Killing Two Birdbrains With One Stone

Palin is “Religulous,” but Maher is “RiDICKulous.”

Bill Maher‘s new mooovie, Religulous, is not going to make it on Sarah Palin’s “to do” list this year, or any other. And it’s a shame too, because Sarah Palin, if she had been willing to talk to Maher, would have been just the sort of interview he should have put in the film. Because Palin is one of those people who at least used to think— and may still— that men and dinosaurs coexisted on earth approximately 6,000 years ago;  about 65 million years after most scientists say they were extinct. So what’s 65 million years between friends?  Probably the difference between the cognitive power of, say, a moosasaurus, and your dullest college graduate of today.  And even though Sarah used four different schools to get through college, she has apparently retained the intellectual keeness of an un-schooled moosasaurus.

As if Sarah Palin‘s recent cerebral dribbling with Katie Couric wasn’t sufficient evidence to cause even intransigent Republicans to recoil in shock, add “Young Earth” stupidity to the list and you might even get a seizure or two from punDicks like BoBo Brooks and George Will.  Oh— wait. . .

In America, Palin is free to believe whatever she wants about dinosaurs, or incoherent babbling in tongues.
Such interpretative beliefs may be right or wrong, or a mixture of truth and error.  Just because there’s no doubt about it in Palin‘s case doesn’t mean she can’t still have a genuine religious experience, and like it or not— that’s the important thing.  But it does most certainly mean she’s not remotely qualified to be a heartbeat away from McMelanoma™ should he become president.

Palin was also asked if she truly believed in the End of Days, the doomsday scenario when the Messiah will return.  “She looked Alaskan blogger [Phillip Munger] in the eyes and said, “Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime.”  Wow.  Has she forgotten that wherever two or more are gathered in his name, he is already there?  Actually and personally present?  Well.  What do you expect from a woman who understands foreign policy because she sees Russia from her balcony.

• • •

Maher says:

“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. Freedom of religion in America is not the problem.

“Anyone who’s religious is extremist.”  Anyone??  Anyone who’s that inane is a dangerous extremist.  Maher claims he’s not an atheist, that he believes in “I don’t know.”  That might be considered noble in some circles, but it sounds more like intellectual chicken shit to me. Mr. “I don’t know” sounds awfully sure of himself when it comes to religion, as well as silly religious dogma; but it’s clear he doesn’t know the difference between the two. And notwithstanding the “. . . mythologic vagaries and the psychologic illusions of the intellectual content of religion, the metaphysical assumptions of error and the techniques of self-deception, the political distortions and the socioeconomic perversions of the philosophic content of religion”— whew— the spiritual experience of personal religion remains genuine and valid. Religious experience is the spiritual content of religion; and because BM doesn’t recognize his as such doesn’t give him any credibility to call religionists crazy, ridiculous, and irrational. But it does make him a major Dick.

It requires no great depth of intellect to pick flaws or poke holes in the most absurd religious doctrines still partially afloat on the sea of stupid today, but it does require brilliance of mind to answer these questions and solve these difficulties.  And Bill Maher, like so many other unthinking secularists opining today, comes up short.  Yes indeed, “a tree is a miracle”; but so is every-frakkin’-thing about creation. Even the most birdbrained religionists take that for granted; should we cheer Bill “I don’t know” Maher because he get’s that??

In the final analysis, all it proves is that Faith is still the best technique for dealing with all such superficial contentions.