Is it right to mock Yahweh?

[marco]

Obviously Yahweh is painted as a powerful sky lord, capable of causing catastrophic rainstorms and making all manner of manna for men he has rescued from bad Pharaoh. Some people actually believe that a powerful being appeared to somebody who may have been Malcolm Moses and not only donated rocks with writing on them, but showed his hind quarters as he raced through the sky.

So we can smirk. But is mockery or satire a useful instrument for having a folly dismissed? Why should we earnestly try to unmask Yahweh as a fraud or fiction? Is there the remotest of remote possibilities we are maligning an actual being, capable of turning us into pillars of butter or some such thing? Is there a smidgen of truth in Greek tales of Arachne, made into a spider for her presumption or Marsyas, whipped to death for his challenge to the god, Apollo? Do we mock Yahweh at our own peril?

Is mockery of Yahweh good or bad? Does it serve any useful purpose?

[marco]

The fallacy of the Biblical religions must be exposed. Keep in mind, Yahweh isn't just the foundation of Christianity, but it's also the foundation of Judaism and Islam. And all of these religions represent the epitome of religious bigotry. They are even used to put each other down, never mind putting down all other people who do not share their faith in their religious dogma.

I have to admit I have never felt threatened by Judaism. I rather feel sorry for what the Jews have had to suffer as a result of the horrible passages in the gospels. Of course it is Matthew who reports the following, and I think we know that Matthew gets confused about the truth.

"Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.�


Were I living in the 16th century I would feel terror in case my interpretation of God made me a candidate for torture. However, at least in Britain, Christianity is in its dying ember state. One church has built a huge slide to attract children. Islam, whose God is the darker side of Yahweh, seems to have adopted the teeth and claws of 16th century Christianity. Call a teddy bear Muhammad and you die. It may have been a brave man who first ate oysters; it is a braver one who makes jokes against Islam.

If death doesn't await the joker, then a loud chorus will demand his imprisonment. Oddly enough this is happening over a Spectator article printed this week where the writer made a joke about keeping Muslims from voting in the coming election.
Mocking the follies of the Abrahamic religions might eventually remove them. In fact we don't need to mock - we just print some of the nonsense the Bible contains, and it is a self parody.

[marco]

[Replying to Willum]

No form of maturity leads to mocking. Mockery is the territory solely of the immature, or of those who wish to set maturity aside for a moment to avoid the burden of thought that comes with it.

Do you believe this? It is patently wrong. Idiotic novels have been rightly mocked. Is there some necessity to analyse rubbish to transform it into competent sense?

Noah was 600 years old. He was told by God to build a boat, containing every species of animal. It is impossible to read this without feeling contempt. At best we can say the writers were primitive savages who enjoyed any tale provided it had a dominant man and a more dominant man-God.

Of course there are some lovely passages in the Bible, which we can treat in the way we would regard a poem by Keats. It is when people are asked to BELIEVE the stuff, and act according to its edicts that we have a duty to mock. To regard the rubbish about Noah as worthy of serious comment is to lower oneself.

But sometimes mockery is not enough. When passages are dangerous and may lead to people losing their lives (murder witches; kill sinful women!) we have to condemn in the strongest way. Mockery and laughter are a polite way of opposing nonsense posing as truth.

We just can’t be both mockers and mature at the same time.)

You do know there is a form of literature called satire. Juvenal and Horace were experts. Satire is used to attack wrongs, even regimes that are oppressive.
Pope used satire to attack incompetent writers. Here's a useful dictum of his:

"A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again."

It may not be nice for those who place some value on what to others is rubbish, but the answer would surely be to educate the mocker or call on the ubiquitous Holy Spirit for the means of answering unkind criticism. If indeed the Holy Spirit is related to the mocked Jehovah, no doubt he will come pretty sharply with a divinely appropriate answer.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 10 by bjs]

I said a kind of maturity.
First you believe in Santa. Then you have shock that there is no Santa. Then maybe you mock or just become wry that you ever believed it.

But surely Christians have little trouble demeaning the world floating in the back of a turtle, or the Earth being the center of the cosmos.

Just as A Buddhist might demean or mock talking snakes, resurrection or the Earth being the center of the cosmos.

[William]

William: The nearest one could get is to mock the stories. They themselves might be attempts at mockery, but I doubt YHWH is mocked in the least. One can mock effigies of someone. Effigies are never accurate representations of the real person.

Perhaps those who feel the need to mock, may really be mocking former representations of themselves...whom they once were and are no longer...

[Mithrae]

Of course there are some lovely passages in the Bible, which we can treat in the way we would regard a poem by Keats. It is when people are asked to BELIEVE the stuff, and act according to its edicts that we have a duty to mock.

If that's what you think then perhaps it would be appropriate to mock the people who ask you to believe it, rather than mocking the bronze age literature itself?

Speaking for myself, I would find no great satisfaction or sense of accomplishment in ridiculing the story-telling abilities or abstract ideas of a child. Similarly, I'm not quite sure why some folk seem to think they are achieving great things by laughing at the customs, worldviews and entertainment of our less sophisticated ancient forebears.

If mockery is appropriate, then surely it would be appropriate to direct it where it belongs: Mock those who take all these ancient stories seriously because they haven't received as much education as you; mock the people born with average or below average intelligence who simply don't realize many of them can't make literal sense; mock the people trapped in a sub-culture which constantly bends their minds back towards a narrow bibliolatry. Mind you - again speaking only for myself - I often don't see much accomplishment in mocking those people either, but at least that would be focusing one's laughter and great wit in the actual direction where it presently belongs.

[marco]

Of course there are some lovely passages in the Bible, which we can treat in the way we would regard a poem by Keats. It is when people are asked to BELIEVE the stuff, and act according to its edicts that we have a duty to mock.

If that's what you think then perhaps it would be appropriate to mock the people who ask you to believe it, rather than mocking the bronze age literature itself?

It is kinder to present tales as absurdities. Conclusions about those who accept them need not then be spoken. One is advised to condemn the sin and not the sinner and so by extension one condemns the tales rather than those who ingest them. It may be that ridicule has the positive effect of causing the tales to lose their didactic appeal.

Speaking for myself, I would find no great satisfaction or sense of accomplishment in ridiculing the story-telling abilities or abstract ideas of a child. Similarly, I'm not quite sure why some folk seem to think they are achieving great things by laughing at the customs, worldviews and entertainment of our less sophisticated ancient forebears.

The child is safe from ridicule, Mithrae. I accept that in art, work is sometimes presented that seems the obvious production of an infant, but the infant is not mocked. You are right in this case that those who accept such "art" are mocked, to no avail of course. The dead writers of biblical tales composed a mix of myth and majesty; woven into the fascinating tapestry of rich language there are rough threads of stupidity. It seems to me correct to hold these up for critical inspection, and perhaps the vehicle of satire and ridicule best serves the purpose of turning folk away from accepting them as divine craftmanship. God is surely no clown.

Mind you - again speaking only for myself - I often don't see much accomplishment in mocking those people either.

Our noxious attitudes towards ordinary people, over the centuries, have been shaped by biblical prejudice. So wicked is adultery that it must be condemned even in its imaginative form. Men were taken and sentenced to death for private acts that were the business of nobody but themselves. Today young girls in God-fearing countries are stoned with stones not too big that they die too fast. If you think that we should dutifully and respectfully preserve these pages and spare them our condemnation, then that is an original and interesting thought.

Of course we condemn the religious murderers, but by treating holy books as bearing God's imprimatur we in a way excuse atrocities. "Deus vult" (God wills it) was a crusading cry. Mockery may be the humblest of armaments against prejudice and pious wickedness, but I see it as an attempt to erase God's name from Holy texts and recognise them as the work, sometimes ludicrous, of human script writers. It might be God's way of fighting back, using formic nothings to magnify his glory through the unlikely medium of mockery. Just another thought, good Mithrae.

[marco]

William: The nearest one could get is to mock the stories. They themselves might be attempts at mockery, but I doubt YHWH is mocked in the least. One can mock effigies of someone. Effigies are never accurate representations of the real person.

Perhaps those who feel the need to mock, may really be mocking former representations of themselves...whom they once were and are no longer...

I think Yahweh, or the underlying supremacy on which he is roughly and brutally modelled, would welcome human correction of human imperfection. If there is an all-pervading presence falsely depicted in absurd tales, then somehow, somewhere that force might use the unlikeliest of instruments to correct what is false. It is said that he works in wondrous ways, his wonders to perform, and if, as I want to believe, his eyes twinkle with amusement over man's silliness, then mockery, irony, satire, ridicule are the dust sprinkled by his benign fingers..... with miraculous, transforming effect, perhaps.

You are right about effigies. But sometimes they induce pity: the pieta, where mother holds her dead son; Christ crucified, his arms open invitingly for the whole of humanity; Saint Sebastian, cruelly pierced with arrows …. When people have a portrait in their heads of a God demanding justice, denouncing sin in whatever form, testing a father by requiring him to sacrifice his son then hearts harden, as "they did at Meribah". Much in the bible requires attack and correction, by whatever means.

[William]

marco: Much in the bible requires attack and correction, by whatever means.

William: If that were true, 'tis a wonder Shakespeare did not spend his time doing so. Perhaps he preferred showing us the role-play we are all active within.
Perhaps really, it is the Bible being mocked, its characters simply created for whatever purpose one wishes to assign them in ones mind.
Is there a Character in the book whom you could identify with marco...someone you most see yourself in.

[marco]

marco: Much in the bible requires attack and correction, by whatever means.

William: If that were true, 'tis a wonder Shakespeare did not spend his time doing so. Perhaps he preferred showing us the role-play we are all active within.

Or perhaps he preferred to stay alive. The previous Queen Mary burned people whose
religion was suspect, and Elizabeth, while more tolerant, was no supporter of unorthodox religious views. Across the sea people were being tortured for opposing biblical truth.

Is there a Character in the book whom you could identify with marco...someone you most see yourself in.

I like David but I certainly do not see myself as someone else. To wish to be another person is to throw your soul away. I am who I am, as somebody else once said.

I watched a religious programme this afternoon and kept wondering if I should reproach myself for previous "mockery". I actually loved the hymns and, dare I say it, the sentiment expressed in them and the tuneful way that sentiment was expressed. Maybe I should express another view in another thread.

[ttruscott]

Does mocking GOD who showed Moses HIS back by calling HIS back HIS hindquarters fit the high tone this forum is reaching for by the use of rules? This is not reddit after all.

Debate Forum Intro and Rules
1. Personal attacks of any sort are not allowed. Comments about any person that are negative, condescending, frivolous or indicate in any way a lack of respect are not allowed.

7. Do not post frivolous, flame bait, or inflammatory messages.

Ranting Guidelines
1. You are free to attack any belief or position on this forum. However, you must do so in a civil and respectful fashion.

4. Avoid posting blanket -- particularly derogatory -- statements against any belief system or group of people.

Mocking statements would seem to be a loophole, a work around the reasons for these rules...not strictly against a rule but certainly against the flavour, the aroma, the rules are trying to establish.