Bill Maher is Like an Awkward Parody of Atheist Beliefs

Famous atheist and washed up 1950s stand-up comic impersonator Bill Maher went on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last night, and it was a gleefully awkward experience for everyone.

You see, Maher is pretty bad at articulating his atheism without sounding like an ass (important side note: this is not a symptom of atheism. There are plenty of atheists who represent their beliefs well and plenty of religious folks who don’t) and Colbert is a famously devout Catholic who people actually like.  So the conversation went pretty much how one would expect it to. The two sort of danced around their differences for a while, which made for fun television.

Maher wasted no time, making strange comments right out the gate about Colbert having a Republican past, joking that the Late Night host probably voted for Nixon. As the conversation continued Maher began spouting some stale tweets about religion being a bunch of “intellectually embarrassing myths from the bronze age” while Colbert struggled to make the best out of a bad situation.

Here’s a brief exchange from the interview, where Colbert jokingly invites Maher to return to the Catholicism of his youth and Maher doesn’t really feel like playing along.

You can watch the whole exchange on Colbert’s website  (you have to watch the entire episode) where you can also see Maher making sweeping statements about Islam that are typically reserved for you drunk uncle’s sleepy Thanksgiving Day rant.

Another thing of note that weasels its way into their conversation is Maher’s insistence that he invented political comedy in the 1990s, a myth that has led him to grumble with disdain at the likes of Colbert and Jon Stewart a few times.

But by far the most wonderful thing about this interview is Maher’s insistence on being as smug and awful as possible:

Bill Maher lighting it up on Colbert right now. It’s like if Christopher Hitchens read Facebook memes instead of books. (He’s really bad.)

— David Roth (@david_j_roth) November 17, 2015