I’m a big fan of Stephen Colbert and have been ever since the early days of the Colbert Report. When he announced that he was leaving Comedy Central and killing his satirical character to take over the Late Show from David Letterman on CBS, I was distressed. And when the Colbert Report finally did end, a yawning Report-shaped hole opened up in my evenings that has yet to be filled. I’m also a (somewhat conflicted) fan of Bill Maher. I watch Real Time religiously despite the fact that I find his views on religion to be unsophisticated and his ideas about Islam in particular to be downright bigoted. It was therefore with great excitement that I pressed play on my Tivo to watch Bill Maher’s November 16th appearance on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The segment is worth watching in its entirety as Colbert is one of the best interviewers on TV and his improvisational skills are formidable. Maher is no slouch on his feet either, but the part of the exchange that was most riveting to me was when they got to religion.
Colbert: Bill-they say at a dinner party you should never talk about sex, politics, or religion. Have you ever been invited to a dinner party in your life?
Maher: [Laughing] That’s a great question. Yeah.
Colbert: Are there things you won’t talk about?
Maher: I probably wouldn’t be invited to your dinner party, because we’re very opposite.
Colbert: Really? How so? How are we opposite? Really?
Maher: You’re married and religious…
Colbert: Yeah, I’m married and I give religion a shot. Yeah. I give it a shot.
Maher: I thought you were a practicing Catholic.
Colbert: I am. It doesn’t mean I’m good at it.
(Audience laughs)
Colbert: I suck. I suck as a Catholic. You were raised Catholic, right?
Maher: I was raised Catholic
Colbert: Come on back, Bill! The door is always open. Golden ticket, right before you. All you have to do is humble yourself before the presence of the Lord, admit that there are things greater than you in the Universe that you do not understand and salvation awaits you. Take Pascal’s Wager. If you’re wrong, you’re an idiot. But if I’m right, you’re going to hell.
(Audience laughs)
Maher: I do admit there are things in the Universe I don’t understand. But my response to that is not to make up silly stories.
(A small, but vocal minority of the audience applaud)
Colbert: Some of them are pretty good stories, Bill.
Maher: Or to believe intellectually embarrassing myths from the Bronze Age. But you believe whatever you want, Stephen.
(Audience laughs)
Colbert: Well yeah, I have a connection to our ancestors…
Maher: Sure. These were men who did not know what a germ or an atom was, or where the sun went at night and that’s where you’re getting your wisdom. Anyway, lets not argue…
(Audience laughs)
Colbert: I like it. I like it. I could eat a big bowl of this. This is good. It’s tasty. You see, my religion teaches me humility in the face of this kind of attack.
Maher: I see that. You brought it up!
Colbert: I didn’t bring anything up.
Maher: You gave me a big lecture on come back to the Church!
Colbert: I did not give…I gave you an invitation. A lecture? It’s an invitation! What are you talking about? This guy gave me a huge lecture about going to dinner.
(Audience laughs)
Colbert: I’ll eat what I want, thank you. I’ll eat what I want. Italian? Italian food? How dare you?!
Maher: I’ve had more inviting invitations, but okay.
As it happens, my thinking about Life the Universe and Everything is closer to Bill Maher’s than it is to Stephen Colbert’s, but I think that Colbert got the better of him here. There was a moment when the energy shifted palpably and Maher became incredibly defensive. And that moment was born out of a basic misunderstanding. When Colbert extended his “invitation” to Maher to come back to the Catholic Church, he was joking. It was a silly pastiche of what religious people say to lapsed members of their faith. But this is one subject that Bill Maher does not have a sense of humor about and it flew right over his head. He took this instead as an attack on his worldview and responded by ridiculing Colbert’s faith. Colbert brilliantly countered by praising Maher’s wit and pointing out that his ability to enjoy it came from the very faith that Maher was mocking.
Colbert both won the exchange and demonstrated a big problem with the discourse of New Atheism. Not a problem of substance so much as a problem of style. In fairness, it’s a problem that transcends the theist-atheist divide and should be thought of as a human problem. Namely, our difficulty in having a sense of humor about our foundational beliefs. We can all take a page out of the Colbert playbook on this one. Cultivating an ability to laugh about our foundational beliefs is an important step towards making the world a better and safer place.
https://youtu.be/IFNHLTSKRd0