Tim Graham over at NewsBusters gives the account of the latest coming out of the mouth of atheist/leftist/comedian Bill Maher on religion and politics. Speaking to Rolling Stone for their 40th anniversary magazine:
"ROLLING STONE: What’s your best case scenario for the future?
MAHER: First of all, some Democrat better win it in 2008. Then that person should go for broke and say to the people, "Now I have to tell you the truth. I couldn’t do it when I was running, because you are a bunch of babies who can’t take the truth, and you know damn well you wouldn’t have voted for me if I said that. But we’re going to take these painful measures."
The sad part of it is, the money is there to do almost anything we want. It’s not as if you’d have to raise taxes so much. If you took the money being wasted on Iraq, corporate welfare and the drug war, you would have trillions of dollars to work with. That’s the core of it. Whoever is the next president has to get at this corporate state we’ve found ourselves living in.
Spoken like a true timecard-puncher for Time Warner/HBO. Then there was the hatred-of-religion section:
ROLLING STONE: Speaking of religion, do you see people getting more or less rational in the coming years?
MAHER: Both. People are finally catching on that religion is childish and dangerous....Europe is over religion. They’re religious in name only. So the older, wiser continent, they’ve moved beyond that. But of course, much of the world has not....
ROLLING STONE: What about religion in this country? Is it becoming less of a political force?
MAHER: I really feel like there’s a movement building. This is the issue of the day, and people are beginning to understand that religion is the problem. Now, when the president shows up at a disaster site and says he’s going to pray, it means nothing. He might as well show up and say, "I’m going to hope. I’m on it – I’m going to wish it were so." It’s meaningless at best. It’s difficult to steer the ship of state toward some sort of safe harbor when at least half the people in this country essentially think we should do that by splitting open a chicken and reading its entrails. I’m suggesting we use a compass.
That sounds fairly in sync with the Edwards campaign and its tendency to hire bloggers who rage against Bush's "wingnut Christofascist base."
Rolling Stone interviewer Mark Binelli also asked if Maher was optimistic or pessimistic about the future:
You know, one man’s pessimist is another man’s realist. People say to me, "Why are you so cynical?" And I say, "I wouldn’t be so cynical if you weren’t so f—ing stupid." I’m pessimistic because I see multiple looming icebergs that we’re sailing toward, and Captain George Bush is the guy in the crow’s nest of the Titanic. He doesn’t see the iceberg. Or he sees it and thinks it’s Jesus or some s–t. There are environmental, religious, and financial disasters looming. What if they all go down at the same time? It’s not like we’re getting our s–t together on any of this stuff."
So, there you have it. There's no mystery about what the liberal atheists think and who they support. They talk very openly about what they believe. The mystery is why does anyone seriously listen to them? I take that back. It's no mystery. It's about what sells papers and magazines and television...and the postmodern, relativistic, swirled views of our day.
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