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This is the blog home for Dr. Johnson's PHIL 360: Existentialsim course at Rhodes College.
The idea I have never ceased to develop is in the end that a man can always make something out of what is made of him. --J.P. Sartre
Doctor J's Phil 360
This is the blog home for Dr. Johnson's PHIL 360: Existentialsim course at Rhodes College.
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2008
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December
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- from Waking Life:
- Percy's The Last Gentleman
- The Neverending Story
- Americans and War: A Satrean Analysis of the Publ...
- Existentialism: Thoughts on the Semester and Unans...
- P.S. Tom Robbins rocks.
- The existential Catch-22
- Is Existentialism really that depressing?
- The Power of Philosophy - psychiatric style
- I Think I've Finally Located My Angst.
- Economic Bailout
- Two Things:
- Meaningless or Meaningful?
- Be Bad, Don't Be Evil
- Tragic Optimism
- Egocentricism and Bad Faith
- Existentialism and Self-Identity
- Cornell West, Race, and Existentialism
- Changing a Paradigm?
- Be Prepared to be Foucaulted (with some Butlering ...
- Marquez & Frankl
- The Concept of Society in understanding Existentia...
- Fun Times With Existentialism
- George Carlin: "Religion is an abdication of respo...
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December
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4 comments:
I probably ought to say something slightly more substantive, but really I think Mr. Carlin speaks for himself (and in fun voices, no less).
I can see some definite parallels between Carlin and Nietzsche and Sartre. He's approaching religion as a crutch for idiots, for people who are scared about the world and need something like god to make them feel better. Furthermore, it's a reason to slough responsibility, by claiming any error to be the will of god—because the will of god is ambiguous (and quite possibly non-existent), it could really be anything.
I definitely think there's much more to religion than what Carlin is pointing out (see the last post and the comments to it), but he certainly does a good job of examining the absurdity of organized, dogmatic belief systems.
Discuss?
Hey Mark - When you commented on my post, you said that in order to understand the relationship between religion and existentialism, it was important to draw a distinction between belief in God and dogmatic belief systems. I think that's right, but I wonder what you think about the way religious communities fit into existentialism. I think Carlin nicely articulates the problem with religion by saying it gives people a crutch. This seems to be the same problem the existentialist point out. However, I wonder whether the existentialist could say the same about the community part of religion. It seems that when one is making meaning in a meaningless world, having a community, even a religious one, might help endorse their existential behavior. It gives folks something to turn away from to examine their own existences, as well as something to turn back towards once they have done this, so I wonder if in fact the religious community is the place where existentialism and religion meet. Thoughts?
Well, I feel like community is important to the existentialist in any form—because we have to be-among-others, we are constantly part of some sort of community. I think that religions can be a community of this sort, but the problem lies in falling prey to being nothing but a part of the community. The problem with organized religions is that people let themselves be defined by the norms of their groups, reducing themselves to their facticity as "Christians" or "Jews" or whatever—which is strange because religion does involve some sort of transcendence. It's just not the individualistic transcendence that Sartre talks about.
So community is absolutely important to living one's life existentially. To say that it wasn't would be inauthentic (BAD FAITH ALERT). So religion isn't bad per se, it's only bad in that it allows humans to reduce themselves, to live only in their average-everydayness.
That kind of thinking is what I hate most about contemporary Christian music. These folks decide that the best—and only—use of their talent is to write songs about god and Jesus, over and over. The thing is, there's a whole lot more to life than what may or may not come after it. If you're going to use religion as a crutch that's your perogative, just so long as you don't lose sight of everything else.
Ok, so I hate to be the Debbie Downer but...
I understand what George Carlin is saying in regards to using religion as a crutch and a way to control the masses, but the way in which he does this is very offensive and unnecessary. His voices are funny and his delivery clever and witty; and these would be great routines (of course in my opinion)if his subject matter wasn't so significant to many people. However, religion is arguably one of the most passionate concepts/lifestyles/passions/ideals one can have. Yes, I very much agree that there are many people who use organized religion as a means to subjugate others. But Mark, you said yourself that you definitely think that religion can be more than this. Therefore, if it can be more than a simple way to abuse power, I don't think that everyone that professes to be of a religion or spirituality should be put in the same category as the blind masses.
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