On Watching John Cleese and Michael Palin Debate Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop...

I recently watched a debate between John Cleese and Michael Palin of Monty Python fame, and the Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood, and Malcolm Muggeridge on YouTube. The debate, which took place at the height of mania over the controversy about the Python's film Life of Brian, took place on the BBC show Friday Night, Saturday Morning on 9 November 1979.

I came away from the debate reflecting on Malcolm Muggeridge and Christian ethnocentrism. Malcolm Muggeridge's reputation, it seemed to me after watching the debate, greatly exceeds him. I knew Muggeridge from his recurring role as staff doctrinalist on the Bill Buckley Show, Firing Line, and his recurring role as if you need a Christian intellectual call Mug. I really never paid much attention to what he said, however.

I was forced to pay attention to Muggeridge after watching the "debate". Forced to pay attention it became clear to me that the argument Muggeridge's made during the debate, the argument that Christianity is true because it is the zenith of global intellectual culture, is monumentally stupid. I don't know whether Muggeridge's moronicity is the stupidity of omission or the stupidity of commission. Anyone, however, who has studied, global history knows that Indian and Chinese intellectual cultures--which thanks to global economic and cultural exchange likely had an impact on Western thought and which existed well before Christianity arose--were and are easily the "equal" of Mediterranean and later European Christian intellectual culture and were and are arguably even more sophisticated and thoughtful and intellectually stimulating than Christian intellectual culture.

At least the Bishop of Southwark was somewhat humourous. He was, however, not very good at prophecy as Life is Beautiful, a comedy about the Holocaust he said that couldn't be done, shows.