There was a review released consisting of 63 studies of intelligence and religion, which revealed that people who don’t believe in God are smarter than people who do. The results are provocative, but less so for religious people, because they don’t know what the word “provocative” means.
Researchers studied a century of intelligence tests, as well as the history of Pakistan and the speeches of Rick Santorum. Atheists consistently scored higher than religious people on IQ tests, although they often spoiled it by being smug.
The research suggested atheists spend more time in school and get higher-level jobs . . . while people who believe in God are less educated and don’t think as rationally, which is why they buy lottery tickets.
The study also found that religious people are not as good at problem-solving . . . just try asking them why God lets bad things happen to good people. They’ve still got no answer for that.
However, the researchers did admit that some atheists can be stupid, while certain religious people may seem intelligent, but only because they say they’re Buddhists. Overall, atheists simply don’t need God as much, though even an atheist may suddenly turn to prayer several hours after eating at an ethnic street festival. Now there’s a new study showing that overweight people without money have sex with anybody that will let them.
HEY, ASSHOLE!–PAT ROBERTSON
“If you can’t scrape up a couple thousand bucks, there’s something wrong with you.”
—Pat Robertson, ministering to the poor
So there’s a segment in Pat Robertson’s show where he gives life advice to people who write in with their problems. It’s like Dear Abby, except Abby in this case is a certifiable maniac. Here is the letter and the response that earned Pat a place in “Hey, Asshole!”
“My mom is dying from a lung disease. She watched your show the other morning; when I arrived, she told me that you said the Bible says cremation is wrong. Well, here’s the problem: mom does not have money, nor do I. So cremation is our only option.
“Believe me, it breaks my heart to know that she would rather be buried, and of course, that would be our first choice, but it would cost thousands of dollars we don’t have. Now my mom believes it would be wrong as a Christian to be cremated. I love my mom a lot, but wouldn’t it also be wrong to go into debt for years to give her a burial? What do I tell her?“
—Letter from 700 Club viewer
“I’m sure that somewhere along the way, you can find a mortician somewhere that can give you a discount burial. If you can’t scrape up a couple thousand bucks, there’s something wrong with you.”
—Pat Robertson
Pat’s right . . . anyone without money has to be insane!
You see, Jesus loves the poor, but not after they’re dead.
Thanks, Pat, I’m sure Mom will take a great deal of comfort from that.
Probably the reason that woman’s broke is she gave all her money to Pat Robertson . . . because he told her he really needed it.
You know, Pat, not everybody knows how to build a religious media empire off of other people’s fear and ignorance.
Obviously, about 30 years ago Pat Robertson buried his compassion.
Billy Graham’s daughter on Meet the Press, telling us what she looks for in a leader:
“. . . the Bible says that the beginning of wisdom is fear of God. And I believe one of the greatest lacks in our nation today is that genuine fear and reverence for an Almighty God. And that’s where wisdom begins . . . that’s what I look for in a president. I want my leader to have a fear and a respect and a reverence for God.”
Yes, if there is one thing I know for sure, it is that some of the best thinking occurs when you approach problems from a position of fear.
Once again, the conservatives reveal their Fear Fetish. They have elevated fear to a virtue, and now attribute it to great leaders:
“Hey, look at that guy. Boy, is he a good leader or what?”
“Which guy?”
“They guy over there shitting his pants, he’s got what God likes in a leader.”
Her father, Billy Graham, was good friends with Richard Nixon, who feared both God and the satanic Jews who ran the media.
Weird that she would say something so stupid, because when you talk to religious zealots in the Bible belt, they usually have “razor-sharp intellect.”
Yeah, knowledge is all fine and good, but when mankind stopped slaughtering non-believers and started reading books, we lost something really special.
PHONE CALL WITH BILL O’REILLY,
10:47pm
JIMMY: Yello. Jimmy Dore here. And yes, I am satisfied with my long-distance carrier.
O’REILLY: Jimmaay Dore. Answer the phone for freakin’ Christ. Our public schools are ignoring God!
JIMMY: I’m here, Bill. And who cares? That’s what public schools are supposed to do.
O’REILLY: You’re not a pagan, are you Jimmy? You don’t believe in all this weird Wiccan bullshit about dead people rising from the grave, and burning incense while some lollipop dressed in silk robes goes around slap-hammering young boys, do you?
JIMMY: Of course not, Bill.
O’REILLY: Oh my God! I just described the Catholic Church! How ironic. Hoisted by my own Picard.
JIMMY: “Petard,” Bill. You mean “petard,” not “Picard.”
O’REILLY: Are you accusing me of being drunk, Jean-Luc? Because according to Starfleet General Order #1, that is not within the scope of the Prime Directive.
JIMMY: Bill, even if I did believe in a god, it’s not the job of public schools to spread religion.
O’REILLY: God is real, jagoff. For example: I am a miracle. Ya follow me? My hairline. My huge, protruding forehead, the way my face lights up like a baboon’s ass whenever I’m upset or sexually aroused—these are all miracles, proof of God, Jesus Christ our Lord. And someday, after my work is done here on earth, God will call me, and I shall sit at the throne of Jesus and his pet mongoose, Sidney. In the meantime, Satan will be juggling your mom’s funbags over a fire pit of burning Biebers.
JIMMY: You can’t prove there’s a god, Bill.
O’REILLY: Here’s more proof—just doing this with my finger. What the human body has to do in order to make my finger do this is pretty miraculous, right? If there’s no God, how do you explain the miracle of what I’m doing with my finger right now?
JIMMY: Okay, I’ll bite. What are you doing with your finger right now?
O’REILLY: I’m flippin’ you the bird, Jimmay! Flippin’ you the bird. You pagan ninny-funtz. You got a good, strong back, boy. You’ll need it. You and me gonna have fun, dammit. Pray with me. Say, why don’t we get right down on our knees now?
JIMMY: Get down—where?
O’REILLY: Right here, Joe Buck. I prayed in the saloons, I prayed in the street, I prayed in the toilet. He don’t care where, Joe. What He wants is that prayer! Gonna be like money from home, Joe Buck, money from home!
JIMMY: Bill, you’re completely smashed again.
O’REILLY: I prefer to call it “getting closer to God.” Uh oh. Uh oh. I feel another prayer coming on . . . “Please God, don’t let me throw up again. It’s a waste of Jack Daniels.”
(VOMITS)
CATHOLIC CONTRACEPTION
“Catholics are tired of the government and others beating up on the church.”
—George Weigel, Catholic scholar
We are all tickled pink about the new direction of the Catholic Church (which reminds me of when a priest tried to tickle my pink parts, but I’ll tell that story some other time). I’m overjoyed at how great Pope Francis is for putting forward the issue of inequality.
And yet, instead of tending to the poor, there’s some peculiar matters in which members of the church have spared time to get involved. For example, there’s a manufactured phony controversy about contraception. It’s being pushed by partisan morons and some Catholic bishops who scream about condoms and cover up child rape.
Well, it turns out Catholics are being victimized again. I mean, the Obama administration is requiring them to provide comprehensive health insurance to their secular employees in hospitals and schools that would include contraceptive. Obama, you jack-booted thug!
Here is Chris Matthews, who still defers to closeted homosexuals dressed up like Elton John on matters of spirituality, asking us to listen to George Weigel, one of his favorite scholars on Catholic Studies.
“This has struck a tribal nerve in Catholicism. The Catholic Church has been beaten up for the last ten or eleven years; Catholics are tired of the government and others beating up on the church.”
—George Weigel, Catholic Scholar, pedophile apologist
“This has struck a kind of tribal nerve in Catholicism.”
Oh, a tribal nerve . . . well, that’s good. Heaven forbid people make policy based on a rational response to a problem—go with the caveman thinking. This “tribal nerve”—is that the same instinctual feeling that kept the previous Pope from turning in any of the molesters on his payroll?
“The Catholic Church has been beaten up for the last ten or eleven years . . .”
Hey world, why do you keep beating up on the Catholics? Oh, right, the molesting and the covering up . . . . Still, can we all quit bullying one of the most powerful institutions in the world that refuses to take responsibility for one of the largest criminal conspiracies in history?
“Catholics are tired of the government and others beating up on the church. . . .”
Oh, yes, how the government beats up on the church, with their appropriate criminal investigations. And can you believe the government with their letting you keep your non-profit status, even though you frequently make political recommendations to your parishioners? I don’t know how you Catholics carry on.
Can you believe it? The people who brought you the Inquisition, suppressed the science of Galileo and Darwin, turned a blind eye during the Holocaust, and molested children—I mean, can you believe we are making them provide diaphragms to women who want to have sex?!
So the Catholic Church thinks it’s a victim? I really would suggest they talk to a few actual victims—like those of molestation or homophobia—and get a more empirical understanding of what victimhood is.
FAITH TRUMPS REASON
“Donald Trump, when I first saw that he was getting in, I thought, ‘Well this has got to be a joke,’ but the more you listen to him, the more you say to yourself, ‘You know, maybe the guy’s right.’”
—Billy Graham’s son
This is a video clip to keep—everyone should put it on their hard drive, then back up that hard drive. Because this is the clip you pull out every time Franklin Graham tries to say anything credible ever again. It’s over, Franklin—you officially gave up any claims you might have had on rational thought. Supporting Donald Trump?! I would have to say that’s worse than actually being Donald Trump.
I mean, “the Donald” has an excuse—he’s a full-blown lunatic who has to live in the head of a full-blown lunatic. And everyone can see that—he has an entire television show dedicated to the fact that he’s a deluded, self-important megalomaniac. But you, Franklin Graham, you as an objective observer, who has watched and listened to Donald Trump all these years; you ultimately said to yourself, “Yeah, that’s my guy—that’s the horse I’m betting on”?
I’m sorry, but as an atheist, I look at all religious leaders as suspect at best. And I gotta say, Frank, you’ve managed to make pretty much everyone else look good with a single endorsement. You know the Pope that condemned Galileo? He just moved up a notch in my book. The crack-head-slash-preacher at my grocery store just moved up in the rankings—cuz Frank, you said that the more you listen to Donald Trump, the more you think he’s right about stuff.
Yeah, I get it now. You mean, the more you listen to Donald Trump’s nonstop cowardly innuendo, shameless race baiting, and xenophobia . . . after hearing that for awhile, you say to yourself, “Maybe this guy’s right!”
Franklin Graham, I hope to God you never come up with the cure for cancer—cuz there’s no way anybody is going to believe you.
CARDINAL SIN
“It’s part of our religion, it’s part of our faith that we feed the hungry, that we educate the kids, that we take care of the sick. . . . We have to give it up because we are unable to fit the description and the definition of a church, given by . . . the federal government.”
—Cardinal Dolan, explaining God’s opposition to Obamacare
Well, it’s been a little while since we’ve heard from the Keystone Cops of morality—the Catholic Church. But not to worry, just like a case of herpes given to you by a priest, they always come back.
(Background info: The federal government gives Catholic charities $2.9 billion a year for their charity work; keep that in mind as you read this chapter.)
Sooo . . . the healthcare reform law (Obamacare) stipulates that providers must offer birth control. Which is totally reasonable, unless you believe sperm is a magical elixir and human ova are tiny little Eucharist—like the Catholic Church does.
Although the church itself does not have to provide such healthcare to its employees, its secular institutions, like Catholic hospitals and schools, must provide this type of insurance. I know, can you believe it? Some liberal Jewish lady working in accounting at St. Jude’s Hospital wants the pill? What a jezebel.
So, someone at MSNBC thought it would be a good idea to point a microphone at the Timothy Dolan, Cardinal of New York (in Latin, “Cardinal” means cover-up).
“When these mandates click in, we’re going to find ourselves faced with a terribly difficult decision as to whether or not we can continue to operate. It’s part of our religion, it’s part of our faith that we feed the hungry, that we educate the kids, that we take care of the sick. . . .
“We have to give it up because we are unable to fit the description and the definition of a church, given by . . . the federal government.”
I had trouble following that logic, too—what with it being illogical and all. What the Cardinal is saying is, if they are required to offer birth control to its lay employees, it would be so immoral, they would have to shut down all those institutions—because the federal government is under some crazy delusion that a hospital is not a church, a school isn’t a church.
Isn’t that crazy? What he’s saying is: God wants us to do good works, but not if it means a tiny percentage of the insurance we provide to our employees might stop one sperm from meeting one egg. That, sir, is a bridge too far.
So let me get this straight, God commands you to serve the poor, the sick, and the needy, and the government even gives you a couple billion dollars to help you do just that, but you’re not gonna do it because the idea of contraception is so sinful to you that it makes you wanna turn your back on the poor and needy? Or did God tell you that, if Obamacare passes, forget about that “help the poor” bullshit?
I wonder if he consulted the poor and sick children that will be affected by his decision, or if he just consulted with the usual group of criminal child-rapist-protectors and closeted homosexuals that we usually hear from. I hear the pedophiles and those in the church that harbor them are on board with making them even more desperate and easy to exploit.
So to sum up, yes, this guy is that much of a maniac about sex that he would rather turn his back on starving children than give women access to family planning.
Can you believe everyone is making a thing out of this? Cardinal Dolan can’t:
“We don’t want this fight, my Lord, we just want to be left alone to the work that we feel Jesus asked us to do.”
—Cardinal Dolan
Oh really, you want the government to leave you alone? You mean after you collect the $2.9 billion or before? And let me get this straight, you are still gonna collect the charity money, you just aren’t going to disperse it?
I, for one, would love to leave the Catholic Church alone to do the work Jesus commanded them to do—like molesting children, teaching shame of the human body, and demonizing homosexuals. However, there’s always that little problem that Catholic institutions employ thousands of people who have basic rights and privileges under the law.
Cardinal Dolan, I got it! You won’t have to worry about this law if, from now on, your schools and hospitals only employ strict Catholics who think a diaphragm is Satan’s beanie! That’s totally feasible, right? What with all those qualified workers out there that still believe the completely reasonable dogmas of the Catholic Church . . . right?
And by the way, and this isn’t funny, but Cardinal Dolan just summed up everything that is wrong with the Catholic Church. They just want to be left alone. In other words, as always, they don’t want to be part of the time and place in which they are operating. They want the MRI machine in their hospital, but they want to ignore the diagnostic manual that says homosexuality isn’t a disease.
You know that once in awhile, if not frequently, Cardinal Dolan thinks, “It was so much easier when the church ran all of Europe and no one told us what to do . . . what was that called again? Oh yeah, ‘The Dark Ages.’”
I’M GOING TO HELL!
I find that people who need to be publicly religious are always putting on a show of one form or another, and I am always suspect of them. All the mainstream religious “group thinks,” and that scale scares me. You don’t get to think your own thoughts about things inside religions.
Oh sure, I hear the religious now, “No, no, no, we encourage questions!”
Oh really? You encourage questions? But you only encourage one answer, correct?
What if your answers aren’t the ones the church has to those questions? I mean, you can’t start coming up with your own answers to questions that contradict church doctrine and still stay in the church, can you?
Why do religious people get a pass for being ignorant in ways other people don’t? For instance, if I think that gays are defective, immoral, and will burn in hell, then I’m just a good Christian. Or just a good Muslim, or a good Jew. Why is it that the more religious you are, the more ignorant you are allowed to be in America?
In our society, there is the expectation that we should watch what we say around the overly religious. Some members of my family are waaaaaay too religious—like the “born again” kind of crazy. Last year, I was at a family reunion with my parents and a few of my brothers, sitting around a picnic table having some laughs and talking about the latest, craziest thing Pat Robertson had said when some “born agains” pulled up in their car.
“Hey, watch what you say about religion, here comes Angela and her family, and they are really sensitive about that stuff,” my father immediately warned us.
And we all quickly changed the subject as to not offend this overly religious family member. And it pissed me off, I mean, ‘til this day it pisses me off that I let that happen and didn’t say something.
Why? Because I am sick of politely dancing around the people who claim to be saved and know they are going to heaven. If you are so sure and so filled with God’s love, then what in the world could anything I say ever mess you up?
Thinking you are going to heaven, forever, eternity, everlasting life with Jesus, in just a few short years . . . but you can’t stand being in the presence of a little public secular reasoning? Really? Then I guess you aren’t really all that sure of yourself. Sounds to me like you aren’t standing on too solid of ground if you can be thrown into a tizzy by anyone expressing their own disbelief.
I wanted to tell my dad, “Hey pop, you know how I’m an atheist? How about if you ask those religious crazies to swallow all their Jesus talk when they are around me, cuz you know how sensitive I am about it.”
See what I mean? Turning the tables, why aren’t knee-jerk reactions to atheists filled with the same kind of reverence for my ideas and the same kind of concern for my easily hurt feelings? Why are atheists not allowed to have sensitive feelings about our beliefs? Why is it that the woman who is super sure that she’s going to heaven and so sure that I’m going to hell gets to scream it at me? Why is it that she gets to play the victim instead of the bully that she is?
I think it’s because those people secretly don’t believe their own bullshit. Anything that undermines the fundamentalist fairy tale they are living in is “offensive and insulting.” Because they secretly doubt it, too, and when you give voice to those doubts, they have to shut that shit up, and quick.
I’ll never forget the time I was on stage in Cleveland, and I was doing my usual jokes about growing up Catholic with 11 siblings:
“I grew up Catholic, but I was never that into it. My parents, on the other hand, were reeeeally Catholic. I mean reeeeally Catholic, like they almost molested somebody. . . . I’m talking hardcore Catholics. . . . I was more of a ‘buffet Catholic,’ I didn’t follow all the dogma, only took what I liked—a little sin forgiveness without judgment, and some unconditional love . . . but I’ll skip the molestation and subjugation of women parts.”
At that point I heard a noise. It was a woman very loudly putting her coat on. I don’t know how you put a coat on loudly, but believe me, she did it.
As she walked out and I asked “What happened? Was it something I said?” and she responded at the top of her lungs, “YOU’RE GOING TO HELL!” You know, just like Jesus would say.
And it struck me at that moment that she didn’t really think I was going to hell. She was wishing that I were going to hell. In my mind, if she really did think I was going to hell when I died . . . wouldn’t she be nicer to me now???
Does she always take so much satisfaction in delivering such horrible news to strangers? Does she run up to smokers the same way? Does she get in their face and scream gleefully, “YOURE GONNA GET CANCER!! HA HA!”?
If she really and truly thought I was going to hell and was going to burn in hell for making a couple of jokes about religion, don’t you think her response would be concern?
Her outburst wasn’t concern for my soul or pity for my eternity of burning in a lake of fire. As I learned from Oprah, anger almost always masks another emotion, and that emotion is fear.
She was not angry that what I was saying was wrong and blasphemous; my comedy was agitating that part of her brain that is worried that her whole life might actually be a fraud. Unlike this woman, who has internalized other people’s thoughts and ideas on spirituality and the meaning of life, I was giving myself the permission to not only think contrary thoughts about religion, but I was also giving myself permission to say those things publicly without fear of repercussions.
Those feeling a need to publicly shout down people expressing disbelief in a higher power, or for ridiculing religion, is a manifestation of their own internal doubt about their own beliefs, and they are unable to shout them down inside their own heads, and so do it externally.
So those that do that are really immature, un-evolved, emotional children who are too scared to actually confront their own inner doubts, so they become outer assholes in a very loud, dysfunctional way.
That’s my theory, anyway. And if you don’t like it, then tell me to go to hell. Just don’t do it in the middle of my stand-up show.