Thread: Thank-you Bill Maher

Wait a second. Bill Maher's conclusion is "Religion must die if the world is to survive"


Where'd that come from?

There's the old rant about "so many wars have been fought about religion..."


Can somebody please name a few of these, that actually were about/because of religious belief, and not actually due to regular political/socio-economic agendas?


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?

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.

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.

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.

What I'm getting at is that it's one thing to say that some religious believers are a bit kooky,poke some fun at them. It's quite another to draw the conclusion that they are therefore a major threat to humankind.

Have you actually READ the Bible?

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Have you actually READ the Bible?

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!

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!

Some others great theocratic wars and atrocities, Iran/Iraq war, the Crusades, the support of Fascist States by the Church (Italy and Germany), the Inquisition., the burning and torturing of witches, the mutilation of female genitals, the ethnic/racial/religious genocides in the the Balkans and Africa, the Taliban, Pakistan/India, Israel/Palestine and the Religious Police in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria ect.

The question isn't really what wars were over religion, but what wars and atrocities theocratic societies have instigated, participated in or condoned.

That is not to say there have not been secular atrocities as well. Unlike religious folks I don't feel the need to defend all secularist or atheists, nor do I take offense for the acts of other brutal mammals.

Some other wars and atrocities that are attributed to the secular world were committed by totalitarian regimes which are actually faith based systems, such as North Korea, China, and Soviet Union.

Its not really about a tally, its about the hypocrisy of the argument that religion is good. All those who practice it are somehow superior to those that question or don't believe in "Faith", when the imperical evidence is that religious mammals are no better than non religious mammals, both are capable of good and bad. Morals come from within not from outside. To attribute ones moral and ethical stance to a religious belief personally is doing oneself a disservice, this says that if you didn't believe you'd be unethical and immoral.

Originally Posted by Hutch

Unlike religious folks I don't feel the need to defend all secularist or atheists, nor do I take offense for the acts of other brutal mammals.

What are you getting at? That statement seems to be randomly tossed into your post. I'm not even sure what it means

I think the point should be made that it may not be religion that is the final resting place of blame for the above mentioned atrocities. It's blind adherence to a system of beliefs and actions as a general phenomenon.

And I think WireBeard was getting at this as well; people have a strange tendency to get so wrapped up in a belief system, be it religious, governmental (as in the worship of a dictator like Stalin or Mao) or otherwise, that they will follow the ideologies of that groups leader(s) to astounding degrees.

The "us vs. them" mentality is prayed upon to no end in all of the abhorrent examples of mass murder/violence cited above. And it's that tendency of not thinking critically that facilitates the whole mess. It's too bad that the phenomenon occurs, but the facts are that the people of have historically been able to exploit this sad tendency are egocentric megalomaniacs and extremist religious leaders. And as long as people remain ignorant to the need for awareness of such events and tendencies, they will continue to be vulnerable to a repeated history. Which is what I get as the essence of Maher's claim, not necessarily that all religious people are dangerous to society (on the contrary, many are wonderful individuals, as the gentleman of this forum, no doubt, typify).

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

What are you getting at? That statement seems to be randomly tossed into your post. I'm not even sure what it means

It's not random, if you go back and read the defenders of religion, they defend all religion as a whole. This is done by intoning that religious people are some how more moral and ethical than non-religious people. I have not noticed that secularist or atheists, saying that all secularists or atheists are better.

In fact secularists and atheists are grouped together not by their beliefs but by what they don't believe. Where religious followers are grouped together by a common belief, that belief is in a common supernatural creator and a religious dogma that has answers to all life's question.

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.