Spiderbite

It boggles the mind that some seemingly intelligent people of today actually believe in the story of "Noah's Ark."

slop101

I always assumed that it was just that region that got flooded and Noah grabbed animals indigenous to that region.

Shannon Nutt

Compared to a guy living inside a whale for a few days or people living to be 900 years old, the Ark isn't that hard to swallow.

dhmac

I was disappointed that Bill Maher didn't ask Horace Cooper more about his belief in Noah's Ark as he suggested he was going to do in the overtime segment. The Noah myth is really just a bastardized version of the older Gilgamesh flood myth and I think Maher would've brought that up if they had talked about it more.

MikahC

I don't think it would be clear to learned Christians as a whole that the story of Noah is just a bastardized version of Gilgamesh. If you have a Christian who has lived in a bubble and hasn't had his views challenged, he may be caught off guard the first time. But anyone who has subjected his views (and faith) to outside scrutiny has already dealt with similar viewpoints. An inability to explain that which is predicated on an unknowable being isn't proof of the nonexistence of said being. If someone is inclined to believe the bible verbatim, he could simply reply, "I don't know exactly which animals were on the ark, just like there are many things people who worship science can't explain."

People (on both sides) are prone to accept the obviousness of the position already held. So while a bunch of atheists can slap each other on the back about how Maher showed up yet another religious person, it usually has very little traction with people who are religious.

http://www.icr.org/article/noah-flood-gilgamesh/

georgec

The reason for it is in your post.

Gustafson78

Maher covered the Boston tragedy very well, but afterwards, as always, was extremely funny. The imagined Michele Bachmann tribute to Margaret Thatcher was side-splitting.

JasonF

What is the deal with libertarians showing up in ridiculous leather jackets? Nice to know their fashion sense is stuck at age 15 just like their political philosophy.

Shady12

Can you remind me who had the leather jacket? I don't remember. I will say as a Libertarian, I don't have much fashion sense..but my political philosophy is badass, yo. And obviously my lingo is hip.

JasonF

Liz Mair. Nick Gillespie from Reason always wears one too.

As for your political philosophy, I'm always reminded of the quote about Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. But this isn't the place to debate the viability of libertarianism in a large, diverse society so I'll limit myself in this thread to laughing at ridiculous fashion choices (see also Cornell West's ubiquitous scarf).

brayzie

That analogy doesn't even work giving the background of what happened. The Bush Administration put out the Iraq War Resolution vote right before reelections for Congress. If you must use one, a better analogy would be a successful blackmail: if Democrats voted against it, their Republican rivals would use that vote against them in the upcoming elections to paint them as weak on terrorism. Which is why most of the Democrats up for re-election voted to grant the President power to declare war. Hilary and Biden, who I don't think we're up for reelection had presidential aspirations though. Also interesting was that Biden voted against going to war with Iraq when he had already invaded a neighboring country. Yet he voted to give Bush the authority to declare war.

Astrofan

Just watching the 7/26 show. I don't get what Bill was up to. He's got a progressive priest on who I thought was there to show how he fights for social justice. Instead Bill uses him to bring out his (correct in my view) anti-religious views. Why was this guy there--for a punching bag? And on the same show he has a guy who just wrote a book about Jesus. Yet he never really got him into the conversation on religion. He finally interjected himself in at the end of the discussion.

I can't believe that the Jesus book author actually said, "as the only immigrant on the panel." What, Bill and the other guys are native Americans?

mwbmis

Well, he was the only one of them not born in the United States. I do believe that would make him the only immigrant.

MikahC

There were a few news articles over the past week or so about how Reza Aslan was interviewed at Fox News. Specifically, he was repeatedly questions about what gives him the authority to write a book on Christianity given that he's a Muslim.

Personally, with an intelligent Muslim on the panel, I was hoping for Bill to get back to how Islam is an inherently evil religion. I can see how it'd be a bit easier to dish that out when there's nobody there to refute him. Having said that, at least he did invite an intelligent Muslim to be on the panel.

albert_m

What would be the context of that? Why would he bring up Islam.

If the author was making an argument for Islam as true and innocent etc etc, it would make sense, but there was no discussion like that.

MikahC

Bill doesn't need a context to discuss something he wants to discuss. He can simply decide he has the people to effectively and/or entertainingly discuss an issue and do so. But if you're living in a world where Bill only discusses things triggered by recent world events, I'll go with Egypt.

creekdipper

We are all immigrants on Mother Earth

arminius

We are made of star stuff, as is the earth.

dex14

dex14

Rypro 525

since Tim Robbins is a hardcore liberal, i'm kinda hoping he's on the panel

dex14

dex14

dex14

Josh-da-man

Richard Dawkins, Michael Moore, and Al Sharpton on the same show?

Atheist, Communist, and uppity black guy. This trifecta could induce strokes to certain tea bagger members of my family!