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?

[Mithrae]

The story says that, does it? You do know that the substance of satire or caricature is to enlarge or exaggerate some feature. Caricature distorts so that certain features are seen in a funny, yet surprisingly true light. It is amusing that we can take a story about God covering a bit of his presumably false body with what he calls his hand, then revealing his "back parts" (which I see Michelangelo understood to be human pudenda) and from this you comment that God is not said to have raced through the sky. Well observed! Nor did he use a helicopter. How silly is satire!

Yet a third point of misrepresentation (I noticed it earlier in the thread too, but thought it might have been a typo of some sort); Yahweh did not cover 'a bit of his body':
22 and it will come about, while my glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take my hand away and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.

I've explained several times why the imprecisions of exaggeration, ambiguity, double entendre, caricaturing and so on create potential problems in communication. You have not refuted that.

Your statement is completely wrong, as instanced by the top literary magazines that make effective use of caricature to get a point across. I'm glancing at one just now. But if you have "explained" that the use of this type of mockery is problematic, perhaps someone should tell the editors to stop doing what they have been doing (successfully). Do you suppose that because Mithrae declares something, it is "an explanation"? You are wrong in what you say about various styles of mockery. I mentioned Gogol, Juvenal and Horace in refutation but of course I didn't expect you to read them.

Of course not, though it's important to be told that you have. Sadly I've been busy with work and fallen a little behind on my Latin readings lately. But your argument seems to be something along the lines of "Since mockery and humour are sometimes effective, it's not the case that exaggeration, ambiguity etc. are imprecisions often reducing the effectiveness of communication and/or not the case that mockery more commonly falls short in communicating with its recipient." Your skill with satire may rival Juvenal's, your ability to change the details of a story may be unmatched on this or any other internet forum, but your competence doesn't redeem the efforts of all past forum members who've been banned for assuming that it's good to mock the things others believe.

We could similarly note that the best painters and sculptors have inspired millions with their work, but I wouldn't consider it 'good' to find the forum flooded with members' amateur efforts and nor would I say that visual art approaches straightforward prose terms of effective communication, most of the time. If it comes to it, much more in line with your 'mockery' theme, many comedians make great use of coarse language or sexual and scatological references in their lampooning of public figures, but even on a forum with laxer rules and more robust ambience than this one, I wouldn't consider that style to be good or generally effective.

Good and effective communication is generally characterized by calm, clear and accurate expression of relevant information. Introducing imprecisions and emotions into the equation is likely to reduce effectiveness far more often than it improves it, a fact which our experience on this forum bears out repeatedly.

[marco]

Good and effective communication is generally characterized by calm, clear and accurate expression of relevant information. Introducing imprecisions and emotions into the equation is likely to reduce effectiveness far more often than it improves it, a fact which our experience on this forum bears out repeatedly.

Your comments are not, then, as it seemed at first, a cautionary note to mankind but a mild local reminder that we must try to be civil to others. You are not scanning the art and literature of the ages and the world and announcing that forms of mockery are not effective, for as I showed they are; but you are dealing with the imperfect, amateurish attempts in much humbler circumstances. Of course I am not advocating abuse, even if it is administered with literary finesse.

When Jesus, in his advisory capacity, suggested that we refrain from calling others "raca" I think he was referring to living humans, not animals nor characters in fiction. That you wish to extend civility to, say Sydney Carton, the lawyer in a Tale of Two Cities or poor Nancy in Oliver, is kindness gone innovatively extreme, but I am impressed.

Jest and jocularity set aside, I accept that when one offers mockery as a vehicle of condemnation it can be seen as an invitation for coarseness and calumny. But even Yahweh is not free of this misfortune, as his jest with Abraham (only joking - I didn't mean kill) creates a precedent: God can whisper "kill" in pious ears. I very much respect ancient texts but if something is construed as ethereal truth, it seems to me correct to dispute this by painting the tale in its most ludicrous form.

There is always the possibility that the tale contains heavier truths than the satirist supposes. That would be hugely interesting and would merit an abject apology. It is on hand. Go well.

[Mithrae]

Good and effective communication is generally characterized by calm, clear and accurate expression of relevant information. Introducing imprecisions and emotions into the equation is likely to reduce effectiveness far more often than it improves it, a fact which our experience on this forum bears out repeatedly.

Your comments are not, then, as it seemed at first, a cautionary note to mankind but a mild local reminder that we must try to be civil to others. You are not scanning the art and literature of the ages and the world and announcing that forms of mockery are not effective, for as I showed they are; but you are dealing with the imperfect, amateurish attempts in much humbler circumstances. Of course I am not advocating abuse, even if it is administered with literary finesse.

If I were to mentally scan the literature of the ages for its effectiveness, I would guess that Plato's Republic, the Buddhist Tripitaka or even Paul's humble letters to tiny local house churches have all had wider and deeper impact than those of Juvenal or Horace; I would think that John Locke and Adam Smith and Charles Darwin were more effective than Nikolai Gogal, perhaps merely betraying a cultural bias. My contention has always been that mockery is more likely to be ineffective and even genuine humour has a tendency to be less effective than more straightforward communication, and while I'm certainly open to the possibility that there may be one or two particularly outstanding mockers representing the very pinnacle of human communication, off the top of my head I'd say it looks like my position holds generally true even at the highest levels.

As I suggested in my second post of the thread, if your intentions are destructive or deconstructive, ridicule might serve you well, maybe: But whether on a local forum or in the grand scope of human history, it's the constructive thinkers, communicators and doers who tend to accomplish more.

Of course it's nice to have plenty of humour and maybe a bit of mockery around. It's nice to have pub limmericks and Disney tales, too.

[marco]

As I suggested in my second post of the thread, if your intentions are destructive or deconstructive, ridicule might serve you well, maybe: But whether on a local forum or in the grand scope of human history, it's the constructive thinkers, communicators and doers who tend to accomplish more.

I wasn't attempting to build a monument more lasting than bronze, Mithrae. I wasn't even attempting to further human knowledge in a local situation. I asked a question.

Whether "constructive thinkers" accomplish more than humourists on a debating forum is a speculation whose truth I cannot guess. If you mean simply that Mithridatic debaters will always win against artless jesters, I suppose that involves private information to which I have no access.

I shall continue to plough on with my heavy attempts at humour. Someone somewhere might smile. That is all one can ask.

[Mithrae]

If you mean simply that Mithridatic debaters will always win against artless jesters

It's basically impossible for anyone to honestly imagine that's what I mean, not least because I have expressed the contrary in basically every single post in the thread, including and perhaps most clearly in this last page which I'd thought was approaching at least some kind of understanding if not real agreement. This blatant misrepresentation of information springs eternal, that much seems clear from this and various other examples previously highlighted. What isn't quite so clear is whether attempts to retrospectively justify them as "satire" or as a "heavy attempt at humour" are supposed to somehow make such dishonesty acceptable, or whether truth and accuracy have simply been discarded as irrelevant in the interests of mockery and ridicule?

[marco]

You absolutely know that's not what I mean......

We are all to some degree handicapped by the level our ability to construe. My goodness, how often have I pondered for ages on some foreign text to find that some dead notable discovered a different interpretation. The Russian poet Tyutchev, who challenged my adolescence, noted that "the thought once spoken is a lie." Words are deceptive carriers of information. Few can employ sentences and be assured they testify truly to what we mean.

So I do not "know" in absolute fashion or otherwise. I deduce and not being a denizen of the depths of your mind, I can but guess, humbly, or err, as the case may be.

Meantime, I maintain that mockery has its place. It might not be well positioned in the text of Magna Carta, but I'm sure in the humbler circumstances of forum debate it is a valuable adjunct to our flawed communication system. Go well.

[Mithrae]

So I do not "know" in absolute fashion or otherwise. I deduce and not being a denizen of the depths of your mind, I can but guess, humbly, or err, as the case may be.

Starting with the simplest and most obvious of at least three major points of concern with your sentence, do you know what terms such as "more likely" and "mostly" mean? Do you need to 'guess' with great humility what such mystifying phrases could mean, or was there some other, less innocent reason for using the term "always" in your mischaracterization of the views I have clearly and repeatedly expressed?

[marco]

do you know what terms such as "more likely" and "mostly" mean?

Yes, very well. But knowing this would not help with "Are idempotent matrices mostly nilpotent"? I cannot see why you want to isolate some simple words, as if that gives complete knowledge of an entire sentence. It doesn't. We need to know what "mostly" modifies.

Do you need to 'guess' with great humility what such mystifying phrases could mean?

I take it, by using mockery, you are trying to show how ineffective it is, as you have been maintaining. If something is mystifying I think guesswork is appropriate.

or was there some other, less innocent reason for using the term "always" in your mischaracterization of the views I have clearly and repeatedly expressed?

One man's clarity....! When a sentence starts with "If" then one should not take what follows as a statement of fact, or even "mischaracterisation" but as an invitation to speculate. There are various types of conditional clause, some of them indicating things that are most unlikely: "If I were king, I would set captives free." It would be wrong to condemn me, on this statement, of setting captives free. I think that is what you are doing but, as I said, words are wily things and we must be careful when approaching them. Go well.

[Mithrae]

Starting with the simplest and most obvious of at least three major points of concern with your sentence, do you know what terms such as "more likely" and "mostly" mean?

Yes, very well. But knowing this would not help with "Are idempotent matrices mostly nilpotent"? I cannot see why you want to isolate some simple words, as if that gives complete knowledge of an entire sentence. It doesn't. We need to know what "mostly" modifies.

Which of the less simple words are confusing you from my statement of position in the preceding post, the most recent of many, that "mockery is more likely to be ineffective and even genuine humour has a tendency to be less effective than more straightforward communication"? Is it 'effective,' or maybe 'communication'? I would be happy to help you out with them (indeed, that touches on a second of the major misrepresentations I noted), but even so I'm really not sure how confusion on any of those more difficult words could change likelihoods, tendencies and mostlies into "always."

Do you need to 'guess' with great humility what such mystifying phrases could mean?

I take it, by using mockery, you are trying to show how ineffective it is, as you have been maintaining.

I'm asking confirmation on whether your stated explanation really applies to the point you responded to. The fact that being asked whether you understand such simple words and sentences comes across as mockery says more about that explanation than anything else, I think. In any case I've already noted several times that I have indeed been known to resort to mockery on occasion, only sometimes without regret. Don't lock horns with a mocker, one might say, 'cos they'll likely end up bringing you to their level and outmanoeuvring you through experience.

or was there some other, less innocent reason for using the term "always" in your mischaracterization of the views I have clearly and repeatedly expressed?

One man's clarity....! When a sentence starts with "If" then one should not take what follows as a statement of fact, or even "mischaracterisation" but as an invitation to speculate. There are various types of conditional clause, some of them indicating things that are most unlikely: "If I were king, I would set captives free." It would be wrong to condemn me, on this statement, of setting captives free. I think that is what you are doing but, as I said, words are wily things and we must be careful when approaching them. Go well.

I could probably count on one hand with a digit or two left over the number of times I've had this kind of difficulty communicating with others on this forum in the nine years I've been here, though I guess it remains possible that it's just me. But with that said, if you want to 'win' your mocking engagements with others simply through an endless trickle of subtle insults and innuendo followed by feigned innocence and confusion when you're eventually successful in provoking a reaction, I suppose it's a formidable strategy likely to work very well a lot of the time. I have a feeling that sentence should say that "it would be a formidable strategy" if it were a merely speculative/hypothetical scenario, much like your royal emancipation above... but I don't see any such qualifier in that earlier comment ostensibly 'speculating' about opinions I had already repeatedly contradicted.

[marco]

I guess it remains possible that it's just me.

There's a fine novel by Paulo Coelho, called The Alchemist, where the protagonist finds what he was looking for at home. We can search all over and blame the world and its granny only to find the fault, dear Brutus, is in ourselves.

In our many exchanges here we have, I think, demonstrated what a fine tool is that much mocked medium of communication, mockery. I am more persuaded to search for flaws in my own humble scribbling when I am overpowered by the might of your own mockery. And when you mockingly present very simple words and ask poor Marco whether he understands them, I am cut, reduced and I have to admit that mockery is indeed a sharp instrument. How well you have illustrated this for me.

So it is effective, too, when mockery is used against Yahweh but I humbly accept that my particular brand may be from the cheap basement store and thereby be inadequate in its composition and for its purpose. One tries to be perfect like our heavenly Father but it is a tall order. Many thanks for an enjoyable series of exchanges. Go well.