[re: whether humor existed before the arrival of Christianity]
To one with an open mind, your vulgar "examples" tend to reinforce the basic observation: (real) humor was lacking before Christianity. Crudeness or vulgarity or mockery is not true humor, and Greek "comedies" were not attempts at humor in today's sense.
If you had evidence of writings about humor itself, or books of humor, or truly comedic performances, or anything remotely similar to quality humor today, then that could help your argument. But the above examples, if they are the best you have, simply underscore the insight in this essay.
68 comments
So if TRUE HUMOUR(TM) does not include vulgarity (I'm assuming fart jokes fit in here) or mockery or comedies, what the hell is TRUE HUMOUR(TM)?
If it's those silly little comics off of Consvervapedia, they're not funny since they mostly include 'mockery'.
I haven't seen any evidence of fundies having a sense of humor, though they do seem to think it would be funny to watch everyone else burning in Hell. That's entertainment! (for nasty, slimy little hatemongers).
I dunno, I'm inclined to at least partially agree.
I mean, I've never laughed so hard in my life before reading through Conservapedia or reading Rapture Ready.
Does this kind of remind you of the way that Soviet propagandists used to claim that everything had been invented in Russia?
Anyway, here's a Roman joke:
A barber, a bald man and an absent-minded professor take a journey together. They have to camp overnight, so decide to take turns watching the luggage. When it's the barber's turn, he gets bored, so amuses himself by shaving the head of the professor. When the professor is woken up for his shift, he feels his head, and says "How stupid is that barber? He's woken up the bald man instead of me."
I think Mr Stupid Schaffffffly is talking out of his ass again. There are several v. old jokes recorded on the site below
http://newslite.tv/2008/08/01/the-worlds-oldest-fart-joke-an.html
I quite like this one -
A woman who was blind in one eye has been married to a man for 20 years. When he found another woman he said to her, “I shall divorce you because you are said to be blind in one eye.” And she answered him: “Have you just discovered that after 20 years of marriage!?” (Egyptian circa 1100 BC)
Well, no one could say you haven't contributed, Andy. In fact, someone really could publish a comedy book containing only your quotes, like the many volumes of "Bushisms" we enjoyed. But then, that would fall under "mockery", wouldn't it?
It's hard not to think the person who made this didn't have a sense of humor.
image
Egypt, somewhere between 3750 and 3550 BC
Our sense of humour has changed, dumbass. Our ancestors wouldn't find a lot of our humour funny and vice-versa.
And I thought Christianity was serious.
Fucking hell Andy, is there no end to the topics you are expert in? I mean there I thought you were limited to expounding on theology and politics, history and law, math and grammar; but it turns out you're an expert on Greek comedy too! Wow, just wow. We're all nowt but ignorant proles, shielding our eyes from the searing brightness of your intellect. How lucky we are to bathe in your polymathy goodness.
I'd like to continue, but it's time for my shock therapy. They say if I respond well, I won't need the lobotomy.
While humor didn't start with Christianity it did reach its peak with it. Unfortunately, the joke went WAAAAAAY too far.
_____
What made the Greeks laugh?
FAIL!
He may be right. That Jesus and his disciples were a laugh a minute.
They were about to feed the 5,000, so they asked Lamech "what do you want?" Lamech says "I'll have some of them fucking fish!" Jesus smites him and sends him to hell. Then they ask Jehoshephat "what do you want?" Jehoshephat says "I think I'll have some of them fucking fish, too." Jesus smites him, too, and sends him to hell. Then they ask Hezekiah "what do you want?" Hezekiah says "I don't know, but after what happened to those other guys, I sure as fuck don't want the fucking fish".
It was a lot funnier in Aramaic ...
To these people, Christianity is like one of those all-in-one appliances sold on late-night TV. "It saves from Hell! It invents democracy! It perfects gender roles! It creates true humor! It slices! It dices! It juliennes!" Etc.
I'm waiting for Schlafly to claim that the wheel didn't exist before Christianity.
An example of what Andy thinks is "real humor", from the CONservapedia page entitled "Humor" (http://conservapedia.com/Humor ):
Person 1: Knock-knock.
HA FUCKING HA!!!!!!
I always found the Bible hilarious, myself.
The writers must have been comedic geniuses! I've never read a better work comedic fiction.
In ancient india there is a joke about Kali. She is a goddess with ten heads but two hands.
A man once asked her what if your nose runs?
Also Greeks invented the word Comedy while Jews were still scraping around thinking the world was just them. A lot of their humour was slapstick like Laurel and Hardy...
Also humour is subjective and changes from society to society.
Name me a Christian comedian, Andy Schaftafly. One who's made it as big in the mainstream as Jim Carrey, Denis Leary, Dan Aykroyd, Leslie Nielsen and Rick Moranis, to name but a few?
It okay, I can wait...
Jesus walks into a hotel, goes up to the booking desk, bangs down a handful of nails and says, 'Can you put me up for the night?'
X3
Except, you know, humor is RELATIVE.
And considering your example, Christianity isn't very funny.
Also, the funniest people of all time, the Marx Brothers? Jewish.
One thing you may be forgetting, Assfly, is that the less "crude" the humor, the greater the understanding of the culture that produced it you need to understand it. In other words, there's probably a lot of ancient humor that you just don't get. And that's not even touching puns and wordplay that require knowledge of the language as well.
Three statisticians go hunting. When they see a rabbit, the first one shoots, missing it on the left. The second one shoots and misses it on the right.
I trust it would not be considered crude. As far as jokes go, it's rather sophisticated. But without knowing how statistician's think, it's just a big ol' non sequitur.
So if you want to understand sophisticated Ancient Greek humor, immerse yourself in Ancient Greek culture.
Crudeness or vulgarity or mockery is not true humor
What? Seriously? Go watch Zero Punctuation, The Nostalgia Critic, AVGN and Atop The Fourth Wall!
Andy has obviously never read the Book of Esther (which, despite what he may tell you, predates the creation of Christianity). The biblical version of the story could not possibly be read as anything other than farce. I can see ancient audiences hearing it read and having a great laugh at nutty old king Ahasuerus.
Hmm, I wonder if Andy's new and improved bible even includes the Book of Esther.
@Dr. Shrinker
"Andy has obviously never read the Book of Esther (which, despite what he may tell you, predates the creation of Christianity). The biblical version of the story could not possibly be read as anything other than farce. I can see ancient audiences hearing it read and having a great laugh at nutty old king Ahasuerus.
Hmm, I wonder if Andy's new and improved bible even includes the Book of Esther."
Doesn't the heretic Andy Schaftafly realise that Farce was invented by the great (Baron) Brian Rix:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Rix,_Baron_Rix
Of the parish of my own neck of the woods (Hull); whose trademark was being caught in embarrassing situations sans trousers.
...using Andy's own logic, that is. X3
But if going off into fantasy worlds is his wont, here's a little something for Mr. Schaftafly to ponder: part of the training to be one of the Religious Caste in Minbari society, involves studying the nature of humour for a year. Including Earth humour. [/"Babylon 5"]
Christianity is certainly A source of humor, as this web site has proven, but no, it is not THE source of humor.
As a good working definition, religious fundies have no real comprehension of humour or irony. The only common exception is when it comes to imagining ironically cruel punishments for sinners, where they can sometimes be disturbingly creative.
"Crudeness or vulgarity or mockery is not true humor,"
Andy has obviously never read (boy, I say that a lot) the story of Ehud and Eglon from Judges. Its a story with rather blatant scatological and homosexual overtones. Most likely it was a story that ancient soldiers told around the campfire for a god laugh that somehow got worked into the bible. If you're interested, I suggest you check it out (although I wouldn't suggest using Andy's bible, its probably been snipped out).
Even that old bore C. S. Lewis conceded that 'vulgar' humour was an important and necessary part of the human experience, so it seems that not all conservatives and Christians agree with you Andy.
Oh, and while I'm 99.9% sure you know fuck all about Greek literature, the fact that we might not find it funny 'in today's sense' does not in any way invalidate it as humour. People lived very different lives thousands of years ago and obviously found different things funny.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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