An Atheistic Examination of the Culture of Death
The Godfather (Part 2) - Thu, Jul 8, 2004
Amusingly, Skallas of Everything Isn't under Control elicited an e-mail response from John Fewings, the artist who drew the Brando obit cartoon in the post below. Quite graciously, he promised to be more sensitive to our delicate atheist sensibilities.
Skallas, for his part, offered this commentary on the cartoon:
The Brando cartoon is in. Just offensive. This is the equivalent of drawing a famous Jewish person with Jesus in heaven. I don't know why atheism isn't respected as a valid philosophical/religious/rational stance, but it's highly unfair and I'm sick of the double-standard.
My objection, however, isn't to the double-standard. Portraying a Jew in Jewish Heaven is just as silly as portraying a Jew with Jesus. The notion that people get the afterlife they want simply because they believe in it, and that there are separate, alternative realities in which Christians meet Jesus, Jews meet G_d, Buddhists go to Nirvana and Hindus get reincarnated, is insane. It actually makes more sense to portray everyone as meeting the same fate after death, regardless of what their particular religion is. If, in fact, Jesus rules the universe and greets people in Heaven then everybody -- Jews, Hindus, Muslims and atheists -- end up meeting him if admitted there.
But that view, even if consistent, is also insane. My objection to both views is simply that they aren't true. Whether Brando was a Christian, Jew or atheist, he should have been depicted as a bloated corpse rotting six feet underground.
And yes, I know it's just a freakin' cartoon.
(Top) —Posted by: The Raving Atheist in The Daily Rave · Permalink · 6 Comments
·•◊•·
The Raving Atheist » Comments on: The Godfather (Part 2)
By Christian doctrine the only people admitted to heaven are those that believe Jesus to be their personal saviour. Anybody who comes to believe that has become Christian. So, Jews, Hindus, Muslims and atheists are never welcomed there.
Any Christian cartoonist, being consistant with their own faith, would depict Brando getting poked in the bum by Satan with his pichfork.
As preposterous as it seems to you and I, some people really do believe that everybody's afterlife is what each individual thinks it will be. My wife is one. She has said to me (with a loving wink), "I'll be sitting on a cloud, sipping a fruity ambrosia, while Jesus gently tucks my hair behind my ears, snearing at you... well, no, check that. There won't really be a you anymore because you don't believe you'll exist."
[Edit] July 8, 2004
Another way of looking at the Fewings cartoon is as a type of death bed conversion hoax, a la Lady Hope's claims about Darwin, albeit one that no one would actually believe in the same way.
You could read it as saying that, just prior to dying (or maybe after, who knows), Brando saw the Truth of theism and was made an offer of everlasting life in Heaven, which he couldn't refuse. In other words, it's making him say "I was wrong after all; the religious people were right."
Besides being possibly offensive to some atheists in a way similar to showing some famous dead Jew standing in Heaven next to Jesus saying "Jesus is Lord! My people are so very, very wrong!" would be offensive to Jews (not for Jesus), what is really offensive is that it is putting words in the mouth of a dead man who can't object. It's a rather petty way of having the last word in an argument, puppeting the corpse of your opponent into agreeing with you.
[Edit] July 8, 2004
I think the cartoon of Brando was along this line; and he could have used Christian Heaven, Valhalla, Nirvana ... whichever was most familiar to his readers. Still an ignorant mistake, but not intended maliciously.
Many here like to see Christians created in Pat Robertson's image, full of bile and hatred for non-believers. But most Anglican's are now so fuzzy in their beliefs that it's more like a country club for the intellectually lazy. Check out the comments from a Church of Scotland pastor at a soldier's funeral.
"I want to believe that, if there is a God in heaven, then there will be justice."
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=539147
This follows comments by Anglican bishops that the bible in many places isn't literally true, including such unimportant events as the immaculate conception, the resurrection etc.
[Edit] July 8, 2004
To Doug Purdie - According to your wife's theology, it sounds like Jesus should go Tony Soprano on you and whack you both so he can start hitting on your wife ...
I think it's admirable on the part of the cartoonist to reply to the (valid) criticisms and offer what sounds like thought-out and sincere comments about the points RA and Skallas brought up. It sounds like someone who, after hearing someone else's points, actually acknowledges with an open mind that those points are valid, and will take those points into consideration going forward. Refreshing.
[Edit] July 8, 2004
The human brain has a special 'illusion circuit' that generates ideas such as (alphabetically) belonging, bragging, brotherhood, competition, destiny, duty, ethics, faith, fate, forgiveness, fortune telling, god, gratitude, greed, grief, heaven, hell, heroism, honesty, honor, humor, insult, justice, logic, loyalty, luck, marriage, morals, ownership, patriotism, pride, religion, repentance, responsibility, romance, sacrifice, satan, shame, sin, snobbery, trust, values, vanity, vengeance, and work.
Once such ideas arise in our brain, they infect the rest of the brain and become hard to shake. I can tell that I have this circuit; but my dog, a very smart Jack Russell terrier, does not. One of the advantages of aging is that one develops an antidotal 'illusion filter'.
[Edit] July 8, 2004
Brando was cremated.
[Edit] July 10, 2004
Comments Closed
In order to stop the proliferation of comment spam, the comments on this post have been automatically closed because the post is older than 30 days and the discussion has been inactive for more than 21 days.
Please feel free to your comments to me.
(Top)