And what do you tell that geeky kid ? You say "Ignore them".
I think there is a difference between calling out the lunacy of an idea and mocking a person for having them.

Columbine

Errr... yes, if Eric and Dylan were being bullied with WORDS then ignoring their tormentors would have been a good thing and that would have saved many lives. Or if they had responded with words of their own in their defence, that would have also been much better.

Besides all that, shouldn't the analogy be the other way around ??? Christianity is the majority, not the small underdog.

Guys, I think the point ought to be made that we are talking about comedy here. Which, by definition, is not meant to be taken seriously. It is meant to be taken lightly. It is also not ambiguously a joke (You don't go to a comedy show and end up crying because it was emotional, or because it was so incredibly offensive, because you know that it isn't meant to be taken seriously)

This is all really obvious, but my point is that, comedy is meant to poke fun at things (heck, most comedians make jokes about current events, people, culture, and life all the time. Religion shouldn't be considered "off-limits", especially not in our world today. Religion is part of culture, and therefore has no reason to not be made fun of.)

In the case of columbine and other, similar situations, it wasn't like the dudes did a stand-up act at the school talent show where they joked about "bringing guns to school" and "blowing [edited] up".

Anyway, this really shouldn't be as big of a deal as is being made of it.

Nobody is making a big deal of it. Making fun of religion hasn't been controversial since George Carlin broke that wall decades ago. It is widely accepted (in the western world). Nevertheless, it is typically in poor taste.

I haven't read all the posts here but I just had to comment on something: Noah's ark is a true story.
I don't know if it was actually Noah or if God actually told him to build a ship, but there was definitely a flood that big in that time that killed a lot of people, there is a story of a big flood in pretty much every religion that existed at that time (religions that don't exist today like enuma-elis or whatever) so there has to be at least some truth in it.
I read it in a book about Atlantis.

That HAS to be a troll right ? The Atlantis thing took it over the top.
For those who are unaware:

1: Yes, there are a FEW stories about floods, some that predate the Biblical story and many consider inspired it eg- "The Epic of Gilgamesh". They are not all from the same time. Many consider these flood myths to be the result of localised flooding of coastal areas, tsunamis for example.

2: Even if those writers WERE writing about the same flood, according to the Genesis myth, they would have been completely wiped out since they were not on the ark. A flood 'that' big as described in Genesis brought the waters above the tallest mountains on earth, so unless they were writing from a hot air balloon or had an awesome surfboard, sorry.

3: There are cross culture stories about aliens, ghosts and other gods which doesn't make those things true either.

4: Atlantis is a non-existant, mythical, legendary place from the writings of Plato. See his dialogues.

I wasn't saying that Noah's ark story is true, I said that there was definitely a flood.
And about Atlantis: I never said it existed or whatever, I just read a book about it because I found the topic interesting, and while we're at it, if it ever existed, it was like 10,000 years ago, so it's kinda hard to prove or unprove(is that a word?) it

Oops, sorry, i read .....



I thought you were stating that 'Noah's ark is a true story', but you were simply saying you were commenting on the claim. Got you.

ok so I did say it, what I meant to say is that the flood is a true story, I just referred to it as noah's ark story because that's the most known version of that story.
As you can see I wrote "I don't know if it was actually Noah or if God actually told him to build a ship, but there was definitely a flood"

The Flood story is actually a great example of why the God Christianity (specifically) is not omnicient.

We can detect a genetic bottleneck in cheetahs through tests of genetic variability. We can tell that because the population of the cheetah was so low, they were forced to inbreed. The bottleneck happened about 10,000 years ago and because of it, just about any cheetah anywhere in the world can receive a skin graft from any other cheetah anywhere else in the world.

If there was actually a global flood that killed every animal on earth less than 5,000 years ago leaving only 2 of each, we would see this bottleneck in every species on earth and it would be MUCH worse. Infant mortality rates would be higher, spermatazoa(sp) production would be way down, and genetic variability would be way down for every living creature there is (including humans).

On topic... has anyone seen "Idiot Abroad"? I wish I could watch it more often but what I've seen is fantastic!!!

For the biblical story to be true, the flood had to be the result of divine intervention. If the flood was the result of divine intervention, then the results shouldn't be expected to match what you would expect from the study of nature; an event that is created by a being not bound by the laws of nature should not be expected to obey the laws of nature. This is why science and religion so often clash; science is the study of nature and is, by design, uninterested in and incapable of studying anything not bound by the laws of nature.

What a deceptive god... allowing our observable reality to directly contradict what happened.

I love Ricky Gervais. The first time I ever heard of him was a couple years ago when I was playing Grand Theft Auto IV. If you go to the comedy club in the game you can see both him and Katt Williams perform. I think the guy is hilarious even if he chooses some off color subjects. I'm a Christian but he doesn't offend me. I thought his bits about creation and Noah's ark were hilarious. Just because he makes fun of something I believe in doesn't mean I have to get offended over it. It's funny, It's okay to laugh at yourself. Unfourtunately you are always going to have some people that get bent out of shape but the solution is very simple. If you don't like it, don't watch it. Don't pay money to go see one of his shows if he offends you.

Personally I would like to see him poke fun of other religions as well. ( kind of how south park leaves no one untouched. Mormon, christian, jew, muslim, scientoligy, etc.) I would love to hear Ricky do a bit about Muhammad and his 9 year old wife.