It's A Brand New Decade - And We're Off,...

Richard Dawkins: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

Björk: "The Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren't lesser beings, they're just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists."

Frank Zappa: "To hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good – and cares about any of it – is the chimpanzee part of the brain working."

-- Atheist Ireland, which has published these three quotes (along with 22 others) - including one by the former Observer editor and Irish ex-minister Conor Cruise O'Brien - as a welcoming party for that country's brand-spanking-new blasphemy laws, according to The Guardian.U.K..