Bill Maher on Religion

I've been meaning to post this for a while now. Last month, comedian Bill Maher appeared on Larry King live to promote his new movie "Religulous". I only caught the last few minutes (I can't stand Larry King - it's clear he usually has no idea who he's talking to or what he's talking about - time to retire Larry!!), but have looked for the video clip ever since. Well, here it is:

In the clip, Bill responds to Catholic League president William Donohue's criticism of him. Now, I've blogged about Donohue before - here and here, and it's clear he's as nutty as a fruitcake, but I was impressed by Maher's response - he articluates what a lot of us have been saying about faith - why put it on a pedestal? Why can't we criticize faith? Here's the transcript:

KING: Back with Bill Maher. Catholic League President William Donahue says that you really have it out against Christians and he would love to duke it out with you in the ring. He's a very, very passionate Catholic, as you know.

MAHER: Oh, yes. Aren't they all? I used to be a Catholic. I saw that on Keith Olbermann's show, and I thought he had the right response after the man threatened to beat me up, just as Jesus would handle it. I hope we can avoid a fight. If I'm attacked, I will defend myself.

KING: Do you suspect when "Religulous" comes out to get a lot of flak?

MAHER: Yes, but I get a lot of flak anyway. That's been their trick for hundreds of years. They say the word faith and somehow we all have to back off and pretend that what they believe is not destructive, and I won't do that. And there are millions of people who won't do that. The minority that is what I would call rationalists, that is people who don't believe in something supernatural, something that was obviously fables that were written by men before men knew what a germ or an atom was. OK?

Yes, we're rationalists. That's like 20 percent of people under 30. That's a bigger minority than lots of minorities. They just don't speak up. I'm hoping this movie and this movement will encourage people to speak up about this. They accuse me of being a Catholic bigot. First of all, I don't have it out especially for the Catholics. I think all religions are coo-coo. OK? It's not just the Catholics.

I'm not a bigot. Just because I wish for the demise of an organization that I think is entirely destructive to the human race, that doesn't make me a bigot. I also wish for demise of Hamas and the KKK. Not that on every score the Catholic Church is the same as those two organizations. But to me they are destructive organizations. I'm not a bigot because I root for their downfall.

KING: But you can offend them?

MAHER: I have been doing it for 15 years. They're perfectly within their rights to be offended. But they're not going to shut me up. They're not going to do it by saying the magic word, faith. This is what I believe. Yes, you believe it. I'm going to say why it's dumb. (emphasis mine)

I think this is critical - we need to start to speak up and let everyone know that faith in God is just as crazy as faith in pink unicorns, or, praise his noodly appendages, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Dissatisfaction with Religion Growing

According to the latest opinion poll from Pew Research, dissatisfaction with religion seems to be growing in the US:

More than one-quarter (28%) of American adults have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion -- or no religion at all.... In addition, about 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.

One of the most interesting aspects of the survey is the fact that young people are less likely to be religious than older people.

The survey finds that the number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.

There's a couple of takeaways from this survey. While the US is still far more religious than most of the other western democracies, especially those in Europe, we may be starting to see a turning point. As the population ages, it's clear that religion will become less of a factor in public life. Young people today are less likely to be religious, and less likely as they grow up to pass that onto their children.

With all the disturbing news about science education and creationism, religion in politics and the intolerance of many of the more fundamentalist christian churches here in the US, it's refreshing to note that time is on our side.

I got a Big Word!

Just started up is a new site aiming to redefine every word in the English language. For a small fee ($1 per letter), you can own a word in The Big Word Project's dictionary, and have it linked to your site.

The Big Word Project is redefining words. You pick a word and link it to your website. Your website is then the new definition. Simple.

How cool is that!

You have to act fast, because words are being snapped up pretty quickly. Good news though!

I scored "atheist"!!

Losing the Faith

As I recounted in an earlier post, my wife and I lost a child at the end of the year, stillborn at 22 weeks into the pregnancy. It's been difficult getting over the loss, and we're still not there yet.

We're undergoing bereavement counseling, and attend regular support group meetings to help us through, and it's been comforting knowing that we're not alone in this process.

But, onto the point of the post. One of the things I've noticed as we attend counseling and the meetings is that there's a lot of people in similar situations to us who've lost the faith that they've had. To be sure, there are some whose faith has been strengthened, but they're certainly in the minority from what I can tell.

Many people are dealing with anger with God, and, from my perspective, it's just one more level of pain to deal with that I, as an atheist, don't have to worry about. I hear constantly "Why did God do this to us?", "What did we do wrong?" and so on.

The bottom line is that people are rationalizing that they believed in a God that is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, but the horror of losing a child indicates that God directly caused their suffering if he is such a being. So, the theory goes, he is not omnipotent, or if he is, he is not omniscient or if he is both, he's not benevolent. So why worship and pray if it's not going to do any good? What follows is a loss of faith, compounded by a church that frequently doesn't know how to deal with child loss. As a case in point from our own example - two weeks after our son died, my wife's church sent us additional offering envelopes for our other children as if to say "Sorry for your loss - please give more".

It seems to me that this loss of faith has not been a bad thing in many people's lives - indeed, it has been freeing to an extent. I know for a fact from my personal experience that not having to worry that some psychopathic sky fairy was out to get me reduced the weight of the loss.

Why I love Lewis Black

Lewis Black is one of my favorite comedians. Here's why:

Speaking of Europe...

Came across this while looking for a graphic for the last post. I think it deserves it's own (there's lots more good stuff over at Russell's Teapot).

(click for larger image)

Happy Thanksgiving!

...to all you US citizens out there. It's a holiday we can all get behind (well, all of us except the Native Americans, I would suspect), nice and non-religious. Kind of like Christmas.

From Daniel Dennett in the Washington Post on being thankful:

When I gaze in wonder at a starry sky, or the waves crashing on the granite shores of Maine, I am not just thrilled to be alive on this wonderful planet; I am grateful. But to whom?

There is no person who created the universe, or the planet, or the biosphere, so there is really nobody to thank for that.

(A God who is not a person is not an appropriate recipient of thanks. Or should we thank the Law of Gravity and the Second Law of Thermodynamics for all they make possible? I don’t think they care, do you?)

But there is a suitably responsible cause of my health, my security, my freedom from want and from fear, and it is composed of, and the achievement of, persons. I can thank goodness–the wonderful fabric of excellence created by individuals working together in human civilization to make this planet a better place.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Maybe sacrificing a goat will help?

Oh dear. 

Just watch this - Georgia governor Sonny Perdue praying for rain on the steps of the capitol in Atlanta, trying to end the drought.

Yeah, that's going to work.

Last time I checked - still no rain in Georgia.

Rewind back a few thousand years ago, and the Maya and Native Americans were pretty much doing similar kinds of rain dances, but they seemed to think sacrifices helped too. Look how far we've come. 

Sacrifices are silly.

The Golden Compass

The new movie based on Philip Pullmans first book in the "His Dark Materials" Trilogy, "The Golden Compass" is due on December 7th. Predictably, it's drawing the ire of Christians already, who have not seen the movie.


Philip Pullman is openly atheist, and he admits that "His Dark Materials" was largely inspired by his response to C.S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia", calling the series "one of the most ugly and poisonous things" he's ever read.

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, has called the film and books:
"These books denigrate Christianity, thrash the Catholic Church and sell the virtues of atheism,"

While we can argue about whether the focus of the books is denigration of the Catholic church, what's wrong with selling the virtues of atheism? Sounds like a good idea to me.

My son loves the books, and we'll be some of the first in line to see the movie.

Atheism gaining ground in the USA?

A recent BBC report seems to indicate that it may be.

I think we've been seeing in general a resurgence of rational thought in the US, following a decade or more of extreme religious zealotry from the religious right. Maybe we're heading back to where mainstream America ought to be - a secular state, with no place for religion in politics or education.

Anti-Creationist Cartoons

Surfing around the interweb the other day, I came across this collection of cartoons attacking creationism. They're all good for a chuckle. My favorite (click to enlarge):
You can pretty much sum up every creationist argument with this one flow chart.

Young People flocking from Christianity..

Well, looks like reason may win the day after all. A new survey from the Barna Group, a christian research institution, indicates that many young people are turning away from the church:

A new study by The Barna Group conducted among 16- to 29-year-olds shows that a new generation is more skeptical of and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago.

What's more,

One of the groups hit hardest by the criticism is evangelicals. Such believers have always been viewed with skepticism in the broader culture. However, those negative views are crystallizing and intensifying among young non-Christians. The new study shows that only 3% of 16 - to 29-year-old non-Christians express favorable views of evangelicals. This means that today’s young non-Christians are eight times less likely to experience positive associations toward evangelicals than were non-Christians of the Boomer generation (25%).

I think the biggest issues here are the intrusions into politics by evangelicals - strongly aligning god with GOP is a huge turnoff for young people - and the hypocrisy of evangelical leaders (Ted Haggard etc.)

Either way, the chart is going in the right direction.


So, we just need to wait for all the old christians to die off :-)

Atheists are everywhere...

While we're pretending to be Entertainment Weekly (see post below), I thought I'd mention how often it seems that we atheists are popping up, quite openly in mainstream media these days. It's not just Dawkins, Harris, Dennett and Hitchens, but folks from other walks of life too. For example, Jodie Foster is quite open about her atheism in a recent issue of EW also, and Cillian Murphy has been open about his conversion during the movie Sunshine.

It's good to see atheism becoming a subject that people have no problem admitting or talking about. Oh, and remember to see Contact.

New Rules for Awards acceptance......

Apparently, there are new rules for awards acceptance speeches. As of last week, the only reason anybody wins an award is because Jesus helped them. No, there's no talent or hard work involved. God did it.

How do we know these new rules? Because Kathy Griffin dared to say at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards that:

"A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus," an exultant Griffin said, holding up her statuette. "Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now."

Sounds OK, right? Well not according to Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. He characterized the quip as "hate speech" and on CNN said that it was worse than racism and akin to what Don Imus did in insulting the Rutgers basketball team. What's more, when the awards are broadcast, the remarks will be censored.

We're moving one step closer to a theocracy here. Kathy Griffin makes one statement of fact at an awards show, and it's censored. "Blasphemy" is now not allowed on network TV. It's a sad day when a simple factual statement - that Jesus had nothing to do with winning an award - is associated with real hate speech. Looks like we can chalk up another victory in the war on terror to religious nuts.

Jesus and Dogfighting....

Michael Vick recently said that through his dogfighting, he had "found Jesus". Quote:

"I'm upset with myself, and, you know, through this situation I found Jesus and asked him for forgiveness and turned my life over to God."

A couple of things here. First - Jesus shows up at dogfights? Who knew!

Second, and more seriously, I'm constantly amazed at how repentant people are after they've been caught, but never before. If they'd not been captured, they wouldn't have thought twice about apologizing, or saying things like:

"I was ashamed and totally disappointed in myself to say the least."

So.....was he also ashamed and disappointed for the decade or so he was running an organized dog fighting kennel before he was caught? No. What's more laughable is bringing Jesus into this - where was Jesus when Vick was killing the dogs? Was he betting on the fights? Is Jesus only around to minimize prison sentences? As willing PR for criminals? Shouldn't he be intervening before criminal activity takes place?

I tell you, religion constantly amazes me.

Life, but not as we know it...

Life will find a way. That's the message from a new study in the New Journal of Physics that posits lifelike structures may form from inorganic substances in space. An international team has discovered that under the right conditions, particles of inorganic dust can become organized into helical structures. These structures can then interact with each other in ways that are usually associated with organic compounds and life itself.

Computer models were created to predict the behaviors of inorganic molecules in a plasma, a state of matter common in space where electrons are torn from atoms leaving behind charged particles. As the plasma becomes polarized as the charges separate, the molecules self-organize into corkscrew structures. These structures are also charged, and attract one another. But there's more:

...they also undergo changes that are normally associated with biological molecules, such as DNA and proteins, say the researchers. They can, for instance, divide, or bifurcate, to form two copies of the original structure. These new structures can also interact to induce changes in their neighbours and they can even evolve into yet more structures as less stable ones break down, leaving behind only the fittest structures in the plasma.

According to V.N. Tsytovich of the General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, working with colleagues in Germany and Australia:

"These complex, self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter," says Tsytovich, "they are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve".

Finding life that evolved in a completely different way from life here on earth would be a huge step forward, and further refutes the arguments of creationists. It opens doors to contemplating myriad forms of life in the universe, in many different environments, and makes the discovery of life more probable outside of a narrow range of conditions on earth-like planets. Stay tuned!

God and Voting

Here we go again. An article in yesterday's New York Times shows US voter's reactions to candidates with certain traits, and whether they would be more or less likely to vote for them. As usual, atheists rank dead last, with 63% less likely to vote for someone who doesn't believe in God.(click for larger version)

This puts us behind groups like homosexuals, muslims, drug users and adulterers.

What's really interesting, is that 3% are more likely to vote for someone who has no college education, so apparently really don't want to see educated people running the country. My guess is that they'd be voting for Christians too.

Doctor Who FTW!

Thanks to the Bad Astronomer. Here's what to do the next time a religious freak comes to your door:


This is a panel from a two-part segment over on Home on the Strange. Click the image for part 1. Part 2 is here.

Hoist by their own petard.....

Found this on the intertubes yesterday. Seems like the best way to refute creationism is to use their own literature. Ricky Gervais reads from the bible.....

Thanks to GrrlScientist over at Living the Scientific Life

More Hitchens

Pharyngula points out a new interview with Christopher Hitchens, by Simon Mayo if the BBC. As usual, Hitchens is eloquent in his answers.

It also points up the huge difference between the soundbite style of interviewing here in the US, and a more reasoned, longer-form, debate style of interviewing that is more common in the UK. No screaming and shouting here.

Check it out while it's still available.