Bill Maher: Atheist Day
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/15
Bill Maher made some commentary on the need for an inclusion of the atheist population in the United States, recently. Naturally, as with many things, he is factual on the general point and wrong on the minutiae. Is that for the sake of the joke, or is it more due to the superficiality of his views on things? Likely, as usual, it’s both.
Maher opened, “Atheists, we are approaching a third of the population now. I should not have to beg for this, for God’s sake. It is outrageous. There are this many of us, and there is still zero representation in government. Congress has 535 members, and only a handful will even sheepishly admit they are religiously unaffiliated. The Supreme Court is two Protestants, one Jew, and six people more Catholic than the Pope.”
The fact is 28% of Americans do identify as religiously unaffiliated as a standard category in American census data or those who work on getting the demographic data on Americans. However, this accounts, not for the number of atheists but, for the number of religiously unaffiliated, which is a larger category than atheists alone.
It is atheists, agnostics, or “nothing in particular.” Atheists are abigger minority within the United States, but are less of a big minority than Maher’s joke may indicate. His general idea is to argue for an Atheist Day, which is important.
However, Armin Navabi’s Atheist Republic has been calling March 23rd “Atheist Day.” American atheists need a national day. I get it. However, for the most part, as with most groups wanting some increased representation, they organized and fought for their time to shine each year.
Maher continued, “Even intellectual presidents like Obama, who admit to being secular humanists, have to pretend to be religious. No one has been able to admit their shameful secret: I don’t believe in ghosts. Next Sunday is Easter, so enjoy. First you’ve heard of it? Okay. Yeah, enjoy it that’s your thing: bunny rabbits that shit eggs to celebrate the son of God. Whatever floats your ark. It is not fair that people who belong to one of the big religions get this cosmic personal day where the world revolves around them. I mean, here we are in the middle of the great egg shortage, and yet next Sunday we are going to take the few eggs we have and hide them in the yard.”
This claim about Obama may not necessarily be true, as he wrote in Dreams from My Father. His mother was a “witness for secular humanism.” is that claiming oneself as a secular humanist? No, it’s sloppy history to make a joke and line of an act work.
“There is also now a movement for schools to officially recognize Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and I am all for it, or anything that gets our fat kids to eat less. While approximately three million Americans celebrate Ramadan, 100 million say they have no religion at all,” Maher said, “Where is our day? Is it really so much to ask that this many people get one day a year when we recommit ourselves to observable reality? One day with no atonements, no corpse reanimation? No fasting, no tree in your house, no big rock to circle, no dirt on your forehead, no candles to light, and please, God, no fruitcakes.”
This one is simply rhetorical and funny, and grounded in the fact of the United States as an obese country. It never seems good to shame someone for being overweight, but it also appears never good to deny the reality of a shorter lifespan and a reduced healthy life for most people who have higher-than-average BMIs or for a population who has a generally unhealthy waistline.
Maher said, “Just a yearly three-day weekend to celebrate your deeply held belief that with Monday off you can drink on Sunday night. And get to sleep in because there is no place to gather. To affirm we all believe the same things. We know what we believe and what we don’t believe. We don’t need to rub elbows with other people who don’t believe it too. We don’t need to commercialize our holiday like all the other religions do. Atheist Day is about not buying something. Like virgin birth, I am not buying it. We have the numbers. We can do this. The fastest-growing religious group in the United States is Nones. No, not the kind who used to beat you with a ruler for being left-handed. I mean people who, when asked how much they want to be involved with a religion, say none.”
He’s got a solid point here. In general, those without a religious commitment has a less burdensome life. That’s what I have generally seen; our lives only tend to be more terrible with the imposition into our lives from some individuals who happen to be religious who are cretins. It’s not enough thtat they believe and practice it, but it’s that they not only won’t not proselytize. It’s that they can’t not. The God of the Universe (TM) demands it. As Nietzsche reminds us, ‘It is not their love for men, rather it is the impotence of their love that hinders Christians of today from burning us.’
“The unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular, has risen from 5% in 1972 to 15% in 2005 to 32% today. You are welcome. Lest you think it is only young, educated white liberals, no. Just about everybody is losing their religion, or as I call it, holy ghosting. The average age of a None is 43. A third are people of color. A quarter voted for Trump. Seventy percent do not have a four-year college degree. Millennials are the first generation that are less than a majority Christian. Their idea of hell is a coffee shop with no Wi-Fi. When asked how often they go to church, 34% of younger millennials answered seldom/never or don’t know. Don’t know? Hey kids, going to church is like having an orgasm. If you didn’t know you did, you didn’t.”
Maher then leaves the earlier point about a third of the population as atheists out of the comedic rhetoric and works to something more factual. Namely, that about a third of the American population is religiously affiliated. The linked text at the top is to the Pew Research data from January, 2024 referencing the 2023 data. Maher’s research team may have messed up. The only 32% religiously unaffiliated that I could find was NBC News reference Asian Americans, not Americans in general. Unfortunately, even when speaking on more comfortable grounds, he’s getting the details more than a little wrong. The real point is there as about 1/3rd are religiously unaffiliated, but the particular point of 32% is false. It’s true. Atheism, as Dr. Sam Harris, noted in one debate, accurately, atheism is, for all intents and purposes, devoid of content. Philosophically, it has content. In practical terms, it is, for most.
Maher continued, “That is another great thing about Atheist Day. You don’t have to fake it. You don’t even have to be an atheist to enjoy it. Just like you don’t have to be Christian to enjoy Christmas. I still love Christmas. You don’t have to be an atheist to celebrate Atheist Day. I’d like it to be the one day a year that the devout can get a little taste of what it’s like to live your life without some mythical daddy figure judging and condemning you for being the exact person he made you. This day should be a day for believers to stop and ask yourselves, why? Why make up a being who is constantly disappointed in you? You don’t need it. You’ve got your wife.”
This is straight funny man schtick and a good play on some tropes around a hypothetical federal atheist day. It’s true. Why not? Why not have a day for atheists, or the religiously unaffiliated generally speaking? No one is coerced into doing anything in particular, as simply another day continues. There is a lot of work that can be done on that day and not wasted. Most people waste a good morning or even a whole day a week in worship. One day in a year is hardly a sacrifice to make a more equally represented society.
“And your parents, your siblings, your coworkers, your trainer when you don’t give 110%. There are plenty of people right here on earth who will gladly make you feel like a lame incompetent fuckup. Why make up one more? It’s like adding an extra mother-in-law. Why always be tormented? I better not make Jesus cry, baby Jesus cry. Why? Is he sitting behind you on a plane? Wouldn’t you like one day, one goddamn day in the year, when for 24 hours you can tell your god to climb down off your ass? Because trying to please a man who’s not there sets you up for a lifetime of misery. Just ask Tiffany Trump.”
Being an eternal liberal, Maher, naturally, must take a stab at the family member of Trump, which is a rather low blow, I think. But it’s, at the same time, not beyond him.
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