The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy (5 page)

Sadly, for most of the crazy claims made in South Park, that obligation is never met. But there are exceptions. In “Pandemic” one of the imprisoned members of a Peruvian flute band makes the seemingly preposterous assertion that their music (annoying though it may be) is the only thing keeping away “the furry death.” We later learn that he is correct, as giant guinea pigs wreak havoc in the bands’ absence. Sometimes what seems absurd can be defended after all! But extraordinary evidence is required. So if you’re going to suggest that an alien wizard is causing sexual addiction in some kids (“Sexual Healing”), or that the first pope was really a rabbit (“Fantastic Easter Special”), you’d better have compelling reasons.

Returning to “All About Mormons,” two villagers are talking about Joseph Smith. One of them says, “He claims he spoke with God and Jesus.” The other one asks, “Well how do you know he didn’t?” Is this a fair question? Should unproven claims be accepted when it appears that they can’t be disproved? No. A request to disprove something isn’t a request that needs to be answered. This is because the burden of proof always lies with the person making the additional claim, not with those who doubt its truth. If this were not the case, then we would be required to entertain
any
belief, no matter how absurd. I can’t disprove the existence of alien souls inhabiting our bodies, but that doesn’t mean I should consider this Scientologist claim to be likely. Or to take another example, when Cartman suggests (“Jewpacabra”) that the Jewpacabra is real and coming for them, the leaders of Sooper Foods reluctantly cancel the Easter egg hunt since they can’t prove that no such creature exists. Kyle has it right here, as he tells Cartman, “There’s no reference of it anywhere on the known species webpage,” and anyone who says otherwise “is either lying or stupid.” We shouldn’t fall into the “disproof” trap. If our beliefs can’t be supported, then they should be rejected, or at least put aside until further evidence comes about.

Believing things without sufficient evidence hardly seems like a good way to lead a successful life. It’s difficult to understand how making decisions without evaluating the available evidence would work in the long run. Imagine picking a college, a career, a place to live, a mechanic, a doctor, or anything, for that matter, without reasoning and examining the facts involved. Imagine going through your life merely guessing whenever a decision is to be made, or going by how you feel at the moment, or basing decisions on what’s said by someone who may not be reliable.

Take as an illustration the time when Kyle became very ill and needed a kidney transplant (“Cherokee Hair Tampons”). Instead, his mother took him to the new “Holistic Healer” in town, Miss Information. At her shop, the townspeople lined up to buy all sorts of useless products. Her employees, introduced as Native Americans, must surely know all about healing! Fortunately for Kyle, these “Native Americans” (who turned out to be Cheech and Chong) were honest enough to convince Mrs. Broflovski that Kyle was really sick and should be taken to a real doctor. Stan, who realized from the start that the “healers” were frauds and their methods unscientific, had been urging this all along. He later tricks Cartman into giving up a kidney, so everything works out well for Kyle in the end. Often though, when we start with beliefs that have been uncritically accepted, the outcome isn’t so fortunate. When the
South Park
version of the company BP (the one which caused the oil spill in the Gulf) continued drilling without carefully examining the potential risks, it proceeded to create an even worse disaster by ripping a dimensional hole in space allowing the evil Cthulhu to cause great devastation (“Coon 2: Hindsight”).

What’s at stake is not just having correct beliefs. As we’ve seen, ­having incorrect beliefs can have dire consequences, but notice, too, how closely beliefs are tied to action. In “Trapped in The Closet,” Stan tells Tom Cruise that he’s not as good of an actor as Leonardo DiCaprio, Gene Hackman, or “the guy who played Napoleon Dynamite.” This causes poor Tom to become depressed, and he locks himself in the closet. Now, why should a famous actor care what a little boy thinks of his acting skills? Well, he
should
care if he was a Scientologist and believed that that little boy is the reincarnation of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. And Mr. Cruise believes
this
, because the current Scientology leaders told him. So his illogical actions are motivated by a ridiculous belief that’s held, not on the basis of any testable evidence (well, they did test Stan’s “body ­thetans” with their “E-Meters”—more unsupported nonsense), but solely on the basis of authority. And the “authority” here is hardly reliable or objective; in fact, later the leading Scientologist admits to Stan that it’s all made up and he’s doing it for the money.

Many people say their beliefs, especially their religious beliefs, are based on faith. What does this mean? And is this a good idea? First, let’s be clear what is meant by
faith
in this context. Sometimes faith means a kind of confidence. In “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” Cartman was confident that his friends would betray him, and they did. This allowed his plan for revenge on Scott to work perfectly. Cartman, we might say, had faith that his plan would work.

Now this kind of faith isn’t opposed to reason and evidence. Cartman reasoned that he could accurately predict what his friends would do based on their past actions. This is perfectly reasonable. If, on the other hand, Mr. Garrison had faith that his students would all work hard on their homework assignments, his confidence would be misplaced. He has no good reason to think so. So faith in the sense of being confident may be reasonable or not, depending on one’s evidence.

Talking about religious faith, however, we usually don’t mean confidence based on reason. This kind of faith is in fact
opposed
to reason; quite simply, it is belief without good evidence. After hearing the story of Joseph Smith, a story that Stan points out is unsupported and contrary to known facts, Stan says, “Wait: Mormons actually know this story, and they still believe Joseph Smith was a prophet?” The reply, of course, is “Stan, it’s all a matter of faith.” So, faith appears to be a kind of fallback position we can take when we can’t support our views. But this shouldn’t be encouraged, for it would render any belief whatsoever acceptable.

Does a belief have to be supported by evidence in order for it to be a rational belief? Can there be
reasons
that justify believing something besides just evidence? Let’s make a distinction between
prudential
reason
s
and
evidential
reasons. The difference between them is easy to illustrate with an example. Suppose that I tell you that John Edward—the self-proclaimed psychic whom Stan puts in his place—really can communicate with the dead. Since you watch
South Park
, you know that John Edward is the “biggest douche in the universe,” so you don’t believe my claim for a second and you demand proof. Suppose I tell you that if you do believe it, I’ll give you lots of money (I show you the full briefcase); but if you don’t believe it, you get nothing. Now you have a reason to believe that John Edward is not a fraud, and it’s a
good reason
. But you still don’t have a shred of evidence. Your reason, instead, is prudential: it’s in your best interest to believe.

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), a French mathematician and ­philosopher, attempted to justify religious belief in exactly the same way. His argument has come to be known as “Pascal’s Wager.”
²
Pascal urges us to think of belief in God as a bet. If you wager on God existing (if you believe in him) and God exists, you win. God rewards believers with eternal joy and happiness. But if you don’t believe and God exists, then you lose. God punishes non-believers with eternal suffering and pain. What if God doesn’t exist? Well, in that case the non-believer has the truth and the believer doesn’t; but whatever positive or ­negative results emerge are negligible in comparison to what happens if there is a God. The point is, if you have
any chance at all
to achieve eternal peace and avoid eternal damnation, you’re a fool not to go for it. Prudential reasons reign: it’s in your best interest to believe in God.

Notice a few things about Pascal’s Wager. First, he’s not trying to prove that God exists. If we could prove that there is a God, then the Wager would be pointless (the same would be true if we could prove that there is no God). Pascal starts by assuming that we don’t know either way. Second, Pascal isn’t arguing that we should simply go on faith alone. He’s instead arguing that religious belief is
reasonable
because it’s prudential. There have, however, been many criticisms of the Wager that show that it’s not a very good argument for religious belief. Let’s look at two of these, as they are nicely illustrated in
South Park
.

First, you might wonder why God would choose to torture someone for all eternity simply because they don’t believe in him. Isn’t God supposed to be perfectly good? Why would a good being wish pain and suffering for anyone? In the episode “Cartmanland,” Kyle ­wonders the same thing. Cartman inherits a million dollars and buys an amusement park, while Kyle suffers from hemorrhoid pain. Kyle begins to lose his faith as well as his will to live. If there were a God, he reasons, He wouldn’t reward someone like Cartman (who’s evil) while allowing me (who’s good) to suffer. He says: “Cartman is the biggest asshole in the world. How is it that God gives him a million dollars? Why? How can you do this? There are people starving in Alabama, and you give Cartman a million dollars? If someone like Cartman can get his own theme park, then there is no God. There’s no God, dude.”

Kyle’s parents, in an attempt to restore his faith, tell him that God sometimes causes us to suffer, perhaps to test our faith, and they read him the story of Job. (Incidentally, the idea of God testing us makes little sense; if he is all-knowing, he would already know what we would do, rendering any test pointless.) But the story horrifies Kyle: “That’s the most horrible story I’ve ever heard. Why would God do such horrible things to a good person just to prove a point to Satan?” Kyle reasons here that if there really were a God, there would be ­justice in the world. God wouldn’t reward someone like Cartman and neither would he allow people like Job and Kyle to suffer.

We can see how all of this applies to Pascal’s Wager. Imagine someone who’s a really good person—loving, honest, helpful, kind—yet she doesn’t believe in God. She thinks she ought to be moral to make the world a better place, let’s say, not because God says so or to get some personal reward. Does it really make sense to think that God (who is supposed to be supremely good, remember) would allow such a person to be tormented for all eternity?

A second—and much worse—problem for Pascal’s argument is that he assumes that we
know
the possible outcomes of our wager. Pascal says that God rewards believers and punishes nonbelievers. But this is just an assumption. If we had proof of this, we would already know that the religious view of things is true, and we wouldn’t need a ­prudential argument. Remember, the point of the Wager is to convince us to believe when we have no evidence of God’s existence or non-existence. Without evidence, there are lots of possibilities to consider. Perhaps God rewards everyone, or maybe there’s no afterlife at all. Maybe God values reason and punishes those who believe blindly without any evidence. There are endless possibilities.

Even if we could show that only religious believers get rewarded (and how would we prove that without making the Wager ­pointless?), we still have the problem of
which
religious beliefs to have. In “Do the Handicapped Go To Hell?” we’re treated to a bunch of religious folks who, to their horror, find themselves in hell. They are told that they have
the wrong religious beliefs
, since only the Mormons go to heaven!

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you ­commit atrocities.

— Voltaire

Maybe Pascal’s Wager doesn’t show us that we
should
believe in God, but still, we might ask, what’s the harm? Perhaps we should only have beliefs based on reasons, but what’s wrong with prudential reasons? In “All About Mormons,” Gary tells Stan, “Maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense. And maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up. But I have a great life and a great family, and I have
The Book of Mormon
to thank for that. The truth is, I don’t care if Joseph Smith made it all up.” And in “The Biggest Douche in the Universe,” John Edward tries to defend himself to Stan when he says, “What I do doesn’t hurt anybody. I give people closure and help them cope with life.” So, echoing Gary, Stan’s Mormon friend, we could similarly say we don’t care if Edward is a fraud, as long as what he does makes people feel good. Again, what’s the harm?

But this is only part of the story. For one, as we’ve already seen, unsupported beliefs can lead to harmful consequences. In “Timmy 2000,” the belief that Timmy has ADD (that he is not mentally ­disabled) eventually causes a wild spread of unnecessary prescription drugs and, worse, a belief that the music of Phil Collins is actually good. In “Super Best Friends,” some of the followers of magician David Blaine blindly follow him and commit suicide, believing they will go to heaven. In both of these cases, the believers feel good about their beliefs; they provide hope or comfort. But they’re still extremely dangerous.

A second sort of harm here is mental weakness and laziness. As Clifford said, “Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy ­reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of ­judicially and fairly weighing evidence.” His point is that even if a ­person’s unsupported beliefs cause no immediate harm (as in the examples from
South Park
), it still weakens the mind. Stan’s dad even gives himself cancer so he can get medicinal marijuana (“Medicinal Fried Chicken”), and, like him, we get used to accepting ideas uncritically, growing mentally lazy, and this encourages others to do the same. Just like Randy Marsh, most of the citizens of South Park rarely use their critical faculties. This makes them easy prey for every cult, fad, or con that comes to town. Think of just about any episode of
South Park
, and you’ll find many examples of this mental weakness and laziness.