Hume: Hello, happy new century, and welcome! On today's show, we have - and I trust this will be entertaining - some poor plonker who just wandered in by accident: It's Grasshopper!
[Enter Kira, leading a bemused looking Grasshopper by the throat]
Hume: Right then - since you're new here, I'll just explain the rules: No conferring, no arguments from comology, special pleading, Pascal's Wager or plain stupidity, and if you get stuck - you can phone a deity, go to a 50-50 probability or sacrifice a leg to Zorb the Sacred Crocodile for divine inspiration. Clear? [No pause for Grasshopper to answer] Good. Let's get on with the game!
Grasshopper: I like my life. I do have alot of questions (concerning God), just as all of you do, but I consider it "the spice of life". I guess we all enjoy "stopping to smell the roses". It soothes the soul,er, well you can't believe in a soul, so I'll say it soothes the troubled heart..no, that would be the soul too...ah! It soothes the senses..the sight, the smell the feel of a beautiful rose...(it's enjoyment on the surface only!) it can't be soothing but it can be pleasureable.
[pregnant pause]
Hume: So in your view, emotions don't exist even though they quite clearly have a physical basis?
[silent, pregnant pause from audience...]
Grasshopper: But don't you sometimes think about the abused and battered (children) people in the world? About the evil done to them?
Hume: yes, of course we do. Have YOU ever stopped to condiser how much of this evil is perpetrated or inspired by religion?
Grasshopper: Oops, not 'evil' exactly, because evil, like good, is a "force"...an influence I guess you could call it, and good nor evil can exist without a god or a devil giving out influence
Hume: Why not? Are you aware of ANY humanist moral philosophy or did you get these strawmen free from the Kent Hovind institute?
Grasshopper: ...because us 'souless' creatures could not concieve of such things much less recieve it from a 'spirit' being!
Hume: What evidence do you have for this? Since when has morality been contingent upon a magic man in the sky?
Grasshopper: Since, as you must think, that we are completely material creatures ('beings' imply spirit)
Hume: In what way does 'being' imply 'spirit', exactly?
Grasshopper: ...that are completely controlled by chemicals (either too much or too little of a certain chemical determining our individual personalities perhaps?), then don't you think that the 'nice' people should volunteer themselves for experimentation? Scientists can study them and find out what makes them 'nice' people, and we can find a cure for 'mean' people!
Hume: Ever heard of drugs to control violent mood swings? You assume that any materialist model or axplanation must be simplistic ("a certain chemical"), whereas in fact materialistic models are incredibly complex , cutting-edge science. We're not there yet by a long chalk, but we're still a lot further forward than fairy-tale theistic versions!
Grasshopper: Make everybody have a shot once a month or something. What do ya think? It couldn't be 'morally' worng (for goodness sakes!)...but I think then we'd all be exactly alike, having the same chemicals and all.
Hume: Giving different people the 'same chemicals' will not result in them becoming identical. Think about it for a moment... As for the crack about "morally" - we DO have morals. It's YOUR people that have no framework for moral thinking. Think about it again...imagine two people. We ask them to multiply 246 by 515. One gets out a piece of paper and works it out. The other looks it up in a book and gives you a rote answer, which is 'Many'. Which is the better mathematician? Looking up moral questions in the Quran, the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita or whatever is analogous to the latter method, humanist moral philosophy to the former.
Grasshopper: I'm just trying to take your beliefs a step further into reality. Does it make sense? or do you have another explaination for these "ways of life"?
Hume: You have chosen a strawman false reality to go into, however. You have not made an effort to see the world as we really do see it.
Grasshopper: I noticed that at the top you said no 'preaching', and I hope you haven't taken this as such. You all speak rather strongly in your defense of athesism, so I felt free to do the same in defense of God. Is this OK with you all? or should I just go away and leave you alone with each other...?
Hume: Fine with us, since it's mildly entertaining. What shall we do with Grasshopper, folks?
Audience: GUNGE! GUNGE! GUNGE!
[Hume pulls the lever and deposits Grasshopper in the sacred gunger pit, where Zorb duly introduces him to the ways of scaliness and big-sharp-pointy-teeth-ism]
