Monty Python and Philosophy by Gary Hardcastle (best young adult book series .TXT) 📕

that they cannot continuously generate such worship with sincerity. In summary, prayer is an integral part of man’s relation to God. Prayer is our means of giving thanks for His many wonderful blessings. Prayer is how we acknowledge His greatness and goodness. Finally, prayer is required and one had better perform this duty or risk being chucked into Hell.

The Pythons present a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail which confirms Socrates’s view that a perfect God has no need of these displays of bowing and scraping. God appears in a cloud and Arthur and his men immediately drop to their knees. “Don’t grovel!” God bellows, “If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s people groveling.” When Arthur begins to apologize for groveling, God interrupts with, “And don’t apologize! Every time I talk to someone, it’s ‘Sorry this’ and ‘Forgive me that’ and “I’m not worthy.’”

In the Euthyphro, Socrates explains why God has no interest in this type of worship. Euthyphro claims that piety involves care of the gods, or service to the gods, which is performed through sacrifice and prayer. Socrates instructs that sacrifice and prayer cannot be wanted or needed by God since to sacrifice is to make a gift to God and to pray is to beg from God. A proper gift is that which another needs or wants. Since God is not in need or want of anything, we cannot give Him a gift. Since God has already provided all that we need, it is offensive and ungrateful to ask for more. Socrates adds that we sacrifice in order to beg more comfortably. So sacrifice and prayer are little more than trading and bargaining with God. God has no need or want of such commerce, so we should not conduct these practices, certainly not in His name.

The Christian God is a personal fatherly god, so it is not surprising that people approach God as children approach their parents for favors. A common prayer is the request for services in which the needy, or merely desirous, ask God to produce or prevent a certain outcome. The requests for services suggest that God’s will is unstable, susceptible to pleading and weeping. Believers sometimes say that God can be moved by our prayers, but the Pythons encourage us to consider this belief. If God’s wisdom is infinitely greater than ours, and all that happens is part of His master plan, why would He change His mind because we beg? If we believe the aforementioned, why would we beg?

It’s little wonder that Christians make many claims about God that seem incredible, outrageous, and just plain silly. In the Bible, God creates the heavens and earth and gives his favorite creatures special privileges, but in a flash of rage takes it all back. God presents a fruit tree to Adam and Eve though they are forbidden to partake (some gift!), commands Abraham to sacrifice his son and heaps misfortune on Job. And there is plenty more drama where that came from. There is a contrasting image of the Christian God as loving and merciful, but the more turbulent characterization is responsible for the doctrines and practices lampooned by the Pythons. If biblical tales of an angry and vengeful God are meant to be taken literally, then Christians are sensible to take measures to avoid His wrath. It is often the case that religious beliefs are not arrived at and maintained through a process of careful reflection. Philosophy performs the service of critical analysis, but religious belief and superstition have been notoriously resistant to intellectual examination. Using humor to illustrate how ludicrous particular beliefs appear when their consequences are acted out for our benefit, the Pythons succeed in challenging us to question certain religious assumptions. That’s not to say that belief in God should be extinguished, but if our behavior looks ridiculous when played for our entertainment, perhaps we should examine beliefs and practices attributed to God that seem so absurd.

11

Monty Python and David Hume on Religion

JOHN HUSS

“Is God really real?”This is a perennial question for the philosophy of religion. Fortunately, the Pythons have answers to it. Perhaps too many answers. If we asked Arthur, King of the Britons, he would certainly testify that God exists, speaks English, and can’t stand people groveling, averting their eyes, ceaselessly apologizing, and deeming themselves unworthy. Yet when we begin inquiring into Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, “there is some doubt” about whether God is really real, or, to put it more philosophically, there is doubt over whether God’s existence can be established through a valid argument. There is a long philosophical tradition of constructing rational arguments for the existence and attributes of God, and an equally long skeptical tradition of deconstructing those same arguments. The Pythons have been exemplary participants in the latter tradition, either through parody, or by echoing in a funnier and more succinct way the skeptical arguments of such philosophical predecessors as Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776).

Causes and Reasons

In the Natural History of Religion (1757), Hume made an important philosophical distinction between causes of and reasons for religious belief. By the reason for a belief, Hume meant an argument in its favor that appeals to shared norms of rationality, premises, and rules of reasoning that everyone can agree on. The cause of a belief is the particular set of environmental, historical, or personal circumstances that led an individual to hold the belief, whether or not it is rational to do so (we will return to a discussion of causes later in this chapter).62 In Hume’s day, there were a number of arguments for the existence and attributes of God—reasons to believe. He was highly critical of these arguments.

The Ontological Argument

An ingenious argument for the existence of God was concocted by St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109). St. Anselm’s argument, the Ontological Argument, was written in the form of a prayer, and began with the following lines:

Oh Lord, ooh, You