At the end of "Real Time" Friday night, Bill Maher lambasted Liberty University, the Virginia religious university that has become a mandatory stop for Republican presidential candidates. (Watch above.)
"You can't expect me to believe anything Mitt Romney said last week at Liberty University, because a) he's a liar and b) Liberty University isn't really a university," Maher began. "It's not like an actual statesman visited a real college. It's more like the Tupac hologram visited Disneyland and said what he would do as president during the Main Street Electrical Parade."
Romney delivered Liberty's commencement speech on May 12.
Maher noted that Liberty teaches "creation science," and the idea that earth was created 5,000 years ago. "This is a school you flunk out of when you get the answers right," he joked.
Much as conservatives believe gay marriage cheapens their own vows, "I think a diploma from Liberty cheapens my diploma from a real school," he continued. "I worked really hard for four years and sold a lot of drugs to get that thing."
Liberty's diploma may look real, Maher said, but "when you confuse a church with a school, Maher went on, "it mixes up the things you believe — religion — with the things we know — education. Then you start thinking that creationism is science, and gay aversion is psychology, and praying away hurricanes is meteorology."
Watch the whole clip above.
UPDATE: Jerry Falwell, Jr., Liberty University's chancellor, provided The Huffington Post with the following statement in response to Maher's comments:
"Maher is a comedian whose words aren't meant to be taken seriously, and he's proven by his parody, once again, that they shouldn't be. Unfortunately, though, some people do take the man seriously and will likely be deceived by his false statements. In reality, Liberty is a fully accredited liberal-arts university. With over 90,000 students, it is the largest private, nonprofit university in America, the largest university in Virginia, and maintains more than 275 programs of study, including a fully-accredited School of Law, and a forthcoming School of Medicine. The same science textbooks are used at Liberty that are used at other major universities. Liberty teaches the theory of evolution as well as the Biblical account of creation (including that the universe could have been created with the appearance of age just as the first man and woman were created as adults) and students make up their own minds on the issue. Liberty is proudly an institution that adheres to the Judeo-Christian values upon which our nation was founded and upon which millions of Christians have based their lives and beliefs. It is sad that Obama donors like Maher seem to fear debating the issues on the merits and instead resort to ridiculing their opponents deceitfully."