I don't have cable.
Ah yes, the universal armchair sport of tearing other people down for their accomplishments. I like what I've seen of Maher. I find him consistently funny more often than a lot of people. My personal favorite though is Craig Ferguson. He never fails to crack me up.
I would be most happy if someone could explain to me in rational and persuasive terms what makes a religion a religion. I thought I knew once. I concluded that my Taoism, which is often labeled philosophical Taoism to contrast with the really, really religious Taoisms, I was convinced that, despite being
less religious, it too was a religion. Now I don't know. I'm hesitant to exclude my Taoism as not being religious, purely on principle, not for any secondary benefits. But I'm finding that, given the reasons I include it among religions, I likely would have to pull atheism and secular humanism under the umbrella based on the same principles. I frequently encounter atheists and humanist who clumsily attack religion, theistic religion and the Abrahamanic faiths as if these terms were idempotent and interchangeable. They're not. I just the other day had to beat back a Buddhist who was trying to assert that religion entails having weekly meetings to reinforce the memes in the minds of the flock. No. Just no. Perhaps many, or even most religions do this, but having weekly meetings is not a diagnostic feature of religion unless we want to include Alcoholics Anonymous and weekly staff meetings at work as religious functions. Moreover, some thinking I did yesterday leaves me with a hunch that, once the decks are cleared of bad thinking and trash, any definition which would successfully demarcate what we normally consider religion, would most likely also suck atheism and secular humanism into its wake. I'm not interested in presenting the arguments formally, but needless to say, these conclusion throw a massive spanner in any attempt I would make at arriving at a robust and satisfactory definition. Maybe there just isn't one, and case by case interpretation is necessary; I'm not sure, if, if that is the case, atheism and humanism will fare any better at avoiding the net under those conditions either.
