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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
at various places in the Old Testament, it is prophesied that 'a virgin shall give birth'; various Christian preachers in the first couple centuries after the time of Christ's human existence wove those Old Testament prophesies together as a way of justifying the primacy of the worship of Christ
much later, after the religious ritual of Baptism had been instituted as the formal and official way to wash away the taint of Adam and Eve's Original Sin, it was reasoned that God the Father would have wanted the female human, who would carry His Son, to be pure and unsullied by the taint of Original Sin and thus, the concept of the Immaculate Conception came about
this is standard Catholic theology, which as a result of 8 years in a Catholic elementary school, 4 years in a Catholic high school for young men and two years at a Catholic college, is part of my reasoning process
I accept this stuff even though it may sound rather fanciful to someone else but that is the thing about "faith", there are some things that simply defy all logic
I will probably attend this movie and laugh at the crazy parts of my faith; I saw "Dogma" and I groaned at the illogical parts of my faith
But as I have said, faith quite often defies all logic
How far do you have to stray from believing in an invisible man who tells you who you can and can't fuck and needs money does one need to get to be considered a "legitimate theologian?"
Its all absolute poppy-cock.. no God powerful enough to create the Universe could possibly care what you or I think, and if He or She held it against us, He or She is a Dick.
My faith in Pastafarianism is unshakable.
Nice try!
Ramen, brother.
You're missing the forest because all you see in front of you is a bunch of trees...
The reason Bill didn't go after voodoo, animists, and other lesser-known religions is precisely the same reason he didn't bother with Hinduism and other Eastern religions...because they don't play as central of a role as Christianity, Judeaism, and Islam do in this country, the U.S. of A...these are probably the numbers 1, 2, and 3 of religion in the U.S. Islam may be a distant 3rd. in regards to practicing adherents in America, but that religion plays such a pivotal role in defining our foreign policy that you cannot ignore it in the U.S.
By going after the extremists, he's trying to make HIS point, the view of agnostics, atheists, and non-believers...that all religion is CRAZY and irrational, when you look at it for what it is. This is something that even folks like O'Hehir, who probably identify with Maher and "get it" better than most, just don't understand about non-believers. We look at this stuff and say "How can a rational human being believe this shit?"...to the point that they let it influence their daily interactions with everyone.
Even O'Hehir tries to be an apologist for organized religion, saying that Maher can't hold a flame to some religious theologian if he has a legitimate discussion with them about the merits of their religion. But for a theologian to try and justify their beliefs, it'll require them to pop out their (insert religious book here), quote lines from said book, then explain how their religioin can help save the human soul, provide comfort to the less fortunate, ensure your salvation in the afterlife, yadiyada...
To non-believers, that's like having The Ronald McDonald clown come and explain to you why your Happy Meal is so delicious, and why you shouldn't feel bad about stopping by your local McDonalds to have a #12 Chicken McNugget meal, supersized...with a diet coke, so you can sort-of stick with your diet. It's not a conversation...it's a sale's pitch.
Non-believers have been squashed in recent years...their voices have NOT been heard, mainly because they have no religion to preach, no people to save (in the holy sense). All Maher is trying to do is to restore some logical balance to this ongoing dialogue about what role religion should play in our daily lives, and how much of it has to be crammed down our throats whether we like it or not.
I for one applaud you, Maher...
I get that the main jist of what Maher is trying to point out is that many people that believe in a certain religions are convinced that others that don't believe in their god can't be a moral person just for the sake of morality. They firmly believe that they have the only true way to be a good person in their teachings. Remember the so-called Moral Majority? There were a few hypocrites in that bunch. Even worse, some of the more extreme religious sects have some beliefs that require them to act in a decidedly immoral fashion such as jihadists and the "eye-for-an-eye" crowd such as Christians that back the death penalty. The big problem is that so many feel it's their mission from their god that they convert all non-believers by any means necessary, including violence and domination.
Let me begin by saying that I am not a Christian or a member of any religion at all.
Yet I find it sort of silly that Bill Maher and most of the commenters seem to blame religion for wars and for general stupidity and evil in the world. I'm not a historian or an anthropologist, I guess, but I'm reasonably sure from what I do know about history that war happens with or without religious justifications, and that many times the religious rhetoric is actually just a coverup for a war that is actually (usually) about division of resources--land, water, minerals, and so forth. Certainly, much of the European colonization of the world had overtones of religiosity, but I think it's fairly clear that it was really about business. About spices and tea and trade routes and control, and very little of it had anything more than a superficial coating of religion on it. Even a lot of the missionaries spent more of their time doing linguistics and helping people plant crops than converting them.
And people are ignorant and selfish and prone to doing evil in roughly the same proportions all the world 'round, no matter how religious or unreligious they are. The Japanese, for example, are nowadays a very nonreligious people (there are still remnants, and of course there are still devout believers, but it is not especially common), and are we suppose, therefore, that they are smarter and less prone to doing evil than Americans? I suppose Bill Maher probably thinks so, but I've lived in Japan, and I beg to differ (yes, there is less crime overall, but this has to do with other issues; evil in Japan takes somewhat different forms than it does here).
Jefferson and some of our other founding fathers were not Christians per se, but they did mostly believe in a god and in Jesus, so were they stupid? Was St. Augustine stupid? Is Charles Taylor or Albert Borgmann or Martin Buber or Kierkegaard or Kant--really, were all these people stupid? I tend to think that despite the fact that I do not believe in the religions they believe(d) in, they are smarter than Bill Maher. It's facile and juvenile to accuse everyone you disagree with of being stupid; it is precisely that kind of nondialogue that has our country in the mess it is in right now. Maher was on The Daily Show the other night and stated outright that anyone who doesn't agree with him politically is a stupid redneck. It's such a progressive, intellectual sort of thing to say, isn't it? I don't know how anyone could take that kind of thing seriously, except that it just reinforces their own biases.
Meh, I'd rather read Charles Taylor on the "malaise of modernity" because he has a thoughtful and profound interpretation of it, one that does not rely heavily on 6th-grade insults of the people who disagree with him. Yes, he's Catholic. So what?
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"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
