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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The answer will come from the conflict between the two sides. Dialectics 1001.
At any rate, when religion is not embraced by the elites in every country, who use it to prop up their rule, or use it to oppress others, I'll be good with religion. You can believe what you want. But not tax free. Not on the money. Not in the schools. Not in the Army. Not in court. Not in foreign policy. Not in science. Or we'll fight you. Period.
It is about time we had ONE movie attacking religion, after years of religious crap on TV and in film. This is Bill's answer to "Passion of the (Bloody) Christ." One movie and the religious are dismissive. Please.
Andrew O'Hehir: "the religion Maher is describing is not imaginary, and in various forms and guises is professed by most people in the United States, including every president we've ever had..."
Andrew I'm a fan of yours, but that's not correct. As the Encyclopedia Brittanica puts it:
"One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian."
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_founders.html
Moreover there is no indication that George Washington and James Madison were in any sense Christians. And Jefferson was an avowed anti-Christian, in the sense that per Christians Jesus was the Son of God. Here's of many statements Jefferson made on the subject:
"The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a Virgin Mary, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
Andrew O'Hehir: "(I'm sorry, that's right -- one of this year's candidates is a Muslim.)"
If only more than 10% of Americans didn't take that joke seriously...
Believe what you need to.
And make no mistake -- I wish I was lying.
Good points all.
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.
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 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."
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
