So Someone has Noticed
Aha. Natalie Angier and I are on the same page, so to speak.
Among the more irritating consequences of our flagrantly religious society is the special dispensation that mainstream religions receive. We all may talk about religion as a powerful social force, but unlike other similarly powerful institutions, religion is not to be questioned, criticized or mocked. When the singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor ripped apart a photograph of John Paul II to protest what she saw as his overweening power, even the most secular humanists were outraged by her idolatry, and her career has never really recovered.
Not this cookie – I wasn’t outraged. (Well, I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but if I had been, I would have cheered.) John Paul 2 had way too much power and used it to do appalling things.
“Society bends over backward to be accommodating to religious sensibilities but not to other kinds of sensibilities,” says Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and outspoken atheist. “If I say something offensive to religious people, I’ll be universally censured, including by many atheists. But if I say something insulting about Democrats or Republicans or the Green Party, one is allowed to get away with that. Hiding behind the smoke screen of untouchability is something religions have been allowed to get away with for too long.”
Exactly. Me, Angier, and Dawkins – a small club, but a good one. Yes okay you can be in it too.
I saw O’Connor on SNL. I applauded.
Criticizing religion is almost as impolite as suggesting that it is crazy to be religious, though there are plenty of crazy ideas out there that the pious accept, not the least of which is the idea that the earth was created in exactly 6 days. If any idea deserves mocking. . . And what about the right of church goers to park in the middle of the street on Sundays because their churches are too cheap to build parking lots–does this go on in your town, too?
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The growth of religion in all market economies has been deliberately encouraged by those in power balancing peoples books in terms of public sector borrowing, whether they be exchequer, the Fed, or the IMF. The more church groups get involved in welfare areas the less the state has to pay. Therefore the risky game of tax adjustments can be played better by the governments of the liberal-left. The right likes the whole approach anyhow, as, to many of them, religion (any sort)gives societies cohesion and ‘moral fibre’. The IMF and World Bank have been using the strategy constantly since the ‘velvet revolution’ in Eastern and Central Europe. Such an enormous groundswell in this brain-dead phantasmic guff has to have root causes that are better explained than stress, ‘work-life balance’, or fear of terrorism/globalisation, or global warming, or any other broadsheet columnists’ babblings. Like the man said, it’s the economy, stupid. We should start pointing out to these pontiffs that they’re there essentially at governments behest to stop hospitals and welfare programmes for the poor. Then show them a f@cking diagram if it helps.
Why is it ‘idolatry’?
It isn’t idolatry. Rather it’s closer to the opposite, iconoclasm.
Ah, Sinead. If she grew her hair and put on a nice dress she’d make some man a wonderful wife.
Good point. Idolatry wrong word. Odd choice of wrong word, too.
I’m in! Do we get discounts on anything? Mebbe at Prometheus Books?
I remember when Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian” came out. Many Christians condemned it outright as blasphemy. One couldn’t get away with satirizing the “sacred” or “divine” – especially if the satirist had no belief in these concepts – it was absolutely out of bounds. In an interview a couple of the Pythons explained that these people were missing the point – the movie was more a satire on the contemporary Middle East with its various sects and fanatics (the People’s Republic of Judea, the Judean People’s Front,etc.).
Yes, the original Python interview up against a priest in a purple thing that made him look like nothing so much as a Borgia Pope was classic, as was the Not the Nine O’Clock News reworking, in which it was the Christians who were blaspheming against the Holy Writ of Python, and the Parrot Sketch was the Lord’s Prayer….
Where is this kind of honest piss-taking today?
“Where is this kind of honest piss-taking today?”
Where it ought to be, reverently adored as an icon of sacred comedy…
The most extreme critics back then ignored the fact that the film didn’t even ridicule Christ; he was in the film and those moments were played completely straight, both in the manger scene and the “blessed are the cheesemakers” scene. I suppose blasphemy can also mean to ridicule ordinary human beings at insufficient distance from the sacred.
Terry Jones also has a great remark to the effect of Christ commanding men to love each other and people killing each other in arguments about the precise wording he used in saying it for two thousand years since then.
Speaking of which, I hadn’t realised how topical this had just become again, due to the “Book of Daniel” controversy. Here’s a small chunk of one article:
Stations in Indiana and Arkansas have decided not to air it. Others decided to run the show and let viewers decide for themselves.
The show’s creator, Jack Kenny, said the show is not a mockery of the faithful.
“This isn’t about religion. This is about a good man and his family. His religion is second nature to him. It’s not a question of questioning his faith. He has absolute faith,” Kenny said.
But, Christian protesters are not convinced.
“The Jesus that will be portrayed in this show will not be the Jesus of the Bible. He will probably be somewhat of the Antichrist, who will be a tolerant Jesus. He will tolerate sin and bad behavior and you’ll still go to heaven,” Christian talk show host Kelly McGinley said.
I always thought the LoB was about piss-take of all Abrahamic religions, their ‘traditions’ and factionalism, although Eric Idle (perhaps unadvisedly) announced to a couple of journos, when falling out of an Amsterdam bar in the small hours, that the film had a working title of ‘Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory’…
LoB was about a lot of things, some general, some specific. All the different fronts Matt mentioned back there were clear references to all the Palestinian splinter groups. For me, possibly the greatest moment in it is when Brian tries to convince his followers that they should be thinking for themselves and they mindlessly repeat his wisdom about them all being individuals and different, en masse.
And isn’t it Michael Palin who then dissents by saying “I’m not [different]” and is instantly clobbered into submission?
So, I suppose one of the messages certainly was that it doesn’t take divinity to create a religion.
I’ve said this before, LoB should be the sole element of any new citizenship test. Anyone, from any background or religion who is actually offended by this film, should not be allowed to stay in the UK.
I meant take up permanent residence… otherwise we’d never have any Midwest tourists in London
Sorry to deflect away from the wonders of LoB, but this seems the most appropriate thread to bring up the West Virginia mining disaster. Obviously I have nothing but sympathy for the victims and their families, but I’m still flabbergasted at the reactions. When twelve of the thirteen were erroneously reported alive, it was a “miracle.” Now, with twelve dead and one with brain damage in hospital… it’s… a… “miracle.” I’ve got to agree, provided “miracle” is redefined as absolutely anything somehow connected to the phenomenon of either life or death.
I would feel sorry for those incapable of seeing the world in any terms that don’t revolve around them and divine reactions to their actions… but then Pat Robertson goes and opens his mouth again. This time it’s his medical expertise that permits him to state that when an elderly overweight man with huge political responsibilities and pressures, as well as upcoming elections and the re-opening of an old corruption investigation, suffers a stroke, well, what explanation could there be, other than god punishing him for adjusting borders? Because god didn’t just create it all, he also clearly demarcated what belonged to who and giving up any part of one of his gifts, even grudgingly with the hope of reducing bloodshed, pisses him off (al)mightily.
When technology has sufficiently advanced, my guess is the old Luna Park Ghost Train ride will be made obsolete by a Virtual Reality tour of Pat Robertson’s mindscape.
Sorry about that. Now please go back to the old LoB thread, where a miracle means causing a man to speak after years of silence by falling on top of him.
The father of the surviving miner:
“… I don’t think God would take him this far and then let him pass on.”
So sad, in so many ways.
Go on then…
ARTHUR:
Master! Your people have walked many miles to be with You! They are weary and have not eaten.
BRIAN:
It’s not my fault they haven’t eaten!
ARTHUR:
There is no food in this high mountain!
BRIAN:
Well, what about the juniper bushes over there?
FOLLOWERS:
Hhhh! A miracle! A miracle! Ohh!…
SHOE FOLLOWER:
He has made the bush fruitful by His words.
YOUTH:
They have brought forth juniper berries.
BRIAN:
Of course they’ve brought forth juniper berries! They’re juniper bushes! What do you expect?!
ELSIE:
Show us another miracle!
…Well, it is Friday (but no halibut though)
Seems an appropriate place to mention Bunting’s piece in today’s Guardian, attacking Dawkins’ ‘Root of all Evil’. As it doesn’t broadcast until tomorrow, it would be unfair to tackle Bunting’s specific criticisms, but I notice that she can’t resist chiding the rest of us with lack of moral seriousness. Again.
Apparently we have nothing on our minds but, ‘consumerism, football, Strictly Come Dancing and a mindless absorption in passing desires’. Yup, that’s me, Maddy. Would never have known it if you hadn’t pointed it out.
And you know why secular humanism has created this vacuous, value free wasteland? Of course you do, GK bloody Chesterton is wheeled out. Again.
So, Ophelia. Put those crystals down, forget about next month’s ley-lines convention and come up with a ‘compelling popular narrative and ethic of what it is to be human and our place in the cosmos’. And don’t try to fob us off with ‘awe towards and reverence for the natural world’ because Maddy has already told us that we certainly don’t have that.