A False Impression of the Religious as Humourless?

[Purple Knight]

Question for debate: Are religious people unfairly maligned as humourlessly pious, and/or perpetually offended? Do you expect them to be? Do you expect on introspection that your expectation is biased? Why or why not?

There's a lot of finger-pointing at Christians because they forgive rather than retaliate, so in media depictions, they may absorb some of the negative traits that are more rightly associated with other religions. So, while even the least fair stereotypes don't grow out of nothing, it's not Christians. It's not Hindus. It's not Jews. It's not Buddhists. In the case of humourlessly pious, it's Muslims. And maybe Puritans.

Whether religious people are fairly or unfairly maligned for being humourless also depends on the function of humour. There seem to be some jokes which are simply cruel, but many people don't find them very funny, and you could argue that digs at a person's appearance if they are simply ugly, for example, don't really rise to the level of a joke. If humour only exists to poke fun at things which are allowed to exist, but perhaps should not be, like tyranny, it's possible that to a thinking person, if a joke attacks something unworthy of being attacked, the joke simply won't land. It's important to at least consider why things are funny - why humour exists - because if religious people are humourless, they're coming from intelligent design and there being a very intentional reason for everything, and I think there are enough sins to make sure everyone is a sinner without adding humour to the list. Even coming from that perspective, it seems in a different category than the urge to hurt people, doesn't it? It's pretty well diametrically opposite.

[Athetotheist]

And yet...it is. And the proof is here.

An awful lot of laughter from that crowd, and there were probably more than a few religious people there....just as there probably were here:

[bjs1]

Question for debate: Are religious people unfairly maligned as humourlessly pious, and/or perpetually offended? Do you expect them to be?

Of course. Real Christians are boring. So are most real atheists. We are just living our lives and trying to do our best in reality as we understand it. Media lives or dies on being interesting. So a fictional character’s faith (or lack thereof) must be exaggerated to be interesting, or ignored in favor of other interesting character traits. We live normal; why would we watch it on TV?

[TRANSPONDER]

Fair point. stories require drama to make it interesting. Of course a Theist - or atheists - who just does their stuff is only interesting in the situations they deal with. To make them entertaining in themselves, their traits have to be made absurd and exaggerated in order to be amusing and entertaining. And of course they that lend themselves to propaganda; to make a believer look absurd is an easy way to attack the belief. We have to beware of that ("Don't take it seriously") even when enjoying the entertainment.