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He’s making a movie with Larry Charles, one of the brains behind the whole Borat phenomenon, and like Borat his movie is about Maher wandering around America interacting with random, and almost assuredly stupid, Americans.
and...
Instead, he’s taking on his favorite target, religion. Says Bill, “I often explained to people, I don’t need to make fun of religion, it makes fun of itself. And, then I go ahead and make fun of it too, just for laughs.”
I thought "It is funny that Bill Maher thinks that most people are stupid - maybe he thinks this because they believe in a God. I wonder what percentage of America is Atheist." So I looked it up and found an article "Atheism in America" that gave some pretty amazing figures. They said that an amazing 14.1% of America was non organized atheism or NON religious. That is pretty staggering until you realize that it says NON religious. I hope to tell this person that I have had many friends that were NON religious - but still believed in a God. They just hadn't settled on a specific one. I wonder what the percentage would be if they had asked specifically are you an atheist - which by the way means they don't believe in any God, not that they are just Non religious. They get there figures from a website: Positive Atheist. It has more figures on where "Atheism in America" got their numbers.
It is amazing how Hollywood is in the business to bash religion all the sudden. With the Golden Compass, and now this. I would expect more to be coming as well. The funny thing is that the atheists in these articles were talking about how they are being persecuted - and some of what they had to say is right. When people talk about God in a hateful way, how can you come against this. If we are going to reach people we definitely cannot be hateful about it. It is a sad factor and I feel for those who will believe that there is no God. We are not stupid, we just have hope, something that an atheist has none, and if they say they do have hope; then I wonder what it would be for.
I would ask Bill Maher, would you get the same answers if you were taking these same questions to people that are experts in the field. Sometimes asking about brain surgery to a nurse, seems kind of dumb, even if they have seen it done. Some questions regarding religion are just hard. It doesn't make that person stupid because they cannot answer it. It just makes them uninformed and maybe untrained. I guess anything to get a laugh at people's expense - sad thing is people will spend money to go see it, but this is the world we live in. Bat the idea and let me know what you think.
1 comment:
There's gotta be some creative editing that goes into these films as well. I wonder how many people he asked questions of who gave well thought-out, reasonable responses - but of course, they didn't make it into the movie. I saw a video on YouTube of a guy interviewing an Obama supporter. The supporter was young and didn't initially come across as that smart. But as the interviewer kept asking questions to try to ridicule him, it became more and more apparent that this kid actually knew what he was talking about. But of course, that's not the video that's going to be linked from the McCain website.
Likewise, Maher's job is to poke fun and ridicule a particular group of people, so you can guarantee that they cut out the people who sounds smart. That's what makes this work entertainment and not journalism; he doesn't have to present both sides of the story, only his.
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