Bill Maher on Daily Show

Maher and Jon Stewart talked about how religion gives comfort to people. Isaac Asimov said:

It is no defense of superstition and pseudoscience to say that it brings solace and comfort to people... If solace and comfort are how we judge the worth of something, then consider that tobacco brings solace and comfort to smokers; alcohol brings it to drinkers; drugs of all kinds bring it to addicts; the fall of cards and the run of horses bring it to gamblers; cruelty and violence bring it to sociopaths. Judge by solace and comfort only and there is no behavior we ought to interfere with.

Jon said that he understood how someone in prison might need faith but there are alternatives: "Don't believe them, don't fear them, don't ask anything of them" was Alexander Solzhenitsyn's mantra that helped him survive the Gulag.

According to the review in Village Voice the movie bombs. I think Julia Sweeney probably made the point better because she is less caustic. I don't know why I am posting on religion anyway when everyone should choose their own and then shut up about it instead of trying to convert people. My apologies.