Nascent

Atheist Holey Book

Look! - Atheist Humor

In the Beginning. . .

So this is my nascent entry here and I’d like to say this blog is meant to be humorous, not that it couldn’t get serious at times but primarily I aim for humor, or I’ll point you to humor. What is humor?? I’m no expert but I’ve noticed there seem to be various nuanced differences between the types of humor, from punning to slapstick and from situational and character driven to humiliation humor (that’s one I don’t like but some people do) all these different types of humor seem so subjective. Will I figure out from doing this just what I find to be funny? Maybe or maybe I’ll find it’s a lot like my love of art and music, determined by my mood and the place I’m in with my life. Here’s a great resource and starting point on humor: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor

On the Personal Side

One thing I remember from my college years when I was reading the NY Times a great deal, there was someone’s commentary on humor or rather the difference between tragedy and comedy. The difference they described was hope. So when there’s no hope it’s tragedy? Not necessarily so, it’s all in the specifics of the

situation. As an example in that author’s definition they described a cartoon depicting a pair of unfortunate prisoners planning their escape out of the window above them, then from the viewer’s point of view we are pulled back and see just how high up the window is, and the prisoners situation becomes clearly hopeless, thus making all their earnest planning humorous. By contrast a situation where there is hope and people still suffer and fail, then the story becomes a tragedy – of course there has to be specifics otherwise we can’t relate to the people who are suffering, and we find it more difficult to empathize and feel their losses as our own.

Still, I don’t think this defines all humor, just the humor that puts a toe across the line into tragedy. Dark humor often touches on very dark subject matter like death and violence. How difficult is it to do Dark Humor? That’s the humor that points to the hot button topics, the mine fields of triggers. These triggers are what will make the audience of the humor cringe instead of laugh. We all have our hot buttons that make us go, that’s not funny! I’ve already told you one of mine, remember? - humiliation humor.

So here’s where I point out that if I’m going to be presenting humor as an Atheist, it’s likely some of the humor will upset religious folks. Some humor will be grim humor or dark humor, and heckling religion of course! If you’re a religious person, don’t be surprised if some of the humor is making fun of the religions and religious people.

(Some Atheists I know would say the religious ought to expect to be the butt of a few jokes if they’re going to express belief in magic underwear, talking snakes and other nonsensical things.)