Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (58 page)

“The Good Book,” a toe-tapping square dance tune about the consequences of using the nastier parts of the Bible (such as the story of Abraham’s willingness to kill Isaac) as a moral guide.

“White Wine in the Sun” isn’t a comedy, but a heartfelt rendition of the meaning of family at the holidays for a religious nonbeliever. It’s an anthem for the humanist heart.

Minchin never offends just for the sake of it. In every case, he’s using edgy comedy and crossing lines to get the listener’s attention — and yes, as always, to yank that fig leaf away, revealing the truth.

Blaspheming at the Movies: Life of Brian

In the late 1970s, fresh off the success of their film
Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
the members of the British comedy group Monty Python were asked what the title of their next film would be. Without missing a beat, Eric Idle answered,
“Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory.”

It was meant to be a joke, but the more they thought about it, the more there seemed to be something there. No one had ever written a comedy set in Biblical times. Why not?

Because it’s bloody hard, that’s why not. The cloak of sacredness, which I mention earlier in this chapter, is like a wet blanket. The more they tried to work up a direct satire of Christ, the more it fizzled. But they didn’t give up on the idea, and after months of research began to identify the problem — and the solution. As Python member John Cleese said, the founders of great religions tend to be extremely intelligent people with good ideas that are instantly mangled and misinterpreted by their followers — who also tended to turn them into gods (or sons thereof).

That’s
where the comedy is — not in the words of the Sermon on the Mount, but in the way Bob and Martha mishear it from the back of the crowd (“Blessed are the cheesemakers?!”)

Messiah fever was very much in the air in first century Judea. There was no shortage of people claiming to be The One — or having others claim it for them.
Life of Brian
(1979) is built not around the life of Jesus, but on the life of Brian, an average putz born the same night in the manger next door. Brian eventually becomes the unwilling focus of a cult of worship, and there begins some of the best religious satire ever written.

One scene captures the history of Western religion in 60 seconds. When Brian, pursued by an adoring crowd, loses his shoe, one follower stops and picks it up, then declares loudly that it’s a sign — they must
all
take off one shoe! Another follower loudly insists that no, it’s clearly a sign that all shoes must be gathered up. Yet another insists it’s a
sandal,
not a shoe, while another urges the crowd to forget the shoes and gather around a gourd Brian had touched. The crowd splits into bickering factions.

When they all catch up to Brian the next morning, he scolds them. “Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t need to follow me! You don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re all individuals!”

“Yes!”
the crowd replies in perfect unison.
“We’re all individuals!”

Christ appears only briefly in the film and is never joked about directly. This wasn’t skittishness on the part of the Pythons — as their BBC overlords could attest, they never hesitated to go wherever the comedy was. But in this case, the best material was in imagining the guaranteed nonsense all around him.

Of course this nuance had little effect on the controversy that followed — as controversy always does whenever the sacred veil is breached. The film was banned in several countries, protests were held across the United States, and commentators decried the supposed attack on Christianity. Most hadn’t seen the film, of course, and the protests only created a larger demand, as such things always do.

Some of the Pythons were atheists or agnostics, while others held religious views. But all saw terrific value in bringing smart satire to bear on human religion,
especially
on the things that are declared off limits.

Bringing the Blasphemy Home on TV

The three most successful animated television series today
all include a huge amount of humor aimed at religion, and atheists and agnostics created all three.

The following three shows have drawn the predictable wrath of religious groups and social conservatives for their irreverent treatment of religion. But irreverence is very much the point of comedy — that’s how to bust through that veil of sacredness and ask otherwise unaskable questions. Whether any given plotline or joke goes too far is up to the individual viewer. For many people, believers and nonbelievers alike, shows like these play a valuable role in knocking the big questions down to manageable size.

The Simpsons

Religious belief and practice get more airtime in
The Simpsons
than just about any other aspect of culture. The Simpsons go to church and say grace before dinner, they have a conservative Christian next-door neighbor, and they shop at a convenience store run by a Hindu. Bart Simpson’s favorite entertainer is a Jewish clown, and little sister Lisa becomes a Buddhist. Homer meets God, Bart sells his soul, and the family briefly joins a cult called the Movementarians.

You can’t swing a three-eyed Jesus fish in Springfield without hitting a religious reference, and the result is some savvy insight into the role of religion in today’s culture. Series creator Matt Groening identifies as an agnostic — the ideal position for an equal opportunity satirist of religion.

South Park

The edgy and risky animated series
South Park
sprang from nontheistic heads — in this case, atheists Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
South Park
goes after its targets relentlessly, sparing no one, including Parker and Stone’s fellow unbelievers:

In one episode, a boy is fostered into a “strict agnostic” home in which a tyrannical father demands absolute uncertainty. The correct answer to any question is “I don’t know,” and Dr. Pepper is declared the only proper drink for an agnostic because “nobody’s sure what flavor it is.”

The boys seek the origin of Easter traditions, only to learn (in mysterious Da Vinci Code fashion) that St. Peter was actually a rabbit.

In the midst of the Catholic child sexual abuse scandals, the local priest goes to the Vatican to demand a better response, only to learn that the doctrine of celibacy for priests can’t be changed because the document it was written on has been lost.

A family of Mormons moves to town, and one of the boys is drawn in by their kindness, then repulsed when he learns the Mormon origin story, then convinced that the family’s kindness is more important than the odd beliefs of their church.

After an episode in which Scientology is lampooned — largely through a straightforward description of its beliefs — Isaac Hayes, one of the voice actors for the series who is himself a Scientologist, quit the show.