I am lazy and just reposing comic and satire sites these days, but I am in the middle of The Origin of Species. I have been a fan of xkcd for some time and it often has language and meta-reality based humour.
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MIAMI—As the Super Bowl captures the country’s attention, excitement over the NFL’s championship game is muted somewhat by the persistent question of whether winning, or losing for that matter, holds any absolute value—a question that has many football fans pondering the meaning of the game itself. The Onion
I had a really odd dream last night. It was probably caused by thinking about philosophy 
The only question: am I dreaming now? Ask me if I have psychokinetic powers. If I say yes, I am definitely dreaming!
Anti Citizen One
Either one does not dream at all, or one dreams in an interesting manner. One must learn to be awake in the same fashion: — either not at all, or in an interesting manner. FN
I noticed this semi-serious “how to” guide on existential crisis survival. A few points make me scratch my head (such as “Turn on a light, preferably 75 watts or brighter.”) but I am pretty sure it would not hurt to try – lol
It also says “Don’t do too much thinking after midnight. That never goes well.” Ironically this is a moment of realisation in Thus Spake Zarathustra:
There is an old heavy, heavy, booming-clock: it boometh by night
up to thy cave:-
-When thou hearest this clock strike the hours at midnight, then
thinkest thou between one and twelve thereon-
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I just finished Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground and I’ve started Kafka’s Metamorphosis, so this made me laugh:
Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport
Just read this fantastic section that is both informative, provacative and tongue-in-cheek from the excellent book “God’s Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion” by Vatican Astronomer and Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno. I will eventually write a review of sorts. Suffice very briefly to explain that the book is not a missionary work, Consolmagno seeks not to gain any converts, rather it may be described as a sociological work outlining how and why (to quote the blurb) “scientists and those with technological leanings can hold profound, “unprovable” religious beliefs while working in highly empirical fields.”
Philosophical Preamble
A little boy prays to God for a red bicycle, when it doesn’t magically appear the following day he decides that God is a fake. However, more worryingly if the little brat does get a red bicycle the following morning (i.e. by generous parents) then he may conclude that it is his prayer that caused the red bike to appear. “A faith based on a lie is worse than no faith at all.”
This type of faith is a fallacy – mistaking chance for cause. Although it is a fundamentally basic concept in our thinking that the cause always comes before the effect – it is really misleading.
Because event A occurs before event B we are sometimes deluded into thinking that A causes B.
Logicians refer to this fallacy as post hoc, ergo propter hoc – “after that, therefore because of that.”
What event B following on from event A can tell us at a basic logical level is that B cannot be the cause of A. It is useful information but it does not equate with A therefore B.
Pigeon Superstition
“B. F. Skinner, the famous behavioural psychologist, performed a classic experiment describing “superstition in pigeons” in the late 1940’s. He had developed a method of training pigones by making them hungry (starving them to 75 percent of their normal weight) and then putting them in a box that would provide food whenever they did whatever he wanted them to do – stepping in a certain pattern, say, or pecking at a certain image. But as he describes in a paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 1948, he also put some hungry pigeons in boxes that would feed them at regular intervals with no reference at all to what they were doing. He reported that the pigeons would train themselves to do whatever it was they were doing the first few times they were fed, as if their behaviour – walking in circles, pecking at the left side of the food dish, or whatever – was the cause of their feeding. This, Skinner said, was an example of how superstitions arise among people. More aggressive skeptics have used this result as an explanation for why people are so foolish as to believe in religion itself.” p.84-85
The Moral
Consolmagno states here that the skeptics have a good point, a religion that is adopted solely for the percieved benefits of what it might grant (afterlife, winning the lotto etc.) is one that descends easily into superstition, even if the percieved benefits are forthcoming (by chance).
“Superstition is faith based on quicksand. And when it fails, as inevitably it will, it can at the very least destroy your capacity to believe in better things and at worst pull you down and destroy you, the way that trusting in a quack medicine can kill you if it prevents you from taking a real cure.” p.85
This type of faith is the fallacy of “after that, therefore because of that.”
The Paradox (and the fun)
Lets consider the Pigeons.
“Consider their theological system from their point of view. If a pigeon walks in a circle and then gets fed, causing it to think that there’s a connection between its walk and its food, what is it really believing in? It believes that there exists a Big Food Server (we’ll call him BFS for short) who lives outside of its cage – which is true. It believes that this BFS, who has the power to feed it, is actually watching it, to see what it is doing – which is also true. And it believes that the BFS is delighted every time that it does its meaningless little dance – which, I am sure, is true again, as I can imagineB. F. Skinner chortling and pointing out the behaviour of those silly pigeons to his friends and colleagues and planning how he would write up his paper expposing their superstitious behaviour. So in what way was this pigeon theology false?” p.85-86
…organisation Christian Voice has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority saying they break rules on substantiation and truthfulness. BBC
It’s a funny old world.
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I found a series of fictional advertisements in the style of political negative campaigning against various “candidates”. Most amusing.
Kierkegaard in ‘08
Descartes Attack Ad
Down with Hume
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Update: Found two more Kant related spoofs: Kant: The Motion Picture and Kant Book Review.
“But I don’t even believe in Jebus!”
A classic quote from the Simpsons, where Homer, forced into missionary activity for his failure to honour a donation to a PBS fundraiser, takes the path of Peter and denies belief.
Rowan Williams (now Archbishop of Canterbury) once said of the Simpsons it “is one of the most subtle pieces of propoganda around in the cause of sense, humility and virtue.” and continuing in his review of a book “The Gospel According to the Simpsons” says “Mark Pinsky manages to decipher the code without deadening the humour which is quite an achievement.”
All comedy, indeed all narratives and utterances and communications are according to the postmodernists codes.
And in that very Simspons quote above (biblically inspired and borderline sacrilege) lies the essence of the coding in humour. Who would have thought (I didn’t until recently) that Jebus was actually the name of the city of Jerusalem before King David conquered it?!
The theological value of the Simpsons lies in its ability to do three things in particular. It presents the Simpson family as a religiously observant family (note this does not make them saints) and thus reflects the reality of life in America and other parts of the world. Secondly it conveys a variety of moral dilemmas in its storylines (without being preachy or even committing to one particular worldview). Finally it treats institutional religion with the same satirical criticism as it treats all institutions – the “Church” has its faults just as does freemarket Capitalism, but it does not propose the abolition of religion nor promote Communism.
Laughing about religion is important – particularly in the abrahamic religions where humility is presented as a virtue. But is it possible to go too far?
I think the problem lies in an inability to decode the Gospel (if you are Christian) and an unwillingness to read the text existentially. Jesus as the scriptures point out is human, and a part of humanity is humour. But few people seem to talk about Jesus in the vein of a comedian or teller of jokes.
Why is this? Well three possibilities. Some of what Jesus says or some of the Gospel narrative is serious (Crucifixion is particularly difficult to satirize without arousing cries of insensitivity – irrespective of the religious aspect to Crucifixion it is one should imagine a fairly painful and nasty thing to have happen or to witness). Some of the humour that Jesus uses is perhaps lost in transcription (you had to be there to get it), lost in translation, or simply lost in encoding for the modern reader. And of course some religous believers amplify an aspect of their religious heritage to the dimunition of another (thus the divinity of Jesus is preciously guarded by the morally sensitive, but his teachings to turn the other cheek, his dire warnings of the persecutions suffered on his behalf are forgotten).
I think the first and last point are the most relevant regards causing and taking offence and as has been discussed on this blog ad nauseum there is certainly room for a little leeway on both sides. One can cause offence but one can also seek to be offended and self-censorship (the only kind that has any worth) can be practised by all parties.
Elton Trueblood an American Quaker theologian wrote an interesting book called Humor of Christ (sic) on the subject of a joking Jesus. He suggests that indeed some parts of the Gospel narrative are intrinsically unfunny and that it may be rather difficult to find any humour in certain parts of the narrative. But he says it is a misconception (often peddled by humourless Christians) that it is all to be taken seriously and that there was no comedy at all in Jesus’s teachings.
He describes Jesus’s humour as being ironic, sardonic, and on occasions where needed sarcastic. Thus the inconsistent Peter (he of the prophesied denials) is nicknamed “the Rock”. The parables are full of sly, wry and absurdist and surrealist imagery, beam and mote, gnat and camel, camel and the eye of the needle (to mention just a couple of examples). Trueblood concurs with my suggestion (or vice versa) that there is probably also a great deal more humour that has been lost in translation.
I certainly will need to re-analyze many gospel texts in order to see if there is plenty more humour available. Matheww 24:28 for example is cited as an example of Jesus’s self-deprecating humour. Describing his ability to draw a crowd he says “Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.”
However as Pinsky argues a joking Jesus is not the same as a Jesus joke and perhaps it is at this juncture we must return to the problem of offence (caused and taken). Trueblood offers perhaps the best descriptive advice on the matter when he says:
” The only kind of laughter which can be redemptive is that which goes beyond scorn to recognition of a common predicament.”
It is for that reason that I have always found Father Ted funny, and find much in the Life of Brian that is virtuous. But it is that thin balance between laughing amongst ourselves (both believers and unbelievers together) at the hypocrisy, or idiosyncracies of those persons or institutions that hold themselves up as a paradigm of virtue, and the more sinister scornfulness that seems a predicate to prejudice of the most vulgar kind. How many ‘attacks’ on Islam are less about the religion and its values than about the cultures that have embraced it?
I guess I havent really added anything new to this debate. After all what price freedom? But perhaps I would repeat my old adage that the concept of “rights” is really a concept about competing values. The right to freedom of speech is put in peril next to the right to freedom of religious belief, or freedom from persecution. Once the debate turns to “rights” inevitably the argument becomes circular.
Well now I need to wrap it up – before this post becomes circular. Clearly some notion of balance is required but wherein can one find the common denominator that everyone of belief or nonbelief can adhere to and agree with? My only suggestion humbly proffered – but pessimistic of already – is a retreat from notions of objectivity and the embrace of subjectivity.
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