I tend to think religion is precisely like any other form of thought, delusional at its core. I recently read this interview of Chomsky (https://chomsky.info/20001210/) and sympathize quite a bit. "The way you do it is by trying to do it yourself ... Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. Its something you have to find out for yourself." Thinking is just action, exactly like throwing a baseball or cleaning grime from a carburetor. And you will only think like another person if you go through the same or similar actions/thinking the other person went through.
As such, religion is thought. So in the case of someone like Bill Maher who consistently isolates religion as "bad" is either familiar with that type of thought or not. Hostility can be bred from both familiarity or ignorance. But the hostility he (and others) show toward Islam seems to demonstrate that they haven't spent much time trying to think like a Muslim ... to steelman Islam. And until/unless they do, I find it difficult to take their criticism seriously. That aside, I'm a big fan of Maher when Maher talks about something he's apparently thought (deeply?) about. My fanaticism ends when he seems to talk about something he apparently hasn't given much (deep?) thought. C'est la vie. We are all good at some things, bad at other things. I react to most atheists this way, perhaps unfortunately. But, then again, I react that way to everyone who is confident in their own thoughts. E.g. La Mott's "You will worship and serve something, so like St. Bob said, you gotta choose." I doubt it ... I doubt everything about that sentiment, "worship", "serve", "some[ ]thing", the necessity of a (binary?) choice. Everything about it screams pithy pseudo-profundity (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/per.2176). But, like Maher, most of the rest of that essay is fantastic and exhibits clear effort. And it's really not a problem to turn on and off that admiration/affiliation/worship/service at will. I marvel at those who artificially unify whatever it is they attend. Growing up, the phrase "cafeteria Catholicism" was an insult. To me, it's a compliment. Parts of Catholicism are just plain stupid. Other parts are brilliant wisdom ... just like everything else in the universe. On 4/16/19 2:18 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: > Your question demonstrates that you are a more careful/thorough reader > than I. I somehow skimmed over the Maher/Graham allusion and even had > to Google Graham to find out what HE was about. > > I've only recently "discovered" Bill Maher... and after listening to > him semi-regularly for several months was still surprised to find out > that he calls down the wrath of some on the left. Once again, maybe I > wasn't *listening* close enough, or maybe I was guilty of letting some > of his more egregious statements roll over me out of my infatuation with > the general thrust (and boldly wry style) of his message, similar to the > way Trumpists seem to do for/with him (though their sins of omission > seem much larger in quantity and quality?). > > I *have* heard him go off on *all religion* and once alerted to it (and > read some quotes from his screeds against Islam) recognize he has a > special place in his heart filled with fear (and judgement?) of their > (extremists?) religion. > > I am personally a strong Athiest in the sense that I have few if any > doubts that the anthropomorphising of whatever the mystery of existence > and beauty might be is a projection... (wo)Man making God(dess) in > his/her own image. I find the stories of afterlife or repeated lives to > be at best interesting metaphors for how the meaning of the lives we > live might be tied to human history and future. I find the > anthropomorphised God(desse)s of Western (and many others) culture to be > a potentially useful way to tap into archetypicals understanding of > ourselves. > > I also see that a great deal of horrific activity has been executed in > the name of various religions, but also suspect that those horrors were > not *caused* by religion so much as possibly "excused" by it. I > suspect many of the folks involved in those "horrors" were both > malnourished in some way (even the "wealthy") as children and even > adults and quite possibly *suffered* their own "horrors" whilst growing > up (I've been watching GOT and might be conflating *that world* with our > own real metal-age feudal history. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
