Religulous - Agnostic or Atheistic?

Cafe Society
21

Apologies, I didn’t mean to abandon my thread, but I’ve been unable to come back until now.

I don’t think that you have to be sarcastic, hostile and condescending to be an atheist. It’s just that most atheists that I know are all of these things when it comes to discussing either the existence of God (or Allah, or whatever) or religion. Their opinions are of course valid, but I just don’t get the nastiness.

Equipoise, I doubt anyone believes that the belittling ramblings of a comedian are going to make up for the atrocities committed in the name of religion. I’m not sure I understand the point of your post.

I know many Christians who are good an moral people who don’t use their religion to push agendas of “hate and discord”. I know a lot of good and moral people who aren’t Christians who don’t do this either. Not every religious person is a horrible person. Deluded? Probably. Hateful? I don’t think so, not the vast majority of them anyway.

I do understand that belief in a “higher power” and organized religion are two different things. I understand why a person would just absolutely not believe in any of the above. I don’t believe in any specific deity myself. It doesn’t seem to matter much whether one exists or not. Looking at the Wikipedia article linked by Walloon it seems to me that Apatheism would imply indifference. But Mr. Maher seems to be anything but indifferent, and that is what I was questioning.

To comment on the “not knowing” issue: what I was taking away from his words was basically that, if he isn’t personally aware of God, God must not exist, therefore anyone who believes in God must be stupid/crazy/deluded/ignorant. He may be right, but it just seems terribly arrogant.

I guess what I was not getting is that indifference to God doesn’t necessarily equate indifference to religion. But I don’t know anyone who DOES believe in some sort of deity who has the kind of hate on for ALL religion that the atheists seem to have.

It is becoming evident to me that my views in this area are somewhat naive. I really do appreciate all your comments. I will take the advice of Voyager and do some more reading on the differences between atheism, agnosticism, etc.

22

Maher was on the Daily Show tonight promoting the movie. During his interview he insisted he was an agnostic, not an atheist, because atheism–so he said–entails its own kind of faith in the non-existence of God, and he maintained that he was skeptical about any kind of certainty about God’s existence, one way or the other.

Personally–if I may wander into Great Debates territory here–I think that’s a bit of a cop-out. I’ve come to the conclusion that one can reject the notion of an omniscent God, particularly as represented in the monotheistic traditions, on rationalistic grounds. For instance, I see consciousness as entirely bound to the existence of a physical body, and if God is supposed to somehow transcend the material plane while still maintaining an individual consciousness, then he/she/it is simply an ontological impossibility. From this perspective, I happily embrace the label of “atheist,” since most of the time (at least, in the U.S.), when one talks about “God,” one is talking about the Judeo-Christian-Islamic-etc. type idea of a personal deity.

I’m more open to the possibility of a vaguely Eastern-type universal spirit or energy force that infuses the universe, although I doubt that such a “being” (if you could call it that) would have any relevance to my personal existence even if it exists. In this regard, I suppose I would be an “agnostic,” but, once again, that’s not the concept of God that most people are talking about in debates about God vs. Atheism.

23

Maher to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show tonight:

“But I heard you in the introduction saying ‘Bill Maher is saying there’s no God.’ I don’t say there’s no God. I’m not an atheist 'cause I find atheism to be a mirror of the certainty of religion, and I don’t like certainty about the next world, 'cause we can’t know. What I say is, ‘I don’t know.’”

24

I prefer the term “shrugnostic.”

25

Meet better atheists. It may be that you have, but you didn’t know it. A lot of people assume that I’m Christian because I don’t tend to talk about my beliefs. My point is that the people who do the most talking tend be the extremists, which is not confined to atheism.

Please do not generalize from the people you have met and this one movie to millions of people. Plenty of us are very nice. And seriously, think about how that sentence sounds to an atheist. Is it similar to the things you are talking about in the first quote? That’s a rhetorical question, I just want you to think through what you say a little more.

I would agree with this. As a suggestion, Julia Sweeney’s audiobook Letting Go of God is funny and a much more positive approach to atheism.

26

Right. And I didn’t want to go into that kind of depth in CS. But I saw him on TDS tonight, and it appears that he’s got the definition of atheism wrong also, so if the OP is confused we know why.

27

Sherri Shepherd. Star Jones left the show in 2007.

28

‘Atheistic’ is in fact a word.

29

walks into thread, bumps it with big ol’ hips

I’m gonna bump this thread, because I just saw the movie tonight.

If Bill Maher called himself an apatheist, he doesn’t know what that word means. He is very interested in whether or not a god exists.

I came away from the movie thinking two things…

  1. The funniest parts of that movie are the times when Bill seems genuinely stunned to silence. When the creationist museum director’s response to his questions dissolve into, “How would you know? Are you God?”, Bill just really seems thrown off completely, in a very authentic way.

Sometimes when he is thrown off, he admits it and points it out. When the Jesus actor says, “The son and the father and the holy spirit can all be god. Just like water can be water, ice and steam.”, Bill acknowledges that the analogy is awesome enough to stop him in his tracks…for a moment at least.

  1. Pretentious assholes that go to the movies and laugh extra loudly, with a peircing, sharp sound really annoy me. We get it! You get the jokes. So do we, and somehow we manage to express that with hardly more than a grin and a chuckle.

  2. Hi, freakin’ Opal. I never Hi’d Opal before, but boy have the people that are so stressed out by this harmless little board fun put me in the spirit to add it to every list I make for the rest of my natural life.

30

Saw it tonight, laughed my ass off.

Does anyone know the name of the televangelist who was speaking in tongues in one of the scenes? He was a white guy, way-to-perfect slicked back hair, and he let loose with a long string of unintelligible syllables, and then said “I love you.”

Anyone know who he is?

31

You forget, Bill Maher is a lapsed Irish Catholic.

I’d say he’s agnostic with a bitter pill.

32

I think that has to with the fact that he does not like people who claim to know what happens after death. He doesn’t know and they don’t have any ability that he doesn’t have so they don’t know, either.

33

There are an awful lot of people out there who validate their opinions by ridiculing your own. Personally, I think it happens mostly when they actually have secret doubts. Religion and movies are two cases where this happens a lot. When you get a movie about religion, well . . .

34

I just saw Religulous last night and I think the movie AND Bill Maher are awesome.

I believe that this movie is part of an overall trend to rational thinking that is part of the long-term development of the human race. The human race is still very young, and just as a child will slowly let go of belief in Santa Claus, tooth fairies, and so on, our species will let go of that sometimes comforting but eventually destructive and irrational mental narcotic that is religion.

Obviously, it does not take place equally in every country at once. Take witch trials as an example. There was a time when probably 90% of Europeans believed that witches existed and should be put to death. Today, I doubt if any significant proportion of people in western countries would believe such things or would allow an old woman to be put to death for witchcraft. Even American fundamentalists, who have the backing of biblical verses ordering that witches be put to death, would not back witch trials in any significant numbers.

One of the reasons for the rise of fundamentalism, the religious right, Islamic militancy, etc. is that religion is in fact slowly withering and dying, and it knows it. Even Islam, with its power to terrorize apostates both through death penalties applied in Muslim countries, social pressure and other means, knows that there are tens of millions of Muslims who are closet atheists afraid to come out.

All over the western world, groups of ex-Muslims are coming together, frightened and timid but determined, helping others to follow their convictions and stand up to the terrifying pressure that can be applied to Muslim apostates, even in Western countries.

For atheists who have left Christianity and Judaism in western countries, the pressure is less but still real.

As Bill Maher points out, even in America, politicians still compete with each other to prove they are persons “of faith”. Atheists will vote for a religious believer (as long as that person is not a rabid fundie trying to overturn the separation of Church and State) but that tolerance does not exist among most theists, the majority of whom would refuse to vote for an atheist politician.

In the long run, Maher’s contribution will be to have effectively attacked the notion that religion enjoys some sort of special immunity from criticism and rational examination that no other idea enjoys. What is rapidly crumbling in the first part of the 21st Century is religion’s first wall of defense, the “magic” word “Faith”. Religion is less and less able to invoke that word to claim that it should not be criticized, that its beliefs cannot be ridiculed no matter how preposterous.

The old bitch of religion is dying, but she will put up quite a fight before she succumbs. Just look at what is happening throughout the world.

35

Ok. I would just like to point out that I am not one of those people whose head explodes if I detect the faintest of buzzing vibrating through the wool of a person’s coat pocket in a theater. Seriously, a person has to be extra annoying to annoy me. But the raucus, piercing, ringing, belly shaking guffaws that people were making at Bill’s every single witticism was enough to really aggravate me.

I thought the movie was very funny. Some parts enough to leave me in a gale of giggles. But that veins-in-the-neck popping laughter was too much.

ETA: I forgot to address your point! I don’t know if I agree that the laughter stems from their ‘secret doubts’. If I had to guess, and I think that is all I can do, I would guess they were more likely laughing to prove that the are smart enough to get all the ‘intellectual’ jokes.

36

As a matter of fact, speaking as an atheist who thinks Religulous is just wonderful, I also noticed a certain quality in the laughter of the audience at the showing I attended last night. I was watching it at a theatre in Canada (which has a 20% “no religion” group that has been growing at every 5-year census, btw), and specifically in the Province of Quebec, which is rated in at least one study as the least religious part of North America (guess who was the most religous. Dixie! Well, d’uh!:D).

In fact I even noticed myself laughing out loud, which is something I almost NEVER do at movies no matter how funny I find them.

There was a nervous qulaity to the laughter, I noticed. But I find the “secret doubts” theory and the “proving that they are smart enough to get all the intellectual jokes” theory patronizing and gratuitously insulting.

I mean come on, who needs to prove they are intellectual enough to get the joke when that fundie Sentor says with a big smirk: “You don’t have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate” and then a second later his face goes deadpan when he realizes what he has just said. The movie was NOT intellectual in the least. It was almost verbal slapstick.

The “secret doubts” theory could explain the nervous laughter, but might it have been that these doubts centered on remaining bits of religious belief of some audience members.

For my part, what I heard was the sort of nervous laughter you would hear when someone finally stands up to an arrogant, frightening, domineering power figure and tells him to his face what everyone else has been thinking.

It is only about 15 generations ago that our ancestors could be tortured and burned by the powers that be for having the slightest doubts about religion. Today, religious apostates are killed in some countries. And even in America, very few politicians could be elected unless they are “persons of faith”. In our own time, Congress and the religious right can insist that the slogan “in God we Trust” that was added to US money about 55 years ago during the Cold War must remain on the currency of a state that supposedly respects all religious viewpoints equally.

So what I think you will hear in a lot of movie houses when this flick is shown is the nervous laughter of rational people who feel a sense of liberation, empowerment and relief, and a willingness to take one more step out of the atheist closet.

May the non-existant god bless Bill Maher.:slight_smile:

37

Valteron, I wouldn’t say that the movie was intellectual, but I would say that the average Bill Maher fan considers himself somewhat smarter than average, well read, properly skeptical and scientific and…well…intellectual.

Now, I am a huge Bill Maher fan, and I loved the movie. And I am miles from anyone’s idea of an intellectual. But I bet that theater was full of people that feel they are.

I don’t mean to insult anyone at all. I am just trying to figure out why these folks were shriek-laughing in my ear in a way that made me shoot up out of my seat every time Bill made the slightest quip. It didn’t sound like a nervous laughter at all to me. It sounded like an over-reaction from the funniest bits to even the mildest smile-worthy bits.

ETA: I hope I am not coming off like I didn’t love the movie. I do. Even the points you made about it championing in an atheist revolution (did you say that?), I am on board with that. I can’t stand that scream-laughing crap, though.

38

Well, Nzinga, we may be over-analyzing here. Let’s just agree that some people next to you were laughing in a manner that sounded exagerated.

I agree because I heard something similar in my movie theatre. Let’s just say it was not just the soft, rolling chuckle that you hear when an ordinary comedy film is shown.

I think we can agree on two facts, Nzinga. Both our audiences no doubt contained a high proportion of atheists and agnostics, and atheists and agnostics are still subject to social consure, misundertanding (e.g. they have no morals) and so on. The fact that the majority of Americans would not vote for an atheist is undeniably evidence that they are at least a disliked minority if despised is too strong a word.

So a great many of these people are “in the closet”, because they do not want to be socially censured, because they do not want their old momma to die of a broken heart, or whatever.

Well, Nzinga, for what it is worth I am a 60-year-old gay man. I have seen the position of gays (in western democracies at least) completely transformed. We went from being an unmentionable obscenity for which you could be imprisoned or certainly beaten up, to a situation in which gay politicians publicly get married to same-sex partners (I realize that last part is not everywhere in the west, but you get my point).

In case you think that I am overstating the plight of non-believers in America in 2008, I would remind you that in the 1950s, people said much the same to the earliest gay rights advocates. They would tell them to stop whining, that criminal prosecution and assault were not likely if they kept their sexual orientation well hidden, and that society did not have to change to suit a small minority. The parallels are there, even if the situation is not identical.

And do you know something, Nzinga? When the first openly gay-positive films and TV programs started coming out in mainstream media in the 1970s, I heard much the same laughter as I heard last night in Religulous. In fact, I remember specifically being in a gay bar in the 70s when the Norman Lear sitcom Maude did a very gay-positive program. The entire bar fell quiet, one of the waiters turned up the TV, and at every joke, there was exagerated laughter of the kind you and I both heard in our respective cinemas. People looked at each other, laughed very loud, and kept smiling and shaking their heads in agreement. Sound familiar?

39

“They seem to have a hatred of all humanity and of all the values of society.” That was what a Roman writer said about the Christians when they were a small and despised minority in the Roman Empire.

40

One small example of the arrogance of theists is their use of an expression like “lapsed” Catholic. Like Bill Maher, I also started Catholic and rejected it all decades ago.

I find it insulting and arrogant for Catholics to call me “lapsed”, as if I had just forgotten to go to Mass because I wanted to sleep in.

Implicit in the term “lapsed Catholic” is the belief that since Maher and I were both baptized as Catholics, and since Catholic doctrine says that Baptism is permanent, we are actually still Catholics.

I imagine a person who still considers himself a Catholic but has just been too lazy to practice for many years can legitimately be called lapsed, I suppose.

But the fact that I rejected Catholicism at 16 the day my parents stopped forcing me to go to church should count for something. But according to some people, I am allegedly still a Catholic, implying that the RC doctrine overrules my own decision.

And you call US arrogant?