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Saturday, August 20, 2005 12:04 PM | rahel luethy | 7 comment(s)
as you probably all know, hundreds of thousands of young people are currently celebrating a pop star who is fighting homosexuality, birth control, and sexual equality in the name of god.
in a weak attempt to counterbalance the immense and mostly uncritical media coverage, i'd like to mention two religious alternatives:
flying spaghetti monsterism was launched as a parody of intelligent design (which is allowed to be taught in science classes in kansas as an alternative to evolution). followers of the noodly master, so called pastafarians, end their prayers with "ramen". consider this relegion if you are on a high-carb diet.
alternatively, consider invisible pink unicornism: the IPU, and its younger brother IGD, the invisible green dragon, are mock god(esse)s. they don't have actual believers, but if they had, these believers could be sure that both deities are beings of high spiritual power. like for a lot of religions, the IPU-ists could build their believes on faith and logic: they could trust in the fact that the IPU is pink and would logically know that it is invisible since they can't see it.
here's a picture of the IPU:
short excursus: yesterday, my sister in law drew a picture of a colorful, neat little dwarf for aviva, my cute little niece who is 4 1/2. since aviva was in a rebellious mood, she stroke through the dwarf and instead drew an angry monster-view of herself. in big letters she wrote: "AVIVA 4/2 DONTLIKE PIKTS GOTOGEIL"
note that there are some people who would like to send the spaghetti monster page to jail. while this might be worth a discussion, i'd rather nominate glossolalia, a page on the "christian view of speaking in tongues"...
3:00 PM | said...
While you might think glossolalia crazy, the article itself contains a survey of psychological studies and a brief discussion of a phenomenon that does actually happen. It would provide a useful place for people who observe it in their churches and would like to research it in the hope of finding a variety of views. FSMism on the other hand is an unnecessary joke that no one actually believes. It's unnecessary because there are a million crazy creation myths that you could use to make exactly the same point. You may think it's a good joke but just because something gets mentioned on a bunch of blogs certainly wouldn't give something the right to have an article in a print encyclopedia It's true that the standard for entry into wikipedia is lower and perhaps that's as it should be.
3:38 PM | said...
I think that there are two main aspects here. There's a sort of intelligent consideration of nature and humanity that considers that a belief in the supernatural is a better hypothesis than not (TW Andrews position as far as I can tell). To this point of view the IPU and FSM are a challenge to more clearly explain why this belief in the supernatural takes precedence over other philosophical feelings without evidence. I believe though that most religious believers (probably including the yoof at the world yoof day) have tested their religion by living it and have received enough evidence to convince them that their beliefs are true (your standards of proof may differ, but that's a subjective decision). To that kind of person IPU and FSM are completely irrelevant.
On the other hand, I also think it's strange that the Pope seems to get such good press. This is quite common for religious leaders though- the Dalai Lama also gets great press. Perhaps it's partly because his current visits have focussed on building bridges with communities he believes are wrong such as the Jews and the Muslims. In fact, although we know his views on homosexuality, birth control and sexual equality, I haven't seen or heard any attempt yet from him to impose those views on anyone outside his own religion. I think the hallmark of any well thought out faith is humility and I have high hopes that Mr New Pope has some.
7:36 PM | rahel luethy said...
FSMism on the other hand is an unnecessary joke that no one actually believes
I believe in FSMisms as much as I believe in Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam.
It would provide a useful place for people who [...] would like to research it in the hope of finding a variety of views
for the very same reason the FSM page should stay with us. while the example itself might be arbitrary and might seem like an unnecessary joke to you, the phylosophical questions that arise are IMHO quite substantial.
[...] just because something gets mentioned on a bunch of blogs certainly wouldn't give something the right to have an article in a print encyclopedia [...]
that's exactly the point i was trying to make: just because thousands of people blindly follow the words of a conservative, right-winged guru, events like the one in koeln don't deserve unprescedented coverage by state-aided media.
I haven't seen or heard any attempt yet from him to impose those views on anyone outside his own religion
unfortunately, this is not true. a quote from the pope's writing on homosexuality (Erwägungen zu den Entwürfen einer rechtlichen Anerkennung der Lebensgemeinschaften zwischen homosexuellen Personen, herausgegeben von der Kongregation für die Glaubenslehre, Präfekt Joseph Ratzinger alias Papst Benedikt XVI., approbiert von Karol Wojtyla alias Papst Johannes Paul II., veröffentlicht
am 31. Juli 2003)
[...] den Staat auf die Notwendigkeit hinweisen, das Phänomen in Grenzen zu halten, damit das Gewebe der öffentlichen Moral nicht in Gefahr gerät [...]
which roughly means:
ask the state to limit the phenomenon [of homosexuality] to protect the structure of public morals
and the closing sentence of the above mentioned manuscript reads:
Die Kirche kann nicht anders,
als diese Werte zu verteidigen, für das Wohl der Menschen
und der ganzen Gesellschaft.
church must defend these values for the well-being of humanity and the entire society
not really what i call humility...
7:36 PM | rahel luethy said...
10:16 PM | said...
My point really though is that FSM doesn't raise any philosophical questions that haven't already been raised at least as well elsewhere. That's what makes it unnecessary. When you say that I believe in FSMisms as much as I believe in Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam. it sounds like you're arguing that the criteria for inclusion in an encyclopedia should be how you view it. I can construct a million rehashings of well established philosophies this evening, and I can probably even make some of them funny, but I still don't think that an article on any of them should receive preferential treatment to an analysis of something that people actually believe. Maybe when there are any serious scientific studies of FSM to summarise I'll change my mind. You don't have to believe that the phenomenon of speaking in tongues is really supernatural to see this: I also think that the entry on Nahual is superior to the entry on FSM because it tells me something I didn't know already and it catalogs actual beliefs during a period of human history.
While the Pope should have the right to try to persuade others of his point of view on homosexuality, I agree that he shouldn't be trying to legislate for this view in secular countries. Compelling people who don't share your beliefs to abide by them is not very humble.
kyb: the reason that religious leaders get away with good press is because they're old. Nobody wants to criticise old, frail looking people.
12:53 PM | rahel luethy said...
FSM doesn't raise any philosophical questions that haven't already been raised at least as well elsewhere
I totally agree! But apparently, bringing up the same philosophical questions again can trigger enthusiastic discussions about important topics (between anonymous people who don't even know each other ;-))
it sounds like you're arguing that the criteria for inclusion in an encyclopedia should be how you view it
hmmm... actually not at all. I think that the question of whether something gets included should simply be based on whether it is of interest to a lot of people. You suggest that it should be based on whether some people actually believe it. I don't think that this is an applicable criterion and I tried to illustrate this by pointing out that I "believe" in FSMism as much as I believe in any other religion. Along the same lines, I would never request scientific studies for any religious phenomena. Simply because I think that people should be free to believe in whatever religions or discuss whatever theories they like, no matter whether these phenomena fulfill artificially imposed rules.
BTW: I don't think that the glossolalia page should be removed. I just said that if the FSM page should be removed, we could argue about other pages, too.
2:01 PM | said...
Ok Rahel, I admit it, I don't know much about what the pope gets up to beyond what is reported on the media, thanks for putting me right. I suppose I would be an example of how the media is failing to educate people about how pernicious catholicism is :-)
I'm trying to work out if you're right that reporting on the WJT should also include a criticism of the Popes beliefs and other activites by imagining a huge convention of muslims, including a leader who in the past has supported suicide bombing discussing how important it is to open links to Christians and Jews (that's the analog of his main appointments over the WJT visit). I think probably the media would praise an event like that. Maybe you're right though, lots of reports would mention briefly the suicide bombing link.
I think it's interesting to compare to the coverage of the Israeli withdrawal from settlements. It's getting pretty much 100% positive news coverage, but there are the occasional stories from reporters contrasting it with the way the Israelis have evicted Palestinians from their homes in the past. (Bulldozers in the night with no warning). Usually when I see those stories, I feel like they're making a good point, but its not really a news story, it's more editorial.
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