I saw it last night and think the point isn't that Maher is perfectly right, or so intellectually superior to the point that he's better qualified than anybody else to ask the gross (as in broad) questions he asks.

For me, the takeaway was that however abrasively, he tried.

I see his sneering and his sexism. But I also saw the confused boy asking his Jewish mother (who raised him Catholic): "You're my mother. Guide me!" Truth in jest.

At various points when he's not asserting his logical specialness, he really is trying, in moments, to understand how people get so enmeshed with the rules of religion that they veer away entirely from the compassion, inclusivity and gentleness that anybody who grasps the Golden Rule even vaguely can understand when they're very small.

I think he resorts to pointing out the contradictions in religious documents and practices as a way of saying it indirectly. There's really only one question: if being good is about love and peace, what is this other stuff you're teaching?

I have a huge sense of mysticism that was influenced by my childhood sense of unconditional love (which I was taught) and the wonder I experienced watching dust motes in sunbeams or stars. Later on I gave up on the notion that any book, any book, any book, any book, any book, any book -- anything expressed in human language EVER -- could get near it.

What Maher's movie left out for me was the mystery of beauty. No matter how far along I am in agnositicism, sacred music moves me. As does gospel. As do spirituals. As do animals.

I think they're all the same thing. Human loneliness. While we chatter and argue about TEXTS and interpretations of texts we're trying to win over, persuade or conquer one another. And we only do that because we're lonely.

Kindness, not rightness, is the only fix.

That takes just a few words to explain. And then you get it, and then you know how to live.

I basically agree with Bill Maher; standard brand orthodox religion is a crock and the oldest con game on the planet. On one point I do differ. There is a type of mature spirituality,

as represented by Buddhism and Vedic Hinduism in their advanced,esoteric forms and Gnostic Christianity as well. However, these are not religions in the commonly understood sense; more accurately, they are methodologies for a realization experience of a consciousness which is transpersonal in nature.

This consciousness is said to exist not just by Buddhists,

Vedic Hindus or Gnostics. Some advanced quantum physicists, such as David Bohm, Itzhak Bentov and Jack Sarfatti, have said the same thing, comng from a scientific orientation. The search for the ultimate particle of matter has led them to that conclusion. The problem with the ultimare particle theory is this: no ultimate particle of matter could ever be observed or described. Why? Because if some ultimate bit of stuff is the source of all matter, it cannot have any constituent parts or distinguishable features. If it does, then it must be comprised of some other more basic material.

This leads to an infinite regression that ends with... what? These scientists say it can only lead to a non-material source of all manifest existence: consciousness. Now, this consciousness is not personal and is NOT a god by any definition.

Granted such a consciousness exists. How can we know it? Through a disciplined use of a methodology that leads us into a realization experience of it. It can only be experienced, not known as an idea or dogma. In the Upanishads, the Vedic Hindu writings, which are the oldest on the planet, it has been written that one can read scripture from one end to the other but unless one experiences what is described, one has nothing but a lot of empty words.

Literalized, fundamentalist relgion makes the mistake of taking the symbol or metaphor of God, or Jesus, as being actually real. The referent of all such synbols or metaphors cannot be literalized or captured in language. Certain kinds of language, like mystical aphorisms or poetry, can point toward the referent, but that's all language can do. I say use religious scripture in the one way it can be useful in terms of spiritual realization: as symbol and metpahor for meditation. That way we don't throw out the baby (being born to higher consciousness) with the bath water (remaining dead in literalized fantasies). By the way, this is not some New Age babble; what I am talking abouut has been known and discussed for centuries, in one form or another. Aldous Huxley's wonderful book, THE PERENNIAL WISDOM, covers the whole history of mystical insight.

We live in a universe of high and low energies, energies that can manifest as three dimensional, sense verifiable things or objects and much more subtle energies, such as consciousness. It all exists,as Ken Wilber has written, on a spectrum of consciousness. When we human beings realize a transpersonal consciousness, we are are released from fear and desire. That release is what is actually meant by being born again. There is no one way of getting there. Choose your methodology--Buddhist, Hindu, Gnostic, native American or speculative quantum physics--any way that works for you is fine. The Gnostic, Paul of Tarsis, put it well: "When I became a man (read grown up), I put away childish things."

his scattershot and ad hominem attacks against many different forms of religious hypocrisy don't add up to a coherent critique

Andrew, look up what an ad Hominem attack (a fallacy) actually means. You obviously don't!

Paid by the word, btw, so that you use ten where one would suffice? Your style is as crisp as a wet sponge.

I think it's a good sign that "believers" have to spin the situation so much in order to seem credible.

"You're not supposed to take it literally," they say, with varying degrees of verbosity. Oh really? Why not? Is the book holy or isn't it? Is it the word of "god" or isn't it? Does it mean what it says, or doesn't it? Put up, or shut up.

"You're just as bad as the religious fanatics." No, we're based on empirical evidence and such. There's no comparison, and if you can't see that, you aren't very smart.

"You ignore the vast moderate majority." The moderates are apostates. See above.

"You're being disrespectful!" Why does religion get a free pass? I'm not obliged to respect anything else.

"Hitler was an atheist..." No, he wasn't. But besides him, do you really want to compare the 20th century Communists and 19th Century French Revolutionaries against all the religous tyranny in the past, present, and future? Atheists overthrew Pol Pot, by the way.

"Religion = Morality" Explain Scandinavia.

"You have to take it on faith." That's a delusion, by definition.

"You believe in nothing." I believe in lots of *real* things.

"Most wars aren't relgious." True, but do we need another reason? Religion stops a thinking brain, it's probably the most potent reason there is.

And so on and so forth.