Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher Clash Over Religion On The Late Show (video)

[Brian63]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqAco8a7vEE
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/11/stephen-colbert-bill-maher-clash-over

That is a brief clip (a little over 2 minutes long), but one that I still find amazing to watch. To see Bill Maher lay out such direct insults towards the Christian religion, on a public TV show, to the host who is religious, and to not only NOT be booed by the audience as a response but to instead have them even laugh and cheer him on....wow....I still am not accustomed to seeing such a dramatic difference in our culture from where it was just 10-15 years ago even. Back then, it was considered rude to even make a publicly critical statement about religion like Maher did. Here and now, he did not just criticize religion, but was making fun of it.

Brian

[ETA 2nd link above which describes the chat as a "clash"]

 

[Valjean]

There was a clash? I heard humorous banter.

 

[bilby]

There was a clash? I heard humorous banter.

Humorous Banter were just the support band; The Clash came on after them.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

I'd respect Bill Maher if he didn't buy into the anti-vaccine bullshit.

 

[Underseer]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqAco8a7vEE
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/11/stephen-colbert-bill-maher-clash-over

That is a brief clip (a little over 2 minutes long), but one that I still find amazing to watch. To see Bill Maher lay out such direct insults towards the Christian religion, on a public TV show, to the host who is religious, and to not only NOT be booed by the audience as a response but to instead have them even laugh and cheer him on....wow....I still am not accustomed to seeing such a dramatic difference in our culture from where it was just 10-15 years ago even. Back then, it was considered rude to even make a publicly critical statement about religion like Maher did. Here and now, he did not just criticize religion, but was making fun of it.

Brian

[ETA 2nd link above that describes the chat as a "clash"]

Right now, I believe deconversion rates are highest in Britain, but I honestly think that is because they were late to the party. The other European nations have fewer theists, so the deconversion rates are naturally lower.

America is even later than Britain, but you can feel the change coming. As momentum picks up, the theists get more desperate, more shrill, and sound even more crazy to regular people (e.g. creationism), which creates a delicious feedback loop in which more and more people leave the religion, the remaining theists become more and more shrill, which pushes more people out of religion. This is an exciting time to be alive.

If you have been paying attention, you will have noticed the early stages of this same wave starting to hit certain Muslim parts of the world. Boy, won't that be a wild ride in some future decade?

 

[fromderinside]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqAco8a7vEE

That is a brief clip (a little over 2 minutes long), but one that I still find amazing to watch. To see Bill Maher lay out such direct insults towards the Christian religion, on a public TV show, to the host who is religious, and to not only NOT be booed by the audience as a response but to instead have them even laugh and cheer him on....wow....I still am not accustomed to seeing such a dramatic difference in our culture from where it was just 10-15 years ago even. Back then, it was considered rude to even make a publicly critical statement about religion like Maher did. Here and now, he did not just criticize religion, but was making fun of it.

Brian

This wasn't a Huckabee audience. It was a fake conservative playing liberal satirist turned late night show host's show audience. They expect to chuckle when someone claims to be religious poking fun at someone who is seriously over the top holding forth his atheist views. What was funny was Bill's serious tone opposing Steve's side busting funny preachiness spoof. Satire one serious atheist righteousness zero. No contest.

The sad thing is Bill doesn't recognize he was being put on by Steve. If you don't have a dog in the hunt you are probably going to distract the guy who thinks everything is his dog's target.

Its a perfect continuation from Bill's supplication to a liberal Muslim's adoration of his Muslim bashing which we saw early on on Bill's Friday show on HBO.

Its as if Steve had watched Bill's interview, he probably did.

I have never seen this chicken, Bill, so expertly plucked before.

 

[Underseer]

[...]

Its a perfect continuation from Bill's supplication to a liberal Muslim's adoration of his Muslim bashing which we saw early on on Bill's Friday show on HBO.

[...]

Sorry, this part didn't make a lick of sense to me. Can you explain in greater detail?

Is this in some way related to the fact that liberals love terrorists and hate America and want the terrorists to win?

 

[ideologyhunter]

Is that "fact" in the Ann Coulter sense?

 

[Underseer]

Is that "fact" in the Ann Coulter sense?

Are you suggesting that the things Coulter says aren't factual?

Well, you are wrong because liberals are exactly as bad, as evidence by the fact that they deny that the Jade Helm 15 conspiracy never happened. Can you possibly imagine a bigger lie than that? Therefore, everything Coulter says is factual.

Why do you hate America? Is it because of our freedom? Do you hate us because of our freedom? Is that why you want the terrorists to win? [/conservolibertarian]

 

[prideandfall]

[...]

Its a perfect continuation from Bill's supplication to a liberal Muslim's adoration of his Muslim bashing which we saw early on on Bill's Friday show on HBO.

[...]

Sorry, this part didn't make a lick of sense to me. Can you explain in greater detail?

last week on bill maher's show Real Time, his interview guest was a liberal progressive muslim, Asra Nomani, who has a book and does some lectures, etc etc.
and basically she and bill patted each other on the back over what martyrs they are for slagging islam as being a religion of violence and terror.
(for context you have to remember that bill maher is in a lot of ways the liberal FOX news, where half his schtick is being outraged about what other people are saying about him - so the whole "bill maher is unfairly painting all muslims as terrorists" criticism he gets translates into "everyone is attacking me for telling it like it is" and that's just part of his narrative)

 

[braces_for_impact]

Sorry, this part didn't make a lick of sense to me. Can you explain in greater detail?

last week on bill maher's show Real Time, his interview guest was a liberal progressive muslim, Asra Nomani, who has a book and does some lectures, etc etc.
and basically she and bill patted each other on the back over what martyrs they are for slagging islam as being a religion of violence and terror.
(for context you have to remember that bill maher is in a lot of ways the liberal FOX news, where half his schtick is being outraged about what other people are saying about him - so the whole "bill maher is unfairly painting all muslims as terrorists" criticism he gets translates into "everyone is attacking me for telling it like it is" and that's just part of his narrative)

I didn't see it that way. I watch his show, but I don't agree with everything he says, like his stance towards vaccinations, as GenesisNemesis pointed out. Basically anything to do with health I usually end up disagreeing with him.

In any case, what Bill and Asra Nomani were pointing out are some pretty obvious facts that seem to make progressives often get their underwear all bunched up. Namely that religions lie on a spectrum of least violent -----> most violent and that Islam often ends up on the more violent side. The claim is that this truth must be confronted, because if we ignore what the terrorists have been telling us themselves about their own motivations (namely the religious ones), we're much less likely to find effective and practical solutions to the problem. They were also saying what many have been saying on the progressive side: that it's not racist to point out that extremism hasn't "hijacked" Islam, as this implies that there is a "real" Islam in the first place. That it's difficult to even talk about the problem of Islamic Jihad, because one must first wade through endless accusations of racism, endless conversations about how most Muslims peacefully practice their religion, and endless rhetoric about how the religion of Islam has nothing to do with this very bad behavior. The idea is that progressives are usually on the side of religious freedom, equal rights for women, and so on, but they ignore these issues when the topic of Islam comes up, for fear of being labelled as a racist.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The idea is that progressives are usually on the side of religious freedom, equal rights for women, and so on, but they ignore these issues when the topic of Islam comes up, for fear of being labelled as a racist.

But how much of that is due to Islam and how much is due to the backwards and economically depressed cultures which Islam is prevalent in? There's nothing inherent in Islam which prevents it's followers from having an artsy-fartsy "Allah is love" version of it, similar to the more useless and irrelevant versions of Christianity that some people have. The modern interpretations of Islam could very well be a symptom of the problem as opposed to a cause of the problem.

 

[Celadon]

The sexual tension between them is palpable.

 

[ronburgundy]

The idea is that progressives are usually on the side of religious freedom, equal rights for women, and so on, but they ignore these issues when the topic of Islam comes up, for fear of being labelled as a racist.

But how much of that is due to Islam and how much is due to the backwards and economically depressed cultures which Islam is prevalent in? There's nothing inherent in Islam which prevents it's followers from having an artsy-fartsy "Allah is love" version of it, similar to the more useless and irrelevant versions of Christianity that some people have. The modern interpretations of Islam could very well be a symptom of the problem as opposed to a cause of the problem.

They aren't "modern interpretations". They are byproducts of its core founding values and ideas and a major reason why those regions are "backwards and economically depressed". They have kept those regions from progressing, which requires secularization as happened in the West starting in the Enlightenment. Yes, Western interference has not helped, and has created a context that Islam can feed off of, but it hasn't perverted Islam, just helped it continue to have such dominating influence by stalling organically arising secularization.

Christianity has those same intolerantly authoritarian core values and ideas. You are correct that larger societal context matters, but mistaken in painting it as though context transforms these religions into something more dangerous. Rather Christianity is only less dangerous on average and only has the "love" variants because it does not dominate society and is watered down by the larger context of post-enlightenment secular ideas, ethics, and politics. That's why the people who do still argue for Christianity as the basis of politics almost always argue for policies of intolerance and authoritarianism, because that is what Christianity inherently supports. It is also why the more Christian various sub-cultures are within the secular West, the more they support intolerant, authoritarian, and anti-science views. This is true whether comparisons are made at the national, state, county, familial, or individual level.
In sum, Christianity, like Islam, breeds aggressive intolerant authoritarian unreason. This is because their core ideas were created and refined to do these very things. Only when they get heavily diluted or restrained by a larger secular social or legal context can they lose much of this quality. By analogy, Christianity and Islam are like inherently dangerous cancer causing toxins that are made less dangerous only if diluted into a large secular context or controlled in their impact via a context of secular laws that restrict how and when they are used.