Bill Maher mocks ‘ancient myths’ in ad for Richard Dawkins’ pro-atheism campaign

[rug]

Arturo Garcia
13 Jan 2015 at 20:04 ET

Real Time host Bill Maher appears in an ad for the atheist group Openly Secular released on Monday, saying he was eager to lend his voice to their campaign.

“It seems to me the most obvious decision a person could make in their life: do I want to make real-world policy decided on the basis of proven facts and the reaches of what humans have gotten to do in science?” Maher says in the ad. “Or do I want real-world decisions made based on ancient myths written by men who didn’t know what a germ or an atom was, or where the sun went at night?” “I picked choice A.”

The group is a collaboration between the Richard Dawkins Foundation and three other atheist groups. On its website, Openly Secular compares discrimination against atheists to the prejudices encountered by the LGBT communities.

“We believe that increasing visibility of secular people will lower prejudice against them, much as it has for the LGBT community,” the group states. “For example, 68% of those who personally know gay or lesbian people favor marriage equality, compared with just 32% of those who don’t know anyone.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/bill-maher-mocks-ancient-myths-in-ad-for-richard-dawkins-pro-atheism-campaign/

http://www.openlysecular.org/#/about

[Scuba]

1. I'm not sure I'd call that "mocking" so much as "rationale".

[Fumesucker]

2. He's not mocking the myths, only people in the modern age who take them seriously

Very few take the Norse, Roman or Greek gods seriously any more and virtually all of us would think anyone who does is not firmly rooted in reality.

[nilesobek]

29. Hopefully the Judeo-Christo-Islamic religions will get the same treatment.

They all three deserve to be in the same category because I surely don't take them seriously.

[pipoman]

3. Hmmm...have I missed

Openly Secular compares discrimination against atheists to the prejudices encountered by the LGBT communities. 

all of the stories of atheists being beaten, killed, fired, denied benefits, etc. ? I know I have seen many such stories about the LGBT community. ..

[edhopper]

7. That is the author's words

not Openly Secular. They aren't comparing the degree of discrimination, just a way to overcome it. They are saying people knowing friends are atheist will have an impact on prejudice, as it has for the LGBT community.

Seems a reasonable assumption, don't you think.

[cbayer]

11. Actually, Openly Secular does draw the comparison on their site.

I agree with you that it can be a valid comparison when discussing how to overcome prejudice.

[cbayer]

10. I think it can be a useful comparison up to a point.

The more atheists who are open, the less prejudice there will be, imo.

OTOH, there is an interesting distinction that will have to be addressed.

It is often stated that religious belief is a choice. I don't' necessarily agree with that, but if it were true, then I would argue that non-belief is also a choice.

That would make it distinctly different than sexual orientation.

[pipoman]

22. Agreed on the 'choice' piece...

We certainly don't want to go backwards on the headway we have made against the 'sexual orientation is a choice' crowd....

[Fumesucker]

25. I've been fired twice due to my atheism being inadvertently revealed

[cbayer]

27. Did you file a suit?

[Fumesucker]

34. This was in the 1970's

What I did is learn to keep my mouth firmly shut regarding my feelings about religion and I have passed for forty years. There are times I feel acute embarrassment for people who prattle endlessly on about their religion, rather like I would for someone who had never been taught not to masturbate in public.

I don't want to know the intimate details of people's sex lives and I don't want to know the intimate details of their spiritual lives either and I most certainly don't want to tell people about my own and resent being asked about something so deeply personal on a damn near instantaneous basis.

What I don't think you realize is that I never out of the blue start talking about religion but there are times when someone else has carried on long enough that I eventually get to the point I can't bear to listen to it without trying to inject some hint of rationality into the conversation monologue. A couple of the worst offenders are in my own family by marriage and they just cannot help themselves from starting a religious argument with me from time to time, one I can always win because I know the scripture better than they do and can argue rings around them anyway to boot. It ends up in hurt feelings and I really don't like that but it's hard to listen to people who don't even make theological sense, let alone rational.

[cbayer]

35. I hop things have changed over the last 40 years.

At any rate, there are now organizations looking for opportunities to take cases like this.

I am sorry that you have to pass and that you lost your jobs. It's wrong and I am really hopeful that it will be over in my lifetime, which isn't going to be that much longer.

I am fortunate to have lived in communities where it was ok to be a non-believer and also ok to tell proselytizers to put a sock in it.

I understand that you don't talk about religion unless pushed to the breaking point. I don't either, unless it is clear that no one is going to be pushing their own beliefs/non beliefs. If we do have discussion, there is no "winning" and no hurt feelings. Everyone feels comfortable shutting it down at any time. But I realize that is not the case for many, many people.

Interestingly, I am currently in a community where it is more or less assumed that you aren't religious and it is the religious who are the outliers. You would probably like it here.

[cleanhippie]

4. Woah, a two-fer! Maher AND Dawkins in the SAME HEADLINE??!!!!!???

It must be your lucky day!

If only it had 'atheist' in there, too! The trifecta pays handsomely, I hear.

[rug]

5. Now it's a trifecta.

[cleanhippie]

6. No, you have to get all three in one headline.

Keep searching, I'm sure you can find it.

[rug]

13. No, I have Maher, I have Dawkins, both acting predictably.

And then there's you.

[cleanhippie]

14. If acting predictably is your metric, make sure to count yourself.

Now show us some more of that last-word compulsion predictability.

[rug]

15. Right down to the smiley.

[cleanhippie]

16. Right down to the inability to let-it-go.

[rug]

18. So much for the last word compulsion.

Last edited Wed Jan 14, 2015, 04:31 PM - Edit history (1)

[cleanhippie]

19. And yet there you go again.

Just when I think you've got it licked, too.

[phil89]

33. What do you disagree

With regarding maher's statements, and why? Be specific.

[cbayer]

8. Looks like a pretty good group and I don't find Maher's words really mocking.

The organization looks to have some good goals.

I think it's unfortunate that "secular" has come to mean non-theist, but that horse seems to be out of the barn.

[cleanhippie]

9. Well, at least it hasn't come to mean "athiest', amirite?

Gotta look at the bright side of things, sailor!

[hrmjustin]

17. On a different note, he is not funny anymore.

I liked him better when he was funny.

[backscatter712]

20. Bill Maher's doubling down.

He gets called a bigot for some of his recent remarks. Here's his response:

http://www.inquisitr.com/1743767/bill-maher-refuses-to-lay-off-islam-slings-more-insults-on-his-own-show/

According to the Daily Beast, Maher used his show Real Time with Bill Maher to focus on Islam as a source of terrible and violent ideas. While Maher finds all religions “stupid and dangerous,” he has a particular dislike of Islam. When comparing Christianity to Islam, Maher has said “one is herpes and one his cancer.” Maher’s rhetoric was no more forgiving on the last episode of his show. He was joined by fellow activist Salman Rushdie — who has some experience in Islamic death threats — political commentator Paul Begala, and the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina.

“What we’ve said all along, and have been called bigots for it, is when there’s this many bad apples, there’s something wrong with the orchard,” Bill Maher said in reference to Islam.

Bill Maher received a lot of heat for a previous exchange over Islam on his show, when he debated with neuroscientist Sam Harris and Ben Affleck. Some, like Affleck, have defended Islam, claiming that most Muslims don’t support violent Islamic extremism. But Bill Maher voiced his disagreement on Jimmy Kimmel, claiming that while many Muslims would never enact such violence, hundreds of millions of them would support an attack like the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Bill Maher doubled down on this point on his own show.

“Obviously, the vast majority of Muslims would never do anything like this,” Maher said. “But they share bad ideas. This is the thing that caused the big ruckus when Ben Affleck was here. Sam Harris said, ‘Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas,’ and everyone went f***in’ nuts on this side of the panel. But it is. These two guys who shot up the cartoonists the other day, they were avenging the prophet, they said? A bad idea. Martyrdom? A bad idea. Women as second-class citizens? A bad idea. And unfortunately, the terrorists and the mainstream share a lot of these bad ideas.”

I'm with Bill Maher - there is something toxic in Islamic culture that's leading to all this violence. Sorry, but it's the truth. Not every Muslim is like this, the vast majority of people wouldn't go shoot up cartoonists or blow people up, but in too many cases, there's quite a bit of tolerance and unspoken support for the ones that do.

[cbayer]

21. Where is the evidence of tolerance, let alone unspoken support.

I have seen nothing but broad and strong condemnation. Among the millions who marched in france were large numbers of muslims.

His apple orchard analogy totally fails. If you wanted to make that analogy, you would have to recognize that there is a single aphid on a single apple in the orchard. The rest of the trees are fine and their fruit unspoiled.

It is reckless to call Islamic culture toxic. It's how we got involved in fighting two holy wars that killed countless numbers of innocent people and deepened the wounds that feed the extremism.

Bill Maher is declaring war on innocents and you are supporting him.

[backscatter712]

23. Then how did ISIS, Boko Haram, and Al Qaeda get so strong?

These are organizations with thousands of fighters, and millions of supporters. They are powerful enough to threaten governments. Not the U.S., but ISIS is powerful enough to control significant pieces of Iraq and Syria. Boko Haram is powerful enough to murder people by the thousand and control large pieces of Nigeria. The Taliban used to literally be the government of Afghanistan. Organizations don't get that powerful without lots of people supporting them.

Maybe the Charlie Hebdo killings were enough to get some of the people who were going "I'm against religious violence, but..." where the "buts" are "He shouldn't have drawn a picture of the Prophet Mohammed" or "that girl shouldn't have gone to school" to rethink their positions.

[cbayer]

24. They are terrorist organizations.

A single terrorist can be strong, threatening and powerful.

There is some support among Muslims, but when you talk about muslims and use the word millions, you have to acknowledge that their numbers are around 1.6 billion.

By painting them all with the same brush and waging a holy war on Islam, all you do is help them with recruitment. The more you marginalize muslims, the more powerful those organizations will become. You want those numbers of supporters to grow, keep calling muslims in general the problem.

So lets talk about the good muslims of the world, the muslims that don't in any way support this and, in fact, loudly condemn it. Their numbers are conservatively well over 1 billion… that would be over 1000 million.

You are talking about an aphid on an apple in the orchard.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

26. I have yet to see a Muslim holy leader denounce the Charlie Hebdo murders and terrorist attacks.

Just like I have not seen liberal Christians denounce the right-wing fundamentalists who want to make this a Christian-only nation and execute atheists (See George H.W. Bush for quote on running atheists out of the country.)

There are several states where avowed atheists cannot hold public office, contrary to the United States Constitution.

I do understand that most Muslims are law abiding, but there are still many thousands of terrorists who want to kill themselves and take others with them in the name of their religion.

[cbayer]

28. Then you haven't been paying attention.

Many Muslim leaders have denounced these murders and many christians leaders denounce the christian RW.

It's really easy to find and I suggest that if you have not seen it then you are actively ignoring it. Articles about this are posted in this group frequently.

There are 1.6 billion muslims in the world. They make up almost 25% of the entire earths population. How many do you think want to kill themselves and take others with them in the name of their religion?

You should be relieved to know that the state laws you refer to were overturned by a federal case and are completely unenforceable.

[tularetom]

30. Don't forget Maher got fired once for insisting that the 9/11 perps weren't "cowards"

He's spent the last 14 years trying to prove to his bosses that he isn't a Muslim loving liberal.

I don't think the guy has any core beliefs at all, he's a slightly more entertaining version of Dennis Miller.

[cbayer]

31. He's got a better nose for money than Miller does.

That's about it.

[LiberalAndProud]

32. Was it Eleanor Roosevelt who said

Last edited Thu Jan 15, 2015, 01:16 PM - Edit history (1)

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Whatever you may think of the man, I think his idea merits discussion. Yet the thread is all about Bill.

“It seems to me the most obvious decision a person could make in their life: do I want to make real-world policy decided on the basis of proven facts and the reaches of what humans have gotten to do in science?” Maher says in the ad. “Or do I want real-world decisions made based on ancient myths written by men who didn’t know what a germ or an atom was, or where the sun went at night?” “I picked choice A.”

Whatever I may think of the man, I think he's got this one right.