Bill Maher Still Doesn’t Get It
A week after debating with Andrew Sullivan about religion on his HBO show, Bill Maher strikes the clueless button again. He appeared on the Daily Show with John Stewart tonight to promote his new movie, Religulous. Unfortunately, I can’t post the segment because it won’t be put online until tomorrow, but basically he made the same mistake he did on his show last week of painting all religious people with the same brush.
Maher got into talking about religion again, about how 60% of Americans believe that the story of Noah’s Ark is quite literally true. They then got into a discussion on the religious beliefs of Barack Obama and John McCain and McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin (poor Joe Biden, he gets left out of everyone’s discussions, doesn’t he?). Maher says he thinks neither presidential candidate is very religious. That’s all fine and dandy. Maher can have his opinion on that subject, though I think he’s wrong. They are different in how they deal with it publicly, though.
Maher went on to say he thought Obama had to present himself as religious, because this is the United States, and a lot of people are Christians. He then noted that he hoped it wasn’t true that Obama was a practicing Christian, because he would then believe the same as biblical literalists. That’s paraphrashing, but that’s what I got out of what he said.
Bill Maher apparently hasn’t read Dreams from my Father or The Audacity of Hope. I’ve read the latter, and while I do see someone in Obama who is firm in their convictions, I don’t see a biblical literalist. Yet, if you believe Maher, that’s what Obama is.
But this isn’t about Barack Obama. This is about putting all believers (more specifically, Christians) in the same category. Now, while it is definitely appropriate to have reservations with organized religion – to refute its assertions – I don’t think it’s right to bunch everybody up and assign them the same set of beliefs.
Has Maher not looked at the world around him? He says he spent a year or so interviewing believers for his movie. Did he not notice a difference in beliefs from place to place? Some more liberal in their views, and other more conservative? Right evangelicals as compared to left evangelicals? Or evangelicals as compared to non-evangelicals? Literalists as compared to those seeing the Old Testament as metaphorical? Did he pay attention at all?
Apparently not if, after spending so much time making this movie, he still wants to put all Christians in the same jar. Maher seems like a smart man. So why doesn’t he have the capability to separate different groups within a religion?
[Update]: The clips for the full interview are up
The answer is not complicated. Maher’s view is very logical and blunt and focuses on this front: it is ridiculous to partially believe in something that is fundamentally absurd. A person who hazily believes in some sort of god is not rationally any more credible than a fundamentalist who literally believes every word written in the Old Testament. Without evidence, both are on level ground.Similarly, a person who thinks Santa Claus ‘might’ exist in the North Pole is no less misguided than a child who literally believes a bearded man flies through the sky and delivers gifts through chimneys every year.This is, of course, one of the oldest quarrels in the history of humankind. I’m simply answering your question. You can fire back with arguments related to religion’s general teachings or the guidance people might get from Church or metaphors vs. literalism, but those are very separate points.
Of course he’s smart enough to see the differences. People like him know very well that there are rational and irrational religious believers, but in their anti-religious propaganda they choose to highlight the most irrational. Creating straw men of the opposition is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
There are certainly rational and non-rational religious believers, and in that sense Bill does generalize far too much.
On the other hand, the fact is that in the absence of evidence, as James explains above, a vague religious belief and a literalist religious belief is just as rational, which is to say not at all.
Again, that DOES NOT mean that someone who has more esoteric religious beliefs is going to behave in the same way as someone who has literalist religious beliefs. I happen to think that a literalist is going to be much more inclined to let their attitude of faith in the face of lack of evidence leak over into their reality-based lives, wheras your more mainstream non-literalist has enough sense to separate their religious faith from their reality based lives.
However, that does not mean that the beliefs of the non-literalist have any more rational value than those of the literalist. If both lack evidence, both lack rational value. I could be persuaded that a non-literalist has more rational footing in those cases where the claims of a literalist are not only lacking in positive evidence, but actually have plenty of contradicting evidence, as in the case of evolution. At least the non-literalist limits his or herself to believing things that lack any evidence in favor, but also lack a way of being disproved, wheras literalists insist on believing things that are disproven.
On the other hand, the fact is that in the absence of evidence, as James explains above, a vague religious belief and a literalist religious belief is just as rational, which is to say not at all.
I completely reject the premise that you and James B. are using here, and I’ll explain why.
Let’s get back to the analogy that James used (and it’s one that’s frequently used, as well as a few other variations like belief in aliens, flying spaghetti monster, etc.) of a child’s belief in Santa Claus.
Let’s look at the evidence that a child uses to accept this belief. He’s told stories about Santa, told to write a letter listing his desired toys and presents. He’s told he must go to sleep on Christmas Eve so that Santa can come. On Christmas morning he wakes up and low and behold, the toys he requested have appeared under the tree in his living room.
Given the actual evidence that this child has, the belief that Santa brought the toys is actually VERY rational. It’s only when he becomes old enough to understand that the story surrounding Santa isn’t rational that he begins to look for other possible explanations.
Now, those who do not believe in God or a Creator of any sort will then say that this is similar to mankind having evolved to a point where we can look for other more rational explanations for the existence of our universe and even ourselves. Yet what we, as rational religious believers are saying is that given the actual evidence that we have, the postulation of a Creator is at least equally rational to the postulation of no Creator and perhaps more so (because there is absolutely nothing in human experience that justifies a belief in matter being eternally present or having come into existence without some force being behind it’s inception, nor is there any spontaneous eruption of life from inorganic matter.)
You see, in the maturing view of a growing child, one begins to understand that the parents are the possible purveyors of the Christmas gifts- but there is no such logical substitute for the hand of God in creation, at least not in current scientific knowledge (and personally I don’t believe there ever will be- this is at the very least something which is philosophically ‘unknowable’, and represents what ought to be the limit of human empirical understanding unless we succumb to hubris.)
Christine, you are mischaracterizing (almost certainly involuntarily) what atheism is. I know I’ve explained it about a dozen times on this site alone, but I will do so once more.
Lack of religious belief, or rejection of the existence of a god, DOES NOT imply a positive belief in the non-existence of a god. That is, it is not a certainty in the lack of something. It is a fallback position. I have no evidence for the existence of pink unicorns, therefore I state that the faith in pink unicorns is irrational.
The difference here is that when faced with the question "Where did everything come from?" I do not feel compelled to state an absolute belief in an answer. I’m comfortable with "We just don’t know yet". Even accepting the Big Bang (which I am unqualified to do, but I do trust the good faith of a plurality of experts in physics) there is still the question of "what about before that?" that delves into our (obviously insufficient) understanding of the concepts of time, space, etc.
All this of course leaves aside the fact that all religious people other than deists not only justify their beliefs with "there must have been a creator", but give that creator quite a few very specific traits and preferences. The all-important creator has specific opinions about pork, or when you decide to have intercourse and with who, or what sins are big ones and which small. The religious are also perfectly capable of seeing logical fallacies in the religion of others while being seemingly incapable of seeing the same in their own. This produced hilarious results for me once, as I saw a friend, who had converted from one religion to another, speak frankly to me about how his ex-religion doesn’t make sense because of this and that fallacy that he could see, now that he wasn’t a believer in it anymore.
Claudia, you seem to have not noticed that I didn’t say anything at all about "what atheism is" either directly or implicitly. I was presenting my argument against the much narrower point that was actually put forth by James and affirmed by you, that religious belief itself not rational. Here are the quotes, first from James, and then from you, stating this assertion:
"…it is ridiculous to partially believe in something that is fundamentally absurd. A person who hazily believes in some sort of god is not rationally any more credible than a fundamentalist who literally believes every word written in the Old Testament. Without evidence, both are on level ground."
"On the other hand, the fact is that in the absence of evidence, as James explains above, a vague religious belief and a literalist religious belief is just as rational, which is to say not at all."
The two statements above are anti-theist statements, not atheistic ones. They are making a positive assertion. I’m well aware of the fact that atheism itself does not make positive assertions like that (and if I remember correctly from some of those past discussions you refer to, you’ve basically admitted that your personal beliefs fall more in the anti-theism camp.) And that’s fine, as long as you admit that it’s just your opinion and not something that you can logically prove or back up as being ‘more rational.’ The best you can really do is to say that it ‘feels’ more rational to you.
I cannot help but feel amused by the fact that we seem destined to go over the same terrain over and over again till Kingdom Come (yes that’s on purpose).
Anti-theism has nothing to do with the argument. Anti-theism postulates that religion has a net harmful effect on the world. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether you hold a certain religion to be true or not. Though the vast majority of anti-theists are probably atheists, not all are, and anti-theism often includes even people who are theists (not deists) but are very much against organized religion.
Of course, the irrationality of religious belief is cited by anti-theists as part of the cause of what they see as it’s harmful effects, but they are not the same belief.
I do not hold a positive belief in the lack of a deity. I say that there is none because I see no credible evidence to the contrary, in my view, and the fallback position in the face of a lack of positive evidence is non-belief, in the case of Zeus or the Easter Bunny. I also believe that religion likely has a net negative effect on society, but that belief exists based on a set of observations that are independent of the lack of evidence of a deity, and therefore can also be argued separately.
Yes, we are destined to keep revisiting this argument as long as you continue to either neglect to see or refuse to admit that you slip between atheism and antitheism in your arguments and assertions. Are you actually claiming that the quotes I referenced above represent atheism rather than anti-theism? Even when you try to defend your views as atheistic you slip up, as in your last paragraph above:
I do not hold a positive belief in the lack of a deity. I say that there is none (…) [the part that I bolded is an assertion, isn't it?]
I realize you then go on to explain why you say that there is no God, and you correctly then state that this is your belief and not a fact that you claim to be verifiable. But you seem incapable of admitting that you ARE repeatedly asserting that your position is inherently more logical or rational even though when pressed on it you have to admit that this is YOUR default and not the only logical default position. It’s only because you adopt a particular worldview (that only those things that are empirically provable are rational) that this default makes more sense to you.
You are correct, of course, that the arguments about whether religious belief is a net positive or negative is a separate discussion, and no one here has attempted to take it in that direction.
C Stanley,
The argument is designed to make it sound like a child who never thought about the subject of God before is automatically an atheist, because he lacks belief. It’s a definition that implies when someone decides to affirm he believes in a God, he’s being convinced into changing his belief, instead of affirming something he already knew. Its ignores the subjectivity of people who decide to state a belief in God. And its a subjective definition written by atheists that tries to cram in an implicit message that belief in God is irrational. It’s not objective in any way, an objective definition would simply be that an atheist believes there is no God. And then you can add to that if you want believes there is no God, because there’s no evidence.
At best, its political counter programming to the belief that a child is the religion of his parents.
It’s sort of like redefining suicide bombers as homicide bombers and then claiming you’re being objective—although I still hear people defending that.
Anyway, Bill Maher’s shows have always been something where when I’ve tuned into them, I felt embarassed by some of the stupidity of the comments. That goes back to when he defended Republican points of views on Comedy Central, back when Ariana Huffington was a Republican also
C. Stanley, it’s very misleading to take my phrase and cut out half of it, especially when it completely changes the meaning of the phrase.
Please explain to me if you can how saying "I don’t believe in fairies" is inadvisable without admitting to a positive assertion of their non-belief while you cannot do the same thing for any given deity. Pretend it’s not your Christian god. Think of Zeus, if it makes it simpler.
I didn’t include anti.theism into the argument, you did that. I said that there is no rational basis for a positive belief in god (or for a negative belief, the certain assertion that there definitely is no god). Neither statement you quote is anti-theistic because neither makes a value judgment on the good or harm of holding that belief. Both are certainly atheistic, but not explicitly anti-theistic.
The issue is that religion has such a "sacred" place in polite society that challenges that would be considered tame if they referred to political beliefs, for instance, are considered instantly over the line in the case of religion.
Actually getting back to the subject of the post. I think Bill over-generalizes, but I also agree with him far more than I disagree. I think he gets under many people’s skin because he totally ignores the taboo of treading more carefully on religious beliefs than any other belief. I do think he is overstepping his knowledge by pretending that Obama and McCain are probably not religious. Curiously enough, atheist that I am, if I had to choose the least religious of them all it would be McCain, not Obama. I think Obama is much more passionate about his faith than McCain, though of course neither can hold a candle to Palin.
God (no pun intended) save us from semantics!
James, nice argument, but what is "partially believing?" Religious people usually seem pretty firm in their belief to me, except if some outside force prompts them to re-evaluate things. There is definitely a difference in following the Bible to the T as opposed to picking and choosing, though.
For instance, if you take the Bible literally, you probably think the apocalypse is just on the horizon. Yet, there are plenty of people who don’t believe this, yet still have a strong belief in Jesus. Heck, there are plenty of denominations out there that hold differing views on just how God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are related to one another. Yet which of these denominations is partially believing? Who knows, since they all think they’re right and the others are wrong.
If everyone believed the same stuff, we’d still be living with a pre-Assyrian Schism church.
Claudia, I truncated your remark to show that you did make a positive assertion, perhaps unconsciously. It wasn’t an attempt to mislead, and I wouldn’t have cut it off there if it weren’t for the fact that your full comment appeared right on the same page for all to read. I was not attempting to twist your meaning- and I even went on to explain that I do see how the rest of your words were more precise in stating that your belief is just an opinion and that you do seem to realize that proving the nonexistence of God is no more possible than is proof of his existence for a believer.
I believe it was redfish in an earlier discussion who clued me in to the terminology for your type of belief system- it’s called positivism. So from the perspective of a positivist, belief in anything has to rest on the ability to perceive through our senses; ergo religious belief is ‘irrational’. You state this as though ALL individuals should then accept that religious belief is irrational, but for anyone who is not a positivist does not agree with that. Rational does not by definition mean that we should only accept the physically knowable universe as the only things in existence.
You state that you aren’t attaching a value judgment, but it’s ridiculous to claim that attaching "irrational" to religious belief isn’t a judgment (it’s obviously a loaded term which gives a purely negative connotation; you’d only have to go a few steps further to claim that religious believers are mentally unstable or insane.)
You further push the ‘crazy’ kind of image when you continuously throw in the more absurd types of comparisons like belief in fairies. You ignore the basis for my argument, which is that the belief in A CREATOR (leave aside for a moment what form that creator takes) is no more or less logical than a belief that our universe has either existed eternally or has come into existence out of nothingness spontaneously- and again, I argue that the first is actually the MOST logical of those three because it’s the hypothesis that is most consistent with everything that we can perceive about the laws of our universe where matter can only come into existence from a transfer of other matter or energy, and where everything has a beginning and end.
When you throw in the ideas about belief in fairies, you are comparing this type of hypothesis to random creations of human imagination which serve no such logical purpose, so the only real objective of that type of comment is to throw more irrationality into the mix to convince people that religious belief fits into that realm of irrationality.
As for Bill Mahrer, although there’s no doubt that he’s gratuitously offensive, I disagree that this is the reason that many of us object to him. I’m actually happy to allow him to exercise his right of free speech as he actually comes off looking like a fool to challenge religion by using strawmen arguments. Anyone who doesn’t have a preconceived bias can see that when that’s all you’ve got to support your side of the argument, you aren’t on firm ground. This would be like lampooning Cindy Sheehan and Code Pink and then pretending that those people are representative of all who oppose the Iraq War.
It’s about faith. It can’t be proven or seen or touched or heard. If you don’t have it, fine; just don’t mock those who do, as if you are more rational and superior, like some sort of super-Spock. We are all clueless about most everything in the universe, so if some choose to make sense of things by believing in God, why do you have to try and discredit then, like Mr. Big Head Maher. He is so full of himself, he won’t see the futility of his continual mocking of the religious until the very end. In the end, if you live your life helping the less fortunate, I don’t care if you worship tacos. Please pass the hot sauce. Zed.