stevesbets

Recently I attended the last Sixers game at the Spectrum before it is torn down. For those of you that don’t know, the spectrum served as the home of the Sixers from sometime in the 60s through 1996. They have been playing at it’s new next door neighbor, the Wachovia Center since 1996 but went back to the Spectrum for one last game. On Philly talk radio all day people were serving up their spectrum memories which mostly consisted of the legendary 1983 team with Dr J, Moses, Andrew Toney, Mo Cheeks and company. I was born in 1983 so my memories of this team are a little fuzzy however I do have my own memories from the Spectrum.

I went with my friend Alex who I have been attending Sixers games with since we became old enough to drive. Hard to believe now that this was nearly 10 years ago, just after the drafting of Allen Iverson, the move the Wachovia center and just before the best year for Sixers fans my age, 2001 when they made a run to the finals and Iverson won MVP. We immediately noticed that the concourses were quite tiny and the seats were cramped, however the stands engulfed the court and there was a real community feel to the building

When I was little my dad had partial season tickets to the Sixers at the Spectrum. He would get home from work and we would immediately leave for the games. When I was very young, the games were the only time i spent in his sporty convertible since he worked long hours and most of my car time was spent in the family minivan. I remember the smell of the seats and always feeling like it was the smell of the Sixers game. Back then they announced the starting lineups with the lights on, without a huge video intro and lots of bells and whistles. Nevertheless it was the most exciting thing to me and I would always joyfully scream their starting lineup in the car on the way. I can’t imagine if I were little now as the promotions for kids are bigger and better. Being older and wiser though I prefer less music and noise and more focus on the game that was the standard back at the Spectrum.

The Spectrum to me is not about great teams with Doc and Moses, it is about my favorite player back then, Hersey Hawkins. Along with Johnny Dawkins, Charles Barkley, Rick Mahorn, Armon Gilliam (those 5 being the starting lineup i would announce in the car), Charles Shackelford, Ron Green, Greg Grant, Greg Graham, Jeff Hornacek, Tim Perry, Andrew Lang (the last 3 being the players they got for Barkley in a trade with Phoenix). A string of hapless coaches after Jimmy Lynam that included Doug Mo, Fred Carter, John Lucas and Johnny Davis, and an age of utter futility in Sixers basketball where it was pretty much a given that they wouldn’t make the playoffs and the building was always half empty (until AI arrived on the scene). None of that matter though because I loved the smell of the leather in the car and I was still young enough that I could dream of becoming like Hersey Hawkins. I made this list from memory, how many players and coaches from the early 90s do you remember?

“Unfortunately before man figured out how to be rational or peaceful, he figured out how to make nuclear weapons”. As soon as I heard this line Bill Maher instantly became one of my favorite public figures. I have never seen a movie or documentary so absolutely on point that so many people will certainly disagree with. Many people that argue against religion start from a point of saying that religious people must be dumb to believe what they do. The reason Maher’s documentary is so powerful and scary is because he points out that this clearly is not the case. Incredibly smart and capable people in all other walks of life believe they are drinking the blood of a 2000 year old being on Sunday and Maher has to set out to try find how this is possible. He made so many excellent points that I am sad I can’t blog about all of them but I have chosen a few that resonate with me.

I have been criticized for being arrogant about my atheist viewpoint. I have always found this curious since all I am saying is that I really just don’t think any of those impossible stories are true. Maher puts it far better. “The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions, is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble and that is what man needs to be, considering that human history is just a litany of getting shit dead wrong.” I think he’s totally right that those who DO believe are the arrogant ones. They are the ones who think they have answers to questions that are unanswerable.

The first thing I noticed from the movie is how many people get deeply offended when Maher examines their faith. He asks them simple questions about all the contradictions in their beliefs and many can’t handle it. I personally have been told many times that I offend people by simply asking why they believe what they do and they respond that you should not question someone’s faith. Maher asks the plain and simple question: Why in our society is faith considered a good thing? All faith means is believing something with no proper cause. This opens the door to all sorts of evil, much of which we have seen throughout history and also many unspeakable things we haven’t seen yet that can easily result from enough people having “faith” in enough crazy things. As Maher eloquently puts it, “Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It’s nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith and enable and elevate it are intellectual slave holders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.”

Maher briefly brings up Scientology and everyone around him just laughs. The tacit understanding is, “well those people are truly nuts”. He talks about how they believe in all these sci-fi type stories from long ago. Then Maher says, “Yea those guys are really crazy, but all the other relgions, they are completely rational…” and the room goes silent. The fact of the matter is, the stories from the bible are comparable to fairy tales. At one point Maher asks a believer, if as a child you were told the story of Jack and the beanstalk as a religious teaching and Jonah and the whale as a fairy tale, would you believe that Jack was true? This comparison once again seems obvious to me but will probably be scoffed at by those who have “faith”

Many people choose to ignore things from their religion that they do not like. Maher interviewed Muslims and asked about all of the violent teachings of the Qur’an. They all claimed that there were no such teachings while he simultaneously put the lines up on the screen. Many who claim to be religious are not even true believers. They do it just on the possibility that the afterlife is real so that they will be sent to heaven. A frequent question that Maher gets asked (and I’ve been asked before) is “what if you’re wrong, then you’ll be sorry”…good logical point…

Maher points out how it’s funny that god always talks to people in private, you would think if he has something to say he would say it to everyone, but he always chooses a specific person to privately hear him and then they go and preach to the world.

Maher shows how the story of Jesus is a carbon copy of stories from other cultures that predated it. Horus was born Dec 25th, was a champion of the poor, was a carpenter, was crucified, was resurrected etc. Yet somehow whoever happened to write about Jesus really got their story to stick so that has become “fact” to so many people. It never occurs to religious people that thousands of years ago there was probably just as much corruption as their is now so maybe people made these religious fairy tales up to control others. This certainly would explain the violent history of religious zealots torturing and killing anyone who dare not believe as they do.

Many people I know, even close friends are fairly religious and I have been told that I have no right to ask them questions about their beliefs. They are not accountable to me. This is true. I would think however that these otherwise moral and logical people would want to be accountable to themselves. As Maher points out, if they were a part of a social club that had as much history of murder, rape, bigotry, hatred and torture as nearly every major religion, they would be shunned for these beliefs (and rightly so). However since it is a part of their “faith” they are a beyond reproach.

The idea that the USA is a christian nation is absurd. Most of the founding fathers were vehemently against religion. Ben Franklin said quite rightly that lighthouses are of more use than churches and Thomas Jefferson created his own bible that had all the moral teachings of Jesus free of the clearly false magical razzle dazzle.

The funniest moment is when Maher interviews Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas. He questions him about evolution and Pryor says he believes in the story of Adam and Eve and goes on at some length about faith. Maher says something to the effect of, “You are a United States senator, one of the few people with real real power in this country and it worries me that you believe in talking snakes” To which Pryor very proudly replies, “You don’t have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate”

Finally Maher makes a spectacular point that I have never thought of before. Religion needs to die or humanity will. In a day and age where big chunks of the world can be wiped out with one bomb, having leaders who believe in children’s tales from the bronze age (when people still believed the world was flat, and wounds were cured by spitting on them) is a serious detriment to the world. These leaders get their power from those they govern and that is why each and every person of “faith” represents someone who is dangerous to society. They put people in charge who answer to nothing rational, logical or peaceful. He begs, as do I, that “Rational people, anti-religious, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price.”

There are so many great quotes that I just can’t stop so I will leave you with this:

“The plain fact is religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having key decisions made by religious people – by irrationalists – by those who would steer the ship of state, not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken.”