Thread: Thank-you Bill Maher

Originally Posted by Philadelph

Yeah, it's a damn good thing too.

By the way, did you SEE the movie? If not, I suggest you do so to help us all.

P.S.- Have you heard of Northern Ireland? Maybe you saw when a couple planes crashed into the WTC? I'm not even thinking about religious conflicts and they just keep popping into my head. Go tell 6 million Jews that religion had nothing to do with the holocaust.

Northern Ireland is more of a politial/teritorial conflict, isn't it? With one side wanting independance from Great Britain, the other wanting to remain as part of G.B. The one side happens to be Catholic, the other Protestant.

911 may qualify as a religiously motivated act.

The Holocaust, the Jews are the victims, not the perpetrators. Hitler acted out of fascist/nationalistic reasoning, not religious belief on his part.

Originally Posted by Philadelph

Yes sir, cover to cover. I used to be a practicing Catholic with a lot of blind faith. Thank science I stopped that a while ago!

Fair enough.

Now I guess I'll have to go see the movie!

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Let's take a look at some secular, Godless, human ideology examples of mass violence:

Mao Tze Tung and his cultural revolution: ~500,000 killed

Stalin and his great purge: ~2 million killed

Abortion: 1.3 million lives lost annually, 46 million since Roe vs. Wade and that's just in the U.S.


You tell me who is more dangerous- a person who believes in God, and at least tries to live acording to those tenents, or someone who doesn't?

Mao and stalin may have not have been religious, but the actions that they undertook were not a result of their secular nature. Stalin and Mao weren't Americans either, but that doesn't mean there's a correlation between being an American and abstaining from mass violence.

Anti stem-cell research legislation hurts an uncountable number of people, and that legislation is based on religious ideas.

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

Mao and stalin may have not have been religious, but the actions that they undertook were not a result of their secular nature. Stalin and Mao weren't Americans either, but that doesn't mean there's a correlation between being an American and abstaining from mass violence.

Anti stem-cell research legislation hurts an uncountable number of people, and that legislation is based on religious ideas.

Are you talking adult stem cell research or "murder as a means to a healthier longer life"?

I'm talking about possible treatments for genetic disorders that are borderline impossible to make progress on because stem-cells can't be worked with in a governmentally funded laboratory (= nearly every lab with the necessary sophistication).

Adult stem cell research is not illegal and is showing great results last time I checked!

Sorry, I didn't realize the distinction you were trying to make.

Yes, by stem-cells, I meant embryonic.

There are surpluses of viable embryos in fertility clinics, yet the opposing laws are much stronger when those embryos become the subject of scientific testing.

Many religions consider all life equal, yet most of us have no problem with the large scale slaughter of farm animals. Who's religion gets to choose what is right and what is wrong?

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

Mao and stalin may have not have been religious, but the actions that they undertook were not a result of their secular nature. Stalin and Mao weren't Americans either, but that doesn't mean there's a correlation between being an American and abstaining from mass violence.

Anti stem-cell research legislation hurts an uncountable number of people, and that legislation is based on religious ideas.

I disagree. I think their actions were based in their secular nature. They both had created their own ideologies and then persued them.

I think I see what you are saying with your "they weren't Americans either..." comment, but the point I'm attempting to make is in opposition to Mr Maher's conclusion that religion/religious views are a widespread danger.

If his conclusion was "religion is for kooks and knuckleheads" then that would have apparently been supported by the rest of the film (which I have not seen...) and I could therefore at least agree with his argument in that regard.


Stem cell research has not helped nor hurt anyone as of yet. It has the potential to help if the theoretical benefits can be made manifest. That research is costly and unproven. They should simply use the viable embryoes from which the stem cells would be taken, incubate them into mature cell formations and then harvest the fully formed organs to use as replacement parts.

The Spanish Inquisition was a direct action in the name of religion that resulted in thousands of people being tortured to death because they were heretics.

The Salem Witch trials were a direct action in the name of religion that resulted in the deaths of innocent people that just couldn't prove that they held the right religion.

Stalin and Mao killed people as a way of gaining or maintaining power, not because those people had different religious beliefs.

Neither situation is any more justified, don't get me wrong, I just mean to say that there has yet to be a connection between not having a religion and being more likely to commit murder.

Originally Posted by Philadelph

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Abortion: 1.3 million lives lost annually, 46 million since Roe vs. Wade and that's just in the U.S.

Yeah, it's a damn good thing too.

Huh?