Not over g-strings, nor over just about anything else.

Why would anyone be upset by Buddy Christ?

Can Jesus only be depicted nailed to a bunch of wood? Way to morbid and dwelling on the wrong parts of his teachings IMO.

Just because as a western society WE don't respect other people's religious beliefs (or anything else very much either), does that give us the right to criticise other societies and cultures with different values?

It's what people fall back on when thinking is just too hard.

Personally, I like the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory because spaghetti goes with red wine.

Anon:

<i>does that give us the right to criticise other societies and cultures with different values?</i>

Yes. yes it does.

Objective rationality pretty much dictates that if all cultures and religious ideas are somehow morally equivalent, then criticism of all cultures should be equally allowed. Budhism, hinduism and even christianity and judaism have survived to the present because, for the greater part of their existence, they allowed internal criticism and dissent. When they supresssed it they were 'forked', to use one of those lovely open sauce terms. The alternative is to completely suppress dissent, as muslims seem to be doing at the moment and as the christians did in the 12-1300s. It isn't a lasting solution, so most religions make allowance for a certain amount of critical thinking despite the popular portrayal of them as unthinking masses of sheep.

The idea that mockery, recently known as the flying spaghetti monster cult, is the best way to deal with all uncomfortable truths about oneself or ideas you don't understand is of course a highly religious view. Mockery is notably the religion that by definition despises all other religions far more than any other view concerning the nature of reality. As such it's the most narrow-minded religion of them all. Adherents of mockery used to call their own religion "I'm going to hell anyway so why should I care" but its followers recently renamed it the flying spaghetti monster cult due to the political incorrectness of hell. As with the devoted adherents of many other religions, adherents of mockery also believe that their religion isn't one.

Mockery a religion? Then you must be our God. For we shall mock thee in the highest. Narrow-minded? Nah. We'll mock any half-baked primitive superstition.

It seems to be an ongoing problem with "west vs East" Especially in the UK. Mockery is a fundamental part of British culture. It seems so often people from other cultures complain about this kind of thing offending their values even when it is published in the UK only. Never a thought that their complaints offend our deeply held values i.e. the right to poke fun at authority figures and icons. It has been our fundamental right for hundreds of years, yet people want to take away this important part of out rights. It is what has kept our county safe for a long time. The ability of the masses to bring the pompous and the self righous down to earth, without needing to resort to violence.

Where would we be today without Monty Pithon, Punch, Privat Eye, Spitting Image etc. The fact that sacred dose not mean Taboo on the UK keeps us all sain.

Then the UK would have a lot less racism. Punch is notable for having persistently portrayed the Irish and Africans as subhuman butts of jokes during the Famine and during mass slave trading. Effectively it dehumanised those who suffered most (the famine in large part having been caused by british law constantly subdividing tenancies to impoverish catholic land owners and renters, leaving a failing subsistence monoculture vulnerable to disease, and slavery being the far more obvious - how much of bristol's wealth came from the brit slaver ships passing through?).

While some British citizens, even when it went against their governemnt, lobbied to stop slavery, or to send food aid and reform to ireland, these brave groups were long in the minority, while crap like Punch peddled racial stereotypes. Sort of like the Daily Mail then...

that said, Monthy Python and Spitting Image were ace, as they attacked norms and politicians respectively, both valuable contributions to culture! :)