I just finished watching Bill Maher's documentary, Religulous. (Seriously. It ended 1 minute ago.) While I agreed with a lot of his points, especially about the role of religion in the US government, his delivery of the material left a lot to be desired. Granted, it's Bill Maher, so the smug superiority of both his interview style and his delivery should not have come as a surprise. But what did come as a surprise was his flawed premise in a documentary about religion - basically a syllogistic fallacy:
1. Religion is made up of people of faith
2. Religion is responsible for many of the world's ills
3. Therefore, people of faith are responsible for many of the world's ills.
Unfortunately for his documentary, faith is not the same thing as organized religion, and not everyone who professes faith in a deity, or force of nature, or the universe, is part of an organized religion. The characterization of people of faith as inherently stupid, and lacking in intellectual curiosity and the ability to reason was, quite honestly, pretty offensive. In fact, I found it just as offensive as the words of fundamental Christians who claim to speak for all, as offensive as any extremist position that refuses to acknowledge other people have valid thoughts or beliefs as well.
I'm not going to delve deeply into my faith or religious beliefs here, largely because they're pretty personal and it's none of your business. ;-) But I will say that these are things that I HAVE spent a great deal of time thinking about, and still do. The suggestion that anyone who believes in something is an immature idiot...well, in this case, I think it says more about the person delivering the message than it does about the people he's describing. Perhaps Maher should take the advice of his closing words in the film, "Grow up or die". Minds that are that closed to alternate possibilities, in my opinion, are a kind of death.
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