Ricky Gervais

The culture of Hollywood has just been beautifully defined by two awards-show decisions. The first one was Brett Ratner being dumped as the director of ABC’s Oscars telecast after he said “rehearsals are for fags.” It wasn’t long before Ratner turned himself in for “negotiations” with the gay Anti-Defamation cops about doing P.C. penance.

The second one, just days later, was the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and NBC begging British comedian Ricky Gervais to host the Golden Globe Awards again – after he mercilessly insulted nearly everyone in Hollywood and ended last year’s program with a long list of thank yous, ending with “And thank you to God – for making me an atheist.”

"Does atheism need a pitch man?" is the latest "panel debate" at "On Faith," the Washington Post religion news-and-views blog.

Yes, a discussion question on a religion blog about whether atheists need a Moses to lead them to the Promised Land.

Leave it to the mainstream media!:

It's not often that a CNN anchor declares America a "very Christian nation," but that's what new host Piers Morgan did on Thursday while debating atheist comedian Ricky Gervais. Morgan chided the entertainer for a joke he made while hosting last Sunday's Golden Globes.

Morgan critiqued, "...I know American culture quite well now and they're a very Christian nation here in America." During the ceremony, Gervais sarcastically announced, "And thank you to God for making me an atheist." Morgan derided this as "poking fun," adding, "But you must be aware that a lot of people in America would potentially find that offensive."

Morgan later described himself as a Catholic and probed into Gervais' atheism: "The problem for atheists, it must be so doom and gloom. When you get to, like, 70, 80, to think, well, hang on, that's it. That's the end of everything."

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]
 

According to the October 2 issue of Entertainment Weekly, advertising for The Invention of Lying, the new film from comedian Ricky Gervais, carefully conceals the atheistic subject matter of the movie. Writer Adam Markovitz explained that in the film, set in a world where everyone tells the truth, "The people...have no concept of heaven, faith, or God- until Gervais’ character fabricates ‘the man in the sky’ to placate them.’"

Markovitz observed, "What you don’t know- thanks to a carefully crafted marketing campaign- is the movie’s actual subject: religion." (The film’s distributors are Universal and Warner Bros.) The EW article quotes Gervais, who is himself a non-believer, insisting that the film is "not atheist propaganda." However, the comedian also added that Invention of Lying "shouldn’t affect [believers] or their God. From what I’ve heard of God, he’s tough."