Pope Francis on Paris Attack - "one who throws insults can expect a 'punch'"

[afleitch]

There is nothing wrong with insulting religions either. Insulting a religion is not the same as insulting believers.

You couldn't be more wrong about that, and I feel the same way in regards to non-thiestic religions such as atheism and humanism.  That said, insulting religious leaders is in general not the same as insulting their religion or their followers.  I say in general because in a very real sense, Muhammad, Jesus, Gautama , etc. have transcended being people who are leaders of a religion to becoming symbols of that religion.  That's a distinction that many secularists have difficulty grasping the concept of, let alone acknowledging the validity thereof.

Bullsh*t. Jesus, Muhammad etc. are only sacred figures to believers, but nonbelievers may say whatever they want about them. It's not that secularists don't "get" it. They simply understand that their liberty is not limited by other people's beliefs.

This. Plus Ernest's definition of 'religion' extends to things such as state Communism. If you have a philosophical worldview, with or without a god head it should be subject to criticism and ridicule because those two observations often overlap; how they are interpreted is often subject to the observer. If I ridicule the fact that Mary was a virgin and that Jesus flew up into the sky, at what point would me saying 'Virgin birth is impossible as is flying literally or metaphorically into heaven' cross the line from criticism to ridicule? I'm belittling that belief either way.

[afleitch]

What was the pope supposed to say? 'Blatant hate speech is essential to a free society, let 'er rip surviving Charlie Hebdo people'? As little as anybody short of Julius Streicher deserves to die because of a newspaper they put out, I don't think that would have been a morally responsible reaction. Juvenalian satire going out of its way to offend entire religious groups, in a country where at least some of the religious groups in question are already disadvantaged and marginalized, doesn't feature in legitimate political discourse.

There is nothing hateful about Charlie Hebdo's cartoons. We can argue about the value of mean-spirited sneer and scatological humour in political discourse (and I wouldn't even necessarily disagree with you on that), but the idea that religious symbols should be afforded some kind of special protection against them is disgustingly reactionary.

Well, then, on this particular issue, call me Joseph de Maistre and pack me off to a hermitage, because the idea that those cartoons 'aren't hateful' strikes me as self-evidently ludicrous.

How is the cartoon in my signature for example, hateful?

[afleitch]

Meanwhile: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30856403

[afleitch]

How is the cartoon in my signature for example, hateful?

To be honest, I can't really tell what's meant to be communicated in that one, so for all I know it isn't. I mean I'm definitely not claiming they all are.

Really?

Well, then, on this particular issue, call me Joseph de Maistre and pack me off to a hermitage, because the idea that those cartoons 'aren't hateful' strikes me as self-evidently ludicrous.

I'm not going to stand and see these cartoons as the pinnacle of satire, because they are not. But as far as I recall you are not fluent in French, nor may you understand what social context particular to France they are satirising, so why are you are claiming that the cartoons are 'hateful', if you don't know precisely what they are trying to address, even if they resort to a crude caricature?

[afleitch]

I'm tempted to just say 'because I've moved towards an admittedly and self-consciously traditionalist-conservative position on this specific issue' and leave it at that, but that's not really a legitimate argument so I won't.

So what's left then? I mean that in all seriousness. If ridicule of religion is for you now 'less acceptable' because you have shifted your position then what are people to do who are under the yoke of religion, or feel it's influence on their daily life? In many cultures or nations there is no opportunity for the non-religious or even people of another religion to engage in critical debate. That platform is not open for them. All you can do is ridicule; not in a gross caricature but in persistently highlighting the absurdities of a faith and it's impact on your life. Ridicule is a low art, but it is a common art and is a tool of the disadvantaged. It's very easy to say 'don't be vulgar' or 'don't be cheap' if you are in a position of relative comfort.

[afleitch]

I'm pretty much done with this, but will quote Bernard Levin (as someone pointed this out to me today) who after critically slaughtering the play Perdition which insinuated that 'Zionist' leaders collaborated in the holocaust to secure a Jewish state;

'Free speech is for swine and liars as well as upright and honest men. I have insisted that any legally permissable view, however repugnant, is less dangerous promulgated than banned, and I would defend its promulgation even if the opposite were true...

In all the beliefs I have lived, and I am minded to die in them; how then can I defend the suppression of this play? I cannot, which is not to say that if it had never been written it now should be. But it exists, and ‘He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still.’ With a heavy heart, I yet must say it: Let them have their play.'

[afleitch]

Victim blaming nonsense. Would those defending the Pope's remarks have said the same about the Sony hacks? They had it coming, no? I'm not sure even John Paul II would have been so callous. Perhaps Francis is overcompensating for being seen as a progressive Pope.

'Of course they did.' The Juche effectively consider Kim Il-sung effectively 'god-like'. He is still effectively their perpetual spiritual leader. Therefore the current leader is the grandson of a 'god'. The Interview was clearly an insult on their belief system, as was Team America. And while of course having celebrity puppets explode and have sexual intercourse was freedom of expression, they shouldn't have 'taken it too far.'

HBO should also be very careful about that documentary they are producing on Scientology. Just saying.

(which is all a logical extension of this sort of apologism)

[afleitch]

I highly doubt that censorship would have been his preferred solution to this, except maybe some kind of voluntary prior restraint, like the Comics Code but for Islamophobia or something. To whatever extent he's calling for that, I'm not sure I agree with him (the Comics Code was flagrantly ludicrous, after all), but I don't think it's an inherently inappropriate or callous or cruel position to take, I think some of our more anti-clerical and/or European* posters are reacting to this as if he'd said that these people deserved to die when that's clearly not the case, and that's all I was really trying to argue in this thread to begin with.

Just out of interest, would this be a two way street? I mean, if I show restraint, should religious figures be required to show restraint and not for example caricature gay people as either being sinful, possessed, threats to society, purveyors of vice or have veiled innuendoes made about them comparing them to paedophiles or pedarasts? (all of which the RC has done - we are after all guilty of a 'moral evil')

Or is that 'okay' if it's an expression of one's religious beliefs?

EDIT: I say this with some 'seriousness' as I genuinely think that a preacher preaching against me is actually greatly offensive especially if it's on the basis of my sexuality or a presupposed moral vacuum because I am not religious. The very act of evangelising can be offensive. Offers of prayer are unwanted and often laced with disdain for an inherent part of my character. I really hate that because religion isn't like sex, or colour, or race or sexuality. It's not an immutable characteristic. You can leap from faith to faith and thanks to the inherited enlightenment belief in 'freedom of religion', what rights you have and what rights you have to promote or take offence to can change depending on what faith you are a member of (or none) or what approach you take to having faith (or none). Yet faiths have the right to discriminate towards inherent characteristics. The religious position on women, approached from some spurious pseudo 'spiritual-biological/naturalistic' position to justify women as being 'different' and or grounded by their sex leading to direct discrimination against them is justified on that basis.

And yet, I'm not going to argue that religions should be banned from being 'anti-gay', nor for supremacists to hate black people even though there are sound reasons to actually argue that this should be the case.

[afleitch]

I highly doubt that censorship would have been his preferred solution to this, except maybe some kind of voluntary prior restraint, like the Comics Code but for Islamophobia or something. To whatever extent he's calling for that, I'm not sure I agree with him (the Comics Code was flagrantly ludicrous, after all), but I don't think it's an inherently inappropriate or callous or cruel position to take, I think some of our more anti-clerical and/or European* posters are reacting to this as if he'd said that these people deserved to die when that's clearly not the case, and that's all I was really trying to argue in this thread to begin with.

Just out of interest, would this be a two way street? I mean, if I show restraint, should religious figures be required to show restraint and not for example caricature gay people as either being sinful, possessed, threats to society, purveyors of vice or have veiled innuendoes made about them comparing them to paedophiles or pedarasts? (all of which the RC has done - we are after all guilty of a 'moral evil')

Yeah. Of course. They really, really, really should stop doing that, and I dearly hope I would still think so even I were cis and/or straight. I think both religious and non- or antireligious people should avoid resorting to defamatory innuendo and raucous mockery on these kinds of issues.

The problem is what constitutes mockery? If 'mockery' is what is to be restrained. Because mockery isn't always just a devolved form of discussion. Sometimes it has nothing to do with discussion or position taking at all. A real life and surreal example of this would be a school child taken aside for eating a ham sandwich at Ramadan in a school with a large Muslim population. Eating and what was being eaten was perceived as 'mockery' when all it really was was simply having a sandwich. Why should the person who considers it 'mockery' be empowered because we consider mockery to be a step too far. That argument requires that the 'step before' is actually meant to be an acceptable 'action' against a person. Often that is not the case at all.

A very common argument against SSM for example (and one made by the subject of this thread) is that allowing it 'mocks' religion, or religious beliefs about marriage and what marriage means and who marriage is for. I'm sure for some people it is mockery, but that's only in the view of the person who perceives it. And it makes an assumption that the person who perceives mockery has a reasoned insight into what mockery is.

[afleitch]

afleitch: Yes, I think the subjective nature of what constitutes ‘mockery’ is indeed the problem with, or at least the difficulty of, holding this position—I think at a minimum I’d say that to constitute mockery something has to be in some way targeted towards addressing whatever the issue is on whose basis it’s claimed to be mocking. The ham sandwich and gay marriage examples are clearly not intended to comment in any way on what they’re purportedly mocking.

I'm aware that this isn't necessarily a sufficient distinction to make and that the question remains subjective and liable to case-by-case judgment calls, in any event. Which, again—the difficulty of holding this position.

I think my problem is that you're suggesting (and the Pope obviously) we have this 'distinction' in terms of religious belief systems which I profoundly disagree with (because they are no more than systems of thought/morality/philosophy) That aside, even if I did agree with the need to be 'careful' I can't honestly trust nor expect religious bodies or religious people to properly determine what is 'mockery'. There is no rational/reasonable basis for them to do so, because religious belief does not operate according to those lines. I find it as impossible to 'offend god' as it is to offend pixies (and I make no apologies for a 'cheap' comparison.). It's just not possible for a non-believer to offend some being that cannot express how offended it actually is. People are a different matter of course, but nor can they express their offence on behalf of god for the same reason. And that is essentially what blasphemy is.