I had to take a look at this thread to see why it keeps going, and I see much of it is responding to a Trump cultist. For the same reason, both the cultist and Maher deserve to be ignored. For the same reason, Maher and Trump cultists will never be moved to think due to valid criticism.
I have zero interest in Maher. He is a phony both-sider, and worse, a core longtime ideologue of the selfish libertarian stripe (of the idiotic, Ayn Rand variety--I am not digressing on that here), and I really don't care if he is an open atheist like I am. I don't want him speaking for me on that or anything else. Sometimes the worst thing going is someone who agrees with you on one or a few topics for valid reasons, and is wrong on a dozen more with no reasoning at all. Here is one of dozens of examples, very like the imbecile Joe Rogan, if not exactly that ridiculously stupid, of bowing down to dangerous falsehoods. A good article excerpt on him:
"The autism issue, they certainly have studied it a million times… and yet, there’s all these parents who say, I had a normal child, got the vaccine… this story keeps coming up. It seems to be more realistic to me, if we’re just going to be realistic about it.”
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Maher arrogantly thinks he is smarter and has a more thoughtful approach to medicine than the world’s medical experts who have dedicated their lives to thinking carefully about medicine. Do tell, Maher – we should take family history and individual medical history into account when individualizing treatment to specific patients based on current evidence? Interesting idea. You should give lectures at medical schools and share your wisdom. Perhaps publish your critique in a peer-reviewed medical journal. We’re all fascinated by your uncanny insight (am I laying it on too thick?).
As further evidence of Maher’s guru-like medical insight, he then goes on to counter the mountain of scientific evidence he admits to with, “It seems more realistic to me…” Sure, there many be many scientific studies showing no correlation between vaccines and autism – there is simply no signal in the data – but on the other hands we have these anecdotal reports. Let’s be realistic here. If there’s one thing that history has shown, it’s that anecdotal reports are entirely unreliable, subjective, biased, and misleading…but that doesn’t really support his point, so just forget that. Let’s get back to Maher’s subjective, poorly informed, non-expert feelings.
So what is Maher’s major malfunction? Again – based on the evidence in the public domain – what I have observed is that Maher does not really follow a process of logic, science, and critical thinking. He apparently takes positions for other reasons, based on ideology with a huge helping of arrogance. He then defends his positions with logic and critical thinking as much as he can. So when his positions happen to be reasonable, he sounds like a champion of critical thinking. When he defends the scientific consensus, like on global warming, or when he takes on religion-based anti-science, he champions skepticism. But then he pivots to positions that are not based on the scientific consensus, and he engages in willful motivated reasoning, untempered by humility.
Bill Maher is a divisive figure among skeptics because he is somewhat of a contradiction. On the one hand he is capable of taking down certain forms of irrationality with humor and satire in a very effective way. He is a warrior and an entertainer, and when he is championing something we agree...
theness.com
