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Christ for President in Religulous


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Guest Speed Racer
i don't really think tweedy agrees that believing in god is stupid

 

There's a big difference between believing in god, and believing in organized religion. From what I've heard, the movie explores the latter.

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Richard Dawkins, atheist extraordinaire has tried to spark an Atheists for Jesus campaign - I could get behind that.

 

Dawkins:

 

I am no memetic engineer, and I have very little idea how to increase the numbers of the super nice and spread their memes through the meme pool. The best I can offer is what I hope may be a catchy slogan. 'Atheists for Jesus' would grace a T-shirt. There is no strong reason to choose Jesus as icon, rather than some other role model from the ranks of the super nice such as Mahatma Gandhi (not the odiously self-righteous Mother Teresa, heavens no). I think we owe Jesus the honour of separating his genuinely original and radical ethics from the supernatural nonsense which he inevitably espoused as a man of his time. And perhaps the oxymoronic impact of 'Atheists for Jesus' might be just what is needed to kick start the meme of super niceness in a post-Christian society. If we play our cards right - could we lead society away from the nether regions of its Darwinian origins into kinder and more compassionate uplands of post-singularity enlightenment?

 

I think a reborn Jesus would wear the T-shirt. It has become a commonplace that, were he to return today, he would be appalled at what is being done in his name, by Christians ranging from the Catholic Church to the fundamentalist Religious Right. Less obviously but still plausibly, in the light of modern scientific knowledge I think he would see through supernaturalist obscurantism. But of course, modesty would compel him to turn his T-shirt around: Jesus for Atheists.

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There's a big difference between believing in god, and believing in organized religion. From what I've heard, the movie explores the latter.

no, it's an attack on both organized religion and god in general. in the movie, maher comes off as an atheist that thinks god is just an imaginary friend in the sky.

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no, it's an attack on both organized religion and god in general. in the movie, maher comes off as an atheist that thinks god is just an imaginary friend in the sky.

He may come off as an atheist in the movie (I haven't seen it yet, but I plan to) but there are numerous instances in both print and television where Maher says that he doesn't really know for sure. I can't really argue with that.

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I just saw the movie tonight and yelled "holy shit, this is Wilco" out-loud when it started playing, meaning to say it only in my head.

 

 

That being said, I think if one were to pay attention to what Bill was actually saying in the movie and watched his show on HBO, they'd know he basically comes from the standpoint of being skeptical of people who believe they know for sure. He's selling doubt, as he says. He's not anti god I don't think, He's anti stupidity. He's anti certainty and he's anti pointlessness. Good movie for sure, but frightening. I can't believe how many people are nuts...

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On the question of "what if Jesus were alive today?" I have always loved the Guthrie song on this topic.

 

 

Lyrics for "Jesus Christ":

 

Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land

A hard-working man and brave

He said to the rich, "Give your money to the poor,"

But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave

 

Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand

His followers true and brave

One dirty little coward called Judas Iscariot

Has laid Jesus Christ in His Grave

 

He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff

He told them all the same

"Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor,"

And they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

 

When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around

Believed what he did say

But the bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross,

And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

 

And the people held their breath when they heard about his death

Everybody wondered why

It was the big landlord and the soldiers that they hired

To nail Jesus Christ in the sky

 

This song was written in New York City

Of rich man, preacher, and slave

If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee,

They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.

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Getting tiresome indeed

 

The proliferation of such threads - the fact that you continue entering into them against your own will (?) or all of the above?

 

(With all due respect) I ask only because though I agree this could have been posted in the

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I kind of thought this was a slightly-different topic from the other threads, because it was more about the Maher movie and the appearance of Theologians in the movie.

 

That said, I quit reading the other one about 30 pages ago, so maybe it's about the Maher movie now.

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No, there certainly are not useless threads started on this board by anyone. :stunned Nothing cluttering up the board anywhere else but here. :stunned All threads outside of here are full of thick ass substance. I can smell the substance from here.

 

 

I like this thread because it's a place to discuss this movie and Bill, a movie I finally get to see Saturday night. I'll be back...

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Or, point it out to the person, so maybe next time they will use the search function and avoid cluttering up the forum with needless extra threads.

 

Or that, if you really feel the need to point that sort of thing out.

 

1010_hall_monitor_cartman.jpg

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I like this thread because it's a place to discuss this movie and Bill, a movie I finally get to see Saturday night. I'll be back...

Fine, but it doesn't belong in here.

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Isn't 'Just A Fan' the appropriate place for a thread about a Wilco song appearing in a movie? Of course it is. There seems to be so much posted that is thinly-veiled adversarial falderal. If I could find a betting parlor that would take book on the likelihood of specific posters posts being replied to by other specific posters no matter the thread's subject matter, I'd be able to afford to have Bill Maher and Wilco play my back garden. If anything clutters up the board, it's that type of nonsense.

 

Back to the thread. I would have probably also said 'Holy shit' or somesuch out loud! I wonder if Maher is a Wilco fan?

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A few statements which should be obvious on their face: first of all, this discussion may become tiresome at times, but it should never feel tired to any of us who have a personal stake in it. And I'm pretty sure we all do, without exception.

 

Secondly, this is a very brave movie from a very brave director (Larry Charles, who helmed and also co-wrote Bob Dylan's brilliant but misunderstood cult classic "Masked and Anonymous", as well as the hilarious, bawdy and genuinely provocative "Borat"), so I think it deserves at least a modicum of respect from those who disagree with its thesis. I saw Charles and Maher on CBC's The Hour, and Bill said something that resonated with me, as I suspect it did for a lot of atheists: that he needn't condescend to the religious by treating them with kid gloves, because they've certainly never bothered to extend that courtesy to those of us who have outgrown their fairy tales. They don't tend to murder or torture us quite like they used to do, but they sure do love to stigmatize us, even in the 21st Century.

 

Thirdly, I don't think it behooves anybody to speculate idly about Jeff Tweedy's thoughts or non-thoughts on the nature of religion or Maher's interrogation techniques. Whether he agrees with them principally or not is for him to comment on, and I think he's clearly not opposed to the movie's taboo-busting aspects if he's licensed a song for use in the flick.

 

(And personally, I would never wear an "atheists for Jesus" shirt. Have you ever read the New Testament? The guy was a murderer and a jerk, not to mention a bigot! To hell with him. Er, no pun intended, of course... :dontgetit )

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Sorry for the duplicate forum. I thought this one could be specific to the song being in the movie. And besides, it's a forum...

 

I wish it could be what you had in mind. We should have a thread called Wilco - Songs in Movies and Television Shows or something like that.

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