Every philosophical analysis needs to start with good questions, and MP does just that in the appropriately titled The Meaning of Life (from the homonymous movie):
“Why are we here? What’s life all about? Is God really real, or is there some doubt?”
And as any good philosopher would do, MP does not provide us with simplistic, canned, answers, but rather with alternatives to seriously ponder:
“Is life just a game where we make up the rules ... Or are we just spiraling coils, of self-replicating DNA?”
Which shows an understanding of both the problem of relativism in morality and of Richard Dawkins’ concept of the selfish gene.
Monty Python does appreciate alternative, even religious, viewpoints, as we can evince from several passages of Every Sperm is Sacred (from the movie “The Meaning of Life”):
“I’m a Roman Catholic, and have been since before I was born And the one thing they say about Catholics, is they’ll take you as soon as you’re warm ... You don’t have to have a great brain ... You’re a Catholic the moment Dad came.”
Which implies a view of sex that one can find developed at length in several Encyclicals by various Popes, or can be clearly summarized in MP’s system as:
“Every sperm is sacred every sperm is great If a sperm is wasted God gets quite irate.”
However, one could argue, make fun of God all you like, but in the end isn’t it rather obvious that He is responsible for the beauty of creation, arguably one of the most important things that give meaning to our life? This is, of course, the well known argument from design, presented at length, for example, by William Paley in his 1831 book, Natural theology: or, Evidences of the existence and attributes of the Deity, collected from the appearances of nature. Naturally, David Hume had already debunked the argument in his 1779 volume, Dialogues concerning natural religion. Hume, pointed out that one needs to consider not just the good stuff that God allegedly made, but also the rest. Which MP summarizes very eloquently (and in a lot fewer words than Hume) in All Things Dull & Ugly:
“All things sick and cancerous, all evil great and small, all things foul and dangerous, the Lord God made them all.”
Never was the argument from evil against the existence of God more aptly presented. But MP does not limit itself to what Francis Bacon called the pars destruens of their philosophy. They go on with a pars construens by elaborating an alternative viewpoint based on what one could think of as the cosmic perspective. Consider, for example, the Galaxy Song (from “The Meaning of Life”):
“Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown ... Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving and revolving at 900 miles an hour ... In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.”
But why -- you may ask -- would astronomy matter to our sense of everyday life? Obviously, because it helps to:
“... remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure how amazingly unlikely is your birth.”
Which doesn’t mean the cosmic perspective avoids scathing social criticism:
“And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space Because there’s bugger all down here on Earth.”
Despite such apparently negative view of humanity, the optimistic character of Monty Python’s brand of secular humanism emerges most clearly in Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (from the movie “Life of Brian”). Consider, for example, the following exhortation:
“If life seems jolly rotten there’s something you’ve forgotten and that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing.”
So much for humanists being a joyless bunch! And the song doesn’t lack deep philosophical forais, as in:
“For life is quite absurd and death’s the final word ... Enjoy it -- it’s your last chance anyhow.”
Not to mention this quintessential, and rather mathematically accurate, summary of human life:
“I mean -- what have you got to lose? You know, you come from nothing you’re going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!”
Something to ponder, the next time that road rage is about to overcome you because yet another jerk on an SUV cut you off without using a turning signal.
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CFI SUMMIT
OCTOBER 24-27 2013
TACOMA, WASHINGTON
Joint Conference of the Council for Secular Humanism, Center for Inquiry, and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
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