i love everyone involved, lewis black and the comedians, but this show is a disaster.

also, colbert rocks, i don’t even know what you are talking about,.

also, atheists don’t believe there is no god, we believe lack belief in a god. the minimum required for being an atheist is that, although it is usually called “agnostic,” (which really is more of a debating stage than a philosophy.) although i am the first to admit there are more extreme atheists out there. er, in here.

i consider myself an apathetic atheist.

Wow….you’ve convinced me. The Protestants in Britain killed 1 million Irish because they were Catholic. But who cares about that, we hate Catholics!

Whatever happened to live and let live. I though atheists would be leading the charge for this. Leave people alone.

And for those of you that don’t think its hate speech, your getting dangerously close. The Catholic Church wouldn’t use words like you do to describe your fellow human beings. The reality is that Catholics are an OK minority to bash…period. If only you made comments like this about Jews….

And speaking of Jews. Go research the inquisition. Its proven now that the numbers were vastly exaggerated. That’s just another anti-Catholic slander.

I wonder what would happen if it was the Root of All Evil: “Jews or Muslims”. Methinks, the show would be canceled.

That’s dedication, keep the faith brother!

I think the pedophilia scandal will go down in history as one of the stupidest and most corrupt moves in human history. The percentage of priests that did the bad thing was very small. I think it was less than five percent. The REAL scandal is what the church did next: They covered it up. (Haven’t these guys heard of Watergate?) The Catholic Church looks out for the Catholic Church. By that I mean the institution looks out for the institution, not its constituents.

And now dioceses are going bankrupt because of the actions of 1/20th of the priests. Stupid stupid stupid. Why should I respect these people?

Plus my family is from Ireland. I think it is fair to say that the Irish have done more for the Catholic Church than the Catholic Church has done for the Irish. Lots of pretty buildings were being built while people were dying for their faith.

That said, if someone says that the Catholic Church is made up of molesters, and he’s not saying it because of evidence he has but because he simply hates the catholic church, that would be hate speech. But if he has good evidence, and he’s not saying it out of hate but simply because it is something he observed, then it’s not hate speech. This is a problem, because there are times when we can’t distinguish the people who are saying something simply because they are hateful from the people who are saying something simply because they actually think it’s the truth and have good evidence that it is. For instance, there are some (not many) atheists who disparage religion simply because they hate it, but most atheists who criticize religion are not doing it hatefully, just fairly and strongly, because they think what they’re saying is the truth and, dare I say, have good evidence that it is.

Also, if anyone said that all catholics were molesters, or that all of any group were anything (that isn’t common in everyday society), then it would pretty much always be hate speech, because there’s almost never an instance where every individual in a group is the same as every other individual, except on matters that are orthodox or dogmatic for that particular group.

However, I do like that the show is actually incorporating the concept of “evil”. My generation is so culturally relativistic that it’s hard to get anyone to make any kind of moral judgements at all. While I do not believe there’s an absolute good or an absolute evil, I get frustrated when my fellow liberals extrapolate this kind of thinking into one where we take no stands at all. Everything is so wishy washy in our culture nowadays. Sure, there are many instances where we should be agnostic and completely uncertain, but there are also many instances where it is completely justified to feel that one is probably right and the others are probably wrong. For instance, I think that Islam is, by and large, wrong. It is mostly a religion of extremists. Not all Muslims are extremists, of course — it should go without saying. But at the same time that we’re being careful not to be racist we can still take a stand and say that most Muslims are fundamentalists. We don’t have to be vague and overly “fair” (and it isn’t being fair at all, is it? The only thing that’s truly fair is telling the truth… the whole truth.) It’s so frustrating, because we should be humble and we should realize that in any given circumstance we could easily be wrong, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t say that we could also be right. And when the evidence points overwhelmingly in that direction, we should not be scared to say that we are very likely correct.

You know what I mean?

Unfortunately, this show may not do so well with my generation. A lot of people may feel it’s too rude and that the comedians on the show are bigots. Oh well.

However, pointing at the Pope “wearing a dress” and condemning homosexuals isn’t even an argument and everyone knows it.

It’s a joke, son. The show is on Comedy Central.

Lighten up.

but if I say “I hate homos” (which I don’t) you would consider that hate speech. If someone says hateful, spiteful things about the Church, why is this not hate speech?

Hate speech (or, say, hate crimes) is designed to target a minority group and threaten them by making an example of one member of the group. This is why threatening/acting out against a small group of people who get discriminated against (say, homos, who die from violence at an alarming rate compared to their counterparts) is a lot worse than saying something about Catholics, who could damn protect their own.

The fact is, it is very easy to say “Priests f*ck little boys” and “The Spanish Inquisition was horrible…” and neglect the fact that the Church still does more than any other organization in the world to alleviate pain and suffering (even pain and suffering it may have had a hand in, at some point, creating).

I am curious what proof you have of this. And what do we mean by “church” here? The Catholic Church? If I accept that you are correct, and the Catholic church has alleviated the most suffering, that might be because they are so damn large- perhaps each individual Catholic only does a small amount of service, but because there are so many Catholics, that adds up to more service, while maybe individual Buddists do more per person.

Also, I would like to claim, sans evidence, that WOMEN do the most to alleviate suffering. I bet I am right, statistically.

As I am not a Catholic, I don’t agree with the condom issue, especially in the case of Africa.

Brilliant. But don’t you think that whole “can’t use condoms, AIDS-ridden Africa” thing might perhaps be cancelling out some of the suffering the Pope is ridding the world of? Foood for thought.

However, pointing at the Pope “wearing a dress” and condemning homosexuals isn’t even an argument and everyone knows it.

I agree. But condemning, say, transexuals for wearing the wrong outfits does make the whole thing a little hypocritical.

What is further, you can point to any organization and find some way in which that organization has helped screw up the world. Heck, if you shop at Wal-Mart, you’re helping to screw up the world.

I agree. Shop union stores, everyone! The difference, I suppose, is that no one is claiming Wal-mart has done the most to alleviate suffering of anyone ever (except WOMEN, as I already pointed out.)

It is also easy to chastise the Church while neglecting to put your money where your mouth is and reaching out to care for the fatherless and the widow.

I agree. B to the W, the fatherless and the widow? Can’t anyone survive without a man these days?

Dropping money into the Salvation Army bucket at Christmas time to alleviate any guilt and get into the Wal-Mart faster and continue oppressing underpaid laborers in China is not helping the world.

I do agree with you here.