This much I guarantee, if you care at all about the world in which you live and hold to a particular view which dictates how that world may be improved, you will be offended by what you are about to read. Given the nature of the subject matter, provocation cannot be avoided. We’re going to examine the most sacred and fundamental beliefs which undergird our thoughts, feelings, traditions, and actions. We’re going to consider ideas people die for. We’re going to consider about ideas people kill for. We’re going to do so because debate has sprung up in America, and around the world, regarding whether people of faith ought to have the right to live according to their beliefs. The stakes of that debate are nothing less than individual liberty, and extend to matters life and death.

One of the chief voices in popular culture articulating the anti-religion argument is Bill Maher, host of HBO’s Real Time and among the most antagonistic leftist ideologues participating in our public discourse. In 2008, Maher produced Religulous, a documentary-style film in which he interviews “some of religion’s oddest adherents.” The film is more than a critique of religion. It is a call to arms for the purpose of uprooting and destroying religion. Cinema Blend critic Josh Tyler articulated the purpose succinctly.

Early on in Religulous, Bill Maher throws up a bar chart illustrating the number of people in America who are non-religious. That number is 16%, more than blacks, more than Jews, more than numerous other minority groups who seem to have no problem making themselves heard and getting Congress to do their bidding. Maher wonders aloud why non-religious people are so underground, and why they aren’t having an impact on the national discussion. His film is aimed squarely at that 16% of the country, and almost no one else. His goal, and he clearly has one, is to give those people the motivation they need to come out of the closet and do something… before it’s too late.

Though profitable, the film went largely unnoticed at the time of its release. Given its uncompromising hostility toward the belief systems of the vast majority of human beings, it was clearly never intended to be a blockbuster. However, it would be a mistake to write off Maher’s work as irrelevant or unworthy of comment.

This topic is not going away, and will have consequences of tremendous import. Maher opens Religulous with a statement emblematic of aggressive anti-religionists such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, who regard religion not as a personal matter but an existential threat which civil society has a duty to neutralize.

I certainly honestly believe religion is detrimental to the progress of humanity. You know, it’s just selling an invisible product. It’s too easy. These questions about what happens when you die – they so freak people out that they’ll just make up any story and cling to it. Things that they know can’t be true – people who are otherwise so rational about everything else – and then, they believe that on Sunday they’re drinking the blood of a 2,000 year old god. That’s a dissonance in my head.

This much I guarantee, if you care at all about the world in which you live and hold to a particular view which dictates how that world may be improved, you will be offended by what you are about to read. Given the nature of the subject matter, provocation cannot be avoided. We’re going to examine the most sacred and fundamental beliefs which undergird our thoughts, feelings, traditions, and actions. We’re going to consider ideas people die for. We’re going to consider about ideas people kill for. We’re going to do so because debate has sprung up in America, and around the world, regarding whether people of faith ought to have the right to live according to their beliefs. The stakes of that debate are nothing less than individual liberty, and extend to matters life and death.

One of the chief voices in popular culture articulating the anti-religion argument is Bill Maher, host of HBO’s Real Time and among the most antagonistic leftist ideologues participating in our public discourse. In 2008, Maher produced Religulous, a documentary-style film in which he interviews “some of religion’s oddest adherents.” The film is more than a critique of religion. It is a call to arms for the purpose of uprooting and destroying religion. Cinema Blend critic Josh Tyler articulated the purpose succinctly.

Early on in Religulous, Bill Maher throws up a bar chart illustrating the number of people in America who are non-religious. That number is 16%, more than blacks, more than Jews, more than numerous other minority groups who seem to have no problem making themselves heard and getting Congress to do their bidding. Maher wonders aloud why non-religious people are so underground, and why they aren’t having an impact on the national discussion. His film is aimed squarely at that 16% of the country, and almost no one else. His goal, and he clearly has one, is to give those people the motivation they need to come out of the closet and do something… before it’s too late.

Though profitable, the film went largely unnoticed at the time of its release. Given its uncompromising hostility toward the belief systems of the vast majority of human beings, it was clearly never intended to be a blockbuster. However, it would be a mistake to write off Maher’s work as irrelevant or unworthy of comment.

This topic is not going away, and will have consequences of tremendous import. Maher opens Religulous with a statement emblematic of aggressive anti-religionists such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, who regard religion not as a personal matter but an existential threat which civil society has a duty to neutralize.

I certainly honestly believe religion is detrimental to the progress of humanity. You know, it’s just selling an invisible product. It’s too easy. These questions about what happens when you die – they so freak people out that they’ll just make up any story and cling to it. Things that they know can’t be true – people who are otherwise so rational about everything else – and then, they believe that on Sunday they’re drinking the blood of a 2,000 year old god. That’s a dissonance in my head.

Objectivity: the ability to honestly and accurately discuss something without regard for, or even in spite of, one’s personal predisposition toward or stake in the subject matter.  You’d think objectivity would be the mainstream media’s most basic prerequisite, but in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Fortunately, the MSM has S.E. Cupp to show ‘em how it’s done. Benyamin Cohen profiles the conservative journalist and pundit for the Daily Beast, noting that her latest book tackles familiar territory from unfamiliar ground:

Newsweek’s alleged Jesus bias is just one of many topics covered in Cupp’s new book, Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity. Targets include MSNBC, Katie Couric, NPR, and The New York Times just to name a few. She also takes aim at President Obama, calling him a “radical liberal… raised by atheists” who has an agenda with “socialist tenets.” With a foreword from Mike Huckabee, a glowing endorsement from Sean Hannity, and a regular spot as a pundit on Fox News, Cupp has become (perhaps unwittingly) the media darling of the right wing.

Which might go against type, considering she’s a Boston-bred Ivy League grad who just happens to also be an atheist. Yes, Sean Hannity’s newest crush is an atheist. (She likes to joke that he’s tried to baptize her at the Fox News water cooler.)

Raised a Roman Catholic, with a short pit stop in New Age Buddhism, she long ago left a life of faith. “I knew at a very young age that I didn’t really buy the whole God gamut,” she explains, a lilt of hoarseness in her voice. “I didn’t know why. I wouldn’t say it was rebellion. It was skepticism. It just didn’t add up to me.” This coming from a woman who wanted to be a nun when she grew up and just received a master’s degree in religious studies from New York University.

Given how the country’s most high-profile atheists make their claim to fame by sneering that “religion poisons everything,” a self-professed skeptic who says God gets a bad rap can’t help but turn heads.  But it should be clear to everyone that organized religion’s admittedly real offenses aren’t why the Left has declared open season on faith.  No, the Judeo-Christian values upon which America is founded need to be uprooted as part of the Left’s broader vision to remodel the nation.  The progressive dream of government-as-savior can’t be fully realized as long as people hold on to their old Savior.  It’s crowded at the top.

Leftist comedian Bill Maher just can’t help being a jackass even toward people he respects. You’d think that if anyone could get him to at least attempt to grasp the value in the religious experience it would be believers who share his “progressive” political faith:

Maher: I have unending respect for Bill Moyers. He’s a brilliant man. He’s also a Baptist minister. Jimmy Carter, y’know, a pretty bright guy. How do we reconcile someone who is so intelligent but who believes things which you and I think are incredibly childish and nonsensical? It’s a neurological disorder that they have?

Harris: No, it’s a social disorder. It’s a conversational disorder. It’s the fact that we can’t apply enough pressure to these ideas and it’s taboo to do so. And there’s this fact that there is a core of truth to religion that we should be interested in. There’s the fact that people do have transformative experiences. If Jesus really was who they said he was or Buddha likewise, it’s possible perhaps to be the Tiger Woods of compassion. It’s possible to really be someone who has transformed himself. And we should be interested in that we should want to actuallize that and understand it scientifically. But the problem is it’s so mired in religious mumbo jumbo and superstition and taboo and religion has seemed to be the only game in town in talking about that possibility and we need to overcome that.

(I’ll leave rebuttals to Maher’s remarks about Moyers and Carter to NewsReal’s diligent commenters. I have other concerns today.)

This open admission about the truth in religion is one of the reasons that of the “four horsemen” of the New Atheist movement (Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett) I prefer Harris. Of course it must be said, though, that I have a great deal of affection for what Hitchens has to say on plenty of other subjects.

Unlike his fellow three horsemen and most secularists, Harris is able to distinguish between religious fundamentalism (something to challenge) and mysticism (something to encourage.) On these points Harris and I are somewhat in agreement. He’s just a bit more aggressive in his confrontations with fundamentalism and I’m more enthusiastic in my promotion of mysticism. I have far too many Christian friends who I love and respect far too dearly to come to Harris’s conclusions about the “danger” of their faith.

What is mysticism, though? What is this “core of truth that we should be interested in” that Harris talks about?

Robert Anton Wilson does a pretty good job of laying it out there in this four- and-a-half minute excerpt from Maybe Logic:

Wikipedia also has a great definition:

Mysticism (from the Greek μυστικός, mystikos, an initiate of a mystery religion^[1]) is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or awareness. Mysticism may be dualistic, maintaining a distinction between the self and the divine, or may be nondualistic.

Buried within almost all religions is mysticism. Religion is a gateway which allows one to experience mysticism which allows one to experience a unity with the Universe. This is why Carter and Moyers are so passionate about their Christian faith. And Maher’s lack of understanding of a mystical connection with the universe also explains two other things about him:

1. His need to be a jackass and lash out so cruelly toward others who he doesn’t understand. (Isolation and a lack of connection with the world causes an emptiness and a need to hurt others.)

2. His fondness and advocacy for marijuana. That is where he gets his mystical union — through the haze of his bong smoke. But hey, at least he has that. Can one imagine how much more vicious he’d be if he didn’t? I have a few ideas of what one might expect.

(You find these same two traits manifest in Hitchens except he seems to prefer liquor to weed.)

People who manage to form some sort of mystical connection to the universe are, by and large, just more pleasant, loving people to be around than those like Maher who have not.

Not all believers manage to find mysticism in religion. And plenty of atheists — like Harris — do stumble upon it apart from religious traditions. But the deck is still  stacked in favor of people of faith to achieve mystical awareness. More religious folks are mystically tuned in and thus kind and loving. This means that they’re generally more persuasive and likable than the often bullying Hitchens, Maher, and Dawkins.

It’s because of this that people of faith shouldn’t be overly concerned that the four horsemen will be successful in bringing forth the Atheist Apocalypse Across America anytime soon. Without the loving spirit that’s a natural byproduct of achieving oneness with God it’s hard to accomplish anything of value or substance in this world.

To Be Continued Soon… (There is an important connection between the Mystical Idea and the American Idea which will discussed soon.)

Author Sam Harris whose book The End of Faith started the "New Atheist" trend.

For the opening interview on Friday’s Real Time, leftist talk show host Bill Maher interviewed fellow secularist Sam Harris, noted author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. Harris was on to promote his new 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation The Reason Project, of which Maher is a member of the advisory board.

I was delighted by this opening interview. In the summer of 2007 I wrote a three-part series on the “New Atheists” for WTHR. I interviewed secularists, believers, and those who find themselves falling somewhere between the two. I end up in the third category, thus I usually find myself agreeing with somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of what Harris and his New Atheist comrades have to say.

Maher began by questioning Harris about his background. He wondered how Harris had stumbled into becoming an advocate of secularism. Harris explained that he was raised in a secular househould where his parents never talked about God.

Maher: As a child you were an atheist?

Harris: Atheism has no content. Being an atheist is like being a non-astrologer. No one gets taught to be a non-astrologer. You just don’t get convinced by astrology.

…

Maher: In your book The End of Faith – which I love — you don’t really use that word [atheism.] So what would you say to people who say… ‘Then what do you believe?’

Harris: The irony is that I never use the word ‘atheist’ in this book which supposedly touched off this movement of so-called ‘New Atheism.’ … The point is that atheism is not a belief system. It is the rejection of a certain style of dogma. And it’s the dogmas of religion. And so every Christian is an atheist with respect to Islam. They’re not convinced by the claim that the Koran is the perfect word of the creator of the universe. They’re not losing any sleep over whether or not they convert to Islam. And an atheist is just someone who goes one god further and just not accept any of these unsupported claims.

Harris is about half-way there. His explanation that Christians are atheists of Islam is useful. Often in discussions with traditional Christians about why I no longer embrace a literalist view of the Bible, I explain how all I’m doing is approaching the Bible and Christianity in a similar fashion to how they approach the Koran and Islam. (Except that I still draw value from the spiritual wisdom and mythology of the Bible, whereas few Christians see much worth in the Koran.)

Where Harris is off base is trying to suggest that atheism isn’t a belief system or a religion in and of itself. It is. Belief in the non-God and the supremacy of science is still a belief. Even I’ve come to gradually accept that my agnostic approach is a “belief system.” We all ultimately have to have belief systems. They’re like the software installed on our computer brains. The only way to transcend the belief system is to just install very flexible, skeptical, agnostic belief systems that allow for frequent software upgrades as new information comes to light. We must have beliefs, but we also must be skeptical about them and recognize them as maps and not the territory itself.

Further, this skeptical attitude must be extended to our political belief systems as well — something “secularists” like Maher seem to refuse to do toward their own leftist faith. We must recognize when political ideas become dogmatic beliefs and push against this tendency. This translates into challenging the Left by identifying its religious nature and working to ensure that conservatism resists the temptation of dogmatism which threatens every intellectual tradition.

See Part II of my commentary on this interview. I discuss Harris’s admission of religion’s “core of truth.”