“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God'” (Psalm 14:1).
Nearly two weeks after Donald Trump was nearly assassinated on national television, reactions from the left have ranged from lukewarm (and quickly forgotten) pleas to “stay calm,” to lamentations about the shooter’s poor marksmanship, to euphemistic (and not-so-euphemistic) accusations that Trump orchestrated the entire incident.
Late-night talk show host and self-described comedian Bill Maher offered a different take on the shooting that left one pedestrian dead and two wounded. After years of recasting himself as a thoughtful moderate opposed to the party’s conscious policies, Maher once again revealed his true left-wing colors in his opening monologue last Friday, blasting Trump supporters who believe the gunman’s near-death was the work of divine providence. In doing so, Maher reaffirmed the dangers of the left’s rejection of religion and its social benefits.
The banality of Maher’s atheism
Maher’s rant had all the rationality and compassion of a billionaire who wants a recession to prevent Trump from being reelected in 2020. Highlights of Maher’s (half-baked) wit included equating believers in God’s plan with those who see Jesus’ face in pancakes, joking that “God was sick” when Rep. Steve Scalise was shot by Bernie Bros in 2017, and denigrating Trump supporters as cultists whose “magical thinking” elevates the presidential candidate to demigod status. The monologue was essentially an abridged version of the 2008 documentary “Religulous,” an extension of the straw man trope of interviewing and actively disparaging religious people.
Maher’s anti-theistic hackjob reaches its climax when he says, “Trump only survived the assassination attempt because of divine intervention….Trump is alive because he’s the luckiest motherfucker in history.” This is the anti-theistic left’s hopeless view of the world: nothing is planned or intended, everything is just coincidence.
Give me some old-fashioned religion
Had Maher been as thoughtful as he wanted to appear, he might have taken the opportunity to reflect on why people find solace in faith in times of crisis, rather than dismissing it as “foolish and dangerous.” Like Marx, he sees religion as merely “an opioid for the masses,” ignoring the fact that the divine physician actually helps patients deal with the pain and suffering that are a natural consequence of the belief in the random workings of the universe.
Study after study has found that religious people are happier, healthier, and more mentally resilient than their non-religious counterparts. For example, they have weathered the storm of the COVID-19 pandemic much better, despite left-wing efforts to shut down religious gatherings. Communities with higher levels of religious observance have also handled economic instability better. Given these facts, it is not surprising that Gen Z, the generation with the poorest mental health on record, is also the least religious.
Maher himself has found it hard to avoid religious reflections when dealing with the tragedy, saying the shooter “should rot in hell” and refusing to believe in it himself.
The Harm of Spiritual Nihilism
GK Chesterton is often quoted as saying, “If a man chooses not to believe in God, he does not stop believing in anything; he becomes capable of believing in anything.” The human urge to make sense of a seemingly chaotic and pitiless universe manifests itself in various forms, many of which are far more “foolish and dangerous” than religious belief or practice.
These alternatives to religion are often channeled into political activism, an area rife with the “magical thinking” Maher denounces. Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Just Stop Oil, and Queers for Palestine are all part of the left-wing “Church of Id.” Together, they preach a false gospel whose goal is not to bring happiness and peace, but to increase anger directed at conservative and centrist opponents, feeding the cycle of left-wing nonsense that Maher claims to oppose these days. Barack Obama, the leader of this false gospel, told his followers in 2021: “I want you to stay angry, I want you to stay frustrated.”
As we have seen over the past few years, this pseudo-faith has been extremely successful in mobilizing young people to cause havoc in the Western world. It may even have influenced a 20-year-old man’s decision to shoot the then-presumed Republican presidential candidate. After all, killing the new Hitler as part of a holy war against the threat of “Christian nationalism” would make him a saint, right?
For those who prefer sensual pleasure over political activism, actual narcotics and other substances can ease the pain of a disordered existence. In this regard, too, Gen Zers are particularly susceptible, and their poor mental health makes them more likely to use drugs and become addicted.
This is an area in which Maher is truly an expert; smoking marijuana is the closest thing to a sacrament to him; he’s ranked 12th on the Marijuana Policy Project’s “Top 50 Most Influential Marijuana Consumers,” which quotes him as claiming to have “tried marijuana … about 50,000 times.” Apparently marijuana is so important to Maher’s “Club Random” podcast that he rescinded an invitation to former “Jackass” star and recovering addict Steve-O, rather than go an hour without it.
Maher, a follower of the Church of Id, is completely a slave to himself and unaware of the consequences of that enslavement. American society is based on the idea that a Creator endowed human beings with inalienable rights. Those rights cannot be effectively maintained and defended without due respect for the Creator. Whether it was through divine intervention or a “lucky bastard,” Donald Trump literally dodged a bullet that Saturday afternoon in Butler, Pennsylvania.
His response, and that of millions of Americans on both sides of the political divide, was to thank the God whom Maher and his ilk despise. Instead of maliciously misleading millions of his fellow countrymen, perhaps Maher should reflect on why they seem so much happier than he is.
Robert Vucek is a Catholic, homeschooled father of six who has taught history and Western civilization in both traditional and online classrooms for over 20 years. His essays have also appeared in The American Conservative and The American Spectator. Opinions he expresses here are his own.
