Joe Scarborough had Bill Maher on his Scarborough Country last night on MSNBC, and the discussion turned to religion. Scarborough's guest did not shrink from sharing his feelings.
Maher's views are probably representative of a lot of people in the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party", although most of them would never be so frank as is Maher in articulating those beliefs. Listening to Maher one can't help but hear in his words the fundamental difficulty facing the Democrats as they seek to entice red staters into the Democratic fold. On the one hand, they have to try to convince those voters that they are sympathetic with their deepest convictions while, on the other, they hold those same convictions in utter contempt.
Maher states that religious people are "unenlightened". Religion is "a neurological disorder" that "stops people from thinking". The only reason religious people believe what they do is because they were "frightened into believing it when they were children". Religion is "a crutch for the weak-minded". Maher claims that he is "embarrassed that America has been taken over by evangelicals", people who "don't believe in science and rationality". He claims that he is "disgusted by religion" and that "it is arrogance parading as humility". The future, he asserts, "does not belong" to the religious.
The dominant feeling I had watching and listening to this was a kind of sadness. Maher apparently has known very few Christians personally, and the ones he has known have evidently not been what one may have hoped they would be. Nor has he seemed to have read much from the extensive intellectual literature that has been produced by Christians throughout history, but especially in the last one hundred years. Maher comports himself as informed and enlightened, but he is, on this topic at least, a pathetically ignorant man in the most precise sense of the terms.
Listening to Maher state his opinion of Christianity should remind Christians and other devout theists that they have a profound responsibility to be all that he is convinced they are not. They cannot be content to be just like everyone else, either morally or intellectually. Just as Blacks and women often believe they have to be better than their competition in order to get a fair shake, so, too, must those who claim to be followers of Christ strive to reflect Him as accurately, clearly, and compellingly as they are able to a skeptical and disdainful world.
The segment of Scarborough Country featuring Maher can be viewed here. The video takes about a minute to load and the relevant portion begins about two minutes into it.
