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with Maher's take on Christianity at least is that he does what the religious crazies do - takes Biblical stories as claims to literal truth, instead of as parables. The people who spoke and wrote the narratives collected in the Bible had no notion of our modern-day empiricism. To them, empirical fact was barely relevant to the telling of a story that conveyed (again, to them) a timeless truth. Like Plato's perfect forms, the story, the parable, the narrative was immutable and hence impervious to facts which were considered niggling, largely unimportant. All mythology does this, and Christianity is no exception. The myth of Icarus and Daedalus is empirically false, but what it teaches about extremism and moderation is highly relevant. Contemporary commentators who claim the biblical stories to be literally factual would be unrecognizable to the people of Mesopotamia 2000 years ago, whether they proclaim themselves to be believers like Sarah Palin or agnostics like Bill Maher.
Maher is a funny guy and any skewering of the nutcases of Christianity is welcome, but taking the stories of the Bible to be what they were meant to be can yield real wisdom today, just like it could back then. The notion that, in order to become a spiritual being, one must first figuratively die to one's material self should not be dismissed because Jesus resurrection is a scientific impossibility.
