A therapist asks his patient how his visit to his mother went. The patient says, “It did not go well at all. I made a terrible Freudian slip.”
“Really?” says the therapist. “What did you say?”
“What I meant to say was, ‘Please pass the salt.’ But what I said was, ‘You bitch! You ruined my life!’”
For Freud, all the ethical philosophy in the world tells us less about the true, unconscious controllers of our behavior than one good dream.
A man comes rushing into his psychiatrist’s office, apologizing for being late because he overslept.
“But I had an incredible breakthrough in my dream,” the man says breathlessly. “I was talking with my mother and she suddenly turned into you! That’s when I woke up, got dressed, grabbed a Coke and a donut, and rushed to your office.”
The psychiatrist says: “A Coke and a donut? You call that a breakfast?”
On the other hand, even Freud admitted that reducing human behavior to unconscious drives could sometimes miss the obvious truth. He famously said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
A man is shaving with a straight-edged razor when the razor drops out of his hands and lops off his penis. He gathers it up, stuffs it in his pocket, rushes outside and hails a cab, telling the driver to get him to the emergency room fast.
There he tells the surgeon what happened and the surgeon says, “We’ll have to work quickly. Give it to me.”
The man reaches into his pocket and deposits its contents in the surgeon’s hand.
“But this is a cigar,” says the surgeon, “not a penis!”
And the man says, “Oh, my God, I must have smoked it in the cab.”
SITUATION ETHICS
In the 1960s came all the flap about “situation ethics.” Proponents claimed that the ethical thing to do in any situation is dependent on the peculiar mix of factors in that situation. Who are the people affected? What legitimate stake do they have in the outcome? How will the outcome influence future situations? And who’s asking anyhow? In a case of infidelity, for example, situation ethicists would want to know, among other things, about the status of the marriage. They might end up on different sides of the issue depending on whether the marriage was already effectively over. Opponents of situation ethics voiced their outrage, sensing that such reasoning might be used to justify anything a person wanted to do. Some of these opponents took an absolutist position: Infidelity is always wrong, regardless of the circumstances.
Paradoxically, however, it is sometimes by ignoring the specifics of the situation that we create the opportunity for self-serving action.
Armed robbers burst into a bank, line up customers and staff against the wall, and begin to take their wallets, watches, and jewelry. Two of the bank’s accountants are among those waiting to be robbed. The first accountant suddenly thrusts something in the hand of the other. The second accountant whispers, “What is this?” The first accountant whispers back, “It’s the fifty bucks I owe you.”
DIMITRI: I’m still not sure what’s right and what’s wrong, but one thing’s for sure—the important thing in life is to make the gods happy.
TASSO: Like Zeus and Apollo.
DIMITRI: Right. Or my personal favorite, Aphrodite.
TASSO: One of my favorites too . . . if she exists.
DIMITRI: If she exists? You better watch your mouth, Tasso. I’ve seen grown men get whammed by a thunderbolt for talking like that.
{V}
Philosophy of Religion
The God that philosophers of religion like to argue about isn’t
one that most of us would recognize. He tends to be more on the
abstract side, like “The Force” in Star Wars, and less like a
Heavenly Father who stays up at night worrying about you.
DIMITRI: I was talking to Zeus the other day, and he thinks you’re a bad influence on me.
TASSO: That’s interesting, because I think he’s a bad influence on you.
DIMITRI: In what way?
TASSO: He makes you think the voices in your head are real.
BELIEF IN GOD
An agnostic is a person who thinks that God’s existence cannot be proven on the basis of current evidence, but who doesn’t deny the possibility that God exists. The agnostic is one step short of an atheist, who considers the case against the existence of God closed. If both of them came across a burning bush saying, “I am that I am,” the agnostic would start looking for the hidden tape recorder, but the atheist would just shrug and reach for his marshmallows.
So these two Irish drinking buddies are in the pub when they see a bald guy drinking alone at the end of the bar.
Pat: I say, ain’t that Winnie Churchill down there?
Sean: Nah. Couldn’t be. Winnie wouldn’t be in a place like this.
Pat: I’m not kidding. Take a good look. I swear that’s Winnie Churchill. I’ll bet you ten quid I’m right.
Sean: You’re on!
So Pat goes down to the end of the bar and says to the bald guy, “You’re Winnie Churchill, ain’t ya?”
And Bald Guy screams, “Get out of my face, you idiot!”
Pat comes back to Sean and says, “Guess we’ll never know now, will we?”
Now that’s thinking like an agnostic.
Atheists are another story. Philosophers agreed long ago that it is fruitless for believers and atheists to argue with each other. This is because they interpret everything differently. In order to argue, there must be some common ground, so that one of the participants can say, “Aha! If you concede x, then you must also concede y!” Atheists and believers never find an x they can agree upon. The argument can never begin, because each sees everything from his own point of view. That’s a little abstract, but this story brings it down to earth—in fact, right into the neighborhood.
A little old Christian lady comes out onto her front porch every morning and shouts, “Praise the Lord!”
And every morning the atheist next door yells back, “There is no God!”
This goes on for weeks. “Praise the Lord!” yells the lady. “There is no God!” responds the neighbor.
As time goes by, the lady runs into financial difficulties and has trouble buying food. She goes out onto the porch and asks God for help with groceries, then says, “Praise the Lord!”
The next morning when she goes out onto the porch, there are the groceries she asked for. Of course, she shouts, “Praise the Lord!”
The atheist jumps out from behind a bush and says, “Ha! I bought those groceries. There is no God!”
The lady looks at him and smiles. She shouts, “Praise the Lord! Not only did you provide for me, Lord, you made Satan pay for the groceries!”
Sam Harris, in his 2005 bestselling book, The End of Faith, provides what could be a stand-up routine based on his observations of religious faith:
“Tell a devout Christian his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anybody else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.”
Harris fails to mention the downside of being an atheist—you have nobody to cry out to in the throes of an orgasm.
The seventeenth-century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that deciding whether or not to believe in God is essentially engaging in a wager. If we choose to behave as if there is a God and we get to the end and it turns out there isn’t, it’s not such a big deal. Well, maybe we’ve lost the ability to thoroughly enjoy the Seven Deadly Sins, but that’s small potatoes compared to the alternative. If we bet there isn’t a God, and get to the end only to find out there is a God, we’ve lost the Big Enchilada, eternal bliss. Therefore, according to Pascal, it is a better strategy to live as if there is a God.
This is known to academics as “Pascal’s wager.” To the rest of us, it’s known as hedging your bets.
Inspired by Pascal’s Pensées, a little old lady goes to the bank with a satchel filled with $100,000 in cash and asks to open an account. The cautious banker asks where she got the money. “Gambling,” she says. “I’m very good at gambling.”
Intrigued, the banker asks, “What sorts of bets do you make?”
“Oh, all sorts,” she says. “For example, I will bet you $25,000 right now that by noon tomorrow you will have a butterfly tattoo on your right buttock.”
“Well, I would love to take that bet,” says the banker, “but it wouldn’t be right for me to take your money for such an absurd wager.”
“Let me put it to you this way,” says the woman. “If you don’t bet me, I’ll have to find another bank for my money.”
“Now, now, don’t be hasty,” says the banker. “I’ll take your bet.”
The woman returns the next day at noon with her lawyer as a witness. The banker turns around, drops his pants, and invites the two to observe that he has won the bet. “Okay,” says the woman, “but could you bend over a little just to make sure?” The banker obliges and the woman concedes, counting out $25,000 in cash from her satchel.
The lawyer meanwhile is sitting with his head in his hands. “What’s wrong with him?” asks the banker.
“Aw, he’s just a sore loser,” she says. “I bet him $100,000 that by noon today, you’d moon us in your office.”
There’s a fine line between hedging a bet and rigging the odds. Consider this neo-Pascalian strategy:
A man with a parrot on his shoulder attends services on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. He bets several people that the parrot can lead the service more beautifully than the cantor. When the time comes, though, the parrot is totally silent. At home afterward, the man berates the parrot and bemoans his losses. The parrot says, “Use your head, schmuck! Think of the odds we can get now on Yom Kippur!”
Hey, maybe this parrot is on to something. Maybe we can rig the odds of Pascal’s wager so that we can play golf on Sunday morning and still keep God happy, if he happens to exist! God knows we’ve all tried.
DEISM AND HISTORICAL RELIGION
Eighteenth-century philosophers, if they weren’t skeptics, tended to be Deists, believers in a remote, impersonal God-ofthe-philosophers—a Creator more like a force than a person, more like a clockmaker than a confidant. Traditional Jews and Christians pushed back. Their God, they said, was no mere clockmaker. He was the Lord of history, present in the Exodus from Egypt, the wandering in the desert, and the settling of the Promised Land. He was, in a word, available—a “very present help in trouble.”
A Jewish grandmother is watching her grandchild playing on the beach when a huge wave comes and takes him out to sea. She pleads, “Please God, save my only grandson. I beg of you, bring him back.”
And a big wave comes and washes the boy back onto the beach, good as new.
She looks up to heaven and says: “He had a hat!”
Try saying that to a clockmaker!
THEOLOGICAL DISTINCTIONS
While philosophers of religion are worrying about Big Questions—like, “Is there a God?”—theologians have smaller fish to fry, usually during Lent.
According to twentieth-century philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich, there’s more to the difference between the philosophy of religion and theology than the size of their fish. The philosopher, he says, pursues truth about God and God-stuff as objectively as possible, while the theologian is already “grasped by faith” and engaged and committed. In other words, the philosopher of religion looks at God and religion from the outside, while the theologian looks at them from the inside.
In theology, schisms have opened over such pressing issues as, “Does the Spirit proceed from the Father or from the Father and the Son?” The layperson clearly needs a simple guide to theological differences and, thank God, the comedians are always willing to oblige. The key to determining the religious persuasion of a person, it turns out, is whom he does or does not recognize:
Jews don’t recognize Jesus.
Protestants don’t recognize the Pope.
Baptists don’t recognize each other in the liquor store.
This last point translates into some very practical advice. If you’re going fishing, don’t invite a Baptist; he’ll drink all the beer. However, if you invite two Baptists, you’ll have it all to yourself.
Another way to differentiate denominations is according to what behavior qualifies someone for a divine dressing-down. For Catholics, it’s missing Mass. For Baptists, it’s dancing. For Episcopalians, it’s eating your salad with your dessert fork.
But seriously, folks, there are important doctrinal differences among the denominations. For example, Catholics alone believe in the Immaculate Conception, the doctrine that in order to be able to carry the Lord, Mary herself was born without the taint of Original Sin.
Jesus was walking through the streets when he noticed a crowd of people throwing stones at an adulteress. Jesus said, “Let whoever is without sin cast the first stone.” Suddenly a rock flew through the air. Jesus turned and said, “Mom?”
Everyone’s favorite sub-genre of sectarianism jokes, of course, is the Counter-Reformation joke. Your basic collection of great Counter-Reformation jokes always contains this one:
A man is in desperate financial straits and prays to God to save him by letting him win the lottery.
Days go by, then weeks, and the man fails to win a single lottery. Finally, in misery, he cries out to God, “You tell us, ‘Knock and it shall be opened to you. Seek and you shall find.’ I’m going down the tubes here, and I still haven’t won the lottery!”
A voice from above answers, “You’ve got to meet me half way, bubbeleh! Buy a ticket!”
This man was clearly a Protestant, who, like Martin Luther, thought that we are saved by grace alone; there is nothing we can do to earn salvation. God, on the other hand, despite his apt use of the word “bubbeleh,” is here carrying water for the Catholic Counter-Reformation. In fact, this joke may well have originated at the Council of Trent in 1545, where the bishops decided that salvation comes via a combination of grace and works, prayer and buying a ticket.
One belief that all the denominations have in common is that only their own theology is the fast track to the divine.
A man arrives at the gates of heaven. St. Peter asks, “Religion?”
The man says, “Methodist.” St. Peter looks down his list, and says, “Go to room twenty-eight, but be very quiet as you pass room eight.”
Another man arrives at the gates of heaven. “Religion?” “Baptist.”
“Go to room eighteen, but be very quiet as you pass room eight.”
A third man arrives at the gates. “Religion?”
“Jewish.”
“Go to room eleven, but be very quiet as you pass room eight.”
The man says, “I can understand there being different rooms for different religions, but why must I be quiet when I pass room eight?”
St. Peter says, “The Jehovah’s Witnesses are in room eight, and they think they’re the only ones here.”
It has been said that the nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer discovered Buddhism philosophically. Like Gautama the Buddha two millennia earlier, Schopenhauer thought that all life is suffering, struggle, and frustration, and the only escape is resignation—the rejection of desire and denial of the will to live. On the upside, they both thought that resignation would lead to compassion for all beings and saintliness. Like, it’s a tradeoff.
A number of Jewish jokes poke fun at the ultimate Schopenhaueresque pessimist, the kvetcher (griper).
Two women are sitting on a bench. After a while the first woman says, “Oy!”
The second woman replies, “Oy!”
The first woman says, “All right, enough about the children.”
For both Arthu
r Schopenhauer and the Buddha, life is a constant cycle of frustration and boredom. When we don’t have what we want, we’re frustrated. When we do have what we want, we’re bored. And for both Artie and Gautama, the worst frustration occurs just when relief appears to be within one’s grasp.
Once upon a time there was a prince who, through no fault of his own, was placed under a spell by an evil witch. The curse was that the prince could speak only one word each year. He could, however, save up credits, so if he did not speak at all in one year, he could speak two words the following year.
One day he met a beautiful princess and fell madly in love. He decided to refrain from speaking for two years so that he could look at her and say, “My darling.”
At the end of the two years, however, he wanted to also tell her he loved her, so he decided to wait three more years, for a total of five years of silence. At the end of the five years, though, he knew he had to ask her to marry him, so he needed to wait still another four years.
Finally, as his ninth year of silence ended, he was understandably overjoyed. He led the princess to the most romantic part of the royal garden, knelt before her, and said, “My darling, I love you. Will you marry me?”
The princess replied, “Pardon?”
It’s just the kind of response Schopenhauer would have expected.
Starting in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D., the Chinese and Japanese developed a branch of Buddhism that is experiencing a renaissance today—Zen. From the perspective of Western thought, Zen philosophy is a kind of anti-philosophy. For the Zen master, reason, logic, sense data—all the stuff that Western philosophy is built upon—are illusions and distractions from ultimate enlightenment. So how does one become enlightened?
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