BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The Simpsons as philosophy
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The Simpsons as philosophy
The Simpsons does this brilliantly, especially when it comes to religion. It’s not that the Simpsons is atheist propaganda; its main target is not belief in God or the supernatural, but the arrogance of particular organised religions that they, amazingly, know the will of the creator.
For example, in the episode Homer the Heretic, Homer gives up church and decides to follow God in his own way: by watching the TV, slobbing about and dancing in his underpants.
Throughout the episode he justifies himself in a number of ways.
*What’s the big deal about going to
some building every Sunday, I mean, isn’t God everywhere?”
* “Don’t you think the almighty has
better things to worry about than
where one little guy spends one measly hour of his week?”
* “And what if we’ve picked
the wrong religion? Every week we’re
just making God madder and madder?”
Homer’s protests do not merely allude to much subtler arguments that proper philosophers make. The basic points really are that simple, which is why they can be stated simply.
