I watched a hilarious short film on Youtube called
Fist Of Jesushttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuKV2Z3eYTY if you watch one of my fav. scenes comes at 3:03
It pokes fun at several stories in the bible: Lazarus, feeding the multitude, Judas hanging himself. It does so with Zombies and Jesus and Judas fighting the zombies with swordfish and Piranha which Jesus continues to produce out of thin air of course Lazarus is the first zombie, just a glitch in Jesus's skilz.
what my point is this film while i find it funny may offend some. I've seen some pretty raunchy cartoons that Christians have posted depicting Muslims ( ISIS) having different kinds of bestiality sex.
I'd like to know what your views are about laughing with and or at religion are. Is it fair to be selective in your humor? is it healthy to have no humor? or is it sick to have any humor when it comes to religion?
I think personally it's healthy to laugh at everything, and I appreciate those that remind me not to get too wrapped up sometimes.
I decided to look into laughter and religion a little bit. In my imagination Jesus, if he was a man. He was described as a carpenter, a tradesman.And having spent a collective hell of a long coffee break sitting on empty buckets across from carpenters. I'll attest to their sense of humor. The Jesus in my imagination has a good sense of humor, as would John the Baptist
I've got a couple Jewish friends who have good sense of humor but aren't very religious so they aren't a good gauge for me to judge first hand as far as laughing about their own religion goes.
after the Charlie Hebbo shootings it's fairly evident how the extremist Muslims feel about laughing at their religion or at least Mohammad.
some intriguing information on Buddhism :
Quote
Two Zen images emerged from the so-called "middle" Chinese period of Buddhism (about the 5th to the 10th centuries). The first was Bodhidharma, known for his strenuous ascetic practices - nine years meditating facing the wall of a cave - who confronted seekers of enlightenment: "with piercing eyes shooting daggers from beneath shaggy brows set in a great craggy forehead, seeing through all the schemes of desire and fortresses of ignorance." (Hyers, C., The Laughing Buddha, Wolfeeboror, New Hampshire, 1989, pp25-26)
The other image of Zen is based on Pu-Tai, a legendary monk who lived in northern China about the 8th century who refused to enter the monastery on any regular basis. Pu-Tai was fat, disheveled, with a cloth bag on his back full of goodies, a jolly figure who danced gracefully in spite of his size, and whose religious life consisted of playing with children. In fact, he is often depicted as surrounded by children, who are often climbing all over him. After he died the local Zen Master proclaimed that Pu-Tai was actually a reincarnation of the Buddha, the enlightened one, but in disguise. It was Pu-Tai who gave rise to the legendary Laughing Buddha.
The tenth (and final) of the famed "ox-herding pictures" represents Pu-Tai entering the city with "bliss-bestowing" outstretched hands. Characterized by ordinariness and approachableness, Pu-Tai represented a totally different vision of the holy,, a shift from celestial other worldliness to the down to earth.
Zen enlightenment was accomplished through some pretty strange and uncommon ways: a tile falling off the roof and cracking your skull, a slap, a kick, a deafening roar, a rollicking guffaw, a single finger held up in silence, or a barrage of double talk in response to a weighty philosophical query. Curious techniques for spiritual realization.
Set against the tendency of religion to become pious dogma, the figure of the clown becomes in the Zen tradition the vehicle of truth and liberation, symbolizing a transcendence of the spiritual isolation of the cave, and a returning to the light in laughter. Mai-treya, the future Buddha, is likened to the fool who turns the hierarchy of human beings upside down. The appeal of the laughing Buddha, like Charlie Chaplin, is the undoing of hierarchy and pomp.
In early Buddhism the religious bureaucrats had classified humor into five levels and proclaimed that only level one, symbolized by the almost imperceptible Buddha smile, was acceptable. Against a tradition like that boisterous Zen humor developed, and in fact, Zen emphasized level five, atihasita, the most uproarious laughter attended by movements of the entire body. Such a belly laugh was a sign of sanity. The laughter of scorn is not a belly laugh. If you are not convinced, try a scornful laugh, and compare it to a good belly laugh. Laughing to scorn does not use the whole body and distorts the face.
I really think Pu-Tai is the guy for me.
How about it, is religion funny?
should it be funny?
can you laugh at other's but not your own...honestly?