can we start anticipating Religulous? "you start disputing my god and you got a problem"

i have no use for him but vaya con dios

The gay muslim activists were funny

clip 1 and 2 are pretty funny
http://www.comingsoon.net/films.php?id=36716clip 1 and 2

I don't think Maher was the best choice to play Michael Moore in this. I'm sure he'll be repeatedly OTM, though.

The trailer makes me wish that the focus was a bit different. It seems like it would be stronger if they focused in on the politics-religion-armageddon interaction, rather than opening it up to a full scale "you're dumb for being religious" critique.

yeah otm - maher is way too extremist on his stance against religion for this to have any significant effect, unfortunately

the key to the whole trailer & probably the movie as well is to put the idea into peoples heads that religion actually = madness, im sure thatll go over well

I think his focus is exactly what the movie is called: Religulous. Nothing too strong, but a jest at stupid religious stuff and ridiculously stupid followers.

The fact that it doesn't come on strong is why there will be many people moviegoers for this film. And that's all that matters.

And I don't believe he will allude to the point that religion = madness. I think he is going to let people speak for themselves, and let the viewer decide that some people are outrageously stupid. I think there's a difference there because, he isn't going to state facts but just have lots of funny interviews like Borat.

And I don't believe he will allude to the point that religion = madness

uhh did you watch the trailer??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2SUAAsYg-o

^ nabisco otm

well, it will me more politically correct, religion = ridiculous (less strong of a word)

we won't buy it, so yes, he will allude to religion = madness. you are correct sir

he lost me at relijewlous

but won't it be grand to make fun of religions! isn't that fun because people will leave the movie angry!

Nothing too strong, but a jest at stupid religious stuff and ridiculously stupid followers.

Doesn't he compare God to Santa Claus in the trailer? While I agree with him, I think many people would consider that to be more than just "stupid religous stuff". I mean, that's a jest at the concept of omnipotence.

and then we can throw popcorn at the the disgruntled people and say things like "ha ha ha, you are upset"

what I meant to say is that the message will be very strong but the way he tries to sell the message, and is polite with people he interviews, will make the movie more light and attract more viewers, which is all that matters.

Maher does at least have Obama's pulse:

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2008/08/right_on_it.php

the god who wasn't there is a great anti-jesus doc if that's yr fancy

I'm glad that the belief this film seems to deepen in critics is that Maher is a self-worshipping asshole.

this looks like the worst fucking movie ever

no results for cmd-f "religulolus"... for shame

n/a otm. i've only seen the trailer twice and i still hate this movie with the intensity of a 1000 suns, etc.

it was classic what a dick he was talking about this movie on the daily show. he started out making a derisive point about sarah palin's intelligence bc of that video of her being protected from witches, but his comment ended up in an o_O place of "what's next, the secretary of the treasury with a bone through his nose?" nice.

he was sort of funny rehearsing the trinity, though. he had clearly practiced in front of the mirror, which came off douchey, but what are you going to do.

I remember hearing BM say on "Politically Incorrect" that "America doesn't have an empire, and we could," which is just as fantastic as any dogmatic myth.

from a NYT feature on Religulous:

“Anyone who’s religious is extremist. See, we’re just used to religion. It’s like what Matthew Arnold said about a tree. It’s not that there are no miracles. A tree is a miracle. You’re just used to it. And conversely religion is something we’re just used to. So the notion that God had a son, that he’s a single parent, and the son went on a suicide mission, and you’re drinking his blood on Sunday, that a man lived inside a whale and that the earth is 5,000 years old — all the essentials of religion that are in the Bible or the Koran — we’re used to them. But it doesn’t mean they’re not crazy, doesn’t mean they’re not ridiculous. And so to be religious at all is to be an extremist, is to be irrational. "

Yeah, every observant Jew and Christian believes all that literally. ILXworthy strawman stuff there.

I have a really annoying friend who is a self described militant atheist, church of the flying spaghetti monster, hard science graduate student Dawkins fellater, and he came online the other night and raved to me about how great this movie was. I don't really know if such a thing is possible but he holds these viewpoints to feel "cool" and superior to others. He's basically the biggest poser in existance after Bill Maher.

I know, Morbs, but except for the blood part (low-church theology on transubstantiation being what it is), I was taught to believe that stuff literally. I dunno if I was just more gullible than other people....

I mean, They Are Definitely Out There.

I wish he'd gone on the Colbert Report, since Colbert actually gives a shit about religion and would have semi-seriously debated him, instead of letting him give his spiel the way Stewart did.

haha Morbs OTM, though about the ILX strawman stuff, i.e. "OMG we interviewed the dude that plays Jesus at the Xtian theme park and he was CRAZY OMG LOL." what a surprise!

i dunno if dudes talking about "dawkins fellaters" and brushing off "cool" posers can really complain about people trying to feel superior to others

you'll have to take me on faith, then

i hate to say it but Dr. Morbious OTM

haha

this movie looks so stupid

Maher's main crime is that he isn't funny.

Yeah, my parents and everyone at the church I grew up in believed all of that literally, along with many other things. I remember one sermon that was dedicated to the verse about "It is easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven", and outlining how that was literally true (The explanation given was that apparently there is/was some gate to an ancient city known as the eye of the needle, it was very small, and a camel would have to get down on its knees to enter it. If you were wondering).

Anyway, yes, strawman argument, but if Maher ever hung out anywhere near where I lived, it wouldn't surprise me that he would think that a lot of Christians are like that.

It's gotta be better than An American Carol though, right?

akm otm

I was only taught to believe transubstantiation literally! cuz rlly, otherwise yer just a Protestant. (They taught us evolution in Catholic school too.)

ok this movie looks really smug & irritating and won't change anyone's mind but using that as a jump-off to talk shit about atheism from the fence-sitting moderate "michael moore is the left's ann coulter" position is str8 garbage - stick 2 facts

btw maher believes in the vaccine/autism link if you're looking for evidence of idiotic, harmful beliefs - really disappointing. i dont think hes fall-down-lol like ever but dude is on point like 90% of the time and a pretty hilarious dick the other 10%

i cannot stand this guys smug clay face

lol
http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2007/07/13/Maher_Hooker.jpg

morbs otm again. as a catholic, there's nothing like eating the flesh of your savior on a Sunday morning to make you feel that all's well with the world.

one of the wha? moments of the Daily Show interview is that Maher backs off of identifying as an atheist, which i thought was kind of cowardly, not to mention false, given what he'd already said.

http://www.bossip.com/uploaded_images/Bill%20Maher1-795571.jpg

ew god ew

sorry, i still like him

He often makes me laugh but, on balance, I really hate this douchebag.

just like olbermann anybody who can come from the left with lolzy "NEW RULE!" asshole game gets props from me

btw, he voted for Dole in '96.

We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, that's not cowardly. Stupid maybe, but not cowardly.

* Politically Incorrect, September 17, 2001

most of the reviews i read blamed this movie's shittiness on larry charles

some truth bombs here http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Maher

I wouldn't touch a hot dog unless you put a condom on it!

^^^untruth bomb

i'm not denying the guy some truth bombs, i just think he picked a topic that makes it impossible to come up with a good, interesting movie

i really dont understand how anyone can tolerate this guy at all - his whole listen closely children while i unveil this amazingly insightful zing tone is so not lol

bill maher is often hilarious, frequently correct, and still smug/annoying. i dunno. he gets pretty good guests, and although the discussions could use better direction at least he stands up to the guests and plays devils advocate, way more interesting to watch than charlie rose

would rather watch show that gets krugman, sullivan and alec baldwin than any of the 24 hr news network pundit shows

OR not.

Seriously Ned, read Blues People.
To quote big lebowski.

"You're out of yr element donnie."

Bam.

― ddrake, Sunday, November 16, 2003 11:19 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol, quotes from when i was 20 yrs old

i was about to say, okay but bill maher's not 19

digging up 5 year old quotes in order to play capn save a maher, really??

his whole ron-paul-american-hero thing is pretty eurgh too

* Apparently Bob Dole's new election strategy is to find a Republican policy so stupid, even Clinton won't copy it.

^^^ morbz?

the only cool thing Maher has ever done was give Scott Thompson screen time.

i did lol @ 'master p's theater,' anyway

i guess i appreciate that he didn't become conservative post-9/11, but that is he nicest thing i can think of to say about him. he seems like the kind of dude who's had about 70 sexual harassment suits filed against him in his life imo.

haa

custos tribute thread

one of the wha? moments of the Daily Show interview is that Maher backs off of identifying as an atheist, which i thought was kind of cowardly, not to mention false, given what he'd already said.

― horseshoe, Monday, October 6, 2008 11:59 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is consistent with what he says -- that the problem lies not so much in the sundry implausible manifestations of religion, but in the arrogant certainty that characterizes many of their adherents. I think Dawkins self-identifies as agnostic too, his decision pending further evidence.

i dont get hbo so i dont watch his show on the regular but judging from when he turns up on larry king + watching politically incorrect every night of 1998 i still fux with dude - showing me his dumb "translated rap lyrics" youtube means as much as some 04 deej post to me

ps master p was on politically incorrect like 5 times

his shows are put up on youtube every week btw, and they dont take them down. i watch parts of them sometimes bcuz he does tend to get decent pundits on like i said before, plus a funny comedian or two.

but that's not all he says. he spends a lot of time mocking pretty much all accounts of god (scientology=christianity=shinto=bullshit). i get how he can still technically be an agnostic, but since he would presumably never advance a less-mockable-by-his-criteria account of god, it seems sort of flimsy in pragmatic terms.

xposts

his audience's lack of discernment (lazy bush zinger = tremendous applause!) i think makes his self regard seem even worse than it is

(scientology=christianity=shinto=bullshit)

i agree with this 100% fyi

his audience's lack of discernment (lazy bush zinger = tremendous applause!) i think makes his self regard seem even worse than it is

― joe 40oz (deej), Monday, October 6, 2008 1:20 PM (24 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is why politics shows shouldnt have audiences, daily show/colbert report have the same problem

I hope none of you saw Bill Maher on Leno last night.....what a stacked card, let me tell you....the biggest pseud on TV with the most unfunny cunt on earth.....Bill said some shit so ignorant it somehow eclipses his "overweight people are just lazy and why should I pay health taxes because they're pigs?!" P.I. show and rap music comments....he says something like "I don't watch the Winter games....they're not sports...they're GRAVITY!!! You sit on a sled.." All the while with that huge triangular nose and those smirky incredulous "I mean COME ON!" facial gestures that must mean this guy actually thinks he's being cleverfresh...... everyday I cry a 40oz of tears trying to understand how people can think this man is exceptionally intelligent or witty....my theory is that Bill is the mascot for midbrow pseuds all over the USA that aren't outright morons but have just the right amount of totally cursory knowledge about shit in general to think they can stop right the fuck there.

-- Ramosi (olafsonski...), February 22nd, 2002.

you'd call yourself an atheist, right?

xpost to ethan

joe 40oz of tears

funny ish coming from a millionaire canadian kid pretending to be a latin n-bomb dropping drug dealer on the pitchforkmedia messageboards to get personally offended by bill maher clowning the xxxtreme sports he was sincerely into

xp yeah

it somehow eclipses his "overweight people are just lazy and why should I pay health taxes because they're pigs?!"

oh he says this? okay, that's retarded.

xpost see, that makes sense to me

i could see him getting down with some variant of negative theology. xpost

oh duh he's a libertarian, right? i shouldn't be surprised by his insightlessness on health care

look, he can be funny. Mostly when not trying to be a sage.

lol ethan, 2000 Maher on voting for Grouchy Bob in '96:

MAHER: Larry, remember in "Casablanca" when the guy said the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans, we have got too many people who don't understand that concept. Everybody thinks they're a big hill of beans. OK. I don't want to be one of those people. I mean, he's a war hero. We're talking about presidents. I can put aside my little -- OK, so -- no, I do -- I'm -- my rule has always been the guy who has been to war, unless he's a total nut or screwup -- he gets the job. I voted for Dole for that...

KING: Why?

MAHER: Because I think war is the great divider.

KING: So you would have been a big Eisenhower guy were you old enough?

MAHER: Absolutely.

KING: Because war is what?

MAHER: War is the great divider among men. I mean, you have been to war or you haven't, and if you haven't you just do not, I think, have the same mettle, and also, you haven't given the ultimate sacrifice for your country. I do think if you are a war hero and you're running, all things being otherwise fairly equal, that guy is going to get my vote.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0002/09/lkl.00.html

(scientology=christianity=shinto=bullshit)

i agree with this 100% fyi

― and what, Monday, October 6, 2008 1:20 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yah and im sure u and bill maher have sufficient understanding of these religions to support yr bullshit calling

maher's rhetoric bothers me because it seems to be based on the assumption that the more cleverly something is expressed the more true it is.

maher's on my list of people who annoy me sometimes but i'm glad they're out there anyway. he is clearly a dick, and not anywhere near as funny as thinks, but he's close enough to right enough of the time. and occasionally his show rises above echo-chamber tedium. i don't know if i'll get around to this movie (probably will the same way i see any bill maher -- when he pops up on hbo at whatever odd time i happen to have the tv on), but he and jon stewart had a pretty good extended gab about it the other night. made me wish the two of them could moderate a debate.

(scientology=christianity=shinto=bullshit)

i agree with this 100% fyi

haha this is ridiculous.

gah i have no interest in this at all. friend just asked me if i want to go and i told him i was cleaning my apartment instead.

it was not a good gab!

xposts to tipsy about daily show

the more cleverly something is expressed the more true it is

I think this is mostly his engrained comedian's fealty to the Dictatorship of the Laugh.

stewart is a lot more humble

MAHER: War is the great divider among men. I mean, you have been to war or you haven't, and if you haven't you just do not, I think, have the same mettle, and also, you haven't given the ultimate sacrifice for your country. I do think if you are a war hero and you're running, all things being otherwise fairly equal, that guy is going to get my vote.

hahahahahaha oh man nice research Morbz.

The main differences between Bill Maher and Carlos Mencia:

1. Maher steals fewer jokes.
2. Maher can make me laugh.

yah and im sure u and bill maher have sufficient understanding of these religions to support yr bullshit calling

Perhaps we can get a theolologist to explain them all for us.

also many xposts to rent; i don't see how he could get down with the negative theology and remain consistent in his uniform contempt for all forms of organized religion?

funny ish coming from a millionaire canadian kid pretending to be a latin n-bomb dropping drug dealer on the pitchforkmedia messageboards to get personally offended by bill maher clowning the xxxtreme sports he was sincerely into

― and what, Monday, October 6, 2008 1:23 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

darren sometimes put on kind of a front online but it's nothing compared to the superhuman con artist you've built him up to be in your mind. millionaire, wtf? anyway i don't have a dog in this fight, Maher is sometimes funny, sometimes annoying to me, but i think i'd much rather watch a couple episodes of his show than this movie.

Maher is sometimes funny, sometimes annoying to me, but i think i'd much rather watch a couple episodes of his show than this movie.

okay can we lock the thread now, this sums things up perfectly

lol i can find old posts too

I love how the photo is EVERYTHING bad about America all in one place: icky summer clothes, fat ankles, mirrored pseudo-Vuarnet shades, people wearing flag shit, spelling errors and misplaced patriotism. All worn by what appears to be an off-duty Embers management trainee.

-- suzy (suzy), Monday, 10 April 2006 23:39 (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

i dunno it was missing america's smug expatriate self-hatred of its own working class until now

-- +++++, Monday, 10 April 2006 23:43 (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

you were otm here, but it seems like you flip into smug hatorade when religion enters into the picture as a common denominator

no i want someone else to acknowledge the wtf-ness of the "bone through the nose" comment, because jon stewart let him off the hook.

Maher is sometimes funny, sometimes annoying to me, but i think i'd much rather watch a couple episodes of his show than this movie.

otm

further:
believing in anything larger than Three 6 Mafia = bullshit

waht are u talking about

he means prophet posse

whatevs im going to hit up the vinnie paz temple before lunch, peace

no i want someone else to acknowledge the wtf-ness of the "bone through the nose" comment, because jon stewart let him off the hook.

From what I remember the audience and Jon both went "...okaaaaaay" and quickly moved on.

(xpost horseshoe) just insofar as it is based on humility and a far more personal experience with GOD or whatever. he comes off arrogant, but i think his arrogance is really frustration (perhaps a little manufactured) directed people who would presume to know and be able to describe in our little human words what can't really be known.

not gonna comment on calling-people-smug-for-calling-people-smug-for-calling-people-smug but i think the bone thru the nose shit was a pretty nice flip of attaching what is normally a racist outsider stereotype on the whitest person ever to run on a national ticket when she's going for this normal american mom shit

like, oh you think obama is "foreign"? hockey mom's gonna have a bone thru her nose!

yeah, not any less racist

^^^still trafficking in the same offensive stereotype

x-post

that seems wrong. the laugh he was going for depended on a lol those backward tribal people premise. it's okay though, i'll settle down. there's nothing really to say about it. except that i think with something like religion contempt for belief does become contempt for people kind of easily bc it's a porous kind of identity

xpost to ethan

Perhaps we can get a theolologist to explain them all for us.

― Oh my god pink flamingoes (Pancakes Hackman), Monday, October 6, 2008 1:33 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

u dont need a theologist to tell you these fascinating cultural phenomenon are a too complex to be completely negated by a egomaniacal tv comedian or internet zingy

i dont think im being smug about atheism

i think it's kind of a shame that a show with thinkers and pundits and some ehh 'topical' comedians is relegated to premium cable and has to have a dickhead as a host, because it's a great idea. but maybe that's the way it has to be.

maher is one of these milk-hating people too which is pretty lol

he seems like he tends to think about things just up to a point where he can settle on a position and then never think about them again

That kind of strengthens the Bill Maher/Carlos Mencia parallel for me!

^^^still trafficking in the same offensive stereotype

x-post

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, October 6, 2008 1:48 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dunno this is kinda close to like "mentioning cheney's daughter was homophobic" shit to me

so what you're saying is that you agree with Ramosi's post that you shit on about Maher being one of those people who has "just the right amount of totally cursory knowledge about shit in general to think they can stop right the fuck there." (xpost)

ethan did you see the episode? the "joke" really only makes sense if maher thinks people with bones through their noses are punchlines.

i didnt see the episode but from what i read on blogs it seemed like he was asking if we really want to have a vice president who believes in witch hunts. don't ask me how he got to witchdoctor from that instead of talking about burning people at the stake or whatever but it's not racist to think that witchdoctors/shamans/"traditional healers"/etc need to be kept the fuck away from government and yeah i do think its funny to use an essentially racist stereotype on the most insane cracker ass cracker ever running against a non-crazy non-witchhunting black guy

u dont need a theologist to tell you these fascinating cultural phenomenon are a too complex to be completely negated by a egomaniacal tv comedian or internet zingy

yeah, I guess I should withhold judgement on scientology etc. because THEY JUST MIGHT BE TRUE.

people hating on religion in general are like anti government types who dont bother to recognize or understand why humans have always had government

complaining about how particular religious people or organizations behave seems totally reasonable

this whole set of people who don't believe in any of the b.s. of religion but, for PC reasons, never would openly criticize it, would rather pat religous folks on the head, are pretty nauseating.

^see something like ice cream's statement seems pretty condescending for all involved

the material point he was making was that sarah palin is too dumb to be vp, about which he's right and in agreement with a lot of people. i just thought it was characteristically dickish of him to slip and make a racist comment. i don't really think he was in control of the moment enough for it to have been intended as a clever inversion of Palin's image, but even if it was i'd argue that the laughs are kind of complicit with the stereotype. but anyway, it's not really worth further discussion.

So basically "PC" means "not being a dick" now?

wtf how is it condescending/'patting religious folks on the head' to acknowledge that religion is important to a lot of ppl? xxp

like "yes we both know religion is full of logical holes, but what YOU fail to understand is that all the little people need it, so let's let them hold onto it.

i started to write a condescending post about you condescending to us claiming that we condescend towards the religious

'logical holes'

^^^misses the point of religion

lolling at white nationalist stormfront dude being named "don black" doesn't mean you think there's something wrong with being black, and lolling at lil whitey prissypants sarah palin, running an implicitly racist campaign against barack obama, being associated with racist stereotypes, is pretty funny to me. i'm not trying to parse if maher was "control of the moment" enough for that to be the "actual" meaning. i'm just glad in a sea of milquetoasty liberal alan colmeses and shouty right-wing tards theres a shouty lefty tard who makes me lol now & again

"Openly criticizing religion generally" is also not the same as "being a dick," Dan. Unless one wants to defend the idea that religious beliefs are off-limits for criticism and questioning, which I doubt.

And whether religion is "important to a lot of people" is ignoring away a lot of the cultural and political bullshit that accompanies its importance.

PC means shying away from criticizing something because it's "important" to someone. and I don't mean to shy away from criticizing it to specific people for whom it is important, which yeah, is a dick move, but to completely take it off the table and say it just isn't open to debate.

yeah, I guess I should withhold judgement on scientology etc. because THEY JUST MIGHT BE TRUE.

― Evel Knievel's Dark Side (Pancakes Hackman), Monday, October 6, 2008 1:59 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

eh im not the one who included scientology in the argument and im not the one who excised christianity and shinto - but the general approach of distilling wildly varied religious/cultural practices in to easy ideas GOD IS REAL / THERE ARE ALIEN GHOSTS IN OUR BODIES and then judging theor truthfulness is emblematic of the sort of willfull ignorance and wishful thinking religious people are accused of by tv comedians and message board posters

You realize it is possible to criticize something without being a dick, right? (wait, who am I talking to, of course you don't)

yes, clearly the polite and humane thing to do is loudly insist YOU ARE WRONG YOU ARE WRONG YOUR BELIEFS AND TRADITION ARE RIDICULOUS AND ANYONE WHO BELIEVES THEM IS A MORON

ps how does alan colmes sleep at night?

^^^misses the point of religion

see? it's this shit! yes, I just don't get it! gee can there be something more to it than a logical theory of the universe? PLEASE TELL ME MORE

i'm not really sure religion IS open to debate, at least not the kind of debate that's going to have any kind of measurable, productive results

how can granny danger compose so many sentences and all of them be wrong?

My problem with Maher and his ilk over the past 12 years or so: I don't want to take the position that comedy can never contain political content, or that socio-political issues can't be discussed in a way that's funny, but stuff like this quickly gets you to a point where the position that seems rightest is the one that's funniest, or sounds the most cynical or derisive or common-sensical, or best allows the comedian to play out his comedic persona. Whereas some issues are important, and some positions are right, despite being totally unfunny and corny and lame-sounding, and packaging politics / entertainment / comedy together in certain ways skews against that. Maher has always bothered me this way.

The premise of this film in particular seems slightly pointless to me, and also incredibly narrow in its view -- i.e., I get this feeling that no matter what it might claim, this isn't concerned in the least with how religion operates in people's lives or human history on a grand scale, and is mainly concerned with the rather tiny question of whether or not it's bizarre or outlandish for people to believe in certain things.

i want someone else to acknowledge the wtf-ness of the "bone through the nose" comment, because jon stewart let him off the hook.

hmm, i missed the discussion of that upthread. i'd forgotten about that line, yeah, it was racist and crude even if intentions were what ethan says, which i think they were. but i mostly liked him and stewart together. maher's whole riff about how christianity only seems not-totally-weird becz it's so widespread is an obvious high-school freshman debating point, but still not one that i get to see made a whole lot on tv.

despite playing save-a-maher here ive been really annoyed by this movie + everyone asking me if i plan to see it because i think maher is really really really bad for the ATHEIST CAUSE lol cf this thread and he should probably just stfu about it for a while

see? it's this shit! yes, I just don't get it! gee can there be something more to it than a logical theory of the universe? PLEASE TELL ME MORE

there are these things called books, maybe you should try and read some sometime

the position that seems rightest is the one that's funniest, or sounds the most cynical or derisive or common-sensical

^^^this is what hard right-wingers have been trafficking in for years imo. like it's not funny to ask for more tolerance or understanding, or to examine our own country's actions, etc, but it's super hilarious to engage in zingy class resentment, xenophobia, and calling other people pussies.

right....it's like a discussion ender..."you're saying people evolved from MONKEYS! LOL"

but the general approach of distilling wildly varied religious/cultural practices in to easy ideas GOD IS REAL / THERE ARE ALIEN GHOSTS IN OUR BODIES and then judging theor truthfulness is emblematic of the sort of willfull ignorance and wishful thinking religious people are accused of by tv comedians and message board posters

This is just nonsense. Whatever their variety, all religions can at the end be distilled down to a very few central tenets (see that's why lots of them have these statements of belief and dogmas and catechisms and creeds and whatnot), and, yes, those central tenets can be easily evaluated for their truthfulness or likelihood. Refusal to do so is to get locked into the game of "Well not every Christian believes THAT" that occurred above.

Dan, the statement in question was "this whole set of people who don't believe in any of the b.s. of religion but, for PC reasons, never would openly criticize it." You're the one who decided to substitute "being a dick" for "openly criticizing" as if they were the same thing, so don't take it out on me.

xxp yes, clearly the polite and humane thing to do is loudly insist YOU ARE WRONG YOU ARE WRONG YOUR BELIEFS AND TRADITION ARE RIDICULOUS AND ANYONE WHO BELIEVES THEM IS A MORON

Uh, this is what many mainstream American Christian denominations do to EVERYONE, and I hardly think atheists should be singled out and told to STFU on that basis.

"Whatever their variety, all religions can at the end be distilled down to a very few central tenets"

lol lets see you do it panckaes hackman

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

That's the Nicene Creed. Episcopalians recite it every week during the liturgy. Will that suffice for that particular denomination's central tenets, or would you like to be a fucking moron some more?

Rssolved: No religion has any central tenets. OK, joe six pack, you're "pro" -- GO!

and btw im not saying religions cant be described in pithy terms - im just saying you cant do it

WHo said anything about pithy terms? I said "central tenets." Get one (1) dictionary please.

but anyway yr approach is so profoundly incurious - have u ever wondered why religion has always been a fixture of human society - besides of course for all the fucking morons believing such omg stupid things!

yes, clearly the polite and humane thing to do is loudly insist YOU ARE WRONG YOU ARE WRONG YOUR BELIEFS AND TRADITION ARE RIDICULOUS AND ANYONE WHO BELIEVES THEM IS A MORON

i don't think he's aiming for politeness or humaneness, and i don't see why everyone should. conceptually at least, i guess i feel about this movie the same way i feel about the dawkins/hitchens books: i didn't have any great urge to read those, and i'm sure they contain their share of straw-man bonfires, but i was in no way displeased to have some angry-atheist books taking up space on the bestseller list. partly these things just serve as big fat raspberries to the cultural-default position on religion in general and christianity in particular. and having grown up american and non-christian, and acutely aware of my cultural position as a religious (or nonreligious) minority, i really don't care if some sensitivities get trampled a little along the way.

i think maher is really really really bad for the ATHEIST CAUSE lol cf this thread and he should probably just stfu about it for a while

what is the atheist cause really, though? it seems to me that every time anybody gets all noisy-atheist it's supposedly harmful to some kind of supposedly civil dialogue. like the guy who sued to get "god" out of the pledge of allegiance and got a fair amount of shit for being a nutjob troublemaker, when in fact it's mostly really the nutjob troublemakers and loudmouth assholes like maher and hitchens who ever get any traction at all. i think it's healthy for an allegedly pluralistic society to have loudmouth asshole atheists on tv and in bookstores etc.

Dan, the statement in question was "this whole set of people who don't believe in any of the b.s. of religion but, for PC reasons, never would openly criticize it." You're the one who decided to substitute "being a dick" for "openly criticizing" as if they were the same thing, so don't take it out on me.

You seem to be glossing over the "b.s. of religion" portion of that, which is the EXACT MOMENT Granny Dainger started acting like a dick (as he himself admitted in a subsequent post). You could excise the whole "any of the b.s." section of the sentence and it would say the same thing without being a dick.

XP: Episcopalians aren't even all Protestants, let alone representative of all Christians! There is a significant subsection of Christianity who don't believe in the Holy Trinity (hi dere Unitarians). Try not being a douchebag and maybe you'll be able to structure a successful argument.

not all Xtians subscribe to the Nicene Creed, btw

fwiw, my interview with BM & LC: http://www.montrealmirror.com/2008/092508/film1.html

just to be a self-linking ho

what was bm like irl

fwiw Buddhism

1. Right View
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

not all Xtians subscribe to the Nicene Creed, btw

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, October 6, 2008 2:26 PM (1 second ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

o come on he worked hard a that c&p!

i was gonna try to pull off a hifalutin post about the tenacity of religions as idea systems but really you should all watch this:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes.html

which isn't even that related

xps: the funny thing about the nicene creed is that it's not a summary document but an oppositional one. each one of those statements is a shot across the bow of some other group of "christians" who had different solutions to problems in the trinity, the nature of christ, etc etc

1. Right View
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, October 6, 2008 2:27 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

LOL RONG!

what was bm like irl

some awful cross between Pancakes Hackman and me, probably

“The problem with organized religion is that it shuts down that debate. That’s the big issue. It’s really stopping our imagination from creating the new myths that we need to continue as a species.”

whereas making fun of religious nutters is opening a dialogue

ive heard a buddhist teacher describe the noble 8 fold path as a little list that somehow became really popular in the west

Buddhism also obviously totally interchangable with the central tenets of Xtianity and Scientology amirite lolz

wait what are the central tenets of voodoo

x-posts

You're making an awful lot of dumb assumptions about me here, joe six pak.

have u ever wondered why religion has always been a fixture of human society

None of the reasons have anything to do with any particular religion's truth value.

xxxxxxp Dan and Shakey, did you drink lead for lunch or something? I specified that the Creed was a good summary OF EPISCOPALIAN CENTRAL TENETS AND NOT ANYBODY ELSE'S. I even wrote "that particular deniomination." I know how fun it is to be all zingy, but try reading the actual words I'm actually typing.

Except I spelled "denomination" right the first time, goddammit.

Appeal to Tradition is a fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that something is better or correct simply because it is older, traditional, or "always has been done." This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

1. X is old or traditional
2. Therefore X is correct or better.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because the age of something does not automatically make it correct or better than something newer. This is made quite obvious by the following example: The theory that witches and demons cause disease is far older than the theory that microrganisms cause diseases. Therefore, the theory about witches and demons must be true.

This sort of "reasoning" is appealing for a variety of reasons. First, people often prefer to stick with what is older or traditional. This is a fairly common psychological characteristic of people which may stem from the fact that people feel more comfortable about what has been around longer. Second, sticking with things that are older or traditional is often easier than testing new things. Hence, people often prefer older and traditional things out of laziness. Hence, Appeal to Tradition is a somewhat common fallacy.

It should not be assumed that new things must be better than old things (see the fallacy Appeal to Novelty) any more than it should be assumed that old things are better than new things. The age of something does not, in general, have any bearing on its quality or correctness (in this context). In the case of tradition, assuming that something is correct just because it is considered a tradition is poor reasoning. For example, if the belief that 1+1 = 56 were a tradition of a group of people it would hardly follow that it is true.

Obviously, age does have a bearing in some contexts. For example, if a person concluded that aged wine would be better than brand new wine, he would not be committing an Appeal to Tradition. This is because, in such cases the age of the thing is relevant to its quality. Thus, the fallacy is committed only when the age is not, in and of itself, relevant to the claim.

One final issue that must be considered is the "test of time." In some cases people might be assuming that because something has lasted as a tradition or has been around a long time that it is true because it has "passed the test of time." If a person assumes that something must be correct or true simply because it has persisted a long time, then he has committed an Appeal to Tradition. After all, as history has shown people can persist in accepting false claims for centuries.

However, if a person argues that the claim or thing in question has successfully stood up to challenges and tests for a long period of time then they would not be committing a fallacy. In such cases the claim would be backed by evidence. As an example, the theory that matter is made of subatomic particles has survived numerous tests and challenges over the years so there is a weight of evidence in its favor. The claim is reasonable to accept because of the weight of this evidence and not because the claim is old. Thus, a claim's surviving legitimate challenges and passing valid tests for a long period of time can justify the acceptance of a claim. But mere age or persistance does not warrant accepting a claim.

xps: the funny thing about the nicene creed is that it's not a summary document but an oppositional one. each one of those statements is a shot across the bow of some other group of "christians" who had different solutions to problems in the trinity, the nature of christ, etc etc

OTFM

explain this 'truth value'

what was bm like irl

― joe 40oz (deej), Monday, October 6, 2008 6:26 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

amiable enough, it was early and he was still swatting away the cobwebs. he seemed like a comedian, looking for riffs to go on, kind of self-absorbed. i dug LC's comedy-mystic vibe tho

(i guess what i mean up above is, if i were personally going to have an actual conversation about religion and faith, i'd prefer it to be with thoughtful and reflective people, whatever their beliefs. but people like maher and hitchens aren't operating in the realm of thoughtful and reflective conversation, they're operating in a public realm where least-common-denominator christianity is the unthinking default and religious identification and decontextualized bits of scripture are routinely used as political batons to bully people and enforce reactionary social policies. at that level, i think a certain amount of noisy bullshit calling is a good thing.)

Pancakes if you aware that there are a whole lot of denominations of Xtianity and that next to nobody agrees about anything than why don't you think twice about lumping them all in together as some kind of monolithic force that can be easily summarized and disposed of in an internet zing

ugh ILE religion threads

x-posts

Dan you honestly don't think there's any BS in religions? (maybe you were misreading me as saying religion is NOTHING BUT b.s.?)

congrats go to shakey for most condescending post of the day (day ain't over yet) xpost not that one

Where, exactly, did I "lump them all in together as some kind of monolithic force ", Shakey? Exact quotes would be helpful here, because I've taken care to NOT do that, by specifically noting the Nicene Creed as something Episcopalians recite, by referring to "many mainstream American Christian denominations," etc. Seems like some of you are trying to put your own hang-ups about atheists on me. Sorry, I'm not playing that.

But for all that, yes, there are at least one or two things, in all likelihood, that probably all Christian denominations (with some notable exceptions, hi dere JWs and Mormons) would agree on. Those things are also probably not true.

there's tons of BS in religions. there's tons of BS in everything fwiw.

Whatever their variety, all religions can at the end be distilled down to a very few central tenets

this is not true

Can I just interject that this stuff about reducing religions to central tenets is almost entirely meaningless? Arguing about religion in terms of "central tenets" is like trying to write a budget for a country you've never even heard of -- it deals entirely in abstractions and becomes irrelevant to anything meaningful in life as it is lived, and in fact the only people who would halfway care to argue with you about it are clergymen and theologians. (Haha this is so basic that there was practically a joke about it on the Simpsons last week: you are not exactly going to solve the religious tensions of Northern Ireland by working out a compromise on the issue of transubstantiation versus consubstantiation.)

Short version of point = religion as theology is a massively different thing from religion as culture, as social organization, as ideological peer group. This is something that gadfly atheists are constantly pointing out -- how the views and actions of religious people often have only the most tenuous and hypocritical connections with what their own religions say they should do! -- and yet said gadfly atheists are weirdly content to keep arguing about tenets and concepts even after they themselves have demonstrated how little real-world meaning or influence these things sometimes have.

"distilling them down to a central few tenets" requires the denial of variety, is what I'm getting at

tipsy, i don't understand the mechanism by which adding hitchens + maher to the status quo, where religion is used as a political baton, is a good thing. do you mean psychologically good for those americans who aren't religious? their existence is a sign that we live in a pluralistic society, i guess, and you thought before they appeared, there was some doubt?

Wait, are you all getting confused because I said "all religions" rather than "each religion?" Fine, substitute as necessary, but I am waiting eagerly for Shakey and joe six pak to point out to me all the religions that have no central tenets.

i dont believe in god but i do recognize that there are a lot of people for whom their faith has played a critical role in cultivating qualities which benefit everyone like compassion and discipline and are in short supply these days

then there are those who i agree w/on the topic of the existence of god who freak out and call me a moron on the internet

im also well aware that there plenty of believers who hold a view of god more sophisticated than OMG HES GONNA SAVE ME AND REUNITE ME W/GRANDMA

oh hey i forgot how fun these threads are

i dunno shakey the number of christians who don't subscribe to the nicene is vanishingly small, as a summary of what christianity "is" NOW it's not bad

but it doesn't encapsulate all the meta-experience of religion that doesn't even involve believing anything -- getting sunday off, knowing a few hymn tunes, knowing what "from adam" means, yelling "jesus christ" when you stub your toe. that kind of stuff can't be chiselled out of people no matter how pissed off at mother and the pope they are.

xp to nabisco as luck would have it

OMG HES GONNA SAVE ME AND REUNITE ME W/GRANDMA

This is the central tenet of Santeria.

(Pancakes your argument here is a total tautology that is based entirely on semantics: of course each religion can be boiled down to a set of tenets, because a name exists for the religion and of COURSE that word can be assigned some sort of loose meaning. But all you are saying here is that words have definitions. Those definitions may or may not have any relationship whatsoever with human lives in the actual world; the fact that we've named sets of beliefs is an argument about the dictionary, not an argument about religion or society or human behavior.)

Wait, are you all getting confused because I said "all religions" rather than "each religion?" Fine, substitute as necessary, but I am waiting eagerly for Shakey and joe six pak to point out to me all the religions that have no central tenets.

― Evel Knievel's Dark Side (Pancakes Hackman), Monday, October 6, 2008 2:38 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

id say all of the major religious have sects that agree w/each other not at all - theses sects certainly have central tenants

but regardless my point from the beginnings that that if yr gonna judge such complex cultural creations a purely doctrinal approach is quite anemic

i don't understand the mechanism by which adding hitchens + maher to the status quo, where religion is used as a political baton, is a good thing. do you mean psychologically good for those americans who aren't religious? their existence is a sign that we live in a pluralistic society, i guess, and you thought before they appeared, there was some doubt?

even with their presence there's "some doubt." i don't know your own religious orientation, but as a nonreligious person i can't help feeling a little alarmed every time some jackass politician or preacher starts going on about us being a "christian nation." in a country where it is essentially impossible for a nonreligious person to get elected to national office (and are there even any agnostic governors?), i don't take pluralism for any kind of granted. and yeah, i think having some noisy asshole atheists out there helps protect that. if it weren't for madelyn murray o'hair (a noisy nutjob by anyone's definition), i might have grown up with morning prayers in my classrooms.

but I am waiting eagerly for Shakey and joe six pak to point out to me all the religions that have no central tenets.

how about the majority of Americans who don't go to a church or belong to any particular denomination but still believe in God and consider themselves spiritual/religious

x-posts

not to derail v. important internet religion debate, but bill m. also is the same douche who poo-poos anorexia/eating disorders because "lol americans are fatteys and should be losing weight"

yeah, i didn't mean to suggest that i disagreed with you that there had been some doubt that we live in a pluralistic society. i do think that this country really fails at protecting the rights of its nonreligious minority.

xpost to tipsy

Nabisco OTM in a polite manner. The impolite way to make that argument is this:

You are making a specious argument designed solely to make yourself look smarter than you actually are. Shut up or learn how to reason.

but regardless my point from the beginnings that that if yr gonna judge such complex cultural creations a purely doctrinal approach is quite anemic

Well, now, that all depends on what specifically it is about them that you're judging, doesn't it? (Though I think "evaluating" is a better word than "judging.")

I'd be perfectly okay with never criticizing religion one iota, but hey did anyone notice that our Commander in Chief believes that God has him on a mission to rid the world of Evil and also that Armageddon will come within his lifetime, and that a current VP candidate basically believes the same? How does criticism of that harmful belief system always get met with "yeah but this girl Crystal I know, she has good qualities that religion helped instill and she like raises money for homeless people, so stfu you dick"??

omg i am so rolling my eyes at both of you

you wanna criticize Dubya's weirdo brand of Xtianity I will not complain. You wanna use that belief system to tar and feather spirituality in general, and I will complain.

Dan, that's what I do.

Anyway, to go back to square one here, the statement that kicked off this little stream was "scientology=christianity=shinto=bullshit," upon which joe six pak laughed at the very idea "of distilling wildly varied religious/cultural practices in to easy ideas . . . and then judging theor truthfulness."

If what y'all really want to discuss is religion as lived by human beings, great, let's do that instead! But when you start using words like "truthfulness," well, then, what are we supposed to apply that to but central tenets? A word like "truthfulness" doesn't have anything to do with the way people apply their faith to their daily lives at all.

xp "spirituality" is the weasel word people use when they want to believe silly things but seem deeper and more thoughtful about it.

And, see, this is why this whole damned thing is a mug's game: "you wanna criticize Dubya's weirdo brand of Xtianity I will not complain." What makes his brand "weirdo" and, say, your brand NOT weirdo? Because, whatever it is, I bet you're judging it on the same criteria I am.

The thing about the "noisy atheist" arguments is that it's not always clear to me what effect they have -- I'm sure there is a level on which they make atheism more visible and comfortable to many who are already somewhat inclined that way, but there comes a point where certain approaches just validate the very reason many Americans are afraid or resentful of atheists: this sense that they represent an attack on mainstream values and a process of subversion, that they're not just politely asking for pluralistic tolerance but seeking to undermine society in some way. People like Dawkins/Hitchens strike me as too academic in their methods for this impression to really be their fault, but I don't know about Maher. Either way, I think the effect Tipsy wants to see might sometimes be better served by concentrating on demonstrating to people the ways in which the non-religious are constantly imposed upon by our culture, not ALWAYS by playing offense against easy-target religious views.

dubya is a methodist! he suckered the snake handlers as much as anyone.

that's kind of what i meant by asking about the mechanism by which hitchens and maher help matters, nabisco. with madelyn murray o'hair the mechanism was a lawsuit which had a pretty clear and direct effect. i guess the claim would be that maher's movie could inspire the country to a less extreme culture around religion...i'm not sure exactly how, though?

Maher might have a chance at that if he wasn't an unrelatable asshole.

What makes his brand "weirdo" and, say, your brand NOT weirdo? Because, whatever it is, I bet you're judging it on the same criteria I am.

you miss my point - I was saying you shouldn't generalize. You wanna discuss a particular denomination's history/beliefs/practices, that's legitimate. I call it weirdo because I personally think its nonsensical and damaging to our gov'ts policies.

or, i thought tipsy might be saying, well, at least nonchristian kids in the u.s. won't feel totally alone because they've got hitchens and maher representing publicly for them? which i can see the value of.

my main problem with this movie (which i haven't seen) and a lot of people who argue against religion is that they attack "religions" as groups of people who all believe one thing when religion is wholly personal, and each individual believes a different thing from the next, and probably something that's different from the "central tenets" of their stated religion or whatever. the differences might be huge or subtle but they are there and they are important. the most annoying part is that maher and lots of other people attack the group by singling out the individual with the most colorful or weirdest or funniest personal beliefs and then acting like that person represents the group.

essentially I think its dangerous to have anyone in a civic office claiming an authority higher than the one granted to them by the people voting for them ("God talks to me!" etc) That's all I was thinking of. Not methodism per se.

x-post

n/a OTM

that's kind of what i meant by asking about the mechanism by which hitchens and maher help matters, nabisco. with madelyn murray o'hair the mechanism was a lawsuit which had a pretty clear and direct effect. i guess the claim would be that maher's movie could inspire the country to a less extreme culture around religion...i'm not sure exactly how, though?

i think there's horse/cart stuff going on here: if maher has any benefits it's to make people who are already non-religious to feel as though they have some room to breathe in american life.

yeah, i get that.

xxxxxxxxxxp I've seen that same school of thought expressed in a lot of places, nabisco, but when you reside in a culture where (for example) one of the most-watched cable news channels in the country posits some sort of widespread secular "War On Christmas" and uses every organ at their disposal to work up an already irrationally aggrieved audience about it, no amount of polite disagreement is going to suffice in fighting that message. What needs to be done, loudly and often, is to say, "You 'War On Xmas' people are a bunch of fucking wackaloons."

Boy, I sure can pick the revives... The first poster who sees the film should yell BINGO (nondenominational), btw.

this whole set of people who don't believe in any of the b.s. of religion but, for PC reasons, never would openly criticize it

You know, when you do criticize the faithful, and insult them and persecute them and utter every kind of evil against them, they rejoice and are glad, for their reward will be great in heaven. (How come the fundies never seem to rejoice at it?)

whether religion is "important to a lot of people" is ignoring away a lot of the cultural and political bullshit that accompanies its importance.

Apparently voting for one of two Pentagon-engorging, Wall Street-save-a-ho's for president is is "important to a lot of people" and it's routine to ignore away a lot of the cultural and political bullshit that accompanies its importance.

I would punch the shit out of any nonchristian kids I caught looking up to Hitchens. I would hope you would all do the same.

St. Morbius

i guess by nonchristian i meant nonreligious and by kids i meant people.

would definitely punch hitchens

On this, we can all agree.

Arrgh Pancakes but the methods Maher appears to be employing here consist of actually FIGHTING that war, surely!!! When Fox news accuses you of trying to undermine Christian tradition, you kinda do need to think about whether the most productive response is to go out and try to undermine Christian tradition just like they said!!

(I should note here that I am fairly sure Maher's approach is not nearly as, umm, NEEDLING of religion as the trailers make it seem, and I get the feeling that if any of us saw the film we would come back going "ehh, it makes certain efforts at fairness and isn't THAT provocative," etc. -- I've seen reviews that say it basically gets lost and goes toothless as soon as he's confronting religion in the mid-East, because, umm, DUH)

xxxxxxxxxxp I've seen that same school of thought expressed in a lot of places, nabisco, but when you reside in a culture where (for example) one of the most-watched cable news channels in the country posits some sort of widespread secular "War On Christmas" and uses every organ at their disposal to work up an already irrationally aggrieved audience about it, no amount of polite disagreement is going to suffice in fighting that message. What needs to be done, loudly and often, is to say, "You 'War On Xmas' people are a bunch of fucking wackaloons."

― Evel Knievel's Dark Side (Pancakes Hackman), Monday, October 6, 2008 2:04 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol this was posted with no intentional irony??? xp nabisco

there are number of prominent ilxors who have pined openly for hitchensionian journalistic chops - when you punch them maybe that could be youtubed - thx!

agree with n/a, for the most part. my problem with that reaction is it a)sometimes winds up painting people (in this case, critics of religion) with the same broad brush and b) turns religion into such a nebulous thing that it becomes practically a meaningless concept.

Religion is a nebulous thing! Wishing it wasn't doesn't make it any more concrete!

religion is nebulous in that it bleeds into all sorts of things considered nonreligious - its not meaningless tho - its just really difficult to understand

maher's rhetoric bothers me because it seems to be based on the assumption that the more cleverly something is expressed the more true it is.

― ryan, Monday, October 6, 2008 1:29 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

way otm post

i think my problem with the whole religion-is-nebulous/is-different-to-everyone approach is that thats true of lots and lots of other stuff that everyone here has no problem criticizing

i mean we're approaching "how can you criticize dave matthews without hearing every bootleg recording/knowing what its like to be front row at his concerts" level here

There's a lot of things that I need to unpack before I can respond to that properly, nasbisco, starting with the idea that saying "There is no War On Christmas, dummies" is "undermining Christian tradition."

To take a different kind of example, when nonbelievers do try to fight these battles quietly and respectfully they often just get turned on their ears. To wit, when someone questions why government meetings at whatever level are opened with a prayer, they're usually told that it's simply tradition, ceremonial deism, etc. etc. and that they can just sit quietly and respectfully for a minute and it's no big deal. Then, when some councilperson decides to bring in an atheist to open a meeting with a nonreligious invocation, all the Christians disruptively get up and walk out. A

gain, after a certain number of those kinds of incidents, you stop being nice about it. And I'm not going to accept that most of the turf has to be conceded to the religious before any of the fights are even fought, nor that fighting back loudly instead of meekly is "undermining Christian tradition."

ppl arent as attached to dave matthews band as a general rule as they are to their central religious outlook, so you're getting a lot closer to attacking the core of who someone is

xxp haha i swear i came up w/ the dave matthews thing before you posted

"things ilx has no problem criticizing" is not really the gold standard

i dunno i think most americans care about religion and shitty alt rock about the same amount

ilx has been criticizing religion all over the place - if a comedian made a movie about lol dave matthews band sucks!! full of zingers i doubt any of us would be interested in seeing it either

practical effect of a movie like this aside, whats so funny about fish in a bucket? people with crazy beliefs sure are crazy!

i dunno what about a movie from a guy who admittedly is uninterested in dave matthews band and goes around interviewing people about why they like them and poking fun at them - id go see that

you would not

they made that movie, it's called "Beverly Hills Chihuahua"

dave mathews band thankfully isnt an basic aspect of human culture

no, but we'd all talk about it on the internet as if we had!

as much as i think dmb basically sucks, that movie sounds a) so boring and b) so mean-spirited that i wouldnt go see it

and im a pretty boring/mean-spirited person

actually, a queasy thing Maher said on Daily Show was "i HOPE Obama is lying" about being a Christian (to get elected), followed by Dem-robot-kid audience clapping. Wouldn't that be the shortest distance to proving Bam is an inauthentic fraud at his core? or do College Dems have a secret compact with him to hoodwink red state yokels?

eh, a lot of nonreligious supporters of Obama say that. doesn't make it true.

maybe i should actually watch this daily show bit or stfu

actually, a queasy thing Maher said on Daily Show was "i HOPE Obama is lying" about being a Christian (to get elected), followed by Dem-robot-kid audience clapping. Wouldn't that be the shortest distance to proving Bam is an inauthentic fraud at his core? or do College Dems have a secret compact with him to hoodwink red state yokels?

― Dr Morbius, Monday, October 6, 2008 2:23 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ugh i hated this too, not because i think its true but bcuz the whole logic of it is eye-rolling

you might think the trinity part is funny. maher plays god talking to his son/self as jesus. i don't know, maybe i'm easy.

xpost to ethan

hoping obamas not really christian is up there w/any salvation fantasy

No, it shows that saying you don't believe in god is the fastest way to find yourself an also-ran in a presidential election. Whether that makes someone an "inauthentic fraud" through and through is up to you to decide. I don't think he's lying about it in any case -- it informs his opinion on gay marriage, for example.

i think it's mostly about the cognitive dissonance of believing oneself to be smart and one's atheism to be a sign of that, believing Obama to be really smart and not knowing what to do with his faith.

xpost

This isn't responding to anything specific, but I want to note here that it is a huge rhetorical problem, for someone like Maher, that it is very easy to imagine religious people sympathetic enough that he would absolutely not take the same tone with them that he would take for easier targets. I am not even referring here to the ghosts of MLK or Gandhi (the latter of whom held religious beliefs we'd consider absurd!), but just everyday, reasonable people whose experiences of religion have been positive and who most everyone would agree do not need to be nagged about it. And while it might not be funny or biting or entertaining, I do think that any serious critique of the overall notion of religion needs to take the tone you'd take when talking to those people, not the tone you'd take when talking to people even mainstream believers would consider a bit nuts.

the idea that saying "There is no War On Christmas, dummies" is "undermining Christian tradition."

Pancakes you are going absolutely frustratingly NUTS here, completely contradicting yourself, and totally missing very basic points. The "idea" above is a result of your complete misreading. My point is that Maher's approach with a film like this is to criticize religion and belief. This is not a film that says "there is no War on Christmas and we unbelievers are content to leave you alone if you will leave us alone" -- this film is a needling and a criticism of the idea of religion! It is explicitly intended as an undermining! It is not a rebuttal! And so yes, I agree with you that "there is no War on Christmas, dummies" -- a rebuttal -- would be a productive approach to take. My point is that Maher is not taking that approach: he is presenting an attack on something similar to Christmas, which just validates people's fear that atheists are out to undermine them. This is not complicated.

Wouldn't the electability canard be informing his "opinion" on gay marriage?

Daily Show Dem kids can't allow themselves to think Bam's a sincere Christian bcz that's just not rockstar? (ie horseshoe otm)

I don't think he's lying about it in any case -- it informs his opinion on gay marriage, for example.

― Evel Knievel's Dark Side (Pancakes Hackman), Monday, October 6, 2008 2:26 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha! see if anything, id believe his 'opinion on gay marriage' is fraudulent before id believe his faith in a church he's attended for over a decade is.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh192/adamrector/JesusRidingDinosaur.jpg

i think poll numbers inform his opinion on gay marriage more than his vague, pluralistic religious beliefs

lol xps

just to make an academic point: the problem of modernity generally speaking is usually felt to be the absence of any stable or definitely "true" point of view from which to criticize all others. so you're left making pragmatic arguments, which are hardly stable (what worked yesterday usually works tomorrow, but not always depending on the complexity of the situation).

ethan i thought of you when bill maher said his thing about how he doesn't think Obama's really religious. lolz

i think my distrust of this virulent anti-religion thing comes basically down to 'whats the point' - like why spend your time on this - and that ive known plenty of completely decent people who believe in shit i think is kind of nutty

if this was a sacha baron cohen movie 90% of this board would be slipping on each other's jizz trying to post trailer links

this has always been my problem with maher. I agree with him sometimes but he is far too black and white about religion. I have to say that the concept of this movie slightly offends me, which is pretty crazy since I consider myself pretty tolerant.

if this was a sacha baron cohen movie 90% of this board would be slipping on each other's jizz trying to post trailer links

well yes, because more people would believe it had a chance to actually be funny

that should be "one another's jizz," and I only do that on the grammar thread

i think my distrust of this virulent anti-religion thing comes basically down to 'whats the point' - like why spend your time on this

I haven't read this thread closely, but has anybody mentioned the "fundies be dangerous when they gain political power" thing yet? Yeah, there's a reason to be virulently anti-religion.

does anyone have the link to the gay mag interview where obama sighted the lag between federal civil right legislation and the repeal of miscegenation laws to explain gay marriages current political impracticality

twas a good read that left no doubt in my mind that he is ultimately in favor of full marriage rights for everyone

if maher were sacha baron cohen, maher would be really smart and funny.

lol xps

goole otm.

also, i read that article, too, jhoshea, and it left me with the same impression.

"pfft, you people dismissing Salieri's latest announced symphony; I betcha if Mozart announced a new piece most of you would be jizzing yourselves"

"fundies be dangerous when they gain political power" thing yet?

haha yes - ME! Oddly I am not virulently anti-religion. Mostly because religion /= fundies. go figure.

oh god I should change my screen name, ugh

cohen is not in any way dismissing religion like maher is

cohen's a fuckin orthodox Jew!

he just hates americans

(he's also not very funny!)

I haven't read this thread closely, but has anybody mentioned the "fundies be dangerous when they gain political power" thing yet? Yeah, there's a reason to be virulently anti-religion.

― I'm the wire monkey, not the soft monkey (Rock Hardy), Monday, October 6, 2008 2:36 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nice conflation there

actually, a queasy thing Maher said on Daily Show was "i HOPE Obama is lying" about being a Christian (to get elected)

Hasn't Alfred said this on ILX?

Advocate interview with Obama

borat makes his ethically icky aspects work for him

that advocate interview is great. if there's one thing i've really hated about this overall encouraging election is that the strikingly lucid obama has been gradually replaced by a more boilerplate dem candidate

Paying a lot of lip service to religion and believing it's a necessary aspect to society while not really caring yourself is one of the main tenets of classic neoconservatism, which makes endorsing that viewpoint kind of creepy to me.

Kristol noted that Strauss' contribution was to help neoconservatives to understand the importance of religion in the political life of a nation. "Religion was not part of elite culture found at places like Harvard," said Kristol. "It was not thought appropriate for highly educated people to learn too much about religion." Straussians, who were not well regarded in the academy, took religion seriously. "They played a very important role in the culture war by keeping neoconservative intellectuals pro-religion," says Kristol. This pro-religion stance gave neoconservative intellectuals a way to influence the wider American culture. Liberal and left intellectuals who disdained religious belief were distrusted by most Americans and this distrust helped check liberal influence and policies.

However, Kristol pointed out that Straussians were not generally themselves committed to religion. Kristol added that Americans "don't bother with theology. The fact is that the moral dimension of religion is what counts for Americans."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/34900.html

well that's the straight-up soviet underpinning of neoconservatism for you. saying "religion contains wisdom and lots of people really like it" is a different thing from "it keeps the rabble in line while we remake the world in our image"

xp

Paying a lot of lip service to religion and believing it's a necessary aspect to society while not really caring yourself is one of the main tenets of classic neoconservatism, which makes endorsing that viewpoint kind of creepy to me.

― mh, Monday, October 6, 2008 3:48 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

necessary is beside the point - its an intrinsic aspect of human society - and i would argue a manifestation of certain inherent qualities of the human mind

The thing about the "noisy atheist" arguments is that it's not always clear to me what effect they have -- I'm sure there is a level on which they make atheism more visible and comfortable to many who are already somewhat inclined that way, but there comes a point where certain approaches just validate the very reason many Americans are afraid or resentful of atheists: this sense that they represent an attack on mainstream values and a process of subversion, that they're not just politely asking for pluralistic tolerance but seeking to undermine society in some way.

no offense nabisco, but that's skating a little close to the "i don't mind gay people as long as i never have to see them or hear about them, why do they have to impose their lifestyle on ME?" line. and ok, maher and hitchens aren't "politely asking" for tolerance, but so what? i can point you to plenty of polite and thoughtful agnostic voices out there, just like you can point me to plenty of reflective religious voices. none of which make very much noise in the pop marketplace of ideas, precisely because of their politeness and thoughtfulness. and as long as we're going to have yr james dobsons and george bushes and sarah palins, i'm happy to have some loudmouths making an oppositional case.

People like Dawkins/Hitchens strike me as too academic in their methods for this impression to really be their fault, but I don't know about Maher. Either way, I think the effect Tipsy wants to see might sometimes be better served by concentrating on demonstrating to people the ways in which the non-religious are constantly imposed upon by our culture, not ALWAYS by playing offense against easy-target religious views.

first, i think to some degree they do demonstrate that, simply by making the point that in fact nonreligious people live in this society and are confronted every day with a fair amount of overbearing religiosity (the overbearing bits are the bits that maher, e.g., tends to single out). and second, the things these guys go after might be "easy targets," but they're not all straw men. the religious right does not represent all or most religious americans, obviously. but it's not just some flakey fringe group either. it has real political power, and isn't shy about using it. on balance, as a nonreligious american, i'm happy for there to be some loudly nonreligious voices.

yes being atheist is just like being gay

...

it is in that i beat them both up

truth bomb

wait no

ok ban me

― am0n, Monday, June 23, 2008 1:29 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark

just think of how many problems we could stop in ther tracks if we could just run our cars by harnessing the power of people arguing about atheism on the internet.

hah what a day to change my username

and then yell out the car window

and then not tip someone

while opening a beer with yr ronahildo can opener

The bigger question here would be whether Bill Maher leaves a tip when he receives communion

hahaha xposts

(fwiw it doesn't even have to do with being atheist or agnostic, as far as i'm concerned. i grew up in a practicing religious family that happened to be part of a very tiny religious minority, and a fair amount of my childhood and adolescence was spent contending with feeling basically marginalized, ridiculed and excluded from mainstream society. i identify as agnostic now, when compelled to identify at all, but challenging christian hegemony over american discourse is not just about saying THERE'S NO GOD. it's largely about saying, make some room, save us a seat, we're here too.)

xpost - I'm not sure what's particularly untrue or sinister about pointing out the following sets of facts:

(a) religion plays an important part in the social organization and moral framework of American life, in an extra-political way that neither party is going to fundamentally change, or has much business trying to fundamentally change

(b) people's religious sentiments and affiliations can be used -- sometimes cynically, sometimes earnestly and meaningfully -- to mobilize them to vote in certain ways
(c) they can also be used outside of politics to mobilize them in support of socio-political changes, whether we want to consider those changes "bad" (sexual intolerance) or "good" (civil-rights organizing, fighting poverty)

(d) therefore it behooves any politician to recognize point (a) and find ways to communicate his or her socio-political vision in a way that makes sense to and draws upon the religious values and moral frameworks of the people he or she is asking for votes, the same way he/she would when talking about the economic situation those people are in

^^ there is no good reason this should be given up as a cynical neoconservative tactic when it's just common sense: if religion plays a role in the social framework of a nation, it makes sense to look for ways to draw on that framework in ways that promote the things you wish to accomplish. And there is no reason the left should let conservatives appeal to people's values frameworks without making similar appeals to quasi-religious values about social justice, caring for the needy, encouraging pluralism, etc. etc. etc.

xpost - Tipsy I don't think it's skating that line at ALL, and you're conflating two very different things -- you're conflating EXISTENCE with RHETORIC. More on this in a second, maybe, but surely a film like Maher's is an explicitly rhetorical activity, and as such it's completely fair to ask what that rhetoric wants to accomplish and whether it will succeed at it. That is completely different from what you're suggesting there...

i grew up in a practicing religious family that happened to be part of a very tiny religious minority and felt only slightly annoyed by christian hegemony

good for you. i spent years either not saying the "under god" part of the pledge of allegiance and hoping no one noticed, or saying it and feeling kind of nauseated. sometimes i split the difference by mouthing it silently.

Tipsy I don't think it's skating that line at ALL, and you're conflating two very different things -- you're conflating EXISTENCE with RHETORIC. More on this in a second, maybe, but surely a film like Maher's is an explicitly rhetorical activity, and as such it's completely fair to ask what that rhetoric wants to accomplish and whether it will succeed at it. That is completely different from what you're suggesting there...

the rhetoric is the accomplishment. it's an assertion of existence.

and not to get all red-state/blue-state on you, but it's very easy to say that existence doesn't need to be asserted if you happen to live in a pluralistic, multicultural etc. place. lots of americans don't.

good for you. i spent years either not saying the "under god" part of the pledge of allegiance and hoping no one noticed, or saying it and feeling kind of nauseated. sometimes i split the difference by mouthing it silently.

― tipsy mothra, Monday, October 6, 2008 4:15 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol i did this too - but it never seemed like a huge deal

Maher's approach just reinforces the persecution complex a lot of religious people have. most people might believe in some form of God, but each religion thinks they are the one true religion and lump the other religions in with the non-believers.

lol at blue states automatically being pluralistic multicultural places to live; I should take you to the town in MN where JJ and I went to high school

i spent years either not saying the "justice for all" part of the pledge of allegiance, beginning with the week Ford pardoned Nixon.

and not to get all red-state/blue-state on you, but it's very easy to say that existence doesn't need to be asserted if you happen to live in a pluralistic, multicultural etc. place. lots of americans don't.

― tipsy mothra, Monday, October 6, 2008 4:18 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is a valid point i think - not to get any more trademarked ilx faux outrage by comparing marginalized atheist teens to marginalized gay teens but just as i talk to kids who grew up in douglasville or idaho or whatever and are just now discovering hitchens/dawkins/etc when i talk to gay kids from those same places i find out they idolized rupaul and margaret cho instead of less confrontational gay icons

it never seemed like a huge deal

it didn't wreck my life or anything, but i resented it. like i resent "in god we trust" on our money, and the way the public meetings i had to cover as a reporter opened with prayers to jesus, and a lot of the other little ways christianity deliberately asserts its dominance in american public life. (oddly, christmas wasn't one of those ways -- my mom loves christmas and refused to give it up, so we had trees and cookies and presents and carols and the whole deal. to this day the nativity story is the only part of christianity that gives me a warm feeling, because i somehow internalized it as a valuable myth without feeling like i had to "belong" in order to appreciate it.)

Okay, Tipsy, I'm having a hard time locating the nugget of disagreement in this. You seem to be saying that so long as we all exist in a noisy pluralistic context where there are needling religious gadflies, you don't mind having a few needling agnostic gadflies, just to keep the conversation balanced, which is better than one side of that conversation being cowed and disappearing -- this is completely fair and I'm not sure I have any huge argument about it. But ... maybe I'm wrong here, but the way you're phrasing that seems to acknowledge that maybe the needling-gadfly approach is not the most positive one? I think that's true on both sides: if I were arguing for more religious presence in American life, I would not want fundamentalists making my case. My point here is similar: that if there's a paranoid fear here that atheists and agnostics are looking to undermine fundamentals of society, it makes sense to me for such people to frame their rhetoric in a way that makes clear that this isn't the case, so as not to shore up the very arguments that marginalize them in the first place. I mean, asserting your existence is not an accomplishment if you assert it in a way that is misleading, misunderstood, and stands to turn people against you -- if you wind up asserting not your own existence, but instead the caricature of you that your enemies hold!

I'm not saying Maher's in that position, I'm just saying that it's something I think is worth keeping in mind when making such arguments. In any argument it's possible to become trapped into presenting yourself dishonestly, presenting something that doesn't serve your purposes and isn't even you in the first place.

i mean i never see more of the "lol let the hicks have their jesus" point of view when i'm living in midtown atlanta with all my atheist buddies but when i go back home to south carolina i see how awful this shit is and it really does inflame the most basic hitchens-style outrage inside me

bill maher: the rupaul of atheists

just out of curiosity tipsy what very tiny religious minority was this?

P.S. I can't remember if I posted it upthread, but I do agree that the best rhetorical result of this sort of thing DOES have to do with young people who aren't otherwise exposed to these ideas, but are in some way inclined to them anyway -- yes, those are the people that something like this film helps reassure and induct into a community

it is a valid point--i tend to think of it less as existence that needs to be asserted and more as rights to be protected--like the case of the nonreligous kid being forced to say "under god" is about the unconstitutionality of the pledge, but i take tipsy's point.

xposts

(NB the argument I'm trying to make here isn't a particularly subtle or complicated one; in principle it's something we'd all understand if, e.g., Maher's approach in this film were to go around shooting people outside of churches. "That's not helpful and it misrepresents what non-religious people are like," we'd all say, which is the only principle I'm trying to introduce here.)

But ... maybe I'm wrong here, but the way you're phrasing that seems to acknowledge that maybe the needling-gadfly approach is not the most positive one? I think that's true on both sides: if I were arguing for more religious presence in American life, I would not want fundamentalists making my case.

no it's the most positive approach, it's sort of a consciously negative approach, but i think it's a valid response to at least the noisier and more aggressive manifestations of religion in public life. i'm sure you wouldn't want fundamentalists making your case, but there they are out there anyway, slapping anti-gay-marriage amendments on state constitutions, scaring science teachers away from darwin, trying to take tax money to fund their schools, etc etc.

if there's a paranoid fear here that atheists and agnostics are looking to undermine fundamentals of society, it makes sense to me for such people to frame their rhetoric in a way that makes clear that this isn't the case, so as not to shore up the very arguments that marginalize them in the first place.

i guess i'm not too bothered about some sensitivities being offended, since in my experience even in places where conservative christians are the majority -- culturally and politically -- they still present themselves as being persecuted by a god-hating secular world. they're not going to think that any less just because bill maher says please and thank you. and yeah, i guess i'm not concerned with the effectiveness of the approach of something like religulous in terms of changing minds or earning new recruits or anything. i think maher has said he mainly means it as a rally-the-base move, for a base that doesn't get a whole lot of explicit rallying in pop culture. i don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that.

just out of curiosity tipsy what very tiny religious minority was this?

zen buddhism. spent a lot of time trying to tell people that my parents didn't worship big gold statues of fat guys.

lol at blue states automatically being pluralistic multicultural places to live; I should take you to the town in MN where JJ and I went to high school

yeah, my experience was in rural western new york. same deal.

mine too! i think mostly people thought what i was (muslim) was the same thing as being hindu. and no clear idea what either of those things were.

oh, not rural western new york. just western new york

And while it might not be funny or biting or entertaining, I do think that any serious critique of the overall notion of religion needs to take the tone you'd take when talking to those people, not the tone you'd take when talking to people even mainstream believers would consider a bit nuts.

I think the dickish tone that many anti-religious folk adopt is a direct product of having a wacko fundie president, school boards wanting to ban teaching of evolution/teach creationism. "Mainstream believers" are not the issue or focus of attacks. It's the fact that they are by proxy legitamizing the wacko beliefs of people in positions of true power that is the problem.

i think my distrust of this virulent anti-religion thing comes basically down to 'whats the point' - like why spend your time on this - and that ive known plenty of completely decent people who believe in shit i think is kind of nutty

maybe you'd feel differently if the leader of your country was making decisions that affected the welfare of thousands of citizens based on his nutty beliefs? or if people with said nutty beliefs were trying to ban certain things to be taught and instead have their nutty beliefs taught in public schools??

the point about religion being nebulous is that it then becomes virtually immune to criticism. is one supposed to say "ok and I'm only talking about the wacko religions here btw"?

my family, tibetan buddhists

but i lived in a super liberal boston suburb

fwiw my father--who went to a seminary and was on the road to being a priest while spending time as a community organizer (lol, useless) working in the robert taylor projects in chicago in the mid to late '60s--has spent years grappling with being socially liberal while adhering to religious principles. after finding over the years that his social views were becoming less welcome the more they progressed he has effectively abandoned churchgoing for private religious exploration and study. he occasionally will broach the subject of religion with me and sort of apologizes on its behalf because he doesn't think it is being represented in the best of lights. my family has had roots in the diocese of chicago going back to the 1850s, very much part and parcel of its history, and my father i think always wanted to be a part of it and he feels as though the religion has perhaps corrupted by association and by less-than-noble pursuits. i believe, in a certain way, in the religion as he would like it to be (cf wide open arms to everyone regardless of anything, charity, and so on) but there's no way i can get down with it now. he knows this and it sort of sucks because he raised me in the manner he would like it to be, but it no longer is.

"Mainstream believers" are not the issue or focus of attacks.

I don't get what's so hard to understand about the following: if you frame your attack as being an attack on the bedrock notion of religion, then "mainstream believers" are a focus whether you want them to be or not. It is also not particularly hard to differentiate between sinister components of religion and religion as a concept, as evidenced by the fact that you're doing precisely that in this post.

and that's why i said it sucks that religion is so nebulous that when in the course of criticizing the nutty aspects of it you end up criticizing "mainstream believers". the subject constantly shifts, you can't lock in on a good target. i guess the problem is that the nutty aspects of religion hook on like barnacles to the bedrock of it.

"Mainstream believers" are not the issue or focus of attacks.

btw this is exactly the same reasoning as what into McCain's "I will always hate the gooks" comment and his subsequent comical backpedalling.

xpost - and scraping off barnacles tends to be easier than sinking the ship, especially since the people aboard will help you instead of shooting harpoons

But whatever, I'm not sure I have any substantive disagreement with Tipsy on this

maher is one of these milk-hating people too which is pretty lol

this belief is very important to him. don't be a dick.

xp for sure, i think i agree with you on the point of bm's and other noisy atheist's motives being counter-productive

some of you are OTM about Maher, but this movie is hilarious. everyone should see it i think. Larry Charles did a great job directing it (it does have a Borat feel to it) but there's this weird misstep in tone at the very end, when it goes from 85 minutes of 'LOL RIDICULOUSNESS' to 'DO YOU REALLY WANT THESE PEOPLE TO HAVE THEIR FINGER ON THE NUCLEAR BUTTON?' which i of course agree with BM in saying OH HELL NO, but the 90-degree turn left my friend and I going 'WTF was that'?