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More Respect

Entry 282, on 2006-02-09 at 14:42:07 (Rating 4, Comments)

The Mohammed cartoons issue still interests me, so I must continue with this for one more blog entry. Strangely, the subject I blogged about yesterday: the South Park Bloody Mary episode, has become an issue here and was discussed on National Radio this morning. This was in the same context as I mentioned: a media item which would be insulting to Christians in a similar way to the cartoons being insulting to Muslims.

Needless to say, the Catholic media person interviewed missed the point entirely. She had never seen the episode in question, and dismissed it as childish "toilet humour". Now I haven't seen it either (there, I admitted it) but judging from my research on the Internet, and knowledge of other South Park episodes, I think she might have underestimated it. There is clearly some clever satire and social commentary in the story - the existence of that aspect of it is unavoidable.

The story clearly makes fun of the religious phenomenon of bleeding statues, etc, and makes miraculous cures look like what they almost certainly really are: changes caused by the mind of the person, and not by any supernatural effect, so I really aren't surprised Catholics are upset about it. They shouldn't be, because this type of humour is a way of examining the truth. But religious people aren't interested in the truth. Maybe that's why scientists just have a good laugh when Darwinism (for example) is satirised. They aren't insecure about the truth of the subject, so they can enjoy the humour without being threatened by it.

So religious people are threatened by satire (a nice word for disrespect and ridicule in this context) of their beliefs. That is their problem, not the satirists, cartoonists, etc. They should (but can't) get over it. Religion should be open to the same criticism as anything else - or should we just admit that religious faith is too weak to stand up to any scrutiny?

Comment 1 (580) by OJB on 2006-03-01 at 15:44:01:

Of course, shortly after this I did see it and my initial thoughts are correct: it is certainly controversial and doesn't exactly try the delicate approach, but it is brilliant satire and clever humour and so its a perfectly legitimate form of commentary. Catholics: get over it!

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