Comments by "wvu05" (@wvu05) on "Bill Maher Fan Can’t Understand Why People Don’t Think ‘Real Time’ Is Funny" video.

Indeed. I got off the Maher train a few years ago as well. Probably my last straw was the weird Klo-boner.
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@TD Indeed. A lot of the new atheists don't realize that they are just as much fundamentalists as they people they claim to hate. In Religulous, Bill Maher basically insisted that Christians had to use the fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible or we weren't being honest.
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@Charliefox71 That is not atheism. That is agnosticism. Atheism says, "I know there is nothing beyond this dimension."
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@Charliefox71 I've known plenty of atheists, and they have all to a person said, "There is no Higher Being." By definition, that is not saying that you just want proof.
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@A86 Indeed. I dealt with one of the above who got mad when I pointed out that what he was describing was agnosticism rather than atheism, because once you think you have an answer, by definition you aren't "just asking for proof" any longer. The irony is that my brother abandoned the faith of his youth, but not the fundamentalism, while I abandoned the fundamentalism but not the faith. I have heard from many a people that I am not taking the Bible seriously and lying about having faith because I take the position of inspired rather than inerrant, whereas the latter is only a 200-year-old position. My denomination is 400 years old, so a majority have clearly disagreed with it in our history.
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@A86 Indeed. It is incredibly frustrating dealing with people who bid a hasty retreat the instant someone says, "Well, you believe that something comes from nothing." If someone takes that position, that is their right. I've also dealt with the ones who (not realizing their own fundamentalism) insist that they want freedom but don't want anyone else to have it. I'm not talking about separation of church and state (which I fully support), but those who want to eradicate religious beliefs and not realizing that would lead to a "Go God Go" situation. The absolute most annoying that I heard was Dawkins insisting on The Colbert Report that you can't make an argument for a higher being outside of time. Pretty much every theistic faith that acknowledges a beginning argues that there is something out of time. That would be like a fundamentalist saying "You can't use the Big Bang Theory in your argument." Or, you can annoy all the fundamentalists, theistic and atheistic alike by telling them that you think "Let there be light" and the Big Bang Theory are the same thing ;-) If people come at with an honest perspective (even if it means willing to admit weaknesses in an argument) and a healthy respect for the other person, it really doesn't have to be a powder keg at all.
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@RobertSmith-lg7jp Atheism is a religion that doesn't realize it is a religion. Given that the latest line is "we just want proof," when that is agnosticism, there is also a lot of dishonesty about what a lot of them really are. And the ones who still fall into the fundamentalist worldview are the people who basically said, "I disagree with how the fundamentalists said what Christianity had to be, but I still accept their framing." I've had more than my fair share of discussions with people like that over the years.
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@John Dew Depends on the type of agnostic. If you are open to the idea of a higher being or just think it is unknowable, that is far different than saying that there is no God.
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