Let’s ruin a perfectly pleasant Friday with a poll full of ugly reality.

The poll of 2,455 U.S. adults from Nov 7 to 13 found that 82 percent of those surveyed believed in God, a figure unchanged since the question was asked in 2005.

It further found that 79 percent believed in miracles, 75 percent in heaven, while 72 percent believed that Jesus is God or the Son of God. Belief in hell and the devil was expressed by 62 percent.

Darwin’s theory of evolution met a far more skeptical audience which might surprise some outsiders as the United States is renowned for its excellence in scientific research.

Only 42 percent of those surveyed said they believed in Darwin’s theory which largely informs how biology and related sciences are approached. While often referred to as evolution it is in fact the 19th century British intellectual’s theory of “natural selection.”

I keep hearing from people that criticizing religion is over-generalizing, that we shouldn’t judge it by the minority of fundamentalist loons who get all the attention in the media, or by those few, rare exploiters who represent religious beliefs poorly. I am sick of it. Ask people directly whether they believe literally in a damnable stupid doctrine like hell, and they don’t waffle, they don’t pose like pedants and maunder on about metaphysics and socioeconomic influences and tradition, the majority simply say “yes”. This is the reality. The majority of Americans do not think, they just accept this nonsense at face value, and we have to deal with stupidity on a national scale.

This is what it means:

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So this young man, Dennis Lindberg, refused a blood transfusion and died. This was a completely useless, futile death; it wasn’t a sacrifice that helped someone, and it was avoidable by a routine medical procedure. So what could possibly have driven him to this behavior?

Earlier Wednesday, Skagit County Superior Court Judge John Meyer had denied a motion by the state to force the boy to have a blood transfusion. The judge said the eighth-grader knew “he’s basically giving himself a death sentence.”

“I don’t believe Dennis’ decision is the result of any coercion. He is mature and understands the consequences of his decision,” the judge said during the hearing.

“I don’t think Dennis is trying to commit suicide. This isn’t something Dennis just came upon, and he believes with the transfusion he would be unclean and unworthy.”

So he wasn’t coerced; he was mature and capable of rational thought; he wasn’t suicidal; this wasn’t an expensive treatment his family couldn’t afford; he did not make the world a better place by dying. He simply calmly decided on the basis of certain premises that were planted in his brain at an early age by an aunt who was a Jehovah’s Witness that he had to do something both lethal and stupid. His head was filled with garbage, and this is the end result.

Religion is child abuse. It strips kids of the critical reasoning abilities that can save their lives. His crazy aunt killed him as surely as if she had beat him to death with a baseball bat.

It’s ben a terrible couple of days for Christianity — I’ve gotten an awful lot of e-mail reporting indiscretions by those trusted members of the clergy.

• Rev. Don LaRose/Rev. Ken Williams, lunatic who abandoned his family and changed his name. The only thing he kept in common in his identities was his calling as a pious con artist.

• Lay preacher Malcolm Edwards-Sayer, convicted of fraud and theft. (This one is also a lawyer, so maybe we can blame this one on his other vocation.)

• Rev. Cory Cortezis Lewis, arrested for sexual battery on a minor.

• Rev. Richard Roberts, resigned as president of Oral Roberts University amidst allegations of corruption.

• Rev. Leonard Frazier, arrested for rape and sodomy of a 15 year old girl.

I should clarify something, though. Many people assume I post these little tales of deplorable behavior by the religious in some misguided effort to show causality, that I’m trying to argue that they do these wicked things because they are Christian. This is not correct. It’s far, far from the truth — I know many good people are also Christian or Jewish.

The point is simpler: Christianity claims to be a force for morality which encourages good behavior on the part of its practitioners. It’s quite clear that it is not when even its clergy seem unable to find their religion to be a source of moral suasion. Religion doesn’t make you bad, necessarily, but it sure doesn’t make you good, either.

A pathologist in Ontario made some dreadful, stupid, sloppy mistakes, the kinds of errors that can destroy people’s lives.

The mistakes Smith made in conducting autopsies or giving second opinions on autopsies prompted the province to call the inquiry. His work contributed to some parents or caregivers coming under suspicion or being convicted for the deaths of their children.

It took years and many cases for this guy’s incompetence to be caught out. How could that be?

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But of course fanatical Catholic Bill Donohue is furious about the upcoming movie, The Golden Compass, and is ranting and raving about it. Pullman offers a universally useful and sensible response.

“To regard it as this Donohue man has said — that I’m a militant atheist, and my intention is to convert people — how the hell does he know that? Why don’t we trust readers? Why don’t we trust filmgoers?” Pullman said. “Oh, it causes me to shake my head with sorrow that such nitwits could be loose in the world.”

It’s just a book and a movie, and it doesn’t compel the reader to like it — and we could say that about any of the overtly atheist books that have been published lately. Maybe Donohue should save the outrage for the day we have tax-exempt Pullman reading rooms, or when Pullman is required reading in science classes, or when politicians are elected on the basis of their attractiveness to Kingmaker Philip Pullman and his lobbying group, Fantasy for the Family.

Yet another example of religious insanity:

A British primary school teacher has been arrested in Sudan, accused of insulting Islam’s Prophet by letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear Mohammed, her school said on Monday.

Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons, aged 54 from Liverpool, told Reuters they feared for her safety after receiving reports that young men had already started gathering outside the Khartoum police station where she was being held.

I don’t know why they’re blaming the teacher. Clearly, all of those 7-year-olds need to be hauled out of their homes and stoned to death.

If there actually were a god, Cyclone Sidr would have spun through Bangladesh, selectively eliminating all the two-faced scumbag missionaries who exploit the poor in the name of their deity. Chris Mooney cites an example from the Baptist Press:

In the hours before Cyclone Sidr reached the coastal areas of Bangladesh, Southern Baptists and other Christians began praying — aware that the Category 4 storm potentially could usher hundreds of thousands into an eternity without Jesus.

…

“Last night a lot of people died and entered an eternity of suffering,” Neely said. “Almost none of them has heard a Christian testimony or biblical explanation of who Christ really is. They have never heard the truth about who God really is, who they are in His sight or what God’s plan is to save us from our sin through Christ.”

The title of the source article is also offensive: “Their prayer: that faith in Christ follows cyclone “. That’s looking on the bright side, I guess — all the destruction, the desperation, and the displacement represent marvelous opportunities for the scoundrels and scalawags of religion to move in and harvest souls for Jesus.

I sometimes hear people claim that religion provides consolation to the bereaved. This is a perfect example of the opposite: a manipulative religion used to incite anguish and fear and misery in the minds of survivors.

It sure seems that way. Yet another tawdry series of escapades by Christianists:

The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother’s wife and fathered a child by her.

The story has some cheering news, though.

At its peak in the early 1990s, it claimed about 10,000 members and 24 pastors and was a media powerhouse. By soliciting tithes of 10 percent from each member’s income, the church was able to build a Bible college, two schools, a worldwide TV ministry and a $12 million sanctuary the size of a fortress.

Today, though, membership is down to about 1,500, the church has 18 pastors, most of them volunteers, and the Bible college and TV ministry have shuttered — a downturn blamed largely on complaints about the alleged sexual transgressions of the elder Paulks.

Ah, I love to see a church imploding.

Today’s Freethinker Sunday Sermonette first tells the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which is utterly wacky by intent…and then has a most amusing cartoon retelling of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is even more insane. Who needs the FSM when you can discredit religion more effectively with its own words?

Salma, Salma, Salma…you heard about my thread to name the feeblest reason for believing in Christianity, and you couldn’t just leave a comment like everyone else? You had to go running to the press to submit your entry?

Mexican actress SALMA HAYEK was so upset by childhood jibes about her flat-chest, she would pray to God for larger breasts. The Ugly Betty star reveals she was bullied for having small breasts as a youngster – and decided to turn to her Catholic religion for help. She says, “My mom and I stopped at a church during a road trip we were making from our home in Mexico. “When we went inside, I prayed for the miracle I wanted to happen. I put my hands in holy water and said: ‘Please God, give me some breasts’. “And he gave me them! Within a few months, I developed a growing spurt, as teenagers do, and I was very pleased with the way I grew outwards.”

They are very nice, Salma, but you should really give credit where credit is due: genes, steroid hormone receptors, steroid hormones, diet, and a million years of chance and selection.