Bill Maher says religion has the power to divert men to destructive courses.
I do not disagree. The “wrong kind of” Man tends toward power over others, any vehicle will do in that pursuit. Implicit in his statement, Bill Maher sees himself as a better man than the diverted one. I would also agree with the proposal that he operates on a level of care and concern for our world. He is not, in my estimation a “bad man”. It seems also implicit that he wants it understood that he manages to be “good without stilts” in full self-determination. We have a good solid point of agreement. I think Bill Maher is who he is, and cares about where we’re headed, without outside influence or help, just because he’s a Good Guy.
Mr. Maher, however is not without a desire for power of a certain sort, he has his own crusade, stating that the trajectory of religion is destruction of the world, “religion must die in order for mankind to live”. He asserts an urgency to this, it has to happen quickly, it’s almost, if not already too late.
So, I’m religious. I’m the enemy. I’m part and parcel of what has its finger on the trigger about to demolish our world. Mr. Maher has pronounced death to me. Quickly. Hurry before it’s too late.
Now THAT, to me, is disturbing. I do not like him as my god, I decidedly do NOT, Sam I Am. I hardly hurt flies, certainly never turtles, and most certainly no one like Mr. Maher or any for whom he cares.
Somehow I think the preeminent danger to mankind is the presence of nuclear capacity at the whim of feuding governments and greed. How many weapons has man created (and many of those men in power claim godlessness) that have not been deployed at some crazed point in history? Whatever can be devised for destruction of “other” is eventually unleashed.
Fact check here: hmmmm, Jesus said “do unto other as you would have done” is the guiding precept. Definitely, my dangerous religion stands against blowing our world up a hundred times over.
Back to Bill: He says to be guided by God in affairs of state is the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken.
There ARE entrail reading sects, yes there are. There are head-chopper-offers in the name of Allah. There are scores of religions that in our day and age call for harm to other in order to benefit one’s own creed and tribe. Again, the world is certainly awash in dangerous practices built on lewd and lascivious lies, but the true practice of Christianity is not one of them.
Bill: since there are no gods talking to us
If I am one of us, and I am, you’re wrong. It’s an unintentional lie, I realize, but Sir, you do not speak for me. I hear God, I see God, and I follow God. You don’t believe God, why would you believe me? You would not. Again, you posit yourself as the authority which rhetorically purports to have some power to persuade others, but it is built on a garbage heap of presumption you do not have the right to assert.
I hear God, therefore I know God is talking to some, therefore it is false by logic that there are NO gods. Until you have tested, and even after you have scientifically measured all that you can, all you will have is a theory, a mere hypothesis that there are no gods. Your control group is a minority with a premise that has already failed. What you might need to ponder is, maybe there are good gods and bad gods as men who follow voices hear them. Try that ethic for awhile and see what spins out. My position is one Real True and Good God, and all the other “false and bad”. In reality if only by ethic as you have probably by now decided if you followed me down this road of argument at all, all the voices are present, and men ARE listening and acting on what they will, which IS a dangerous thing.
Bill: Doubt is humble.
Then you also, doubt, for you have the correct and high opinion of yourself as a good man, therefore you have the humility of doubt. Interesting that you do not permit that in your posturing these statements. So truly, in your heart, if you were to find it beneficial to be governed by God Law if it be benevolent, then you would admit to doubt, or even may I suggest, hope?
Or is your only aim to hold out the doubt cookie to be bitten by others, to rend the foundation of their faith and so begin your mission, your crusade may I say, to save the world? You are the benevolent one? But not to me, me you must destroy.
Bill: rational people, anti-religionists … must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves.
Where have I seen THAT happen before? Let me think, ah yes, Nazi Germany when the “rational people” asserted themselves. They first broke down the churches as is happening today. Their first target was Judaism, but it wasn’t a bad place to start to annihilate god-folk, since they’re the center in our creed. Is it too bold of me to say I don’t LIKE your version of rational or what it portends?
Have you noticed, Mr. Maher that the genocide in our present time is disproportionately aimed at good and innocent people? At Christians and Jews alone? Families, mothers, fathers, children who were Tutsi’s were killed to the 800,000’s. Tutsi’s were Catholic. What is happening today in Sudan? It is war against Christians by people who torture, maim, and kill in the worst possible and most publically shamefully boasting methods. Tunesia. Nigeria. Stalin’s Russia. Mao’s China. Always God’s People are the target.
Why are the Jews treating members of Hamas and their families in their hospitals while Islam wants the whole race wiped off the face of the earth? There is a good versus bad, good God and bad god in operation. The blindness to that is horrifying for me. We need Truth above all else. You don’t want examination, you want continued blindness, and that, is VERY dangerous. You would lump radical Islam in with compassionate Yahweh and you would be mistaken for if we are not looking and counteracting what drives evil, evil poised against our very right to exist, then we COULD fall. You cannot say these are “only men acting on their own agenda” when the agenda is historically always present beyond men or cultures. There is a “thing” of a nature that want’s the other opposing “thing” of a better nature destroyed and it plays out in all lives before and beyond ours. Your inflicted “humble doubt” leaves the troops delusional, disarmed if they believe there is “nothing”.
Here, you will deny that the God of Jews and Christians is at all good. You would want to dredge up the Old Testament battles and the Crusades into the Holy Lands to discredit my God’s teachings; well you and I weren’t there. We are here. Let’s begin then with what we have as directly apprehensible today. I have answers to those in distant history as well, but if we can’t ground ourselves in reality to what’s within our reach, then how can we possibly assign understanding when even you said is “human history is just a litany of getting shit dead wrong”? There is probably, possibly, no certainly, some error in the retelling of those events and our perception of them. We will put those aside, temporarily in order to come to some basis for our own argument about the urgency of ending all religion now and today.
Bill: religion is bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance
What is the way of Evolution? Where goes the trajectory under the kingship of almighty biology? Have you seen ducks? There is always one at the base of the pyramid in the pecking order. Nature, I would propose, is the ugly goading mistress of those ills you state. How species cull the weak to promote the strong is behavior that follows sheer ignorance of the finer, what we Christians call, Sacred quality of Life and Being. Our way lifts the woman from the ground where she is being stoned. Christianity alone among all the cultural ethics, gives women status and asserts that in marriage: the woman is to be strong, working, merchandising, teaching, and honored. When Christ was being led to his death, Peter struck the ear off one in the party arresting him, Christ replaced it and cried out “Forgive them” as he was murdered. On which side do you find the violence in my creed? I am governed by Love, Sir, as directed by my God, who is Love Itself.
Your teaching turns all against me, stating a believer is “an enabler, a mafia wife, for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers”. You lie about me and my kind, and drum up your own followers to mock and molest me without ever questioning themselves or my heart. You would beat me bound to stocks in the city square and scream to the crowd, “here, see the hater” and feel just in doing so. You may never awaken to the devil calling you to act or speak these things, and so I tell you truly, you join the killers of all things good and right and innocent as they ignite hatred. You speak only the sentence of your own truth.
Bill: Jesus with the virgin birth and the dove and the snake who talked in the garden, that's cool. But the Scientologists, they're the crazy ones.
Bill, where do you stop reading, how far back do you allow yourself to go in studying say, the Classics? Was Socrates cool, or Homer? Have you ever looked at a Hieroglyph? I know you have, you have a degree in History. Do you take any interest at all in any civilization, philosophy, a search for meaning, purpose and “what’s it all about?” What do you think of Alexander the Great? What if the more you studied trying to figure out if there IS a pattern, you found it all fits together like a cool puzzle and there’s a message in the thing once you’re able to reconstruct it?
What if there’s a message that brings us to that salvation you talk about wanting so fervently, so urgently, for mankind? Would that, or would it not, be cool?
Here and now I apologize for the counterfeits in Christianity. You are very angry, and I'll bet my socks you have good reason to be. You told Bill O'Reilly that Jesus wasn't the problem, the problem is that His followers aren't more like him.
It is with that statement that you and I find common ground.
Prosperity theology is a sham. Jihad is evil, in any language. The Vatican is too rich and abuse too rampant. You have something to say about men and their practices, I get that, but I do think that you are inciting an attitude that WILL sooner rather than later do great physical harm to me and mine. You are dismissing too many of us who do aim to follow Christ worldwide. You're drawing down fire we don't deserve. Angry men with hatred and evil intent quote you as they turn toward us. I beg you to throw down your ample verbal weapons for awhile and look a littler harder through the temperance of that doubt.
The urgency isn't where you think it is.
KH Benefield
June 26, 2014
