Bill Maher is wonderful.

[theweaselking]

"I think that flying planes in a building was a faith-based initiative."

Anything that annoys the AFA is inherently good.

(Full transcript here)

Comments

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

Just to play Devil's Advocate for a minute, what is untruthful about the AFA guy's statement "Had Maher said such things about homosexuals, he would have been immediately fired" and why is what Maher said ok and great in that context?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If gay people spent all their time complaining that those who were not gay were "unclean" and should be killed, and who devoted vast efforts to attacking the weakest members of society and converting them to gayness, you *might* have a case.

Right now, though, you're saying "Well, you shouldn't call the KKK 'ignorant racists' because it's not very nice".

Also, see exhibit A: Anything that annoys the AFA is inherently good.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

Easy there buddy, I said I was playing Devil's Advocate.

I would also point out that all Christians don't spend all their time complaining that those who are not Christian are "unclean" and should be killed, and devote vast efforts to attacking the weakest members of society in order to convert them to Christianity. The KKK is universally ignorant racists because that's part of the spiel. There's nothing equivalent in Christianity.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Agreed. On the other hand, Maher's problem is, like mine, with the evangelical loons who *do* do that.

You know, the ones who want "faith-based initiatives", and who feel that they have some obligation, duty, or, worst of all, right to inflict the conclusions of their unwillingness to think on everyone else.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

Actually, Bill's made it pretty clear that he thinks religion in general is a psychological disorder. He might also dislike the evangelical loonies and the crazed Muslims, but, to him, those are problems on top of the base issue: that they are religious.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

(Incidentally, crazed Muslims ARE evangelical loonies. They're just not "Christian" evangelicals.)

He's got a point. When you start making decisions based on religion in the face of facts, you're making decisions irrationally. As long as you get reasonable results from your irrational process and don't insist that everyone else use it, nobody cares. The day you decide that your diabetic children don't need insulin, they need oatmeal, you're dangerously insane whether you're doing that because you're Christian or because you're schizophrenic.

In the end, it really doesn't matter *why* you're making irrational decisions. You're making them, and that's generally considered a bad thing.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

I was using evangelical in the "convert to Christianity" sense of the word. "Evangelical" as in "marked by militant or crusading zeal" is further down the list of definitions, and I was always taught that it was a lesser use the further one went down the list. I was more speaking of definition 3 ("emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual"). Crazed Muslims are also evangelical loonies only in the most extreme and unused reading of the word.

Bill has never really divided his belief on religion as you just did. He's sorta just said he believes that the religious have a neurological disorder in general, whether they arrive at the appropriate decision or not.