Lemmy Thuku

LA 101H

A World Without God

The truth about the existence and nature of God has eluded man for centuries. Great

minds have spent their lives arguing in this enduring debate which has never yielded a

resolution. Where words have failed; men have turned to violence, so that in a cruel irony, many

atrocities have been committed in the name of a deity that condemns those very actions. It is

not surprising then, that as the world witnessed more of these atrocities, people begun to

wonder if the world would be a better place if God and religion did not exist. It is this question

that the episode ‘Go God Go’1 of the eleventh season of Comedy Central’s hit television show

‘Southpark’, seeks to address. In this essay, I will illustrate how the Southpark writers effectively

utilize rhetorical and literary devices in this episode to challenge the claim: ‘The world would be

a better place without God’.

While an animated comedy show may, at first, seem an odd platform for such a

demanding philosophical discussion, Southpark has successfully established the necessary

ethos over many years. Its writers have done so mainly in three ways. Firstly, they have

specifically written many of the episodes to offer commentary or engage discussions on current

issues as well as to blatantly challenge or ridicule societal commonplaces. Infact, to aide this

end, the show’s creators now completely write and produce their episodes during the same

week when they are aired, allowing them to stay relevant to current issues2. Secondly, whatever

the topic of their episode, the creators do a lot of research and often present the facts

accurately. This lends authority to their evaluation as well as weight to their ridicule. Finally, the

main characters often offer the different opinions surrounding an issue. This allows the show to

1
www.southparkstudios.com/guide/episodes/s10e12-go-god-go, 03/01/2011

2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park, 03/01/2011
maintain some degree of objectivity even as the main plot is geared mainly to deliver the

sender’s own views.

The Southpark studio released “Go God Go” in November 2006, recognizing this time as

the Kairotic moment for the discussion of religion as the major cause of world conflict. It is not

difficult to identify the major elements that have fed into this Kairotic moment. Firstly, in our

world today, religious conflict greatly affects our lives as world citizens. Religious extremism has

led to such events as the September eleventh attacks, the bombing of abortion clinics and still

contributes to the ongoing conflict between Israel and some Arab nations. As a result, the

perception that the world may be better off without religion has gained popularity, and so any

discussion surrounding the issue will find a ready audience. Furthermore, we live in a time of

unprecedented freedom of expression where the blatant criticism of religion, in this episode, is

not only tolerated but finds a large audience in an increasingly secular community.

Logos is a major part of the sender’s arguments in this episode. Using literary devices

such as symbolism, the sender appeals to the logic of the audience in order to persuade them

to the his way of thinking. The sender’s challenge to the claim under discussion is made up of

two main parts. The first part of the argument disputes the idea that the prevailing religious

conflict originates from differences in the beliefs of the major religions. It uses symbolism to

instead put forward the argument that these differences are actually very little compared to the

conflict they supposedly cause and so this conflict must born from a deeper-seeded source.

To present the first part of the argument, the episode depicts a vision of the world 500

years in the future where the population is separated into three waring atheist groups; the

United Atheist League, the United Atheist Alliance and the Allied Atheist Alliance. These three

groups clearly symbolize the three major religions of our time; Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

The great similarity between the names is meant to underline the great similarity between the

majority of the beliefs held by the three religions. In following this idea, one character points out

that the one dispute that they do have is that ,”Their answer to the big question is different from
ours, so we must kill them.” Summarizing the source of the conflict to this one small fact, implies

the sender’s belief that the major religions’ conflict arises from their tendency to focus on the

few things that they disagree on, instead of the many things that they have in common. The

statement is also written to sound ridiculous which connotes that the reasons for the conflict

between the major religions are similarly ridiculous, especially in comparison to the suffering

they cause. The character then reveals that the ‘big question’ is; “What atheists should call

themselves”. By juxtaposing the idea of ‘big question’ with such a seemingly insignificant issue,

the sender further emphasizes his view that the reasons we give for all the dispute in our time

are flimsy and thus implies that there must be a deeper, more concrete reason for all the

conflict.

The second part of this argument directly challenges the claim that the world would be a

better place without God. Despite the total lack of religion in this imagined future, the world still

separates into factions and is in conflict. The sender thus implies the view that our so-called

religious conflict is not a direct result of our differing religious views but rather stems from our

inability to tolerate these differences. Finally as the episode closes, a moment in history is

changed, that in turn changes the future to one where religion still exists. However in this

alternate future, war still continues but the original opponents are now united against a new

opponent; the “French-Chinese”. With this final argument the sender concludes that humans are

innately attracted to conflict and so even if it were not along the established lines of religion,

race and sex, we would always find a justification for conflict.

The sender no doubt makes a convincing argument. By identifying the Kairotic moment,

taking advantage of established ethos and effectively utilizing logos, he succeeds in presenting

a persuasive argument against the claim that the world would be a better place without God.

However, the sender’s conclusions carry with them great implications. To fully embrace them

would be to accept that by virtue of being human we are forever damned to live in conflict.

Regardless of the possible naivety, I am not so ready to damn the human race to such a bleak
future. After all, It should not be ignored that the level of tolerance and co-operation we now

enjoy in many parts of the world was unthinkable just a few decades ago during the world wars.

And given the amazing accomplishments of human beings in the field of science, the arts and in

our unending commitment to explore the universe, I see no reason why world peace should be

unattainable. It may just take a little more time than you or I have on this planet to see it happen.