Chef and Stan
William of Ockam was a logician and Franciscan friar in 14th century England. He is credited with the famous maxim, “Ockam’s razor”. It states in Latin, “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem” which means, “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”. The meaning? States Wikipedia:“…the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.”
From episode 78 of South Park, “Kenny Dies”, Chef and Stan have the following dialogue:
Stan: “Why would God let Kenny die, Chef? Why? Kenny’s my friend. Why can’t God take someone else’s friend?”
Chef: “Stan, sometimes God takes those closest to us, because it makes him feel better about himself. He is a very vengeful God, Stan. He’s all pissed off about something we did thousands of years ago. He just can’t get over it, so he doesn’t care who he takes. Children, puppies, it don’t matter to him, so long as it makes us sad. Do you understand?”
Stan: “But then, why does God give us anything to start with?”
Chef: “Well, look at it this way: if you want to make a baby cry, first you give it a lollipop. Then you take it away. If you never give it a lollipop to begin with, then you would have nothin’ to cry about. That’s like God, who gives us life and love and help just so that he can tear it all away and make us cry, so he can drink the sweet milk of our tears. You see, it’s our tears, Stan, that give God his great power.”
Stan: “I think I understand.”
If we take the assumption that God exists, a question often asked is why “bad things happen to good people”. The standard response (a good example) usually involves the invocation of God blessing humans with “free will”; or the more ineffable “he loves us all” but “works in mysterious ways”.
Ockam’s razor would seem to suggest a simpler answer, and the “truth” is revealed in the profound if puerile script of the aforementioned episode of South Park. This, furthermore, should not be particularly surprising. States the holy texts of the Christian religion:
Exodus 20:5: For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.
Leviticus 24:16: And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death.
Exodus 31:15: Whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
Exodus 21:15: He that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.
Exodus 21:17: He that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death.
Leviticus 20:10: And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.
Mark 16:16: He that believeth not, shall be damned.and one of my personal favourites…
Malachi 2:1-4: And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If you will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, … behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces.
If the Christian God is real He will punish innocent children to the third and fourth generation for the sins of their fathers. His preferred method of punishment generally involves death – even for the “crime” of working on a Saturday. From this perspective, it is perhaps not surprising why someone like Pat Robertson, a TV evangelist (i.e., fundamentalist) would believe that Ariel Sharon’s stroke was the result of divine retribution for leaving the Gaza Strip.
Although it is ironic as Ockam was a Franciscan friar, his eponymous razor is frequently applied in the existence of God. From Wikipedia:
“…if the concept of God does not help to explain the universe, it is argued, God is irrelevant and should be cut away (Schmitt 2005). While Occam’s razor cannot prove God’s non-existence, it does imply that, in the absence of compelling reasons to believe in God, unbelief should be preferred.”
This is the essence of the justification for “weak atheism”. With the reductionist slice of our favourite logician’s tool, we can conclude that if God exists, then He is vengeful and cruel; that or He doesn’t exist to begin with.
Source articles:
DuVernois Blog: Religion from South Park
Wikipedia: Occam’s razor
Wikipedia: Kenny Dies
Positive Atheism: Which Ten Commandments?
6 comments:
Isn't that a little weak Michael? Quoting Southpark to prove there is no God?
Let me state that I have nothing against Southpark, I too enjoy the program. Whenever I am channel surfing and come across it I normally stop right there to watch.
But how can you try to make the point that the Christian God is vengeful? Have you read the Gospels? Jesus was full of love and forgiveness. In fact, Jesus was the ultimate left wing liberal. "Turn the other cheek." "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Etc, etc.
Now I do not know if Jesus was God. I do know there is a God and I do know that once upon this earth walked a fine man by the name of Jesus. I call Jesus Rabbi (although I am not Jewish, he was).
Do not ask me to prove to you there is a God, I can not do it. I could explain to you why I KNOW there is a God, but I could be lying about my own experiences, right?
Well then, point out the weakness of the argument.
As for the "vengeful God", the above is a theological explanation of "why bad things happen to good people" in the context of an omnipotent God, Christian or otherwise. There are other explanations (the aforementioned "free will" argument or the "mysterious ways" argument) as well, but in the absence of a simpler explanation, Ockam's razor seems to favour mine.
As specifically for the "Christian God", yes I have read the Gospels. The only question that I have for you is whether or not you've read the rest of the Bible. The holy text of the Christian religion comes as a set. You're not meant to pick and choose what you "like" to believe - that, is heresy.
Read the other verbatim quotations out of the Bible. God describes himself as jealous. His actions show that he is vengeful.
As for your peaceful Jesus:
Luke 22:36: "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one."
Before going into the temple in Jerusalem and anticipating as fight, Jesus tells his disciples to buy weapons even if they need to sell their clothing. Jesus was not a pacifist.
As for "I could be lying about my own experiences", yes, you could. Or you could be mistaken about their significance or making the wrong conclusion about their meaning. There is a substantial number of people who "know" that there are extra-terrestrials as well...
You can choose to believe what you want to believe but the fluffy image of Jesus and the Christian religion is a relatively new invention. Earlier Church teaching focus much more on sin and eternal damnation.
Considering the number of different religions in the world, most of which are mutually exclusive, it seems that if there is such a thing as an omnipotent maker, the vast majority of religious devotees are wrong in the factuality of their belief structure.
I find it much more likely that there is in fact no god relevant for human worship and that the concepts of god and religion are a human invention. There may be "truth" in religion in that there is value in teaching of morality, ethics and virtue. The same, however, can also the case in a well written novel or a philosophical dissertation, but without the pretensions of there being an "ultimate authority" by way of a "supernatural being".
Regards,
Michael Tam
Well, I have my own problems with the Gospel according to Luke.
It is important to note that Luke is supposed to have been a Doctor. He put his Gospel together long after the death of Jesus by compiling all the spoken stories of Jesus that were passed down from one to another by word of mouth so that these stories would not be lost. Luke was not a first hand witness. Is it any wonder that his Gospel contains some inaccuracies? After all, he may have been learned, but he was only a Doctor - Grin.
But even in the Gospel of Luke, after Jesus told his followers to buy a sword, did he tell them to use it? Or, after he was betrayed and his followers resorted to the sword, did he command them to cease?
Yes, I have read some portions of the rest of the Bible. However I always read them within the framework of the truth as spoken by Jesus in the Gospels. I do not consider the Bible to be infallible. I do not even consider the Gospels to be infallible. The only thing I know for certain is that once upon this earth walked a fine man by the name of Jesus. He sure was closer to being perfect then me. I am not ashamed to profess my love and admiration for this man. Our history of this fine man might be less then perfect... but there was SOMETHING about him.
As for why I know there is a God, well, if you had experienced what I have experienced you would have to be crazy to not accept that God must exist. There is no point in my going into details, since I can prove none of it. Let me just say I have repeatedly asked for signs from God. At times I have asked for the utterly rediculous and have seen it come to pass.
Which is why I feel confident I can ignore all the imperfect (and sometimes downright evil) preachers that fill the airwaves. I have asked for my "signs from God" and I have been granted them. All them preachers are only human.
By the way Michael, I am not telling you all this to "save your soul" or something. My judgement of you is that you are a pretty decent human being. Do you have imperfections? Yeah. But so do I - grin. My loving God is so forgiving that he gave me, the wretched human being that I am, signs that he exists. For some reason he must love me. If he can love me, as imperfect as I am, I am fairly confident he loves you too even if you deny his existance.
After all, I didn't believe in him either, until I got my signs.
I'm not sure but I think that South Park episode was a joke. You are supposed to laugh when you read it... of course, I guess it isn't funny unless you were tortured by Good Christians when you were a child...
Of course the South Park episode was a joke. It is satire. It is funny because it contains a grain of truth.
Regards,
Michael Tam.
I came across this blog and thought that I'd comment.
I am still dumb founded why people believe in god. This is very unlikely. And, to believe in a specific god as created by other humans is just foolish, like the god from the bible.
The reason why believing in the god from the bible is foolish, is because Darwin's theory of natural selection is, thus far, correct. Read a book called 'The Selfish Gene' and get back to me. Natural selection is simple, elegant and correctly explains how we came to be.
People who live in a fantasy world are very weak in my opinion. Let's toughen up and step into reality. Instead of wasting time praying to a fictional character - place your time into something worth placing time into - science and technology.
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