It seemed particularly odd being addressed to an audience in London who, I would imagine, were largely old-school Eddie Izzard fans and are pretty unlikely to have the sort of closed religious fundamentalist opinions he seemed to be attacking.

To me, attacking organised religious belief is like shooting fish in a barrel.  It’s easy to dismiss as founded on ancient myths and legends in the 21st Century if you take a logical viewpoint.  The days where this was a controversial issue were surely buried in the middle ages.  I did wonder whether spending time in the USA, as presumably he does these days, it’s closer to the surface and perhaps I’m misguided in my judgement that the intelligent majority these days are largely non-religious.  Certainly skeptics I’ve met over there are very fond of preaching to the choir to demonstrate their own non-religious superiority.

I will accept that the rise of fundamentalist Islamic belief is a cause for concern, but I still think that it is the beliefs of a relatively small number of people which are being inflated as being much more important than they actually are by religious leaders anxious for power and control.

If you’re a comedian and you want to make jokes about religion, go ahead, it’s a subject ripe for parody, but don’t insult the intelligence of your audience by preaching at them, that’s just lowering yourself to the level of the evangelists.  Be funny – that’s what people have paid for.