Bill Maher: The GOP is divorced from reality.
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Steve I do agree that in ideology Maher is pretty liberal on most topics, however I was refuting the logic that Athiest (which I am) are by nature Liberals.
I admit I have a bit of vitriol about christianity and most religions, however I do find myself pulled toward more moderate economic stances and some social positions (I hate permanent welfare and Unions!)
Honestly after watching Megan Mccain on a few shows espousing her "republican" positions I have to say I closely mirror a lot of her positions. I am hoping the Republican party turns into a more modern party.
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Steve I do agree that in ideology Maher is pretty liberal on most topics, however I was refuting the logic that Athiest (which I am) are by nature Liberals.
I admit I have a bit of vitriol about christianity and most religions, however I do find myself pulled toward more moderate economic stances and some social positions (I hate permanent welfare and Unions!)
Honestly after watching Megan Mccain on a few shows espousing her "republican" positions I have to say I closely mirror a lot of her positions. I am hoping the Republican party turns into a more modern party.
Steve I do agree that in ideology Maher is pretty liberal on most topics, however I was refuting the logic that Athiest (which I am) are by nature Liberals.
I 'm just commenting that Maher is as big a nasty idealogue loon as exists.
But he's funny.
He makes Ann Coulter seem like Mary Poppins.
As to religion I just don't get the left wing hate.
Not you in particular Sev.
WSS
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Obviously this is projection about left wing venom on the religous subject...
I think one of the big topics for them is the seperation of church and state, they see the right as being too influenced on specific topics on say scientific topics.
With Maher and others like him they also might see the religous types as well stupid. They look at a specific cross sample of that community and apply it too broadly. I dont know but I think Legacy is a republican Christian and he is clearly not stupid. There are tons of intelligent christians so that is just a flawed concept anyways.
The extremist ( I do count Mormons as extremists) make most moderate christians look bad and the extremists on the left side seem to forget that most moderate christians are not like the oddball types that picket military funerals of known homosexuals.
with some closet athiest I know they also honestly think too highly on their own intelligence when in reality IMHO NO one really has definitive proof of anything so all of us could be wrong anyways.
Its just one side being judgemental on the other, most of the time with our government system of checks and balances it all works out to some more moderate answer anyways.
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@inspecta said:
The article is irrelevant, this guy is so filled with hate over religion that he's completely blind to anything.He doesn't hate religion.
He just knows he's a better, more evolved human than most of the Retards walking around praising some invisible being like god damn neanderthals.
Maher is one of the smartest guys in the political journalism world, and he's WAY more bi-partisan than anyone who doesn't watch his show would ever believe.
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@inspecta said:
The article is irrelevant, this guy is so filled with hate over religion that he's completely blind to anything.He doesn't hate religion.
He just knows he's a better, more evolved human than most of the Retards walking around praising some invisible being like god damn neanderthals.
Maher is one of the smartest guys in the political journalism world, and he's WAY more bi-partisan than anyone who doesn't watch his show would ever believe.
He doesn't hate religion.
He just knows he's a better, more evolved human than most of the Retards walking around praising some invisible being like god damn neanderthals.
Maher is one of the smartest guys in the political journalism world, and he's WAY more bi-partisan than anyone who doesn't watch his show would ever believe.
Oh, here is Doggie the dickhead come over here to get bitch slapped? Riffer scare you away from the Browns Board? ROFLMAO!
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@inspecta said:
The article is irrelevant, this guy is so filled with hate over religion that he's completely blind to anything.He doesn't hate religion.
He just knows he's a better, more evolved human than most of the Retards walking around praising some invisible being like god damn neanderthals.
Maher is one of the smartest guys in the political journalism world, and he's WAY more bi-partisan than anyone who doesn't watch his show would ever believe.
He doesn't hate religion.
He just knows he's a better, more evolved human than most of the Retards walking around praising some invisible being like god damn neanderthals.
Maher is one of the smartest guys in the political journalism world, and he's WAY more bi-partisan than anyone who doesn't watch his show would ever believe.
Sounds as if youu have an axe to grind, or your just blind.
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He doesn't hate religion.
He just knows he's a better, more evolved human than most of the Retards walking around praising some invisible being like god damn neanderthals.
Maher is one of the smartest guys in the political journalism world, and he's WAY more bi-partisan than anyone who doesn't watch his show would ever believe.
Sounds as if youu have an axe to grind, or your just blind.
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@inspecta said:
The article is irrelevant, this guy is so filled with hate over religion that he's completely blind to anything.He doesn't hate religion.
He just knows he's a better, more evolved human than most of the Retards walking around praising some invisible being like god damn neanderthals.
Maher is one of the smartest guys in the political journalism world, and he's WAY more bi-partisan than anyone who doesn't watch his show would ever believe.
He doesn't hate religion.
He just knows he's a better, more evolved human than most of the Retards walking around praising some invisible being like god damn neanderthals.
Maher is one of the smartest guys in the political journalism world, and he's WAY more bi-partisan than anyone who doesn't watch his show would ever believe.
Please go take a biology class, or genetics, or maybe google for a minute on m-RNA & DNA transcription and specie differentiation before you continue to ignorantly roam the planet with the belief that you magically "evolved" a brain.
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mz. said:
Have you ever seen his show, T? I think you'd be surprised...I have seen this jokers show, I laughed so hard at his idiocy, that I was sick for 2 days.
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Religulous actually was the most critical when approaching Islam and hit its peak while mocking a dumbass Southern Democrat - both things our resident right-wingers would enjoy.
Maher's shtick is very much enjoyable. And for those who bitch about him engaging silly people, you'll see why that's ridiculous - even the smart people he talks to don't have any answers.
I have a pretty deterministic view on faith: people are either born or conditioned to believe in certain things, and it's very hard, if not impossible, to unwire them. So it doesn't surprise me that a half-Jew, half-Catholic like Maher would end up being a sarcastic Spinoza.
So even if reason militated against unbelief, I'm not sure a guy like Maher would end up religulous.
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Religulous actually was the most critical when approaching Islam and hit its peak while mocking a dumbass Southern Democrat - both things our resident right-wingers would enjoy.
Maher's shtick is very much enjoyable. And for those who bitch about him engaging silly people, you'll see why that's ridiculous - even the smart people he talks to don't have any answers.
I have a pretty deterministic view on faith: people are either born or conditioned to believe in certain things, and it's very hard, if not impossible, to unwire them. So it doesn't surprise me that a half-Jew, half-Catholic like Maher would end up being a sarcastic Spinoza.
So even if reason militated against unbelief, I'm not sure a guy like Maher would end up religulous.
Aloysius said:
Maher's shtick is very much enjoyable. And for those who bitch about him engaging silly people, you'll see why that's ridiculous - even the smart people he talks to don't have any answers.Allow me to bitch about the way he edited his interviews with "smart people". Unless Francis Collins has taken great pains to lie about it, he was asked to give an interview on the relationship between the human genome project and his faith. He claims to have spoken to Maher extensively on the compatibility of evolution and Christianity. But Maher's movie depicts Collins talking briefly about the history of the gospels, a topic with almost no relationship to the issues he expected to discuss, and one on which he shoves most of his foot into his mouth. So, you're right Alo, he doesnt just talk to silly people. He also spoke to intelligent people and then cut out their intelligent answers.
I find it hard to believe that you expected anything more.
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Bill Maher:
This idea that there's somebody out there who can make a case for this and make it sound reasonable, that just doesn't exist.
This is the quote that I feel like youre flirting a little too closely with, Alo, when you said,
even the smart people he talks to don't have any answers.
I won't bother with a rant on his statement, assuming you don't agree with it. If you do, let me know and we can spend a few posts on it.
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I thought the movie had some great laughs, but it's mostly a joke on fundamentalism, and people who insert certitude where there can be none.
It's not exactly high brow stuff, and neither is he, even if I agree with his basic point.
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Aloysius said:
Maher's shtick is very much enjoyable. And for those who bitch about him engaging silly people, you'll see why that's ridiculous - even the smart people he talks to don't have any answers.Allow me to bitch about the way he edited his interviews with "smart people". Unless Francis Collins has taken great pains to lie about it, he was asked to give an interview on the relationship between the human genome project and his faith. He claims to have spoken to Maher extensively on the compatibility of evolution and Christianity. But Maher's movie depicts Collins talking briefly about the history of the gospels, a topic with almost no relationship to the issues he expected to discuss, and one on which he shoves most of his foot into his mouth. So, you're right Alo, he doesnt just talk to silly people. He also spoke to intelligent people and then cut out their intelligent answers.
I find it hard to believe that you expected anything more.
Allow me to bitch about the way he edited his interviews with "smart people". Unless Francis Collins has taken great pains to lie about it, he was asked to give an interview on the relationship between the human genome project and his faith. He claims to have spoken to Maher extensively on the compatibility of evolution and Christianity. But Maher's movie depicts Collins talking briefly about the history of the gospels, a topic with almost no relationship to the issues he expected to discuss, and one on which he shoves most of his foot into his mouth. So, you're right Alo, he doesnt just talk to silly people. He also spoke to intelligent people and then cut out their intelligent answers.
I find it hard to believe that you expected anything more.
Didn't know the back story behind the interview. Either way, I stick behind my initial point. My understanding is that there hasn't been any absolute incontrovertible proof that there was a historical Jesus, just as every medieval proof for God's existence has had a modern whole punched through it.
That leaves a great deal of uncertainty. Some people take a leap of faith, others run in the opposite direction. My feeling is that move isn't completely voluntary, which makes something like Religulous more like an ethnography of people of different backgrounds/faiths than a real disputation between faith and reason.
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Allow me to bitch about the way he edited his interviews with "smart people". Unless Francis Collins has taken great pains to lie about it, he was asked to give an interview on the relationship between the human genome project and his faith. He claims to have spoken to Maher extensively on the compatibility of evolution and Christianity. But Maher's movie depicts Collins talking briefly about the history of the gospels, a topic with almost no relationship to the issues he expected to discuss, and one on which he shoves most of his foot into his mouth. So, you're right Alo, he doesnt just talk to silly people. He also spoke to intelligent people and then cut out their intelligent answers.
I find it hard to believe that you expected anything more.
Didn't know the back story behind the interview. Either way, I stick behind my initial point. My understanding is that there hasn't been any absolute incontrovertible proof that there was a historical Jesus, just as every medieval proof for God's existence has had a modern whole punched through it.
That leaves a great deal of uncertainty. Some people take a leap of faith, others run in the opposite direction. My feeling is that move isn't completely voluntary, which makes something like Religulous more like an ethnography of people of different backgrounds/faiths than a real disputation between faith and reason.
Aloysius said:
My feeling is that move isn't completely voluntary, which makes something like Religulous more like an ethnography of people of different backgrounds/faiths than a real disputation between faith and reason.The problem is that Maher portrays the movie as damning evidence of the incompatibility of faith and reason (yes, I know the two words dont go together, but it's late and I'm too lazy to be more careful at the moment (wow, I'm using a lot of parenthetical disclaimers today)), but what he gives us is one side of the story - explicitly ignoring the other side. He interviews idiots, and edits the clear rational answers from intelligent people out of the movie. That, to me, is pretty damning evidence that the movie was a waste of time.
I saw Collins give an interview on the movie in which he seemed pretty upset about how it played out. I have no idea where a transcript for that would be. Here are some links on background of his interview:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/20...igulous-th.html
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You have to admit, the last line is priceless:
Taken as entertainment, which is what he intended first and foremost, it works.
Taken as anything more than that, not so much.
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My feeling is that move isn't completely voluntary, which makes something like Religulous more like an ethnography of people of different backgrounds/faiths than a real disputation between faith and reason.
Maybe you're just a Calvinist.
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The GOP: divorced from reality
The Republican base is behaving like a guy who just got dumped by his wife.
By Bill Maher
April 24, 2009
If conservatives don't want to be seen as bitter people who cling to their guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiments, they should stop being bitter and clinging to their guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiments.
It's been a week now, and I still don't know what those "tea bag" protests were about. I saw signs protesting abortion, illegal immigrants, the bank bailout and that gay guy who's going to win "American Idol." But it wasn't tax day that made them crazy; it was election day. Because that's when Republicans became what they fear most: a minority.
The conservative base is absolutely apoplectic because, because ... well, nobody knows. They're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore. Even though they're not quite sure what "it" is. But they know they're fed up with "it," and that "it" has got to stop.
Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law.
And here's the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes.
Do these sound like the concerns of a healthy, vibrant political party?
It's sad what's happened to the Republicans. They used to be the party of the big tent; now they're the party of the sideshow attraction, a socially awkward group of mostly white people who speak a language only they understand. Like Trekkies, but paranoid.
The GOP base is convinced that Obama is going to raise their taxes, which he just lowered. But, you say, "Bill, that's just the fringe of the Republican Party." No, it's not. The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is not afraid to say publicly that thinking out loud about Texas seceding from the Union is appropriate considering that ... Obama wants to raise taxes 3% on 5% of the people? I'm not sure exactly what Perry's independent nation would look like, but I'm pretty sure it would be free of taxes and Planned Parenthood. And I would have to totally rethink my position on a border fence.
I know. It's not about what Obama's done. It's what he's planning. But you can't be sick and tired of something someone might do.
Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota recently said she fears that Obama will build "reeducation" camps to indoctrinate young people. But Obama hasn't made any moves toward taking anyone's guns, and with money as tight as it is, the last thing the president wants to do is run a camp where he has to shelter and feed a bunch of fat, angry white people.
Look, I get it, "real America." After an eight-year run of controlling the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, this latest election has you feeling like a rejected husband. You've come home to find your things out on the front lawn -- or at least more things than you usually keep out on the front lawn. You're not ready to let go, but the country you love is moving on. And now you want to call it a whore and key its car.
That's what you are, the bitter divorced guy whose country has left him -- obsessing over it, haranguing it, blubbering one minute about how much you love it and vowing the next that if you cannot have it, nobody will.
But it's been almost 100 days, and your country is not coming back to you. She's found somebody new. And it's a black guy.
The healthy thing to do is to just get past it and learn to cherish the memories. You'll always have New Orleans and Abu Ghraib.
And if today's conservatives are insulted by this, because they feel they're better than the people who have the microphone in their party, then I say to them what I would say to moderate Muslims: Denounce your radicals. To paraphrase George W. Bush, either you're with them or you're embarrassed by them.
The thing that you people out of power have to remember is that the people in power are not secretly plotting against you. They don't need to. They already beat you in public.
Bill Maher is the host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher."
via The LA Times
mz. said:
And here's the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too muchYou have to laugh, this guy must have a horrible memory problem.
If it wasn't for politics Maher & Obama wouldn't have jobs. These Lefties Obama and Maher act like they are running student council in a high school. The only differnce is that they now have soap box to stand on and people are actually fooled by them thinking thats how the rest of america thinks. well maybe on the left coast.
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My feeling is that move isn't completely voluntary, which makes something like Religulous more like an ethnography of people of different backgrounds/faiths than a real disputation between faith and reason.
Maybe you're just a Calvinist.
Maybe you're just a Calvinist.
Can't do it. He spent too much time in Dallas....
WSS
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