Why does Salon insist on covering all of this religious crap? How many times do we have to hear the argument from religious people that atheists only understand the most simple "literal-minded" view of religion? Here are the facts:

* The vast majority of religious people in the world practice the simple, literal minded version of religion. Only the people who write books defending religion from rationalists seem to be committed to its esoteric, deliberately-impossible-to-disprove variant.

* All religion started out as simple and literal-minded. "Zeus is throwing lighting bolts". Only as it became obvious that this was bullshit did the more abstract, deliberately-impossible-to-disprove variant begin its ascent. "Okay, so maybe Zeus doesn't throw lightning bolts personally, but he helps to charge the clouds with negative ions!"

* The history of religion, the "true meaning of Christianity", etc. are as completely irrelevant to a discussion of the existence of god as slight-of-hand techniques are to the existence of magic.

* For all suspect entities in the universe, there is a simple set of principles to determine if they are real or not: the scientific method. If you can find EVIDENCE of its existence, can confirm its existence with predictions that can be borne out by experiment, others can examine and validate the evidence, duplicate the experiments, then IT EXISTS. If not, it's BULLSHIT.

Well thank god! Nothing's more valuable than your uninformed, poorly written approval. I'm sure the Female Health Co. is breathing a big sigh of relief.

Is it some abstract idea of platonic, innate funniness, only testable in an imaginary world where "learned behavior", social expectations, experiences during youth, etc. are magically factored out? Or is the questions about which set of real world people (men or women) are more likely to contain funny individuals? Every time somebody makes a generalization about gender, feminists respond with the "learned behavior" and "social environment" argument. But both the original assertion and the response are totally meaningless. With funniness, like every other trait people care about, the only thing that matters is the individual. Because even if men are funnier than women on average, the fact is that 75% of them are still fucking bores.

Religion? Grow up! I hate to break it to you, but your mind is nothing more than the working of your brain. Your brain is a physical object. Like all physical objects, it obeys the laws of physics. Its working can be understood. (The fact that our understanding of these laws is today insufficient is beside the point.) If you think technology, which is accelerating its level of complexity and power while the brain stands nearly still, will not reach and then surpass human intelligence as embodied in that hunk of gray stuff (excepting some civilization ending catastrophe that stops technology's advance) then that just means you don't understand information technology. I can picture the look of shock and dismay on your face as your future robot superiors laugh at you for your naive self regard.

Why is that people cling to religion, even when they know better? Just can't kick it, can you? Back to the needle...

All it takes is money and/or fame. Or if you're in high school, it just requires that you're a bully/jerk. So great point; it's men who have the primitive psychology, right?

But plenty of women DO want it; my friends sure do. Or why would they keep going back? Oh but they must be unwitting victims, right? Because only men like sex.

My girlfriends have been telling me about his for years. Real scoop, Broadsheet! And why the prudishness? This may be news to you, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with getting off. I'm always amazed by how conservative and uptight this column is. Don't you see that you're just playing in to the "women are supposed to hate sex" meme of the patriarchy? Grow up.

It's interesting that Joan Walsh's longstanding opposition to Obama and support for Clinton has allowed her to hypocritically ignore Clinton's *unforgivable* vote for war with Iraq and Iran. (And no, the fact that she has written wimpily about how it was the wrong vote, but then continued to support her, does not count.)

While no longer supporting Obama because of his FISA vote may be reasonable at this point, supporting Clinton after her disastrous votes demonstrates that Joan has no credibility.