FB friend B.R. posted this. I'll post the comic B.R. linked to, and then the FB discussion that resulted.
Me: B.R., astounding in its hypocrisy, stereotyping, and construction of straw men. But of course, I'm now set up. Simply by me criticizing it demonstrates my intolerance and narrow mindedness.
B.R.: Not at all, you're free to criticize it. I'd rather enjoy this cartoon with a realistic grain of salt than ignorantly pledge myself to every word. Would you care to share how you think it's hypocritical, and how it creates straw men? I agree that it utilizes stereotypes for the sake of extra laughs.
J.B.: Agree with Rich. Balance: some religious people are shitty. Also, some non-religious people are equally as shitty.
J.B.: And actually, from the completely non-scientific sample group of "people I encounter regularly," I know far more argumentative, hateful, asshole atheists than I do argumentative, hateful, asshole religious folk.
J.M.: B.R. - picking up on Rich's comment, I would say that it goes far beyond mere stereotypin and picks up the most outrageous versions of 'fundy' fundamentalism and blind adherence in most of the religions depicted, which is perhaps why he arrives at the conclusion that those who are religious shouldn't ever share their beliefs with others.
I did, however, chuckle at the liberal/conservative discourse lampooning.
B.R.: Oh dear me - have I brought out the centrist spirit in my Facebook brethren? Success!
B.K.: Seems like a pretty noncontroversial list of ways in which organized religion can, very broadly speaking, make societies more intolerant, violent, and repressive. I think Rich points out why satire can be so unhelpful to dialogue, though. The vulgarity, absurdity and hyperbole contained in the comic is all humorous to someone already sympathetic to the message (like me), but for someone like Rich, it's immediately offputting.
B.R.:
J.M - The wildly exaggerated speech bubbles and outlandishly-arrived-at conclusions are totally characteristic of The Oatmeal. I love his humor, but the messages often negates themselves by choosing short-attention-span laughs over committing to accurate representations.
Me: 1) It presumes to judge how people suck at their religion... by pointing out how bad it is to judge people. 2) The Catholic church was simply adhering to the current science, the Ptolemic view, at the time Galileo presented his theory. 3) Everyone chooses their religion or lack of same. That doesn't make the choice bad. 4) Parents impart a universe of perspectives on every conceivable subject. Why shouldn't they also impart religious perspectives? 5) The ones I see most fixated on sex is the political left. 6) it is ironic the comic criticizes religious people for sharing their faith perspective while engaging in precisely the same thing itself. 7) Everyone believes crazy shit about stuff (itself a judgment, by the way) 8.) People vote for good and bad reasons all the time. Like, say, voting for someone because he is black... Then at the end the author makes his own pronouncements about the nature of life, apparently unaware that he is doing the very same thing he accuses others of doing...
B.R.: Well put, B.K.. I'd like to think I would at least enjoy the inverse/pro-religion version of this cartoon, but I'll have to wait til I see one to monitor my own reaction. Rich, have you seen any writing or cartoons that would be a satiric complementary opposite to this one?
Me: I'm going to post the comic on my blog with expanded commentary. Then I think I might insert my own dialogue into the comic and see how that works. Haven't decided.
B.K.: Hi Rich. Thanks for taking time to deconstruct the comic. I'd just like to point out that the author's 'pronouncements about the nature of life' are based on objective reality, which tells us that we're living on earth, we're all going to die, that's scary, and that religion plays a powerful role in helping people cope with that. He's accusing others of imposing their own subjective spiritual beliefs on others - so categorically speaking, he's not being hypocritical here.
J.L.: Yeah, I actually usually really like the Oatmeal. But I think religion is his humorist's Achilles heel, as it were, for all the reasons Rich pointed out above.
Me: Brian, thanks. Those pronouncements are hardly objective reality. Or perhaps you can objectively prove the metaphysical opinion that we are completely powerless, helpless, and insignificant, or that anyone's religion should prove its value according to his criteria?
B.K.: The only other two things i'd like to point out are that: defending the Catholic church in their handling of Galileo because they were 'adhering to the current science' is problematic. Galileo was no saint, and basically forced the Church to jail him, but there's no way to defend the Catholic Church during the Renaissance. An excellent text for this era is The Sleepwalkers, by Arthur Koestler - also offers a ton of context about Copernicus, Kepler, and how many of the astronomers of that time interacted with Catholicism and the church. In reference to the political left being fixated on sex, I think you're referring to the left being more socially liberal and accepting of sex and sexuality in the public sphere, which is true. The artist is referring to the political right's legislation of sexuality (abstinence-only education, anti-sodomy laws, etc.) The joke he's trying to make is that the Christian right tries to control the sexual lives of consenting adults through legislation, because they are 'obsessed' with enacting laws based on biblical attitudes. He's also implying that they themselves are fighting their own sexual repression by repressing others - once again, referring to his consistent theme of imposing subjective beliefs on others.
Me: I simply pointed out the church, as the political and spiritual authority, defended the status quo of science. It seems you want to evaluate the political environment of the day using contemporary standards. That would be a mistake. It doesn't make the church's actions right. But it is far from the intolerant anti-science caricature imposed on it by less than thoughtful skeptics.
"Accepting of sex and sexuality in the public sphere..." is certainly an innocuous characterization of a far more insistent activity. I can't think of even the most foaming-at-the-mouth religionist ever obsessing about what people should or should not do in their bedrooms in a way that the Left does.
B.K.: Hi Rich. Of course I can't objectively prove anything metaphysical - that would be a contradiction in terms. The author does get hyperbolic here, for sure - but I have to say, when I contemplate the vastness of the universe, my dominant feelings are ones of insignificance and smallness.
B.K.: I think the left definitely does obsess, not about what people should or should not do in their bedrooms, but what all people should have the right to do.
B.K.: In regards to the Catholic Church, I take issue with any organization that brutally impedes human progress, whether it be scientific or social, in order to maintain its own power structure. You can find plenty of those in any era (which should render any claims of moral relativism moot) and most of them are religious institutions. And I agree that the 'intolerant anti-science caricature' imposed on Catholicism is usually simplistic and unhelpful.
L.W.: Not obsessing about what people do in their bedrooms is easy enough if neither you nor the people you know can still, in many places, be excluded from niceties of civic life taken for granted by the comfortable middle if word of your proclivities were to get out. I don't think that "the Left" (whatever that is) obsesses over sex and sexuality so much as it is aware, largely as a function of proximity, that otherwise ostensibly harmless proclivities can have material and political consequences unless shrouded in secrecy . . . and pretty much any useful sense of the word "liberal" is all but antithetical to any useful sense of the word "secrecy."
I agree that no religion should ever have to answer for its beliefs. Religionists, like anyone else, should be judged according to action. Whether a belief system or its keepers should be called to account for actions done in its name is probably a subject outside the scope of this discussion, but generally, I'm not for policing thought.
I'm not sure everyone--or anyone--entirely chooses religion or irreligion. It seems to me that so far as religion is a matter of belief, it is not chosen. Belief is the philosophical position of holding a posit to be true; one cannot hold true something one finds either counter-intuitive or, based on his or her understanding of the facts, counter-factual. I cannot simply "decide" to believe that I am a naked mole rat, and simply ignore evidence to the contrary (though I could proclaim such belief, and others could evaluate for themselves whether I am serious). Some posits have less recourse to empirical data (existence or non-existence of deity or other unifying metaphysical principle), but it still seems to me that one is reading the data, even if that data is intuitive (say, a core temperament that sees the universe as ordered vs. one that sees it as chaotic; all faith, like all hypothesis, is, at core, made entirely of "hunch").
L.W.: Oh, and I think the strip is funny, patently one-sided, and deliberately offensive. If there's such a thing as comedy that manages the first without resorting to the latter two, I've never seen, heard, or read it (and I've seen, heard, and read an awful lot). Comedy is made out of cruelty, and is probably the most subjectively apprehended qualities in all of art.
Me: "...but what all people should have the right to do." There's a right to sex? Astounding.
It's interesting that the Left seems only interested in their version of sexual freedom, with a mandatory celebration by everyone of those choices, but will happily tell us all how much taxes are fair, what temperature we should keep our houses, what firearms we can and cannot possess, how much income is too much, and what type of light bulbs we must buy. Whew. I'm so glad we can fuck who we want, as long as the government approves of the rest of our lives...
L.W.: Frankly, if you're fucking the right person, the rest of that can seem pretty insignificant. And if it doesn't, well, follow the line of reasoning.
In all (or at least some) seriousness, there's no right to sex because there are no rights at all except what we enumerate to be a right. That is, the one and only reasonable basis on which I've ever heard anyone argue against the right to sex could (and probably should) apply to any and all rights. Rights are yielded. You have a right because I, and a good number of others, are kind enough not to kill you, and if anyone were to lack such munificence, well, that right is at the heart of pretty much every social contract, so we tend to collectively suppress any urge that threatens that right (though we may disagree, in some cases, as to when that right is truly threatened and how it should be enforced; see disagreements regarding abortion or the death penalty). As the lion recognizes no right to life on the part of the gazelle, I yield no right of life to the grass-fed cow; I yield that right to my brethren for numerous reasons, one being that I have reached a conclusion via moral reasoning that killing is wrong ... which is not the reason that I think it should be illegal. After all, I've also reasoned that incest and listening to the Eagles are morally wrong, but I would never suggest that they should be limited by legislation, and actually object to those cases in which they are.
In any case, I hold that there is a right to sex because I recognize and cherish such a right morally; my argument that this right should be legally defended is based, on the other hand, on an argument from civic utility, i.e., that those civilizations are most likely to survive where citizens have the maximum right to moral self-determination that is possible without exercise of such interfering with similar rights in others.
Because the consequences of some actions are levied upon individuals other than the consenting participants, one can differentiate between a proscription that is strictly and only a matter of moral reasoning and one that speaks to some empirically demonstrable consequence to someone other than participants. Not everything in the latter category is likely to be regulated, of course, and the selection of which should be and how these proscriptions will be enforced will, again, vary.
T.K.: It REALLY shouldn't ever be necessary in a rational discussion to spell out the difference between controlling the love lives of consenting adults vs. controlling taxes, wealth, energy usage, and the distribution of lethal weapons, but the last four are justifiable on the grounds that they all have enormous, far-reaching social and economic consequences. Some people believe that's true of the first one, too, but those tend to be the folks who believe in talking snakes, 800 year-old men, and guys who could raise others from the dead, walk on water, make food magically appear, and heal sick people and yet were never mentioned in the writings of any civilization except for a small population of bronze-age goatherds.
B.K.: aaaand here comes Tim like a lion riding a god damn pegasus.
T.K.: 1) You have no business comparing fundamentalists, who condemn people's lifestyles solely on the basis of superstition with no provable facts whatsoever to those who criticize and try to block these actions from becoming public policy. Yes, okay, fine. I'm "judging" them for what they're doing. I think it's bad. But it's because any idiot knows that people and society both function better when everyone is afforded the same opportunities. Those are the grounds on which I make MY moral judgments. The preacher's is based on the belief that a supernatural force will punish us if people engage in something that almost 1500 other species on earth do.
2) Yeah, "adhering to the current science" wouldn't have involved a trial by the inquisition and sentencing Galileo to live the rest of his life under house arrest. And don't try to tell me their dogmatic persecution of the man was because they were super into Ptolemy.
3) That's a fair point. I do think religion, when taught properly, can serve as an excellent moral framework. And it's easier to teach than facts, too. Parents should pass their knowledge on to their children, and religion is one way this can be done.
4) I think he's mainly criticizing the inability of some people to distinguish what, in their collection of knowledge, is based on fact. But to be fair, it's an ability that many do not have and that none have mastered.
5) The political left is fixated on the government having a reasonable attitude regarding people's personal lives because the political right is constantly trying to manipulate and limit them! Trust me, as soon as they let it go, we'll let it go.
6) How many evolutionary biologists have come to your door, Rich?
7) There's gradients of crazy. Some people think my belief that cats and dogs will evolve full sentience and begin demanding civil rights is crazy, but at least it's possible, unlike fitting two of every species on earth on a boat a quarter the size of the Titanic.
8 ) He's not saying nobody does it, he's saying it's a bad thing to do. And in the process he criticizes both sides of the aisle. So you agree with him.
I'm assuming you're referring to the "keep it to yourself" part in your last bit. In that case, I'll recast a previous point: You could get most atheists to "keep it to themselves", and you wouldn't even need religious people to do the same. They just need to stop trying to fuck with our governments and rights based on their favorite books of fairy tales. That would be enough for me.
L.W.: I would go even further and say that I do not want anyone to "keep it to themselves." My journey from the Catholicism of my youth to the atheism of my college years to Spinoza's naturalistic pantheism to [G/g]nosticism to Bruno's panpsychism to Nichiren Buddhism (though, for me, this Buddhism is largely a mode of practice; Bruno's writings in Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast and Cause, Principle, & Unity still best describe my cosmology, though they are well matched by T'ien T'ai's concept of Ichinen Sanzen) has been, for me, an exciting one, and I'd be happy to discuss it with others, as well as listening to what others have to say of whatever religion (or whatever flavor of irreligion ;)) forms their personal moral and/or metaphysical bedrock.
The problems that arise, in my experience, are that reaching different conclusions given more or less similar data is all too often treated as an affront to a given belief; that attempts to subject factual claims (as opposed to speculative metaphysical posits) to the evidentiary rigours usually required for such is taken as an attempt to falsify, rather than an attempt to get all parties to recognize the inherently subjective and intuitive nature of religious inquiry; and there's all too often a failure on the parts of many (on both sides of the aisle) to distinguish between the kind of guidance that is appropriate for the family or the community from which one may voluntarily egress (which can, will, probably should contain all manner of complex, abstract, subjective reasoning) and which is appropriate for broad governance (which should be kept as "objective" as possible, which is to say, should satisfy the largest possible cross section of subjective interests by offering recourse to the measurable, the experimentally repeatable, the factually verifiable--the least imperfect of our inevitably imperfect methods of "knowing").
Me: "...like a lion riding a god damn pegasus." More like a hippo defending his little pond. I figured it wouldn't take long for the hostility to escalate. There's nothing like pointing out the hypocrisy of those who wag their finger at religion.
L.W.: Two observations:
First, people who gather up their toys and leave at the first sign of teasing will generally move those inclined to tease to, well, heavier teasing.
Second, those who complain most of online hostility, in my experience, respond more often to hostility than to more measured attempts to engage, will often even go so far as to shun such honest attempts and read hostility in them when none is on offering while taking time to answer the obvious heckler. I'm as guilty of this as anyone, probably. I just find it interesting when those claiming to be honest brokers treat honest questions (and yes, honest criticisms) as though they're rhetorical traps or pointless distractions.
I'm curious, Rich ... Do you see ANY value in recognizing a useful difference in application between moral reasoning and legal reasoning, between factual assertions and metaphysical posits, and so on? Do you not see ANY complicity on the part of religionists (of which I'm inclined to say I am one) in fomenting discord between the believer and the non-believer (or other-believer)?
Me: Who is "gathering up their toys?" Sorry, Lyam, the statement "...solely on the basis of superstition with no provable facts whatsoever..." is pure hostility and anti-intellectual.
Your curiosity about (...) is a matter that has not yet been discussed. Yes, I see value in recognizing a useful difference in (...).
Do I not see "ANY complicity?" Up until your intervention in the conversation, the topic of discussion was the rhetorical flaws of this comic. We weren't discussing religionists' complicity in anything.
"it is ironic the comic criticizes religious people for sharing their faith perspective while engaging in precisely the same thing itself."
"People vote for good and bad reasons all the time. Like, say, voting for someone because he is black... Then at the end the author makes his own pronouncements about the nature of life, apparently unaware that he is doing the very same thing he accuses others of doing..."
All before I entered the conversation, Rich, and all speaking to the conflicts between the religious and the (ostensibly) irreligious that give birth both to this comic and the posts on your page insisting, say, that public schools are, by and large, indoctrinating our children with secular/liberal viewpoints. Whether you discuss things in terms of complicity is immaterial; complicity is worth establishing so both sides have a mutual baseline understanding that this conflict is perhaps endemic to the existence of multiple viewpoints in a pluralistic (by design) society.
We all view subjects through epistemic filters; the best we can hope for is to be able to look at every subject through filters other than our own, even if we don't quite trust what we see under those circumstances. Changing the filter is not tantamount to changing the subject.
L.W.: For some reason, Rich, we always end up arguing about HOW we argue, or about whether or not our respective thoughts on the matter are even on topic. So I'm going to make a good faith effort to rectify this by breaking down what I see as your basic position and responding to it.
Rich: The comic in question indulges in stereotypes and straw men, and practices the intolerance against which it supposedly rails.
L.W.: Agreed! Of course, all art relies on types and archetypes; the distance to stereotypes is not far. This is particularly true of comedy; one cannot mock that of which one is truly and fully tolerant. I'm not sure one can count on art, particularly comedy--both the most democratic and the most controversial of all art forms--to reach anyone other than the "converted"; the rare work that does is uniquely and impressively subversive.
In any case, there's little value in addressing any isolated work born of the very real and constant conflict between various religious and/or irreligious factions in modern society and in our culture in particular without addressing that conflict itself--its roots, its character, our hopes for its future.
Another question that you may find more on-topic: Is there an example of a comedic work, from either side of this debate, that does a better, more conciliatory job of illustrating the conflict and/or outlining a possible solution?
T.K.: Just because the comic might indulge in some of the things it accuses the people it criticizes of doesn't mean it's wrong.
B.K.: Rich - these are two compatible statements. I'm wondering if you're willfully misunderstanding Tim here. Obviously when he says wrong he means 'true.' Whereas when you say 'wrong' you mean 'bad'. Also, I would love to see you respond to some of Lyam's discussion points, especially concerning online hostility. "I figured it wouldn't take long for the hostility to escalate": I get the sense that you're glad it did, since it confirms your biases about 'atheists' or 'the political left' or whoever it is you're identifying as the problem. I'm sorry you feel persecuted. See if you can't take the conversation in a constructive direction. Finding a more appropriate comedic work (by your standards) for discussion, as Lyam suggested, would be a nice start.
Me: Brian, we were all having a respectful, constructive conversation until approximately 15 hours ago. I quoted the offending statement, but I note that rather than ask the gentleman in question to restrain himself, you go after me. Why might that be? And why is it my burden to change the direction of the conversation when I did not alter its direction in the first place?
My original thesis is that this comic contains "hypocrisy, stereotyping, and construction of straw men," an observation nearly everyone has agreed with in some fashion. Now you assert that Tim believes the comic to be "true." Well, I happen to disagree. Whatever. I see no virtue that can be derived from a hypocritical, stereotypical, straw-men-laden presentation.
I am never glad when people do negative things, even when those things are expected. I simply noted the bad manners, I do not feel persecuted. I want a debate of ideas, which seems to be fairly difficult to find amongst the political left. Ben has been one of the few who fits the bill. We rarely agree, but we listen to each other.
Me: Lyam, what do you think is the core nature of the conflict between religious and non-religious persons/entities?
