Bill O'Reilly and Bill Maher discussing religion is like a cow and a donkey discussing physics

Really. I'm not being mean. Watch this:


Embarrassing. I'm being honest. It's embarrassing for both because anyone with a Sunday School education knows neither of these two have a clue what they are talking about. O'Reilly gets some of it, but I've long maintained he knows little factual information about the faith he so often references. Whether because he wants to walk a thin line for ratings, or really doesn't know is beyond me.
Maher, on the other hand, doesn't even get as much as O'Reilly. From his 'God wrote a book' (even fundamentalists acknowledge the human authorship side of things), to his repeated inaccuracies (the Sabbath in the Old Testament would be Saturday, not Sunday Bill), his ignorance is nerve grating.

This illustrates two major problems in our modern discourse. First, so much of it is framed by people who just don't know. Whether these two, or Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh, or Keith Olbermann, or Rick Sanchez, or Anderson Cooper, or Joy Behar - these folks often use their platforms to shove their opinions, some in the guise of news casters, and frequently display an impatience for any facts that suggest they could be wrong.

The other problem is with modern atheism. Yes, there are atheists out there who are informed, rational, and insightful with their opinions and beliefs. You don't hear about them, of course, because there is nowhere in our modern debate for calm and rational discourse. Instead you have Bill Maher whose ignorance about the subject of religion is unparallelled. Compared to his grasp of religion, Glenn Beck comes off as a Rhodes Scholar.

But Maher is, sadly, not alone. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Meyers - these well known modern atheists frequently display a horrendous lack of knowledge about religion, history, philosophy, and a host of other disciplines. Some, such as Dawkins, at least get their basic facts right most of the time, even if their interpretations display a sorrowful lack of understanding and comprehension of disciplines outside of their own pet subjects.

But others, such as Hitchens or Maher, are the equivalent of the very thing they mock: uneducated and ill-informed fundamentalists who believed fairy stories and false tales because they want to. Filled to the brim with falsehoods and errors, they nonetheless plow forward, assured that too many atheists today are like so many others in our world: they care not one rip for facts or data, they simply want to be told what they want to hear, lies and falsehoods being as good as anything.