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Maher is of a piece with all the "new atheists," who are only new if we all forget that Diderot, Voltaire, Bayle, etc. ever existed and act like they're not just repeating 18th-century talking points. (You may say: better 18th-century talking points than 1st-century talking points. To which I'd say: maybe.)
The question is: what does he want to DO about it? Make silly movies? Write angry books? When do the political teeth sink in? What policies is he proposing? Getting prayer out of schools? We did that already. It was a good idea worth defending if its achievement is endangered. Anything else? Gonna round up the religious people and put them in reeducation camps? No? What then?
The biggest threat to democracy, as Jeffrey Stout has written, is not theocracy but plutocracy. And coalitions against plutocracy are historically formed of religious and non-religious groups working together. All Maher and his ilk do is exacerbate cultural rifts that make it harder to form such coalitions.
