In Jeffrey Dueck’s essay “Religious Pluralism and The Super Best Friends” he takes the view that Stone and Parker South Park’s creators are relaying the lesson through their character Stan that take the Religious Pluralist view that all religions are “roughly ‘on par’ with on another in terms of their truth.” (Dueck, 226). While Dueck’s points throughout the essay remain solid, I think he fundamentally misunderstood the writer’s of South Park’s goal in their portrayal of religions in Season 5 Episode 4 of South Park, “The Super Best Friend Club.”
Both of the authors of South Park identify themselves as atheists, not religious pluralists. Might it then be a better assumption to assume that they are not promoting a religious pluralist view but instead an agnostic or atheist worldview. In the Super Best Friend Club the heads of the major religions are presented as silly parodies. While Stan may have reached a religious pluralist view, it seems that to the viewers of the show, they are being asked to take the cognitive leap that while these religions can lead people to good and ethical actions, that they are all on par with David’s Blain religion which is not based on any divinity but started out as cult-like entities that took to have corporate-like structures of religious hierarchy. Under this view what the show is actually promoting is that of religious skepticism.
History has bred two overriding forms of skepticism: Pyrrhonian skepticism and Cartesian skepticism. Both offer a smiliar problem through contrasting means. Pyrrhonian skepticism attacks the possibility of objective truth through the perceptions of the world and Cartesian skepticism attacks it through the capacity to absorb the world through the senses and also raises the question of whether or not our capacities can be trusted with regard to this.
The Pyrrhonism means to life is to constantly withhold judgment on all matters and attest that nothing can be known with certitude. They see the world as a place of only impressions and that one cannot move beyond these impressions. Take the example of chocolate pudding. One person may look at the pudding and see that it is brown, feel that it is cold, and taste that it is sweet.
However, a person who has had his hand in a bowl of ice, who has had his eyes gazing at the sun for hours, and who has been eating sugar all day (As Dr. Flood did often as a young child) may say that the pudding is red, cold, and not sweet. Notions as this are expounded upon by the skeptics to arrive at the conclusion that different people have different perceptions about the same thing and, if this is so, it is impossible to come to a definitive judgment about anything. These skeptics see variations of species differences in positions and qualities and find all this variation of appearance as a challenge to the something constant and unchanging that objectivist require for certitude. Therefore, the best way to live one’s life is to withhold one’s judgment. To them, “Every argument has an equal argument that is opposed.” Instead of taking sides in the debate they merely rest in “mental tranquility” by assenting to appearances but refusing to go beyond them and say more about them than that the are appearances.
Cartesian skepticism does not dwell on the appearances and contemplate whether or not they are true, but instead attacks the human apparatus for observing the world and poses the question of whether or not we can believe our ability to perceive. In short Cartesian skepticism claims that no empirical proposition can be known as true with certitude because we may be deceived in our assumption. Anything outside our own existence must be doubted as we are never able to be outside ourselves in any meaningful way. A basic Cartesian argument is 1) I know that trees exist only if I am not deceived that there are trees. 2) I do not and cannot know that I am not deceived that there are trees. 3) Therefore, I do not know that I am not deceived that there are trees.
Unlike the Pyrrhonians who look at individual objects of knowledge, Cartesian skeptics ask for justification that proves all our impressions of the outside world are not just being fed to us by some other entity. From these roots, Cartesian skepticism has led to idealistic world views that deny anything not being perceived.
In the philosopher’s quest for objective certitude, the previous systems of skepticism and their related offshoots pose serious threats to knowledge. When attempting to ascertain the greatest threat to knowledge, it is best to look at the root of the many offshoots of skepticism that currently exist. Though Cartesian skepticism presents many important aporia for an objectivist to overcome, Pyrrhonian skepticism is the more detrimental to certitude of the possession of knowledge both because it was instrumental in the dawning of Cartesian skepticism and because its skepticism is so pervading that it goes so far as to even doubt the very notions it relies upon as a system.
These two views of skepticism are the views I come away with from watching South Park’s Super Best Friend Club. Dueck’s conclusion is that The Super Best Friends “raises important question about religious diversity and how religious beliefs relates to evidence.” This leads to the conclusion that we should be “careful about surrounding justifiable ways of life that may define us as the people we really are.” (Dueck, 234). In their personal beliefs, the creators or South Park do not believe that any religion is necessary for this as both are self-avowed atheists. They believe that all of the fruits of religion can exist without religion. Perhaps this would be far to controversial a message to put blatantly on TV, but it is my belief that it is the overriding point of their work.
As human beings we live at the level of our knowledge. What we give our assent to becomes the framework of our existence and shapes our perceptions of the outside world. Because of this, any threat to the degree of certitude we can know things or a threat to the possibility of if we can know at all, poses not only a threat having knowledge, but carries implications to the essence of how one exists.
Religion does provide people with religious experiences, but they are not necessary for them as we can see that many different religions can provide them. David Blaine, though he is a musician, is able to provide these experiences to his followers. With this in mind, the it is not a debate in The Super Best Friends of different religion and whether or not they are all equal, but whether or not they are all equally absurd. The creators of South Park are not troubled by their doubt. They see it as a positive way of going through life and having a view which instead of holding individual judgements against religion holds them all equally abusrd.
Dueck says that “If it is possible that “God exists, and possible [as a] prerequisite for experiencing such a supernatural force” of faith, then he believes that they should move beyond looking for empirical evidence on the matter. (234)However, there is another option. That option is to move beyond all religions in the first place. This is a continual message of South Park, it is not to show all religions as equal, but to speak out against them in the first play.
References:
South Park Episode 4 Season 5 “The Super Best Friends”
Religious Pluralism and The Super Best Friend. Pgs 224-236. Jeffrey Dueck.
