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Is Bill Maher Right On Religion?

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  • Is Bill Maher Right On Religion?

    Another response to another Salon article. https://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/2...t-on-religion/

  • #2
    "we could easily say Nietzsche was right about the 20th century being the bloodiest century of all." Nietzsche died in 1900, so if you're right, he was a marvel as a prophet. However, I don't think he used the word "bloodiest."

    "We also have to wonder how this Enlightenment revolution came about. Was it through the bloody French Revolution for instance?" Wikipedia says that the Enlightment started in the late 17th century. The French Revolution started 1789, so maybe there is an overlap, but it seems more likely the Enlightment led to the revolution than less likely.
    The greater number of laws . . . , the more thieves . . . there will be. ---- Lao-Tzu

    [T]he truth I’m after and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance -— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

    Comment


    • #3
      Thank you, Nick.

      The jackboots of athée pigs like Shermer must not be allowed to trod upon our people.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by DLAbaoaqu View Post
        Thank you, Nick.

        The jackboots of athée pigs like Shermer must not be allowed to trod upon our people.
        "Althee"?
        The greater number of laws . . . , the more thieves . . . there will be. ---- Lao-Tzu

        [T]he truth I’m after and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance -— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Apologiaphoenix View Post
          Another response to another Salon article. https://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/2...t-on-religion/
          What utter nonsense!

          Shermer has clearly been looking at history as is actually was, NOT at a few cherry-picked quotes saying what it should have been. The historical fact is that women were regarded as chattels in law throughout most Christian countries until relatively recently. Hence the Suffragette Movement and Women’s Liberation!

          And slavery was justified scripturally by Christians throughout most of history. E.g. The Southern Baptist Convention (largest Protestant congregation in the US) was founded specifically to defend the practice and didn't renounce this position until 1995.

          Typical fundamentalist rewriting of history!
          “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

          Comment


          • #6
            Looks like you passed The Tassman TestTM Nick (for those who don't know, this is the test that if Tassman disagrees with you, you are likely on the right track, but if he agrees with you; you should rethink your position. It's somewhat related to The Epoetker TestTM). Anyway, since I'm board and I know Tazzy Wazzy pretends I have a serious mental condition that he can't prove or show I actually have, in any measured way (it most likely only exist in his own head, much like the rest of his delusions do), I guess I should get to refuting everything he says too.

            Originally posted by Tassman View Post
            What utter nonsense!
            This should be entertaining.

            Shermer has clearly been looking at history as is actually was, NOT at a few cherry-picked quotes saying what it should have been. The historical fact is that women were regarded as chattels in law throughout most Christian countries until relatively recently. Hence the Suffragette Movement and Women’s Liberation!
            Bald assertion. I guess that must be why woman became leaders of countries across the world. I suppose Queen Isabel, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth didn't exist and were just figures made up later, by people trying to rewrite history. In truth, history actually shows that the church was involved in the Woman's Suffrage movement. You are aware that the first women right's conventions were held in church's and church properties, right? Of course you are not because that would require you getting an education on these matters and trying to refute something that you're too stupid to refute. Go ahead, give a single piece of evidence to prove otherwise because I enjoy tearing apart absurd claims about Christianity holding back woman because only a fool would make such a claim (aka you).

            And slavery was justified scripturally by Christians throughout most of history. E.g. The Southern Baptist Convention (largest Protestant congregation in the US) was founded specifically to defend the practice and didn't renounce this position until 1995.
            That's nice and it is too bad that Adrift already took you to task on this one too. In reality, The Southern Baptist Convention was not a major denomination during the 19th century. The Methodist were the largest denomination, at the time. Funny, many Methodist were quite against slavery and many Christians took a very strong stance against slavery. You are aware that the Underground Railroad ran though many church's, right? You are aware that preachers spoke very harshly against the practice? You are aware that Christians pushed the first anti slavery laws, though the process? Of course you're not because you're too busy showing your hatred and bigotry, of Christians, to care about the truth.

            Typical fundamentalist rewriting of history!


            And this comes from the same idiot, that keeps trying to re-write history himself! I know you'll ignore me (because I refute you so thoroughly), but you're welcome to attempt to refute a word I said.
            Last edited by lilpixieofterror; 01-24-2015, 10:07 AM.
            "The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy."
            GK Chesterton; Orthodoxy

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Truthseeker View Post
              "Althee"?
              FAs, or antitheists. If they push you, the Christian, around, push back against them just as hard, if not harder.

              Comment


              • #8
                I wouldn't trust Maher to give the truth on what he had for breakfast...
                That's what
                - She

                Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
                - Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)

                I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
                - Stephen R. Donaldson

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                  What utter nonsense!
                  What's nonsensical is that you'd rather bash Christians than say a word against Muslims. Now who was it that recently took hostages and killed three of them... ...in your own home country?



                  Originally posted by Tassman
                  Shermer has clearly been looking at history as is actually was, NOT at a few cherry-picked quotes saying what it should have been. The historical fact is that women were regarded as chattels in law throughout most Christian countries until relatively recently. Hence the Suffragette Movement and Women’s Liberation!
                  And Christians were among the leaders of the suffrage movement. How many atheists were involved?


                  Originally posted by Tassman
                  And slavery was justified scripturally by Christians throughout most of history. E.g. The Southern Baptist Convention (largest Protestant congregation in the US) was founded specifically to defend the practice and didn't renounce this position until 1995.

                  Typical fundamentalist rewriting of history!
                  Typical 'bright' atheist logic.

                  Christians were among the leaders of the anti-slavery movement in Europe and America. Ditto the American Civil Rights movement (e.g. MLK).

                  How many atheists were leading those movements?
                  ...>>> Witty remark or snarky quote of another poster goes here <<<...

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Bill Maher is a pretty good example of fundy atheist hypocrisy, in action. They will, for example, attack YEC's for being anti science, but ignore Bill Maher's anti vaccination rants. For evidence of his stance, here is a video done a few years ago:



                    Notice how Tazzy Wazzy mindless defends Bill Maher, while he says anti science nonsense, like that video?
                    "The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy."
                    GK Chesterton; Orthodoxy

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by lilpixieofterror View Post
                      Bill Maher is a pretty good example of fundy atheist hypocrisy, in action. They will, for example, attack YEC's for being anti science, but ignore Bill Maher's anti vaccination rants. For evidence of his stance, here is a video done a few years ago:



                      Notice how Tazzy Wazzy mindless defends Bill Maher, while he says anti science nonsense, like that video?
                      As I posted last month in the Screwball thread:
                      Originally posted by rogue06
                      Maher has gone on record as a germ theory denialist, expressly saying "I don't believe in vaccination either" and claiming on his show Real Time with Bill Maher on March 4, 2005 that Pasteur recanted germ theory on his deathbed
                      I don't believe in vaccination either. That's a... well, that's a... what? That's another theory that I think is flawed, that we go by the Louis Pasteur theory, even though Louis Pasteur renounced it on his own deathbed and said that Beauchamp(s) was right: it's not the invading germs, it's the terrain. It's not the mosquitoes, it's the swamp that they are breeding in.

                      Pasteur's recanting germ theory has as much basis in fact as does Darwin's supposed death bed denouncement of evolution.

                      On Larry King Live from December 15, 2005 we were treated to this bit of woo
                      MAHER: I'm not into western medicine. That to me is a complete scare tactic. It just shows you, you can...

                      KING: You mean you don't get a -- you don't get a flu shot?

                      MAHER: A flu shot is the worst thing you can do.

                      KING: Why?

                      MAHER: Because it's got -- it's got mercury.

                      KING: It prevents flu.

                      MAHER: It doesn't prevent. First of all, that's...

                      KING: I haven't had the flu in 25 years since I've been taking a flu shot.

                      MAHER: Well, I hate to tell you, Larry, but if you have a flu shot for more than five years in a row, there's ten times the likelihood that you'll get Alzheimer's disease. I would stop getting your...

                      KING: What did you say?

                      MAHER: That went better in rehearsal but it was still good. Absolutely, no the defense against disease is to have a strong immune system. A flu shot just compromises your immune system.

                      So where did Maher get his information for the very specific claim that getting flu shots more than five years in a row will increase your likelihood of getting Alzheimer's disease by ten-fold? I turns out that this information came from whale.to -- a source that Rationalwiki accurately described as "contains every (and we do mean every) half-baked pseudoscientific theory ever concocted."

                      The fact is the claim that Maher was promulgating is pure unadulterated poppycock. Typical anti-vax propaganda.

                      Worse, this idiocy was blathered by Maher only a month after CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta smacked down his nonsense when he was a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher when he started his mantra about how vaccines are a waste of time and that you can defeat a virus by eating right.

                      In the King interview Maher also credited the elimination of diseases not because of vaccines but rather because of improved sanitations
                      KING: Polio was eliminated.

                      MAHER: Yes but, you know, there are many books out that will -- that will -- and I'm not well enough versed on it to talk about it that will indicate that there are other reasons why it was.

                      And a lot of diseases that have been they say, whoa, this was eliminated because of a vaccine, they find out well no actually the country got toilets and that's what happened.

                      Quackwatch terminally rebuts this claim: http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPr...mu/immu01.html

                      In 2009 when Bill Maher was set to receive the Richard Dawkins award from the Atheist Alliance for his contributions to an increased scientific knowledge the blowback was tremendous causing him to issue "clarifications" on his previous statements. But one week after getting the award he returned to his anti-vaccine balderdash in a conversation with former Senate Majority Leader and heart surgeon Bill Frist. You can see the whole thing for yourself at Bill Maher gets schooled on vaccines by Bill Frist on youtube:



                      For my money the best part is the look at Maher's face after he said to Frist, "You say that as though I’m a crazy person,” and Frist replied, “Well, here you are.”

                      For a more detailed take down on the encounter I suggest starting with http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-..._b_316192.html[1], and anything by the science blogger "Orac" at ScienceBlogs™ who wrote after the last incident:
                      He’s an anti-vaccine, quackery-supporting font of flaming moronicity every bit as bad as Ken Ham, Michael Behe, or any flak from the Discovery Institute. His views on medicine are every bit as much ideology driven as any view on evolution from a creationist. Indeed, the vitalism from which Maher’s germ theory denialism derives is every bit as much a mystical, religious viewpoint as that of the worst hard core young earth creationist. And he’s the 2009 recipient of the Richard Dawkins Award.

                      And this is merely one area where Maher has been a disseminator of scientific nonsense.












                      1. Another more generalized takedown is Michael Shermer's open letter to Maher: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michae..._b_323834.html. From the letter:
                      Vaccination is one of science's greatest discoveries. It is with considerable irony, then, that as a full-throated opponent of the nonsense that calls itself Intelligent Design, your anti-vaccination stance makes you something of an anti-evolutionist. Since you have been so vocal in your defense of the theory of evolution, I implore you to be consistent in your support of the theory across all domains and to please reconsider your position on vaccinations. It was not unreasonable to be a vaccination skeptic in the 1880s, which the co-discovered of natural selection--Alfred Russel Wallace--was, but we've learned a lot over the past century. Evolution explains why vaccinations work. Please stop denying evolution in this special case.

                      As well, Bill, your comments about not wanting to "trust the government" to inject us with a potentially deadly virus, along with many comments you have made about "big pharma" being in cahoots with the AMA and the CDC to keep us sick in the name of corporate profits is, in every way that matters, indistinguishable from 9/11 conspiracy mongering. Your brilliant line about how we know that the Bush administration did not orchestrate 9/11 ("because it worked"), applies here: the idea that dozens or hundreds pharmaceutical executives, AMA directors, CDC doctors, and corporate CEOs could pull off a conspiracy to keep us all sick in the name of money and power makes about as much sense as believing that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their bureaucratic apparatchiks planted explosive devices in the World Trade Center and flew remote controlled planes into the buildings.

                      I'm always still in trouble again

                      "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                      "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                      "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                        As I posted last month in the Screwball thread:
                        And notice how Tazzy Wazzy mindlessly defends him because he is against Christianity and it doesn't matter that he is passing on anti science nonsense, which kills children and/or disables them for the rest of their lives. He says things that are critical of Christianity and thus will mindlessly be defended.
                        "The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy."
                        GK Chesterton; Orthodoxy

                        Comment

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