RELIGION-The number one cause of blindness in the world
There are things in this world that are not explained, and that’s OK! Not every gap in human knowledge is God-shaped. Doubt is good, doubt makes us ambitious and inquisitive and humble. And that’s not a bad way to be.
Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking.
It’s nothing to brag about.
And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.
Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do.
Most people would think it’s wonderful when someone says, “I’m willing, Lord! I’ll do whatever you want me to do!” Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas.
And anyone who tells you they know, they just know what happens when you die, I promise you, they don’t.
How can I be so sure? Because I don’t know, and they do not possess mental powers that I do not have.
The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt.
Doubt is humble, and that’s what man needs to be, considering that human history is just a litany of getting shit dead wrong.
This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price.
If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you’d resign in protest.
To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife, for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers.
If the world does come to an end here, or wherever, or if it limps into the future, decimated by the effects of religion-inspired nuclear terrorism, let’s remember what the real problem was… that we learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it.
That’s it.
Grow up or die.
Bill Maher
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6 Responses to “RELIGION-The number one cause of blindness in the world”
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As always, Maher paints with the broadest of brushes, making hyper-generalized statements with zero support. Yes, there are believers of all faiths who fit into his “box.” But they are not even the majority of believers of all faiths. In Judaism, the “extremist” element is miniscule. In Islam, even according to the CIA’s own statistics, less than 1% (of over 1 billion) are “radicalized.” (This does not mean we don’t need to be vigilant about that small number.)
In Christianity – which Maher attacks with greatest fervor – it is almost exclusively Pentacostal/Charismatic and some evangelical Protestants to whom Maher’s comments apply. But they only make up ~25% of the faith-based population. But anyone who follows Maher’s diatribes and really fact-checks them knows that Maher never met an actual fact that he likes.
The majority of Christians (the only faith for which I can speak, being a center-left evangelical minister) are actually saddened by the way the minority has come to represent the whole.
Re his opening comment that “Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking,” perhaps he should tell that to Copernicus, Bacon (who established the scientific method), Kepler, Galilei, Pascal, Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Mendel, Kelvin, Planck, Pasteur, Leeuwenhoek, Darwin and other scientists who were either deists, theists or devout Catholics. The argument that science and religion are necessarily at odds is a canard that Maher is well aware of, but chooses to ignore.
Maher also deliberately fails to note the historical fact that it is atheism – not religion – that has caused more unnecessary deaths in human history. According to numerous historians and scholars, the total number of people who died in holy wars, Crusades, Inquisitions, witch hunts, etc. is ~75 million – in all of recorded history. Yet Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot – committed atheists all, some of whose policies were openly anti-religious and pro-atheist – are responsible for over 100 million deaths – in just 75 years! And if we add in Hitler (who was a pagan, not a Catholic, no matter what he claimed to the contrary), we can add another 13 million.
Ultimately, the majority of Christians make SOME attempt to follow Jesus’ teachings. And His ministry was based on eleven precepts: love, peace, humility, compassion, forgiveness, patience, charity, selflessness, service, justice, truth. Yes, plenty of Christians fail to live up to these virtues; as I myself have said many times, there are many Christians who wouldn’t know Jesus if He bit them on the ear. And those are the Christians that Maher is (or should be) talking about.
Ultimately, Maher and his “New Atheist” ilk are as uninformed and…fundamentalist-extremist in THEIR views as they claim many believers to be in theirs. The hypocrisy of the “New Atheists” is why even many atheists do not take them seriously.
Peace.
Posted on 03-Feb-12 at 11:53 am | Permalink“In the Name of God” is a major reason behind most wars.
Posted on 03-Feb-12 at 12:41 pm | PermalinkMy dear friend, I think you missed the point and appear to be a bit over sensitive to his position/ statement- Me thinks you protest too much….
Posted on 03-Feb-12 at 12:45 pm | PermalinkReligion can be and has historically been evil. I, for one, take exception to your statement of Hitler being a Pagan. Much of my beliefs are based in Paganism. Your religious passion, has proven the point once again. It is hard for me to understand how you could possibly know the teachings of Jesus given your response and the history of manipulation by the early and later churches. Religion is dangerous and like Woody Allen said-if the day before you were born your parent decided to become Buddhists you would be a Buddhist today! Religion is about feeding into the fear. We have killed more in the name of God than anything else in the history of the world and besides perhaps the anopheles mosquito, religion has killed more human beings than any other reason. Shame on us.
MB:
Yes, “in the name of God” has been used all too frequently to justify war. I was simply pointing out that, historically, atheists have committed more atrocities – more unnecessary murders and deaths – than believers.
MH:
With due respect, this is a subject that I have studied intensively for over three decades. For you to make the claim that “We have killed more in the name of God than anything else in the history of the world” is simply not supported by…the history of the world. The statistics I provided for this come from dozens and dozens of books, articles, etc. Unless you can provide actual support for your statement, it is simply a “feeling” rather than a fact.
As for Hitler, most people simply do not read their history here. Hitler’s goal was a “master race” of “Aryans.” But Aryan is not a religion, it is a bloodline. Hitler’s actual “spiritual” beliefs (such as they were) were more closely akin to paganism than anything else.
In this regard, as early as 1933, at a meeting of the party faithful, Hitler said, “It is through the peasantry that we will finally destroy Christianity. One can be a German [Aryan] or a Christian, but not both.” And everything he did – even before he became Chancellor – was done with that singular aim (a master race) in mind.
Mein Kampf was largely a way to get the Germans to rally behind him, since the Jews were an easy first scapegoat for the economic damages done to the country. His use of Christian language and symbolism as Chancellor was “used” in the same way; to get the Christians to destroy the Jews. But as he implied said in 1933, once the Jews were gone, his next target was Christianity.
Indeed, he was already moving to destroy it during the war. He personally attempted to completely dismantle the “confessing church” (what we would now call evangelical Protestants). As for Catholicism, in one instance he had almost every parish priest in Prussia arrested on charges of attempting to help the Jews. Two years later, almost all of them had been murdered, with only 5% returning to their parishes. Hitler did this in other provinces as well.
As for the claimed relationship between Hitler and the Pope, this is perhaps the most absurd canard of all. Hitler HATED the Pope. This is because, while the Pope himself agreed not to help the Jews, he was turning a blind eye to individual priests who WERE helping them. Hitler was well aware of this, and there are documents showing that Hitler planned to move against the Pope as soon as he could.
None of this points to Hitler being a “Christian,” much less a Catholic. But perhaps the most obvious indication of this is the obvious.
As I noted, Jesus’ ministry was based on eleven precepts: love, peace, compassion, forgiveness, humility, patience, charity, selflessness, service, justice and truth. Yet Hitler was hateful, warlike, lacking in compassion, unforgiving, arrogant, impatient, uncharitable, egomaniacial, greedy, unjust and a liar. By what rubric, then, can one consider him a “Christian” – in ANY regard?
Don’t forget that Hitler was the master propagandist. Everything he did and said, and all the symbolism he used, were means to an end. His self-proclaimed Catholicism was of a piece here. He never was, and everything he actually DID proved that.
I do not “protest too much” because I know all too well how poor most people’s actual reading and understanding of history is. No, I do not claim to be “THE” expert. But as noted, I believe I speak from solid ground based on three decades of studying this very question. Nor did anything I said in my first post – or this one – absolve Christianity of the atrocities it is guilty of. But those atrocities are almost entirely in the past (by perhaps 300-500 years). As well, they are balanced to SOME degree by all the good done in its name. Almost every major social movement in the U.S. – abolition, child labor, suffrage, civil rights, etc. – were either founded by or co-led by Christians. As well, Christians built more (public) hospitals, universities, schools, orphanages, community centers, etc. than any group, with the possible exception of the government itself. And Christian groups – the Red Cross, Salvation Army and Medicin Sans Frontieres (which was founded by Christians, but has since become secular) – have been in the forefront of providing emergency and disaster relief worldwide for decades, regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other factor. I do not see the same level degree of direct “good” being done by atheists. (Which does not mean they do not do good things, or that they are not capable of doing them. Indeed, there has been a recent rise in atheist groups doing good works, which is a good thing.)
Peace.
Posted on 04-Feb-12 at 11:17 am | Permalinki think it hard to say which class of humans is more violent .. we have of long history of killing each other in all kinds of different ways .. eif you read Jared Diamond’s book the main determinant to who committed atrocities early on was whoever developed means to support a large population, often that meant controlling said population with some kind of religious theme (though not always)
Getting to Maher’s point, its hard to have an intelligent back and forth with someone who relies on religious dogma for the basis of their opinion, i.e. homosexuallty is evil because the bible says so, etc
Posted on 04-Feb-12 at 2:38 pm | PermalinkMike:
Thank you for your measured response. And I whole-heartedly agree that “it’s hard to have an intelligent back and forth with someone who relies on religious dogma for the basis of their opinion.” And I agree that all too many Christians do just that.
If Maher and his “New Atheist” brethren confined themselves to specifically focused statements like that, I would have little problem with them. But, unfortunately, they can’t help themselves, and resort to the exact same kind of extremism and broad-brushing of believers that they accuse believers of doing re atheists.
There is an old adage that “Religion is about laws, rules and behavior; Faith is about a relationship with God.” As “not-your-mother’s-minister,” I have always said that if you give me someone with faith, I can get them to understand the proper place for dogma/doctrine (and there is such a place). But if you give me someone who is “religious,” I cannot do anything for them, since they already think they know it all.
Peace.
Posted on 04-Feb-12 at 8:52 pm | Permalink