His Kampf: We Want The Airwaves.
To paraphrase the late great Graham Chapman, the old fool's got a persecution complex you could elect a pope in.
And Bill Maher is not an atheist. If McAdams wants to discuss religion, then why doesn't he? Because he can't. He doesn't even know what an atheist is, or how many believers despise organized religion every bit as much as Bill Maher does. Inter alia.
McAdams has much to learn, even as he thinks he knows it all. As a matter of fact, McAdams could learn a lot about religion from atheists. In many, many cases, they've studied it in considerably greater depth than have its actual adherents.
Because when it comes to the Bible, not believing in it leads to the most accurate scholarship and understanding. And I'm thinking just a bit more Baruch Spinoza than Bill Maher here.
What does McAdams think Jesus would have thought of all the farces and tragedies perpetrated in the name of religion? Or in his name, especially. Like Dostoevsky said, if Jesus came back to earth, the priests and the politicians would throw him in jail immediately, where he couldn't cause any more trouble.
Has McAdams ever heard Bill Maher criticize the ethical and moral teachings of Christ? Of course he hasn't. Maher's point — and it's certainly nothing novel or even remarkable — is that many people who call themselves Christians, in particular the loudest of the loud in this country, don't follow Christ's teachings at all.
They're called hypocrites, and Jesus wasn't much fond of them either.
Unfortunately you'd have to hit the university professor McAdams over the head with a solid gold tabernacle to induce him to see even that most glaring obviousity.
capper's got a point too. Marquette University's sports teams aren't called the Warriors anymore because it went out with a bunch of other nicknames that were considered offensive to Native Americans. But neither McAdams nor Charlie Sykes give a Ratz's ass if or when somebody else is offended.
And the Hitler Youth was a Nazi paramilitary outfit.
What's great is Mc-idiot's lumping the hundreds of faiths under the moniker "Christians" to unite a hodgepodge of fractured beliefs against a commentator that (while mostly shockingly hilarious) usually hits the nail on the head. Who exactly are these "Christians"? The last Catholic mass I attended I heard more grumblings about "those damned Protestants" than lessons on Loving Thy Lord. I suppose Luther was a bigot too, since he hated the dogmatic Catholics; as was Williams when he founded the Baptist Church; or Wesley when he broke to form the Methodist Church. Bigots abound could be the Christian mantra. I would prefer a simple WWJD, but even that's suspect.
ReplyDeleteIf you have a look at Martin Luther's pamphlet, "The Jews and Their Lies," you'll find that if anyone deserves the epithet bigot, it was he.
ReplyDeleteOne can only imagine how much a treat it must be to sit through the perfesser's lectures.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of which, it might be hard to distinguish who's the wise and worldly educator and who's the zit-faced adolescent in this exchange.
Zoink
ReplyDeleteKmiec, very interesting. Thanks.
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