Monty Python and Philosophy (20 page)

This scene presents how believers are willing to distort logic in their zeal to execute what they perceive to be God’s will. God is drawn into the situation because witches are considered dangerous since they have magical powers and practice sorcery. According to religious superstition witches cannot command supernatural entities loyal to God, so their influence is limited to evil spirits. Since witches conspire with these enemies of God, they are God’s enemies, and God’s enemies must be destroyed. The mob’s determination to burn the witch, in His holy name, means they believe that God is not able or willing to act and delegates authority to humans.

A later scene from
Monty Python and The Holy Grail
asserts that God not only sanctions the earthly destruction of His enemies, but provides the instruments to do so. When the knights are confronted by the killer rabbit that has savagely attacked members of the party, and more importantly, interfered with the mission ordered by God, the rabbit must be annihilated, in His holy name. As the knights prepare to unleash the Holy Hand Grenade, which has been blessed for such use by God Himself, an assistant cleric (Michael Palin) offers the following reading from the
Book of Armaments
, Chapter 2:

Evidently no job is too small when it comes to eliminating God’s opponents. God needs his defenders of the faith to overcome whatever sentiments they may have for killing women and rabbits if His will is to be done. The case of the rabbit is not at all ambiguous. This vicious little bunny was caught red-handed (get it?) in the act of multiple assault and homicide and should be terminated with extreme prejudice to prevent any further interference with holy missions and serve as deterrent to other rabbits. There is some doubt about whether the woman is actually a witch, but it is better to err on the side of safety. The risk is greater if the mob releases the woman only to discover later that she is a witch, than to burn her only to learn that she was not. So
logically
it is better to burn the woman on the chance that she might be a witch. If the mob is wrong, there is no harm done. The woman simply receives her Heavenly reward
⁶¹
ahead of schedule. Besides, she might have been chucked into Hell anyway.

The mob of stoners in
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
and the knights that destroy the rabbit in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
believe that their actions are just because they are sanctioned by God, which further implies that any action sanctioned by God is
for that reason
just.

The question raised by the Pythons of whether an act which seems unjust is nevertheless just if sanctioned by God is an ancient problem. In fact, the topic is the subject of a Socratic dialogue called the
Euthyphro
. Socrates meets Euthyphro in the city’s center and learns that the young man has come to indict his own father because, Euthyphro insists, it is the pious thing to do. When Socrates challenges him to define piety, Euthyphro asserts that piety is that which is loved by the gods. Socrates asks whether a given act is pious because it is loved by the gods, or whether it is loved by the gods because it is pious. The same question is applicable to justice. Another way to put the question is to ask whether justice is determined by God and dependent upon God, or whether justice is embraced by God but independent of God. The former construction, which
Euthyphro
, the stoners and the knights evidently support, is problematic because it asserts that any action, no matter how monstrous it may seem, is just if authorized by God.

The examples of the witch and rabbit demonstrate why the character of God is so important. If God is angry and vengeful and orders the earthly destruction of His enemies, then it would seem that He is capable of ordering acts considered wicked. On the other hand, if God is perfect, and human characteristics and weaknesses are not applicable to Him, then wickedness cannot be performed in His name and cannot be attributed to Him.

In
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
, Part II: Growth and Learning, the Python troupe has a little fun with church prayer. After some informational remarks by John Cleese, Michael Palin formally tells the congregation, “Let us praise God,” and leads them in the following prayer, which they dutifully repeat.

Believers are expected to constantly acknowledge the greatness of God. This form of prayer includes giving thanks to God for all He has given us. We are not only appreciative of the products and services we receive, but for our very lives, which persist only because of His will. Refusal to give thanks is not merely impolite, but the worst form of ingratitude. Even those in pain and misery must not appear ungrateful, for that too comes from God. These sorts of prayers imply that God wants and needs human praise, and never tires of hearing about His infinite might and goodness from His humble servants. Apparently God has an insatiable ego that centuries of worship have not satisfied and requires His followers to forever stand in awe of His magnificence. Believers must utter every word with passion or risk falling out of His favor and being, that’s right, chucked into Hell. The congregation’s acknowledgement of “barefaced flattery” conveys their recognition that God must be aware that they cannot continuously generate such worship with sincerity. In summary, prayer is an integral part of man’s relation to God. Prayer is our means of giving thanks for His many wonderful blessings. Prayer is how we acknowledge His greatness and goodness. Finally, prayer is required and one had better perform this duty or risk being chucked into Hell.

The Pythons present a scene in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
which confirms Socrates’s view that a perfect God has no need of these displays of bowing and scraping. God appears in a cloud and Arthur and his men immediately drop to their knees. “Don’t grovel!” God bellows, “If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s people groveling.” When Arthur begins to apologize for groveling, God interrupts with, “And don’t apologize! Every time I talk to someone, it’s ‘Sorry this’ and ‘Forgive me that’ and “I’m not worthy.’”

In the
Euthyphro
, Socrates explains why God has no interest in this type of worship. Euthyphro claims that piety involves care of the gods, or service to the gods, which is performed through sacrifice and prayer. Socrates instructs that sacrifice and prayer cannot be wanted or needed by God since to sacrifice is to make a gift to God and to pray is to beg from God. A proper gift is that which another needs or wants. Since God is not in need or want of anything, we cannot give Him a gift. Since God has already provided all that we need, it is offensive and ungrateful to ask for more. Socrates adds that we sacrifice in order to beg more comfortably.
So sacrifice and prayer are little more than trading and bargaining with God. God has no need or want of such commerce, so we should not conduct these practices, certainly not in His name.

The Christian God is a personal fatherly god, so it is not surprising that people approach God as children approach their parents for favors. A common prayer is the request for services in which the needy, or merely desirous, ask God to produce or prevent a certain outcome. The requests for services suggest that God’s will is unstable, susceptible to pleading and weeping. Believers sometimes say that God can be moved by our prayers, but the Pythons encourage us to consider this belief. If God’s wisdom is infinitely greater than ours, and all that happens is part of His master plan, why would He change His mind because we beg? If we believe the aforementioned, why would we beg?

It’s little wonder that Christians make many claims about God that seem incredible, outrageous, and just plain silly. In the Bible, God creates the heavens and earth and gives his favorite creatures special privileges, but in a flash of rage takes it all back. God presents a fruit tree to Adam and Eve though they are forbidden to partake (some gift!), commands Abraham to sacrifice his son and heaps misfortune on Job. And there is plenty more drama where that came from. There is a contrasting image of the Christian God as loving and merciful, but the more turbulent characterization is responsible for the doctrines and practices lampooned by the Pythons. If biblical tales of an angry and vengeful God are meant to be taken literally, then Christians are sensible to take measures to avoid His wrath. It is often the case that religious beliefs are not arrived at and maintained through a process of careful reflection. Philosophy performs the service of critical analysis, but religious belief and superstition have been notoriously resistant to intellectual examination. Using humor to illustrate how ludicrous particular beliefs appear when their consequences are acted out for our benefit, the Pythons succeed in challenging us to question certain religious assumptions. That’s not to say that belief in God should be extinguished, but if our behavior looks ridiculous when played for our entertainment, perhaps we should examine beliefs and practices attributed to God that seem so absurd.

JOHN HUSS

 

 

“I
s God really real?”This is a perennial question for the philosophy of religion. Fortunately, the Pythons have answers to it. Perhaps too many answers. If we asked Arthur, King of the Britons, he would certainly testify that God exists, speaks English, and can’t stand people groveling, averting their eyes, ceaselessly apologizing, and deeming themselves unworthy. Yet when we begin inquiring into
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
, “there is some doubt” about whether God is really real, or, to put it more philosophically, there is doubt over whether God’s existence can be established through a valid argument. There is a long philosophical tradition of constructing rational arguments for the existence and attributes of God, and an equally long skeptical tradition of deconstructing those same arguments. The Pythons have been exemplary participants in the latter tradition, either through parody, or by echoing in a funnier and more succinct way the skeptical arguments of such philosophical predecessors as Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776).

In the
Natural History of Religion
(1757), Hume made an important philosophical distinction between
causes
of and
reasons
for religious belief. By the
reason
for a belief, Hume meant an argument in its favor that appeals to shared norms of rationality, premises, and
rules of reasoning that everyone can agree on. The
cause
of a belief is the particular set of environmental, historical, or personal circumstances that led an individual to hold the belief, whether or not it is rational to do so (we will return to a discussion of causes later in this chapter).
⁶²
In Hume’s day, there were a number of arguments for the existence and attributes of God—reasons to believe. He was highly critical of these arguments.

An ingenious argument for the existence of God was concocted by St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109). St. Anselm’s argument, the Ontological Argument, was written in the form of a prayer, and began with the following lines:

So said St. Anselm. Well, not really. Actually this was the prayer of the school chaplain in
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
. However, St. Anselm did advance a similarly superlative premise asserting God’s greatness:

Put another way, God is simply, by definition, the greatest conceivable being. (St. Anselm may have meant “possible” rather than “conceivable” but we will leave that point off to one side for the time being and return to it later). Ah, but what conclusion can be drawn from this premise? Does God, this greatest conceivable being, actually exist, or is he merely imaginary?

St. Anselm was well aware of the freethinkers and skeptics who might doubt God’s existence, but he had an answer for them. Imagine the greatest conceivable being: omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnivident, omnibenevolent, and omnivorous. Suppose, St. Anselm asks, that such a being didn’t exist. Well, in that case, we wouldn’t really be conceiving of the greatest conceivable being, now would we? For we can conceive of a still greater being, namely, one that has all of these traits,
and exists
. Therefore, if God, by definition, is the greatest conceivable being, he must exist. In fact, St. Anselm takes the argument one step further and says that God is an even greater being than we can conceive of.
⁶³

We don’t have to visit the Argument Clinic to see the problem with this argument (Yes, we do! No, we don’t!). Instead, we can do what philosophers do and focus on the form of the argument. Let us forget for a moment that St. Anselm’s argument is about God. Consider instead an argument of the same form, only in this argument we seek to establish the existence of Yeti. Yeti is defined as a Himalayan ape-like creature that leaves footprints in the snow. But suppose we tweak this definition as follows: Yeti is an
actually existing
Himalayan ape-like creature that leaves footprints in the snow. All that follows from this definition is that IF something is to count as Yeti, it would have to be Himalayan, ape-like, leave footprints in the snow,
and exist
. That’s a big IF. It doesn’t follow that Yeti does exist. In fact the camel-spotter of
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
(Episode 7, “You’re No Fun Anymore”) before he became a camel-spotter, had been a Yeti-spotter, and never did actually spot a Yeti. Thus, we may here be dealing with a definition that goes unfulfilled by any real being. Likewise, directly or indirectly importing the property of existence into the definition of God, as St. Anselm did, leaves open whether there exists a being that fulfills that definition. Defining God as the greatest possible (hence existent) being leaves unanswered the
question of whether there is any real being that fulfills the definition. We can certainly conceive of the definition going unfulfilled without running into any logical difficulties. Hume summed this up well in his
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
, when he wrote: “Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as nonexistent” (p. 91). Thus, St. Anselm’s argument fails to establish the existence of God. Of course, its failure to do so does not disprove God’s existence either.