Showing posts with label Bill Maher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Maher. Show all posts

Saturday, January 10, 2015

No Equivalency Here

After all his trash-talking of Christianity over the years, it’s unusual to see Bill Maher have a moment or two of unexpected lucidity on the Charlie Rose show:

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Bill Maher: There are illiberal beliefs that are held by vast numbers of Muslim people.

Charlie Rose: A vast number of Christians too.

BM: No, no. That’s not true. Not true. Vast numbers of Christians do not believe that if you leave the Christian religion you should be killed for it. Vast numbers of Christians do not treat women as second-class citizens. Vast numbers of Christians do not believe that if you draw a picture of Jesus Christ, you should get killed for it.

Monday, July 21, 2014

Lies, Myths and Misinformation: Smart People Are Atheists

Are more intelligent people atheists? Bill Maher certainly thinks so:
“We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking ... I think religion is a neurological disorder ... I am just embarrassed that it has been taken over by people like evangelicals, by people who do not believe in science and rationality.”
So does Richard Dawkins, unsurprisingly:
“By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.” 
And of course the atheists network calls itself “the Brights”, presumably in contrast to those who are not.


Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Islam, Christianity and Secularism

Interesting things on TV these days.

If you missed it, which I certainly did, in this YouTube clip from last Friday’s show, Bill Maher — surprisingly, for such a notorious secularist — connects the actions of Boko Haram (the Nigerian schoolgirl abductors, for anyone not watching the news) to Islam “at large”, stating plainly that “It’s not just a few bad apples”, much to the consternation of fellow leftist Ariana Huffington, who begs to differ.

Matt Welch, Editor-in-Chief of Reason Magazine agrees with Maher (with a considerable number of qualifications): “Islam is providing a disproportionate share of radical nutbags killing people right now.”

Baratunde Thurston, CEO of Cultivated Wit and author of How To Be Black, dislikes Maher’s assessment and disagrees with Welch’s about the “disproportionate share”: “I don’t think Islam has any monopoly on darkness and nutbags and crazy rhetoric and violence.”

Maher replies: “It’s not a monopoly, but it’s the Titanic hitting the iceberg compared to Whitney Houston dying in her bathtub.”

Ouch.