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Michaels,
Perhaps I should clarify (and I caught a typo of my own). I meant that nihilism is more THAN (not that, my bad) the boogeyman of the evil dude smashing shit because he "believes in nothing." That isn't really nihilism. Nihilism is (yes, I'm aware this is an oversimplification, what isn't?) more a deconstruction of the entire set of morality that has evolved over history. Religion has been the main guide by which we have developed our moral code. If Maher has a problem with religion in general, then he really needs to re-examine exactly how he gets his sense of morality. I simply find someone making anti-religious diatribes in the same breath as a moral judgement on anything, absolutely hilarious. Reminds me of my old roommate who drove a Jeep Cherokee with a bunch of enviro bumper stickers on it.
I'm not terribly sure how your argument for the categorical imperative works here, but I'm assuming you mean that morality can exist for non-religious people. I'm not taking issue with that at all. I'm just saying that they should be aware of where their moral code and their very sense of good and bad things comes from. The categorical imperative is great because it tickles the fancy of the current collective Judeo-Christian set of good/bad, which is simply how morality has evolved. If there were no religion, (at least the kind we've evolved from) I'm not sold on the idea that people would have anywhere near our current concept of good and bad.
I certainly don't find Nietzche's set of "good" traits anything to aspire to, but that is because I have lived in a soociety mired in the Judeo-Christian slave morality and it is just darn hard to change your moral framework when you find out that its premise is at best a pretty lie and at worse a cage. So I'm not the Ubermensch, I can live with that.
The point is, you can't completely slam religion on the whole and say the world would be better off without it, because you whole concept of "better" comes directly from religion. You can be non-religious to your heart's content, but you are just a metaphysical George Bailey if you wish it had never existed in the first place.
You know the old maxim "if you like sausage, you don't want to see it made"? Well, that works for your precious sense of good and bad. Guess what, it is all based on the thing you call stupid and terrible.
