Life of Brian at 40: an assertion of individual freedom that still resonates
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Hardly. Palin and Cleese seemed to perfectly understand the ridiculous childishness of the comically pompous bishop and Muggeridge who both repeatedly avoided engaging and simply derided the film as "tenth rate" etc.
A curiously empty article about a film, which like Holy Grail has barely dated in the intervening decades.
For a more interesting take on Life of Brian at 40, see yesterday's "How we made": https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/16/how-we-made-mon...
There is such an obvious dichotomy between the authority the clerics expected to be regarded with and the realilty. They looked and sounded so anachronistic. The moral authority just seemed gone. They just looked like python caricatures, robes, misplaced pomp and all.
Meanwhile, these comedians were winning at the philosophical sparring.
I'm from the next island over. We trailed the UK by 10-20 years, in terms of secularism and church authority. But, starting from a much more religious/clerical point and reaching and arguably more secular one very fast.
There have been several key referendums recently, and the church simply failed to mount an opposition. Appearing in regalia and demanding the moral authority because "I am a bishop of the church" would have been a ridiculous spectacle. That element of power was long gone. In my symbolic narration of the story, Cleese and Palin did that in that interview.
I noticed during the Iraq War how much INSANELY quicker the comedians turned against the war compared to the mainstream and self-proclaimed moral authorities like journos. Institutionalized stupidity tends to be really funny to make fun of and really lame to defend.
It seems like a stupid idea for comedians to be moral arbiters when comedians themselves hardly seem like particularly moral people and comedy is such an informal thing. Yet there is this skeptical contarian spirit so fundamentally baked into the medium. Which consistently leads to Comedians being one step ahead of their moral betters.
Tho I wonder how much of this actually translates to modern times, as in: How much impact do these "political comedians" actually have?
Case in point: German political satire has a very long tradition, but when looked at it bluntly it's pretty much just "comedians" telling people about the roots of problems, and all kinds of corruption, and people mostly just laugh at it, while nothing actually changes, it's all kind of absurd.
In that context, it often feels much more like an "overpressure steam valve", giving people at least the impression of awareness, while nothing is actually done about the issues themselves.
What they do is spend most of their time thinking about society, and then pointing out hypocrisy.
So it's no surprise that they're quick to point out failings.
But 99% of civil society is not mired in moral controversy, and the daily grind of regular people, public servants, bureaucrats, functionaries and workers is where the material artifacts of morality play out. And of course legally.
It's hard to make a career in comedy, like it's hard to have a career being a movie critic - but to any thinking person, being an antagonist or critic is easy. Heck, we do it all day on HN.
Comedians are not moral arbiters. They are just outside opinions.
Want to lambaste the rich? You and Buffett both. Make fun of racist white people? Who doesn't? Healthcare is a mess? A long line of CEOs parrot that line, too.
Nobody is sitting around making fun of overreach for a good cause. Nobody is making fun of the absurd political mathematics thrown around by favored political movements.
To be fair, it's more work to actually push against the grain of the culture you live in. It's easier to be make the millionth dig at the orange skinned jackass.
Lots of people from every walk of life lambast the US health care system, because the US health care system is objectively terrible, in terms of positive outcomes vs. money spent.
Making these out to be rich-people opinions is really reaching.
Comedians like the Python Troupe.
These are popular positions (at least in the US) only among the Left.
The Republican party - including its poorest members - lauds the most greedy billionaires as "job creators" and the pinnacle of achievement for Americans.
Conservatives believe that straight, Christian whites are just as discriminated against - if not more so - than racial, religious, or gender/sexual minorities.
Republicans decry almost any attempt to provide affordable health care to the American masses as "socialism."
The positions you describe are most definitely "against the grain" for half of the US. And they are important positions to take, for the future health and wealth of the country. And I'm not sure why you're focusing on the difficulty/popularity of espousing certain positions on social issues, rather than the correctness of the positions taken.
But my real point is that the bubble of most forms of comedy includes powerful people like academics, politicians, executives, and even corporate policies of multinational megacorps.
It's mostly a myth that comedians mostly contrarians making digs at the powerful. On the contrary, they're living in the same bubbles.
I'd actual settle for some aggressive criticism of the fairly ludicrous tribalism going on these days. Perhaps the biggest problems these days are a lack of grace and humility, and it should be really easy to make fun of all the small hearted people wrapped up in the modern social moment.
Also you're really creating a weird situation for yourself if your idea of contrarian is that there can be no overlap with the wealthy or powerful.
It will be a difficult task for a comedian to identify a position so contrarian that no influential/powerful people or institutions favor it.
The people nixing comedians' and other speakers' university events have real power, in contrast.
I haven't been alive for all that long and mostly came into political awareness when W. Bush was in office, but my impression of the times before based on the political art and documentation that survives is that... it was never really nice and graceful, that's just a rose tinted view of the past.
And it is true that certain parts of culture at certain times did have a live and let live attitude. Or at least a there-are-more-important-things one.
I think one major element is absurdity, which is a big part of humour and of logic... Reductio ad absurdum is a logical negation, and it comes up a lot in sober politcal arguments/rhetoric.
Another element is taboo. Comedy is edgy, which pretty much means bringing up things you're not supposed to bring up.
Yet another part is what laughter actually is. We tend to assume it's about humour, but when researchers measure, it turns out that <10% of laughter is directly humour related. Think of how many awkward laughs you get in a board meeting or diplomatic negotiation. Laughter expresses solidarity, subservience, esprrit de corps.. The implications go deep.
Every system of reasoning has intrinsic blindspots, while internally seeming consistent and all-knowing. Corrupting fallacies sneak in, each only off by a little bit, but self-consistent.
Attempting to directly argue any one conclusion looks wrong, as it disagrees with all the surrounding/supporting points. Only by completely shrugging off that strict logical-progression paradigm can the absurd conclusions be called out.
What was most noticeable seeing it later is how respectful and careful the Pythons were trying to be. Yet met with closed minds, dogma, "it's a terrible film" and "Listen to me, because it's been that way hundreds of years". Ironic that John Cleese was trying to develop a conversation on closed and open minds! There's a few facial expressions that reveal their frustration - there may have been a bit of internal swearing!
Listening to my kids and their friends, and other younger people, religion is irrelevant in the UK, outside some ethnic communities, nowadays. Ireland seems to have caught up - twenty or thirty years ago even a conversation around the abortion referendum would have seemed impossible. Yet had the church reacted to the 40 years of post-Thatcher society and they might have had as large a place as ever - albeit in a changed role - had they been inclusive, replaced the lost community resources, sense of hope and so on. That they didn't speaks volumes.
From the perspective of now it does seem to mark the end of an era. Thankfully.
I'm not sure about "end of an era". People seem to have an intrinsic need for faith. Now that organized religion is playing a less prominent role in their lifes (at least in Western countries), that hole seems to get filled with esoterics and conspiracy theories.
It isn't the end of an era in the utopian sense, from now on science and reason. But the era of the church as "1st estate of the realm," the unchallengeable political power & moral authority, ended.
They seem mostly orthogonal.
I don't seem to have any, and I don't think I'm alone.
> Now that organized religion is playing a less prominent role in their lifes (at least in Western countries), that hole seems to get filled with esoterics and conspiracy theories.
You need only look at the history of antisemitism to see that conspiracy theories can and do flourish among very religious people.
The clergyman in the debate, Malcolm Muggeridge, was raised by super communist secularists around the turn of the last century! There's a link below which is a fantastic reference worth repeating [1].
Hyper secularist ideals are not 'new' - the largest war in history, WW2 was partly based on this (i.e. Germany v. Soviets). (And yes, only partly ... the Germans were super concerned about the Communists at the time, I'm not trying to start a big ideological thing here).
I doubt that secularists have any advantage on real progress, my take is that the Church of the past was simply a calcified institution, as all institutions are when they have more or less absolute authority and try to protect it. Moreover, most people 'outside' such communities tend not to understand them at all ... to the point of bigotry.
And yet we have material prosperity and 'freedoms' - we are more depressed and anxious than ever before.
Our 'national strategies' are fundamentally economic: build more homes, more Starbucks, more IKEA.
We live in a weirdly intolerant era - consider how many movies 'couldn't be made today' - and I'm not talking about 'mean racist movies', rather even films that tried to have fun with the issue. See: 'Blazing Saddles' one of the funniest and most sincerely topical films ever made about race relations. Could never be made in our new utopia.
Reform and progress are essential, but I think we're conflating and confusing a lot of institutions and ideas.
This position hardened for me while visiting the rural areas of a very arab/muslim country with super archaic traditions. We are not as advanced as we think we are.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles...
I think that's a common meme which is spread uncritically by people who want to denigrate the current age.
I don't think it adds anything to the argument to indicate "People who say such and such just want to do this or that"
That 'a lot of films could not get made' is not a controversial idea - have a listen to Hollywood podcasts. Granted, a lot of the 'can't get made' memes are directed at issues such as 'market size' and geopolitics (i.e. China market), there's no shortage of films that have suffered consequences due to nearly arbitrary issues over race, gender etc. - and these were the films that were approved.
"Scarlett Johansson is again at the center of a casting controversy, this time for accepting a role to play a transgender man. " [1]
"Taika Waititi Teases ‘Akira’ Film Adaptation, Says No One Has to Worry About Whitewashing" [2]
"Cloud Atlas under fire for casting white actors in 'yellowface' makeup" [3]
Literally a film made by two hyper-progressive transgender women, 'under fire' for casting people of different ethnicities and genders, in different roles entirely to make a point about such things, faces controversy.
These various movements represent serious restrictions to artistic creativity and freedom of expression in the arts, and it's had a chilling effect on the industry.
The studios have 'taken note' - and now there are an entire series of stories and characters removed from pop culture reference, due to the antagonizing of a fairly small number of individuals.
Twitter has become a tool of mass suppression, whereby a few angry people can often dictate 'what cannot be done'.
The effect is pronounced and significant, affecting casting decisions in most films made in Hollywood.
Consider that in 2019 there was no host for the Oscars - largely because nobody wants to step up to the plate and undergo the kind of scrutiny usually reserved for presidential candidates. Any public statement ever made, in any context, that runs afoul of one group or another, can have one permanently removed - I'm not defending terrible people like Bryan Singer (X-Men), rather, guys like James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy), who made some really tasteless jokes on Twitter and lost his job (though thankfully regained).
Finally, on a side note, I'll refer to John Cleese himself during a Marc Maron interview (you can search iTunes for it, highly recommended): "You can't make a joke about the French Revolution anymore". I understand this isn't quite a concern over sensitivities, but Cleese himself pokes in this direction in his interviews.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2018/07/04/scarle...
[2] https://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/taika-waititi-akira-film-d...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/oct/26/cloud-atlas-und...
As for public statements, we just didn't use to be able to publish whatever crap came to our brains at 3am on the toilet to millions of people. Broadcasting was a Big Deal, only made after careful preparation. The difference is Twitter, not the reactions.
Yes, there are still taboos and stuff you can't say freely. But worse than before? I'm not seeing it. And Cleese provides no more evidence than you.
This is one of those words - like "glorious," "pro-abortionist," or "non-Madhayamaka-Tibetan-Buddhist" that lets you know exactly the ideology of the speaker.
It says nothing about 'the commenter' at all.
As for the word ... the 'old stodgy conservative clergyman' was apparently raised by the furthest thing from that: old-school communists, and since most people don't fully equate communism to secularism (which is effectively the case) - the description is apt, given the whole point of the thread is the nature of this guys religion, and the recent history of secularism.
So it wasn't a surprise to read that link and find he disliked most things - that seems to fit very well. SSC's commentary says far more about American attitudes than the actual history in places.
Anachronistic as even in 1979 nobody seemed that bothered abotu what the church thought of Life of Brian, whether christian or not. The furore was among the great and the good (lol) in the media, with a few town councils banning it, and a fuss on the TV. So the debate was already distinct and disconnected from the regular people and out of time. In those days the media and establishment moved slowly. It was the follow up Not The Nine O'clock News sketch as a reversal of the absurd debate that was the talking point.
The countless revelations of abuse over the decades since have reinforced the feeling that any place the church still held in society was ill deserved.
> And yet we have material prosperity and 'freedoms' - we are more depressed and anxious than ever before.
I see this as likely a symptom of the loss of community for individualism.
Historically religion and community went together, today they both seem rather lacking, but are separate and distinct. It seems to be the loss of community that is hurting rather than the general decline of faith across Western Europe. As I hinted above, it's that role the churches could have tried to fill, successfully, but chose not to.
Why couldn't Blazing Saddles be made today? Some of the jokes would be different -- mores have moved in 40 years. There's been racial progress, even in America!
And as you point out, the reception of 'The Life of Brian' is almost more interesting than the film itself.
Sunday opening is still constrained, although seemingly by labour MPs for unions, and Easter Sunday seems to be still betrothed to the church, even though it’s the Celtic festival of spring.
Various clerical abuses/scandals probably played the real lead role, if you ask most people. You can always convincingly argue for "one damned thing after another" as the real engine of history. There's also the plain fact that the BBC interview involved an entirely different church in a different country, which is points againt my version.
..That's why I say symbolic.
That interview just feels like the magic is gone, curtain is pulled or pick your metaphor. Suddenly (it seemed to take them by surprise) the bishop was just an old man in silly clothes who couldn't make a relevant argument, didn't seem like an authority and wouldn't be taken more seriously than the comedians who's film had interesting commentary, besides being funny and entertaining.
It captured a moment, imo. I also like python... so bias.
British produced and made, Irish written and acted. Guess it depends on your defintion of an Irish show but you can be sure that if something is funny, RTE had absolutely nothing to do with it.
But the semantics changes substantially with different religions, only dates, abstract motions, and symbols remained (seldom the symbolisms, meanings, etc).
Which is why pointing that this or that custom was adopted from an earlier religion doesn't say much about it's new role -- some skeptics seem to go like "it was adopted, so it's fake" and can't fathom that it just means it was convenient and served a role for both religions, nor that the role can be completely different, even if the date is the same.
Like if we replaced Xmas on Dec 25, but kept the date as a new holiday of a new religion, say, "The day of buying gifts". So, instead of the message of god becoming man, redemption, love, etc, it would mean "time to indulge ourselves with crap, and buy some token BS for others to keep the market moving". Hmm, wait, we already did that.
At this remove it seems just about impossible to pick apart, let alone identify the previous significance.
Easter, however, is conceptually linked to Passover, since it commemorates Christ's death at Passover and subsequent resurrection [1].
Easter's actual date is highly variable and notoriously aggravating to compute, though [2]. For reasons I do not know, the church did not want to just say "the first Sunday following Passover."
If this wikipedia link is to believed she may also have been the origin of Easter hares and rabbits.
https://historyforatheists.com/2017/04/easter-ishtar-eostre-...
Now, the hares and rabbits and all, that's obviously not from Christian tradition or the Bible. That's clearly a regional adaptation of adopting a local tradition into the Christian celebration. This is a typical way to assimilate a culture. Reuse their traditions, but rebrand them (change masks of pagan gods or entities to be saints, change the parade to focus on the Christian symbols, etc.).
There's probably a long tradition of people in Europe associating March and April with hares, but I don't think there's anything particularly "pagan" about it.
It wouldn't surprise me if the pre-indo-european cultures of the area also had the same symbols for whatever religions they practiced.
The fertility symbols of spring have very little to do with Christianity, and I can't see where they are even made part of the theology. So looking backwards from a thousand years later, it seems like the pagan religions did recognize them as fertility symbols and rites. Even if those symbols have always been there, it feels like the pagans used them to make sense of their world in a way that Christians haven't.
Holy Week (preceding Easter) and Easter itself are full of themes and symbolism, but the focus is different — it's square on the mysteries of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
See for example the Exsultet[3] and the Victimae paschali laudes[4]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogation_days
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ember_days
The Easter bunny has about as much to do with Christianity (or pagan religions) as Santa Claus.
So yeah, I'm sure you can loosely trace lots of this stuff back into the distant past. My point was just that this isn't an instance of Christianity taking over or "rebranding" some older pagan tradition.
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3147.htm
I don't know when/how the tradition changed.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_particular_churches_a...
See:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/paschal
https://www.etymonline.com/word/Easter?ref=etymonline_crossr...
Most Christians of course don't, which is why we think of the above as Christian holidays even though some Christians find something objectionable.
The only “Christians” (the application of this label to them is controversial within Christianity) that take this approach are Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and some related groups, who share the trait of rejecting the concept of holidays (with the exception of, or as distinguished from, the regular Sabbath). I know of no Christian group that rejects Christmas for pagan ties and refers to Easter in the way you describe.
I know of several other Christian groups today who don't. The ones you mention are the only ones anyone is likely to recognize without personally knowing someone in the church. It isn't only about rejecting holidays.
There's actually quite a bit of history and uncertainty re: December 25.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas#Choice_of_December_2...
It's also that the Church of England is hardly a church. More like a country/bingo club.
Where would it find the moral authority?
A curiously empty article about a film, which like
Holy Grail has barely dated in the intervening decades.
When I first saw Holy Grail, I thought it was the funniest thing ever. Now the mere mention of "it's only a flesh wound" and other such lines makes me want to hurl myself out of a window. I've probably heard that line recited 1,000 times!
Hardly. Palin and Cleese seemed to perfectly understand
the ridiculous childishness of the comically pompous bishop
and Muggeridge who both repeatedly avoided engaging and
simply derided the film as "tenth rate" etc.
(As an atheist and huge fan of the movie, I certainly don't mind. But Life of Brian most certainly does make light of Christianity, among many other things)
I believe in it because it is right, and it is right because I believe in it.
Religion doesn't follow logic. It follows belief.
It is like saying "the team that I support is better than the team that YOU support". Even if "my" team hasn't won anything for the last 100 years. Even if "your" team beats us 100-0 on every game. Just bad luck, the referee didn't see things clearly, the coach made a few untested last minute changes, the list is endless.
But the dogma remains. MY belief/idea is better then YOUR belief/idea, and that is that. And this is why many people (including me) are rejecting religion/"The Church". I want people to have the freedom to believe whatever they want, but I cannot get into a dialogue on religion.
I remember from the music video of Van Halen - Right Now [1]: Right Now, god is killing moms and doges because he has to (the clip displays this in all caps, I will respect everyone's eyes)
Religion does follow a belief structure that differs from logic but it sure as shit is a robust and resilent belief system.
Perhaps that’s true in a global sense, but that doesn’t mean Christianity is devoid of individuals who can clearly and logically defend their position in debate against secularists and atheists. William Lane Craig comes to mind, among several others. You might not like listening to him, but he certainly doesn’t rest his case on an assumed moral authority or any other fallacious logical grounds.
What matters is whether it’s objectively true. Christians may be failing in certain ways at evangelism, but as scripture says, “The natural man does not understand the things of God, because they are spiritually discerned.”
Most I know come up with their own version of religion based on christianity - picking up what they like, ignoring rest. Which is a sane and fine solution and practically transition to agnosticism over few generations, but it sure ain't the same christianity branch they claim to adhere to.
It could be still adding numbers due to remote missionaries wiping out local religions and overall increasing numbers (I sure as hell hope not), but I can't imagine this trend in western democracies. Immigration you mention should be 0-sum game - yes more immigrants in their new home country go into church, but they left their home country.
Other religions, especially islam might be another story.
1) http://elm.washcoll.edu/index.php/2018/11/fastest-growing-re...
Christianity’s main claims revolve around agreeing eyewitness accounts from hundreds of people, set against a backdrop of people in power who had the motivation and opportunity to disprove them if they could (but who opted to kill them instead). You may say those people were lying or call them delusional, but my choice to believe them hardly qualifies as magical thinking.
And that could easily be lobbed the other direction. To think that a universe, its physical laws, and everything in it can come from nothing might just as well be called magical thinking.
It might be more helpful to engage the worldview and its arguments than use dismissive phrases.
As we all know, many people are effin' properly weird. They make up stories, believe utter nonsense only because its convenient. But we're led to accept without any question records passed verbally for hundred(s) of years of magical supernatural acts. In fact, whole bible is full of them, somehow universe 2000-3000 years ago was much more magical place where simple laws of physics didn't work if you had the right god on your side.
Here we come full circle to the fact that most sane christians today don't have answer to this simple logical fallacy (and others). They will tell you that you can't take these things literally, just take the moral values etc. So we end up with some bastardized religion, call it a sect, which picks from Bible what they like, and conveniently ignore the rest.
With this logic we can turn to old greek/persian/hindu/pagan/etc myths which contain tons of moral lessons too. And being a good moral person doesn't need any fear-of-god pressure, most of us have this thing called moral compass. Those who don't have it can't be saved/turned good by any faith anyway.
Maybe some older folks from bible belt or some 3rd world country can be still fed this utter nonsense, but anybody with critical thinking has hard time with these topics. You can't be a good citizen and be critical to your government and overall bullshit around us, and in the same time turn this part of your personality off with faith.
Nah.
> Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
John 20:29
> He replied, "Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."
Matthew 17:20
Christianity at least was always about (blind) faith. And I'd argue all abrahamic religions were like that. Let's not forget the start of the all these religions - Abraham blindly believing god so much that he tried to kill his son.
Or maybe try Hiob's story (I believe in English it's Job?). God killed his family to win a bet with the devil, and Job was supposed to keep his faith because he will get a new better family in the end.
Or the wife of Lot who was changed into a salt pillar because she dared to look back at the cursed city (damn LGBT, it ruined Sodom ;) ) instead of blindly believing the god and going away.
There's lots of such stories in the Bible - the message of "shut up and believe what you're told" is clear.
In other words, Jesus blessed people who trust him though they didn't meet him. He didn't exactly expect people to say "Jesus... nice name. I think I go apologize to my wife now." The expectation was always that Christians would be a people who taught and encouraged each other to understand Jesus and trust him.
In fact "blind faith" itself is a reference to Jesus mocking folks with ignorant dogma.
That's a different position than "religion is a matter of faith". IIUC it's more like "everything is a matter of faith".
And in matters concerning religion - at least the Catholic church still believes in papal infallibility.
>... before we believe in a proposition as revealed by God, we must first know with certitude that God exists, that He reveals such and such a proposition, and that His teaching is worthy of assent, all of which questions can and must be ultimately decided only by an act of intellectual assent based on objective evidence. Thus, fideism not only denies intellectual knowledge, but logically ruins faith itself.
See e.g. the following for further discussion.
https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/67580/what-...
> All the truths you list above, which are beyond the capabilities of human reason alone to discover, can only be known through faith. See, for example: "Whether the trinity of the divine persons can be known by natural reason?" (Summa Theologica I q. 32 a. 1).
> Just because there are truths beyond our human natural reason, that doesn't mean faith is not an intellectual virtue grounded in reason.
This debate seems to be orthogonal to our debate. They are arguing whether faith is a feeling or a thing you can reason about. But they all agree faith is required to believe in catholic dogmas.
And I fail to imagine how you could think otherwise, religions make lots of assumptions about god, and the proofs of existence of god I've seen were all flawed, and even if they weren't - they would only prove the existence of something, not the existence of a personal god with any particular properties.
I especially liked the proof that went: "all things are perfect to some degree, therefore there must be a thing that is the most perfect, and that's by definition god" :)
I was a devout catholic when I heard it the first time, and still it seemed so fishy to me :)
>Human reason is able to prove with certitude the existence of God; faith, a heavenly gift, is posterior to revelation, and therefore cannot be properly used against the atheist to prove the existence of God.
>...
>Revelation, indeed, is the supreme motive of faith in supernatural truths, yet, the existence of this motive and its validity has to be established by reason.
Whether or not certain arguments for God are valid or not is beside the point. The point is that rational grounds for believing in God's existence are regarded as a necessary foundation for faith.
Catholicism also condemns Rationalism, so faith is considered essential too, but it's not the blind faith you were referring to in your earlier post. You believe in the trinity through faith but your faith is grounded in a knowledge of the reliability of the relevant revalation(s).
> it condemns the idea that one should believe unreasonable doctrines through faith alone.
And who decides what is unreasonable :)?
Because as a catholic you are required to believe in lots of self-contradictory statements with no proof. Stuff like holy trinity, virginal birth; omnipotence of god; humanity and divinity of messiah; omnipotent, omniscient and loving god creating an universe with evil in it; free will, salvation by good acts, and god's omniscience; impossibility of salvation without sacrifice of Jesus; bread that is a human body as well (in essence not in substance, but the idea of essenece itself is unreasonable and has no basis in reality).
All of that with no proof other than scripture and tradition.
I was a catholic for 22 years. I was taught by parents, and in school by priests. I took it seriously and fought with these statements for several years before abandoning them altogether.
Catholics are required to believe in whatever the pope says is true in the matters of religion. You have to believe Mary was a virgin her whole life and never died, but went straight to heaven. You can have doubts, but the correct reaction is to ignore the doubts and pry for god to give you faith.
And it haven't changed in last 150 years - some dogmas were added, but the idea that you have to believe in these things is at least 1600 years old, and probably older.
The Catholic position isn't that you should believe every part of Christianity on the basis of blind faith. That's clear from the sources that I linked to.
You might think that the arguments are bad. However, believing something on the basis of a bad argument isn't the same thing as believing it on the basis of blind faith.
Take the infallibility of the Pope's ex cathedra pronouncements as an example. Yes, you are supposed to believe these as a Catholic. But the doctrine of infallibility rests on reasoned (though not necessarily sound) arguments. Catholics don't say "believe whatever the pope says because blind faith". They say: here is why we believe the Pope's ex cathedra pronouncements are infallible and hence to be assented to.
The difference between "blind faith" and what the Catholic church would call "reasoned faith" doesn't seem at all relevant if one doesn't accept (logically sound) arguments where there is no demonstrable reason to accept the premises of said argument... is it?
Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?
EDIT: To me it's a bit like arguing from a premise of "the Bible is 100% true and infallible". Well that can't be a valid premise because there are contradictory passages... and, anyway, it wasn't written directly by God, so there is already at least 1 layer of interpretation going on. I mean, I can accept that if you believe the premise then you wouldn't want to wear clothes made of mixed fibers, but that's neither here nor there. Likewise, you could argue as long as you like about how many angels fit on the head of a pin, but I don't accept the premise that angels (as described in the bible) exist, so...
As to why the specific teachings of the Catholic church? It literally comes down to "God said so and God wouldn't lie."
"We may point out in this connexion the falsity of the prevalent notion that faith is blind. "We believe", says the Vatican Council (III, iii), "that revelation is true, not indeed because the intrinsic truth of the mysteries is clearly seen by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Who reveals them, for He can neither deceive nor be deceived." Thus, to return to the act of faith which we make in the Holy Trinity, we may formulate it in syllogistic fashion thus: Whatever God reveals is true but God has revealed the mystery of the Holy Trinity therefore this mystery is true." [1]
As to the reasons why Catholics believe that one should place one's trust in God, these have to do with a variety of purely rational, if not always convincing arguments. Catholics believe that the existence of God can be proved with reason.
"'that God, the first cause (principium) and last end of all things, can, from created things, be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason' (Denz., 1785-old no. 1634)
and in the corresponding canon (can. i, De revelat.) it anathematizes anyone who would say
'that the one true God our Creator and Lord, cannot, through the things that are made, be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason (Denz., 1806-old no. 1653)." [2]
Catholics would not argue that you can logically deduce every tenant of their faith through reason alone, but they do believe that through reason, one can deduce enough to decide to place faith in truth of the religion and then chose to follow the rest of the beliefs.
1. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05752c.htm 2. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608b.htm
How do you know god said so? How do you know there even is a god? How do you know god wouldn't lie?
You assumed it (in one way or another). Blind faith.
BTW, regarding the whole "god doesn't lie" thing:
> O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me.
Jeremiah 20:7
> And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel.
Ezekiel 14:9
> And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
2 Thessalonians 2:11
But Bible is full of contradictions, it's not like anybody can be persuaded by pointing them out. Faith doesn't care about contradictions :)
> these have to do with a variety of purely rational, if not always convincing arguments.
Arguments using circular reasoning are indeed not very convincing :)
> that God, the first cause (principium) and last end of all things, can, from created things, be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason
There's no way to deduce anything about the first cause. Not the fact that it would also necessarily be the end of all things. Not that it was something conscious with a free will. Much less again that it was a personal god. Much less still that it was the God as Catholics define him.
And it's perfectly possible that there was no first cause at all (the chain of causes could be infinite for all we know).
> Catholics believe that the existence of God can be proved with reason.
And that's blind faith, because they can't actually prove it, they just declare it's possible. You're arguing my point for me here ;)
I don't know any of these things. I don't believe in a God. But you're missing the whole point which is that just because you disagree with the reasoning and beliefs of Catholics doesn't mean that you can impose a doctrine upon them which they do not believe.
"And that's blind faith, because they can't actually prove it, they just declare it's possible."
They believe that they can prove it, and I've met many who will attempt to a do so at the drop of a hat. If you'd read the link I provided you'd actually see some of those attempts. Whether they actually can prove it is beside the issue, however. What matters is whether they believe that their proofs are valid.
Belief: "Earth is flat"
Argument: "If earth was flat it would look flat. Earth looks flat therefore it must be flat."
It's no longer faith, it's reason now. Doesn't matter that you ignore all the counterarguments.
Catholics as a group don't "ignore all the counterarguments". So for example, Ed Feser recently published a book presenting five arguments for the existence of God (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Five-Proofs-Existence-Edward-Feser/...). The book responds to the various counterarguments that atheists and agnostics usually make to these arguments. You might not be convinced by the responses, but the counterarguments are not ignored.
Again, I am not trying to argue here that Catholicism can ultimately be rationally justified. I'm not a Catholic, and it's not particularly important to me whether it can or can't be. But it's unfair to caricature Catholics as a group as irrational faith heads (though no doubt some individuals may meet this description).
It's no longer faith, it's reason now. Doesn't matter that you ignore all the counterarguments."
Exactly! Otherwise literally everyone on earth could be said to be acting on 'blind faith' because nearly everyone holds at least one or two mistaken beliefs out of some prejudice or unwillingness to examine the counterarguments.
This is fairly explicitly not true. Most papal statements even on subject matter that could in principal be subject to infallible declaration are not made ex cathedra. There very few even arguably ex cathedra pronouncements (leaving aside the disputed status of canonizations), even though Popes say and write a lot about religion.
But anyway, the question was whether religious belief was necessarily based on "blind faith", not whether it meets some kind of positivist criterion of ideal rationality. People who believe in God wholly or partly on the basis of arguments aren't believing on the basis of blind faith. You might think the arguments are bad, but you could have a rational discussion with them about that.
Papal infallibility is actually a rather new dogma (and, on the age scale of the Catholic Church, even somewhat new as a general belief), and it means a lot less than a lot of people (especially outside the Church) think it means, because it applies only on special circumstances and only on specific subject matter; there's a very small number of pronouncements to which it is generally held to apply (and I believe only two that are absolutely unquestioned), and several more to which it has been argued to apply (as well as one very frequent act to which it has been argued, but is not generally accepted, to apply: canonization of saints.)
You've picked some of the best stories that illustrate if god existed, he'd be a moral thug and sociopath...
I think I know what you're driving at but what you literally said is wrong. I've read many Christians from over 150 years ago jawing on anout faith.
Many early scientists and alchemists were driven by a desire to discover through theory and experiment the mind of god. Archeology as a field was largely formalized by members of christian societies hoping to find the historical sites of miraculous events, to bolster their faith. Even as these searches strike out in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, religion still clung to the near universal belief in material of life being different from inanimate matter. The proof in the existence of god was as simple as looking in a mirror--you were made in his image, and so obviously different from the mechanical substances that made up the rest of the world.
The discovery of evolution as a mechanism for the explanation of life, and the later elaboration of life's mechanical nature really closed off the final possibility of there being everyday real-world proof for the existence of god. It was then that the philosophy was adopted that ALL of religion was a matter of faith alone, untestable by science.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku3GcPrW9xg&t=190
(Brace yourself for a classy joke at 4:50)
Seems like it was only after John Cleese made a more seriours thrust that the stiffs got scared and went into a hedgehodge defense and it all turned boring and ridiculous.
Vintage!
What they do mercilessly lampoon are all the hangers-on, unthinking followers, ungrateful beneficiaries and various religious functionaries that follow rules before they follow principles. Those people get a proper drubbing.
I looked it up and apparently it was Muggeridge who had skipped the beginning of the film. Perhaps he had also skipped the bit in the bible about bearing false witness, it is quite a large book after all.
So basically the whole Church Inc. with its highly pyramidal management structure, messy internal politics, hunger for power/money and a history that noone could possibly be proud of.
interesting. i never looked at the film that way.
i took the message in that scene to be that optimism can be overdone, that maybe the belief in Jesus's death/resurrection was simply optimism taken to a really absurd extreme
Here is a question I would ask, What are you really trying to say in this film? I believe you wear on this a wee bit earlier but unfortunately we only got the picture outside, not the voice, which was something that husbands might want of their wives...
Classy.
The Swedes loved it; their movie posters dubbed it 'The movie which is so funny, it is banned in Norway!'
Wouldn't it be fun to watch movie having fun about Mohammed in Sweden? Or we became some kind of cultural caliphat in the mean time? Joking about Jesus respecting Mohammed? There is a reason for which our era is referred to as "new middle-ages" by some philosophers.
Sad.
By the way there is much more comedy material in Mohammed case too.
As we know since Freud hypocrisy is this what makes the best jokes. I.e. saint God messiah who is a war lord and peadophile in the meantime. Try making movie about that.
A movie lampooning Mohammed, made by Christians and for the amusement of other Christians, offers no such opportunity for self-reflection or growth. It would be nothing more than 21st century blackface.
It might appeal to non Christians, ex-hindus like me. Or ex-Christians.
Should you be part of a group to criticize it? Can only Hitler criticize Nazis?
How exactly is lampooning Islam going to help Christians, ex-Christians or ex-Hindus?
With these religious/cultural differences I can understand how Muslim take greater offence to people making fun of their most prominent prophet as opposed to Christians, but also you have to take into account that because of that, people usually are more provocative with their humour when it comes to Mohammed.
I can't remember having seen any sexually depraved depiction of Jesus in mainstream media whereas I can clearly remember many that depicted Mohammed.
IMO it's not as easy to make fun of Islam/Mohammed because people tend to go for the extreme in term of dark humour but also it's not perceived the same way by the religious communities.
Interestingly, the west does not, however, honor similar Jewish reverence towards utterance or the writing of the name of G-d. See, for example, http://www.jewfaq.org/name.htm. I always wondered about the discrepancy.
(And The Life of Brian doesn't make fun of Jesus in any way, that's what people who haven't seen the film think.)
Whilst they're careful in the action of the film to make it clear Brian isn't Jesus, surely the central premise is that "Jesus is Brian", that his presentation as Son of God is a [comedic] mishap, or misunderstanding.
Are you trying to tell me you don't think it is saying 'people are mistaken and Jesus was just a man'? (Or perhaps 'a very naughty boy'!)
To me it seemed carefully written to maintain deniability and skirt blasphemy regulations.
FWIW it's a film I've enjoyed watching both as an agnostic and as a Christian.
And, you're right Brian is not the Messiah (which is just what the Messiah would say!).
You know Animal Farm isn't about a farmyard, right?
There are many examples in literature and film where the creators focus on a personage close to a celebrity and make them the main character. But I guess the film is well done if we can both claim our positions and believe the other person is wrong.
I don't think the writers took a post-modernist approach. Indeed, as I tried to explain, the inclusion of Jesus as a character is IMO a clear attempt to say "see, no blasphemy here" for the purposes of publishing the film. (FWIW I don't consider the film blasphemous without the Jesus scenes, not explicitly at least).
The intention is pretty clearly to say "Jesus is Brian", ie "he's elevated by the crowd to his position as Messiah, rather than that being an intrinsic part of the man known as Jesus".
This makes me think that it isn't left or right that loves censorship. It's those with power that love censorship. Seems like the first thing people do when they get power is to tell other people what they can or cannot say.
They loved it!(thankfully)
Especially, the part where the crowd yells “We’re all individuals!”.
And one lone voice peeps, “I’m not.”
Often silly, frequently smart, and occasionally dark irreverence.
If you teach your kids latin, they'll appreciate the movie that much more.
‘Still, as gender transitioning becomes culturally mainstream, the desire of the revolutionary Stan (Eric Idle) to be a woman, to be called “Loretta” and to have babies, will strike a chord.’
In fact, actual the scene from the film will be highly offensive to anyone who has accepted the pro-trans dogma. “Loretta”’s companions point out to him the absurdity of his decision to “be” a woman, and Loretta’s comments could have been transcribed from the Twitter feed of any trans woman yesterday. They are kind to Loretta, and spend the rest of the film trying to treat him as he wants to be treated, and frequently apologizing when they forget. But there is never any doubt that this is the kindness of friends towards one who is just very confused.
Here is the scene, by the way:
I was raised protestant and my girlfriend Jewish; after this scene I leaned over and whispered, "this is why there are too many denominations to keep track of".
>Kant put it in 1784, “‘Have the courage to use your own understanding!’ — that is the motto of enlightenment.”
>The virtue of the film today is its capacity to offend a whole new generation of viewers for different reasons.
I wish that in 2019 we were not so quick to personally attack for unique or politically incorrect ideas.
That's the beauty of the film, it deftly illustrates that the vast majority of us don't have any "unique politically incorrect ideas". We're all, kind of, members of the People's Front of Judea. (Except, of course, for those of us who are members of the Judean People's Front.)
Basically, the movie showed that most of us are "uniquely rebellious" in almost exactly the same way. Same taglines. Same clothes. Same beliefs. Same pass times. Etc etc etc. We've all become the brooding Goth teenager, who believes him or herself to be unique and counter cultural. Yet somehow we still look, sound and dress like every other "uniquely rebellious" Goth teenager on the planet.
The film makes fun of the fact that there were very few people out there with completely unique and insightful views back when it was made. The reason it resonates today is because this central fact is still true. Not many people with unique ideas out there at all. Most of what we hear, we've already heard before.
I don't think we do that any more now than we used to, is just that as what is considered politically incorrect changes some people will think that there is an increase due to them personally getting more shit, where there is actually just a change in focus.
I have personal conversations offline with people where we can discuss controversial topics without anyone taking offence or "calling out". I have learned to avoid any such topics on social media because of the social consequences. I know many others who do the same: simply avoid certain topics online.
I'm old enough to remember how we were before the internet, too. It wasn't like this. Discussions were more interesting and less fraught. People had a wider range of opinions on everything. At least, that's how I remember it.
10 or even 5 years ago, you could have debates on every controversial topic online from abortion to atheism to lgbt to healthcare. In comment threads you would literally see every side of the debate. But something happened fairly recently where social media got weaponized for political reasons. And "blasphemy laws" got established on social media platforms. What's interesting is that the same "blasphemy laws" are on every platform as if a pope or an authority figure sent out a decree that everyone had to obey.
Now there are even well funded "hit squads" to attack or shame people for wrongthink. But I think their time is coming to an end because more and more people are getting tired of censorship.
I mean, I've posted a couple of John Gray links here and it would be difficult to have read anything of his without having spent at least a little time thinking about the secular analogs to religious practices, as that is one of his major themes.
You've just successfully described one of my main hobbies. As far as any secular tradition goes, I am firmly in the Diogenes camp.
like elements of the crowd that wants to stone a woman for adultery, we're all itching to chuck a rock or two, not so much because we love violence or hate the woman, but because we're afraid someone more powerful will accuse us of failing to throw a stone and we ourselves will become the next target. i don't see any Jesus on the horizon to stop it.
So they want things that will anger as many users as possible, so that they will stay on the platform and share the outrage with their friends, but not so outrageous the advertisers will leave.
I don't think this is going to end well.
Also known as the 'Daily Mail' strategy. (Which admittedly has had a slight change in tone recently what with the editor being changed for someone very slightly less mental after Lady Rothermere got bored of being teased at parties)
We are, literally, living the Monty Python moments which resonate so well.
All it takes to demonstrate this is a brief moment of pause before you hit the upvote or the downvote button.
Beyond that point, we are all made of wood and weigh the same as a duck.
WOW, that was well phrased.
I liked this quote, even if I'm not 100% in agreement:
>On the whole, they are older and wiser myths than secular myths like progress
Moreover, the changes brought by enlightenment were actually revolutionary and immense. But what is his correct observation is that no rights are fixed and that the most of the humans who have them now can as well lose them fast.
Atheism is an affirmative answer to a question about your faith in the unknown. So I agree with him, again just personally.
I don't think this claim stands up to much scrutiny.
Sure - religion is interesting from a historical perspective. "Why do we think the way we do" for example. Or "how did we grapple with problem X before we discovered Y..."
But religion doesn't offer some unique perspective or insight we don't otherwise have access to.
In fact, it stops us exploring questions we don't yet understand. Because (organised) religion claims to have the answers. That's what makes it so dangerous.
And, as Christopher Hitchens used to say, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to support them"...
We can, and we did.
The US constitution for example, is explicitly secular.
In fact I'd say there's a convincing case to be made that - as soon as faith (in some form) enters the equation - you can no longer have a reasonable argument about human rights, because by definition, a person who believes something 'on faith' cannot be persuaded by logical argument, reason, or evidence. They simply 'know it to be true'.
> I think a good example is human rights. Remember, these started out as natural, or god-given rights.
The teachings of the most common major religions included some human rights. But also a lot of incitement to commit atrocious acts completely counter to our human rights (for example the death penalty for adultery and homosexuality, the command to commit genocide in several cases, genital mutilation and so on).
Sure, you can cherry pick just the 'good' parts of your chosen religion, but if you're doing that, why bother with religion in the first place?
If you (or anyone else reading this) genuinely agree with the comment I'm replying to, please, please, please watch this debate with an open mind --> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJCZKZomtXQ).
> We can, and we did.
> The US constitution for example, is explicitly secular.
The US Constitution is a plan of government amended with a listing of human rights. In its original form it left those rights entirely unenumerated. It's an odd argument to claim that it forms any kind of basis for those rights when that basis is clearly elsewhere.
True (although amongst some species no higher than our own, so not sure what point that proves).
> By using the word atrocity you’re buying in to some definition of evil that has to come from a philosophical belief system, ie a faith, which could be directed toward God, the future of humanity, logic, a flat earth, or literally anything else.
I don't know that you can believe in logic or the future of humanity.
Definitely not in the same way people believe in God.
As for where morality/our basis for human rights comes from if not from religion, Richard Dawkins explains best (in ~5min) how the source most probably isn't belief/faith/religion in this video --> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XtvWkRRxKQ).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg
So, no to those that claim that, humans aren't special, and no, the good sides of morality don't come from religion, especially not from the modern ones with a "jealous" god (killing homosexuals, or punishing women when not wearsing something, however, if that is considered "morality", indeed provably does come from religion).
The whole talk:
That is true, however look at the world we live in. A lot of people are not moral.
He admits the question asked of him is a "genuinely hard question:" using concepts of good and evil is an inherent admission in some faith in such concepts.
If you take a honest look in what religions are "really about" you'd come to: hell. Deities providing a place to torture human souls. Even Buddhism (as a developed religion, not as an idea on which it was established) has its hell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism)
The proof that all of these stories are actually produced by humans and even have one origin is that the concept of hell effectively didn't exist around 3000 years ago but then appeared in all the cultures which mutually exchanged goods through the trade routes around 2500 years ago. The timing also doesn't fit with any of the religions claiming they have "the truth": the concept of hell was surely unknown to early Judaism but was provably spread across the cultures centuries before the Christianity appeared.
> But it has value in exploring questions and aspects of humanity that we are not able to understand with reason.
Like, we can imagine hell really good, and obviously successfully spread the invented stories about it. Heaven on another side is either non-existence, or profoundly uninteresting or obviously produced for a mind of sex-obsessed hormone pushed teenagers who will therefore be motivated to die for their "religion" (virgins always ready for sex).
> Human beings are really bad at reason.
Should we then prevent them from trying to reason about their religions? Or shouldn't we support them exactly to do so? The problem is, raising people to "not do something" because they will be "punished" in the afterlife provably doesn't work, otherwise we wouldn't be where we are now -- the human civilization constantly being near to complete annihilation.
By pure nature of how probability works, there will be sooner or later some false alarm that will indeed trigger the actual detonation of the nuclear weapons. The only sane action by humanity would be to reduce their amount to the scale which makes humanity's annihilation impossible. We are very far from that at the moment. Because it's so profitable making these weapons.
Yes, human beings are really bad at reason.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/john-f-k...
"military and intelligence leaders responded by unveiling their proposal for a pre-emptive thermonuclear attack on the Soviet Union, to be launched sometime in late 1963. JFK stormed away from the meeting in disgust, remarking scathingly to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “And we call ourselves the human race.”"
From the crude and inaccurate broad brush descriptions of modern attitudes to blasphemy, through to presenting the song 'Always look on the bright side of life' as an example of nihilism, this reads like a poorly researched high school essay, with a Kant quote thrown in at the end to try and make it sound clever.
I expected wolf-nipple-tips but was delivered stale bread.