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atheism

Sorry, Ricky Gervais: Humanity Still Needs a Cure

March 21, 2018 by Matt Hill Leave a Comment

i genuinely dig
Ricky Gervais plenty,
and i’m thankful for
The Office,
like, for sure

i appreciate his
iconoclastic approach
to comedy;
i relate to his atheism,
tho i’m not an atheist myself,
as you’ll gather below

however,
i noticed him make a move
in his recent Netflix comedy special,
Ricky Gervais: Humanity,
that i’d like to call into question,
because it raises a
significant issue
for someone like Gervais

(Ricky, i hope you’ll appreciate this;
you seem to appreciate
close thinking,
or at least attempts at it 🙂 )

last year around this time,
Netflix was
releasing a slew
of comedy specials;
at that time, i posted
“comedy needs Crashing”

in it, i noted:

…a certain “typical”
comedic perspective –
generally hilarious,
of course,
but also
sardonic, cynical,
melancholic and
world-worn and weary,
endlessly observational
when it comes to
finding problems,
but seldom (apparently)
when it comes to
actually addressing them,
actually living with them
in the day-to-day
(other than offering
its own oddly biblical
and plenty true
pseudo-spiritual
prescription of
“just laugh through it”)

i submit that Gervais
affects this perspective
in Ricky Gervais: Humanity
*to the letter,*
almost as if he’d
read what i wrote

he even chooses to
end the special –
having already advertised,
importantly,
his own atheism,
as he’s wont to do –
with his own version
of the prescription:
“just laugh through it”

in other words,
how does Gervais
suggest we approach
(obv universally rough) life
in this Godless universe?

“just laugh through it”

*this* is the move i want to
call into question

first let me say again:
i agree with this suggestion;
it can be, in fact,
found in the Bible
(Proverbs 17:22, e.g.)
and other religious traditions

but here’s the thing:
in the Bible,
such a prescription is
clearly but a palliative –
something to help you through,
but not something
that ultimately cures
any ultimate issue

for,
importantly,
in the Bible,
there is an ultimate issue,
and more importantly,
there is an ultimate cure

and so this is the part where Gervais –
where any atheist –
encounters a problem;
here’s the rub:
either there isn’t really
an ultimate issue to cure,
or there is an ultimate issue,
but no ultimate cure

either the way things are
in this Godless universe
seem wrong –
like something that
could be,
should be “fixed” –
but they’re really not
(because “wrongness”
isn’t really a thing);
or they really are wrong
(whatever that could
even mean sans God),
but there’s nothing
and no one “ultimate” enough
(no God)
to ultimately do
anything about it

to me, tbh,
neither of these
really seems okay

to me, tbh,
neither of these
really seems to
match up with
our experiences, our intuitions,
our wisdom about the world

and so,
to me, tbh,
a palliative like
“laugh through it” –
nice and true
and helpful as it may be –
is just not enough
once we’ve dismissed
the possibility that
something is really wrong
and
something can
really be done about it

in other words,
it’s just not enough,
once we’ve dismissed God

\\\

so…
calling into question complete…
where one goes from here, of course,
is up to that one

thanks for the laughs, Ricky –
humanity is certainly a
fertile topic for it

here’s to hoping for
options kept open 🙂

 

 

Filed Under: Editorial, Reviews, Television Tagged With: analysis, atheism, atheist, Christianity, comedy, God, humanity, Jesus, laughter, Netflix, pop culture, religion, review, Ricky Gervais, special, spiritual, Twitter

Of Course All These Alt-Right Racists Are Wrong, but Why?

August 14, 2017 by Matt Hill 1 Comment

you’re likely upset about
what happened in Charlottesville

maybe you’ve talked about it,
maybe took  some kind of
social media stance,
maybe just sort of saddened inside

it’s probably super obvious to you
that all these alt-right racists are wrong,
that racism is wrong
(“evil” as Trump (finally) put it),
has always been wrong,
that we should do something about it

fair enough,
understandable enough
(of course i agree)

but have you asked yourself
why?
not why you feel as you do,
or why racism seems so clearly wrong,
but actually
why is racism wrong?
what makes it wrong?
put another way,
how do we know it’s wrong or
are we justified in saying it’s wrong?

i mean . . .

is it wrong cuz it seems wrong?
(but unfortunately it doesn’t seem wrong to everyone)

is it wrong cuz everyone agrees it’s wrong?
(but unfortunately they don’t)

is it wrong cuz it’s not “fair?”
(what’s “fair” mean?
who defines it?
who says everything is
or should be “fair?”)

is it wrong cuz you wouldn’t want someone
to be racist to you,
so you shouldn’t be racist to someone else?
(wait, what makes this line of thinking
the line of thinking?
is there some other similar line of thinking
that applies certainly?)

is it wrong cuz humans (or Americans)
all “deserve” “dignity” “equally?”
(again: problems abound)

maybe you think racism is
self-evidently wrong
and that saying so
requires no justification at all
(but is it possible the alt-right racists
feel they’re self-evidently right?

can science prove racism is wrong?
(or could a solely Darwinian/naturalistic understanding
of eugenics in fact be used to support racism?
has it been? is it currently being?)

(we could go on)

what i’m saying is this:
none of these lines of thinking can
truly justify the claim that
racism is wrong;
further,
none of these lines of thinking can
justify the claim that
anything is wrong (or right)
in general

further,
there is but one line of thinking, in fact,
that can truly ground these kinds of moral claims,
and it’s the one where
we know, cuz God;
where things are wrong (or right),
in general,
cuz God

and so, further,
as a consequence,
making moral claims sans God,
ultimately,
is making ungrounded,
unjustified claims

so,
to circle back,
of course all these alt-right racists are wrong,
but why?
why is racism wrong?
what makes it wrong?
what right do we have to feel and think it’s wrong?
what justifies us when we say it’s wrong?
. . .
cuz God says so

(now, exactly how we know he says so,
how and where he does so,
what reason we have for thinking so,
what to do in response,
how to deal with the fact that
we continue to make horrible errors
even given all of this, etc. etc. . . .
those are (excellent) questions
for another time)

[For some awesome unpacking of these ideas that I stumbled upon recently through the Unbelievable? podcast (which you should totally subscribe to), check out “The Most Important Thing This French Atheist Taught Me About Christianity.” 

This article doesn’t necessarily make what’s called “the moral argument for God” – as I have above – but it does specifically look at philosopher (and atheist) Luc Ferry to trace our western ideal of human equality back to Christianity itself. As Ferry puts it:

. . . the Greek world is an aristocratic world, one which rests entirely upon the conviction that there exists a natural hierarchy…of plants, of animals, but also of men: some men are born to command, others to obey, which is why Greek political life accommodates itself easily to the notion of slavery.

In direct contradiction, Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity – an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance.

This [idea of human equality] may seem self-evident, but it was literally unheard-of at the time, and it turned an entire world-order upside down.

Given recent events in our country, it seems like a good time to remember that – just as much racism is culturally inherited – much of our outrage against racism is culturally inherited too, insofar as our culture is still “Christian.” However, we can intentionally choose these values and be justified in doing so, as described above.]

Filed Under: Current Events, Editorial, OtherFish Tagged With: alt right, atheism, Black Lives Matter, charlottesville, Christian, Christianity, current events, God, luc ferry, moral argument, naturalism, protest, racist, response, riot, spiritual, Trump

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