Atheism

Gervais' comment has no reflection on theists at all. Just because he makes a statement about atheists doesn't imply any counterpoint to theists, nor do I think he would ever try to make such a point.

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), a global organization that unites atheists, agnostics, and other religious skeptics, released a study that shows 13 Muslim countries around the world mete out execution of non-believers of Islam, according to a Reuters report.

The Freethought Report 2013 covered all 193 U.N. member states and asked the expertise of lawyers and human rights experts to look into statutes, court records and media accounts to verify the situation of atheists and non-believers.

IHEU's study this year is more comprehensive. It brought to the fore a full list of countries where execution, usually public beheading, takes place. The study includes Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The list of countries in the study is higher compared to seven out of 60 countries surveyed last year. The study showed that the offenses that warranted public execution are blasphemy and apostasy, or when a believer renounces the faith or switches to another religion.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association said Tuesday that the founding fathers intended the First Amendment to only protect Christianity, not Islam or any other religions.

On his radio program, called Focal Point, Fischer said the word “religion” in the First Amendment referred to Christianity alone. That is why, according to Fischer, Satanists cannot seek equal representation at the Oklahoma statehouse grounds.Fischer noted that a group of Satanists are seeking to erect a monument at the Oklahoma statehouse. The Satanists say the statehouse cannot erect a Ten Commandments monument but deny religious displays that honor other faiths.

He's going to have a problem with the treaty which Adams sent to the Senate in 1797, and which the Senate approved in a unanimous vote, and the eleventh article of which reads:

He (Muhammad) poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust: to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature..

– John Quincy Adams
6th president of the United States

So apparently people like Gervais think that the only reason theists do not rape and murder...is because of their fear of a god. Which means that non-theists apparently refrain for higher reasons...their personal conviction that they ought not do such things.

when the grownups are talking to one another.

Being "arrogant and overblown" is much better

Late to the party but you really straw manned that one frank. I'm guessing you're not familiar with twitter.

Gervais was responding to a question from a theist, the bit in the quotation marks. He was literally answering a question not 'saying' anything about Christians. That's all.

I thought it was a concise and original answer to a question atheist are often asked.

I thought it was a concise and original answer to a question atheist are often asked.

Not sure why there are theists who think that the only thing holding society and civilization together is a devotion to gods...but obviously it is much more than that.