Back in my Christian days, this troubled me as well. I would read the Bible, and though it happened in strange, miraculous contexts, god still spoke to people in the conventional sense. Moses saw a burning bush, but still, quite literally, heard god speak. Jesus had the dove, but god still said, apparently in a loud, booming voice, “this my begotten son with whom I am well pleased” (paraphrased). I would read these pasages and still believe that “god spoke to my heart”, yet wonder why god had given us the silent treatment for 2,000 years.

Despite Huckabee’s troubling answers and Maher’s flawed perspective of what it means to be an atheist, I’ll agree that it is refreshing to see the civility and kudos to the Governor for having a level of respect that wouldn’t have been found with many of his FOX news counterparts.

I think Maher says:

This movie is not an atheistic screed, it’s not saying I know the true, and there is not God.

And it’s not the first time, he’s used atheist to mean that a few times now.

Maher still wrongly defines atheist as someone who categorically denies God’s existence (in other words, saying “There is no God” instead of “I don’t believe in God”).

In fact, Maher doesn’t define atheism that way in the clip. Around 04:25 he says

[This movie] is not saying I know what the truth is and that there is no God. That’s not what I’m saying because I feel that would mirror the kind of certainty that I think is so wrong about religion. What I say is ‘I don’t know, and you don’t know either.’

That’s very different from the view attributed to him.

The point being that God doesn’t just let us have the choice to follow him or not, but actively hides and obfuscates his own existence. He doesn’t want you to follow him because you have objective evidence of his existence and like what you see, but you’ve got to follow him without evidence and without any idea of which of the many choices of God he actually is. That’s not just keeping the “follow or not” decision unbiassed, but it makes it a “which God? roulette wheel, where you gamble your life against eternal hell. Nice.

I don’t know and neither do you!

He also changes positions throughout, several times taking the position of “belief in belief”, ignoring that religions make mutually exclusive claims, and defining “true” religion not by the claims, but whether they commit violence. Basically it’s OK to believe whatever you like as long as you don’t act immorally. What’s immoral? Well, you see, morals come from God, and God said… Don’t get caught by this facade of relativism, like almost all “relativists” they’re only adopting it at times when it is conveniant.

Bill Maher knows full well that most self defined atheists don’t claim to know the non-existance of any deity. Maybe he’s just using language his audience, many religious, will understand. Alternatively, he’s a dick.

I think Maher might be overstating the atheism in Western Europe. Also, while they may not believe in Gods some places, that doesn’t stop them believing in elves and trolls (Nordic), energies and auras (hippies), and witchcraft (pagan/wiccan).

Fun fact: Cannabis isn’t legal in Amsterdam, it’s decriminalized (unpunishable) in licensed coffee shops.

Huckabee strangely implies it is up to others to do the questioning. Why can we not find one fundamentalist Christian who is not intellectually lazy to present their case?