bosk, my main thesis is that the vast majority of religious beliefs are outrageous, but we become desensitized to them. For example, let's take a look at the Garden of Eden:
-In the Garden, God created Adam from dust. He created a lot of other stuff too like animals and plants.
-Then, wanting to make a helper for Adam, God took one of Adam's ribs to make Eve, because I guess the dirt thing wouldn't work a second time.
-God set some rules, the most important of which was that you couldn't eat a fruit which inexplicably gave you knowledge of good and evil.
-A talking snake convinced Eve to eat that very fruit, and she convinced Adam to eat it.
-Eating the fruit revealed to Adam and Eve that they were naked, and nakedness is bad, so they covered up.
-God saw this and cursed the human race forever. Among these curses are that childbirth will now be painful, because pushing a baby out of a vagina felt great up to this point for some reason.
The Mormon mythos adds another point:
-This garden was in Jackson County, Missouri.
Now, to me - and keep in mind that I am one of DTF's more vocal and strong atheists - but the Mormon addition doesn't necessarily seem any more unlikely or unprovable or silly than anything else in the story to me, because objectively, it was already a pretty crazy story. So what's the difference? I think that the Jackson County bit is funny to Christians because they're unfamiliar with it, and not necessarily because it's an inherently funny thing to believe.
You're free to disagree with me, of course. That's why I started the discussion.
If you don't want to respond to that question, I could perhaps word it a bit more diplomatically: Is there any circumstance under which we can mock the religious beliefs of others?