Bill Maher stirs controversy with Tim Tebow tweet

He doesn’t. Why does Maher need to be harmed to crack jokes about the single most publicized person on the planet - or so it seems.

He isn’t taking cheap shots, he’s joking about him. He’s a comedian. He does stuff like that. If you want to argue about how original and funny the joke was, then I’m not your huckleberry, because it was the hackiest joke in the world.

Is this a great country, or what. Call Maher an asshole all you like.

This is the whole crux of my argument. A comedian made a hacky joke about a public darling. This is the way of the world, my friend. Maher’s crack wasn’t a fatwa. He wasn’t calling for Tebow’s death or anything. So why are the Tebow-ites acting like he did?

They need to learn how to take a joke.

And by making Christian prayers, Tebow is announcing he has contempt and hatred towards non-Christians, since that’s normally a central part of that religion; especially among the sort of people who make a point of showing how very Christian they are. I expect you don’t find it offensive because you are probably Christian yourself - those public displays of religion aren’t aimed at you. But from my viewpoint, writing prayers on your cheek is little different than writing a swastika; they are both symbols of evil and aggression, they are both implied threats.

And with that, Shodan was never heard from again.

Okay, now THAT I do find fucking offensive. To compare praying to Nazism, unless you have proof that Tebow has specifically expressed that is his intent, that he has malice towards non-Christians, then you’re just throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks.

This is fucking ridiculous. You didn’t even know who the guy was until this thread. All you know is that this guy is religious, thus that makes him evil in your mind. What about Troy Polamalu, crossing himself after a play, and quietly using a rosary on the sidelines? Is Polamalu evil? (BTW, if you know anything about the guy, saying yes would be absolutely absurd)

Tebow’s excessive, yes. But evil? Please.

No, I’m acknowledging the nature of Christianity and how it got to its present position. The difference here between Christianity and Nazism is that Christianity won; it slaughtered those who opposed it, converting by the sword and killing those who refused until it because the world religion it is today. And now that it isn’t as acceptable to slaughter your way to prominence, it tries to pretend it is all about peace and love and whatnot. If the Nazis had lasted as long I expect they would have done something similar and whitewashed their origins.

If Christianity had been stopped and destroyed instead of it killing its way to power, I expect it would be regarded today much as the Aztec religion is; as a religion of mass murder.

So in other words, you have nothing. You know nothing about Tebow, only that he’s Christian, thus that automatically makes him evil in your eyes. What about other Christian athletes, like Polamalu?
It’s just another opportunity for you to spew diaarhea about your little pet subject.

Christianity is **Der Trih’s **little pet subject? In what sense do you mean that? That Christianity is a small subject? That it’s cute or inconsequential?

And by “diarrhea” do you simply mean “views with which you disagree”?

Just checking.

No. You are confusing the nature of Christianity with the cultural norms of the 16th century (or whatever time you want to pick in the past when the cultural norms did not align with our modern cultural norms). There is nothing in the nature of Christianity (or most other religions, for that matter) that requires it to be a conquering religion. In fact, it did not become such until it was used but the state to be such.

Nice way to twist my words around. :rolleyes:
All I ever hear from him is dogma. Nothing concrete, just slogans and rhetoric. Nothing of actual substance.
And one thing I find amusing is that I’ve asked him time and again: I’m religious. Am I evil? Am I crazy? He has yet to answer. I won’t be offended, I won’t complain. I simply want an answer to these questions.

Have you asked him that in the Pit? It’s not very fair to do so in GD.

I can’t remember – I know I’ve asked at least twice, and it might have been in a Pit thread. I have no interest though in starting an entire thread about it.

Much like I tend to brand someone who is a member of the KKK evil. Christianity is an overwhelmingly evil belief system, and the Christians who are all showy about it tend to be among the most unpleasant. If he isn’t evil, then he’s being willfully blind about what he is supporting; just like my hypothetical KKK member.

I’m sure I could condemn people for supporting all sorts of causes and you wouldn’t get all offended for me accusing them of supporting something evil. But because you are committed to seeing Christianity as a good thing, you want criticism for support of it to be off limits regardless of how much harm it causes.

Of course there is; if you really believe that everyone who disagrees with you will be tortured forever, that positively demands that you convert everyone else, or kill them if you can’t to prevent them from sending others to eternal torment.

I never said it was a good thing. (Or a bad thing, for that matter). I said comparing Christianity to Nazism is absurd. Two entirely different things. Kindly do not twist what I said. We were discussing Bill Maher’s comments about Tebow praying on the sidelines after a touch down. (Not in the end zone like some believe) If that makes Tebow a Nazi, he’s a pretty pathetic one.

Again, not all branches of Christianity teach this. Catholicism certainly doesn’t.

That is a fringe view in Christianity. The Catholic Church, by far the largest denomination, does not ascribe to that view.

No, it doesn’t. Where do you see that happening regularly today? There are over 2,000,000,000 Christians in the world. If that were in it’s nature, you’d be seeing it happen all over the place. Sort of like you saw it regularly 400 years ago. The fact that you don’t see it today is empirical proof that it is not part of its “nature”.

To be entirely fair, he didn’t say kneeling on the sidelines makes him a Nazi. He said it’s like wearing a swastika. I suppose in theory you wouldn’t have to actually be a Nazi to wear a swastika.

Two examples off the top of my head. The persecution of homosexuals, including their killing. The war against condoms by the Catholic Church, even to the extent that it spreads AIDS among the population of Africa and kills them in large numbers. But that doesn’t matter if you “save their soul”, since it’s the soul that matters.

But on the whole Christians don’t actually follow what their religion clearly demands, because it’s incompatible with civilized behavior and because the governments of the West won’t let them. When Christianity is weak it pretends to benevolence; when it is strong it is brutal, murderous and tyrannical.

You’re fucking hilarious, Der. Christians believe in evil, except they don’t actually carry out their evil, because that would be against modern social norms. So which the fuck is it? Are Christians evil or not?

And is it really the government that protects us from Christians? You know the majority of American voters are Christians, right? And so are the judges, elected officials, bureaucrats, civil service drones, cops, prison guards, soldiers, businesspeople, teachers and so on that make up the apparatus of our current social system?

If the majority of Christians wanted Iranian style Theocracy, then why don’t we have it? They have all the power in this country, and atheists like you and I, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, apathests, and so on are a small minority.

I need you to pick a position and stick with it. Either Christians really are more evil than other people, in which case why doesn’t the Spanish Inquisition rule America, or are they not more evil than other people, in which case what reason do we have to say that Christianity as it actually exists today is evil?

And how, exactly, does his tweet substantiate that claim? Oh, that’s right. It doesn’t.

It’s called hypocrisy; a relatively benevolent example in this case. They follow an evil belief system, but many have thanks to outside influences have over the centuries become too civilized to be good Christians. So they say they are Christians but don’t actually follow their own beliefs. The ones who do? Those are the ones who do things like beat and disown their children for being gay, or waylay & murder some stranger because he stepped out of a gay bar; those are the real Christians, the ones who take their religion seriously.

Because large numbers are Christians in name only, and the rest can’t agree which flavor of Christianity to force on everyone else. Most are just rational enough to realize that the attempt to do so would either result in a civil war between Christian factions, or in their own particular sect being one of the losers. Theocracy is only attractive if you think that your particular One True Way is the one that will be forced on people. It’s not usually atheists who do things like file lawsuits against school prayer you know; it’s some religious minority that doesn’t like being forced to say the “wrong” prayer.

  1. He was tweeting, not writing an article to be published in a political journal. I’ve seen comedians say a lot worse about people to much broader audiences and never get an overblown reaction like this.
  2. There is no way to do what you are asking him to do in the space a tweet allows.