![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"The right wing is built on anger. And they run everything now, so where does the anger go? [...] They're angry. Right wing hate radio is built on impotent rage. It's built on, 'You! White guy in a car! You're being screwed over by the treehuggers and the feminazis and the teacher's unions and the French, whoever!' They have more enemies than that woman Robert Blake killed -- or didn't kill, that's right [...]
"They have so much anger, the Republicans, and they have no place to put it because they control everything now. For them to complain now, it's like Don King complaining that he doesn't control enough of boxing. They control the House, they control the Senate, they control the White House, the courts, so there's nothing left for them, so what do they ... activist judges, Jay, activist judges, which is a code word for what? 'Gay'. [...] They have this obsession with what they call 'the gay agenda'. You know what? We both used to live in West Hollywood when we were young men ([to audience] Not like that.) You know what the gay agenda is? Starbucks at eight, tanning salon at nine, workout at ten. That's the gay agenda. There is no 'gay agenda'."
-- Bill Maher, 2005-04-18, on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
(no subject)
Man, I wish double-quoting a quote wasn't against
(no subject)
(no subject)
Let me ask you are right wing people throwing things at left wing speakers?
I'd say this guy is blinded by his own hate.
(no subject)
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42906
"We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it's something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child. It certainly was drilled into mine at that age. And you really can't be responsible when you are a kid for what adults put into your head."
http://www.suntimes.com/special_sections/spirit/cst-nws-god24.html
""I think so much that's wrong with our society stems from religion," Maher announces"
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/002936.php
"I always call religion a neurological disorder. I really do believe that. I mean it's not criticizing. I'm just saying if you took religion out of it and somebody went to a psychiatrist and said you know I believe in you know this crazy, illogical thing, the shrink would say, well you have a neurological disorder. And you need to really get therapy or take a pill."
I could go on for hours. Maher is a bigot of the highest degree. A hatemonger both intolerant and angry. For him to stand up and denounce ANYONE as being hateful is like Hitler saying the Jews were Hateful.
(no subject)
That however, in no way makes him a hate-monger.
(no subject)
(no subject)
He's right about a few things. If you want to be technical, 9/11 WAS a "faith based initiative" in that people's faith (misguided as it was) drove them to do it.
And he's probably right when he says that if it was never talked about in the Bible, if you showed up at a shrink telling him how you believed in the event known as the Rapture, and described it in great detail, you'd probably be forcibly committed.
I think he's throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but he does have some points, and I don't see what hateful about the above sentiments...
(no subject)
A hatemonger labels people with bitter hateful words. This is what he is doing. No matter how he phases it.
For you to agree with him means that you as a religious person feel you deserve the titles he wishes put on you. So are you Crazy? Are you mentally challenged? Are you the force destorying our country? If you think he has a point in these labels then accept them for yourself.
I for one call him a hatemonger because he is encourageing hatred of religious people. As a hatemonger he has no standing to tell us when others are hateful.
(no subject)
So lets put him to the test.
Is he saying religious people should be shot? beaten? put in jail? Not at all.
He says they are misguided. He says they were likely brainwashed at a young age. He feels sorry for them. He feels alot of societies ills happen because of this.
Where I think you and I disagree is that I don't think Religion has to believe in the almighty.
I think Atheism is a religion too as it is a faith that believes in the *absence* of a supreme being.
Religions are dogmas as to the structure of the universe in the absence of other information. Belief in what cannot be proven, or at least what cannot be proven *yet*. So I believe the Nazi's did practice a religion (heck, they were a cult!). Likewise, the USSR's insistance as the State as the supreme being was a religion too.
Just because your religious, doesn't mean you believe in a Creator. What Bill is going off on is the blind acceptance of what *anyone* tells you you should believe. And on that level, I can't really find fault with him.
(no subject)
As for the hate monger thing... if I were to say the same things about Jews would you call be justifed? Would you cansider me as "having a point"?
I happen to agree that Atheism is a religion, Nazism was a fanatic world view.. ie race wars. For a group to be a religion they need to have answer for 3 questions... 1) What started all this 2) What is my purpose here 3) What happen when I die. Any group that answers these three questions I would say was a religion. The Nazi's did answer 1 or 3.
(no subject)
Where did you get that?
Even in your quotes he goes after religion itself and not the people.
Re: Nazi's being a religion.
For the people like Bill, the Nazi's are a religion. Certainly, when I think of the crimes done in the name of religion, I count the holocaust. The Nazi's thought they were right to kill members of a religion. They thought they were on the right side of the religious teachings. It's religious fervor. It doesn't have to rise to the level of fanaticism to make you disregard your own senses.
(no subject)
Now according to you I could say democrats are brain washes, mental flawed, and are destorying our society, and I would not be guilty of hatered toward democrats I would only be making a point. Is that right?
(no subject)
And yes, you could say that without hating someone. I might think you'd be misguided and wrong and thickheaded, but not guilty of hatred, and neither would I be for saying that opinion.
(no subject)
(no subject)
I think he's mad about how religion gets used by some people. Religion requires faith. I don't think he has a problem with that until that faith is used to justify whatever the guy at the pulpit thinks should be justified (excuse me...how he interprets the scriptures).
Look at the 9/11 hijackers. They killed over 3000 people thinking the Almighty approved of it, so they'd go to heaven for doing so. I think Bill feels hostility towards anyone who uses religion like that. I think he also has a problem with trying to teach religion to someone who isn't capable of making decisions for him/herself.
I do not believe he feels hostility towards people who don't do that, but I think he feels the people who do have become endemic.
(no subject)
Well on that I guess we are both making subjective judgements because only he could answer that and even in his own answer it would be subjective. I feel he is hateful towards religion and that he promotes hateful ideas against religion. You don't and that fine. But I personnal would not consider him a good athority on decide is someone is hateful or not. Since I feel he is fully emersed in it himself.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
When it come to the Nazi's they hated Jew... but they also hated Gypsys, Gays, Blacks, etc. To think that the Jews were the ONLY target of there groups is foolish.
(no subject)
(no subject)
It tells you where everything came from, what is our purposes here, and what happens when you die.
But the idea of religion is subjective and can blur with the idea of philosophy. Some "religions" are mearly philosophy while some "philosophys" appear to more like a religion.
(no subject)
Are "anger" (the word Maher used) and "hate" (the word you introduced) synonyms?
That is to say, is this another of your straw man distractions, or merely careless phrasing on your part?
(no subject)
(no subject)
Since your concluding that when Maher says he is angry that he hates, then I must take that to mean that if you say youre angry at someone, you must hate them.
If that doesn't apply to you, but you think it applies to someone else, youre being hipocritical.
(no subject)
If I remained angry with someone for many many years I would safely say I hate them. For example I have been angry at Bin Laden for a number of years now... I think it would be safe to say I hate him.
(no subject)
there's a difference between expressing an opinion and preaching it. Maher clearly phrases things in the sort of statements therapists teach people to use in order to communicate their feelings without making their words a personal attack -- he says, "i say," "i think," "i feel." he's expressing his opinion.
now, if he went out and said, "i think religious people are crazy and you should too, join with me so we can defeat the evil religious hordes," that would be hatemongering.
i think, in a country that was founded on the principles of freedom -- of speech, of religion, of association -- it's important to know the difference between the two, so that we can recognize -- and act against -- the real thing when we see it, instead of freaking out every time someone expresses an opinion we don't agree with so that it's impossible to distinguish the signal from the noise in the national discourse.
me? yes, i'm an atheist. i respect the right of others to believe as they choose, which is more consideration than i've usually been accorded by the other side. and many of my friends are people of faith, for which i admire and respect them.
personally, i don't think Maher's real issue is with religion, though -- i think it's with people who don't think. because no matter what they believe, thinking people will consider all sides of an issue before they act. people who don't think -- who react based purely on fear or hate or anger or what someone else tells them -- those are the dangerous people.
(no subject)
-join with me so we can defeat the evil religious hordes-
This is were we enter the relm of oppion. "I feel" that he is indeed saying this. "I feel" he is one of many athiest that would deny religious people voices in their government, their schools, their press, and in effect force them to hide in dark closets. If you are really about freedom that means religious people should be allowed to speak out when they disagree with something and work within the system the same as everyone else does. When you tell them "you should not be allowed to influance the government because your 'too' religious" then you are in effect you are not a citizen if you are religious.