The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy (13 page)

While we laugh at Parker and Stone’s portrayal of the major religions and their prophets, we also might feel uncomfortable or uncertain about the episode. For example, what are we to think about the conclusion Stan reaches at the end of the show? Should we agree with his idea that all religions are equally viable and should co-exist in harmony? This seems appealing in some ways, but we might also wonder how feasible it would be to hold all religions to be equally true. After all, different religions make different claims about what is true or best, and “Super Best Friends” seems to show that, while some religions should be recognized as equally significant, not
every
approach to religion is equally good. David Blaine’s religion is criticized as being like a cult, and most people find the deceptively controlling and ­brainwashing practices of cults to be both immoral and definitely
not
in line with the will of a god. Philosophers have offered three different theories to deal with the diversity of religions: religious pluralism, religious exclusivism, and religious inclusivism.

Many people believe that the best way to deal with the diversity of religions is to treat all religious beliefs—as far as possible—as relatively equal. The viewpoint that all religions should be considered equal in terms of their truth and effectiveness is called
religious pluralism
. The “fact of pluralism,” is merely the observation that there are many world religions that have a large number of adherents and have stood the test of time. But the
philosophical
position known as pluralism goes beyond this obvious empirical fact. It says that because there are so many religions around the world and because many of them produce religious experiences for religiously minded people, we should consider these religions to be roughly “on par” with one another in terms of their truth. In other words, we shouldn’t claim that one ­religion is better than another, as long as everyone gets along (like members of the Super Best Friends), allowing each religion to foster the greater good of humankind.

One such pluralist is John Hick (1922-2012), who argued that central to any religion is the idea of “salvation.” For Hick, salvation is always as a transformation from self-centeredness to divine-reality-centeredness. Religion is all about appreciating a higher power and the compelling message of looking beyond ourselves to help others. For Hick, this personal transformation occurs through love and compassion. And since all religions do about as well at producing devout, loving, and compassionate people, we should conclude that all are about on par with respect to their power to “save” people. Other differences about specific doctrines, history, and ideas about the divine reality should be de-emphasized and we should focus on the truth expressed in all religions.
¹

It seems that, despite their implied religious affiliations, most of the boys support this viewpoint (though Cartman regularly voices condescending remarks about many religions, including Kyle’s Judaism). And the fact that the combined powers of the Super Best Friends proves to be stronger than just one prophet on his own seems to further indicate the truth of pluralism. Other moments on
South Park
embrace pluralistic ideas, too. To cite one example, at the end of “All About Mormons,” the Mormon kid Gary implies a belief in ­religious pluralism when he notes that “loving your family, being nice, and helping people” are the real essentials of any religion.

But responding to the fact of religious diversity with pluralism isn’t the only option. Indeed, it’s poor reasoning to infer all religions are equally true from the observation that there are many successful religions. By comparison, if there’s diversity of opinion about the human rights that people have based on their race, then are we justified in saying that each viewpoint equally expresses the truth on the matter? Do we have to say that the racist, bigot, and supremacist are as correct as someone who believes in racial equality? Or, how about Cartman’s ongoing response to the hippie lifestyle? Does being rational mandate that any sincerely held view should be respected as even
partially
true? What about when Cartman tries to clear out hippies in South Park with a giant “Hippie Digger” drill? Is this okay simply because he’s sincere? In general, the mere fact that people disagree about their beliefs doesn’t mean that everyone is equally correct.

To the contrary, certain belief systems stake “exclusive” claims to clear, uncompromising conditions for the truth of their own doctrines. They exclude any incompatible beliefs, claiming that they’re untrue. For example, Islam claims that there is no God but Allah, and that Muhammad is his prophet. Doesn’t this imply that other ideas about god(s) are mistaken, and that Muhammad must be seen as preeminent among other prophets? Or take Christianity, which certainly has exclusivist elements: Jesus claims to be the
only
way to God (John 14:6), for instance. If this were true, wouldn’t every other path to salvation be a false one?

Perhaps the most familiar response to the diversity of world religions is
religious exclusivism
. It says that the claims of one religion are true, and that anything incompatible with the tenets of this one religion must be false. For most beliefs, this approach makes perfect sense. If I think South Park is located in Colorado, and you think it’s located in Alaska, can both of us be right (both of us could be
wrong
, of course)? This same perspective even applies to many moral questions. In viewing “Cartman Joins NAMBLA,” we seem justified in thinking the members of the North American Man/Boy Love Association are wrong in their treatment of children, despite their leader’s requests for us to tolerate them. But when it comes to religion, something causes many of us to hesitate from being so exclusivist. So many people feel so passionately about their religious beliefs that we feel it’s wrong to say someone is right and another who disagrees is wrong. Or maybe we truly feel that there is no way to evaluate the truth of religious doctrines, and so we can’t comment on whether or not any one particular religion is true. Better to hold all religions equal if none can give clear reasons for why they are more valid. While exclusivism permeates many of our beliefs about facts and morals, many people feel that exclusivism about
religion
is somehow disingenuous or arrogant.
²

Of course, it is hard to avoid thinking we’re right about our own beliefs—why else would we believe them? In “Go God Go,” the creators of
South Park
train their sights on these questions from the atheist perspective. Famed atheist Richard Dawkins convinces Mr(s). Garrison that evolution and a viewpoint based on strictly natural ­reasons are the right sort of beliefs. But Cartman (hoping to avoid a three-week wait for the forthcoming release of the Nintendo Wii) accidentally time-travels into the future and arrives in the year 2546, in a world where religion has been discarded and various atheist factions are fighting over a new “Great Question”—how to best frame atheism! Each group is convinced they’re right about their brand of atheism, and so again it seems impossible to avoid a commitment to exclusive beliefs. After changing the past (including the break-up of Dawkins’ and Garrison’s romantic relationship), Cartman witnesses a peaceful future where religious perspectives co-exist again. And so we return to the pluralistic position: freedom to pursue one’s beliefs is presented as preferable to heavy-handed constraint, whether religious or atheistic. The story also shows that a healthy society cannot—and should not—give up tolerating varying viewpoints. In a properly functioning world, pluralism is inevitable and should be celebrated. And yet the inevitable differences between the deeply held beliefs existing within a pluralistic society do nothing to remove the tensions that come from exclusivity.

And so we come to a third approach to religious diversity, called
religious inclusivism
. This view says that one religion is superior to others with respect to truth, but includes other religions and their ­followers under the grace and salvation of that one true religion. Karl Rahner (1904-1984), a Catholic theologian and inclusivist, states that non-Christian people around the world who have honest faith in their religion should be considered “anonymous Christians.” That is, they’ll receive the grace and salvation of Christianity (the only
true
religion) in the midst of their religious lives without even knowing it. For Rahner, Christian salvation is the only genuine way to be saved, but God is gracious enough to extend that salvation to honest adherents of other faiths. Inclusivism seems therefore to represent a “middle-of-the-road” approach.

All this is fine and good, but we don’t just want to list the possible responses to the fact that religious diversity exists; we also want to understand and evaluate the reasons why a person could believe in pluralism, exclusivism, or inclusivism. The branch of philosophy that examines how beliefs can be justified by reasons is called
epistemology
, and the phrase
epistemic parity
refers to the appearance of equal validity that different reasons for believing often seem to have.

For example, the circumstances of our childhood have a deep impact on our beliefs as well as on the reasons available to us for
why
we believe them. The
South Park
boys learned this early on in their adventures with Starvin’ Marvin, and we have a lot of fun watching them interact with people of different cultures and religions throughout the series. If culture and upbringing provided
all
of the reasons for why someone holds the religious beliefs they do, then we should be pluralists about religion. After all, our learning experiences as children impact us
all
deeply. But, as we saw earlier, culture and upbringing can’t be the only kinds of valid reasons for belief; otherwise, everyone would be justified in any of her beliefs just because she was raised to have them. Mr. Mackey’s believing that 2 + 2 = 5 (while smoking mar-e-joo-on-e, m’kay?) or Cartman thinking that a certain race of humans is inferior may be
explained
based on upbringing, but it isn’t
justified
. And even if I
was
justified in holding a belief because of how I was brought up, this certainly does not imply that the belief must be
true
.

We can also look for good reasons by investigating the internal consistency of a set of beliefs. For instance, we might reject a religion because it makes claims that are self-defeating, or it has some ­doctrines that clearly contradict other doctrines it maintains. For example, if someone claimed to be a Christian Muslim, then that person would be saying that they believed Jesus was God (a Christian belief) and a mere human (an Islamic belief)
at the same time
. While there are ­incoherencies and contradictions to be found in the world’s religions, people either ignore them, rationalize them through a leap of faith, or use philosophy to show how these incoherencies and inconsistencies aren’t genuine. Since it would be difficult to understand the persistence of most world religions over time if they advocated blatant contradictions, it seems likely that they don’t suffer from
radical
inconsistencies.

The final type of reasons we could look to is
empirical
evidence. In other words, what do our five senses reveal to us about the diversity of religions and an appropriate response? As we saw, John Hick thought we should judge all religions to be on par with each other because we can observe a kind of equality in the
results
of religious life (selfless, loving, compassionate people). Yet it’s hard to imagine how a clear empirical test could measure how loving and compassionate all the various adherents of religions are. So we might also look at the history of a religion, judging whether it advanced by ­suspicious developments; or we could examine the lives of the great prophets of religions, aiming to see whether or not there was consistency and plausibility in their teachings. A further kind of empirical evidence might be the testaments of believers in the past. While this couldn’t
prove
that a religion is true, there might be evidence for this if vast numbers of people testified that a set of religious beliefs and practices was life-changing, compelling, and purpose-giving. But are these kinds of evidence the
only
empirical standards for the truth of a religion?

“Super Best Friends” focuses on another kind of evidence, namely, miracles. David Blaine is portrayed as a magician who’s also a powerful miracle-worker, while Jesus’s “tricks” depend far more on the audience’s gullibility than on authentic power. Miracles are mocked throughout the episode and, yet, in the end we see each of the Super Best Friends demonstrating fantastic abilities. And this leads us to consider one of the most important underlying questions about the justification of religious belief: is there a way of understanding and evaluating reasons for belief that takes into account the central role of
supernatural
elements of religion? Or can we only take into account evidence from the
natural
world?

David Hume (1711-1776) asked this question with respect to miracles. His argument against reasoned belief in miracles runs something like this: a miracle is a violation of laws of nature, which have been established by past human experience. The only kind of evidence for miracles is the testimony of witnesses. But testimonial evidence for supernatural events is almost always of a limited amount and dubious quality. Hume thinks that this kind of evidence could
never
outweigh the overwhelming experience that validates laws of nature. So, rational belief in a miracle could never be justified.
³

While this argument focuses on miracles (as does the battle ­between David Blaine and the Super Best Friends), the underlying issue is the conflict between natural and supernatural evidence. Since our standards of rationality are very much based based on common, day-to-day experiences of “natural” life, it seems difficult to fit supernatural kinds of experience into this framework. Even John Hick frames ­pluralism in terms of experience of the natural world: specifically, the empirically verifiable actions of people. It might appear that evaluating the reasons for religious belief has to involve a
reduction
of supernatural evidence into terms familiar from the natural realm of day-to-day life. But then, why are the supernatural elements of ­religion needed at all? If, as Hick says, the only thing that matters is moving from self-centeredness to divine-reality-centeredness, resulting in love and compassion, then why not get rid of the supernatural, “divine reality” altogether and just focus on encouraging loving and compassionate behavior? Why get hung up on divine incarnation and virgin birth when the same amount of Christmas spirit can be promoted by Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo? Why, from the pluralist perspective, is Kyle’s Judaism or Stan’s Christianity any different from honest, compassionate atheism?