yes, chuck, you have a right to express your anti-religion views. yaawwwwn. no, i am not repressing you, or shutting you up, because even if i wanted to, i couldn't, and even if i could, i wouldn't want to.
and yes, i agree that if by "god" you mean, say, the god of most christians or even most jews or even most muslims, hindus, whatever, then i probably agree with you: fuck him. certainly, no one in my biblical lit classes can come away with any other impression than that i think the god of the bible (to the extent that it is only one god, and that's a complicated question) is fucked.
all that said, i just don't see the point of ranting about it. i even rather like rushdie's essay. i think his point about the truce (that the other side won't do it) is a tad disingenuous, but beyond that, he has concrete points to make about the relationship between religious and non-religious people, and, actually, the relationship between science and religion.
and i say this being quite happy to call myself an atheist, not an agnostic, mainly because i see atheism as rejecting a positive belief in any god with which/whom i would have some kind of relationship that matters in my life, not because i am making a knowledge-claim that is in any case impossible to sustain.
in the end, my point has only and always been that we cannot simply bash religion without grasping that it speaks to some very deep needs and then addressing those needs in a positive way. rants never do that. it's the same problem with political discourse generally in this country. rant rant rant.
it would put me to sleep if it didn't piss me off so badly.
-- Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying to Him metaphysical compliments.
- Alfred North Whitehead