Penn Jillette: If they could take out Galileo, why can't they take out Penn and Teller. Was that your thinking?

It was, yeah. And then there was that ad in Variety from the Catholic League accusing you of "hate speech."

Well remember, the Catholic League is just one divorced guy in his garage. Or as Teller and I like to say, the Catholic League and his wife. I love that it's called hate speech when you have the audacity to suggest that pederasty and child rape might not be a good idea. (Laughs.) That's a pretty odd definition of hate speech, if you ask me.

The Vatican episode isn't included on the season 7 DVD of Bullshit. What happened there? Was that Showtime's decision or yours?

I swear to god, it was just a little oversight in the printing process. (Laughs.)

Do you really think I'm dumb enough to believe an avowed atheist who begins a sentence with "I swear to god"?

The honest answer, and it's actually less fulfilling than the answer I just gave you, is I don't know. They never told me. The DVD came out and the Vatican episode wasn't on it and nobody had talked to us and I actually found out about it by fans going "What the fuck?" But of course when you try to say you didn't know anything about it, you sound like a cross between Nixon and an idiot.

Do you have any theories about what might've happened? Maybe Showtime was nervous about a backlash?

I think that has to be the case, even though the reaction was overwhelmingly positive, and what we said about the Catholic Church was actually much more conservative than what the New York Times said a few months ago. We don't actually say that the Pope himself was covering up child rape, which turns out to be the truth. We don't say that, because at the time we didn't have proof. The funny thing is, if you look at the Vatican show now, after everything we've learned over the past year, it almost plays an apology for the Catholic Church. As you know, there are hundreds of people involved in a corporation, and I guess somebody at Showtime decided it was for the best to leave it off the DVD. And maybe it was for the best. I'm always surprised when the corporate world does stupid things, because they're often not very stupid in hindsight.

Like when South Park did an episode portraying Muhammad in a bear costume and Comedy Central said "Whoa, Nellie?"

I think that said more about the Islamic group that made death threats against Trey and Matt than it does about Comedy Central. I believe very much that the most damning thing you can say about Muslims is that you're afraid to say anything because they'll hurt you.

As opposed to other religions?

I will forever stick up for Catholics and Christians in general. With a small number of very horrible exceptions, they do play by the rules.

That's a curious sentiment from somebody who's gone out of his way to make fun of religion.

I do believe that a belief in god is crazy, but that doesn't mean that the people who believe in it are crazy. Those are two different things. Ideas can be stupid and crazy and the people who hold those ideas are not necessarily stupid and crazy.

You've said that you're beyond atheism. What does that mean?

I have trouble believing that other people believe. (Laughs.)

You think they're lying?