Brad Pitt Just Got More Awesome

He seems like a Ron Paul guy.

qft

Well, I'll concede that you probably know more about Brad Pitt than I do.

Did any of you guys seem him on Real Time with Bill Maher on friday? IT WAS AMAZING!!!
1) he is the biggest celeb on real time in a while
2) what he said suprised even my dog

he said that he has no use for god, but USED to tolerate other peoples beleifs, but that since prop 8 and bill mahers film (a film he called an awakening) he no longer tolerates people who want to push their values onto others

he also discussed marijuana and bill talked about how brad rolled perfect joints

it was , in a word: AMAZING
you all owe it to yourselves to watch. i've NEVER seen a star of pitts calibar come out and say stuff like that about god in public before. he just went up in my estimation

whatever tone it was, it was a tone of which i strong approve. any major 20$ million a film moviestar who comes out as not just personally anti god, but anti christian activism is awesome in my book

He and Angelina Jolie were attached to a hypothetical film version of Atlas Shrugged for years. If he considers himself liberal, it's quite possible that nuanced political thought is not his strong suit.

I don't think he came off as anti-god or anti religion. He just doesn't want people pushing their values on him. Besides he said that on Bill Maher I don't think many moderate or nutso conservatives watch him. Well except me a moderate.

he called bill's film a clarion call adn said that he USED to be ok with people having different opinions than him on religion, but now he is through with it all. bills film said people who believe in religion are fools who are going to bring about the end of the world. if you say bills film was a "wake up call".... well i do not see how you can call it that and not have "woken up" to the fact religion is bad. bills film was anti religion. brad praised the ideas in bills film. therefore, brad is anti religion. i got a 780 verbal on my sats, and i am pretty sure the logic is sound there

Bill Maher is only slightly above Ayn Rand when it comes to reasoned political discourse, sadly.

I don't really expect awesome political insight from my movie stars, though, if they're against hating gays and can roll a good joint I'm happy.

that is a pretty silly statement. bill maher is the person whose politics i most agree with. name one thing about bill mahers positiopns that suggest "poorly reasoned political discourse".

It is much more in his attitude and rhetoric than his actual positions: he is unfailingly shrill, bullying and dismissive. He argues from the position of someone who's already got It All Figured Out and doesn't need to engage in actual debate. I mean Religolous is a great case in point - how is that movie ever gonna change anyone's mind or lend anything to the debate when all it's doing is shooting down the easiest of targets and using a 13 year old's arguments (hurhurhur believeing in Jesus is like believing in SANTA CLAUS!) to pat itself on the back? The militant atheist standpoint is pretty puerile in and of itself, but at least people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens frame it in slightly more nuanced terms than Maher does.

I mean, at the end of the day, he's a Bill O'Reilly for the left. And while some might see value in fighting fire with fire, I'd just rather see the discourse elevated on both fronts.

I love that he is rude adn a bully. The reality based world needs a bully on our side. i remember some woman being on the show a few years ago, and she started talking about the supposed WMDs in iraq, and bill just cuts her off, slams his fists on the desk "NO, THERE WERE'NT, AND WE ALL KNOW THERE WERENT LETS STOP THAT *BULLSHIT* --RIGHT--NOW!!!" and i fell in love with bill from that moment forward. fuck yeah, call people out on their bullshit. I love lawrence odonnel for this reason too

and religulous isnt about changing minds. if you believe in talking snakes, the movies point of view is "youre an idiot". the movie is about people who do not really believe in talking snakes standing up for themselves and for logic. its about getting the 16 % of america that is atheist out of the closet. if you believe people live inside whales , youre a lost cause.

It wasn't intended to change people's minds any more than the Ben Stein movie was (whatever it was called). Those movies are "preaching to the choir" movies, designed so that people who already hold the same belief can watch it and feel superior. People who think those movies are some sort of revelation are the target audience and didn't even realize it.

I'm boggled that people like Brad Pitt more because he's coming out with his beliefs. I don't understand why I should care at all about any celebrities religious beliefs, whatever they might be. At the end of the day, if they're making films I enjoy that's pretty much all that matters.

that is not true... the point of the movie was the speech bill gave at the end. if you have a brain, speak out, because the crazies will fuck us all.

and i care because i care about the planet and humankind. if a celeb like brad pitt can come out and say believing in talking snakes is dumb, maybe the world will be a little better off

jesus...

Oh yeah? Did you know that a couple of weeks ago, he came out in favor of Capital Letters?

Religulous wasn't about coverting anyone and it wasn't about 'preaching to the choir'. It was about giving the atheist movement a kick in the ass and getting it more into the public consciousness. If you asked Maher, he'd probably say he wanted people unafraid to make their (non)beliefs known in society. As someone fairly similar to Pitt's 80/20 stance, I'm pretty jazzed about Maher.

You'll watch a movie directed by somebody who forcibly sodomized an underage girl on it's own merits but won't watch a movie if it's affiliated with somebody who is Mormon. You're exactly the target audience of Bill's movie.

You're young and still figuring things out, while at the same time thinking you've got it all figured out. We've all been there. Of course, we didn't all feel like we needed to share the details with every soul we came in contact with.

Fucking 780, man. That's all I'm sayin.'

I don't mind a RIGHTEOUS OUTBURST happening every now and then - Shep Smith is pretty good at those, so's Rachel Maddow. But having it as a default setting means buying into this frat boy mentality where he who shouts loudest is automatically right and it becomes about personality, not the issues that are being discussed. Obviously Maher is mostly a comedian, so by no way should he feel forced to act as diplomatically as, say, Obama, but - look at Jon Stewart. Dude has right wing guests on his show every other day and he's almost never rude to them. At the end of the day, the dude calmly unpaking his opponent's arguments is always gonna look better than the dude yelling your ears off.

I don't really get your argument about Religolous - do you honestly believe that all american christians hold to a 100% solely literal interpretation of the bible and are thus "a lost cause"? And what do you suggest that 19% of atheists do about this?

Frankly, religion has been around since the dawn of mankind and I very much doubt that it's ever gonna go away. Being an atheist myself, I do find it very scary when religious zealotry starts to affect government and civil society as a whole: however, I belive that the best way to fight this is by showing where the extremism lies and hoping moderate christians see that this is not their cause, as opposed to just going BIG MAN IN THE SKY LOL and alienating most of the population.

:: drops needle onto broken record ::

Religion isn't the problem, religious literalism is the problem. People who perceive the metaphorical value in reading parables about talking snakes aren't the problem, people who think that the snakes actually talked are. People who take the extreme positions in the weird, twisted argument we insist on having about faith in this country - Joel Osteen, Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Pat Robertson and on and on - are the problem. They stifle meaningful discussion about faith and alienate people who actually want to talk in an intelligent fashion about belief.

edit - Or, you know, what Daniel said so eloquently up there.

he did no such thing, i've seen every episode of his show since katrina.

No kidding.

And I personally couldn't give less of a shit what Brad Pitt thinks, says, or does. His only entertainment value for me is watching his eyes disappear into that old man squint.

actually, if you look at statistics, a majority of americans believe all sorts of crazy stuff from the bible literally. also, a majority of americans are unsure if jews came before jesus.

Can you see, then, Kate, that the problem isn't the faith system, but the ignorance and cultural illiteracy of many Americans? An alarming number of Americans can't answer simple questions about our system of government. Does that mean democracy is bad?

It was on a CNN interview. He was pissed off and everything.

As you've shown no signs of having a sense of humor before now, I'll assume this was serious.

I'm also going to assume they started grading the SAT's on a curve.

yeah, I mean its cool that he's comfortable saying that stuff but I could really care less of his belief structure or lack there of.

1) i have shown i have a sense of humor. just look at some of my posts, a few are jokes (i posted a joke in the film anachronism thread).
2) i was joking, though not about never missing his show
3) i got my 780 on the old school hard SATs, the last year they administered them

maybe it does... i honestly do not know. i waffle between wanting democracy and then when i sober up and get a good look at america, i want KING obama to just shove health care down alabama's throat.

however, i also think an absolute belief in things that are not knowable (the divinity of jesus christ only being one example) is harmful to society and yourself. its not just the talking snake. the whole thing i am sick of.

Sources, please. I suggest starting here, since the Pew Research Center is a highly respected, non-partisan, non-advocacy group.

Bravo, very well put.

Atheism is an absolute belief in things that are not knowable.

It strikes me odd that we give people so much credibility when they claim to believe what the bible says on a "literal" level. In the first place, it's truly not possible. I mean, the book opens with two different accounts of creation. But, in the second place, it shows the ignorance on both sides of the equation about a book that clearly needs to be better understood by the average individual in order to help deal with its place in our society.

Also, more to the point, Maher is a contemptible asshole. It's made worse by the fact that I usually agree with him.

bill maher talked about it last week and cited the pew research center. it was his new rules.

"thats right, most americans, when faced with books called the old testament and the new testament.... are UNABLE to determin which one came first"

i know, im agnostic personally, but whatever

Now is really not the time to start trash-talking Alabama. You think you're sick of shit? Just fucking try me.

Also, not all people who follow a religion have an "absolute belief" in the conventions of that religion. Millions of very reasonable people who mind their own business consider their beliefs to be both a private matter and hardly absolute. Faith makes up the difference.

Well, I cannot pretend to tolerate people who believe in stuff that is just silly. i am sorry , private or not. i do not want to get into a big stink about it, but no, i will not pretend that i think its perfectly ok for someone to believe in stuff that is silly. i feel that if humanity is going to survive another thousand years, religion is going t need to go. private or not, it needs to go.


also, when i see the racism, ignorance, and homophobia that find themselves on regular display in the south in my own beloved new england, then i'll lay off alabama. untill then... fuck the south. trash talking alabama? uh, alabama trashed itself, i'm just talking about it.

Honey, I hate to break it to you, but Alabama hardly has a monopoly on racism, ignorance, and homophobia. I've seen plenty of it in New Hampshire, Maine, and Connecticut too. People just enjoy hating the South, and that speaks worse for you, not the region.

And I love that you "cannot pretend to tolerate" other people's private thoughts. I guess that makes you both nosy and a mind-reader.

No, he didn't. At least not in the version that's making the rounds on the web. He mentions a Gallup poll that says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth (which might be religious in origin, but is just as likely poor education in the sciences). Most of his percentages go unattributed.

More importantly, though - he doesn't make a case for all of these percentages having any causative or even correlative value. As one of the comments on the post says:

"One falsehood this article implies is that the 18% of Americans reported to believe the sun resolves the Earth are people who disagree with President Obama's policies. Stupid people vote for Republicans and Democratic party members. This has been proven by exit polling data as well as various man-on-the-street interviews."

Uuuuh...Kate, you do know that Obama is religious, right?

Also, shit, I don't even live in the USA and I know about Boston's reputation as a city with its fair share of racist problems! Rule of thumb, decrying any particular region as worthless because of ignorance or bigotry is...well, bigoted.

Alright Devin, off with the mask. Time to accept a hard-earned round of applause.

yeah, we enjoy the fact part of this country is so backwards that they manage to hold the entire nation back. i REALLY enjoy that.

are you kidding?

did maine go to war to keep slaves? how about new hampshire? or connecticut? no? sorry then, youre more racist than we are. i think the fact i hate racist people .... STILL speaks worse for the racists than the fact i dislike racists

i've never heard anyone say nigger in my entire life, but campaign 08? you saw videos of people using it constantly,a dn they continue to. the south is backwards, poorly educated, and hateful. those are not opinions, they are facts gathered through statistics and test scores. PERIOD.

Nearly three straight weeks of backlash.

i believe obama is faking his religious convictions.

boston had problems, but we never lynched people in boston took photos of the mutilated bodies, and sent them out as postcards to our nearest and dearest with captions like "look at the BBQ we had!".... the south though? yeah... the south did that shit.

also, sorry if i do not care about being called intollerant for not tollerating intolernece

It's starting to unravel a bit, though. Kinda like the new kid in school who tries to pretend he's from Australia, but the act starts showing cracks as the first month passes and he can't keep the accent straight...

Yeah, I'm not sure why Devin jumped in to tell people to back off when he's normally the first to out a troll.