Bill O’Reilly told David Silverman, president of American Atheists, on live television that Christianity is not a religion, that it is a philosophy. That was weird.

Then he proceeded to make the argument that since it’s not a religion, it’s okay for the government to declare Christmas a federal holiday. Silverman simply took the position that our government should not favor one religion over another. There should not be religious federal holidays, like Christmas.

O’Reilly tried to counter that argument and it looks like he stumbled badly.

I would ask why we don’t have federal holidays related to other philosophies, like existentialism, nihilism, atheism, if those things could be labeled as philosophies?

Here are O’Reilly and Silverman: