So, um, I really, really love humor about religion, most of which is making fun of religion, because I figure that if we can’t make fun of ourselves, what good are we?  I think this show–Moral Orel–is hilarious, and though I’ve only seen two episodes, so I can’t really speak about the entire show, I can say that I wish it showed, at least occasionally, how religion can be a good thing.  But that might be asking too much of a satire, whose purpose, after all, is to attack, not propose.

That’s all well and good, but the problem with satires like Moral Orel or South Park is that they wind up teaching relatively trite lessons about modern American secularism and our own visions of liberal individualism–and often these also deserve to be mocked.