Why does bill maher hate christians

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Scholars see a breach between text and practice. But, it is usually the pastoral workers who are sometimes scholars who try to provide any reform, reunion, or healing.

I wish this interview with this Priest was much longer than the two minutes it seemed to be. But, perhaps it is so short because he has answers to Maher's comments, for it would contradict Maher's goals with the film. I'm saying that if we are to clinch Maher's praise of skepticism, then we would have be skeptical about Maher's intentions. He takes issue with this recurring idea in religions that God speaks to specific people, rather than all humanity. He presents this criticism as a refutation, but it is not much of one.

First, the obvious point that if we are speaking of God as a supreme being, then naturally God can speak to humanity in any format He chooses. So, if the Supreme Being communicates with creation through select individuals, then that would be His prerogative, because He is the Supreme Being. So, to complain that God speaks in special ways to specific people would be a complaint, but not a refutation.

Second, however, many of these religions do not limit communication with and from the Divine through these select individuals, anyway. He ends the film with an apocalyptic sermon of his own, and naturally, we have to wonder if he considers himself a stage performer, preacher, and pimp. Save for the loud editing, it shares the complete lack of nuance, depth, innovation, and oratory of a boring weekly sermon at a house of worship.

Maher asserts that religion must end, that religion is dangerous because it gives power to humans that humans should not have. Essentially, he's calling for fascism; he uses the same language that fascist movements all use.

He opposes faith as anti-rational, opposes certainty as illusion, and praises doubt. Again, his approach is rather selective, disregarding the role of rationality in religion considering for example that even in Catholicism, the mostly forgotten Bishop Tempier, of Paris, opposed the attention his contemporary St.

Thomas Aquinas gave to rationality. It is not that religion is anti-rational; rather, religion is often not as comprehensively rational as he believes it should be. I would agree with him, on this point, except that for me, belief in a radical monotheism is the most rational of the options. More, importantly, Maher disregards the pacifism of the overwhelming majority of believers and ignores the horrendous violence resulting from wars of secular nationalists.

Let's face facts that much of the world's violence comes from armies, and much of the world's civilian violence results from anger, rather than religious zeal. And, the local level, we often see people of religion cleaning up the mess alongside state authorities. But, despite his hopes, religion will not die, unless it gets replaced by something that is somehow not religion, yet fulfills that seemingly innate need in humanity for religion.

Nevertheless, if all religion is fraud, then such cataclysmic destruction will be irrelevant because we will all die one way or another anyways. Though most of the movie is focused on Christianity, he does speak of Judaism and Islam.

His comments on Judaism involve mockery of Moses, may peace be upon him, and a company developing Kosher products for the Sabbath.

His comments on Muslims tend to fall into the usual right-wing rhetoric, presenting Muslims as duplicitous anti-Semitic shouting killers hell bent on global domination. I also have to wonder why he had to travel all the way to Europe to interview Muslims; that reinforces the notion that Muslims are a bunch of foreigners.

Though each of these depictions of Muslims is seriously problematic and inconsistent, the accusation that Muslims are duplicitous is the most troubling of the troubling list. I have to face this accusation rather frequently, that "Even though you preach mercy and peace, you secretly probably support violence. This accusation against Muslims did not spontaneously appear; it is the result of a conscious campaign.

Maher supports it by interviewing a European politician who is outspoken in the movie and in politics in his venom against all things Muslim; and Maher does not challenge him on it, but instead nods in agreement. But, we can point out, that this approach reveals that Maher advertises himself as a liberal, but duplicitously follows right-wing rhetoric.

Still, in both cases Judaism and Islam, Maher also catches his interviewees tripping over themselves with inconsistencies or contradictions. It's the same problem: he catches people who do not take their views to their logical conclusions. I think this point that he so repeatedly discovers illustrates a deeper problem in our society. We live in such a diverse society, yet hardly know anything about our own faiths and know less about the faiths of others.

This phenomenon illustrates that we each really do seem to live in our own bubbles. More than that, this phenomenon illustrates that we are often part of our religious-teams, rather than in some serious transformative quest for the ethereal.

In my experience, Atheists tend to be far more literate about religion than majority of their believing counterparts. That is not to say that Atheists are more intelligent; not even close. But, it is far more likely that a former-Catholic-now-Atheist will know a few tidbits about Islam, than a believing Catholic. The same goes for the Muslim equivalent.

Readers know that I'm a poor excuse for a Muslim who teaches in the academy, preaches in the mosque, and spends too much or not enough of his quality time watching movies; there is one moment in the film that had me laughing out loud. Maher interviews some miscellaneous elderly Imam at some miscellaneous mosque in Europe, but gets interrupted by some music. The Imam's cell phone ringtone starts playing "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin. I'm laughing about that moment as I type this sentence.

Hold on. I have to pause to let this laughter out. Ok, I'm back. Someone outside the circles of Islamic scholars would expect an elderly sage would have a ringtone playing the Qur'an, if he masculine were to have a cell phone in the first place.

Maher even went after President Obama "who says he gets scripture on his Blackberry first thing every morning" but then said on 60 Minutes that anyone who thinks it was wrong to kill bin Laden should 'have their head examined. Some might ask where Maher, a person who has made his hatred of all thing religious very clear, gets off telling people who are religious what to think.

But Maher had an answer to that:. For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. You are putting Muslims up against a wall and pushing those who fear us further into spaces where little choice is left. As the mother of two American-born daughters, and a Muslim who calls the U. Rabia Chaudry is an attorney and the founder and president of the Safe Nation Collaborative.

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