religulous

Saw the film this weekend and loved it. I knew I'd parked in a lot filled with my kind of people when walking to my car I found a guy taking a pix of my Silver Pine Mica's Whale Tail lic plate, SOYLENT.

 

:yawn: Bill is an adult, and does not me to point out blogs to him. He can find them himself.

Having said that, I don't think that Gagdad Bob would be half as fair as Bill when it comes to views. Again, Bill's ultimate message has always been to raise doubt. If you believe, you believe, and if you do then, your belief won't be shaken by Bill Maher. Or at least it should not. 'Cause if you believe that God is the Almighty, then nothing anyone says will make a hill of beans difference.

Correct. He is indeed. However, most people who are arguing against Bill and this movie, I seruously doubt have seen it. It's easier to hate then to think.

 

That one's actually true.

 

There are questions we can answer and questions we cannot answer. Some questions, by their nature, are meaningless and have no answers. "What is ten divided by zero?" Division by zero is undefined, and therefore the question has no answer. "Is there a planet on the opposite side of the galaxy, hidden from us by the galactic center, on which there is intelligent life and a civilization where everyone universally believes in the Flying Spaghetti Monster?" This question has an answer, but it is one we on Earth will never be able to answer. Most religious questions fall into these two categories. Most questions concerning life on Earth have answers, and these answers are knowable, and we have answered some and are still working on others.

There is no single absolute truth. There's stuff we can know, and stuff we cannot know and stuff that is merely the object of belief rather than knowledge.

To jump from the completely unfounded assertion that humans are the only sentient beings to the conclusion that we are therefore the purpose of existence, is preposterous on so many levels it's hardly worth addressing, except to say that there's no basis for the assumption, and even if there was, the conclusion does not follow from it.

But of course that kind of reasoning is the basis and entire foundation of all religion.

Interesting. I imagined that volition was a necessary component of the definition of the word "god." If you leave out volition you may be able to compose a definition of the word that even I would accept as having meaning and relevance. If by "god" you mean simply the entire material universe, then I have no problem with it. But I'm not sure that definition is very useful, except as an argument against religion itself.

 

paraphrased from the 72 names of god...
religion is a man made invention and this invention has done nothing but create separation between people. tragically more blood has been spilled on behalf of religion than from all other diseases and crimes combined.
religion fosters hatred and gives rise to war and genocide, all in the name of GOD...War, hatred and genocide should never be confused with Gods name.
the fact is that divine wisdom, by its very nature, can evoke only harmony between people. the arousal of love and peace is an intrinsic effect of a genuine spiritual wisdom and naturally builds bridges between people of opposite faiths and does not look to divide!! if a religion displays any form of hostility or DIVISION within itself or towards another religion, if it doesnt generate goodness and love, then something is wrong with it..
this of course assumes god is something without will

 

I guess it's as good a time as any to post this... I suppose you know which side I'm on in this thread.

I do think that some people have to believe in something, whether it's real or not, and religion only exists as a "medication for the masses" anyway. If it gets you "through the night" so much the better.

I suppose it'll be just as much of a surprise that their beliefs were just as misplaced as the ones they had in their childhood, ie..Tooth Fairy, Santa, and the Easter Bunny. The basic ideas of right and wrong is better off taught without the prejudicial confinements that religion puts on people. As always, mankind has taken an ancient historical jewish document and made it into a social-guilt ridden-money making event.

 

I am god,
I am god for me and you are god for you
Everywhere I go I am there there fore I am omnipresent
I provide for myself
I give myself guidance
I punish myself if I do wrong and reward myself if I do good things
I am the strongest influence over my world that there is in the universe
The elements from which I am made have always been and will always be
I am god.
This is what I tell religious nuts.

 

God is Love.
Love is Blind.
Ray Charles was Blind.

Therefore, Ray Charles is God.

 

Can anyone say "Wayne's World"?

 

Only Wayne and Garth were smarter then those two.

 

Okay, I went and saw the movie since I felt a bit uncomfortable commenting further on it otherwise. I also wanted to see if some of the assertions here concerning it were accurate.

First off, this is not a documentary even though many of the participants are under the impression that is what they are engaging in. It is pure entertainment. It’s very funny. It’s irreverent. It is cleverly edited. I was delighted to see it since in its course it pokes fun at many who give religion a bad name.

In addition to making money, it has an underlying purpose and the plan is to demonstrate that ‘religion’ is a dangerous delusion which puts mankind in grave danger.

The problems I have with the film are centered on the fact that it presents only one side of the debate. It chooses as its subjects of ridicule, for the most part, those fundamentalists that take scripture literally.

Contrary to an assertion made in this thread, there is not one interview with a serious theologian. One credible interviewee was Francis Collins (former head of the Human Genome Project.) He is presented as the ‘only’ scientist who is also ‘religious’ (there are many thousands). He is a Christian who wrote the book ‘The Language of God’ which revolves around his work with genes and his understanding of DNA and how it presents no barrier to his faith. He’s a very interesting man with a vast amount of knowledge. Maher’s ‘interview’ consists of a series of snorts and chortles as he says basically (and I paraphrase), “Come on, a talking snake and a virgin birth?” I’d guess it lasts less than a minute. PBS’s Charley Rose spent an entire hour with this man.

There is also a Vatican scientist, an astronomer, who basically says the Vatican’s position is not to take parts of the Bible literally, since scientific inquiry did not even come into existence for a couple of millennia.

Other than that, the interviewees are a collection of oddballs, misfits and simple persons who wouldn’t know a theologian from a thespian. In other words, Bill picks the low-hanging fruit and makes no effort to include someone with a deeper understanding of man’s spiritual nature. This is completely understandable in that this ‘documentary’ wishes only to paint the worst possible picture of religion (Christians). There is, of course, no attempt to present any good that has come from the various religions.

Now, the grave danger that man is facing due to misplaced ‘religious’ fervor is real enough. As it concerns us today, it comes from Islam’s fundamentalists. Unfortunately, this movie spends the vast majority of its time ridiculing harmless Christians, with a crazy rabbi (he attended Iran’s Holocaust denial shindig a while back) thrown into the mix. Christianity’s historical crimes are just that – history. There is no threat (other than that in the imagination) from Christians today. There are many ‘facts’ flashed onto the screen which are anything but factual, but that is s discussion for another day.

The few Muslims ‘interviewed’ all say Islam is a religion of peace and any assertion to the contrary is ‘political’. Bill jokes very little with these people for understandable reasons.

The film ends with a mushroom cloud after Maher explains the grave danger all religion places us in. There were, of course, no Buddhists in this film. No Communists were interviewed to demonstrate how their religion-less ideology saved the world from murderous excess.

All in all I enjoyed it and laughed out loud, but it’s not anything other than a light-hearted comedic trashing of a specific fundamentalist type. It is most certainly does not justify the grave message at the end.

 

Horse apples.

 

And your statement is the absolute truth. Right?

Man's consciousness is an extraordinay thing. It is absolutely unneccessary in an evolutionary sense. There is no Darwinian explanation for it. No other animal can imagine standing outside the entire cosmos (a physical impossibility, of course) and draw conclusions based on the observation. Yet, we do it all the time. Systems of logic can only be examined by 'standing outside' of them to see if they work as a whole.

Some people refuse to stand outside the narrow confines of scientistic observation or their system of logic. Are they missing anything?

 

What? A hollywood liberal does a movie that makes fun of Christianity and ignores other religions in order to make money? I never would have thought it could happen. Why didn't he make fun of Islamic fundamentalism too? Well, I think we all know the answer to that one, don't we? Can you say Theo van Gogh?

Van Gogh suspect confesses to killing - World news - MSNBC.com

C'mon Bill. Grow some balls. Put your money where your mouth is.

 

Yeah, it was kind of a shock!


To be fair, scargi01, one of the Muslims in the film is a Dutch policewoman standing on the spot where van Gogh was murdered, but she never varies from the 'Islam is peace, all else is politics' line. A brief picture of Theo, dagger in chest pinning the murderer's letter there, is flashed on the screen.

 

so because of that everyone should keep their mouth closed and give up our freedom of speech..maybe we should lock up people who call palin a pig with lipstick..you didnt see the movie, if you did you would know their was many references to islam and other religions, which are all IMHO garbage..as obama stated, get out from under your guns and religions

 

Not having seen the film yet, my impression from the trailer was that it is just that: A comic look at fundamentalist Christianity. The film is showing downtown, half an hour's drive from me. It comes on just after lunch time, which is awkward, and again late in the afternoon so it is dark out when it's over. I am very diurnal. I seldom go out after dark. But one of these days soon I'm going to make it down there and see it.

I state that there is no absolute truth and you accuse me of making an absolute statement? My statement is a negative one: essentially that we cannot know certain things. Religious fundamentalists (of whatever religion) state, "God is thus and such, he wants this or that, and he'll hurt you if you don't do what I tell you he wants." There is a very different character between that kind of statement, and my assertion that there are things we cannot know.

Consciousness is an amazing thing. But amazement is a subjective emotional reaction. It speaks to our perception of the world, not to the world itself.

Nothing is "necessary" from a Darwinian evolutionary perspective. Evolution favors traits that confer a survival advantage. We cannot infer from the existence of consciousness that there must be a supernatural creator.

 

Would you agree with this statement?
...there is absolutely nothing -- not love, not truth, not art, not virtue -- that cannot be reduced to a battle... for genetic survival.