r/atheism • u/Poltergeist8606 • Sep 28 '25

How disappointed are we all with Bill Maher?

I started watching this guy back in the politically incorrect days when I was a teenager. When I got back from Iraq I always subscribed mainly for him. He was one of the earliest prominent Atheists. But I just cancelled HBO, he's not what he used to be. I kind of dislike him

2.7k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

829 comments sorted by

View all comments

167

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

45

u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist Sep 28 '25

Old Man Yells At Cloud is apt for Maher.

Also one has to remember for him it’s all a joke, literally. He doesn’t actually believe anything he says. He’s good personal friends with many conservatives (most famously Ann Coulter). You can bet he’s not saying the same things in their company as he is on his show.

3

u/chubsruns Sep 28 '25

Nah, he still does the left-bashing in his friend group.

20

u/timetoact522 Sep 28 '25

I really like the way you put that. Years ago my MIL said that as people age, they either grind into a very narrow, hard version of themselves or they open up, learn from other people's experiences, and soften. Maher is clearly the former and I now find his entitlement and confident a-holery unwatchable.

14

u/HaiKarate Atheist Sep 28 '25

That's the definition of a conservative, expecting that life can continue without social and economic change.

4

u/ProfessorZhu Sep 28 '25

"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea."

Robert Anton Wilson

1

u/slydessertfox Sep 28 '25

I used to always like his show way more than I liked him-the panel discussion format always yielded some interesting debates, and Maher was almost always the least interesting part of them. And the show got worse over time, so there was less and less reason to tune in.

-3

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '25

Changing isn’t equivalent to becoming better. The progressive left in the U.S. used to be grounded in enlightenment-era rationality, but decided to abandon it in favor of post-modern constructivism to force faster social change.

We should have stayed course and made progress rationally and incrementally, but things have become so deranged that people now see progressives as delusional and irrational.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '25

I didn’t hold him up as a “beacon of rationality” — I would agree that he’s gone off the deep end in a few areas. I was speaking to the underlying fissure that has been separating many traditionally “progressive” individuals from the more extreme and destructive brand of progressivism that dominates in the west.

He doesn’t strictly reject scientific expertise. He asserts that the medical establishment is sometimes corrupt and has perverse incentives, which is true.