Bill Maher Mocks Sunday School, Claims Churches Should Pay Taxes for Making Children 'Stupid'
On his show "Real Time," comedian and HBO host Bill Maher said the policy of taxing things that are bad to get people to stop doing them should be extended to religion and "let's put one on Sunday school so they don't get stupid."
"If we levy taxes — sin taxes, they call them — on things that are bad to get people to stop doing them, why in Heaven's name don't we tax religion?" asked Maher toward the end of his show on Friday.
"A sexist, homophobic, magic act that's been used to justify everything from genital mutilation to genocide," he continued. "You want to raise the tax on tobacco so kids don't get cancer? Okay, but let's put one on Sunday school so they don't get stupid."
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He added: "Americans are losing their religion because they're catching on that religions do much more harm than good. Who enabled child sex abuse for centuries? What's the common thread between ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and most other terrorist groups in the world? Who's behind the new law in Mississippi that says Mississippi now cannot, among other things, force a baker to bake for a gay wedding?"
Earlier in the show, Maher said the U.S. Supreme Court needs to take a case about taxing churches "because it hasn't done that since 1970."
"And since then, religion has become much less popular, especially with younger people. Thirty-five percent of millennials want nothing to do with it, and the rest worship an ancient Jew born over 2,000 years ago: Bernie Sanders."
He continued: "And it's not just millennials. My flock — the atheists, agnostics and anti-religionists out there — are now the second biggest denomination in America right behind evangelicals. We're 22.8 percent."
Maher then complained, "That means almost a quarter of us in America are being forced to subsidize a myth we're not buying into. Why am I subsidizing their Sunday morning hobby? They don't subsidize mine."
Maher chose not to mention violence and bloodshed in the atheist, Communist world.
Responding to questions at a students' event in Atlanta last month, Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias spoke about societies that lack objective moral reasoning.
"Do you know who has killed more people in the 20th century than China and Russia?" he said, noting that China and Russia killed 60 million people a piece during the 20th century. "The 20th century became the bloodiest century in history. And the reason it became the bloodiest century is … the weapons of our wars were piling up and there were no guiding principles to take us anywhere."
