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Let the mutherfuker burn!
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Kevin S. Willis
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yellojktAt least, not according to this study. But some of the “research” looks highly questionable. I tend to agree with many of Ace of Spades HQ critiques. How is the “guy who did a hit and run on a car” more likely to be a Christian, Muslim, Atheist or Rapist a good survey question?
Ace also mentions Ricky Gervais, noting there is no relation between the researcher and the prominent British comedian. However, it prompted me to once again think of my biggest problem with his Religious-people-are-idiots movie, The Invention of Lying. The Gervais character invents lying, and subsequently invents a religion involving a man in the sky; then everybody believes him because nobody, except him, understands what lying is, and cannot even conceptualize it.
However, clearly they would have to be able to understand what it was to be wrong. That nobody says, “Well, clearly, you’re mistaken, otherwise I would have heard of this before,” simply destroys the high-concept structure for me. Even if nobody lied, he could clearly be mistaken. If you’re going to make it out that religious people are, for the most part, gullible idiots and that religion is, indeed, an opiate for the masses, then I think you should be smart enough to craft a high-concept film that understands the difference between nobody lying and everyone believing everything anybody ever says about anything is true.
That being said, watch the Coke commercial from The Invention of Lying.
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All Things in Moderation 
Coke commercial is worth the price of admission, at least here at ATiM. Thanks.I saw the movie in the theater and do not recall much about it. I remember other movies, so that is not a function of my failing recall – yet.
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The commercials in The Invention of Lying are, without a doubt, the best part of the movie. The brutal honesty of everybody when they communicated with each other was the other. Jennifer Garner explaining to Gervais's character that, despite his new-found financial success, she still wasn't interested in marrying him because their children would be fat and have pug noses was classic. It's one of those cases where there's just one thing that sticks in my craw, that I feel wasn't addressed and needed to be, and dramatically impacts my opinion of the movie. Because I kept asking myself the question: why do people just accept it? Even if you don't know what lying is, the idea that you have to have sex with someone or the world would end would have to seem so outlandish that the person presenting you with the assertion would have to be wrong, or mistaken, or delusional, even if you didn't believe they were lying. I know, the high concept, like a comedy sketch, must assume that you don't ask that question. I understand that idea (I was a fan of Lost, I know what it is to suspend disbelief, even within the confines of the fictional narrative), but it was just a bridge too far. Even though if I looked at as more of an SNL sketch, I just wouldn't ask that question. Which I suppose I should have.
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This study says way more about the people who took the study than it does about atheists. It's not that atheists aren't trustworthy, it's that the surveyed people didn't trust them. There is a Bible parable involving injured people and Samarians which addresses this to some degree.Also, the inclusion of rapists as one of the possible responses is just bizarre. Possible the worst phrased psychology study I've heard of.
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