This thread is in refference to two episodes of South Park: "Go God Go & Go God Go: Part II." Here's a VERY brief summery.
South Park
Eric Cartman wants a Wii. He decides freezing himself in the mountains will suspend him until the Wii's release. He wakes up in the far future, and it is run by Atheists. In the past, Richard Dawkins was hired to teach evolution, and converts Mr/Ms Garison. They become "romantically" involved and he/she makes Dawkins aggressively pursue converting everyone. There are three future atheist groups (one being a group of evolved talking otters) and they are all warring over what to call themselves.
If you haven't seen it and want to watch them, you can check them out here:
~~~~~- http://allabout-sp.net/?p=season10/1012
~~~~~- http://allabout-sp.net/?p=season10/1013
If you just want the details hit-up these links (They even have responses from Nintendo and Richard Dawkins):
~~~~~- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_God_Go
~~~~~- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_God_Go_II
There's even a guild. I just had to join. xd
~~~~~-http://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds/index.php?guild_id=33161
Anyway, some people see these episodes and see it as a statement to the flaws of Atheism, some see it as offensive to Atheists, and even some even find it insulting to theism. In the show we see Atheist organizations essentially acting like religious leaders and killing each other over denominations and views. We see a poke at evolution with the evolvement of talking sea otters. We also see a comparison with science to religion with all the "Atheinized" expletives. However, As is customary with South Park, I think there was a good message, but you have to stop being offended to see it. Here are the points I think they were trying to make:
~~~1) By showing a future where Atheists are at war over what to call themselves, they were not showing that Atheists are as ignorant as the tyranical religious leaders who started such wars in the past, but saying that "even if religion is removed, people, and evolved talking otters, will find something to war over, no matter how trivial." I really feel this was more of an attack on human, and otter, nature than it was on Atheism. I think a lot of us would agree that people like to war, regardless of what it's over, and it's just a nasty part of human nature.
~~~2) By portraying Atheist leaders like religious leaders, and by "Atheinizing" religious expletives such as "God Damn it!" as "Science Damn it!", they were not saying that science is just like a religion, but showing that to some Atheists (mind you, all these Atheists of the future follow the Garison influenced Atheist ideology of "Using logic and reason isn't enough, you have to be a d**k to everyone who doesn't think like you) science is their replacement for religion, and then the show goes on to show the dangers of doing so. By the way, "Oh my science!" was my favorite expletive. OMS!
~~~3) A lot of people think that by showing three Atheist groups trying to use logic to answer a question, only to come up with three different answer, shows the fallacy of logic. I partially agree. What I think they were trying to say is that, anytime you believe in something so strongly that you think it infallible, you are flirting with disaster. The point they were trying to make is that we are human, or otters, and that we are flawed, and so we have to accept the possibility that our logic is flawed as well. If we blindly believe in our logic, then we would be no better than faith belivers. We have to always accept the reality that our logic is based off perception, hense, to the otters "The other's (Atheist Groups) answer is not based on good science! They go around chopping tree's to make tables, when they have perfectly good tummies to eat off of, how logical is that!?" Not very logical for a talking otter, but very logical for a human. Perception is key.
I know Trey & Matt (South Park Creaters) are theists, so I'm sure they had some intent of poking fun at us, but as long as they do it in a funny way that isn't just mindless bashing, I'm cool with it.
Anyway, what duth ya'll think? What do you think of the episodes? What do you think of the issues they addressed? Did you really read all of the first post? Wow, really? I'm impressed.
