Bill Maher Debates the Bible with Bill O’Reilly

LOUD NOISES! I DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT!!!

Nice!

And it goes on and on and on and on…

Seen a range of interviews by O’Reilly that run roughly like that. Setting up straw-men and stuff all over the place.

Sadly there is a very large audience that never even heard of the strawman fallacy, let alone have any capacity to identify it.

I’m sure many watchers of this think O’Reilly held the correct position in the exchange and Maher indeed believes some cook theory about emerging out of meteor slime.

When O’Reilly said that Noah’s story was allegorical, Maher should have asked what it was an allegory for. God kills pretty much everything that lives, then decides to never do this again. What is the moral of that story? It makes no sense.

Maher could also have mentioned that the New Testament has some wonky bits too, like Jesus telling his followers they have to leave behind their families. (Family values? What familit values?)

But even without these, Maher made O’Reilly look enormously ignorant about his own religion.

If anything you should treat Jesus like any historical mythical figure.

FTFY.

Thanks for that Cat’s Staff! I was just going to ask if anyone knew the Jefferson quote BM referred to.

Really? That’s the argument you’re going with? It’s so overused… It’s not even worth my time to give you a more nuanced answer, so I’ll give you a clichéd response right back.

Anyone else feel the same?

If I was talking privately with someone like O’Reilly, who makes a good living promoting ignorance and pigheadedness, and who has used all those tired arguments and seen them shot down hundreds of times, and who probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether any of it is true or not, then yes, I would feel the same, and I’d dismiss him quickly.

But,

Maher was talking in front of millions of people, many of whom may not have heard O’Reilly’s tattered arguments before. They will hear him say one, they will perk up, and will pay attention to Maher’s rebuttal. If Maher brushes it off shallowly and with disdain, as he is so good at doing, then he will not be helping them think more carefully. They will only remember what they perceive as his dismissive attitude.

Maher is often very hilarious, and I love his wit, but he’s only good at making those who already agree with him laugh. I don’t think he’s good at persuading people to change their minds. There’s a legitimate purpose for what he does, and I don’t condemn it. It’s just that he and I have different purposes, so we have different responses.

On the other hand, if instead of talking privately to O’Reilly I was talking privately to an ordinary Christian, most likely young, who has just heard one of the naive, worn-out arguments that I’ve heard 1,000 times, but he or she thinks that it’s new, fresh, and exciting, then I would try my best to be patient and to give them a careful, thorough, clear and polite response.

Just because I’ve heard it from 1,000 Christians, does not mean that I should treat them with contempt as if they are the same single person who has been coming back with the same argument 1,000 times.

So I take a deep, slow breath and try to keep my tone sounding just as new and fresh as they think their argument is, even though I’ve gotten very efficient at my response through lots of practice.

First, decide what is your purpose in talking with them: to have fun mocking them, or to get them to think more carefully?

If your purpose is the latter, then use empathy: What kind of response would have helped you to see through the holes in that same argument, if you believed it to be valid? Probably a patient, brief, but clear dismantling without personal devaluation, rather than a verbal beating or a hurtful brush-off.

It’s important to help people to think more carefully without humiliating them. If we treat them respectfully, even though we don’t respect their argument, they are more likely to listen to us when they come back with their next naive argument. If we roll our eyes and use a dismissive, “you dumbass” tone, they won’t come back at all. They’ll only hang around those who don’t challenge them.

As I’ve said before, if you want someone to see things more clearly, don’t start by poking them in the eye.  

As I’ve said before, if you want someone to see things more clearly, don’t start by poking them in the eye.

But the way it actually usually works is that they’re busily poking you in the eye, and your insistence that they stop is, they say, stepping on their rights.

I have no problem with a ‘what are you talking about, you fool’ tone, but I do have a problem with Maher’s lack of solid argument and huge concessions. The new testament’s peachy? Really?

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them. (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)”

And that’s just slavery. The new testament is as riddled with hate as the old one. Also, people like to throw around parts of the old testament as it pleases them, like the ten comandments or the anti-gay verses from Leviticus.

Mock away, but have solid evidence beneath it so that when the Christians watch and say ‘that’s not what my religion says’ they go and look up the verses and such and realize that it is. The ‘Stone an Atheist fundraiser is a good example of this-mocking, yes, but also making a solid point. Maher isn’t being clever, he’s just childishly calling names.

Maher vs. O’Reilly?

I don’t care for either of them and can’t bring myself to watch the video. That would just represent time that I’ll never have again.

O’Reilly is a moron, but I don’t really think Maher did all that good of job with his debate.

The Debate

Problem with this debate was that Maher was allowing O’Reilly jump around and take jabs. People like O’Reilly like to use a ‘daze and confuse’ style of debating. (I am not sure if there is a better term to describe his style so I figured I’d use a boxing analogy.) They want to move on to the next jab before his opponent can recover from the previous jab.

Maher should have taken control and dealt with the fallacies one at a time.

If someone that was on the fence about religion was watching that, they would still be there scratching there heads, not sure who made the better argument.

The Old Testament

The OT is the foundation of which Christianity is built upon. To dismiss the OT as allegorical would topple every book that comes after the OT like the NT and the Book of Mormon. (I’m a recovering Mormon, so I had to add that.) If O’Reilly is not going to take the OT literally, then why take the rest of it seriously?

hahahahaha remember that recent survey that showed how little xians know about religion. Bill O’Reilly is the poster boy of xian ignorance. He doesn’t even know where “love your neighbor as yourself” comes from. In Matthew 22, Jesus is quoting Leviticus 19.

Actually, Bill O’Reilly, with his statement that the bible wasn’t written by god but by men, implying that it is just a collection of parables with some deeper meaning, puts him at odds with about 1/3 of the American population who believe that the bible is the actual word of god. This belief is also often found in various religious organizations’ “Statement of Faith.”

In a rational world, Bill O’Reilly’s profession of faith being based on that there is some stuff in his holy book he likes so he just blindly accepts the ludicrous (loaves and fish) or rationalizes the offensive (death for breaking the sabbath) ought to be a nail in his argument’s coffin.

And, of course, I’m so very disappointed that Bill Maher so lacks some fundamental knowledge of science that he can’t answer the question about how the earth was formed. Even Bill O’Reilly seemed know something about the role of comets (though he said meteors) in the seeding the Earth with water.

MikeTheInfidel wrote:

How do you draw a moral lesson from near genocide perpetrated by a deity?

*potential bumper-sticker alert!*

🙂

It’s an inescapable mathematical fact that 50% of the population of any country will be of below average intelligence. Many of the rest will be ill-informed. I’m not American, but even I can see that Maher was right on that point.

Seems almost like O’Reilly doesn’t believe in the Bible — how can he throw away half of it as allegorical?

Depending on the distribution of intelligence, the percentage of people below average intelligence could be significantly lower or higher than fifty percent.

Having said that spell check has just told me that I was spelling intelligence wrong so now I know where I fall on the scale.

It’s worth watching the uncut version: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/index.html#/v/4355597/bill-maher-unedited/?playlist_id=86923 It covers politics a bit more, and for me gave Maher’s comment about Jesus and health care a little more context. As it was it sounded ‘out there’.

I think Maher envisions himself as the fifth horseman, but he’s not. Any of ‘the four’ would have hit those out of the park.

Maher comes across arrogant and rude. He is not an intellectual at all and I really don’t think that he a good spokesperson for atheists.

As a Christian I wasn’t too impressed with O’Reilly either unfortunately.

This debate didn’t advance understanding or tolerance in any manner.

I’m sure we’ll see several Sophisticated Theologians commenting on this segment, scolding O’Reilly for being theologically illiterate. …Right?

Maher wasn’t afraid to say what he really thought (the general population is, in some ways, “stupid”; Maher’s example of the polling on spending and tax cuts was, actually, a good one), even if some people might get offended by it.

I don’t think we should confuse arrogance with clarity and rigorous honesty. Maher’s underlying point for most of the discussion was that religious people tend not to interrogate their own beliefs very much. This is a hard truth, and I don’t think it does anyone any good to tip-toe around it. Maher’s interlocutor sure wasn’t tip-toeing around anything. It bugs me when Dawkins always gets called “arrogant,” too. He is not arrogant; he’s just direct. I think Maher’s the same way.

The first thing O’Reilly did was call Maher an “elitist.” If you watch his program, you know that’s just a word he uses for people who disagree with him. He also calls people “pinheads” and “loons” and “gutter snipes” on a nightly basis, but is shocked—shocked!—to hear Maher call people “stupid.” What a hypocrite.

Meh, that was blather between two blithering idiots. I suck at debate and could have done better than Maher.

Christ’s sake, he didn’t even ask, well, if the law about not killing the neighbor who works on the Sabbath doesn’t pertain because it’s OT, then why do you take the 10 commandments and that bit about lying with a man as with a woman so seriously? And how do we know what’s allegory and what’s meant to be taken as real? Or is it just allegory when it becomes convenient as in you can’t freaking explain this one?

I don’t care for either one of these fools.

Really? That’s the argument you’re going with? It’s so overused… It’s not even worth my time to give you a more nuanced answer, so I’ll give you a clichéd response right back.

Anyone else feel the same?

I felt that reaction to Maher, actually. O’Reilly’s answers were not very good, but Maher’s objections are equally overused strawmen. Just a pretty dumb debate from both sides there really.

Yeah. I’m not with Maher on this one even though I’m atheist. He made Reilly look good by jumping too quickly to religion. Maher got in with the generalizations.

I know Maher is being Maher, but honestly, the comments we’ve heard a thousand times such as “it takes as much faith to be an atheist” are frequent but you have to appreciate the point of view of the speaker before you dismiss it. All you’re doing if you don’t is making it easier for people to badger back into their faith holes when you had an opportunity to say something that made sense about how you personally were an atheist.

How can we be atheists while simultaneously lumping all believers? That’s high school debate. We need the next level.

muggle wrote:

Christ’s sake, he didn’t even ask, well, if the law about not killing the neighbor who works on the Sabbath doesn’t pertain because it’s OT, then why do you take the 10 commandments and that bit about lying with a man as with a woman so seriously? And how do we know what’s allegory and what’s meant to be taken as real? Or is it just allegory when it becomes convenient as in you can’t freaking explain this one?

Exactly. That would have been a great retort to counter on. The OT has tons of stuff that current Christians quote and latch onto all the time. For O’Reilly to say he follows only the NT was a wide open shot Maher could have taken on that.

“What is that?!”
“I don’t know what that is!”

Bad marks all around. I’d like to see someone defend the concept of being “elite”—that some people ARE smarter or better educated than others, and they don’t have to apologize for it. I freely acknowledge the existence of elite athletes and artists!

No one should get away with the tired old false equivalency between atheism and belief. I’m sure O’Reilly has had the distinction explained countless times, but he’s not honest enough to retire the argument.
And hearing him blather on about “love thy neighbor” was just laughable—he’s one of the most hateful people around. He promotes intolerance and practices deceit on a daily basis. What a blowhard.

Wow, neither Bill had any clue what they were talking about. It’s was brutal to watch such a spectacle of two, seemingly intelligent, blatantly uninformed people.

It’s unfortunate Bill Maher doesn’t speak with scholars when critiquing the Bible.

Maher’s arguments, as well as those from the majority of non-theists I know personally and of those I have read (i.e. Same Harris, Richard Dawkins, Chris hitches, et al) direct their arguments toward and against a very small segment of Christian fundamentalists and Young Earth Creationists, as though these were the representatives of the whole of Christian experience, thought, and tradition.

It’s quite aggravating to be honest.

It’s as if Bill Maher has chosen such a fringe segment of Christian thought to go to battle against because he knows how absurd their stances are and how easily he can defeat them. It’s like he is trying so hard to convince himself the Bible ins’t accurate and is ultimately untrue because he is afraid that it may actually be accurate and true.

If he actually spoke with the many Christian scholars and intellectuals in our world, he may be convinced of the validity of the Christian experience and tradition.

Speak to someone skilled in literary criticism and biblical scholarship for God’s sake, Bill (both of them). You may learn something!

cb

Cliff:

Maher’s arguments, as well as those from the majority of non-theists I know personally and of those I have read (i.e. Same Harris, Richard Dawkins, Chris hitches, et al) direct their arguments toward and against a very small segment of Christian fundamentalists and Young Earth Creationists, as though these were the representatives of the whole of Christian experience, thought, and tradition.

You’ve read Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens and somehow managed to come away with the impression that they only address Christian fundamentalism and creationism? I don’t understand how that’s possible.

By the way, I would hardly call the 1/3 of Americans who believe the Bible is meant to be taken literally a “small” or “fringe” segment of Christianity.

It’s as if Bill Maher has chosen such a fringe segment of Christian thought to go to battle against because he knows how absurd their stances are and how easily he can defeat them. It’s like he is trying so hard to convince himself the Bible ins’t accurate and is ultimately untrue because he is afraid that it may actually be accurate and true. If he actually spoke with the many Christian scholars and intellectuals in our world, he may be convinced of the validity of the Christian experience and tradition.

Not likely. This is a common attitude, but just because some Christians like to make the assertion that their form of Christianity is “sophisticated” and their theologians are “intellectuals” doesn’t mean it’s true.

Bill Maher, although intelligent, can be an ass at times. In this particular interview with O’Rielly his knowledge (and one would suppose, his denial) of the Second Covenant is sadly lacking. And although he remembers quite well (SOME of the more harsh laws fitting his side of the argument) the “Laws of Moses” and those from Leviticus in the Old Testament, and even going as far as quoting Thomas Jefferson, whom I suppose he still believes was an atheist like himself, tragically he forgets the basis of the laws in this country, and the Founders true doctrine which give him the right to be such a pampas ass without fear of being stoned or beheaded which indeed would have happened in many other countries which he heralds. I also, as a true American, even though I basically disagree with his whole philosophy, defend his right to be so pampas according to our Constitution. In addition, even when laws of diet were concerned it was answered   “It is not so important as to what goes into ones mouth, but what comes out of it”