It's always an interesting conversation when Bill Maher is on Larry King Live. It's basically Maher talking the whole time, which is fine with me. He tells it like it is. Here's what he said about religion:
KING: Clarion, Pennsylvania, hello.
CALLER: Yes?
KING: Go ahead.
CALLER: Yes. What convinces Bill that God exists?
MAHER: I'm not convinced that God exists. But I do allow the possibility. I'm not an atheist. I'm open.
KING: You're an agnostic.
MAHER: My view on spirituality is I don't know. I never will as long as I'm alive. So why waste time dwelling on something I can never know? Just be a good person. It should be enough to want to be a good person for the sake of being a good person. I don't need the approval of Jesus or a God. If a God exists, or something that is a realm in another world, great. I'm happy about that.
What I'm most against is the certitude that people have about faith. You know, human beings are very ill-equipped for certitude, and that's what faith is. It is saying, I know more -- I just know it. When Bush was -- came back from the funeral of the pope, the press asked him what he thought about it. And he said, no doubt in my mind the Lord Christ was sent by the Almighty. Way to keep it neutral, huh? That's the first thing. I mean, what about the people who aren't Christian, what do they think when the leader of their country says a thing like that? But no doubt in my mind? Doubt is very fitting for the human mind, because we don't know. We're not that good. So you know, to answer that question, I would say, no, I don't...
KING: What do you say to those intelligent -- the Billy Grahams, who say they have no doubt? They have no doubt. They're going somewhere. They believe it.
MAHER: Well, they've brain-washed themselves. That's what religion is. It's brain-washing people to believe what you can never believe. And it's childish. It's childish. Instead of just saying, I don't know. That's what the adult thing is to do. To say, I don't know, and I'm going to be a good person for the sake of being a good person.
KING: Not because someone told you to be a good person or because...
MAHER: I don't think you're good if you're doing it to get to heaven, first of all. That's not a -- that's not a reason. That's not a good reason to be a decent person. I believe that, in just kind of a vague way, that as you get older and approach death, you should become more selfless. You should start to rid yourself of the addictions and shackles of selfishness that have bonded you your whole life. Sex and materialism and egoism and looksism and all the things that we care so much about when we're living our day-to-day lives. I hope when I'm 80 years old, I'm not having sex, as opposed to so many people who have plastic surgery and try to keep themselves somehow in the game. I hope in 30 years, I've advanced to the point spiritually where those are not my concerns at all.
I've been called shallow, because I've criticized people in their older years when they say, ooh, they're so sexy. I say, they're not sexy. You can't be sexy when you're an old person, and you shouldn't want to be. It's not shallow of me to say that. It's shallow of people to think that sexiness is something that can go on undiminished into senescence.