South Park can fuck off

So I watched an episode of South Park called Go, God, Go. In it, Richard Dawkins teaches evolution to the children and is then convinced that religion is evil and should be wiped out. Fair enough, that's basically his attitude in real life.

Cartman is then transported into the future where religion no longer exists but scientists still appear to be raging war on each other - all shouting "SCIENCE damn you!" and so on. Basically, it's saying that science is religion with a lab coat.

Now, this is a really twatty episode. It's not funny, unless you count Mr Garrison shitting into his hand and throwing it at Richard Dawkins funny, which you may do if you're 12. What it is, is massively pretentious.

Now, I get that the episode is supposed to be about extremism being wrong (particularly Dawkins attitude to religion)- what I have a problem with is the episode says that if atheists are extreme enough to try and rid the world of religion, they will abandon everything they believe in.

If I could turn this around slightly, this is like having an episode where religious people want to wipe out atheists and 500 years later, they've abandoned everything they've believed in and have become atheists. It just doesn't make any sense.

I really don't like the idea that people agree with the sentiment that if scientists disagree vehemently enough with religion, they'll abandon questioning their motives, conclusions and methods. That they'll abandon everything that makes them scientists. This argument would be okay if they were rival factions in, for example, animal farm where one side would become obsessed with truth and freedom, liberate itself and then begin terrorising itself. I can cope with that because an entire society goes through this change.

This isn't the case with the south park episode because you can't have an entire society made up of scientists. The idea that scientists would worship something to the point of abandoning everything that has made them what they are is just fucking stupid.

The possibility exists that none of the people depicted in the future are in fact scientists, and that they just worship something called science and are new religious nuts. In that case, what is the episode criticising? Religion. Just religion.

I should point out at this point that if you wanted to criticise extremism amongst scientists, there's loads of ways to do it. Just one is to go into the somewhat dubious methods some use to get results in under funded areas- the company I work for sells a documentary about an eastern European scientist who drilled into his patients skulls and attached electrodes to their brains in order to try and cure blindness. It didn't work. His, I suppose you could call them victims, still can't see and now have plugs in the sides of their skull that don't fit properly and leak brain fluid.

THAT's extreme science, and it would be a much more valid thing to criticise than the massive false syllogism that science + hatred of religion = religion.

The problem with the current incarnation of South Park is... it used to be mildly topical farce. Episodes like the Ladder To Heaven touched on topical issues but spent most of their time trying to be funny. Now, they appear to have abandoned the humour in favour of high level satire.

The problem is- satire is hard. Really, really hard. The list of shows that have pulled it off is very short. Yes Minister managed it, Jennifer Government managed it. South Park doesn't manage it.

I've got a final point on this subject. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are obsessed with going after targets no-one else goes after. In Team America World Police, they refused to criticise George Bush because everyone was doing that. Now, that's fair enough but that attitude can really get you into trouble. It can lead you to criticise things that you really don't have the skill to criticise.

Matt & Trey need to realise that they're not massively intelligent political commentators, they're overgrown schoolboys with a large animation budget. That's fine and has allowed them to produce some really good television. They're tried satire, it really hasn't worked. Can we have the old show back please?