During an interview on Friday’s Real Time, Bill Maher and scientist Bill Nye agreed “religion is the enemy of science,” while lambasting Republicans, Christianity, and creationism.
MAHER: I mean, I read that you were in, I think it was Texas and you quoted Genesis ‑‑
NYE: Oh, yes. Yeah.
MAHER: About, and the Genesis something like God made two great lights, the sun and the moon. And you pointed out to the crowd that the moon, of course, is not a light itself. It's just reflecting the light off the sun. And they (inaudible) it and stormed out of the room.
NYE: A woman by the wrist, took them out.
MAHER: Right.
NYE: Which was kind of cool but also troubling.
MAHER: But you cannot see that and not know that religion is the enemy of science and people say you can reconcile science and faith, no, we can't.
NYE: Well, the whole thing is in science you when you have claims. That's the big deal. So if you claim the Earth is 10,000 years old, that's just wrong. I mean, Rubidium becomes strontium and has this extraordinary half‑life and that's how we determine threes things. And the same way, as I said at that thing in Waco, I said it looks to me like whoever wrote this didn't really have it right. And bear in mind, everybody, this has been translated I don't know how many times from Sanskrit. Maybe the guy was pretty savvy actually.
“And he's talking here again about the verse: ‘And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night,’” Pat explained.
“It is a reflection of light,” Glenn continued. “It's a light, when you look up to it at night it is a light. It gives light. It's not its own light. I mean, how simpleminded do you have to be?”
Stu was quick to point out the pathetic nature of Maher and Nye’s claims. Their argument has been reduced to analyzing ancient Biblical texts that have been translated countless times in order to claim Christians believe the moon is an actual light source, while simultaneously nit-picking about dates.
“Where they're saying, ‘Oh, yeah? Well, the moon isn't its own light. It's reflective light. And even though that's not at all specified in the Bible, we believe that's what they meant. So therefore Christians are idiots.’ If that's your argument, you're a moron. You're just a moron,” Stu said. “And it's like when you focus on things like that, it shows you have nothing. t shows you have zero in your weaponry because if that's the way you're going to attack Christianity, ‘Oh, well, their dates are different than ours.’ Who would care about that? That's not the point of the Bible.”
The teachings of science and religion have always had their differences, but, as Glenn explained, it is absolutely necessary for religion and science to coexist.
“Here's the real argument on why religion and science must coexist: Because if man rules himself, then man can do anything and can make it up as he goes along – there are no ethics anymore… It's just man saying, ‘Well, we can do it. Let's do it,’” Glenn explained.
“Well, that's why religion is important with science. Now there is a balance on everything… If you have somebody who is a religious zealot, who says we are not looking into anything scientific, well, then that's a crazy person in religion. If you have somebody who's in religion and says, ‘Yes, God created man. God created the intellect. God created all of the things on Earth, and we're supposed to be good stewards of it, and we're supposed to use our brains and our talents and our resources. God created the conditions for us to create medicine.’ So we're supposed to do these things. It's good for us to explore these things,” he continued. “However, are there limits? Of course there are limits. There are limits to everything.”
“There's a balance to everything. And that's where science and religion coexist in a world where there's balance. But once one of them gets out of balance, it's bad. Once religion starts taking over science, it would be bad. Once science starts taking over religion, it's bad. When are we going to understand,” Glenn asked. “You know, this is the thing about progressives. They think that they are so different than, ‘Well, we'll never lock up Galileo in the tower.’ No. You'll just lock up all the people who believe in religion in the tower. What makes you different? Nothing. It's just that your side is winning. The real enlightened position is balance. We don't lock anybody in the tower. We have a balanced approach to things. But that's too much common sense for today's world.”
