I’ve been checking out some stand-up comedy DVDs recently to investigate whether any of the good and well-known comics of the day (including Mr. Carr, Mr. Gervais, Mr. Minchin, Mr. Bailey, Mr. Moran and a few others) hold views that are respectful or in any way sympathetic towards religious believers.

They’re not. Put plainly, if you believe in any non-trivial definition of god, you can’t laugh at jokes at the expense of the irrational, be they theists, psychics, “new age spiritualists,” etc., without incurring a hefty hypocrisy penalty and losing all credibility.

This tweet in reply to my glib observation of the above point suggests that my ability to laugh at humour that’s at the expense of “White [sic] people” is analogous to Christians’ ability to self-deprecate by enjoying comedy at their expense. No prizes for telling me why that doesn’t make any sense.

If you are religious, you are widely considered to be wrong. It takes some very shaky reasoning to justify even the most vague claims about a god without throwing questionably-sourced specifics in as well (read: Biblical claims). Any nonreligious person who is even vaguely aware of the damage that irrational faith, childhood indoctrination and religion as a force in its whole all cause to humans as individuals and humanity will look down on those who choose to accept religious beliefs. No matter how nice and tolerant they might seem to come across as, if nonreligious folk accept that religion is damaging then they must accept the religious are the root of the damage.

Stop laughing at our jokes belittling you. You don’t get to laugh, you are all too mired in your own self-sustaining incorrectness to laugh. God will smite you if you laugh.