Funny, non insulting religious humor

[High Lord Tolkien]

The peculiar thing about laughing at Christianity is that the Christians will roll with it. No one's going to call a fatwa on you. Just compare it with the sensitivity that Islamic reaction forces on our media.

Sure it's offensive. But don't you think it odd that it doesn't bring forth much stronger responses than it actually does? Consider if someone was laughing at the core beliefs of atheists, materialists, agnostics or pagans. Heck, as soon as I challenge those beliefs here I get hit from every side, and that's without even laughing at them. Whenever people take beliefs seriously (which is a good thing), then being laughed at is offensive.

The intended spirit of this thread is (or ought to be) non-offensive.

The comedy in Syl's post, to me, is the horrible product design made even more horrible by the sanctity of the subject/image portrayed.

And from all the polls done here over the years most of the KW posters are Christian orientated, or at least influenced by it more than Buddhism or Muslim so I would expect most of the comedy to be Christian based to some degree.

[rusmeister]

The peculiar thing about laughing at Christianity is that the Christians will roll with it. No one's going to call a fatwa on you. Just compare it with the sensitivity that Islamic reaction forces on our media.

Sure it's offensive. But don't you think it odd that it doesn't bring forth much stronger responses than it actually does? Consider if someone was laughing at the core beliefs of atheists, materialists, agnostics or pagans. Heck, as soon as I challenge those beliefs here I get hit from every side, and that's without even laughing at them. Whenever people take beliefs seriously (which is a good thing), then being laughed at is offensive.

The intended spirit of this thread is (or ought to be) non-offensive.

The comedy in Syl's post, to me, is the horrible product design made even more horrible by the sanctity of the subject/image portrayed.

And from all the polls done here over the years most of the KW posters are Christian orientated, or at least influenced by it more than Buddhism or Muslim so I would expect most of the comedy to be Christian based to some degree.

I'm not sure that follows in today's global world, but I do agree 100% on the influence thing. That's why there is such a specifically strong bias against Christianity here.
Snippets from TEM, intro:

The point of this book, in other words, is that the next best thing to being really inside Christendom is to be really outside it. And a particular point of it is that the popular critics of Christianity are not really outside it. They are on a debatable ground, in every sense of the term...
...They write wild and pointless articles and letters in the press about why the churches are empty, without even going there to find out if they are empty, or which of them are empty...
...Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it. It is the contention of these pages that while the best judge of Christianity is a Christian, the next best judge would be something more like a Confucian. The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgements; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard. He does not judge Christianity calmly as a Confucian would; he does not judge it as he would judge Confucianism. He cannot by an effort of fancy set the Catholic Church thousands of miles away in strange skies of morning and judge it as impartially as a Chinese pagoda. It is said that the great St. Francis Xavier, who very nearly succeeded in setting up the Church there as a tower overtopping all pagodas, failed partly because his followers were accused by their fellow missionaries of representing the Twelve Apostles with the garb or attributes of Chinamen. But it would be far better to see them as Chinamen, and judge them fairly as Chinamen, than to see them as featureless idols merely made to be battered by iconoclasts; or rather as cockshies to be pelted by empty-handed cockneys. It would be better to see the whole thing as a remote Asiatic cult; the mitres of its bishops as the towering head dresses of mysterious bonzes; its pastoral staffs as the sticks twisted like serpents carried in some Asiatic procession; to see the prayer book as fantastic as the prayer-wheel and the Cross as crooked as the Swastika...
...In other words, I recommend these critics to try to do as much justice to Christian saints as if they were Pagan sages.

www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/everlasting_man.html
You can read the whole introduction here (and everything else, if it's interesting enough).
It's a sin, really, to abbreviate that work, but given the necessity to keep things short...

Feel free to post jokes - I'll just be more impressed and find jokes funnier from people who have that in mind. When they don't, it looks like just another "ill-tempered agnostic". And as you'll have noticed from earlier in the thread, we Christians don't mind laughing at aspects of our faith, either.

[Lord Mhoram]

rusmeister,

Sometimes I don't know if I'm talking to rusmeister, or CS Lewis and GK Chesterton. Need you constantly quote them in order to make your points? You are evidently an articulate person. No need to quote a unitary source.

[rusmeister]

rusmeister,

Sometimes I don't know if I'm talking to rusmeister, or CS Lewis and GK Chesterton. Need you constantly quote them in order to make your points? You are evidently an articulate person. No need to quote a unitary source.

Hi, LM.
As I've said before, if other people have said it much better than I can, why should I spend hours typing stuff here trying to say the same thing in different words? It is the ideas that matter, and with which I challenge you. If you don't understand something, disagree and can respond, I'll certainly use my own words. (But if I can save myself several hours by pointing to the counter-argument elsewhere, I will.)

What we want to do, no matter what position we hold on what we believe, is, at the very least, to have found (and defeated, if applicable) the best arguments opposed to ours, not the most mediocre or the worst. I have found the authors I quote to be head and shoulders above me, and often there is little that I can personally add - unless it is to clarify something for people today.

So again, if you think that Chesterton is wrong, say so, and why, and if a response will be useful, then I will. I hold this very view on this subject (the unreasonable bias against Christianity). If nothing else, you will have encountered highly original minds (even though they are not mine) that will very likely reveal at least some truth about modern thought to you. I have chosen my champions - you are free to choose yours - or simply to take them on yourself.

Would not a scientist reference the works of Newton or Einstein, rather than simply pride himself on what he alone can discover? (He may well make a contribution to science himself, but he would be a fool to do it without such reference; ie, to attempt to rediscover the wheel.)

BTW, I realize that none of this will "convert" anyone here - only personal experience can do that, I think. But I would at least like to make people conscious of the unreasonable bias shared by many here, and I think Chesterton nailed where it comes from. And logically, a person raised in India might well have similar unreasonable biases against Hinduism, for example. But at KW, Christianity is the target. I think it was a target for SRD as well. The people that are both good and intelligent are unbelievers who are moral - the subtext is always that religion is for idiots; a form of insanity.

[Prebe]

Rusmeister:
Perhaps you should just let the moderators know that you find the humour offensive, so that the posts can be removed?

Alternatively, if you want to debate the merits of christianity compared to other religions and atheism, how about starting another thread?

Consider if someone was laughing at the core beliefs of atheists, materialists, agnostics or pagans.

They are. Check out the Darwin adoration upthread.

I go to this thread for a laugh, not a sermon.

[rusmeister]

Rusmeister:
Perhaps you should just let the moderators know that you find the humour offensive, so that the posts can be removed?

Alternatively, if you want to debate the merits of christianity compared to other religions and atheism, how about starting another thread?

Consider if someone was laughing at the core beliefs of atheists, materialists, agnostics or pagans.

They are. Check out the Darwin adoration upthread.

I go to this thread for a laugh, not a sermon.

Prebe - there's a simple solution - you don't have to read my posts.

I think there is a world of difference between the kind of humor that actually treats Christianity as silly and the kind that merely pokes light fun at Darwinism without calling the beliefs themselves into question at all.

I am not making simple complaints of offence. If anything, I hope to point out the ignorance (in the best sense of the word) of people who do produce bitter laughter against my faith - that there may be something that they really don't know - a piece of knowledge that would transform how they view it.

[Prebe]

"Here lies the funny thread. May it rest in peace."

[High Lord Tolkien]

"Here lies the funny thread. May it rest in peace."

But you just made it funny again!!

[Prebe]

If they tickle us, do we not laugh? If they prick us do we not bleed? If they poison us, do we not die?

[High Lord Tolkien]

[[Syl]]

[High Lord Tolkien]

Lets see if those in the religion of Science have a sense of humor:

[rusmeister]

Or how about this:

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/o ... dvertising

[Reisheiruhime]

Pagan humor, yes yes... the 13 Commandments:
1. Thou shall not turn thy ex into a frog.
2. Thou shall not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
3. Thou shall not laugh at nekked snow sprites.
4. Thou shall not get drunk with thy Goddess's wine.
5. Thou shall not sacrifice thy little sister.
6. Thou shall not go running around proclaiming thy witchhood if thy are in times of burning.
7. Thou shall not question the word of thy High Priestess - She is God.
8. Thou shall not laugh at being nekked at coven - thou shall be killed.
9. Thou shall not commit to signing anything that declares any single person as thy lord and savior.
10. Thou shall not invoke thy Watchtowers only to say "never mind".
11. Thou shall not burn enough candles to burn thy house down.
12. Thou shall not have the magickal name "Sir Stinky Fartsalot".
13. Thou shall not call coven only for laughs.
forum.paganlore.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=511

*sniffle* but... but... like half of those make a lot of sense!

(and it's really pathetic when people wanna have a good time, for someone to be so petty as to come in and try to break it up b/c they can't find the humor in a situation... that level of bitterness is truly heartbreaking.)

[High Lord Tolkien]

[Reisheiruhime]

Ahh, sweet-little-baby-Jesus wrapped up in swaddlin' cloths...

Ever noticed how in the South it's completely acceptable to totally dog someone out as long as you add a little "Bless his poor sweet little soul" at the end?

[rusmeister]

It's fine to insult religions as long as the one you're insulting is Christianity. Even on a thread that specifically requests that the humor be non-insulting.

Is it the bias of the moderators, or just the mood of the site to allow for hypocrisy in this one area? For all of my seemingly 'rabid dogmatism', I would not stoop to such insults and caricatures of the beliefs of those I disagree with.

Christians don't start fatwas - you should notice that. And if the insults cannot be prevented we are to bear them. But I'd ask that you please remove that cartoon.

If something is really held to be holy - it seems that many people do not understand what that means anymore - the holy thing should not be attacked via one's humor. We do have a sense of humor - but we don't do that. It's so...childish.

PS - if I have mistaken intent, please forgive me! But this is the equivalent of throwing dung on a Buddhist shrine or what-have-you - even if unintended.

[rdhopeca]

It's fine to insult religions as long as the one you're insulting is Christianity. Even on a thread that specifically requests that the humor be non-insulting.

Is it the bias of the moderators, or just the mood of the site to allow for hypocrisy in this one area? For all of my seemingly 'rabid dogmatism', I would not stoop to such insults and caricatures of the beliefs of those I disagree with.

Christians don't start fatwas - you should notice that. And if the insults cannot be prevented we are to bear them. But I'd ask that you please remove that cartoon.

If something is really held to be holy - it seems that many people do not understand what that means anymore - the holy thing should not be attacked via one's humor. We do have a sense of humor - but we don't do that. It's so...childish.

PS - if I have mistaken intent, please forgive me! But this is the equivalent of throwing dung on a Buddhist shrine or what-have-you - even if unintended.

Rus, there's a simple solution to this. Don't read the posts in this thread. I'm not particularly fond of religion-based humor, so I stay out of here, most of the time anyway.

[rusmeister]

I know that, Rob. But I think it's worth pointing out that a thread established precisely for non-offensive humor gets the exact opposite treatment, and the hypocrisy is always directed at one religion.
If this were posted in a thread that said "Warning! offensive humor!" I would stay away and have nothing to say.

By comparison, I found the original post (with the bear) to be quite humorous and genuinely non-offensive.

[rdhopeca]

I know that, Rob. But I think it's worth pointing out that a thread established precisely for non-offensive humor gets the exact opposite treatment, and the hypocrisy is always directed at one religion.
If this were posted in a thread that said "Warning! offensive humor!" I would stay away and have nothing to say.

By comparison, I found the original post (with the bear) to be quite humorous and genuinely non-offensive.

Well, you know now that you, at least, find some things in this thread offensive. So now that you know the thread has drifted, you can stop reading it. Just because you find it offensive, or I find it offensive, doesn't mean its intention isn't what it is.