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Sometimes he makes me laugh out loud; mostly his fratboy humor makes me cringe. Maher's living proof that I would still dislike Bill O'Reilly even if I were stupid enough to agree with him.
He attacks straw men: "Or they say, "Jesus will be there sitting at the right hand of the Father, wearing a white robe with red piping. There will be three angels playing trumpets." I mean, come on. If you want atheists and agnostics to answer your rallying cry, then at least acknowledge that most christians don't say things like that.
Straw man 2: "I mean, 60 percent of Americans believe the Noah's ark story to be literally true." He said that on The Daily Show too. Actually, he did most of this "routine" verbatim there too. In all due respect, I have some problems with the numbers from this particular poll. 29% of non-believers say they believe in Noah and his ark also. Why? Because the wording of the question included those people who believe that there was a flood sometime in the Middle East and that there was a family who made it through on a raft/boat of some sort - and that this story was sung around the campfire for many many years (and exaggerated, like most oral histories) until someone wrote it down. That isn't quite so ridiculous.
Strawman 3: "I said, "We don't even know for sure whether Jesus lived," and he said, "We have eyewitness accounts." And then the 40-70 years debate. I'd agree that it's not an "eyewitness" account, but Collins wasn't really making that point. He was arguing that we have pretty good proof Jesus existed based off of these accounts. I'd agree with Collins here; I "rationally" find it to be unlikely that disparate groups of people gave accounts (in different languages) of a purely fictional character. Bill doesn't acknowledge that point. He attacks the use of an unfortunate word.
"You can't pull your punches, and you wouldn't be respected if you did." I actually agree with most of the points you make. I think this is a dialogue we certainly need. I think the way you go about it is childish and undermining to your actual argument.
"Prejudice comes from the words "pre" and "judge," and I don't think I'm prejudging." Except for how you really are. Why is he surprised that Foster said, "They're just stories" out loud? The Catholic church has been saying this for years! There are books and books. The official Catholic line supports evolutionary theory, for goodness sake. They have nothing to hide. They just don't require Catholics to accept evolution. They don't require people to accept that the world is round either. Does that mean the pope still believes in (and teaches) that the earth is flat?
"I don't use the word "atheist" about myself, because I think it mirrors the certitude I'm so opposed to in religion. What I say in the film is that I don't know." And then he demonstrates - repeatedly, in many different ways - how clearly disingenuous this statement is. In fact, he contradicts himself immediately: "When people say, "You're going after extremists," I say, well, to be religious at all is to be an extremist. It's to be extremely irrational.
I'm an actual agnostic in that I don't think it's provable either way. Dawkins thinks we can disprove the existence of a god through science and reason; Bill Maher thinks he can do it through mocking people. Personally, I don't think either one helps the people who are combating the rise of religious extremism.
