Bill Maher on Evil

[godless_hobbit]

Here is a transcript of Bill Maher's excellent monologue from the September 16 episode of Real Time. It made me applaud, and I finally managed to track it down online:

And finally, New Rule: For Christ's sake, no more devil movies. "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" opened huge last week, and it surprised a lot of people, mostly because Owen Wilson

Comments

[godless_hobbit]

Ahh my goodness, how you unearth memories I thought were dead and buried. Yes, I read Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness when I was 15 or 16 on the recommendation of my youth pastor. Actually, you haven't been reading me long so you may not know that I was a Christian until about 2000, when I began to start doubting. But at the time, I loved those books, sigh =(

I can say that I never really believed there were literal demons and angels fighting in and around me, but the conceit and conceptualization was neat, I thought at the time.

It's more of the denial Christians live in, denial of everything that makes us human. Christianity is the philosophical equivalent of sticking one's fingers in one's ears and screaming "No, no, no, I'm not listening!!" It requires a complete denial of reality and responsibility, a fixation on the materialist fetish of "paradise." That's really all it boils down to. What do I have to do to make sure I get to live in heaven forever? Act "good?" Okay, sounds fine, sign me up. For Christians, there is no higher motivation to be "good" than whatever it will earn them in spiritual brownie points. Sure, they say it's for altruism and in the spirit of charity, but deep down, they know that's cynical. It's all about what they're going to get in the end. For that reason, Christianity's supposed moral system is utterly bankrupt, and is in stark reversal of what actual morality consists of.

As long as there are evil monsters to blame it on, people aren't culpable for their own behavior, which works out nicely for Christians who enjoy being bigots and hatemongers; even if they're proved to be wrong, they can just pawn it off on evil spirits, and, at least in their minds, they come out smelling like a rose.

[rosepurr]

I think some Christians have genuine faith and believe that they have a relationship with a loving, paternalistic god.

They have faith in that god, and not in a fear of hell and a reward of heaven. Some of them don't even believe in heaven and hell, actually.

Having said that, I firmly think that Christianity is an inherently flawed system that rewards false piety and teaches us to repress much that is good about humanity.

[rosepurr]

Oh, I also meant to recommend some other books:

Why Christianity Should Change or Die
by Bishop Shelby Spong

anything written by Bertrand Russell. :)