At Tiny Frog the question is asked: “Are comedians more likely to be atheist/agnostic?”
I’ve also wondered, why would so many comedians be atheists?
I have no empirical evidence for any of this, but here’s a few possible reasons:
They are relatively smart
They are widely read
They question everything
They see the funny side of things
They are quick witted
I think the way they look at the world and poke fun at it, lends them to look at religion and poke fun at it.
Tiny Frog’s site lists a few comedians, here’s a few more: Ross Noble, Paul McDermott. Any more?
What other jobs (beside sciences) lend themselves to have a higher proportion of atheists?
Technorati tags: atheism, atheist, religion, humour, humor, agnostic,
23 October 2007 at 5:25 am
personally i think most comedians are people who have tramas in their past. they cover their pain with jokes . which in most cases are not even funny. like sarah sliverman she not funny at all but she got a show on tv. i dont get that she has no teast in jokes. she feel she entertainng lol not!!!!!!!!!!!!
by making fun of religion, brit kids. idont think so
for the most they might feel that questioning everthing might be therapy.
13 November 2007 at 1:01 am
In the UK, besides Ross Noble, there’s Billy Connolly, Eddie Izzard, Griff Rhys-Jones and Ricky Gervais. (I suspect a whole pile of others are too, but these are definites)
There are a number of American comedians, including George Carlin (he does some great bits on religion, including “There is no God”), Kathy Griffin (“Suck it, Jesus!”), Janeane Garofalo and Julia Sweeney (“Letting go of God”).
I’ve seen Andrew Denton referred to as an atheist, and stuff that he’s done and said are certainly consistent with that, but I haven’t seen anything where he explicitly states it.
3 February 2009 at 3:14 pm
I’m an atheist comedian an iv noticed since i was young that alot of comedians were atheists and it’s b/c we think differently then alot of people. We do ALOT of thinkin and logically at that. And i personally have spent a very long time pondering on religion and its so obvious that it was created by humans to answer our wildest questions. But it might just be the weed.
p.s. fuck that person who left the first response. You know nothing.
(look around you)