But Joyce wouldn’t eat food like Ross did anyways. He was probably a big potatoes and gravy fan, while I think Joyce probably won’t eat gravy at all. At least not on the potatoes anyway. (Potatoes and gravy, yum.)
Because this isn’t food, it’s information. If you already know a source is full of shit, you don’t keep believing the rest of that information without inspecting it.
If you like:
“Why eat the plague-ridden food your father gave you?”
“WHY LET MY JACKASS FATHER TAKE FOOD AWAY FROM ME?”
“…Because you know everything you DID eat made you sick?”
Her father isn’t the font of all religious information.
There are plenty of more open and accepting Christian groups. We’ve seen several in this comic even (Sierra’s church).
She’s been to an episcopal church, understood that it didn’t have the toxicity of her father’s version of Christianity, and seemed to have far fewer problems with its legitimacy than Joyce did. So, aware and seems to regard it as legit.
Sounds like Becky has always had a broader worldview than Joyce, or at least didn’t build hers entirely around blind obedience to authority like she did.
I’m sure there are. But why believe any of it? And see below for my comment on non-literalists. If you don’t actually believe your own holy books then… what are you even doing? You’re literally making it up as you go along.
Jesus himself often explicitly spoke in parables and metaphor; it’s not such a great extension, then, for believers to posit that other parts of the book, too, would be such.
That’s what everybody’s doing. We’re all on a crazy ball spinning in a void and no one really knows what the heck is happening, so we’re all just trying to figure it out as best we can. Some people can look at a single source and think “This has all the answers I need, I’m good to go”. Other people find some very cogent ideas, and even if they don’t totally find some of the other bits useful, that doesn’t mean we have to dismiss every idea as being invalid.
This is little different than secular philosophy. I think there are a lot of interesting ideas to be gleaned from reading the works of Plato, he had a lot of interesting ideas about how we perceive reality through our senses and reason. He also seemed to believe that an ideal society would be a caste system ruled by an insular group of people raised from childhood on how best to rule over the rest of society and was generally dismissive of democracy in general. Does Plato being wrong about that somehow mean that his ideas about how we perceive the world are also without merit for consideration?
Knowledge and spiritual understanding is not a take it or leave it affair.
Plato’s ideas about how we perceive the world are only useful on the order of metaphor. Which is to say, not really.
On the other hand, democracy certainly does have it’s occasional problems as we have recently seen. An insular caste of people are probably not going to have an understanding of the society they are ruling and it will not go well. But if you had some other way of insulating the ruling class from self-interest, who knows?
Probably because fundamentalists invented the ideas the books weren’t parables in the first place. The whole idea of it being literally true is a very recent idea. Also, you know, maybe they believe in God and think the whole tenets of the faith are good.
Well the Catholic Church said that it wasn’t literally true for most of its history and that a lot of it was parable. The entire idea of the priestly caste existing to interpret it is because it was not to be taken at face value is indeed a major part of the reason fundamentalism exists. To challenge the idea that “anyone” could read the Bible and know the truth.
Which the Catholic Church says, “No. That is not how it goes” and they are the oldest of churches. By, you know, 1600 years or so.
Early Christianity is a mess of different variants that eventually mostly coalesced into Catholicism or were wiped out – though some sects from splits from the early centuries have survived (Coptics?)
Access to the actual bible is. For a long time people sat in a big building while someone droned on in a language they didn’t understand and they prayed on their own terms. What the monks bickered about had fairly little impact on the people working the fields and going about their lives.
Before that, people were integrating their pre existing beliefs into a religion that was violently forced on them.
But Christianity IS NOT the only religion and should NEVER be treated as such.
The earliest religions were based on our connection to nature, and honestly after working on a farm I don’t know how you can connect deeply with nature and not believe in a divine force of some kind.
They worshipped the miracle of life coming forth and ending, the swollen belly of pregnancy, the return to the earth, the rhythm of the universe. They regarded seeds as precious treasures. It was an incredible show of gratitude for the amazing bounty this solar system has gifted our species with – which is something we could all use a little more of.
It’s really difficult to get a solid idea of what the earliest religions actually looked like. We can make assumptions and inferences but reconstructing a dead religion nobody bothered to write down is really hard.
Well I can say for my particular church we believe in revelationary reading, in that God imbues a divine understanding over the fallible word of man and lets you basically vibe with a deeper truth unable to be captured by literal writing. Every man his own prophet basically.
Sierra’s church is probably not a source of religious information for Becky, because if Sierra is any indication it has absolutely zero issues with pre-marital hanky panky.
Everybody has something they firmly believe in that is completely unsupported by evidence. Have a good look through Snopes and Politifact and see if you can spot some of yours.
I am an agnostic and I have a belief completely unsupported by evidence that the universe is both just and merciful in the long run.
The label of ‘Christian’ is varied enough that if you ask if it is helping or harming people then the answer is clearly “Yes”. Many jerks justify their jerkness in Christian belief, many nice people credit their niceness on Christian belief and a great many ordinary people are a mixture of jerk and nice and blame/credit their Christian belief for that jerkness/niceness (although it’s arguably irrelevant for both).
I guess what I’m saying is, “Don’t be a jerk and removing religion isn’t going to magically remove jerkness from human society.”
I agree with you in most of what you said, but since I have been often “wordplayed” and dismissed by many “believers” throughout my life as a soul-less, bitter or plain stupid person, I have to clarify this little bit.
No, not “everybody has something they firmly believe in that is completely unsupported by evidence”. I don’t. I might believe some things that have yet to be _proved_ (like my belief that some type of life probably exists outside of Earth) but I would not put my hands to the fire for those, this is not part of my main convictions. Evidence (even personal experience, even if it can easily be wrong) is required for me to build concepts and ideology.
Is it better? Arguably, since objective truth is still not achieved, but it is my way of moving through life, I will see how it changes or not based on future experience.
In the meantime, I’m an Atheist and an Eskeptic. Depending on what part of the world you are in, that is quite shitty. I found out relatively recently that only 7% of people worldwide are “godless”, aparently, and since most are not in my country I have been planning to move somewhere else. Maybe one day I will.
For now, sorry, but I just don’t do that kind of belief.
> No, not “everybody has something they firmly believe in that is completely unsupported by evidence”.
The point of false beliefs is that you don’t know that they are false. If you take the time to check through lists of common misconceptions you’ll probably find at least one that you were sure was right. For example, today I found out that water isn’t actually completely colourless. If you asked me yesterday, I would have been sure that water – like air – only appears to be blue because of variable light refraction. But apparently it’s blue because even clean water preferentially absorbs red light. https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/water-color?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects
The other point where you’re almost certain to have some firmly held beliefs with no evidential basis is politics. I won’t get into any particular side or belief (I don’t even live in the US) but political beliefs on all sides include at least as much fiction as any random religious group.
I didn’t say that everybody (including skeptics) have beliefs that aren’t supported by evidence and won’t change those beliefs if confronted with contrary evidence. That is a greater claim that I didn’t make.
Sorry Paul. In that last bit where you say “The other point where you’re almost certain to have some firmly held beliefs with no evidential basis is politics” are you implying I said a political thing, or are you just saying that politics in general often work with a set of beliefs with no evidential basis? This is a genuine question. I’m not a native English speaker, and I might be missing some obvious pointer to what you meant. Feel free not to answer.
I think we are having problems with the “believe” thing. Just to make it clear though, I want to say I’m making the following distinction between belief and faith: belief (as I used it) is only a matter of wording. You can replace it by “I think this is true”, but it is based on experience and/or facts, even if they might be proved wrong later. For example, many kids think the moon follows them at night. They don’t just come to this idea from nowhere.
They see the moon is always up there, and as they walk they see the moon is still in the same spot, so with all the knowledge they possess at the time, they figure the moon is following them. Same could be said of them believing the sun “comes up” in the morning. If you explain to them what’s really happening, however, they will get it.
No one is born knowing. And you never learn everything, there’s always new things to know. And as you say, new stuff sometimes overrides previous knowledge. But that’s not “a belief”, it’s *understanding being built*.
I bet you thought water was colorless because 1- you were thought so in school and 2- because water, upon inspection, didn’t hold color to you. It wasn’t baseless, even if it was mistaken after all. This is common to all of us.
However “faith” IS believing in something/believing something is true WITHOUT any evidence, and it has often been justified to me as a “gut feeling” I don’t get due to me being, basically, a no-fun party-pooper. A feeling, or an intuition, or sometimes I guess just a decisive choice. You have faith the Earth is flat, you have faith there’s life after death, you have faith there is a God or ruling force in the world that defines what is and will be -a force that is often your side, in some way, or that takes you into account. You might have faith in cryptids and aliens building the pyramids or in reading hands or curing stomach ache with a measurer trick and a prayer. Some of these, I think, are easily refutable (I have had plenty of discussions regarding the measuring meter as cure for “bad eye” and stuff that I am not affraid to say it is ridiculous, based on nothing, and absolutely a scam) but other stuff is still to be actually proven. For example, I might be an atheist, but as an eskeptic I can’t enter into a discussion about a god actually existing or not, because my arguments are mostly subjective. I have no more proof god doesn’t exist than anyone has that it/he/she/they do. Religions, religious writings and other stuff like that can be “debunked” partially or totally through investigation and facts, but I have no proof regarding the “”entity”” itself.
And still, if tomorrow a literal angel spawned in my yard and smaked me in the nose, and after all posibilities had been discarded, I would have to admit the winged invader is an angel, no matter what I considered true before. Because new data would be at hand, and it would question what I thought before.
Because I have no faith. I only think some things might be true, based on stuff. And if that turns out to be mistaken I can just re-adjust. Like anybody else can.
> politics in general often work with a set of beliefs with no evidential basis?
I am absolutely saying that politics in general usually works with a set of beliefs that have no evidential basis. Not all of their beliefs, obviously, but yeah a whole heap of them.
Politics is mostly, but not entirely, money, charisma and PR. Some parties may be marginally ‘worse’ or ‘better’ but I’m not going to go into that swamp.
Thanks for taking the time to answer that for me, Paul. I agree with your point regarding politics. I don’t know how many countries are like that, but mine is also deeply polarized. Given corruption and other factors this “side-against-side” doesn’t really amount for nothing more than separaring people, but that’s how it goes here. So yeah, I have abandoned all party-politics as well. (I don’t know if that translates properly. Here we are thought that every social act is political, therefore the “apolitical individual doesn’t exist”. Party-politics, however, are related with an afiliation with a political party -such as leftists, right-wings, etc- and that is something you can remain away from. I clarify this because I didn’t check the term, I just translated on the go and there might be more appropriate terminology.)
Well, I did say that I was an agnostic – not an atheist. My belief that the universe is just and merciful in the long run is my unsupported-by-evidence faith.
Not everything; if that were the case, she would have never have tried to hook up with Joyce, and then eventually Dina. Not everything about religion is toxic.
Science is entirely based around falsifiable claims and the idea of an objective reality. I’ve yet to see a theistic position that’s compatible with that.
Sure. If you push god so far into the gaps that he/she/it literally does nothing and requires nothing from you, you can keep your vague sense of religion and purpose and still do science. The idea of a god like that boggles my mind, but I guess that’s a thing that does happen.
The usual mental compromises people make for this are things like “Theology’s original message was corrupted by man’s agendas and beliefs” or evolution as an aspect of intelligent design. These things aren’t intrinsically incompatible with science and are often based on science itself not having a full measure of things.
Or like Becky, believe in God’s love without it interfering in their understanding of science.
One can’t be a Biblical literalist and a scientist without some serious mental contortions, but most religious people aren’t Biblical literalists.
I think the point here is that just because Ross was claimed to be religious does not mean that his tainted version of religion should automatically negate all possible religion for Becky. She can choose her own religious path.
Meanwhile, Joyce’s point that Ross was bad at religion does not automatically mean that all religious is bad – but that is what Joyce is implying. It’s a false conclusion.
I think Joyce is projecting a bit here, when asking “Why believe something your jackass father believed?” She’s also asking why should she believe something her mom does, someone she used to look up to and thought of as good, remember how upset and hurt and shocked Joyce was when her mom was agreeing with Toe-dad. I think that a big part of why Joyce lost her faith while Becky kept hers, was that Becky already knew and always knew that her dad was a POS. Joyce learning that her mom was a POS and then her parents potentially splitting because of her mom being a POS that her dad can’t support is new information and I don’t think Joyce has the same ability that Becky does to separate her feelings towards her family, from her feelings towards her religion.
She is. For Joyce, religion was handed down from infallible parents, so when her parents failed, so did the religion they handed down to her. For Becky, she already knew her dad was a jackass, and whatever her mother taught her is safely tucked away in the unchanging fortress of pleasant memory.
The events shown in the comic strip are devastating for Joyce. But for Becky, the events are basically just Tuesday. They’re not special. They don’t change how oppressive the world feels to her. Becky believes because she’s an underdog and God has her back. Joyce believed because she had been told to, and no other reason.
For Becky, religion is a pile of pebbles. She can toss out the ugly ones and the mismatchy ones, keep only the ones she likes, and she still has a pile of pebbles.
For Joyce, religion was a mountain, one solid immovable mass. She can’t get rid of any of it without getting rid of all of it. This point has been a long, inevitable time coming for her.
Oh, I didn’t even think about that! Poor Joyce, so many anxieties. Maybe she’ll relax re: food as she claims/reclaims control over other parts of her being.
I don’t think her mom is wrapped in pleasant memories. We saw some of the ugly when she broke into her house to get her social security number.
I think that tragedy is what brought her to God personally. God stopped being this amorphous thing her parents talked about – god became the actual presence that she turned to for support and salvation during her darkest hours.
(Cuz we can bet Joyce was kind of sucky about it, because she was a little kid and everyone lied to her about what happened, and toedad sure as hell sucked about it)
Give it a year and Becky will likely be the kind of person who calls her the Goddess and is reclaiming the feminine wisdoms of the rosary and the Magdalene.
I will also add to this (though I vehemently believe Becky is in the wrong for a lot of reasons in this comic page) that Becky has more on the line than Joyce does when it comes to belief.
If there’s no god, then there might be no heaven. If there’s no heaven, then her mother is really gone in a way she hasn’t had to face. There’s no television to watch, no impending reunion at the end of her life. Becky will have to accept she has probably had all the time with her mother that she’s going to get, and that is a horrifically large wave of grief for anyone to deal with. Let alone an 18yo girl.
… she isn’t.
She’s saying that Joyce’s comment there makes no sense when given even a tiny amount of thought.
Ross did a lot of things. He paid taxes. Does that mean that, if Becky pays taxes, that she is like Ross? No. That is absurd.
Except that Ross didn’t use taxes as the center and purpose of all the awful things he did. Ross’s belief in paying taxes was not the reason he removed Becky from college, or chase her down with a shotgun. Ross’s belief in his religion led him ultimately to kidnap Becky’s friends. It’s likely that it led to her mother’s death.
Choosing other aspects of his life to compare with Becky’s life is beside the point.
Ross’s faith destroyed Becky’s life, full stop. She’s rebuilding, but it’s not unreasonable to ask her to reassess whether the religion he followed is something that she wants to follow now.
Becky was sustained by her faith through Rosses cruelties. Essentially Becky is pointing out the fact that Ross does not own Christianity and giving it up to him is acknowledging he was RIGHT because his entire belief system was based on being the arbiter of that faith.
Except everyone pays taxes. Everyone eats. No one thinks anything Becky’s dad did was right except for every single Christian they grew up knowing. (Yes, I know probably not literally all of them, but between the church banding together to get him out of jail and her mother’s reaction afterwards it must seem that way to Joyce.) Not just that, but he actively used his religion to justify his behavior. At this point Joyce knows maybe 4 Christians who aren’t absolutely horrible people, and all of the ones that are horrible are basically declaring that Christianity is the reason they are the way they are.
I mean hiding behind religion is what Jesus said was the worst thing you could do. There’s a lot of irony about Joyce’s disgust with the hypocrites in her life for a woman so well-read in the Bible.
It’s the same faulty thinking behind hero worship (and some forms of religious worship), only in reverse — instead of having some person, idol or god become your infallible standard of truth, where every truth that contradicts them becomes a lie, you have a person, idol or god that becomes your magical standard of falsehood, and any good that aligns with them becomes undoubtedly evil.
This kind of thinking may even lead to copying or avoiding behaviors that have nothing to do with morality.
There are stories within religions where disciples avoided certain numbers or rocks, or kissed walls, for no other reason than they saw their priests or imams doing it.
It’s the same basic essence of superstition — replicating and avoiding arbitrary gestures. Joyce might intellectually be an atheist, but a lot of her brain is still automatically thinking like it has been for nearly all her life.
The core of Joyce’s argument is that Becky only believes that stuff because her jackass father indoctrinated her with it. Which is not a stupid argument.
But Becky feels that she has taken her beliefs beyond what her father indoctrinated her with, and it has nothing to do with her father anymore.
Her best and only really valid argument here is, “because I still believe.” As I understand it, that’s all it takes. The rest of it is condiments on window dressings.
Maybe, but she could focus on not believing anymore herself and why, rather than whatever she’s trying to do here.
Make some of the arguments people here have been making in her defense.
She is not ready to say any of that, nor are her reasons much beyond the why being ‘because it stupid’. She doesn’t know what she actually believes, only that she doesn’t. She can only see that there are huge piles of garbage she treated as treasure her whole life, and reasonably thinks it’s probably all garbage in there.
She not going to magically, or miraculously, do a buttload of actual processing and sorting and reflection in a few seconds.
I think her reasons have a lot more to do with not feeling god any more than because it’s stupid. That’s a post hoc rationalization.
Even if she can’t explain it well, concentrating on her loss of faith is likely to work out better. Currently she’s focusing on why Becky shouldn’t believe, which isn’t likely to go well.
I read last strip less as Becky shutting it down and more as Becky forcing Joyce to admit what she’s apologizing for. I think I’d actually have more respect for Joyce if she came out and said “Yes, I do think you’re a bit stupid for believing XYZ. I’m sorry you heard me say it and I’m sorry you’re hurt by it, but this is where I stand.” As it is, Joyce tried giving a vague apology with no sincerity or admission of what she thinks she did wrong behind it and that’s what got shut down.
Remember when Becky was kidnapped by her dad and prayed for help? Then a superhero shows up and saves her? That sounds like extraordinary evidence for an extraordinary claim.
Becky eating the communion wafers with unabashed relish was an epic moment for her. Keeping her connection to God on her terms is Becky’s preferred most powerful “fuck you” to those that raised her.
Isn’t this a strawman argument? It’s the Christianity that’s problematic. You need food to survive, but you don’t need a problematic religion to survive. If you replace food with cocaine, then that’d make more sense
But Joyce has expressed some real, valid reasons for rejecting god…
– problems with the bible (e.g. age of the earth). Becky doesn’t have a problem because she picks and chooses what is important. But then if you engage in such “cafeteria Christianity” you have to wonder “am i picking the right pieces”
– pointing to ross as an example of how toxic religion can be
I mean, that would’ve been better than what she actually said. Rather than that, she put out evidence that the religion is wrong. While that isn’t explicitly stating that she thinks Becky is an idiot, it is doing a lot of implicit work in that direction.
They need to have that conversation. Becky and Joyce grew up together, being taught and believing the same things, and in the past few months discovered a bunch of it was wrong and downright toxic.
They reacted to this revelation differently. Becky was able to compartmentalize, keep the bits that worked for her. Joyce wasn’t. To Joyce, it was a whole, indivisible: losing some of it meant losing all of it.
Neither response is wrong. Joyce’s atheism is legitimate, Becky’s belief is legitimate. It can be difficult to reconcile, and this is why this conversation is necessary. We see now that at least part of the reason she didn’t dare come out as an atheist to Becky is that she didn’t know how to approach the subject without basically calling dumb.
A believer losing faith and becoming an atheist feel like they finally renounced magical thinking and embraced logic. How can one describe their process and reasoning without coming off as calling other believers gullible idiots who believe in Santa Claus?
But having this conversation lets you find out believers often never gave much stock in the magical thinking bits you thought were intrinsic to religion, that their relationship to faith doesn’t contradict scientific fact, and that their embrace of faith is not actually illogical.
It’s probably the worst way this conversation could have happened, but it’s good that it is happening.
Yeah, a whole lotta people in the comments here have been acting like you can lawyer your way out of upsetting someone (“Ah see, you actually CAN’T be mad at me because X, Y, and Z so really….”) and, uhhhh, that’s not how it works.
I mean, what is Joyce apologizing for here? Those are her feelings. I guess she could be focusing on apologizing for how Becky found out, or how Joyce worded things, but Becky pretty firmly isn’t looking for that. Becky has turned this into an argument about whether or not Joyce really believes that stuff she was saying. Would it be a better and more genuine apology if Joyce just walked all that back?
The core disagreement here isn’t just an issue of poor communication or whatever. The hurt isn’t because of what Joyce SAID, it’s because of what she thinks. Becky is hurt that Joyce feels that way. Becky already shut down the idea of accepting an apology for how she found out, in yesterday’s comic. So what exactly should Joyce be doing, here?
Pretty sure Becky is upset Joyce thinks she’s stupid for her beliefs and mad Joyce has been hiding her change in belief from her making what was believed to be genuine and touching moment honoring her dead mother into a bunch of insincere lies.
Yeah. That’s why this one may be hard to come back from.
But the fact that they’re talking it out is good. Whether it’s actually an apology or not, the act of recognizing her friend’s hurt and working through it is good.
Becky shut that down yesterday, with her “sorry I heard you” line. It was never an option for Joyce to simply apologize for hurting Becky, because Becky isn’t hurt by how Joyce expressed her feelings, she’s upset that Joyce is having them.
And possibly that Joyce was lying to her about them, but that turns back around into “Becky shut Joyce down really really hard the last time we saw her attempt to bring this topic up, so why would she have been truthful”, which is a bit of a separate issue to hash out.
I think Becky is angrier that Joyce didn’t confide in her Joyce’s new worldview and finding out about it the way she did, than for having them (though it can definitely still be a factor). I think Becky doesn’t want an apology so much as she wants Joyce to have an open conversation about it with her. Frankly, though, Joyce didn’t owe her (or anyone else) that info, and never did. Whatever secrets about herself Joyce wants to keep from anyone and/or everyone (that isn’t abusive) is her right, and that was clearly a conversation Becky was never meant to overhear.
Also, not telling someone about an internal struggle you are working through on your own isn’t lying. Joyce wasn’t required to open up about a difficult topic to the absolute most difficult person to discuss it with while she was still working through it.
The idea that keeping your thoughts to yourself until you’re ready to discuss them is “lying” is such an intrusive part of this and I can’t stand it. Becky doesn’t own her and she wasn’t entitled to hear what Joyce was thinking until Joyce was good and ready to tell her.
As for apologizing for hurting Becky, yeah Becky shut that down. Of course Joyce is sorry Becky overheard what she was saying, because she has the right to work through her own stuff in whatever way works for her and she chose to wait until she was in a room full of people who wouldn’t be hurt by what she was saying.
The fact that Becky overheard it is regrettable, and worth apologising for, but what Becky wants is an apology for Joyce’s feelings and that’s flatly not okay..
Yes, this exactly! Just because Becky’s been through a lot of trauma in her life doesn’t mean she gets to dictate how Joyce works through hers. She needs to let Joyce vent even if she doesn’t like what Joyce might ultimately decide on.
Except that it can involve lying, if you lie to keep from opening up. Not starting the discussion with Becky isn’t lying. Telling Becky about her mom up in heaven is.
She’s not required to open up about it to Becky, but not doing so means that it’s going to be even worse if she finds out accidentally. That’s not so much a moral judgement as just natural consequences. Putting off the hard thing often leads to it being harder.
She shouldn’t apologize for her loss of faith. She shouldn’t even apologize for not opening up to Becky about it, though she could try to explain why.
She should apologize for humoring her about her mom.
She should apologize for casting believers as idiots and explain where saying that came from, since I’m sure she doesn’t actually think Becky’s an idiot.
I’m not sure she should apologise for humouring about her mum. I mean, how’s that going to go? “I’m sorry I agreed with you that your mum is in heaven eating cake and looking out for you to help you with your trauma instead of saying what I actually believe, which is that your mum is well, truly and completely gone”?
What’s the alternative? “I’m not going to apologize. I lied to you for what seemed to be good reasons. I was trying not to hurt you.” To which the response will likely be: “Well that didn’t work well, did it.”
She can tell the truth. “I’m sorry I went along with that even though I don’t believe anymore. I was scared to tell you before and that wasn’t the time and I didn’t know what else to do.”
From the moment Becky asked that question of Joyce, she had three choices:
1 – Lie like she did
2 – Tell the truth, further stressing someone she holds dear in a moment specifically set up to help her deal with trauma
3 – Yell “Look behind you, a three-headed Jesus” and run away while Becky was distracted.
Don’t get me wrong I think literally anything can be improved by Monkey Island references (I bet Joe fights like a cow), but that doesn’t seem like it would’ve yielded a great result.
That doesn’t mean she didn’t put herself in that situation and hurt Becky by doing so. If Becky had already known, then the confrontation wouldn’t have come up.
She would’ve hurt Becky regardless, is my point. It’s just that in lying and postponing the revelation she hoped to delay that hurt to a, shall we say, less fraught situation other than “dead mum memorial”.
Having private thoughts is not lying. Telling Becky you believe her mom is in heaven watching on the heavenly TV stream is lying.
It’s understandable lying, since that would have been a horrible time to tell her , but it’s still lying and Becky still has the right to be upset about it.
Yeah but Joyce tried not to say anything and Becky pried it out of her, and so Joyce went really non-committal.
It’s not like she could say it there either, the day she expressed a lot of fear of hurting Becky any further by reminding her of her mom and Joyce’s own being lied to (BY BECKY) about how she died.
“Joyce I am demanding you tell me right this second what you are thinking on this, my dead mother’s birthday, that mother you told to my face repeatedly how sorry you were that she had died of cancer and I kept my mouth shut because my dad probably told me to.”
Damn maybe Joe was off-base. Maybe Joyce should have kept her mouth shut and not thrown a party celebrating Becky’s mom and how much they loved her, because showing Becky how much she loved her and how she couldn’t bear to hurt her didn’t work out!
I am an atheist (former christian) but i came to that point through logic and reason. But i do have relatives that are christian. (Mainline protestant fortunately… Not evangelical.) So a little part of my brain does have to reconcile “are they dumb for not seeing what i see”.
I think they have too much invested in religion to let go. I think they find too much comfort in the idea of god, a plan, seeing loved ones again, etc to ever let go. I think they want there to be a god too much to ever let go.
The thing is? That’s just a logical fallacy writ large.
Complex is a good word for it. Every day I see what organized religion does to people, and I hate it, and it becomes harder and harder not to hate the people, especially when they mean well with their proselytizing attempts.
On the other hand, we have people whos intelligence I respect who are total dicks about people who believe things, like Sagan and Tyson, and I don’t want to become that either.
It depends for me. I don’t think anyone is stupid for just having spirituality. And I’d never think someone of Jewish, Hindu or Muslim faith is stupid for it, my experiences rest squarely with Christianity. I think fundamentalists of any kind are… depending on their role, pitiful or cruel, but idk if I’d say stupid. I met at guy in school once who was like early comic Joyce but worse. She actually wanted friends, he wanted to be friends with me so he could preach his doomsday scripture. I wouldn’t say he was stupid, but it was like his brain was buffed smooth by his church. I don’t think he had thoughts outside of his scripture, it was like talking to a robot with prerecorded phrases. We met right before going into college, i worry about that guy…
I mean, to an extent there’s nothing she can do about it – she thinks her former self was stupid for believing those things, and since Becky believed all the *same* things, she can’t logic her way around it and act like somehow Becky’s identical beliefs are more defensible for her. She’s in a position where no matter what she says to defend herself there, it’s going to come across as disingenuous.
I don’t think either of them fully realizes that they didn’t actually believe the same things. I think other commenters got the right of it that they had come to their beliefs in slightly different, but very important, ways.
She can’t logic her way around it, since none of it has anything to do with logic in the first place. She didn’t lose faith because of logic. She didn’t have faith because of logic.
Yep. It’s honestly a really tough position for Joyce- and one I sympathize with, having been in a similar position with my anti-vaxxer mom asking me if I think she’s stupid and being like… I don’t know how to answer this question! I do not think you are a stupid person overall, but I do think you believe in a stupid thing! But also I love you and I don’t want to hurt you (and also I don’t want you to die of COVID.)
And obviously this isn’t the exact same situation, given that if nothing else there are a lot more concrete and specific bad outcomes from believing vaccines are bad. But in terms of Joyce’s mindset- she does now think a lot of these beliefs (and not just the dinosaurs on the ark) are wrong and dumb, and how can you say, well, I think those beliefs are dumb but I don’t think *you’re* dumb? I can tell you from experience that does not go over very well. I don’t think there’s an easy way to have this conversation.
I think “stupid” is the wrong way to look at it. Obviously, there are very smart Christians. Even very smart fundamentalists. In many cases it takes a lot of smarts to set up the complicated excuses and explanations for why all the seemingly contradictory bits fit together. 🙂
Mostly though even smart people don’t really analyze their belief structures. We see this everywhere, not just religion. People can be really smart in the field they concentrate their intelligence in and believe ridiculous things elsewhere. This is even more true when it comes to things learned in childhood. Those seep in at a level below our rational minds.
I do think believing in religion isn’t rational, but I think most of what we believe isn’t really rational either. Rationality has very little to do with most human behavior. We mostly use these big brains of ours for justifying what we do by gut instinct. And it’s largely that gut instinct that’s driving both Joyce and Becky here – Joyce lost faith because she doesn’t feel God anymore (and wonders if she ever did) – that’s got nothing to do with being smart or stupid. Becky still does, which still has nothing to do with being smart or stupid.
Joyce is still in the ‘this is all such obvious garbage how could we have been stupid enough to believe any of it’ stage of her disillusionment. She hasn’t hit a point where she can accept that it wasn’t necessarily all or nothing for everyone yet.
She doesn’t believe in the important bits anymore either, though. Becky may not care much about biblical literacy, but she does believe in a loving god and an afterlife where she’ll see her mom again, and Joyce doesn’t. That’s not an easy thing to reconcile.
I agree. Obviously Joyce is being hurtful and is going to have to amend for that, but if they don’t discuss it at all, there’s not going to be any hope for them. What Joyce really needs is a cultural anthropology class. Show her the value of different ways to approach understanding the world. We all just need something that brings us comfort. That’s not going to be the same for everyone. At the moment, Joyce is partially projecting, and maybe if she realizes that she can patch things up with Becky. I think they’ll get out what they want to say today and then give each other some space for a while.
Addendum/clarification to the above:
I’d say that there is some “talking past each other”, but it’s my hope that will lead to them realizing and understanding how very different their experience with religion has been, sooner rather than later. While the circumstances right now are terrible, it’s a conversation they need(ed) to have.
I think it’s been somewhat evident for a while that Joyce and Becky developed their religious beliefs differently
Joyce actually believed the things their parents told them and developed the same sort of inflexible biblical literalism, while Becky sort of developed her own version that could bend on a lot of things without breaking.
Gonna be honest, the religious non-literallists piss me off more than fundies.
It’s true that you can’t reason somebody out of a position they didn’t reason themselves in to, but at least you can point to everybody that their belief is factually wrong. Non-literalists just slip around and move the goalposts, keeping what they like and handwaving away the rest.
If you’ve got a damn holy book and don’t believe it, WTF do you actually believe?!
Becky, for one, believes that there’s a God who loves her so much that when she was in trouble, he sent her best friend on a motorcycle and an actual real-life superhero to rescue her from her father.
Right, which, that doesn’t feel any more difficult to believe than “A bunch of people a long time ago took some religious teachings, but not all of it, and put it together as a book. These were the inspired word of God, which is why translations can change meanings significantly.”
A god that loves her so much he sends a super hero to rescue her, but not enough to have given her a father who accepted her lesbianism in the first place.
@John Smith:
It helps to actually read the holy book. Jesus, the person, hated the way the rich and powerful abused the Jewish religion. He believed that goodness didn’t require one to be Jewish – hence the Good Samaritan story. And he wanted to throw open the doors of his church to anyone.
He would HATE modern conservative Christianity. They espouse everything he fought against.
Oh, and in his faith, none of the bible was meant to be literal. Jewish rabbis argue and interpret their holy texts to this day. That was the tradition Jesus was raised in. SO yeah… the non-literalists are doing their religion the correct way.
The only reason the bible is “literal” is because it benefited the medieval Catholic church monetarily.
Jesus would hate the entirety of Christianity because as Jewish (and presumably aware he isn’t God) he’d hate the fact it wrongly deifies him, and he’d see the idea of the trinity as an abominable violation of monotheism.
“Oh, and in his faith, none of the bible was meant to be literal.”
That’s very convenient. No particular facts to pin out: The Second Coming is never Coming because it isn’t literal. An afterlife doesn’t actually exist, it’s not literal either. Why, God’s very existence, not literal either, I guess.
Actually, yeah, it is possible to be a practicing Jewish person and still not believe in God. I follow several of them and they’re all pretty cool people.
Well I mean. The Second Coming isn’t necessarily a thing in Judaism, no. Because that would imply a FIRST Coming of the Messiah, which they don’t believe has occurred yet. The Jewish concept of a messiah is very, very different, and early Christians basically had to hammer the shape of it into something else entirely to make Jesus fit after he was crucified because his death would very much otherwise have precluded him from being a king to save the Promised Land and lead the Jewish people into a new age. There were other would-be messiahs running around Israel around that time period – people weren’t that fond of the Roman Empire, which is why war broke out against the Roman occupation and ended with besieging and sacking of Jerusalem. The early Christians just didn’t want to believe they’d followed this guy for nothing, and so they started coming up with a story where he would in fact be back, death was just part of his plan, and the Messiah as King is METAPHORICAL, you see, because he’s King of Heaven and the son of God sent to save us all (and also a male-line descendant of David, totally, he DEFINITELY still fits all the traditional criteria of messiahood.)
Note: I am saying this as a cultural Christian agnostic who knows a bit about modern Jewish theological schools of thought and read Reza Aslan’s Messiah once, which touches on the politics of Israel circa the first century of the Common Era, but doesn’t claim to be an expert on either Jewish theology or that particular period and region of history. I just know just enough about Jewish and Islamic approaches to God and scripture to know that, yeah, they are VERY different philosophical stances than Christianity. ESPECIALLY American Protestant Christianity, but seriously you can see a fundamental difference between Catholic, Jewish, and Islamic conceptions of sin from the overview paragraphs on their respective Wikipedia pages. The differences run deep.
How much have YOU actually read? Unless you were pretty freaking religious I doubt it’s as much as me, given the seventeen odd years of christian schooling and church. I don’t recall the line saying “And actually, don’t take this literally it’s just a metaphor.” I DO remember several lines saying quite the opposite though. And hey, you’re right! Medieval Christians DID write the book for self-serving reasons. So why, precisely, should I be taking any of it seriously?
And uh… you say the Jews don’t take the Torah literally? The same Jews who’s orthodox community to this day goes and tries to follow all the laws laid down?
Really? Matthew 13:34, Mark 4:34, John 10:6; and John 16:25 are all explicit that Jesus spoke in figurative instead of literal terms (“without a parable spake he not unto them.”)
Because they set themselves up to condescend to everybody else from an unassailable position. They want to take the moral high ground, but they’re just an amorphous blob of “I think this is right, so clearly the bible supports me.” It’s the fucking gish gallop of religion, trying to pick apart their position takes forever and is pointless because they’ve just moved on.
Not everyone that has non-literal faith is seeking to condescend or claim a moral high ground. Plenty of them just want to have their faith in peace without people trying to pick it apart. You don’t need to pick apart their position. You can leave them alone.
Why is it so important to you that you can pick their position apart? You know they won’t change their mind. You aren’t going to convert them, especially not in the moment.
I feel like you haven’t talked to many non-literalists, or maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean by non-literalist.
I was raised by non-literalist catholics. I myself am agnostic/atheist, though I never call myself that because I find other atheists to be just as bad as evangelists when it comes to conversion. My family’s view is that the bible isn’t literal, there wasn’t an adam and an eve, there wasn’t a flood that flooded the entire world, but they view these as stories that *teach* a moral idea. Some of these ideas don’t “translate” well now because we’re missing historical context lost by millennia. But most stories teach “Hey, help the most vulnerable members of society cuz otherwise that’s shitty” in some fashion – my mother argues that the new vulnerable are people like trans* individuals, bipoc in america, lgbt+, etc.
So, sorry that you can’t out-argue my mother about the bible, but I don’t see how taking the bible non-literally is inherently a bad thing.
The bible is a collection of stuff. Some of it makes factual claims and those are just wrong. Some of it is clearly parables and metaphors. Others, you aren’t sure if the speaker was being literal or not.
Example: in the Song of Solomon, the author wasn’t saying his love interest’s breasts are doves. Whatever the original language said, the translators judged that the word “like” belonged in there. It’s a judgment call.
Not even “literalists” are saying that in the Song of Solomon those breasts were literally doves.
The problem is that the “non-literalists” aren’t actually trying to decide whether something was intended as literal or not, they’re simply saying “That’s not literal” as an excuse to EVERYTHING that’s wrong about the bible BECAUSE it’s wrong, when the honest thing to say would have been to admit “That’s wrong”.
What’s wrong with loving someone who has doves for breasts?
You know, reality is too complex to be captured in a single consistent picture. It comes in levels and things that are true in one level and one framework are false in another. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.
I mean, they’d tell you if you actually asked rather than tried to use their book as a bludgeon.
Most of the things Christians believe today were made up much later by people like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Another chunk of them were made up even more recently, by people like John Nelson Darby in the 19th century. Long, long, long after the Bible was canonized and someone said it couldn’t be altered.
Incidentally, there are different Bibles for different Christianities. Their beliefs really have nothing to do with their books, man.
@John Smith
Do you pick apart Plato or Aristotle or Josephus or Herodotus with the same literalism you use for biblical interpretation? Do you mock scholars as “slipping around” who use those texts as historical evidence without taking everything they say literally? The Bible is a compilation of ancient texts of multiple genres with multiple historical settings. It’s not a science textbook. It’s not even a modern history textbook (and those are much less literal than I’m pretty sure you want them to be).
The literalists basically arose in response to people like you who tried to tear apart the Bible. They felt like they had to defend the Bible against attacks from Enlightenment Modernism. But, as a historian, that’s just not how ancient texts work.
If people were teaching Plato, Aristotle or freaking Charles Darwin as god-given scripture instead of historical writers I would absolutely be tearing them apart.
I don’t have a problem with history or historical texts. I don’t have a problem with people trying to interpret them, or hell even pull decent messages from them. I DO have a problem with people who say they’re divinely inspired and then try and interpret ‘correct’ ways of living out of them.
If you ask who let the atheists in, then I’ll say who let the religious apologists in? The people who think that the existence of such a big LIE as religion is justified, and that you waive it away by calling every proven falsehood “non-literal” or unimportant, when people have both died and been murdered for such “unimportant stuff.
You wouldn’t tolerate apologists of fascism, or of racism. Why are you tolerating apologists of religion?
zee asked who let the “reddit atheists” in, not atheists as a whole. People like you are precisely the problem so many people have with “new atheists”.
Well, to be fair, aelwine is talking about cherry-picking your religious beliefs while at the same time ignoring crimes committed in the name of the stuff you chose not to believe. You can’t have it both ways.
I’m 95% certain that’s not what aelfwine is talking about, given their track record of commenting the likes of such things as that they’re “proud to be an ‘edgy atheist’ and [they] hope Joyce becomes one too”, “so-called progressives have made a deal with the devil by allowing religious people into their party”, calling all religious people “either victims or liars”, saying that “Democrats are so afraid to be called Islamophobes that they refuse to condemn Islam”, and of course the above comment comparing people who simply think the existence of religion should be allowed to fucking racists and fascists.
Wrong, I certainly believe “the existence of religion” should be allowed. I never asked for the banning of religion. I never asked for the banning of flat-earthers either. Or the banning of anti-vaccer propaganda. I do believe in free speech and free religion.
People are allowed to spread falsehoods – flat-earthers and religious people alike. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t STRONGLY CONDEMN THESE FALSEHOODS.
Can’t we celebrate the falsehoods? Sometimes falsehoods capture the truth better than anything else.
When the Right Stuff movie came out, one of my friends had a long list of all the things in the movie that were inaccurate. Which totally missed the point. It captured the truth of a certain place and time.
maybe because people have been and are being murdered for belonging to certain religious groups as well? or because many of the victims of fascism and racism were targeted specifically because, or using the proxy of, their religion? or because some of the people fighting against the murders committed in the name of religion belong to the same religion as those committing them?
@thejeff: aelfwine did put out this comment a week ago exactly, if you’ll remember:
Condemning an entire religion? Oh, noes, let’s not condemn an institutionh of horrific oppression of hundreds of millions of people. It might make us sound “right-wing” after all. /s
Well, my point of view is that unless unless supposed progressives start condemning religion (preferably all religions, but *at the very least* the homophobic and misogynist religions like the vast majority of Judaism, Christianity and yeah Islam) as an oppressive institution and a lie, their supposed progressiveness is a very very bogus lie.
Not to mention how they proclaimed they were “proud to be an ‘edgy atheist'” at the beginning of this storyline. Terrible anti-religious takes seem to be a running theme with them.
Bro I’ve literally spent days outlining my experiences as an atheist in these threads, including today 🤦
I said reddit atheists, cringelords like you who compare religion to antivaxx conspiracies and fascism
Right? These new atheists are exactly why I never bring up atheism or religion. They’re exhausting. “I HAVE to be right about religion being ALL WRONG or ELSE” like jesums calm down.
I haven’t seen you be an ally to me when my government shoved years and years of religious LIES down our throats in public schools.
But, yeah, sure it’s the atheists that are exhausting. Did I force you to years and years of atheist catechism when you were at school? Did we make you do daily atheist prayers every morning?
And I’m one of the lucky ones, I live in a country that shoves religion down every schoolchild’s throat, but atleast it doesn’t murder atheists.
Hundreds of millions of other people around the world aren’t so lucky.
Religion is the biggest evil in the world today. By FAR.
I’m a bit less aggressive than aelfwine, but yeah. I was also brought up on a huge pile of bullshit that could be easily disproved. Why is the education system like this? Because Christians fight tooth and nail to keep christiantity in the system, of course. Y’all are giving me grief over the non-literalist thing but none of them came along and said, Oh yeah, we should cut all this out and make sure the fundies don’t cripple science education.
So now you get aggressive atheists. Because the silent ones sure as hell weren’t working.
Also, there’s an interesting contrast between Joyce seeing her faith as something that she believed in because her family and community did (and now that that’s gone, what’s the point?) and Becky seeing faith as important in itself, even (or perhaps especially) without family and community.
Call me crazy, but I think this all has to do of how Becky and Joyce see themselves and accept the people they are. Joyce has been insecure about her own identity and who she really is. She has agoraphobia and has struggled the last semester with the changes she had to endure. And when she did realize the changes, she saw herself as a bad person (like at Dina’s b-day party). Add to that the “no-compromises” policy she always had with religion, either everything was right or nothing was. Evolution was fake because it HAD to be. But when Joyce realized she had changed and that evolution was real (this is a metaphor), she fell into a pit of anger, sadness and revolt.
Meanwhile, Becky barely struggled with her own identity. She is the christian lesbian girl. When Dina told her at the b-day party she was ready to be touched, Becky declined because of who she was, despite all the horniness (good for her, it takes integrity to do that). Becky knows who she is and accepted it. She refuses to change, she was willing to give up her family (granted, her father) to keep her own lesbian identity. And being a christian, no matter what branch, is a part of that. A part she won’t let go because that’s who she is. And you know what? Good for her
You seriously think Mary would see Becky enough as a person to do that? And you think Becky’s mild petty thing with Dorothy is so intense shed side herself with someone who represents all the worst and most traumatic parts of her life growing up?
On slightly different layer, I’d like to think that Becky resents Joyce for being able to admit the truth of an uncaring, godless universe. And everytime Joyce demonstrates that ability, she gets defensive.
Let her go, Joyce. Sometimes you need to outgrow your friends.
I’ll be honest, every time I speak to someone religious, I have to remind myself that believing in something like religion doeen’t make you stupid. And, Becky is right, her father’s actions and beliefs shouldn’t have to dictate what Becky does or believes.
Also, Joyce should know by now that Becky has learned about what did or did not happen in the bible. Is that asking too much?
I can think of 2 reasons why looking at the actions of Ross might be relevant:
– If the tenants of the Christian religion are so flexible that they can be used to justify either actions of sacrifice/valor (such as Joyce protecting Becky last term), or actions of brutality (Ross kidnapping becky) then MAYBE your religion doesn’t actually have a basis in reality
– Many people use the excuse “what’s the harm?” to justify religious beliefs. Well, the fact that people can use religion to justify kidnapping/gay conversion therapy or terrorist actions is a pretty good indication that something is wrong. You don’t tend to see atheists engaging in the same sort of actions. (Not that they never commit crimes, they just don’t have a religious basis.)
I believe she’s remarked before to the effect of “so what if evolution kinda probably happened? It doesn’t contradict anything important.” To me, that probably indicates that she’s focused on the stuff Jesus specifically preached, not so much what came before (or too much after) him.
Phrasing this in a way that sounds condemning of Becky but it’s not supposed to be: Becky’s faith in an eternally loving God works on a level where as long as Becky doesn’t like it, then it’s not the important part.
God loves her, ergo she is not going to Hell for being a lesbian. Science is cool, ergo Young Earth Creationism is wrong and to prove it God sent her a rad atheist dino girlfriend, which also means atheists naturally don’t go to Hell. Her dad is evil, so his belief in God is wrong and Becky’s is right, and whatever it is that motivated Becky’s mom to kill herself it’s fine because she’s with God now and Becky will see her soon.
But Becky still believes in sexual purity (while still being horny on main for Dina and feeling betrayed that Dina isn’t horny for her all the time and won’t get so overwhelmed by Becky’s impossible sexiness that she’ll tear her clothes off then and there), that’s still something she thinks is right to hold onto, so instead of it being something that inconveniences her that God would naturally not approve of it if inconvenienced Becky, it’s the rule to follow, because she wants it to be a rule to follow and therefore it’s one of the inerrant facts God has laid down for her.
Basically what I’m saying is that Becky is such a bottom that she subs for God.
In the sort-of-argument over whether an Episcopal church was better than an evangelical (with guitars), she indicated that Jesus/God loving her/not caring that she was gay was a pretty big deal.
A lot of Christians believe that “God is love/love your neighbor” is the important part, and most of the rest is meh. And I’d add that a lot of folks I know left evangelical Christianity saying “Yeah, I know rationally sex before marriage doesn’t matter, but it still feels wrong, because of a whole-life guilt campaign,” and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s where she’s coming from.
welp so much for them reconciling within this storyline
you could easily have said she wasn’t an idiot, joyce, neither of those false things in the bible that you mentioned are even things becky believes anyway.
Joyce is clearly angry at herself for believing the things she did, but this conversation makes me wonder if she’s perhaps also jealous that Becky’s come out of everything with her belief intact. Looking through that lens, her current hostility towards Becky makes a lot of sense, even if it is coming from an unhealthy place.
I think that’s entirely possible. Becky was able to hold onto the core of her faith while ditching the stupid and toxic trappings, while Joyce is having trouble seeing it as anything except all or nothing. Of course it probably helps that Becky has been thinking about this a lot longer, since she’s been questioning her received dogma at least since she realized she wanted to kiss girls. Joyce, OTOH, doesn’t seem to have entertained any doubt prior to the beginning of the comic. So while the two of them have gone through some similar trauma, it’s not really surprising that they might be processing it differently.
It seems to me that Joyce has always had this all-or-nothing attitude (most likely fostered by her community) while Becky was more flexible.
What odd is that they two never talked about this? They were best friends and grew up together! Was Becky so deep in protection mode that she never discussed her faith truthfully with her best friend?
Becky likely developed her approach out of necessity. We don’t know exactly when she realized she was gay, but I’m guessing it was early enough that her faith hadn’t fully formed itself in her mind, so she was able to ignore the parts that she knew from her lived experience to be false and come up with a framework that still worked in her head. Joyce never had to reconcile any of this, so she didn’t, and the result was a fragile faith that couldn’t withstand a single blow.
Considering the kind of environment they grew up in, I think it’s entirely possible that Becky would hesitate to mention her doubts to anyone, even Joyce. Given what we saw her father was willing to do, this was not really unreasonable. When you’re a child in a potentially dangerous environment, it’s hard to know if you can trust anyone. Keeping your head down and playing along until you can get out can easily look like the best plan.
I think it’s exactly this moment you linked, that shows exactly where Joyce stands.
And Becky, clearly from these comics, knew how Joyce felt for this subject.
Becky likely also didn’t really get into the details until she got a radical dinosaur girlfriend and started shedding all the unimportant stuff. Their focus was always different, but the contrast wasn’t as clear before then, since they basically believed the same things.
When it did come up it could just be seen as structured Joyce being Joyce and wild Becky being Becky.
From what’s going on with them right now, it seems pretty clear to me that Becky and Joyce didn’t ever actually talk about that when they were growing up. Though apparently Becky forgot what Joyce told her in those two strips as well, since she seems to not understand how Joyce is now an atheist.
It’s the same faulty thinking behind hero worship (and some forms of religious worship), only in reverse — instead of having some person, idol or god become your infallible standard of truth, where every truth that contradicts them becomes a lie, you have a person, idol or god that becomes your magical standard of falsehood, and any good that aligns with them becomes undoubtedly evil.
This kind of thinking may even lead to copying or avoiding behaviors that have nothing to do with morality.
There are stories within religions where disciples avoided certain numbers or rocks, or kissed walls, for no other reason than they saw their priests or imams doing it.
It’s the same basic essence of superstition — replicating and avoiding arbitrary gestures. Joyce might intellectually be an atheist, but a lot of her brain is still automatically thinking like it has been for nearly all her life.
Despite the emotional strife this is occurring in, it’s actually interesting to see it laid bare how belief/faith is inextricably linked to certain things differently for both Joyce and Becky. For Joyce all the toxic and silly things (if taken literally) are inseparable from the faith and the belief in God while Becky was able to parse the different elements apart from each other (seemingly even before she was outed/recognized her sexuality?).
Yes, exactly. Becky sees her faith as something she has, something that remains important to her; Joyce sees it as something that was imposed on her, and has hinted that she never really felt it but was just going along with it to please others and hoping that, at some point, she’d have it too.
Joyce thinks she, Joyce, is an idiot for believing in God. She is in a place of doubt and anger and self-loathing. Ideally, she would be able to talk through her feeling with a person who won’t react with anger. Thaaaat person is not Becky 😬
Becky feels betrayed and insulted. Joyce felt she couldn’t be honest about her faith so Becky felt lied to. Except Joyce really couldn’t talk about her feeling with Becky without feeling like it was an attack on her. She just overheard Joyce saying some angry (and not particularly kind) things and assumed it was an attack on her.
Becky can dismiss what she feels isn’t important about the Christianity she was brought up in. Joyce can not. Joyce is rightfully angry with a lot of things she grew up with.
Becky heard her best friend say some mean and incredibly out of the ordinary things. She responded by making a snide remark and leaving. When Joyce ran to her to apologise she dismissed her apology. She implied Joyce agreeing that her mum was in heaven was cruel if she didn’t believe anymore.
A more mature and open to dialogue response would be asking what is going on with Joyce because this is uncharacteristic of her. But hey, it’s right there in the title, Dumbing of Age and these two are eighteen year olds wrapped up in their feelings and trauma.
>When Joyce ran to her to apologise she dismissed her apology.
Yeah I think Becky’s smart enough to understand that wasn’t an actual apology. Joyce is basically stating her she DOES think Becky is an idiot, and that she herself was an idiot.
I’ll say yes Joyce is most likely projecting here, but she is also verbally saying with her words that Becky is an idiot here. Becky asked if Joyce really thinks she’s an idiot for having faith and Joyce responded by outlining the ways in which faith is stupid and punctuated it by using Becky’s trauma with religion, not her own. So she’s not exactly going about this the best way either
(Also Joyce came to Becky with this conversation not the other way around but that’s semantics)
Honestly despite how it looks im not on either side necessarily bc i don’t think this is a sides situation overall
*high five*
I feel like it looks like I’m on Becky’s side since I’ve been more defensive of her, which is really only bc i feel like a lot of her criticism gets irrational. Honestly i didn’t even care too much about Becky beyond passive enjoyment until the crowd against her got really loud post time skip
Uh huh, here’s the crux of the situation. Becky’s faith can bend, and it has done a great job withstanding some serious bullshit. Joyce’s faith wasn’t flexible. It was brittle and based on everything working as one perfect inerrant system. It was like a giant stick tower. Yank one out and the whole thing collapses.
I’m gonna withhold final thoughts until this storyline is over, but I AM wondering, disappointedly, if Joyce was being less literal than I thought in her usage of ‘I’ earlier. If that ends up being the case, my apologies if I upset anyone by arguing otherwise – y’all were right, I was wrong.
That said, I’m not 100% convinced YET. 😛
(Also, happy thanksgiving to any of my fellow Canadian type Pokemon celebrating).
I suspect the problem is that Joyce hasn’t taken the time to talk or think any of this out properly so her anger at herself, her anger at her parents, her anger at Becky’s dad, her anger at her Church, etc, is all mashed up together in an incoherent mess and getting projected at Becky because she’s the closest target.
Fully agreed. Joyce DOES need to talk and think, but Not With Becky. Dorothy seems like the only possible person in Joyce’s circle who’d be both willing and even slightly equipped to listen and help sort. If Joyce can actually get some Joyce-and-Dorothy time, that is. (Joe has helped Joyce with a lot of stuff, and he could probably help with this, but willingness is the question.)
Joyce actually had beliefs, she actually genuinely believed in the things in the Bible. And eventually she realized they were fairy-tales and lies and so she stopped believing in them.
Becky instead just actually really really needs the “important things” (that there’s a God in heaven who loves her, and her mom is with him) to be true. Her belief is “flexible” in everything else, because her beliefs aren’t really beliefs, she wants and needs a specific part of her religion (the all-loving God that her mom is with), and she doesn’t much care about much else.
Is that not also belief though? Like, I would not be comfortable going around telling people “Ah, you don’t REALLY believe in your religion/faith/spirituality/etc because you don’t meet my standards of rigor”.
It’s a different kind of belief. Literalist belief is intellectual and is strung together by stated reasons. I believe my friend is a math genius because I have literally watched her do super hard math. Other belief is more emotional, and all you really need is the feeling. I believe my friend would take a bullet for me because I’ve felt protected in her presence.
If your God is real because you have been given reasons to believe, then your belief will be intellectual. If your God is real because you have felt that presence and are confident in its strength, then your belief will be emotional.
These aren’t real categories, btw; I’m making them up because they’re useful right now.
I agree that Becky’s belief is no less valid or real for being more resilient. But us ex-fundies tend to stick to the intellectual pattern of belief that we were taught: we just think them through a different filter now.
I would certainly agree that their outlooks on faith are different, however I’m far more hesitant to say that Becky somehow believes less than Joyce does because some parts of her beliefs are flexible.
Can one truly say that one is a Christian if one does not believe every single itty bit of the bible? Maybe, but frankly based on that criteria I’m not sure how many true Christians there actually would be. (Like depending on your interpretation of scripture there’s a valid argument to be made that only people of Jewish background can actually be Christian)
However if someone does believe that there is a good loving power in the universe, and puts their faith in that power, even if it doesn’t precisely match all elements of biblical canon. (And debatably can’t if it’s actually supposed to be all-loving) is that less valid than the person who bends over backwards to explain away every idiosyncrasy or contradiction in biblical canon arguably also because they also desperately want it all to be true?
I’d call anyone a Christian who believes that Jesus Christ is the ultimate moral teacher — belief in “every single itty bit of the bible” is not a requirement. My brother is a believing Christian, he does admit that the bible is self-contradictory and that it isn’t inerrant.
But I’ve no reason that I know to think that *Becky* is a believing Christian at all. The parts that she actually seems to care about… well, she could just as well be Jewish or Muslim or perhaps several other faiths. “There’s a loving god, her mom is in heaven, and sex before marriage is wrong” — that’s the extent that we know of her beliefs.
Where is *anything* about Jesus Christ and what he taught? Does she even care? Or is that “not important” either?
I mean, Becky definitely believes that Jesus is the son of God and died for their sins and all that stuff. She has specifically NOT rejected the Jesus stuff, and in fact referred to herself as Joyce’s Jesusy pal, specifically. So yes, she’s specifically Christian.
(She also has a very all-or-nothing idea of sin that is very, very Christian, and doesn’t have the same ‘believing in the holy book means analyzing what it’s trying to get at, having wildly different opinions, and sometimes deciding that God’s being a jerk and needs arguing with’ that is very much a Thing in Judaism in particular. Becky’s willing to IGNORE things and consider things parables, but her perception of God is one that agrees with the things she finds valuable – she doesn’t have the theological stance that sometimes God’s just flat-out wrong. The differences between the three Abrahamic religions aren’t superficial – you pick up some very different philosophical stances after over 1,000 years of internal theological debate and hashing out of various details for even the youngest of the three.)
I think the difference here is between belief and faith. Becky has a very firm sense of faith in a loving god – she doesn’t need the world to be 6,000 years old for there to be a god who answers lesbian prayers and saves her from kidnappings. Joyce very much believed in Biblical literalism, and put a lot of effort into it being a single coherent story, but she’s not sure she ever felt God when she prayed. Her feeling of God in a service is tied to the community and specific rituals she’s used to, down to the specific variety of grape juice used for communion (and it had to be juice, not wine, OBVIOUSLY. She’s too young to drink.) Becky ultimately took the trip to Jacob’s church in stride once she got used to the aesthetic shock, and she can tune out an evangelical pastor giving a sermon about how gay people are going to hell, because she knows they’re wrong. Joyce can’t really reconcile either change. Underneath all the effort she put into believing every word was true, into trusting the adults in her life and being a Good Girl and not even acknowledging the CONCEPT of sex, much less her own desires… there was nothing there, except maybe a deep anxiety at the idea of going to hell if she did Bad Things. (We haven’t heard that part for sure, but we know she’s questioning ever truly believing; we know Joyce CLEARLY has an anxiety disorder that includes a need for rigid structure and has serious hangups about acknowledging she is anything but perfectly-behaved, which is especially pronounced in her refusal to acknowledge she knows or thinks about anything sexual; we know they grew up in an authoritarian church and the way she freaks out about breaking into Becky’s house meaning they’ll go to jail; and when Willis was discussing their own break with faith back in the Roomies reruns it involved a similar ‘I didn’t actually believe in a loving God, I was terrified of punishment’ sentiment to what I’m describing here. I had a similar realization with less authoritarian upbringing and religious abuse and trauma – my anxiety disorder gels REALLY badly with any concept of punishment in the afterlife, so even though the denomination I was raised in was chill, the cultural Christianity osmosis and the idea of hell meant I cannot have a healthy relationship with Christianity.)
At the end of the day, I think you can sum up the core difference with Becky telling Ross as he’s dying to ‘tell Mom I’ll be a while.’ Even though he kidnapped her and then kidnapped her friends to get her again, even though she didn’t want to have a relationship with him ever again, she does not believe he’s going to hell. I’m not 100% certain she believes in hell, honestly – she also thinks Dina will be in heaven, after all. If she does, the love she still had for Ross in spite of everything terrible he did was enough for her to say ‘he won’t be punished eternally.’ Joyce, by contrast? Absolutely believes in eternal damnation, and if she thinks the wrong thoughts even once she will DEFINITELY go there. So she won’t. Ever.
I also think there’s a difference in what their belief was based in. Joyce’s belief was based in fear- fear of what would happen to her if she didn’t believe, and the fear that if there was no God, then nothing mattered. Becky’s belief is based more in love or comfort- comfort in feeling like there is an all-loving God who cares about her even when no one else does, and comfort in thinking her Mom is in heaven.
I’m baffled that so many people seem to consider what I see as the start of acknowledging and understanding how very differently they’ve approached religion is a bad thing.
The increasingly angry expressions don’t make it seem like reaching an understanding but becoming defensive and more aggressive about their specific take. It seems like an escalating conflict to me. Could still turn to understanding, but this right here looks like it is leading into an argument.
Sometimes you need an argument. Besides, they’ve said, like… five sentences to each other; of course they haven’t reached understanding yet. They just started the conversation.
It’s ultimately a good thing, but neither is equipped to have or participate in that conversation in good faith at this time. Joyce hasn’t processed, and Becky is… still trying to be somewhat controlling of Joyce’s identity.
I worry that your view on this is way too optimistic. It looks more to me like they’re getting into an argument, and they’re gonna both end up saying some things they’ll regret later. This could end with them coming to understand each other better, but I suspect it’s gonna end with them being even more mad at each other and maybe even them not wanting to be friends anymore.
I really only think it’s a bad thing that Joyce is with her words (yes i know she’s probably projecting) affirming that yes, she thinks Becky’s an idiot. That’s not great. But I’m not expecting either of these emotional teenagers to be perfectly smart or rational
I don’t sympathize with Becky here at the moment. As her religious best friend, she should have already known how deep Joyce was into the bible already. Especially her interactions with Dina.
I sympathize with Becky because she’s effectively had this conversation with Joyce before or so she thinks. Joyce did her extensive Biblical study of, “Does God hate lesbians?” and concluded, “No God does not.”
Becky’s response was, “Wait, why the hell did you have to consult the Bible? God is love!”
I’m sorry for wanting to barge into your private conversation because I cannot comprehend the idea of you talking to someone other than me and I wanted to assert my rights as your bestest friend evah?
Exactly. I’m so tired of the comments section being filled with “joyce was lying to her”…no. She wasn’t. She just hadn’t told her yet because, frankly, she’s not a safe person to tell.
Becky talks about Joyce like she’s a chew toy and dismissed the early fledgling of this thought. Joyce was allowed time and space to deal with and explore her feelings on this topic without having to tell Becky. Becky doesn’t own her and actually isn’t entitled to Joyce’s every thought and journey.
The fact that Becky overheard something upsetting is due to her inability to allow Joyce to be her own person. Becky has NO boundaries so Joyce isn’t allowed any either? The comments section has been legitimately gross these last few pages.
Joyce was lying to her though, she wasn’t just not bringing up the topic.
The clearest example is in the strip “watchin” in As long as it’s free in the run up to Becky’s birthday party. Becky asks her directly what’s going on that made Joyce hesitate after Becky said that her mom was watching her from heaven, and Joyce tells her a direct naked lie.
She even lampshades that that’s what’s she’s doing at the end of the strip.
She could have set a boundary there and insisted on keeping the thought private but she didn’t, she choose to lie instead.
That might have gone poorly, or it might not, in various ways probably some that’d have been Becky’s fault but that doesn’t change the fact that Joyce choose to lie.
There is no way that Joyce would have been able to say “I’m not interested in/ready to talk to you about this topic right now” without it causing a much worse scene than this even.
Becky has repeatedly shown that she will violate boundaries and it was an important and stressful day for her already. She has also shown that she will disregard Joyce’s feelings on things when she feels she’s having a bigger problem because something-something-trauma-olympics.
Becky was not a safe person to tell. Joyce does not owe her an apology for not starting a fight on her dead mother’s birthday, Becky is NOT entitled to her inner thoughts no matter what they might be.
Exactly, it’s amazing the number of people ignoring Becky’s part in all this, she put Joyce in an impossible situation the day before and pushed her to reveal her private thoughts until Joyce lied to avoid hurting Becky on a bad day. Then, today she forced her way into Joyce’s time with Liz because she’s insanely possessive and lacks any appropriate boundaries and respect for Joyce’s autonomy. Yes, Joyce said something angry and bitter that hurt Becky, but Becky has no respect for Joyce as a separate individual and never has and that’s not alright.
Joyce apologized. The first words out of her mouth were ‘I’m sorry’. Becky declined the apology for what Joyce is actually sorry for, and Joyce had better not apologize for having thoughts and feelings Becky doesn’t like.
But that IS why Joyce is sorry. That’s exactly why Joyce is sorry and what she is sorry for. She is sorry Becky heard that, and Becky refused to accept that. The apology Becky seems to want involves Joyce’s thoughts and feelings being eliminated and replaced by ones Becky likes better.
Yeah, people have this weird idea that feeling apologetic is all or nothing, like if you are unwilling to change future behavior or retract earlier behavior then you are lying about being sorry for the way it affects others. I can feel bad/guilty/apologetic/whatever about the way my behavior affects others and still stand by my words/actions. Here, Joyce is sorry for the way her words made Becky feel, but she still stands by the underlying sentiment of them, but Becky (and a lot of other people, it seems) is under the mistaken impression that Joyce cannot be sorry for the way her words affected Becky without retracting them.
Well, then their friendship should end, because if Joyce is only sorry that Becky heard her mocking Becky for being an idiot, then there really isn’t much else to day. If she stands by really thinking Becky is an idiot for believing, then I don’t see much future here.
If that’s not true, then she has more to apologize for than just letting Becky hear her.
She shouldn’t apologize for being an atheist, but that’s not the same thing.
Here’s kind of how I’m processing it right now in light of this new strip.
Joyce was cutting up other Christians, at least in concept, because Joyce thinks everyone processed belief in the exact same way: an Authority Figure tells you exactly what you need to think and that Authority Figure is only allowed to be contradicted if a higher tiered Authority Figure pulls rank. Joyce thinks every Christian (I honestly can’t imagine she knows how to process the existence of other religions) had the same kind of faith as her, which is to say they all had inerrant rules to follow without question and a God who sent pain for their own good.
Like, Joyce is not responding to Becky’s feelings right now. Much like how Becky thought Joyce would naturally get over all the unimportant stuff like Becky, it seems Joyce thought Becky also thought, or was supposed to, think of her faith as an inerrant fact with no deviation.
I think that’s more analysis than Joyce has put into it. 🙂
In my take, Joyce was cutting up other Christians because of frustration with the version she was raised in and her own feelings about believing it. She was venting. She hasn’t really been focused on even whether others in her sect, like Becky, understood it the same way she did, much less how Christians in non-fundie churches might understand it.
It’s less about whether Joyce is analyzing and more that, at least from this strip and how she’s approaching Becky, I don’t think Joyce has ever thought about how other people process faith. I think Joyce assumed Becky and everyone else treated it like a rulebook.
Like to try and sum this up: Joyce was talking about herself, but she was talking about the only experience she thinks exists.
But that’s exactly what you’re asking for. Joyce is blowing up a mountain, and right now all she’s got is ‘this is so stupid! I was so stupid! How could anyone believe this? How could I? It’s so stupid to believe this.’ What’s happening right this moment is that Joyce’s answer to whether she thinks Becky is dumb for believing is ‘right now, yes!’ Because Joyce feels the dumb on every level despite knowing that Becky’s not. The feeling has NOTHING to do with Becky, only Joyce. It’s Joyce’s crisis.
Is it messy? Yes. Is it kind of mean? Also yes. Did Joyce ever intend to let the best friend she loves see this internal shitstorm? Emphatically no. Had Joyce been allowed the time and space to get the big garbage out, process and think through and find what she actually does believe, there could have been a less-messy version of this conversation.
Becky and the narrative didn’t allow it, so here we are! With Becky attempting to make Joyce’s crisis all about her and getting a face full of why that was not advisable.
What she needs to say is that part about her feeling dumb. Right now, combined with the mockery Becky overheard, it sounds like she thinks Becky is an idiot and she’s a brain genius.
It’s not completely the same though. Her being caught is only a small fraction of the problem. (And her only being sorry about being caught is not going to useful as an apology).
If Joyce was only sorry being caught, that’d imply she’s completely fine with the ‘all believers are complete idiots’ mindset, and thus considers Becky a complete idiot. That hurts, and Becky is understandably unhappy with that. Especially combined with the betrayal when someone she considered a friend was apparently only lying, while actually considering her a complete idiot.
It’s also pretty worthless as an apology, as it doesn’t offer any apology for the actual offense. ‘I’m sorry you heard me calling you an idiot, I still consider you an idiot and will refer to you as such behind your back’ doesn’t really make anyone feel better.
This is not really about Joyce’s own beliefs, it’s about her current attitude towards believers. Becky seems flexible enough to be cool with Joyce not being a believer, but the active mocking of believers (which includes her) is the problem here.
Joyce is calling ALL Christians idiots. While yes she is projecting her own anger here, Becky DID just walk into a conversation where her *BEST FRIEND* is with some new friend going “Ha, that old friend my mine? Total dumbass. LOL”
Yeah no shit Becky is hurt. That attitude is shitty and not a good look. Why would she want an apology for overhearing Joyce? That makes no sense. She wants Joyce to apologize for calling her an idiot.
Why would Becky want an apology for overhearing Joyce? That makes no sense. She wants Joyce to apologize for calling her an idiot.
Sure Joyce is sorry Becky overheard, but the overhearing isn’t what hurt Becky, it’s her best friend calling her an idiot for having a religion at all.
Becky has known her entire life that her father is a liar, so she never hung her religion on him. Joyce found out just recently that her parents lied to her.
This is the comment I’ve been writing in my head. Joyce grew up in a perfect family. There weren’t any problems between her parents or siblings, only with the outside world. Any family internal problems were successfully hidden from her. Her family was perfect, so her religion was perfect too.
Becky grew up in a family that was broken. It was forbidden to talk about the problems, but they couldn’t be hidden from her. She loved her family, but had no illusions that it was all good. So she has no problem with the idea that her religion is imperfect, but the bad parts don’t mean that the good parts aren’t good.
I think Joyce also saw how deeply the entire community backed Ross and contributed to their trauma in a way Becky hasn’t – even Hank, the ‘good’ parent who emphatically DID NOT stand with Ross, still considers ‘atheist’ synonymous with ‘bad’ per his talk with the Keeners post-kidnapping, and Joyce knows that because of the Freshman Family Weekend blowup over her friendship with Dorothy. Becky can brush off Carol being judgy, but Joyce heard Carol use the same ‘I will die for you’ Ross did immediately after the first kidnapping. Joyce knows she went to a secular college and Becky didn’t in part because Joyce was more obedient than the other kids.
And of course, Becky needs to believe Bonnie would never have betrayed her the way Ross did, which means her mom couldn’t possibly have been complicit in raising her in a deeply harmful way. (In fairness to Bonnie, I fully believe she was also raised by fundamentalists and never thought she had an alternative, which I think contributed to her eventual suicide attempt. But I wonder if part of that depression stemmed from watching a curious, rebellious little girl grow up and realizing the same thing Becky did about the role she was allowed – that it didn’t fit, and never would, and Becky would end up as stifled as she was. Intentionally or not, Bonnie harmed Becky as well, and Becky is not remotely equipped to recognize that right now.)
Very good point. I agree that Becky probably holds Bonny up on a pedistal, and that she’s not prepared to look closer at the damage her mother did to her.
Joyce does not have the luxury of idealizing any of her parents.
I think Becky probably has some complicated feelings about Bonnie’s suicide attempt – not enough time had passed for her to be talking about Ross at the hospital to Amber – but I suspect she separates that one action from all the things preceding it. (I also take it as a given Becky received no mental healthcare whatsoever for the whole ‘finding her mom overdosing’ thing, which is why I suspect she ALSO might not be particularly fond of ‘God works in mysterious ways (and that’s why your mom’s dying)’. Poor Becky.)
*Reads old comments under that strip* Huh. I forgot I wrote this in 2015:
“Next DOA-year, Joyce will start drawing cartoons about a character named Julia Baker who struggles to reconcile religion with her college experience while saving the world from interdimensional alien invaders.”
“I probably won’t think you’re stupid for believing that stuff once I’ve gone through the fallout. but right now I think *I* was an idiot, and it looks very much like, if I’m an idiot for my beliefs, you must be too.”
Wow it’s amazing how Joyce and Becky hate and loathe each other now, they’re definitely gonna have long lasting animosity forever now, Becky literally will hire Agent 47 to assassinate Joyce, Joyce is planning to kill Becky in real life with a gun, hate hate hate hate hate.
Next strip, Willis will announce the release of his new fighting game DoA: College Fight. Play as your favorite character with unique special abilities!
Billie: summons a cheer squad to run you over.
Sarah: between a baseball bat and a law degree.
Ruth: already has your femurs.
Becky: calls in an orbital strike on any and all closets.
Joyce:
Make sure you click “Add to your wishlist” for updates!
I have a .png file of Read Hall with a basic painting filter on it and the Dumbing of Age logo in the top-center. It’s exactly as nothing as you’re imagining.
Carla: laser-shooting rollerskates.
Faz: shows you a really disturbing drawing.
Amber: game-within-game, inception-style hacking. She kill you.
Dina: emulates the behaviour of whatever creature’s currently at the top of the sci-news.com/paleontology page.
Sal: blasé remarks about how stupid fighting games are. also, mean punch.
I’m wondering if Becky and Dorothy hadn’t interrupted Joyce, in fact weren’t there at all, would Joyce have gotten everything out of her system (like a dam breaking) and then be able to talk to Becky about this?
Everything, probably not. But there also would’ve been space for a debrief with Sarah, and maybe Joe, and that might have been enough. It probably would’ve gotten her to the point of confessing to Becky, who I don’t think would have taken it much better than this, frankly.
At this point, this probably is going to end with an ‘I guess we’re not friends anymore’, however temporary that may be. Becky seems to only be interested in hearing ‘Becky, you’re right, I’m sorry, God is totally real and in my heart all day forever.’
Joyce cannot give her that. Joyce hasn’t fully processed what she actually DOES believe. At this point, all she knows is that she doesn’t feel God, isn’t sure she ever really did, and that the piles of stupid bullshit (young earth, dinosaurs on an ark, etc) that she definitely should not believe are basically the only things that are actually there in the ‘faith’ place inside her.
It’s different for Becky. But no amount of demanding or ultimatum or argument will make it any different for Joyce right now.
That, I don’t think, myself. I think Dina could be very helpful to Becky in understanding where Joyce is coming from. Also, Becky has been much more willing to accept all of Dina, as a real person, than she has been of Joyce. Dina is the best person with whom Becky can wrestle with these things..
On the other hand… If becky ever asks dina “do you think my religious beliefs are DUMB” (as becky is suggesting with joyce) then dina might end up saying yes they are. Result: unexpected problems in their relationship.
I don’t doubt Dina will say ‘yes’ to some, but crucially Dina us 100% sure on her own beliefs and priorities. I have no doubt that she has questioned and reasoned within herself, knows what she can and can’t accept in herself and others. Becky hasn’t clung to the things that Dina can’t tolerate and hasn’t demanded that Dina believe anything.
I feel like Dina’s response will be something like ‘your religious upbringing was filled with vile and, yes, exceptionally stupid lies, and I do not believe in God myself, but I accept that you do. Your belief does not deny reality in a meaningful way, therefore I see no difficulty with it even if I will never share it.’
That absolutely DOES answer the question, and frankly it’s a ridiculous question really.
Dina is aware that Becky is intelligent, and will certainly say so if asked. They wouldn’t be dating if Dina thought Becky was dumb. Dina values reason and intellect very highly, and has relied more than once on Becky being both intelligent and perceptive. Becky has one or more thoroughly unprovable beliefs that Dina does not share and never will, that’s all.
No, it doesn’t answer the question. It dances around it while avoiding what was actually asked. The question wasn’t “Was I exposed to lies when growing up”, it was “Am I dumb to continue believing in some of those lies now”.
Becky may have been exposed to “stupid lies” when growing up, ,but she is now exposed to a more scientific world view. Yet she is still clinging to some elements of her superstition. Dina is probably quite willing to ignore that, because she values her relationship with Becky. But if Becky decides to actually ASK Dina straight up what she thinks of her religion, I doubt you will get the tap-dancing response you seem to think she will provide.
I dunno, I want to agree with you, but Dina replied to “You’re proof that there’s a higher power” with “That’s not how any of that works,” basically. I do suspect that at some point she’ll just have to tell Becky that she does think it’s all kind of unscientific hand-waving, and Becky will have to make her peace with that.
Dina is, I think, honest enough to be able to take the position that she can’t prove a negative, so as long as Becky doesn’t believe anything that CAN be proved to be incorrect, it’s not worth arguing about. Which may well be enough for Becky to make do.
But, if the negative is so… unscientific (like the aspects of chritianity) then an atheist can easily dismiss it.
After all, if you claim that there is an invisible pink unicorn living in your sock drawer, I can’t [i]prove[/i] its wrong. But it falls so far outside the bounds of accepted science that nobody woudl take it seriously.
I think Becky wants to hear that from Joyce specifically. Dina is supposed to be her atheist dinosaur girl, Joyce is supposed to be her fundamentalist religious best friend.
Me too. They both need to sort out reality and their desired relationship with it. Only then will they be able to sort out a real relationship with each other, if they want one.
Joyce is finally getting to get her frustrations out about religion, and the only one who’s left to listen is her closest friend. Shit sucks and I’ve been there
Closest friend no, oldest yes. Dorothy, Joe and Sarah have all shown to be better, closer friends to Joyce then Becky has and thats the main problem here
Becky doesn’t want to be friends with Joyce, she wants to be friends with a Joyce-Bot
A little late to the party on this one but I must say I’m a little surprised these two appear to be so uncompromising. Especially since they both have pretty valid points. Why should Becky keep following a religion that’s been so damaging to her? Especially since for how flexible she supposedly is she still choses to uphold some of the more toxic aspects of it even if that gets in the way of her own happiness. Such as her views on sexual intimacy creating some self inflicted tension between her and Dina.
And Joyce shouldn’t let the abusive expression of Christianity she was raised with dictate the validity of the entire religion. She’s old enough to make her own decisions on that, they both are.
Ironically they’re both giving people whose opinions don’t matter too much power over what they believe.
Joyce has a choice on what she believes, yes. But she doesn’t really know what to keep and what not to keep because authority figures have been doing that for her all her life, and she has yet to completely detangle and discern HER beliefs from HER GROUP’S beliefs.
What Joyce is doing right now is that she’s trying to distance herself from her religion as much possible, because what’s important to her right now is breaking the hold they have on her brain.
It’s kinda like the psychological equivalent of how the Russian Socialists didn’t have time to determine what “collective ownership” meant during the revolution, when they were too busy trying to avoid getting shot.
Yup. During the walk through the snow, I was saying that Joyce really needed Jacob to bounce this stuff off. Jacob thinks thoroughly enough that he’d be useful at digging into the details, is religious enough to offer a solid alternative perspective, and is kind enough to give her exactly as much space as she needs to figure it out.
There was even a couple of strips where the conversation started. But of course, then drama happened and there wasn’t another such conversation.
1) Yeah as Holly said, they’re like 18, and to use Willis’s exact word for it, were raised in a cult. Neither of them’s been given healthy tools to unpack the trauma there.
2) That also means Becky hasn’t had the time or tools to unpack ‘okay but exactly how much do I think God ACTUALLY doesn’t like premarital hanky panky, and how much do I think that’s something adults tell kids so they’ll be overcome with appropriately straight lust, get married and start popping out babies ASAP?’ Which is part of where her issue re: sex is, since she’s just as ashamed of having Sexual Desires as Joyce is and was hoping her hot atheist girlfriend would likewise be overcome with lust and, unbound by those Christian mores, utterly ravage her and then once it’s happened once it’s not so bad, right? And God will eventually forgive them because they just couldn’t help themselves, they were being controlled by hormones, which is why Dina being a sex-positive aspec who’s very clear that she wants to have sex when Becky does but has no problem waiting because she DOESN’T experience sexual attraction as a constant, inescapable horniness has been such a curveball.
3) I genuinely don’t think Joyce ever experienced faith in the same way Becky did, which means there’s not that same comfort to salvage. Joyce internalized the fear, the eternal damnation, the Do The Right Thing And Think The Right Thoughts Or Else, in part because Joyce is a very anxious person who fears punishment and other people’s displeasure. (Was she always prone to anxiety, or was it the trauma? If anyone figures it out, tell Willis, he wants to know.) Becky internalized the idea that someone lives her unconditionally and will answer her prayers when she’s kidnapped with superheroes and her best friend on a motorcycle, that her mom is happy and watching over her and they’ll see each other again someday. (So you know, also informed by religious trauma, but differently.) I think we have a while to go yet before they get to that particular fundamental difference, and that’s the key to why they can’t come around to each other’s lines of thinking. Until they realize that, I suspect there’s still more anger to go around, because how DARE the other have a different response to their shared religiously abusive upbringings than their own, which is obviously the correct one.
On 3, I feel like as I go through life I encounter two brands of people, people who Feel spirituality in some form and people who don’t, and while how and where you were raised will determine what you end up with anyways and how those tendencies manifest, at the end of the day the people who Feel it will find some way to express or tie themselves to some form of spirituality and the people who don’t will trend agnostic/atheist or just live by the mores, values, and logic of the culture they live in.
Becky clearly Feels god, and Joyce clearly doesn’t. Which was fine as long as Joyce was living in a cult bubble that told her what the rules of reality were and that they included god, but now? Without that artifice there’s nothing for Joyce to believe in. Trying is a logic problem, not a feeling. Whereas Becky has never stopped feeling something was there and can’t understand why Joyce Doesn’t Get It.
Yeah, some people are treating this as a choice that they should sit back and make after due logical consideration, which it really isn’t. Whether it’s as innate as you suggest or not, Joyce doesn’t believe in God anymore, while Becky does. Neither of them can just decide to change that. They could pretend, but core beliefs like that rarely come out of conscious choice – even if we rationalize them afterwards.
Yep. And Joyce isn’t exactly motivated to try and feel God even if that was likely to work, because her idea of a loving God was dependent on the Garden of Eden story literally being true (so that death and such weren’t God’s design,) and original sin being a thing. But now she’s realized that she doesn’t like the idea of original sin, either. The idea that Jesus died for her sins is actively triggering due to Ross and Carol. Becky could ask her to try, but even the stuff that wasn’t dependent on the cult upbringing is stuff Joyce is realizing she doesn’t like.
The thing is, (2) can take decades to unpack, even after marriage. Evangelical Christianity is so hyper-focused on “sexual morality/purity” that a lot of people internalize that more than the other stuff. I have known several ex-vangelicals who, even as liberal Christians, deists, and atheists, would say “Well, I don’t believe in hell, but of course you should wait to get married to have sex. Imagine the guilt if you didn’t!”
Oh, yeah, shame runs deep. One of those reasons why I think both girls could use a therapist experienced with religious trauma and abuse, because while I don’t think Becky needs to drop everything and have sex right now I do think the shame for having sexual desires is unhealthy and she could use some help trying to reduce it a bit.
I think I’ve read a few stories online where even after marriage such christians can be still fucked up by the emphasis on ‘purity’ to the point that they can’t go through with it despite a part of them wanting to. Because they still feel subconsciously it’s unclean. It’s actually really hard to work past for them.
Well, I was hoping maybe Joyce might get to specifics but Becky is too angry and Joyce is too close to her own anger.
I assumed that Joyce doesn’t think Beckys an idiot, just herself, but now I think her anger is at everything in their childhoods which includes the faith maybe faith itself. That is genuinely concerning beyond this. I think it’s fair game to say what you will about christianity and catholicism, 2 extremely powerful religions whose impacts when you consider how they’ve been utilised around the world, but once you go beyond that you’ve ceased to care about power dynamics and your criticism is lazy “skygod” atheist crap.
But back to the argument, this is maybe gonna end in their friendship breaking with both of them speaking past one another. They both seem rigid in at least the question of beliefs from childhood. Joyce wants to abandon everything including belief in god whereas Becky needs Joyce to be at the same place she is because Becky has her boxes, which includes believing in god
I was maybe too kind to Joyce she seems to be unable to interact with anything that reminds her of her upbringing unless it’s like Liz who hates it a lot. But Becky I’m not surprised by, her need for people to stay the same once Becky decides what that is is a long running problem for her, and here we see it manifest. She might have found a way through social pressure or whatever to accept Joyce as an atheist otherwise but here she has a perfectly justifiable reason to be mad: Joyce mocking of belief. So she can hold onto that anger and not face the fact Joyce changed, a thing Becky kind of hates.
Gonna be interesting what the fallout is, I assume Dorothy is on Becky’s side and Sarah and Joe on Joyce’s but Dina will be interesting considering she has been shown to not care for a lot of Becky’s beliefs to the point of anger. Though watching Dina defend Becky while struggling with what she’s defending would be funny.
Sarah and Joe, no question. Sarah stands with Little Sis and Joe with his Dammit Feelings Why You Gotta Stealth A Bro. Also, Joyce is his lab partner, they need to get along.
Dina for sure supporting Becky, but that gets complicated since she’s… pretty vocal and open about thinking religion is trash. She and Becky have navigated that so far, though, so I trust Dina’s navigation going forward.
I think Dorothy is likely to do her damnedest to stay neutral. She has to live with Becky, and she genuinely loves Joyce (rather than a box labeled Joyce, as Becky seems to at the moment) so she won’t want breakage on either side f she can avoid it.
If pressed, though, I think she’ll choose Joyce over the girl who’s been passive-aggressively bullying her for X amount of time. Said passive-aggressive bullying is surely a good basis for a request to change roommates if it comes to that. I bet Sal would be willing to have Dorothy instead of Malaya. (The Becky and Malaya war of posturing would be glorious.)
Dang your right about Dorothy, her desire for neutrality will for sure keep her in the middle. Honestly your right on all of them, I especially hope Becky and Malaya end up room mates cause that would be funny, pure chaos right there
The more I think about it, the more I think that Becky and Malaya might even be good for each other. Malaya will push back against Becky’s actual fakey bits the way no one else Becky knows ever does, and the bulk of Becky that actually IS ‘unapologetically me’ might actually give Malaya something to think about.
Hmmm… Seeing roommate assignments change from becky/dorothy and sal/malaya to becky/makaya and sal/dorothy would be some interesting dynamics… Not only do you have the drama of breaking friendships but in one room you have a lesbian and malaya with her… Complex sexuality. And in the other room you have sal dating dorothy’s ex.
I don’t think Dorothy will have any particular issue with Sal and Danny sating. In fact, I think she’d be legit happy, especially if she sees Danny playfully ribbing Sal. It’s a relationship of equals and people who enjoy each other’s company, not Danny passively following Sal around like a puppy. On the flip side, Sal has never put Dorothy on a That Perfect Girl pedestal, so I don’t imagine that general insecurity/jealousy re: ‘pretty white ex’ would survive past Dorothy’s utter unconcern or Danny’s provable, actual continued affection and care.
Just as importantly, Dorothy has never seemed to put Sal on any kind of ‘unapproachably cool girl’ pedestal, either. Frankly, neither seems to much care about the other one way or the other. They’d be the perfect roomates!
I don’t think she does think Becky’s an idiot! I think she believes some of the things Becky believes are dumb, and since those things are pretty fundamental to Becky, it’s going to be (understandably) pretty hard to really hear a distinction there.
That’s true. I will say I think they’re both avoiding the central dilemma that Joyce doesn’t believe anymore and is an atheist because that means neither one will have the same belief and so much of their relationship has been defined by having the same perspective.
Sometimes you can’t fix something that’s broken and, in this case, I’m not sure that Joyce’s bitterness and sense of betrayal will ever let her be Becky’s friend again.
1) When Becky ran away, she came straight to Joyce. Joyce accepted her with open arms, and sheltered her at immense risk of trouble with her landlords.
2) During the first kidnapping, Joyce jumped on a motorcycle, chased down Toedad and Becky, and KOed Toedad right in front of her.
3) In BOTH kidnappings, Becky agreed to offer herself up as a sacrifice to secure Joyce’s freedom.
There’s countless examples of that all throughout the series. As friendships go, this is quite possibly the strongest in the entire series. I doubt it’s going to end after a single bout of unintentional mocking.
That they love each other or think they do is, at least for me, not in question. That they’ll eventually come together and mend fences is also, for me, not in question.
More and more I think that what we’re seeing now is something like the flip side of your point #1. Previously, Becky ran to Joyce, pretended everything was normal, and then snapped and kissed Joyce, who was all NOPE NO THANKS. And that scene ended with Joyce declaring that Becky was more important, she’ll have Becky’s back no matter what. (And, please note, Joyce has been exactly as good as this word.)
Now, we’re seeing Joyce has been pretending everything is fine and normal, until she snapped and ranted, angry and bitter, and Becky’s reaction is NOPE. It remains to be seen whether Becky will stick the landing the way Joyce did. If JOYCE is worth sticking with and supporting no matter what. If she has Joyce’s back in a difficult time.
Based on past behavior, I think that’s a temporary no, and maybe it should be. It still might be a yes, though. We’re not at the landing yet, I feel.
This looks very bad. Joyce thinks she’s right and don’t wants to change idea, or even pretend to be still able to accept Becky’s point of view. Joyce is just tired of the whole story. Actually, I’m with her. At some point you need to be sincere. Even if that means destroy something that used to be important.
This is getting interesting. Joyce was brought up in the “God is a person and everything in the Bible is meant literally” materialistic branch of christianity while Becky seems to understand that christianity is a way of thinking and acting. I’m curious if their friendship will survive this.
Ehhhhh, that’s actually kind of a loop because that describes all people who think they’re Christians and thus is a more accurate way of saying it than, “A Christian believes X, Y, and Z.”
Or to use a less reactionary example:
1. Joyce was raised to believe that Jedi are only those raised by the Jedi Temple on Coruscant from birth.
2. Becky was raised to believe a Jedi is anyone who believes in the Force and serves the Light.
I dunno, perhaps because she wants to have sex with someone she has made a important commitment to? It feels weird to say that she should have sex before she’s ready.
I thought it was made clear that becky’s reluctance to have sex was based in large part because of her religious upbringing. (Wasn’t there some line becky had in an earlier comic about “just let me hold on to this part of my beliefs”?)
I mean, my thoughts on Becky are that if she was really ready for sex, she would’ve done it. Instead she tried to find someone to tell her not to. I get the feeling that the religious argument was the mask to cover up that she didn’t feel ready for it.
OTOH, she’s also said she was hoping Dina would blow past her objections and ravage her, so it’s not quite so simple as “tried to find someone to tell her not to.”
Part of the reason Becky’s not ready to have sex is that she’s been taught all her life that sex before marriage is bad. Maybe most of the reason. It’s not really reasonable to think all that washed off with no trace and she’s just clinging to the sexual purity because for some completely unrelated reason she’s really not ready.
How other folks who are in the know have described this to me, it’s that Becky’s hoping Dina will go so wild that Becky herself is not responsible for having sex. She’s supposed to be innocent, demure and chaste, but be innately so sexually enticing that the husband she was supposed to have won’t be able to control his powerful horny desires for her. This doesn’t make Intended Husband a bad person because “guys are just like that, silly” and Becky herself is not responsible.
Because trauma and brainwashing work in funny ways. There are a lot of atheist ex-fundies who still cling to the guilt of premarital sex. There are married fundies who are riddled with guilt for wanting to sleep with their spouse. Becky needs therapy for this
1: Akin to what Zee said, deprogramming your brain takes weird paths. It’s the same as how Joyce took so long after deconversion to question her evolution denial.
2: This is my own theory. I think Becky feels distrustful towards and overwhelmed by her own sexual impulses, like they’re too strong for her to control. Remember that the only time she indulged in them, at Anderson, she got caught and it went bad. So she puts as firm a leash on them as she can, but still really really wants that leash taken away from her.
I don’t think this is mainly about apologizing or even debating atheism vs religion. This is Joyce making a clean breast about what she feels to her close friend who she kept in the dark until now. This is obviously painful for both parts, but without this there is no way to amend their relationship.
Just pointing out to anyone who thinks Becky wouldn’t have taken it any better if they had that conversation earlier before Joyce’s outburst, Becky’s first problem isn’t that Joyce is an atheist. It’s that Joyce thinks Becky’s an idiot for not being an atheist. Has been ridiculing her behind her back for several days while pretending to be her friend, and giving her advice. That’s a betrayal. Of course she’s pissed off.
How is one overheard outburst ‘ridiculing for days’? How has Joyce been pretending to be a friend? She’s been pretending to be Christian while still very much actually being Becky’s friend.
Unless an absolute criteria for ‘Joyce friendship with Becky’, without which no friendship can exist, is ‘Joyce is devout Christian’. In that specific case yes, Joyce is pretending friendship.
Becky doesn’t know this insult session with Liz is a new thing, though. She doesn’t know anything about what Joyce thinks or believes or says when she’s not around. Whether that’s something she’s entitled to know is debatable, but it’s entirely possible there’s a part of Becky that’s feeling equally stupid and defensive about not having picked up on Joyce’s reluctance any time she’s talked about God or otherwise assumed they were on the same page about this stuff, and wondering what else she’s missed.
Kind of. I don’t think Joyce has only been pretending to be Becky’s friend or even that she intended to be mocking Becky, but it’s not at all unreasonable for Becky to think so. When you come across a friend making fun of you behind your back, it’s not strange to assume that’s not the first time.
Yeah Becky’s assumption is fair, but that’s what it is. It’s an assumption.
The stuff I said about us in the commentariat using the same words we’re assigning to ten different feelings is appropriate, because Becky and Joyce are both doing that to each other right.
Backy’s completely in the right to feel betrayed by Joyce and the comments section here is why; because the moment a person embraces atheism they automatically and baselessly believe they’re better and smarter than anyone who’s the religion they just abandoned five minutes ago, including everyone important in their life, including Becky, and they act like it too. What Becky says are the important parts are the things that keep the ego in check in that way. Joyce’s is so out of control right now that she thinks there’s the first one ever to realise that there’s a Christian who’s not a good person. Of course this is a standard she’ll never apply to atheism; the existence of an atheist jackass won’t undermine any of her nu atheist sensibilities at all because its foundation is a complete cynicism regarding the fact that people can be good and should try to.
Joyce has given away something that a careful reading has made clear for a few years, now, that she never really understood religion on the level Becky does. Regardless of her personal theological conviction, her level of understanding is less than Becky’s by a significant amount and that’s something that has to sting Becky, to realise not just that Joyce’s understanding is inferior to hers but that having realised that, she can’t do anything about it because Joyce won’t listen.
“because the moment a person embraces atheism they automatically and baselessly believe they’re better and smarter than anyone who’s the religion they just abandoned five minutes ago”
Don’t group everyone like that, not everyone who becomes atheist thinks of themselves as “better” than anyone else, to claim such a thing inherently implies that you’re no better than what you believe of atheists, that you believe you’re “better”. Many of us never cared about what other people believe, and have our own reasons for abandoning that faith, but pride isn’t a part of it. You’re also heavily missing the real issue here. It isn’t that Becky feels betrayed by Joyce for becoming atheist or learning she “didn’t understand religion”, it’s because she was her *best friend* and was lied to and mocked behind her back. I wouldn’t be surprised if within a few strips Becky flat out says she doesn’t care if Joyce is faithful or not, but that she just wishes she’d have been honest with her.
100% agree. To me it felt like Joyce was a fanatical Christian (a lot like born again Christian’s who obsess over what’s a sin and what isn’t. Whereas Becky is a normal Christian, who follows the bible without obsessing over it.
Exactly. Joyce has mixed up her theology, but not actually addressed the underlying baseless self-righteousness in any way. She’s just self-righteous about different stuff now.
I’m not sure that Joyce’s understanding of Christianity is less than Becky’s. It’s certainly different. I prefer Becky’s, personally, but then I’m an atheist, so my opinion doesn’t really count. I’m sure there are plenty of Christians who’d condemn Becky and stand by Joyce’s old approach and others who’d condemn both.
Also note that your take on atheists applies equally well to Christians (or to most religions, generally.) It’s very common, especially in fundamentalist circles, to be very disparaging of non-believers or those of other faiths. There are also old sayings about new converts being more pious or fanatic, which is basically human nature and applies to new atheists as easily as new believers.
“because the moment a person embraces atheism they automatically and baselessly believe they’re better and smarter than anyone who’s the religion they just abandoned five minutes ago, including everyone important in their life, including Becky, and they act like it too.”
Can you maybe phrase this in a not utterly fucking insulting and demeaning light that smears an entire group of people based on nothing more than their belief systems?
I hate the “I’m atheist and therefore superior” folks too, but that’s a fucking small subset of atheists, and that string of bullshit up there really doesn’t seem to notice that.
“the moment a person embraces atheism they automatically and baselessly believe they’re better and smarter than anyone who’s the religion they just abandoned five minutes ago, including everyone important in their life, including Becky, and they act like it too.” Stopped reading there. Holy shit. Did you actually read your own comment?
I hate when SOME atheists do this. Let me emphasize: SOME. I’m not the most Christian person ever, though I was raised Catholic. I’m a believer in science, but I also believe in God. Not in the same way the church instructed me to, hence why I left it. But I hate when atheists belittle someone with some faith with the science argument. Most Christians believe and acknowledge science, like Becky. She’s dating someone who knows about dinosaurs, she wants to he a scientist and is totally correct in that the takeaway of the bible isn’t exactly “dinosaurs in the ark”. In Becky’s case she’s NOT in denial like Joyce was, her faith isn’t blind. She’s taking solace of all her misfortunes in something spiritual but she’s not blindly accepting religion either and she’s right, no one, especially her shitbag dad should be allowed to take away her ONLY comfort. (And I’m not counting friends, because spiritual health,To me, is deeply personal).
In short, Joyce’s “but science!” argument is at the very least, tone deaf to someone who’s gone through ALL the shit and just needs spiritual solace. She indeed has no right to take it away from Becky.
Becky obviously believes in Theistic Evolution (like Roman Catholics and most Protestants do for example).
Joyce seems to have been …some sort of Geocentric given her mention of the sky-canopy.
And Becky’s right on the money with the “important bits part”. I’m Lutheran and I onced asked my pastor what our Synod’s official position on the linked continuum is. And he had no clue. Which tells you how “important” of a subject it is. He eventually just told me to assume we matched the Catholic position.
Well, Becky was also a geocentric young earth creationist up until Dina started showing her real science. I’m not sure she’s settled on any particular other variation – like your pastor, that’s not important to her.
I’m assuming LCMS, then? So far as I know Missouri Synod doesn’t have a lot of hardline doctrine handed down, so you can end up with very traditional high church congregations that tend more towards literalism (including young earth creationism in some cases) and much more contemporary low church congregations that are more socially and religiously liberal and more willing to accept intelligent design and the like. WELS does have a lot of doctrine handed down from the synod council, and I recall sitting down with a pastor at my Lutheran high school to catch up on a religion class, and him telling me how the creation myth and the Big Bang match up because nothing exploding sounds a lot like Gid saying “let there be,” y’know? Meanwhile, ELS is close enough to WELS that they’re in fellowship with each other (i.e., they believe both synods teach the same stuff enough that members of both believe pretty much the same thing) and I can’t really see ELCA churches just going along with Catholicism.
Idk in my experience as someone who was LCMS her whole life and whose mom worked for the church offices there’s a decent amount of doctrine handed down direct from the synod, it’s just not super super enforced like in WELS. Like you could go to 2 different churches in my hometown both the same synod and the pastor would be preaching 2 pretty different positions on the same issue. Heck even the size of the church and demographics have a big big influence on the church community beliefs, and if u get a real zealot type pastor fresh out of seminary you’re gonna have a weird ass time compared to some of the more long time, seen it all, chilled out a bit pastors. Actually caused a big conflict in my childhood church when the senior pastor was planning to retire cuz the junior pastor was much much more Fire and Faith style compared to the more relaxed, “well it’s ok if you’re gay and stuff like gods not sending u to hell over that”
I can see that. It’s been a very long time since I was regularly in an LCMS church (and a couple years since I was in any church at all, but that’s a different matter), and I went to a WELS church regularly for a longer period than LCMS churches.
I do wonder if the WELS call system has something to do with the doctrinal enforcement. When a pastor’s doesn’t have much say in where they get to work, it’s a lot easier to keep them in line. Either way, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a WELS pastor be relaxed and chill about homosexuality, which is a huge part of the reason I don’t care that they excommunicated me.
Whenever I explain Lutherans to people i can usually go “ELCA is the ‘we wanna be a modern church!’ Lutherans, LCMS is ‘Okay but like not toooooo modern right?’ And WELS is ‘If we wanna segregate the men from the women then by god we shall’ sort of church” and most people get a lil bug eyed about it.
That’s not a bad summation. The WELS has some doctrinal stuff I do like regarding fellowship, the nature of the Trinity, the sacraments, predestination, and the way salvation works, and I love the high church pomp and ceremony, but damn if they don’t also have some of the most backward teachings when it comes to gender and sexuality.
I appreciate this is clearly a personal issue for you, but I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of what’s going on. They were both raised in more or less the same fundamentalist evangelical environment that the author of this comic has described as a cult. Even if Becky recently abandoned parts of that belief, she definitely *did* at some point think the world was 6000 years old.
Joyce perspective here appears to be “Well if large parts of the religion we were raised in is patently idiotic and fake, what makes any other supernatural part of those beliefs any more legitimate?” which, while hardly an ironclad takedown of Christianity, is a fairly understandable and coherent question in this context.
Becky *can* move to a softer form of Christianity that skirts around the glaring conflicts with reality, there are already hundreds of millions of people with that stance, and she clearly derives meaningful value from her faith. But Joyce isn’t unjustified in asking what the point in doing that is, or whether doing that is intellectually honest, rather than simply abandoning the whole system of belief.
Joyce’s take is absolutely understandable. I think she should have led with “I dont think you’re an idiot” to Becky rather than the awkward ignoring of the question.
I do t think she thinks Becky is stupid for still believing, and shes trying to work through it herself. I think had Becky not heard her say that she wouldve come to terms with it in her own time and been able to tell Becky she respects her beliefs on it but her own has changed.
Of course Becky showed to feel hurt too, since it feels like joyce was calling her an idiot and stupid for still believing and after they had that whole thing for her mom.
It’s not a good situation for either, joyce was mostly venting her frustrations in what she thought was private and Becky heard her call those who still.believe stupid.
Shit, I’m agnostic as fuck, and I utterly loathe this sort of attitude.
It really comes down to one question regarding Joyce: What exactly does she believe in right now?
Even lifelong atheists have positions of belief, be it in people, in the wild randomness of the universe, or even that there can’t be an almighty divine being due to all the shit that happens in the world.
It’s one of the most important factors when it comes to this subject, recognizing that “Faith” and “Religion” are not the same thing. But right now, Joyce is so absorbed in Naytheism, as a result of all that trauma from *vigorously gestures at the last several hundred strips* that she’s cutting herself off from the notion of faith as a whole, and it’s getting kinda toxic.
She’s fully justified in being pissed off, no question, but eventually you have to find a place of peace with it all.
I’m not sure that lifelong atheists really need to have such positions of belief. I mean – “there’s no god” is part of the definition, but other than that.
Everybody has some beliefs of course, but I don’t think atheists really need anything special to replace religious beliefs. Theists can believe in people or in science, along with their belief in God. Atheists can believe in those things too, but they don’t have to.
I like to demarcate the difference as between “trust” and “faith” where “trust” is reliance on something without a guarantee because you’ve seen the something work before, even several times, and “faith” is that same reliance without the evidence.
2+2 will always equal 4 except in some very extreme circumstances that are not common, the same way the speed of light is constant until you hit a black hole or other extreme astronomical phenomenon, and so I trust math and science. Religious adherents only have faith that their god is real.
Much like everyone was insisting about her mockery, Joyce is really talking about her own beliefs here not Becky’s. That’s not the best tack to take and she certainly needs to say it more directly, but she’s talking about why she feels like an idiot, not why she thinks Becky is.
To preface, there is an obvious difference between an atheist, and a proselytizing anti-theist who voices loudly and argues that anyone who believes in a God or religion (or usually specifically a certain God or religion) is by definition a moron.
With that in mind, I don’t think I’ve ever met an anti-theist who didn’t base a significant chunk of their argument on taking holy books as direct and literal.
That’s a bit valid here, as Joyce WAS the type to believe everything she was taught with blind faith.
I personally just don’t understand why people are so afraid of the concept of compromise that it breeds these fanatics on both sides. Science searches for the ‘how’. Religion, or philosophy if you will, questions the ‘why’.
Science searches for answers, but every infinite will ALWAYS have something beyond to beg more questions.
Unanswered questions spawn speculation. Unanswerable questions bring endless speculation.
Joyce didn’t say she thinks Becky’s an idiot to Liz so technically that means I’m still right and don’t have to wear that embarrassing gravatar I believed so strongly I’d avoid that I made one way more horrible than anyone could come up with, right?
I mean she’s not calling her an idiot but I was real insistent Joyce was exclusively talking about herself, in that Joyce processed the dissolution of her faith as something completely exclusive to herself and even as a failing on her part that Becky was smart and cool enough to avoid. I still think the failing part is kinda true given how hesitant she is to call herself an atheist, but I think it’s more apparent she does think belief itself doesn’t make sense anymore which, well, there’s a lot to say about that too given how she’s phrasing herself now in this strip.
Anyway it looks like I was totally wrong about the idea of Joyce still admiring Becky’s faith, which in hindsight makes sense since that was mostly inference of their existing character dynamic and how nothing’s really changed between them so far whereas pretty much every other part of The Essay could get triple cited. Joyce obviously still loves Becky, but that’s based on Becky herself, not whether Becky did her upbringing right compared to Joyce.
And I think this strip kind of changes things a lot for how I viewed Joyce: I assumed she understood Becky as happy because Joyce herself did her religion wrong and that Becky was right, but it turns out Joyce thinks every single other Christian processed their faith as Joyce does: a set of rules chiseled from stone that you weren’t supposed to question in the slightest, and Becky obviously must have been questioning herself the same way Joyce did but found the answers she needed to stay faithful and to stay objectively right, which to Joyce would mean the same thing.
Like, Joyce is saying “the universe isn’t 6000 years old” because she processed that as an inerrant fact that God/her pastor/her mom and dad told her so, ergo it had to be objectively correct and anyone who said otherwise was wrong. Faith never had anything to do with it, and Becky doesn’t get that. She started that way too, but whatever it is in her that led to Toedad calling Joyce the most hopeful of the kids because she was the most obedient, she had no problem changing gears.
I had an ultra casual religious upbringing, so if I said “haha sky wizard”, that’d be me talking smack about something I don’t particularly understand or feel. I’d be making surface level commentary on something that means nothing to me.
Joyce did not just believe in a sky wizard, she believed in a sky wizard and fire-breathing dinosaurs and a veil of water that filled the sky that would let people live to 900 years old. Her sky wizard is associated with things that are actually stupid bullshit, it just turns out that Joyce thought everyone believed in the fire-breathing dinosaurs as much as she did.
Hmmm, now I’m going to go in the other direction. I’m not sure Joyce has really gotten to the point of processing what other Christians believe or even what Becky believes.
She’s still talking about herself and why she feels like an idiot. She’s projecting it outward and Becky’s getting caught in the splash, but she’s still talking about her own struggle. She really needs to say that more explicitly – admit that she feels stupid and that it was venting about that that led to her mocking believers in general.
Yeah, but that’s about like giving a regular duck the Chaos Emeralds. We know somethin’ is about to happen, but it’s probably gonna be really stupid and moderately underwhelming.
Up until this point, I’ve been reading this as a particularly “Joyce is autobiographical” chapter. Now though, I think it’s a “Joyce and Becky are both semi-autobiographical” chapter. Joyce represents all the afeelings of anger, betrayal, and negativity that must have come out of lil’ David when he was decompressing from fundamentalism, Becky represents much-later David, after he came to peace with it on his terms. I think Joyce’s all-or-nothing mentality compared to Becky’s throwing out the crap while keeping the good stuff is evidence of this. Joyce does have positive memories, but she’s not focusing on them right now because her world is completely broken. Becky made her peace with her upbringing, and she’s holding onto the good again.
(Not trying to put words in your mouth of course, this is just my interpretation.)
Two days in a row with no punchline? This is the most srsbizns DoA has ever been, which is remarkable for a story that includes two kidnapping attempts and a murder.
Becky made a very good point, in the last panel. Yes there are terrible people, who abuse religion to justify doing terrible things; but that does not invalidate the decent people who do believe.Just because Becky has strong theological beliefs, does not make her stupid or childish, and just because her dad was an asshat, does not mean that she has to give up on those beliefs.
I think the difference here is Joyce bought in to the authoritarianism of conservative biblical literalism hook, line and sinker. To Joyce, religion IS community IS family IS morality IS “The Rules” etc. None of it is severable so for her it was like a house of cards. If one faltered a little, the rest could support it, but if one failed completely to her, her faith and trust in the rest all comes down, too. For Joyce all of those things are like a fracture critical bridge. For Becky it’s more like juggling balls. Each ball can fall and it doesn’t necessarily affect the others.
Joyce is more of a rigid, black or white thinker. Becky’s a lot more flexible in her mindset. Becky’s faith can bend to accommodate new circumstances and information. Joyce’s can’t.
And so they’re talking past each other because Joyce is saying my bridge collapsed because this critical support failed and Becky is confused how a juggling ball can support a bridge.
Becky managed to get many bricks out and its still standing.
In all seriousness joyce has been uncompromising in the bible and her belief for a while, and she tried to make it work with her new values since she came to college but it’s not meshing for her.
Her family has.fallen apart, people she loves are hated because of it, including Becky. They were put in danger because.of not only Ross’s belief, but the belief of their entire.church ensuring he made bail, not even taking into account Blaine manipulating that belief for his own ends.
Hell, her belief was used against her by “Ryan” in order for him to get closer and nearly sexually assault her. A pastor’s son whom he admits was actually true.
That’s not even getting into the specifics of her mom and brothers, who actively were defending Ross’s actions through the eyes of their religion.
Its not the image she had of what her faith was supposed to be.
Beckham honestly I feel is keeping her faith to help her cope. Her.mom is long dead, dad recently dead and kidnapped her.in order to have her go through conversion therapy most likely, and community she grew up with has completely and utterly turned their backs on her.
Her relationship with God, besides Joyce is probably the only one she feels she still has from her time growing up. So shes holding onto it, making allowances, trying to justify her new scientific ideas with her faith, plusnwithout her parents or friends from before, it’s a.nice feeling having someone watch over you when dealing with so much.
Both are valid feelings in response to the situation, and the nuance comes in how they will be able to deal with each others new look on faith
And I suspect part of the issue is that Becky usually thinks of Joyce’s anxieties and obvious neurodivergence as an amusing quirk, and Joyce thinks of Becky’s rebellious tendencies as something that makes her cool and fun, and neither of them ever considered that as a result they have fundamentally different approaches to faith or the traumas they’ve experienced. They know they’re different people, obviously, but I think they’ve brushed off the fact that they don’t think in the same ways until right about now.
wrt the posts about “the sky wizard” commentary, ie surface level commentary that’s used to smugly dismiss religious beliefs, here’s how I’m processing it from Joyce’s perspective:
My religious upbringing was just an aspect of my life. I went to Church because my mom took me every Sunday and once I was old enough to stay alone at home, I stopped having faith because I had nothing gluing me to it. I make this sound shallow and it kind of is, but I’m saying that my faith was based on feelings and didn’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things. After-Church was just something I thought was for playing with other kids.
For someone like me to say “go pray to your sky wizard, nerd!” would be kind of petulant, because for someone like me, someone whose interactions with God were entirely faith-based and didn’t last long enough to become deep, I am mocking something I can only understand as feelings and those feelings weren’t much anyway, and I think, for the most part, North American God-types are about feelings too.
Joyce, of course, is not most of them. She grew up in a fundamentalist cult.
Joyce isn’t really criticizing the God you feel when you pray, she’s criticizing the God she never felt but was told was there and constantly judging her, who let bad things happen to her to teach her a lesson, and who was exactly as real and factual as fire-breathing dinosaurs that were hunted to extinction by man.
Like, here’s the thing; it’s okay to think fire-breathing dinosaurs are fake, they are. If you insist otherwise you’re actually dumb and it’s okay to say you’re dumb.
But God for most of us here isn’t processed like that. God to most of us isn’t a fact, he’s a feeling. He’s something you believe in that can’t be objectively quantified, because if he could you wouldn’t need to believe in him in the first place.
Joyce only knew he was real because she was told he was a fact, much like everything else. God for Joyce lives on the same level of reality as the fire-breathing dinosaurs.
You felt how you felt, but from what you’re saying here (which is the only thing I can go from) you never had faith at all. “going to church because I was forced to and I stopped as soon as I didn’t have to go” and “after-church was just time to play with other kids”, to me, don’t say “I had faith and then I lost it.”
It’s more like I had faith because I didn’t have a reason not to.
God, not even religion but just the existence of God, because religion in my upbringing was so uncomplicated that “believe in God, he’s got your back” was all that it ended up being, was a small part of my life.
Like I was “forced” to go to church in the sense that my mom also made me go to the grocery store with her or do sports that I didn’t like. It was just a part of my life I cared about because I was raised to care about it, and then getting cut loose showed me that it wasn’t so important that I wanted to keep it at it once I was old enough to make that decision.
I just stopped thinking about God the way I stop thinking about guys on Youtube when they stop showing up in my recommendations.
(Sorry for double post, pls don’t block me, Willis, I got some problems in comment)
OMG, this “God to most of us isn’t a fact, he’s a feeling.”.
That explain things I never could express.
I want to return to my teenage years and tell myself to not worry about not feeling the Holy Spirit at some revival meetings.
This isn’t her first F-bomb. When she thought she made Ethan and Joyce break up (which is technically true) Joyce wouldn’t get mad at her, so Becky told her that she should be fucking pissed.
Joyce was mortified but quickly accepted that Becky has been under a lot of stress, leading to an exasperated “gosh dang it, Joyce!”
Creationism and biblical literalism are actually tiny minorities in the religious community, and from what I’ve seen on youtube, are also the biggest source of religious critics and people who have deconverted.
Joyce is pissing me off here. She believed in all that shut herself up until like 2 months ago so she can have maybe a LITTLE patience for other people who still believe. It’s really shitty to act like believing in god is moronic when she herself was a “moron” until like yesterday
Wishing both characters well and that their connection to each remains even as it changes.
I wish they could have a long conversation of being angry, sad, and very real with each other. And at least leave with a better understanding of what is happening with each other and with themselves. Whether they’re still friends is up to them.
Nice fantasy it is the Dumbing of Age so will just hope for survivable damage and not to many tears.
I feel sorry for Joyce. She was raised to believe, and truly believed, in God so much, for so long, that it became a cornerstone of who she was. And now with her faith gone, she doesn’t have a good grasp of who she is, and when she finds someone else who was in the same boat at one point, she latched on for guidance.
And I believe that when she was making fun of people who believe in God (spurred on by her new “moral compass” as it were), Joyce is really making fun and ridiculing herself, because to her, she wouldn’t be so lost right now if she hadn’t believed in Him in the first place.
That was very much my experience. Never really believing but only admitting it to myself in college.
I didn’t believe in God even in elementary school, but adults around me believed so I figured I would get it when I am older and I got the message in Sunday school (after I got kicked out for calling God a murderer and getting very angry over Noah and the Ark) that questioning what adults told me wasn’t done by good kids.
So that’s a big part of why I kinda relate to Joyce if it is in fact the case that she was just giving lipservice. But like so convincingly she’d even fooled herself.
I’d be more sympathetic to Becky if it wasn’t for the fact she wasn’t supposed to be here to overhear this. Of course Joyce shouldn’t be shit talking behind Becky’s back, but Becky just WILL NOT leave her alone or let her grow in any way she deems unacceptable. She’s been trying to push Joyce away from other relationships. She hasn’t gone so far as to actually isolate her, but Becky is wandering in some vaguely Toedad territories here, and the sooner she knocks it off the better
Tbh Becky had no reason to believe that this conversation was taking place specifically because of her absence. In her mind she’d show up, give Joyce a good-natured ribbing about skipping class, and fifteen seconds later everyone would be getting along great. Instead she walks in on a conversation where we have the perspective and nuance to realize Joyce was taking deliberate aim at herself, but coming in partway it looks a lot more hazy, with Joyce seeming to be in full agreement with Liz and just adding more to the “jfc religion as a whole is dumb” pile.
You forget the part where Becky would also make abundantly clear to Liz who Joyces bestest friend evah is, was and always will be, forever and ever and ever
Anyway we’re not talking about this enough but: Becky in panel 5, by admitting that she thought Joyce would or already did shake off the adherence of the inerrant facts of their upbringing, that’s kind of signalling that she doesn’t understand Joyce’s perspective either and never really has.
I think that Becky “never thought those were the important parts” is an indication that they were facts until they contradicted, which is a way healthier view on this stuff and she totally could have seen it differently since Becky has been indicated to be subtly rebellious to her dad since childhood (but in a way that makes her a funny affable goofball that Joyce thinks is a huge badass). I wonder if part of that is that Joyce never had reason to doubt authority, whereas Becky had been failed/didn’t buy into it in a way that let her keep the unimportant bits but be open to them being wrong.
I’m kind of writing this to emphasize that these two, for all they love each other and will do anything to make each other happy, are not having the same conversation about the same thing.
Gotta agree with this take, that was my impression too. Joyce has generally been shown as a literalist in her reading of the Bible, while Becky’s view is way more like someone who already took a critical look at what she was taught, probably back in earlier childhood, shook off the clear fantasy and has kept the bits she needs.
Honestly not really. If we go back to other discussions Joyce has had on some of this stuff, Joyce has taken a critical look, maybe not a super in depth critical look but still a critical look, at this stuff and come to an honest conclusion that The Stupid Stuff Is Foundational. Because as she sees it if the stupid stuff isn’t true, original sin isn’t true, and if original sin isn’t true, everything bad in the world is god’s fault.
It’s been a slow creep realizing that, at least as far as writing through the years has led me to believe, Willis may actually be writing these comics as someone raised a fundie, turned atheist, then back to religion again.
For my part, I’ve been an atheist as long as I could choose, but this comic hits that sweet spot of nuance, because in spite of having laughed at church when I was 5 and pretended in youth groups and Sunday schools for friends into my teen years, I didn’t actually lose my faith in God, heaven and the afterlife in general as methods to cope with the loss of my father, aunt, and grandparents, until I was like… 17.
And that really broke me, I would have these massive, spiralling panic attacks where all I could do outwardly was sob and moan, inside the universe was being destroyed on loop and I was consumed with fear. I developed a phobia of earh destroying events, and would frequently have nightmares or melt into panic attacks when anythig triggered that phobia.
I eventually had help from good friends with rationalising my thoughts, learning to accept things I couldn’t change, finding a way to focus on positives and let go of worst case scenarios, and I began to identify through a sort of mindfulness what the actual sensation in my mind was when I was going off the rails, and just put it away. Like, oh, I’m feeling that, it will cause me to spiral into frightened lunacy. Oddly, being able to pinpoint a physical sensation causing the spirals helped me block them completely.
It was a devastating and years long road, the final nail in the coffin was wakig up from a dream about my dad, burning in hell, and he hated me. I woke up sobbing and unable to get my shit together, but somehow that itself was a catharsis. My dad wasn’t in heaven, he wasn’t in hell, he was just gone and it was up to me to be who I wanted to be, not who I thought he wanted me to be.
Yeah, I suspect it’s not ‘Willis came back to religion’ but ‘Willis has worked through the edgy atheism and anger from being brought up in a cult, and reached a point of being able to recognize non-toxic forms of religion exist and can write a religious character with empathy.’
Not that it’s any of our business either way, but the vibe I get/vaguely recall per It’s Walky reruns and the like is that their breaking from Christianity included a similar ‘wait, did I actually believe to begin with?’ as we saw with Joyce, and that’s one of those things you’re not super-likely to develop down the line. Especially when the cult upbringing interfaced badly with or outright caused some serious anxiety problems.
People are saying this is going badly but I think this is actually going well. It would be nice if this could be a calmer conversation but they’re both saying what they need to say, and without calling names or anything. They’re both saying what the other needs to hear- not to change their minds, but to get a grasp on what’s going on.
Here’s the real fun truth: Maybe they shouldn’t be friends?
People grow apart. It doesn’t mean you should be enemies. But that “friendship” level certainly doesn’t exist anymore.
You know, for all the chatter about how Becky has a right to be offended that Joyce said people who believe in God are stupid—because Becky does still believe in God, and therefore Joyce has called *Becky* stupid, by inference, even if she didn’t say “Becky is an idiot because Becky believes God is real and that God loves her”—I really don’t think Becky believes that Joyce thinks so poorly of her, or that that is at all the real issue she’s having here. Becky isn’t offended that Joyce said something mean that might apply to her; Becky is devastated that Joyce apparently doesn’t share her faith anymore.
I’m pretty sure if Joyce had gone after her and said all the perfect words—“my crisis of faith is MY crisis; it has nothing to do with you; when I mocked the religion we were raised in, I was mocking myself, not you, because my faith is broken, even though I know yours isn’t, and I envy that in you”—Becky would still be angry, and still not be okay knowing Joyce’s bitter, mocking words were about Joyce, and would still probably want to punish her. Because what this is *really* about is Becky either realizing for the first time (or, depending on whether her various little comments in the past few weeks were because she has some suspicions, having those suspicions painfully confirmed—she leapt to “Joyce isn’t a believer any more” fast enough that I suspect this) that she and Joyce *no longer share religious beliefs*. Becky is clearly capable of getting along with non-Christians/atheists, but her friendship with *Joyce* is, at the moment, completely inextricable from their common religious upbringing that has dominated every aspect of their entire lives from childhood.
Becky has managed to negotiate her religion and her faith during all this trauma and upheaval in a way that allowed her to move forward and accept new ideas and a more scientifically-informed worldview with the core of her faith still intact. She wants Joyce to follow her on that same path—to change, but only in the ways that keep her close to Becky, and to otherwise stay exactly the same, in the ways that keep her close to Becky. I think what Becky is really angry about is not that she thinks Joyce called her stupid—it’s the deeply, deeply uncomfortable realization that her closest friend no longer believes the same things as her. It’s about religion, here, or at least about faith and the belief in a higher power, but you could map this conflict—“we no longer believe in the same things”—onto just about any kind of profound ideological schism, and the emotions would be the same.
This could be the end of their friendship. I don’t know. I think it depends a lot on what Becky is willing to accept in Joyce, specifically, and whether she can continue to love someone who surprised her by turning out *not* to be exactly the person she always thought she was, or the precise iteration of that person that Becky would prefer.
(I think Joyce has already proven that she values people more than ideology—she started with Dorothy, she showed it a thousand times over with Becky, she showed it with Ethan—and that’s part of what’s led to the breaking of her faith in the first place! Her faith was ideological, and her ideology broke against her capacity for love. Joyce said she’d choose Becky over religion, and she did, even when it put her into conflict with her family. Joyce really means it.)
Anyway, right now, I have to say Becky’s reaction here is not heartening. She’s shown way, way, waaaaaaaaaaaay less capacity to handle change in Joyce than Joyce has in Becky. I would be pleasantly surprised, if she was able to roll with this in the short term; I would not at all be shocked if she chose to freeze Joyce out for a long time, especially since she’s less dependent on Joyce’s friendship for physical security at this exact moment in time. It would be kind of shitty of her, in the face of that unstinting friendship…but… *points to the strip title*.
I would really hope that even a Becky who did freeze out Joyce to punish her/because interacting with Joyce knowing this about her hurts her would eventually work her way through it enough to reconnect. They’ve been friends since they were little kids! That’s a LOT of shared history.
I agree. Becky was pretty much always going to react badly to this, and I can sympathize with why – she’s hurting, she needs something in her life she still recognizes after everything she’s lost, and she’s clearly really terrified of losing Joyce in specific – while still thinking this isn’t a great sign for Becky and their friendship. If they do have a friend breakup over this, I feel certain it wouldn’t be forever – I think once Becky has time to get through the initial shocked hurt, Leslie or Dina or someone will gently point out that Joyce is allowed to change and Becky’s being a bit shitty in implying otherwise, and that they’ve both been through something deeply traumatic and are allowed to react to that differently, and I think Joyce will eventually decide that no, she doesn’t think less of Lucy or Jacob for being religious while she DOES think Known Atheist Walky is kind of dumb – but that could be a couple years our time. But a friend breakup might be what they need to have the space to process. We’ll have to wait and see.
I sort of hope they DO have a friend breakup over this. I don’t think it’s one of those things that HAS to happen, but it would make sense, and it would push them both off in interesting social directions indefinitely.
(It might just be me, but oh man, has a friendship that started out as being really admirably devoted started to feel…claustrophobic. It certainly doesn’t help that a day in comic-time can take months to play out in real-time, but it’s been *years*, now, of Becky demanding that Joyce not change in ways Becky isn’t ready for. As a person who is foremost interested in Joyce’s personal growth…Becky and I have different goals, you know?)
I think, re: Joyce’s beliefs, that she’s fairly firm on ‘does not believe in God’s existence’ and has been for a little bit now. She’s been much less willing to ACKNOWLEDGE that fact, even to herself, but she’s actively God Isn’t Real.
I think part of this (per the original sin strip, the ‘everything happens for a reason’ that Becky walked in on, and the Rich Mullins dream and how ‘only Jesus is perfect’ just makes her sad now) is a realization that if God did exist and planned for things to happen this way, she doesn’t like that idea! If God exists, why would He let Becky’s mom die? Why wouldn’t He do something to stop Ross and Blaine from teaming up? (An aside: I would be really interested in knowing what Becky thinks about the same topic. My suspicion includes ‘She ALSO thinks Everything Is In God’s Plan is some bullshit’ and that Early Strip Joyce didn’t really believe in free will the way she does now, while Becky always has. But I’m also still not sure how Becky squares her belief in a loving God with the trauma that’s been her last year, which is one of those Core Questions of Religion everyone has to grapple with.) Even more critically, she sees Jesus dying for our sins as the same paternalistic ‘I’m doing the right thing and you might disagree, but I Know Better as an adult’ that was Ross’s motivation. ‘I would die for you’ is explicitly triggering to Joyce, whether it’s Carol saying it or a song about Jesus. Joyce losing her faith is directly tied to that particular trauma, so it’s no wonder she asks how Becky can still believe after what happened.
However, because Joyce has been so afraid to talk about this, and had so few outlets to process, she didn’t really think about ‘I don’t have to believe in the Ark anymore’ until talking about it with Joe. And I think that also means she hasn’t thought much about ‘so do you think Becky’s an idiot for believing? How about Lucy, or Sierra? How about Jacob?’ Let alone what she thinks about religious but non-Christian friends – at the moment, I suspect she’s not considering them much at all, because she knows functionally nothing about even other branches of Christianity beyond ‘they are wrong and therefore damned.’ I suspect at the moment her thinking ‘I believe in God, I’m an idiot’ is mostly projection of her own self-loathing for believing all these things that she now realizes were ridiculous, but she is at the moment extending it to the congregation that taught them all these things. But she also hasn’t had time to really sort through those feelings, to consider if she thinks her religious friends who never believed the literalism are dumb. I also suspect that right now, coming out of the trauma and acknowledging it for the first time, she doesn’t have the room to really think about the idea that religion isn’t all like what she grew up with – that it goes deeper than ‘not thinking gay people are going to hell’ and grape juice versus wine for communion, but that not every Christian believes in original sin, that not every religion believes God is infallible, that there are religious people who spend a lot of time grappling with how bad things happen to good people and how you can square that with a loving god where Joyce was likely taught* that Abraham was wrong to ask God for mercy for Sodom, because later God had to go back and destroy Sodom anyway.
* Per a recent Willis Tweet which I am including because it really is illustrative of how fucked up this religious teaching was. No wonder Joyce has an anxiety disorder (whether the cult upbringing caused it or exacerbated tendencies that were already there!) That’s pretty awful! https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1446939909298827266?s=21
Oh, also: Since people are betting they’ll change their gravatars if their predictions are wrong, let me tell you now that if I’m inaccurate here… I will do absolutely nothing. I’ve changed computers like twice since I made the AmeWut grav, I’m genuinely not sure I could find the file again if I needed to reupload it for whatever reason, and more to the point I wouldn’t be able to recognize my comments without it for whatever length of time I wasn’t using the usual one. As it stands I need a moment to readjust whenever one of the regular commenters switches to an all-new one. AmeWut is forever.
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“Why still eat food like your JACKASS FATHER ate?”
“WHY LET MY JACKASS FATHER TAKE FOOD AWAY FROM ME”
SEE HOW STUPID YOUR ARGUMENT IS JOYCE
But Joyce wouldn’t eat food like Ross did anyways. He was probably a big potatoes and gravy fan, while I think Joyce probably won’t eat gravy at all. At least not on the potatoes anyway. (Potatoes and gravy, yum.)
Joyce isn’t the one eating, Becky is
A single day is made up of 4 days and children should kill adults who don’t believe this basic truth.
Ack. It’s gone. Oh, well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube
Dang. I should have linked to https://web.archive.org/web/20141108172553/http://www.lib.hcu.edu.tw/journal/files/CAS/CAS0206.pdf
oh my god that looks both terrifying and delightful.
You must be EDUCATED STUPID.
You don’t understand 4 Simultaneous Days Same Earth Rotation.
Because this isn’t food, it’s information. If you already know a source is full of shit, you don’t keep believing the rest of that information without inspecting it.
If you like:
“Why eat the plague-ridden food your father gave you?”
“WHY LET MY JACKASS FATHER TAKE FOOD AWAY FROM ME?”
“…Because you know everything you DID eat made you sick?”
Her father isn’t the font of all religious information.
There are plenty of more open and accepting Christian groups. We’ve seen several in this comic even (Sierra’s church).
I have no faith that Becky is aware of any of them, tbh, or considers them legitimate if she is.
She’s been to an episcopal church, understood that it didn’t have the toxicity of her father’s version of Christianity, and seemed to have far fewer problems with its legitimacy than Joyce did. So, aware and seems to regard it as legit.
Oh, right! With Jacob, right? Completely forgot that episode.
I withdraw my objection.
Sounds like Becky has always had a broader worldview than Joyce, or at least didn’t build hers entirely around blind obedience to authority like she did.
she also went to church with Joyce & Sierra in a bonus strip and I think that’s her current church
I’m sure there are. But why believe any of it? And see below for my comment on non-literalists. If you don’t actually believe your own holy books then… what are you even doing? You’re literally making it up as you go along.
Jesus himself often explicitly spoke in parables and metaphor; it’s not such a great extension, then, for believers to posit that other parts of the book, too, would be such.
That’s what everybody’s doing. We’re all on a crazy ball spinning in a void and no one really knows what the heck is happening, so we’re all just trying to figure it out as best we can. Some people can look at a single source and think “This has all the answers I need, I’m good to go”. Other people find some very cogent ideas, and even if they don’t totally find some of the other bits useful, that doesn’t mean we have to dismiss every idea as being invalid.
This is little different than secular philosophy. I think there are a lot of interesting ideas to be gleaned from reading the works of Plato, he had a lot of interesting ideas about how we perceive reality through our senses and reason. He also seemed to believe that an ideal society would be a caste system ruled by an insular group of people raised from childhood on how best to rule over the rest of society and was generally dismissive of democracy in general. Does Plato being wrong about that somehow mean that his ideas about how we perceive the world are also without merit for consideration?
Knowledge and spiritual understanding is not a take it or leave it affair.
Plato’s ideas about how we perceive the world are only useful on the order of metaphor. Which is to say, not really.
On the other hand, democracy certainly does have it’s occasional problems as we have recently seen. An insular caste of people are probably not going to have an understanding of the society they are ruling and it will not go well. But if you had some other way of insulating the ruling class from self-interest, who knows?
Probably because fundamentalists invented the ideas the books weren’t parables in the first place. The whole idea of it being literally true is a very recent idea. Also, you know, maybe they believe in God and think the whole tenets of the faith are good.
Not remotely.
Well the Catholic Church said that it wasn’t literally true for most of its history and that a lot of it was parable. The entire idea of the priestly caste existing to interpret it is because it was not to be taken at face value is indeed a major part of the reason fundamentalism exists. To challenge the idea that “anyone” could read the Bible and know the truth.
Which the Catholic Church says, “No. That is not how it goes” and they are the oldest of churches. By, you know, 1600 years or so.
Even if the Church of England was the first non-Catholic Church, that still puts the foundation of Catholicism a century before Jesus died.
Pretty sure that there were splits before Constantine, if not *Nero*.
There were splits before the Gospels. 🙂
Early Christianity is a mess of different variants that eventually mostly coalesced into Catholicism or were wiped out – though some sects from splits from the early centuries have survived (Coptics?)
Why worry about old sects when there are plenty of new ones.
http://www.angels-heaven.org/english/img_0000/obr290.jpg
Access to the actual bible is. For a long time people sat in a big building while someone droned on in a language they didn’t understand and they prayed on their own terms. What the monks bickered about had fairly little impact on the people working the fields and going about their lives.
Before that, people were integrating their pre existing beliefs into a religion that was violently forced on them.
But Christianity IS NOT the only religion and should NEVER be treated as such.
The earliest religions were based on our connection to nature, and honestly after working on a farm I don’t know how you can connect deeply with nature and not believe in a divine force of some kind.
They worshipped the miracle of life coming forth and ending, the swollen belly of pregnancy, the return to the earth, the rhythm of the universe. They regarded seeds as precious treasures. It was an incredible show of gratitude for the amazing bounty this solar system has gifted our species with – which is something we could all use a little more of.
It’s really difficult to get a solid idea of what the earliest religions actually looked like. We can make assumptions and inferences but reconstructing a dead religion nobody bothered to write down is really hard.
Well I can say for my particular church we believe in revelationary reading, in that God imbues a divine understanding over the fallible word of man and lets you basically vibe with a deeper truth unable to be captured by literal writing. Every man his own prophet basically.
Sierra’s church is probably not a source of religious information for Becky, because if Sierra is any indication it has absolutely zero issues with pre-marital hanky panky.
Or they really underline the position of not judging others transgressions.
Yay. Atheist vs Christian debate./s
Everybody has something they firmly believe in that is completely unsupported by evidence. Have a good look through Snopes and Politifact and see if you can spot some of yours.
I am an agnostic and I have a belief completely unsupported by evidence that the universe is both just and merciful in the long run.
The label of ‘Christian’ is varied enough that if you ask if it is helping or harming people then the answer is clearly “Yes”. Many jerks justify their jerkness in Christian belief, many nice people credit their niceness on Christian belief and a great many ordinary people are a mixture of jerk and nice and blame/credit their Christian belief for that jerkness/niceness (although it’s arguably irrelevant for both).
I guess what I’m saying is, “Don’t be a jerk and removing religion isn’t going to magically remove jerkness from human society.”
I agree with you in most of what you said, but since I have been often “wordplayed” and dismissed by many “believers” throughout my life as a soul-less, bitter or plain stupid person, I have to clarify this little bit.
No, not “everybody has something they firmly believe in that is completely unsupported by evidence”. I don’t. I might believe some things that have yet to be _proved_ (like my belief that some type of life probably exists outside of Earth) but I would not put my hands to the fire for those, this is not part of my main convictions. Evidence (even personal experience, even if it can easily be wrong) is required for me to build concepts and ideology.
Is it better? Arguably, since objective truth is still not achieved, but it is my way of moving through life, I will see how it changes or not based on future experience.
In the meantime, I’m an Atheist and an Eskeptic. Depending on what part of the world you are in, that is quite shitty. I found out relatively recently that only 7% of people worldwide are “godless”, aparently, and since most are not in my country I have been planning to move somewhere else. Maybe one day I will.
For now, sorry, but I just don’t do that kind of belief.
> No, not “everybody has something they firmly believe in that is completely unsupported by evidence”.
The point of false beliefs is that you don’t know that they are false. If you take the time to check through lists of common misconceptions you’ll probably find at least one that you were sure was right. For example, today I found out that water isn’t actually completely colourless. If you asked me yesterday, I would have been sure that water – like air – only appears to be blue because of variable light refraction. But apparently it’s blue because even clean water preferentially absorbs red light.
https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/water-color?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects
The other point where you’re almost certain to have some firmly held beliefs with no evidential basis is politics. I won’t get into any particular side or belief (I don’t even live in the US) but political beliefs on all sides include at least as much fiction as any random religious group.
Right but you are doing a false equivalency, in that very example you immediately changed your mind when supplied with information to the contrary.
I didn’t say that everybody (including skeptics) have beliefs that aren’t supported by evidence and won’t change those beliefs if confronted with contrary evidence. That is a greater claim that I didn’t make.
Sorry Paul. In that last bit where you say “The other point where you’re almost certain to have some firmly held beliefs with no evidential basis is politics” are you implying I said a political thing, or are you just saying that politics in general often work with a set of beliefs with no evidential basis? This is a genuine question. I’m not a native English speaker, and I might be missing some obvious pointer to what you meant. Feel free not to answer.
I think we are having problems with the “believe” thing. Just to make it clear though, I want to say I’m making the following distinction between belief and faith: belief (as I used it) is only a matter of wording. You can replace it by “I think this is true”, but it is based on experience and/or facts, even if they might be proved wrong later. For example, many kids think the moon follows them at night. They don’t just come to this idea from nowhere.
They see the moon is always up there, and as they walk they see the moon is still in the same spot, so with all the knowledge they possess at the time, they figure the moon is following them. Same could be said of them believing the sun “comes up” in the morning. If you explain to them what’s really happening, however, they will get it.
No one is born knowing. And you never learn everything, there’s always new things to know. And as you say, new stuff sometimes overrides previous knowledge. But that’s not “a belief”, it’s *understanding being built*.
I bet you thought water was colorless because 1- you were thought so in school and 2- because water, upon inspection, didn’t hold color to you. It wasn’t baseless, even if it was mistaken after all. This is common to all of us.
However “faith” IS believing in something/believing something is true WITHOUT any evidence, and it has often been justified to me as a “gut feeling” I don’t get due to me being, basically, a no-fun party-pooper. A feeling, or an intuition, or sometimes I guess just a decisive choice. You have faith the Earth is flat, you have faith there’s life after death, you have faith there is a God or ruling force in the world that defines what is and will be -a force that is often your side, in some way, or that takes you into account. You might have faith in cryptids and aliens building the pyramids or in reading hands or curing stomach ache with a measurer trick and a prayer. Some of these, I think, are easily refutable (I have had plenty of discussions regarding the measuring meter as cure for “bad eye” and stuff that I am not affraid to say it is ridiculous, based on nothing, and absolutely a scam) but other stuff is still to be actually proven. For example, I might be an atheist, but as an eskeptic I can’t enter into a discussion about a god actually existing or not, because my arguments are mostly subjective. I have no more proof god doesn’t exist than anyone has that it/he/she/they do. Religions, religious writings and other stuff like that can be “debunked” partially or totally through investigation and facts, but I have no proof regarding the “”entity”” itself.
And still, if tomorrow a literal angel spawned in my yard and smaked me in the nose, and after all posibilities had been discarded, I would have to admit the winged invader is an angel, no matter what I considered true before. Because new data would be at hand, and it would question what I thought before.
Because I have no faith. I only think some things might be true, based on stuff. And if that turns out to be mistaken I can just re-adjust. Like anybody else can.
CLEAR WATER DENIER!
Drown them all and let Poseidon sort them out.
> politics in general often work with a set of beliefs with no evidential basis?
I am absolutely saying that politics in general usually works with a set of beliefs that have no evidential basis. Not all of their beliefs, obviously, but yeah a whole heap of them.
Politics is mostly, but not entirely, money, charisma and PR. Some parties may be marginally ‘worse’ or ‘better’ but I’m not going to go into that swamp.
Thanks for taking the time to answer that for me, Paul. I agree with your point regarding politics. I don’t know how many countries are like that, but mine is also deeply polarized. Given corruption and other factors this “side-against-side” doesn’t really amount for nothing more than separaring people, but that’s how it goes here. So yeah, I have abandoned all party-politics as well. (I don’t know if that translates properly. Here we are thought that every social act is political, therefore the “apolitical individual doesn’t exist”. Party-politics, however, are related with an afiliation with a political party -such as leftists, right-wings, etc- and that is something you can remain away from. I clarify this because I didn’t check the term, I just translated on the go and there might be more appropriate terminology.)
If the universe is just and merciful in the long run, it will be only because it invented us and we made it so
We weren’t really “invented” as much as we just “happened”
Entropy always wins in the end.
Just, maybe. But merciful, not so much.
My theory is that we were invented when Evolution got bored one day.
Well, I did say that I was an agnostic – not an atheist. My belief that the universe is just and merciful in the long run is my unsupported-by-evidence faith.
Not everything; if that were the case, she would have never have tried to hook up with Joyce, and then eventually Dina. Not everything about religion is toxic.
The bible isn’t the only source of evidence for god. You can be a scientist and a theist.
Science is entirely based around falsifiable claims and the idea of an objective reality. I’ve yet to see a theistic position that’s compatible with that.
And yet you can still be a scientist and a theist. Plenty of people are.
That doesn’t mean that their position on God is a scientific one, just that their belief doesn’t interfere with their science.
Sure. If you push god so far into the gaps that he/she/it literally does nothing and requires nothing from you, you can keep your vague sense of religion and purpose and still do science. The idea of a god like that boggles my mind, but I guess that’s a thing that does happen.
You should worry more about things that come out of the gaps, Saurians from the Dark Worlds who want to put chips into your body and enslave you like poor puppets. http://www.angels-heaven.org/english/img_3000/obr3000.jpg
i have seen the light. thank you clif. www=666, amen.
Some of the best defenders of secularism and some of the best people working against teaching creationism are both scientists and theists.
The usual mental compromises people make for this are things like “Theology’s original message was corrupted by man’s agendas and beliefs” or evolution as an aspect of intelligent design. These things aren’t intrinsically incompatible with science and are often based on science itself not having a full measure of things.
Or like Becky, believe in God’s love without it interfering in their understanding of science.
One can’t be a Biblical literalist and a scientist without some serious mental contortions, but most religious people aren’t Biblical literalists.
Presently I’ve yet to see any evidence of it and that includes the bible.
You’ll probably find theist scientists will openly admit they don’t have evidence for it.
I mean, there’s a difference between eating food, something you need to do in order to live, and being religious, which you don’t.
I think the point here is that just because Ross was claimed to be religious does not mean that his tainted version of religion should automatically negate all possible religion for Becky. She can choose her own religious path.
Meanwhile, Joyce’s point that Ross was bad at religion does not automatically mean that all religious is bad – but that is what Joyce is implying. It’s a false conclusion.
It’s the Hitler ate sugar fallacy.
If Hitler eating sugar was the worst people had to deal with back then, they’d have had it made.
(ya know, aside from all the other geopolitical horsefuckery and atrocities going on)
Like Stalin eating salt and such.
That motherfucker
I bet Mike ate salt.
“Do you believe religion is a good thing to have?”
A:] No [agree with Joyce]
B:] Yes [agree with Becky]
C:] Depends on the religion
D:] Depends on the person having the religion
THIS.
Religion is such a good thing to have that I have many of them.
Consistency is the bugaboo of small faiths.
There is, as always, an xkcd for that.
A! But not for the reasons Joyce has.
I think Joyce is projecting a bit here, when asking “Why believe something your jackass father believed?” She’s also asking why should she believe something her mom does, someone she used to look up to and thought of as good, remember how upset and hurt and shocked Joyce was when her mom was agreeing with Toe-dad. I think that a big part of why Joyce lost her faith while Becky kept hers, was that Becky already knew and always knew that her dad was a POS. Joyce learning that her mom was a POS and then her parents potentially splitting because of her mom being a POS that her dad can’t support is new information and I don’t think Joyce has the same ability that Becky does to separate her feelings towards her family, from her feelings towards her religion.
Pretty much this, yeah.
She is. For Joyce, religion was handed down from infallible parents, so when her parents failed, so did the religion they handed down to her. For Becky, she already knew her dad was a jackass, and whatever her mother taught her is safely tucked away in the unchanging fortress of pleasant memory.
The events shown in the comic strip are devastating for Joyce. But for Becky, the events are basically just Tuesday. They’re not special. They don’t change how oppressive the world feels to her. Becky believes because she’s an underdog and God has her back. Joyce believed because she had been told to, and no other reason.
Yes!
For Becky, religion is a pile of pebbles. She can toss out the ugly ones and the mismatchy ones, keep only the ones she likes, and she still has a pile of pebbles.
For Joyce, religion was a mountain, one solid immovable mass. She can’t get rid of any of it without getting rid of all of it. This point has been a long, inevitable time coming for her.
This is genuinely beautifully put. I love this analogy so much
It’s even more apt considering Joyce’s aversion to her foods touching.
Oh, I didn’t even think about that! Poor Joyce, so many anxieties. Maybe she’ll relax re: food as she claims/reclaims control over other parts of her being.
Oh I’m stealing this analogy. Very well put.
I don’t think her mom is wrapped in pleasant memories. We saw some of the ugly when she broke into her house to get her social security number.
I think that tragedy is what brought her to God personally. God stopped being this amorphous thing her parents talked about – god became the actual presence that she turned to for support and salvation during her darkest hours.
(Cuz we can bet Joyce was kind of sucky about it, because she was a little kid and everyone lied to her about what happened, and toedad sure as hell sucked about it)
Give it a year and Becky will likely be the kind of person who calls her the Goddess and is reclaiming the feminine wisdoms of the rosary and the Magdalene.
I will also add to this (though I vehemently believe Becky is in the wrong for a lot of reasons in this comic page) that Becky has more on the line than Joyce does when it comes to belief.
If there’s no god, then there might be no heaven. If there’s no heaven, then her mother is really gone in a way she hasn’t had to face. There’s no television to watch, no impending reunion at the end of her life. Becky will have to accept she has probably had all the time with her mother that she’s going to get, and that is a horrifically large wave of grief for anyone to deal with. Let alone an 18yo girl.
To be clear, “an 18yo girl” not intended to imply that a woman is less adept at dealing with grief than any other gender.
Why are you comparing eating food to being raised in a cult?
… she isn’t.
She’s saying that Joyce’s comment there makes no sense when given even a tiny amount of thought.
Ross did a lot of things. He paid taxes. Does that mean that, if Becky pays taxes, that she is like Ross? No. That is absurd.
Except that Ross didn’t use taxes as the center and purpose of all the awful things he did. Ross’s belief in paying taxes was not the reason he removed Becky from college, or chase her down with a shotgun. Ross’s belief in his religion led him ultimately to kidnap Becky’s friends. It’s likely that it led to her mother’s death.
Choosing other aspects of his life to compare with Becky’s life is beside the point.
Ross’s faith destroyed Becky’s life, full stop. She’s rebuilding, but it’s not unreasonable to ask her to reassess whether the religion he followed is something that she wants to follow now.
Becky was sustained by her faith through Rosses cruelties. Essentially Becky is pointing out the fact that Ross does not own Christianity and giving it up to him is acknowledging he was RIGHT because his entire belief system was based on being the arbiter of that faith.
Becky says, “No it is mine too.”
Ok, this is where Midoriya yells at Todoroki that “It’s YOUR power, not his!”
It’s BECKY’S faith
Not Ross’s
Yeah but that’s the problem.
Joyce never had faith, she had authority. So to Joyce, she can’t understand why Becky would have faith when her authority figure was wrong.
It’s basically a math formula for Joyce and we’re only just now learning it has been all her life.
nicely put.
Hey, they had me at “Toe-Dad paid his taxes. Don’t be like Toe-Dad. Refuse to pay your taxes.”
But of course they let Toe-Dad go. Don’t count on it for something as serious as not paying your taxes.
Except everyone pays taxes. Everyone eats. No one thinks anything Becky’s dad did was right except for every single Christian they grew up knowing. (Yes, I know probably not literally all of them, but between the church banding together to get him out of jail and her mother’s reaction afterwards it must seem that way to Joyce.) Not just that, but he actively used his religion to justify his behavior. At this point Joyce knows maybe 4 Christians who aren’t absolutely horrible people, and all of the ones that are horrible are basically declaring that Christianity is the reason they are the way they are.
I mean hiding behind religion is what Jesus said was the worst thing you could do. There’s a lot of irony about Joyce’s disgust with the hypocrites in her life for a woman so well-read in the Bible.
It’s the same faulty thinking behind hero worship (and some forms of religious worship), only in reverse — instead of having some person, idol or god become your infallible standard of truth, where every truth that contradicts them becomes a lie, you have a person, idol or god that becomes your magical standard of falsehood, and any good that aligns with them becomes undoubtedly evil.
This kind of thinking may even lead to copying or avoiding behaviors that have nothing to do with morality.
There are stories within religions where disciples avoided certain numbers or rocks, or kissed walls, for no other reason than they saw their priests or imams doing it.
It’s the same basic essence of superstition — replicating and avoiding arbitrary gestures. Joyce might intellectually be an atheist, but a lot of her brain is still automatically thinking like it has been for nearly all her life.
The core of Joyce’s argument is that Becky only believes that stuff because her jackass father indoctrinated her with it. Which is not a stupid argument.
But Becky feels that she has taken her beliefs beyond what her father indoctrinated her with, and it has nothing to do with her father anymore.
Becky sounds trapped in a sunk-cost fallacy.
Her best and only really valid argument here is, “because I still believe.” As I understand it, that’s all it takes. The rest of it is condiments on window dressings.
Joyce should just be focusing on that she hurt her friends feelings, not getting into a theological debate.
Becky already shut that down last strip, I think. It’s a non-starter.
Maybe, but she could focus on not believing anymore herself and why, rather than whatever she’s trying to do here.
Make some of the arguments people here have been making in her defense.
She is not ready to say any of that, nor are her reasons much beyond the why being ‘because it stupid’. She doesn’t know what she actually believes, only that she doesn’t. She can only see that there are huge piles of garbage she treated as treasure her whole life, and reasonably thinks it’s probably all garbage in there.
She not going to magically, or miraculously, do a buttload of actual processing and sorting and reflection in a few seconds.
I think her reasons have a lot more to do with not feeling god any more than because it’s stupid. That’s a post hoc rationalization.
Even if she can’t explain it well, concentrating on her loss of faith is likely to work out better. Currently she’s focusing on why Becky shouldn’t believe, which isn’t likely to go well.
I read last strip less as Becky shutting it down and more as Becky forcing Joyce to admit what she’s apologizing for. I think I’d actually have more respect for Joyce if she came out and said “Yes, I do think you’re a bit stupid for believing XYZ. I’m sorry you heard me say it and I’m sorry you’re hurt by it, but this is where I stand.” As it is, Joyce tried giving a vague apology with no sincerity or admission of what she thinks she did wrong behind it and that’s what got shut down.
Remember when Becky was kidnapped by her dad and prayed for help? Then a superhero shows up and saves her? That sounds like extraordinary evidence for an extraordinary claim.
Becky eating the communion wafers with unabashed relish was an epic moment for her. Keeping her connection to God on her terms is Becky’s preferred most powerful “fuck you” to those that raised her.
Isn’t this a strawman argument? It’s the Christianity that’s problematic. You need food to survive, but you don’t need a problematic religion to survive. If you replace food with cocaine, then that’d make more sense
Joyce, you are handling this SO poorly.
Joyce, no… 😰
She is still new at this.
But Joyce has expressed some real, valid reasons for rejecting god…
– problems with the bible (e.g. age of the earth). Becky doesn’t have a problem because she picks and chooses what is important. But then if you engage in such “cafeteria Christianity” you have to wonder “am i picking the right pieces”
– pointing to ross as an example of how toxic religion can be
I hate to say it but:
Becky: Do you really believe I’m an idiot for believing in God?
Joyce: I mean, yes?
Joyce: No, I feel like I’m an idiot for believing so long.
I mean, that would’ve been better than what she actually said. Rather than that, she put out evidence that the religion is wrong. While that isn’t explicitly stating that she thinks Becky is an idiot, it is doing a lot of implicit work in that direction.
They need to have that conversation. Becky and Joyce grew up together, being taught and believing the same things, and in the past few months discovered a bunch of it was wrong and downright toxic.
They reacted to this revelation differently. Becky was able to compartmentalize, keep the bits that worked for her. Joyce wasn’t. To Joyce, it was a whole, indivisible: losing some of it meant losing all of it.
Neither response is wrong. Joyce’s atheism is legitimate, Becky’s belief is legitimate. It can be difficult to reconcile, and this is why this conversation is necessary. We see now that at least part of the reason she didn’t dare come out as an atheist to Becky is that she didn’t know how to approach the subject without basically calling dumb.
A believer losing faith and becoming an atheist feel like they finally renounced magical thinking and embraced logic. How can one describe their process and reasoning without coming off as calling other believers gullible idiots who believe in Santa Claus?
But having this conversation lets you find out believers often never gave much stock in the magical thinking bits you thought were intrinsic to religion, that their relationship to faith doesn’t contradict scientific fact, and that their embrace of faith is not actually illogical.
It’s probably the worst way this conversation could have happened, but it’s good that it is happening.
Agreed.
Yeah, that was more what she should have said, while still matching what I think she actually believes.
Yeah turns out I owe you a mimosa or something.
Some people have to make these really, REALLY stupid decisions in order to learn how to be better.
Joyce is gonna fuck this all sorts of up and it’s going to hurt, but she’ll grow. I just hope Becky isn’t going to be too messed up by all of this.
Joyce is really digging herself deeper, huh.
Protip: If you’re still defending your actions after apologizing for them, it wasn’t a real apology.
She is very, truely sorry…that Becky heard her.
Yeah, a whole lotta people in the comments here have been acting like you can lawyer your way out of upsetting someone (“Ah see, you actually CAN’T be mad at me because X, Y, and Z so really….”) and, uhhhh, that’s not how it works.
You’ve got. No lawyering ever made an upset person happy.
When the insurance lawyer coughed up an unexpected check, it made this upset person happy.
Now, mind you, the happy didn’t last, but it helped a great deal with the upset.
I mean, what is Joyce apologizing for here? Those are her feelings. I guess she could be focusing on apologizing for how Becky found out, or how Joyce worded things, but Becky pretty firmly isn’t looking for that. Becky has turned this into an argument about whether or not Joyce really believes that stuff she was saying. Would it be a better and more genuine apology if Joyce just walked all that back?
The core disagreement here isn’t just an issue of poor communication or whatever. The hurt isn’t because of what Joyce SAID, it’s because of what she thinks. Becky is hurt that Joyce feels that way. Becky already shut down the idea of accepting an apology for how she found out, in yesterday’s comic. So what exactly should Joyce be doing, here?
Pretty sure Becky is upset Joyce thinks she’s stupid for her beliefs and mad Joyce has been hiding her change in belief from her making what was believed to be genuine and touching moment honoring her dead mother into a bunch of insincere lies.
Yeah. That’s why this one may be hard to come back from.
But the fact that they’re talking it out is good. Whether it’s actually an apology or not, the act of recognizing her friend’s hurt and working through it is good.
She SHOULD apologize for hurting Becky.
She shouldn’t apologize for her beliefs, but she can apologize for placing her bitterness about them over Becky.
Becky shut that down yesterday, with her “sorry I heard you” line. It was never an option for Joyce to simply apologize for hurting Becky, because Becky isn’t hurt by how Joyce expressed her feelings, she’s upset that Joyce is having them.
And possibly that Joyce was lying to her about them, but that turns back around into “Becky shut Joyce down really really hard the last time we saw her attempt to bring this topic up, so why would she have been truthful”, which is a bit of a separate issue to hash out.
Becky wants Joyce to be honest with her as long as her honesty doesn’t attack what she thought was their shared core belief.
I think Becky is angrier that Joyce didn’t confide in her Joyce’s new worldview and finding out about it the way she did, than for having them (though it can definitely still be a factor). I think Becky doesn’t want an apology so much as she wants Joyce to have an open conversation about it with her. Frankly, though, Joyce didn’t owe her (or anyone else) that info, and never did. Whatever secrets about herself Joyce wants to keep from anyone and/or everyone (that isn’t abusive) is her right, and that was clearly a conversation Becky was never meant to overhear.
Also, not telling someone about an internal struggle you are working through on your own isn’t lying. Joyce wasn’t required to open up about a difficult topic to the absolute most difficult person to discuss it with while she was still working through it.
The idea that keeping your thoughts to yourself until you’re ready to discuss them is “lying” is such an intrusive part of this and I can’t stand it. Becky doesn’t own her and she wasn’t entitled to hear what Joyce was thinking until Joyce was good and ready to tell her.
As for apologizing for hurting Becky, yeah Becky shut that down. Of course Joyce is sorry Becky overheard what she was saying, because she has the right to work through her own stuff in whatever way works for her and she chose to wait until she was in a room full of people who wouldn’t be hurt by what she was saying.
The fact that Becky overheard it is regrettable, and worth apologising for, but what Becky wants is an apology for Joyce’s feelings and that’s flatly not okay..
Yes, this exactly! Just because Becky’s been through a lot of trauma in her life doesn’t mean she gets to dictate how Joyce works through hers. She needs to let Joyce vent even if she doesn’t like what Joyce might ultimately decide on.
Except that it can involve lying, if you lie to keep from opening up. Not starting the discussion with Becky isn’t lying. Telling Becky about her mom up in heaven is.
She’s not required to open up about it to Becky, but not doing so means that it’s going to be even worse if she finds out accidentally. That’s not so much a moral judgement as just natural consequences. Putting off the hard thing often leads to it being harder.
She shouldn’t apologize for her loss of faith. She shouldn’t even apologize for not opening up to Becky about it, though she could try to explain why.
She should apologize for humoring her about her mom.
She should apologize for casting believers as idiots and explain where saying that came from, since I’m sure she doesn’t actually think Becky’s an idiot.
I’m not sure she should apologise for humouring about her mum. I mean, how’s that going to go? “I’m sorry I agreed with you that your mum is in heaven eating cake and looking out for you to help you with your trauma instead of saying what I actually believe, which is that your mum is well, truly and completely gone”?
What’s the alternative? “I’m not going to apologize. I lied to you for what seemed to be good reasons. I was trying not to hurt you.” To which the response will likely be: “Well that didn’t work well, did it.”
She can tell the truth. “I’m sorry I went along with that even though I don’t believe anymore. I was scared to tell you before and that wasn’t the time and I didn’t know what else to do.”
From the moment Becky asked that question of Joyce, she had three choices:
1 – Lie like she did
2 – Tell the truth, further stressing someone she holds dear in a moment specifically set up to help her deal with trauma
3 – Yell “Look behind you, a three-headed Jesus” and run away while Becky was distracted.
Don’t get me wrong I think literally anything can be improved by Monkey Island references (I bet Joe fights like a cow), but that doesn’t seem like it would’ve yielded a great result.
It was definitely a no win situation.
That doesn’t mean she didn’t put herself in that situation and hurt Becky by doing so. If Becky had already known, then the confrontation wouldn’t have come up.
She would’ve hurt Becky regardless, is my point. It’s just that in lying and postponing the revelation she hoped to delay that hurt to a, shall we say, less fraught situation other than “dead mum memorial”.
And therefore lying to her was good and she has no need to apologize.
If you want a binary answer, then yes
Yes is a unary answer. Yes and No is a binary one.
now u lissen here u varmint
Exactly; having private thoughts is not lying. I’d have been fired from my job years ago if it were.
Having private thoughts is not lying. Telling Becky you believe her mom is in heaven watching on the heavenly TV stream is lying.
It’s understandable lying, since that would have been a horrible time to tell her , but it’s still lying and Becky still has the right to be upset about it.
Yeah but Joyce tried not to say anything and Becky pried it out of her, and so Joyce went really non-committal.
It’s not like she could say it there either, the day she expressed a lot of fear of hurting Becky any further by reminding her of her mom and Joyce’s own being lied to (BY BECKY) about how she died.
Definitely a no-win situation.
“Now, tell me your honest opinion. And it’d better be X, because that’s the only one I’ll accept.”
That’s the kind of thing that drove HAL insane.
“Joyce I am demanding you tell me right this second what you are thinking on this, my dead mother’s birthday, that mother you told to my face repeatedly how sorry you were that she had died of cancer and I kept my mouth shut because my dad probably told me to.”
Damn maybe Joe was off-base. Maybe Joyce should have kept her mouth shut and not thrown a party celebrating Becky’s mom and how much they loved her, because showing Becky how much she loved her and how she couldn’t bear to hurt her didn’t work out!
That’s how I see it too.
Ooooof, that is not a no.
(I’m also of the opinion that the truth is probably “I don’t know”.)
To me its… Complex.
I am an atheist (former christian) but i came to that point through logic and reason. But i do have relatives that are christian. (Mainline protestant fortunately… Not evangelical.) So a little part of my brain does have to reconcile “are they dumb for not seeing what i see”.
I don’t think my family is dumb.
I think they have too much invested in religion to let go. I think they find too much comfort in the idea of god, a plan, seeing loved ones again, etc to ever let go. I think they want there to be a god too much to ever let go.
The thing is? That’s just a logical fallacy writ large.
Complex is a good word for it. Every day I see what organized religion does to people, and I hate it, and it becomes harder and harder not to hate the people, especially when they mean well with their proselytizing attempts.
On the other hand, we have people whos intelligence I respect who are total dicks about people who believe things, like Sagan and Tyson, and I don’t want to become that either.
It depends for me. I don’t think anyone is stupid for just having spirituality. And I’d never think someone of Jewish, Hindu or Muslim faith is stupid for it, my experiences rest squarely with Christianity. I think fundamentalists of any kind are… depending on their role, pitiful or cruel, but idk if I’d say stupid. I met at guy in school once who was like early comic Joyce but worse. She actually wanted friends, he wanted to be friends with me so he could preach his doomsday scripture. I wouldn’t say he was stupid, but it was like his brain was buffed smooth by his church. I don’t think he had thoughts outside of his scripture, it was like talking to a robot with prerecorded phrases. We met right before going into college, i worry about that guy…
Oh this is far worse then I thought it would be, it sounds like, at least on some subconscious level, Joyce WAS mocking Becky
Otherwise the answer to Becky’s first question would have been an easy “no”
Yeah, that third-panel silence is ironically speaking volumes.
I mean, to an extent there’s nothing she can do about it – she thinks her former self was stupid for believing those things, and since Becky believed all the *same* things, she can’t logic her way around it and act like somehow Becky’s identical beliefs are more defensible for her. She’s in a position where no matter what she says to defend herself there, it’s going to come across as disingenuous.
Except Becky just pointed out (and not for the first time to Joyce) that she doesn’t believe those “same things”.
I don’t think either of them fully realizes that they didn’t actually believe the same things. I think other commenters got the right of it that they had come to their beliefs in slightly different, but very important, ways.
She can’t logic her way around it, since none of it has anything to do with logic in the first place. She didn’t lose faith because of logic. She didn’t have faith because of logic.
Yep. It’s honestly a really tough position for Joyce- and one I sympathize with, having been in a similar position with my anti-vaxxer mom asking me if I think she’s stupid and being like… I don’t know how to answer this question! I do not think you are a stupid person overall, but I do think you believe in a stupid thing! But also I love you and I don’t want to hurt you (and also I don’t want you to die of COVID.)
And obviously this isn’t the exact same situation, given that if nothing else there are a lot more concrete and specific bad outcomes from believing vaccines are bad. But in terms of Joyce’s mindset- she does now think a lot of these beliefs (and not just the dinosaurs on the ark) are wrong and dumb, and how can you say, well, I think those beliefs are dumb but I don’t think *you’re* dumb? I can tell you from experience that does not go over very well. I don’t think there’s an easy way to have this conversation.
I think “stupid” is the wrong way to look at it. Obviously, there are very smart Christians. Even very smart fundamentalists. In many cases it takes a lot of smarts to set up the complicated excuses and explanations for why all the seemingly contradictory bits fit together. 🙂
Mostly though even smart people don’t really analyze their belief structures. We see this everywhere, not just religion. People can be really smart in the field they concentrate their intelligence in and believe ridiculous things elsewhere. This is even more true when it comes to things learned in childhood. Those seep in at a level below our rational minds.
I do think believing in religion isn’t rational, but I think most of what we believe isn’t really rational either. Rationality has very little to do with most human behavior. We mostly use these big brains of ours for justifying what we do by gut instinct. And it’s largely that gut instinct that’s driving both Joyce and Becky here – Joyce lost faith because she doesn’t feel God anymore (and wonders if she ever did) – that’s got nothing to do with being smart or stupid. Becky still does, which still has nothing to do with being smart or stupid.
Joyce is still in the ‘this is all such obvious garbage how could we have been stupid enough to believe any of it’ stage of her disillusionment. She hasn’t hit a point where she can accept that it wasn’t necessarily all or nothing for everyone yet.
Some never do, but I suspect she’ll get there eventually.
She doesn’t believe in the important bits anymore either, though. Becky may not care much about biblical literacy, but she does believe in a loving god and an afterlife where she’ll see her mom again, and Joyce doesn’t. That’s not an easy thing to reconcile.
It’s an easier thing to reconcile than “Joyce thinks Becky is stupid” though.
Becky has always appeared a bit flakey and carefree. Joyce mistook that for not as bright.
Say what?
Damn Joyce. It’s good to vent your anger, but you are barking at the wrong tree.
Good. Very good. Getting to the important parts, rather than fumbling around or talking past each other. This is a hopeful sign.
I agree. Obviously Joyce is being hurtful and is going to have to amend for that, but if they don’t discuss it at all, there’s not going to be any hope for them. What Joyce really needs is a cultural anthropology class. Show her the value of different ways to approach understanding the world. We all just need something that brings us comfort. That’s not going to be the same for everyone. At the moment, Joyce is partially projecting, and maybe if she realizes that she can patch things up with Becky. I think they’ll get out what they want to say today and then give each other some space for a while.
Addendum/clarification to the above:
I’d say that there is some “talking past each other”, but it’s my hope that will lead to them realizing and understanding how very different their experience with religion has been, sooner rather than later. While the circumstances right now are terrible, it’s a conversation they need(ed) to have.
Baby atheist is such a rough period of time. Been there as an ex catholic!!! Uuuuggghh
I think it’s been somewhat evident for a while that Joyce and Becky developed their religious beliefs differently
Joyce actually believed the things their parents told them and developed the same sort of inflexible biblical literalism, while Becky sort of developed her own version that could bend on a lot of things without breaking.
Evident to us, but now I think they’re finally gonna get that out in the open to each other.
Gonna be honest, the religious non-literallists piss me off more than fundies.
It’s true that you can’t reason somebody out of a position they didn’t reason themselves in to, but at least you can point to everybody that their belief is factually wrong. Non-literalists just slip around and move the goalposts, keeping what they like and handwaving away the rest.
If you’ve got a damn holy book and don’t believe it, WTF do you actually believe?!
Becky, for one, believes that there’s a God who loves her so much that when she was in trouble, he sent her best friend on a motorcycle and an actual real-life superhero to rescue her from her father.
Right, which, that doesn’t feel any more difficult to believe than “A bunch of people a long time ago took some religious teachings, but not all of it, and put it together as a book. These were the inspired word of God, which is why translations can change meanings significantly.”
And for those people who don’t get a rescue when they’re in trouble, I guess God didn’t love them well enough?
It’s true! God = Willis. Willis loved Becky more than Mike.
We know from Shortpacked! that God plays favorites. He’s also a big fan of Star Trek: Enterprise.
No accounting for taste, I guess.
Star Trek: Enterprise was a good show that deserved more seasons than it got though. So Shortpacked God had some good taste.
It was, IMO, a show with one good season. Too bad we had to waste two others to get there, and it ended right after they finally did.
I stopped watching sometime in the third season. i never did see how they resolved the Xindi conflict.
On the other hand, one of the first principles of editing is “kill your darlings,” so…
A god that loves her so much he sends a super hero to rescue her, but not enough to have given her a father who accepted her lesbianism in the first place.
That god is good but man is flawed therefore the set up may be correct but the details were wrong.
@John Smith:
It helps to actually read the holy book. Jesus, the person, hated the way the rich and powerful abused the Jewish religion. He believed that goodness didn’t require one to be Jewish – hence the Good Samaritan story. And he wanted to throw open the doors of his church to anyone.
He would HATE modern conservative Christianity. They espouse everything he fought against.
Oh, and in his faith, none of the bible was meant to be literal. Jewish rabbis argue and interpret their holy texts to this day. That was the tradition Jesus was raised in. SO yeah… the non-literalists are doing their religion the correct way.
The only reason the bible is “literal” is because it benefited the medieval Catholic church monetarily.
Yeah, I’m Jewish but to me, pretty much all of it is to be taken as metaphor, God is just energy.
Jesus would hate the entirety of Christianity because as Jewish (and presumably aware he isn’t God) he’d hate the fact it wrongly deifies him, and he’d see the idea of the trinity as an abominable violation of monotheism.
“Oh, and in his faith, none of the bible was meant to be literal.”
That’s very convenient. No particular facts to pin out: The Second Coming is never Coming because it isn’t literal. An afterlife doesn’t actually exist, it’s not literal either. Why, God’s very existence, not literal either, I guess.
Actually, yeah, it is possible to be a practicing Jewish person and still not believe in God. I follow several of them and they’re all pretty cool people.
Well I mean. The Second Coming isn’t necessarily a thing in Judaism, no. Because that would imply a FIRST Coming of the Messiah, which they don’t believe has occurred yet. The Jewish concept of a messiah is very, very different, and early Christians basically had to hammer the shape of it into something else entirely to make Jesus fit after he was crucified because his death would very much otherwise have precluded him from being a king to save the Promised Land and lead the Jewish people into a new age. There were other would-be messiahs running around Israel around that time period – people weren’t that fond of the Roman Empire, which is why war broke out against the Roman occupation and ended with besieging and sacking of Jerusalem. The early Christians just didn’t want to believe they’d followed this guy for nothing, and so they started coming up with a story where he would in fact be back, death was just part of his plan, and the Messiah as King is METAPHORICAL, you see, because he’s King of Heaven and the son of God sent to save us all (and also a male-line descendant of David, totally, he DEFINITELY still fits all the traditional criteria of messiahood.)
Note: I am saying this as a cultural Christian agnostic who knows a bit about modern Jewish theological schools of thought and read Reza Aslan’s Messiah once, which touches on the politics of Israel circa the first century of the Common Era, but doesn’t claim to be an expert on either Jewish theology or that particular period and region of history. I just know just enough about Jewish and Islamic approaches to God and scripture to know that, yeah, they are VERY different philosophical stances than Christianity. ESPECIALLY American Protestant Christianity, but seriously you can see a fundamental difference between Catholic, Jewish, and Islamic conceptions of sin from the overview paragraphs on their respective Wikipedia pages. The differences run deep.
* Zealot by Reza Aslan. Thought I was remembering something wrong but it was the title, not misspelling his name.
How much have YOU actually read? Unless you were pretty freaking religious I doubt it’s as much as me, given the seventeen odd years of christian schooling and church. I don’t recall the line saying “And actually, don’t take this literally it’s just a metaphor.” I DO remember several lines saying quite the opposite though. And hey, you’re right! Medieval Christians DID write the book for self-serving reasons. So why, precisely, should I be taking any of it seriously?
And uh… you say the Jews don’t take the Torah literally? The same Jews who’s orthodox community to this day goes and tries to follow all the laws laid down?
This might be something you want to talk to a therapist abut tbh, sounds like you got some trauma you need to work through
Have you ever tried politely asking an orthodox Jew why they follow all the stupidest laws in the Torah? There’s a reason, and it’s not in the Torah.
It’s in the Sefer Zohar. Kinda.
Really? Matthew 13:34, Mark 4:34, John 10:6; and John 16:25 are all explicit that Jesus spoke in figurative instead of literal terms (“without a parable spake he not unto them.”)
We call that the parable of speaking in parables.
So you’re upset with non literalists because you specifically cant condescend to them?
Because they set themselves up to condescend to everybody else from an unassailable position. They want to take the moral high ground, but they’re just an amorphous blob of “I think this is right, so clearly the bible supports me.” It’s the fucking gish gallop of religion, trying to pick apart their position takes forever and is pointless because they’ve just moved on.
Not everyone that has non-literal faith is seeking to condescend or claim a moral high ground. Plenty of them just want to have their faith in peace without people trying to pick it apart. You don’t need to pick apart their position. You can leave them alone.
Why is it so important to you that you can pick their position apart? You know they won’t change their mind. You aren’t going to convert them, especially not in the moment.
Stop playing missionary.
This very much feels like a classic case of someone talking in generalities about a very specific incident.
I feel like you haven’t talked to many non-literalists, or maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean by non-literalist.
I was raised by non-literalist catholics. I myself am agnostic/atheist, though I never call myself that because I find other atheists to be just as bad as evangelists when it comes to conversion. My family’s view is that the bible isn’t literal, there wasn’t an adam and an eve, there wasn’t a flood that flooded the entire world, but they view these as stories that *teach* a moral idea. Some of these ideas don’t “translate” well now because we’re missing historical context lost by millennia. But most stories teach “Hey, help the most vulnerable members of society cuz otherwise that’s shitty” in some fashion – my mother argues that the new vulnerable are people like trans* individuals, bipoc in america, lgbt+, etc.
So, sorry that you can’t out-argue my mother about the bible, but I don’t see how taking the bible non-literally is inherently a bad thing.
Non-literalists are weasels who can’t admit that the bible is just wrong, and therefore they say “It’s not wrong, it’s *non-literal*”.
The bible is WRONG. Not “literal truth” or “non-literal truth”, it’s actual falsehood.
Okay, Liz.
The bible is a collection of stuff. Some of it makes factual claims and those are just wrong. Some of it is clearly parables and metaphors. Others, you aren’t sure if the speaker was being literal or not.
Example: in the Song of Solomon, the author wasn’t saying his love interest’s breasts are doves. Whatever the original language said, the translators judged that the word “like” belonged in there. It’s a judgment call.
Not even “literalists” are saying that in the Song of Solomon those breasts were literally doves.
The problem is that the “non-literalists” aren’t actually trying to decide whether something was intended as literal or not, they’re simply saying “That’s not literal” as an excuse to EVERYTHING that’s wrong about the bible BECAUSE it’s wrong, when the honest thing to say would have been to admit “That’s wrong”.
What’s wrong with loving someone who has doves for breasts?
You know, reality is too complex to be captured in a single consistent picture. It comes in levels and things that are true in one level and one framework are false in another. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.
I mean, they’d tell you if you actually asked rather than tried to use their book as a bludgeon.
Most of the things Christians believe today were made up much later by people like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Another chunk of them were made up even more recently, by people like John Nelson Darby in the 19th century. Long, long, long after the Bible was canonized and someone said it couldn’t be altered.
Incidentally, there are different Bibles for different Christianities. Their beliefs really have nothing to do with their books, man.
@John Smith
Do you pick apart Plato or Aristotle or Josephus or Herodotus with the same literalism you use for biblical interpretation? Do you mock scholars as “slipping around” who use those texts as historical evidence without taking everything they say literally? The Bible is a compilation of ancient texts of multiple genres with multiple historical settings. It’s not a science textbook. It’s not even a modern history textbook (and those are much less literal than I’m pretty sure you want them to be).
The literalists basically arose in response to people like you who tried to tear apart the Bible. They felt like they had to defend the Bible against attacks from Enlightenment Modernism. But, as a historian, that’s just not how ancient texts work.
If people were teaching Plato, Aristotle or freaking Charles Darwin as god-given scripture instead of historical writers I would absolutely be tearing them apart.
I don’t have a problem with history or historical texts. I don’t have a problem with people trying to interpret them, or hell even pull decent messages from them. I DO have a problem with people who say they’re divinely inspired and then try and interpret ‘correct’ ways of living out of them.
What about people that pull messages out with computers?
https://www.northshire.com/book/9781601429155
God damn it who let the reddit atheists in
If you ask who let the atheists in, then I’ll say who let the religious apologists in? The people who think that the existence of such a big LIE as religion is justified, and that you waive it away by calling every proven falsehood “non-literal” or unimportant, when people have both died and been murdered for such “unimportant stuff.
You wouldn’t tolerate apologists of fascism, or of racism. Why are you tolerating apologists of religion?
zee asked who let the “reddit atheists” in, not atheists as a whole. People like you are precisely the problem so many people have with “new atheists”.
Also, great job tarring all religious people with the same brush as FUCKING FASCISTS. Fuck.
Well, to be fair, aelwine is talking about cherry-picking your religious beliefs while at the same time ignoring crimes committed in the name of the stuff you chose not to believe. You can’t have it both ways.
I’m 95% certain that’s not what aelfwine is talking about, given their track record of commenting the likes of such things as that they’re “proud to be an ‘edgy atheist’ and [they] hope Joyce becomes one too”, “so-called progressives have made a deal with the devil by allowing religious people into their party”, calling all religious people “either victims or liars”, saying that “Democrats are so afraid to be called Islamophobes that they refuse to condemn Islam”, and of course the above comment comparing people who simply think the existence of religion should be allowed to fucking racists and fascists.
Wrong, I certainly believe “the existence of religion” should be allowed. I never asked for the banning of religion. I never asked for the banning of flat-earthers either. Or the banning of anti-vaccer propaganda. I do believe in free speech and free religion.
People are allowed to spread falsehoods – flat-earthers and religious people alike. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t STRONGLY CONDEMN THESE FALSEHOODS.
Can’t we celebrate the falsehoods? Sometimes falsehoods capture the truth better than anything else.
When the Right Stuff movie came out, one of my friends had a long list of all the things in the movie that were inaccurate. Which totally missed the point. It captured the truth of a certain place and time.
Great job NOT explaining why I shouldn’t tar them with the same brush.
Religion & fascism have both killed millions. Do you think that the people murdered by religion are any less dead than the people murdered by fascism?
maybe because people have been and are being murdered for belonging to certain religious groups as well? or because many of the victims of fascism and racism were targeted specifically because, or using the proxy of, their religion? or because some of the people fighting against the murders committed in the name of religion belong to the same religion as those committing them?
We should condemn Judaism because of the Holocaust is a hell of a take.
@thejeff: aelfwine did put out this comment a week ago exactly, if you’ll remember:
Condemning an entire religion? Oh, noes, let’s not condemn an institutionh of horrific oppression of hundreds of millions of people. It might make us sound “right-wing” after all. /s
Well, my point of view is that unless unless supposed progressives start condemning religion (preferably all religions, but *at the very least* the homophobic and misogynist religions like the vast majority of Judaism, Christianity and yeah Islam) as an oppressive institution and a lie, their supposed progressiveness is a very very bogus lie.
Not to mention how they proclaimed they were “proud to be an ‘edgy atheist'” at the beginning of this storyline. Terrible anti-religious takes seem to be a running theme with them.
Bro I’ve literally spent days outlining my experiences as an atheist in these threads, including today 🤦
I said reddit atheists, cringelords like you who compare religion to antivaxx conspiracies and fascism
Right? These new atheists are exactly why I never bring up atheism or religion. They’re exhausting. “I HAVE to be right about religion being ALL WRONG or ELSE” like jesums calm down.
I haven’t seen you be an ally to me when my government shoved years and years of religious LIES down our throats in public schools.
But, yeah, sure it’s the atheists that are exhausting. Did I force you to years and years of atheist catechism when you were at school? Did we make you do daily atheist prayers every morning?
And I’m one of the lucky ones, I live in a country that shoves religion down every schoolchild’s throat, but atleast it doesn’t murder atheists.
Hundreds of millions of other people around the world aren’t so lucky.
Religion is the biggest evil in the world today. By FAR.
I’m a bit less aggressive than aelfwine, but yeah. I was also brought up on a huge pile of bullshit that could be easily disproved. Why is the education system like this? Because Christians fight tooth and nail to keep christiantity in the system, of course. Y’all are giving me grief over the non-literalist thing but none of them came along and said, Oh yeah, we should cut all this out and make sure the fundies don’t cripple science education.
So now you get aggressive atheists. Because the silent ones sure as hell weren’t working.
Sometimes I really wish you could upvote comments in here.
Also, there’s an interesting contrast between Joyce seeing her faith as something that she believed in because her family and community did (and now that that’s gone, what’s the point?) and Becky seeing faith as important in itself, even (or perhaps especially) without family and community.
Except there have been entire strips showing us that Becky does believe in the “unimportant” parts.
I think those strips were something she did believe, but Dina saved her. Good for them
I mean there’s also a whole strip of Joyce snapping at Becky for studying science and saying evolution happened so, clearly she doesn’t anymore
Call me crazy, but I think this all has to do of how Becky and Joyce see themselves and accept the people they are. Joyce has been insecure about her own identity and who she really is. She has agoraphobia and has struggled the last semester with the changes she had to endure. And when she did realize the changes, she saw herself as a bad person (like at Dina’s b-day party). Add to that the “no-compromises” policy she always had with religion, either everything was right or nothing was. Evolution was fake because it HAD to be. But when Joyce realized she had changed and that evolution was real (this is a metaphor), she fell into a pit of anger, sadness and revolt.
Meanwhile, Becky barely struggled with her own identity. She is the christian lesbian girl. When Dina told her at the b-day party she was ready to be touched, Becky declined because of who she was, despite all the horniness (good for her, it takes integrity to do that). Becky knows who she is and accepted it. She refuses to change, she was willing to give up her family (granted, her father) to keep her own lesbian identity. And being a christian, no matter what branch, is a part of that. A part she won’t let go because that’s who she is. And you know what? Good for her
The flipside of that, though, is that Becky insists that everyone else conform to the identity or role that she’s assigned to them.
No one is perfect, okay? xD
Her relationship with Dorothy being the most literal version of that. I fear that we’re gonna be seeing a Mary-Becky team up soon.
You seriously think Mary would see Becky enough as a person to do that? And you think Becky’s mild petty thing with Dorothy is so intense shed side herself with someone who represents all the worst and most traumatic parts of her life growing up?
I think Mary would see an opportunity, yes.
JJonahJamesonLaughing.gif
They make surprisingly good foils for each other in that respect. I wouldn’t have necessarily thought of that on my own.
On slightly different layer, I’d like to think that Becky resents Joyce for being able to admit the truth of an uncaring, godless universe. And everytime Joyce demonstrates that ability, she gets defensive.
Let her go, Joyce. Sometimes you need to outgrow your friends.
I think they are both jealous of the others ability to think for themselves.
I’ll be honest, every time I speak to someone religious, I have to remind myself that believing in something like religion doeen’t make you stupid. And, Becky is right, her father’s actions and beliefs shouldn’t have to dictate what Becky does or believes.
Also, Joyce should know by now that Becky has learned about what did or did not happen in the bible. Is that asking too much?
I mean, Becky learned it before Joyce did. Joyce may have been trying to find common ground.
I can think of 2 reasons why looking at the actions of Ross might be relevant:
– If the tenants of the Christian religion are so flexible that they can be used to justify either actions of sacrifice/valor (such as Joyce protecting Becky last term), or actions of brutality (Ross kidnapping becky) then MAYBE your religion doesn’t actually have a basis in reality
– Many people use the excuse “what’s the harm?” to justify religious beliefs. Well, the fact that people can use religion to justify kidnapping/gay conversion therapy or terrorist actions is a pretty good indication that something is wrong. You don’t tend to see atheists engaging in the same sort of actions. (Not that they never commit crimes, they just don’t have a religious basis.)
re: hovertext, just thought I’d link this.
Okay, that makes up for a mention of commercialized holiday music that isn’t meant to be played for another 45 days (minimum).
I am excited to find out which parts Becky considers to be important.
I believe she’s remarked before to the effect of “so what if evolution kinda probably happened? It doesn’t contradict anything important.” To me, that probably indicates that she’s focused on the stuff Jesus specifically preached, not so much what came before (or too much after) him.
We know two things that she seemingly considers important:
– her mom being in heaven.
– that it’s wrong to have sex before marriage.
Agreed on both counts. But why those two? What else? And as King Daniel indicates, the literalist creation story is not important.
Mostly I’m hopeful that there’s any kind of logic that can be drawn from what she considers a step too far, because then I can have fun debating it.
Phrasing this in a way that sounds condemning of Becky but it’s not supposed to be: Becky’s faith in an eternally loving God works on a level where as long as Becky doesn’t like it, then it’s not the important part.
God loves her, ergo she is not going to Hell for being a lesbian. Science is cool, ergo Young Earth Creationism is wrong and to prove it God sent her a rad atheist dino girlfriend, which also means atheists naturally don’t go to Hell. Her dad is evil, so his belief in God is wrong and Becky’s is right, and whatever it is that motivated Becky’s mom to kill herself it’s fine because she’s with God now and Becky will see her soon.
But Becky still believes in sexual purity (while still being horny on main for Dina and feeling betrayed that Dina isn’t horny for her all the time and won’t get so overwhelmed by Becky’s impossible sexiness that she’ll tear her clothes off then and there), that’s still something she thinks is right to hold onto, so instead of it being something that inconveniences her that God would naturally not approve of it if inconvenienced Becky, it’s the rule to follow, because she wants it to be a rule to follow and therefore it’s one of the inerrant facts God has laid down for her.
Basically what I’m saying is that Becky is such a bottom that she subs for God.
That did not end the way I thought it did. But I agree with the first part, at least.
In the sort-of-argument over whether an Episcopal church was better than an evangelical (with guitars), she indicated that Jesus/God loving her/not caring that she was gay was a pretty big deal.
A lot of Christians believe that “God is love/love your neighbor” is the important part, and most of the rest is meh. And I’d add that a lot of folks I know left evangelical Christianity saying “Yeah, I know rationally sex before marriage doesn’t matter, but it still feels wrong, because of a whole-life guilt campaign,” and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s where she’s coming from.
God loving her was important, but she preferred the guitars.
I’m liking the sixth panel in that at least Joyce appears to be getting angry or defensive or something.
The fear I had was that Joyce would immediately retreat from her beliefs and fall in line with what Becky wants
That shes not being passively accepting of the role Becky wants for her is, in the long run, good for both of them
welp so much for them reconciling within this storyline
you could easily have said she wasn’t an idiot, joyce, neither of those false things in the bible that you mentioned are even things becky believes anyway.
The last bit she mentioned, the bit we know Becky heard; a god that loves you, that is a thing Becky does believe, it’s the core of her faith.
Joyce is clearly angry at herself for believing the things she did, but this conversation makes me wonder if she’s perhaps also jealous that Becky’s come out of everything with her belief intact. Looking through that lens, her current hostility towards Becky makes a lot of sense, even if it is coming from an unhealthy place.
I think that’s entirely possible. Becky was able to hold onto the core of her faith while ditching the stupid and toxic trappings, while Joyce is having trouble seeing it as anything except all or nothing. Of course it probably helps that Becky has been thinking about this a lot longer, since she’s been questioning her received dogma at least since she realized she wanted to kiss girls. Joyce, OTOH, doesn’t seem to have entertained any doubt prior to the beginning of the comic. So while the two of them have gone through some similar trauma, it’s not really surprising that they might be processing it differently.
Agreed.
Joyce used to firmly believe in the nonsensical parts of the Bible because to her, if one part was not true, then the whole thing could be thrown out.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/devourin/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/originalsin/
It seems to me that Joyce has always had this all-or-nothing attitude (most likely fostered by her community) while Becky was more flexible.
What odd is that they two never talked about this? They were best friends and grew up together! Was Becky so deep in protection mode that she never discussed her faith truthfully with her best friend?
Most likely Joyce never thought about it, any of it, until they both got away from their community for a while
and went among the heathen.Becky likely developed her approach out of necessity. We don’t know exactly when she realized she was gay, but I’m guessing it was early enough that her faith hadn’t fully formed itself in her mind, so she was able to ignore the parts that she knew from her lived experience to be false and come up with a framework that still worked in her head. Joyce never had to reconcile any of this, so she didn’t, and the result was a fragile faith that couldn’t withstand a single blow.
Considering the kind of environment they grew up in, I think it’s entirely possible that Becky would hesitate to mention her doubts to anyone, even Joyce. Given what we saw her father was willing to do, this was not really unreasonable. When you’re a child in a potentially dangerous environment, it’s hard to know if you can trust anyone. Keeping your head down and playing along until you can get out can easily look like the best plan.
I think it’s exactly this moment you linked, that shows exactly where Joyce stands.
And Becky, clearly from these comics, knew how Joyce felt for this subject.
Becky likely also didn’t really get into the details until she got a radical dinosaur girlfriend and started shedding all the unimportant stuff. Their focus was always different, but the contrast wasn’t as clear before then, since they basically believed the same things.
When it did come up it could just be seen as structured Joyce being Joyce and wild Becky being Becky.
From what’s going on with them right now, it seems pretty clear to me that Becky and Joyce didn’t ever actually talk about that when they were growing up. Though apparently Becky forgot what Joyce told her in those two strips as well, since she seems to not understand how Joyce is now an atheist.
It’s the same faulty thinking behind hero worship (and some forms of religious worship), only in reverse — instead of having some person, idol or god become your infallible standard of truth, where every truth that contradicts them becomes a lie, you have a person, idol or god that becomes your magical standard of falsehood, and any good that aligns with them becomes undoubtedly evil.
This kind of thinking may even lead to copying or avoiding behaviors that have nothing to do with morality.
There are stories within religions where disciples avoided certain numbers or rocks, or kissed walls, for no other reason than they saw their priests or imams doing it.
It’s the same basic essence of superstition — replicating and avoiding arbitrary gestures. Joyce might intellectually be an atheist, but a lot of her brain is still automatically thinking like it has been for nearly all her life.
Woops that was meant to be a reply to @Ana Chronistic; ‘xcuse the duplicate.
Despite the emotional strife this is occurring in, it’s actually interesting to see it laid bare how belief/faith is inextricably linked to certain things differently for both Joyce and Becky. For Joyce all the toxic and silly things (if taken literally) are inseparable from the faith and the belief in God while Becky was able to parse the different elements apart from each other (seemingly even before she was outed/recognized her sexuality?).
Yes, exactly. Becky sees her faith as something she has, something that remains important to her; Joyce sees it as something that was imposed on her, and has hinted that she never really felt it but was just going along with it to please others and hoping that, at some point, she’d have it too.
Joyce thinks she, Joyce, is an idiot for believing in God. She is in a place of doubt and anger and self-loathing. Ideally, she would be able to talk through her feeling with a person who won’t react with anger. Thaaaat person is not Becky 😬
Becky feels betrayed and insulted. Joyce felt she couldn’t be honest about her faith so Becky felt lied to. Except Joyce really couldn’t talk about her feeling with Becky without feeling like it was an attack on her. She just overheard Joyce saying some angry (and not particularly kind) things and assumed it was an attack on her.
Becky can dismiss what she feels isn’t important about the Christianity she was brought up in. Joyce can not. Joyce is rightfully angry with a lot of things she grew up with.
Becky needs to back off and let Joyce sort her feeling out with someone else.
Becky will decide who Joyce can and can’t talk to about this
I wonder if Dina would be on that pretty little blacklist…….
Becky just need to back off and be understanding about Joyce thinking she’s an idiot.
Becky heard her best friend say some mean and incredibly out of the ordinary things. She responded by making a snide remark and leaving. When Joyce ran to her to apologise she dismissed her apology. She implied Joyce agreeing that her mum was in heaven was cruel if she didn’t believe anymore.
A more mature and open to dialogue response would be asking what is going on with Joyce because this is uncharacteristic of her. But hey, it’s right there in the title, Dumbing of Age and these two are eighteen year olds wrapped up in their feelings and trauma.
>When Joyce ran to her to apologise she dismissed her apology.
Yeah I think Becky’s smart enough to understand that wasn’t an actual apology. Joyce is basically stating her she DOES think Becky is an idiot, and that she herself was an idiot.
Yeah, it was a very loaded question that put Joyce in a no-win scenario.
I’ll say yes Joyce is most likely projecting here, but she is also verbally saying with her words that Becky is an idiot here. Becky asked if Joyce really thinks she’s an idiot for having faith and Joyce responded by outlining the ways in which faith is stupid and punctuated it by using Becky’s trauma with religion, not her own. So she’s not exactly going about this the best way either
(Also Joyce came to Becky with this conversation not the other way around but that’s semantics)
Honestly despite how it looks im not on either side necessarily bc i don’t think this is a sides situation overall
yaaay join the “no sides” side *high five*
*high five*
I feel like it looks like I’m on Becky’s side since I’ve been more defensive of her, which is really only bc i feel like a lot of her criticism gets irrational. Honestly i didn’t even care too much about Becky beyond passive enjoyment until the crowd against her got really loud post time skip
yeah. same. i really like both of them, but i feel especially defensive about Becky because she gets so much flak.
Uh huh, here’s the crux of the situation. Becky’s faith can bend, and it has done a great job withstanding some serious bullshit. Joyce’s faith wasn’t flexible. It was brittle and based on everything working as one perfect inerrant system. It was like a giant stick tower. Yank one out and the whole thing collapses.
I’m gonna withhold final thoughts until this storyline is over, but I AM wondering, disappointedly, if Joyce was being less literal than I thought in her usage of ‘I’ earlier. If that ends up being the case, my apologies if I upset anyone by arguing otherwise – y’all were right, I was wrong.
That said, I’m not 100% convinced YET. 😛
(Also, happy thanksgiving to any of my fellow Canadian type Pokemon celebrating).
I suspect the problem is that Joyce hasn’t taken the time to talk or think any of this out properly so her anger at herself, her anger at her parents, her anger at Becky’s dad, her anger at her Church, etc, is all mashed up together in an incoherent mess and getting projected at Becky because she’s the closest target.
Very possible. She wasn’t ready to talk to Becky about this and good lord does it show.
Fully agreed. Joyce DOES need to talk and think, but Not With Becky. Dorothy seems like the only possible person in Joyce’s circle who’d be both willing and even slightly equipped to listen and help sort. If Joyce can actually get some Joyce-and-Dorothy time, that is. (Joe has helped Joyce with a lot of stuff, and he could probably help with this, but willingness is the question.)
A different way of thinking about it is this:
Joyce actually had beliefs, she actually genuinely believed in the things in the Bible. And eventually she realized they were fairy-tales and lies and so she stopped believing in them.
Becky instead just actually really really needs the “important things” (that there’s a God in heaven who loves her, and her mom is with him) to be true. Her belief is “flexible” in everything else, because her beliefs aren’t really beliefs, she wants and needs a specific part of her religion (the all-loving God that her mom is with), and she doesn’t much care about much else.
Is that not also belief though? Like, I would not be comfortable going around telling people “Ah, you don’t REALLY believe in your religion/faith/spirituality/etc because you don’t meet my standards of rigor”.
It’s a different kind of belief. Literalist belief is intellectual and is strung together by stated reasons. I believe my friend is a math genius because I have literally watched her do super hard math. Other belief is more emotional, and all you really need is the feeling. I believe my friend would take a bullet for me because I’ve felt protected in her presence.
If your God is real because you have been given reasons to believe, then your belief will be intellectual. If your God is real because you have felt that presence and are confident in its strength, then your belief will be emotional.
These aren’t real categories, btw; I’m making them up because they’re useful right now.
I agree that Becky’s belief is no less valid or real for being more resilient. But us ex-fundies tend to stick to the intellectual pattern of belief that we were taught: we just think them through a different filter now.
The intellectual belief has the advantage of often being true or true-adjacent. Emotional belief is a real crapshoot.
I would certainly agree that their outlooks on faith are different, however I’m far more hesitant to say that Becky somehow believes less than Joyce does because some parts of her beliefs are flexible.
Can one truly say that one is a Christian if one does not believe every single itty bit of the bible? Maybe, but frankly based on that criteria I’m not sure how many true Christians there actually would be. (Like depending on your interpretation of scripture there’s a valid argument to be made that only people of Jewish background can actually be Christian)
However if someone does believe that there is a good loving power in the universe, and puts their faith in that power, even if it doesn’t precisely match all elements of biblical canon. (And debatably can’t if it’s actually supposed to be all-loving) is that less valid than the person who bends over backwards to explain away every idiosyncrasy or contradiction in biblical canon arguably also because they also desperately want it all to be true?
Faith is faith.
I’d call anyone a Christian who believes that Jesus Christ is the ultimate moral teacher — belief in “every single itty bit of the bible” is not a requirement. My brother is a believing Christian, he does admit that the bible is self-contradictory and that it isn’t inerrant.
But I’ve no reason that I know to think that *Becky* is a believing Christian at all. The parts that she actually seems to care about… well, she could just as well be Jewish or Muslim or perhaps several other faiths. “There’s a loving god, her mom is in heaven, and sex before marriage is wrong” — that’s the extent that we know of her beliefs.
Where is *anything* about Jesus Christ and what he taught? Does she even care? Or is that “not important” either?
I mean, Becky definitely believes that Jesus is the son of God and died for their sins and all that stuff. She has specifically NOT rejected the Jesus stuff, and in fact referred to herself as Joyce’s Jesusy pal, specifically. So yes, she’s specifically Christian.
(She also has a very all-or-nothing idea of sin that is very, very Christian, and doesn’t have the same ‘believing in the holy book means analyzing what it’s trying to get at, having wildly different opinions, and sometimes deciding that God’s being a jerk and needs arguing with’ that is very much a Thing in Judaism in particular. Becky’s willing to IGNORE things and consider things parables, but her perception of God is one that agrees with the things she finds valuable – she doesn’t have the theological stance that sometimes God’s just flat-out wrong. The differences between the three Abrahamic religions aren’t superficial – you pick up some very different philosophical stances after over 1,000 years of internal theological debate and hashing out of various details for even the youngest of the three.)
I think the difference here is between belief and faith. Becky has a very firm sense of faith in a loving god – she doesn’t need the world to be 6,000 years old for there to be a god who answers lesbian prayers and saves her from kidnappings. Joyce very much believed in Biblical literalism, and put a lot of effort into it being a single coherent story, but she’s not sure she ever felt God when she prayed. Her feeling of God in a service is tied to the community and specific rituals she’s used to, down to the specific variety of grape juice used for communion (and it had to be juice, not wine, OBVIOUSLY. She’s too young to drink.) Becky ultimately took the trip to Jacob’s church in stride once she got used to the aesthetic shock, and she can tune out an evangelical pastor giving a sermon about how gay people are going to hell, because she knows they’re wrong. Joyce can’t really reconcile either change. Underneath all the effort she put into believing every word was true, into trusting the adults in her life and being a Good Girl and not even acknowledging the CONCEPT of sex, much less her own desires… there was nothing there, except maybe a deep anxiety at the idea of going to hell if she did Bad Things. (We haven’t heard that part for sure, but we know she’s questioning ever truly believing; we know Joyce CLEARLY has an anxiety disorder that includes a need for rigid structure and has serious hangups about acknowledging she is anything but perfectly-behaved, which is especially pronounced in her refusal to acknowledge she knows or thinks about anything sexual; we know they grew up in an authoritarian church and the way she freaks out about breaking into Becky’s house meaning they’ll go to jail; and when Willis was discussing their own break with faith back in the Roomies reruns it involved a similar ‘I didn’t actually believe in a loving God, I was terrified of punishment’ sentiment to what I’m describing here. I had a similar realization with less authoritarian upbringing and religious abuse and trauma – my anxiety disorder gels REALLY badly with any concept of punishment in the afterlife, so even though the denomination I was raised in was chill, the cultural Christianity osmosis and the idea of hell meant I cannot have a healthy relationship with Christianity.)
At the end of the day, I think you can sum up the core difference with Becky telling Ross as he’s dying to ‘tell Mom I’ll be a while.’ Even though he kidnapped her and then kidnapped her friends to get her again, even though she didn’t want to have a relationship with him ever again, she does not believe he’s going to hell. I’m not 100% certain she believes in hell, honestly – she also thinks Dina will be in heaven, after all. If she does, the love she still had for Ross in spite of everything terrible he did was enough for her to say ‘he won’t be punished eternally.’ Joyce, by contrast? Absolutely believes in eternal damnation, and if she thinks the wrong thoughts even once she will DEFINITELY go there. So she won’t. Ever.
Yup. 🙁
I also think there’s a difference in what their belief was based in. Joyce’s belief was based in fear- fear of what would happen to her if she didn’t believe, and the fear that if there was no God, then nothing mattered. Becky’s belief is based more in love or comfort- comfort in feeling like there is an all-loving God who cares about her even when no one else does, and comfort in thinking her Mom is in heaven.
Thank you for saying that way more succinctly than I ever could, because YES. Cosigned. Upvoted.
Yup to this too.
They both are digging their own goddamn trenches here.
I’m baffled that so many people seem to consider what I see as the start of acknowledging and understanding how very differently they’ve approached religion is a bad thing.
The increasingly angry expressions don’t make it seem like reaching an understanding but becoming defensive and more aggressive about their specific take. It seems like an escalating conflict to me. Could still turn to understanding, but this right here looks like it is leading into an argument.
And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Was it be better back in La Porte when Becky desperately asked, “Why won’t you get mad at me!?”
Sometimes you need an argument. Besides, they’ve said, like… five sentences to each other; of course they haven’t reached understanding yet. They just started the conversation.
It’s ultimately a good thing, but neither is equipped to have or participate in that conversation in good faith at this time. Joyce hasn’t processed, and Becky is… still trying to be somewhat controlling of Joyce’s identity.
I worry that your view on this is way too optimistic. It looks more to me like they’re getting into an argument, and they’re gonna both end up saying some things they’ll regret later. This could end with them coming to understand each other better, but I suspect it’s gonna end with them being even more mad at each other and maybe even them not wanting to be friends anymore.
I really only think it’s a bad thing that Joyce is with her words (yes i know she’s probably projecting) affirming that yes, she thinks Becky’s an idiot. That’s not great. But I’m not expecting either of these emotional teenagers to be perfectly smart or rational
I don’t sympathize with Becky here at the moment. As her religious best friend, she should have already known how deep Joyce was into the bible already. Especially her interactions with Dina.
I dunno, really.
It seems that before she became an atheist, the line between her and her indoctrination seemed indistinguishable when it came to the Bible.
I sympathize with Becky because she’s effectively had this conversation with Joyce before or so she thinks. Joyce did her extensive Biblical study of, “Does God hate lesbians?” and concluded, “No God does not.”
Becky’s response was, “Wait, why the hell did you have to consult the Bible? God is love!”
I hope you remember to apologize at some point during your apology.
Becky won’t (I assume you’re talking about Becky)
I’m sorry for still being a Christian and I should become an atheist now because that’s the only correct way to respond to trauma?
That’s not the problem. She’s kinda been blackmailing Joyce with their friendship for being an atheist.
She seems to value religious freedom, but yet denies it to her best friend. But I guess contradiction is only human, after all.
I’m sorry for wanting to barge into your private conversation because I cannot comprehend the idea of you talking to someone other than me and I wanted to assert my rights as your bestest friend evah?
Exactly. I’m so tired of the comments section being filled with “joyce was lying to her”…no. She wasn’t. She just hadn’t told her yet because, frankly, she’s not a safe person to tell.
Becky talks about Joyce like she’s a chew toy and dismissed the early fledgling of this thought. Joyce was allowed time and space to deal with and explore her feelings on this topic without having to tell Becky. Becky doesn’t own her and actually isn’t entitled to Joyce’s every thought and journey.
The fact that Becky overheard something upsetting is due to her inability to allow Joyce to be her own person. Becky has NO boundaries so Joyce isn’t allowed any either? The comments section has been legitimately gross these last few pages.
Joyce was lying to her though, she wasn’t just not bringing up the topic.
The clearest example is in the strip “watchin” in As long as it’s free in the run up to Becky’s birthday party. Becky asks her directly what’s going on that made Joyce hesitate after Becky said that her mom was watching her from heaven, and Joyce tells her a direct naked lie.
She even lampshades that that’s what’s she’s doing at the end of the strip.
She could have set a boundary there and insisted on keeping the thought private but she didn’t, she choose to lie instead.
That might have gone poorly, or it might not, in various ways probably some that’d have been Becky’s fault but that doesn’t change the fact that Joyce choose to lie.
Joyce said she wanted to talk about it and Becky told her that she’s keeping Joyce nonsense in her head and she’s going to let it out.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/watchin/
Joyce said that she did not want to talk about it*
More specifically, Joyce said she was allowed to hesitate.
There is no way that Joyce would have been able to say “I’m not interested in/ready to talk to you about this topic right now” without it causing a much worse scene than this even.
Becky has repeatedly shown that she will violate boundaries and it was an important and stressful day for her already. She has also shown that she will disregard Joyce’s feelings on things when she feels she’s having a bigger problem because something-something-trauma-olympics.
Becky was not a safe person to tell. Joyce does not owe her an apology for not starting a fight on her dead mother’s birthday, Becky is NOT entitled to her inner thoughts no matter what they might be.
Nope. 🙁
(I’m agreeing with you, if that’s unclear.)
Exactly, it’s amazing the number of people ignoring Becky’s part in all this, she put Joyce in an impossible situation the day before and pushed her to reveal her private thoughts until Joyce lied to avoid hurting Becky on a bad day. Then, today she forced her way into Joyce’s time with Liz because she’s insanely possessive and lacks any appropriate boundaries and respect for Joyce’s autonomy. Yes, Joyce said something angry and bitter that hurt Becky, but Becky has no respect for Joyce as a separate individual and never has and that’s not alright.
Joyce apologized. The first words out of her mouth were ‘I’m sorry’. Becky declined the apology for what Joyce is actually sorry for, and Joyce had better not apologize for having thoughts and feelings Becky doesn’t like.
Becky responded to the sorry with “sorry you got caught”. She didn’t believe her
But that IS why Joyce is sorry. That’s exactly why Joyce is sorry and what she is sorry for. She is sorry Becky heard that, and Becky refused to accept that. The apology Becky seems to want involves Joyce’s thoughts and feelings being eliminated and replaced by ones Becky likes better.
Yeah, people have this weird idea that feeling apologetic is all or nothing, like if you are unwilling to change future behavior or retract earlier behavior then you are lying about being sorry for the way it affects others. I can feel bad/guilty/apologetic/whatever about the way my behavior affects others and still stand by my words/actions. Here, Joyce is sorry for the way her words made Becky feel, but she still stands by the underlying sentiment of them, but Becky (and a lot of other people, it seems) is under the mistaken impression that Joyce cannot be sorry for the way her words affected Becky without retracting them.
I like to remember The Last Unicorn on regret vs. sorrow. ‘I can never regret. I can feel sorrow, but it’s not the same thing.’
Joyce feels sorrow that Becky heard, not regret for speaking, I think.
Well, then their friendship should end, because if Joyce is only sorry that Becky heard her mocking Becky for being an idiot, then there really isn’t much else to day. If she stands by really thinking Becky is an idiot for believing, then I don’t see much future here.
If that’s not true, then she has more to apologize for than just letting Becky hear her.
She shouldn’t apologize for being an atheist, but that’s not the same thing.
Here’s kind of how I’m processing it right now in light of this new strip.
Joyce was cutting up other Christians, at least in concept, because Joyce thinks everyone processed belief in the exact same way: an Authority Figure tells you exactly what you need to think and that Authority Figure is only allowed to be contradicted if a higher tiered Authority Figure pulls rank. Joyce thinks every Christian (I honestly can’t imagine she knows how to process the existence of other religions) had the same kind of faith as her, which is to say they all had inerrant rules to follow without question and a God who sent pain for their own good.
Like, Joyce is not responding to Becky’s feelings right now. Much like how Becky thought Joyce would naturally get over all the unimportant stuff like Becky, it seems Joyce thought Becky also thought, or was supposed to, think of her faith as an inerrant fact with no deviation.
Becky has faith, Joyce had programming.
I think that’s more analysis than Joyce has put into it. 🙂
In my take, Joyce was cutting up other Christians because of frustration with the version she was raised in and her own feelings about believing it. She was venting. She hasn’t really been focused on even whether others in her sect, like Becky, understood it the same way she did, much less how Christians in non-fundie churches might understand it.
It’s less about whether Joyce is analyzing and more that, at least from this strip and how she’s approaching Becky, I don’t think Joyce has ever thought about how other people process faith. I think Joyce assumed Becky and everyone else treated it like a rulebook.
Like to try and sum this up: Joyce was talking about herself, but she was talking about the only experience she thinks exists.
But that’s exactly what you’re asking for. Joyce is blowing up a mountain, and right now all she’s got is ‘this is so stupid! I was so stupid! How could anyone believe this? How could I? It’s so stupid to believe this.’ What’s happening right this moment is that Joyce’s answer to whether she thinks Becky is dumb for believing is ‘right now, yes!’ Because Joyce feels the dumb on every level despite knowing that Becky’s not. The feeling has NOTHING to do with Becky, only Joyce. It’s Joyce’s crisis.
Is it messy? Yes. Is it kind of mean? Also yes. Did Joyce ever intend to let the best friend she loves see this internal shitstorm? Emphatically no. Had Joyce been allowed the time and space to get the big garbage out, process and think through and find what she actually does believe, there could have been a less-messy version of this conversation.
Becky and the narrative didn’t allow it, so here we are! With Becky attempting to make Joyce’s crisis all about her and getting a face full of why that was not advisable.
What she needs to say is that part about her feeling dumb. Right now, combined with the mockery Becky overheard, it sounds like she thinks Becky is an idiot and she’s a brain genius.
I hope she gets to that part. It may take a little bit.
It’s not completely the same though. Her being caught is only a small fraction of the problem. (And her only being sorry about being caught is not going to useful as an apology).
If Joyce was only sorry being caught, that’d imply she’s completely fine with the ‘all believers are complete idiots’ mindset, and thus considers Becky a complete idiot. That hurts, and Becky is understandably unhappy with that. Especially combined with the betrayal when someone she considered a friend was apparently only lying, while actually considering her a complete idiot.
It’s also pretty worthless as an apology, as it doesn’t offer any apology for the actual offense. ‘I’m sorry you heard me calling you an idiot, I still consider you an idiot and will refer to you as such behind your back’ doesn’t really make anyone feel better.
This is not really about Joyce’s own beliefs, it’s about her current attitude towards believers. Becky seems flexible enough to be cool with Joyce not being a believer, but the active mocking of believers (which includes her) is the problem here.
Yes, thank you!
Joyce is calling ALL Christians idiots. While yes she is projecting her own anger here, Becky DID just walk into a conversation where her *BEST FRIEND* is with some new friend going “Ha, that old friend my mine? Total dumbass. LOL”
Yeah no shit Becky is hurt. That attitude is shitty and not a good look. Why would she want an apology for overhearing Joyce? That makes no sense. She wants Joyce to apologize for calling her an idiot.
Why would Becky want an apology for overhearing Joyce? That makes no sense. She wants Joyce to apologize for calling her an idiot.
Sure Joyce is sorry Becky overheard, but the overhearing isn’t what hurt Becky, it’s her best friend calling her an idiot for having a religion at all.
Good callback to this conversation on the same subject.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/originalsin/
Becky has known her entire life that her father is a liar, so she never hung her religion on him. Joyce found out just recently that her parents lied to her.
This is the comment I’ve been writing in my head. Joyce grew up in a perfect family. There weren’t any problems between her parents or siblings, only with the outside world. Any family internal problems were successfully hidden from her. Her family was perfect, so her religion was perfect too.
Becky grew up in a family that was broken. It was forbidden to talk about the problems, but they couldn’t be hidden from her. She loved her family, but had no illusions that it was all good. So she has no problem with the idea that her religion is imperfect, but the bad parts don’t mean that the good parts aren’t good.
Ooh, I was looking for that strip! Thanks! And yes, everything you said.
I think Joyce also saw how deeply the entire community backed Ross and contributed to their trauma in a way Becky hasn’t – even Hank, the ‘good’ parent who emphatically DID NOT stand with Ross, still considers ‘atheist’ synonymous with ‘bad’ per his talk with the Keeners post-kidnapping, and Joyce knows that because of the Freshman Family Weekend blowup over her friendship with Dorothy. Becky can brush off Carol being judgy, but Joyce heard Carol use the same ‘I will die for you’ Ross did immediately after the first kidnapping. Joyce knows she went to a secular college and Becky didn’t in part because Joyce was more obedient than the other kids.
And of course, Becky needs to believe Bonnie would never have betrayed her the way Ross did, which means her mom couldn’t possibly have been complicit in raising her in a deeply harmful way. (In fairness to Bonnie, I fully believe she was also raised by fundamentalists and never thought she had an alternative, which I think contributed to her eventual suicide attempt. But I wonder if part of that depression stemmed from watching a curious, rebellious little girl grow up and realizing the same thing Becky did about the role she was allowed – that it didn’t fit, and never would, and Becky would end up as stifled as she was. Intentionally or not, Bonnie harmed Becky as well, and Becky is not remotely equipped to recognize that right now.)
“The danged extent of her allowed aspirations” http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/aspirations/
Very good point. I agree that Becky probably holds Bonny up on a pedistal, and that she’s not prepared to look closer at the damage her mother did to her.
Joyce does not have the luxury of idealizing any of her parents.
I think Becky probably has some complicated feelings about Bonnie’s suicide attempt – not enough time had passed for her to be talking about Ross at the hospital to Amber – but I suspect she separates that one action from all the things preceding it. (I also take it as a given Becky received no mental healthcare whatsoever for the whole ‘finding her mom overdosing’ thing, which is why I suspect she ALSO might not be particularly fond of ‘God works in mysterious ways (and that’s why your mom’s dying)’. Poor Becky.)
All of this, including your previous comment and Bagge’s reply. 🙁
*Reads old comments under that strip* Huh. I forgot I wrote this in 2015:
“Next DOA-year, Joyce will start drawing cartoons about a character named Julia Baker who struggles to reconcile religion with her college experience while saving the world from interdimensional alien invaders.”
You know, looking at each other might help during this whole interaction.
Nope. Too close, too ‘real’. That comes later. (Or should.)
“I probably won’t think you’re stupid for believing that stuff once I’ve gone through the fallout. but right now I think *I* was an idiot, and it looks very much like, if I’m an idiot for my beliefs, you must be too.”
Probably don’t even have to go that far. Just saying “I feel like an idiot for believing so long and I was venting about that” would probably suffice.
“Do you really think I’m an idiot because I believe in god?”
“I mean…I’m a new atheist. It comes with the territory.”
Wow it’s amazing how Joyce and Becky hate and loathe each other now, they’re definitely gonna have long lasting animosity forever now, Becky literally will hire Agent 47 to assassinate Joyce, Joyce is planning to kill Becky in real life with a gun, hate hate hate hate hate.
Well that would be a different way to take the story
Only blood can follow. Okay, maybe a mature conversation might, but reading the room, I anticipate at least a mild amount of dismemberment.
Are you sure that’s a gun? It looks more like a phone to me.
It’s a kniPhone.
This is bullying. Q_Q
(lol)
I’m sorry, but every time it comes up, I cackle remembering how much fun it was on patreon that night.
Oh, I can only imagine. The crow was delicious, mind you.
Next strip, Willis will announce the release of his new fighting game DoA: College Fight. Play as your favorite character with unique special abilities!
Billie: summons a cheer squad to run you over.
Sarah: between a baseball bat and a law degree.
Ruth: already has your femurs.
Becky: calls in an orbital strike on any and all closets.
Joyce:
Make sure you click “Add to your wishlist” for updates!
….How did you know about the fan game I’ve been puttering with, and how did Willis get it off my laptop?
That sounds awesome, do you have any screenshots or footage?
I have a .png file of Read Hall with a basic painting filter on it and the Dumbing of Age logo in the top-center. It’s exactly as nothing as you’re imagining.
Stealing your femurs should be Ruth’s fatality move.
it’s not stealing, they’re hers by right/forfeit.
Okay this isn’t fair because i actually really want this now
Carla: laser-shooting rollerskates.
Faz: shows you a really disturbing drawing.
Amber: game-within-game, inception-style hacking. She kill you.
Dina: emulates the behaviour of whatever creature’s currently at the top of the sci-news.com/paleontology page.
Sal: blasé remarks about how stupid fighting games are. also, mean punch.
you, can i sit next to you
I’m wondering if Becky and Dorothy hadn’t interrupted Joyce, in fact weren’t there at all, would Joyce have gotten everything out of her system (like a dam breaking) and then be able to talk to Becky about this?
But then I suppose there’d be no drama…
Everything, probably not. But there also would’ve been space for a debrief with Sarah, and maybe Joe, and that might have been enough. It probably would’ve gotten her to the point of confessing to Becky, who I don’t think would have taken it much better than this, frankly.
At this point, this probably is going to end with an ‘I guess we’re not friends anymore’, however temporary that may be. Becky seems to only be interested in hearing ‘Becky, you’re right, I’m sorry, God is totally real and in my heart all day forever.’
Joyce cannot give her that. Joyce hasn’t fully processed what she actually DOES believe. At this point, all she knows is that she doesn’t feel God, isn’t sure she ever really did, and that the piles of stupid bullshit (young earth, dinosaurs on an ark, etc) that she definitely should not believe are basically the only things that are actually there in the ‘faith’ place inside her.
It’s different for Becky. But no amount of demanding or ultimatum or argument will make it any different for Joyce right now.
Something tells me there will be a Dina-Becky breakup soon.
That, I don’t think, myself. I think Dina could be very helpful to Becky in understanding where Joyce is coming from. Also, Becky has been much more willing to accept all of Dina, as a real person, than she has been of Joyce. Dina is the best person with whom Becky can wrestle with these things..
On the other hand… If becky ever asks dina “do you think my religious beliefs are DUMB” (as becky is suggesting with joyce) then dina might end up saying yes they are. Result: unexpected problems in their relationship.
I don’t doubt Dina will say ‘yes’ to some, but crucially Dina us 100% sure on her own beliefs and priorities. I have no doubt that she has questioned and reasoned within herself, knows what she can and can’t accept in herself and others. Becky hasn’t clung to the things that Dina can’t tolerate and hasn’t demanded that Dina believe anything.
I feel like Dina’s response will be something like ‘your religious upbringing was filled with vile and, yes, exceptionally stupid lies, and I do not believe in God myself, but I accept that you do. Your belief does not deny reality in a meaningful way, therefore I see no difficulty with it even if I will never share it.’
The problem is… That still doesn’t answer the question becky might have… Do you think i am dumb to have these beliefs”.
Its a direct question she seems to have of joyce, and she might not accept such an indirect answer from dina on the same issue.
That absolutely DOES answer the question, and frankly it’s a ridiculous question really.
Dina is aware that Becky is intelligent, and will certainly say so if asked. They wouldn’t be dating if Dina thought Becky was dumb. Dina values reason and intellect very highly, and has relied more than once on Becky being both intelligent and perceptive. Becky has one or more thoroughly unprovable beliefs that Dina does not share and never will, that’s all.
No, it doesn’t answer the question. It dances around it while avoiding what was actually asked. The question wasn’t “Was I exposed to lies when growing up”, it was “Am I dumb to continue believing in some of those lies now”.
Becky may have been exposed to “stupid lies” when growing up, ,but she is now exposed to a more scientific world view. Yet she is still clinging to some elements of her superstition. Dina is probably quite willing to ignore that, because she values her relationship with Becky. But if Becky decides to actually ASK Dina straight up what she thinks of her religion, I doubt you will get the tap-dancing response you seem to think she will provide.
It’s the direct question she has of Joyce because she heard Joyce say believers were idiots. Dina hasn’t said any such thing.
This conversation might lead her to ask Dina that, but I don’t think it’s likely.
I dunno, I want to agree with you, but Dina replied to “You’re proof that there’s a higher power” with “That’s not how any of that works,” basically. I do suspect that at some point she’ll just have to tell Becky that she does think it’s all kind of unscientific hand-waving, and Becky will have to make her peace with that.
Dina is, I think, honest enough to be able to take the position that she can’t prove a negative, so as long as Becky doesn’t believe anything that CAN be proved to be incorrect, it’s not worth arguing about. Which may well be enough for Becky to make do.
You can’t prove a negative.
But, if the negative is so… unscientific (like the aspects of chritianity) then an atheist can easily dismiss it.
After all, if you claim that there is an invisible pink unicorn living in your sock drawer, I can’t [i]prove[/i] its wrong. But it falls so far outside the bounds of accepted science that nobody woudl take it seriously.
See also the Dragon in Carl Sagan’s Garage, and the teapot in orbit of Jupiter.
I think Becky wants to hear that from Joyce specifically. Dina is supposed to be her atheist dinosaur girl, Joyce is supposed to be her fundamentalist religious best friend.
Becky needs to stop putting people in boxes and forcing them to stay there.
^ THIIIIIIIIS ^
Exactly!
Honestly, good
I think the best thing that can happen for both of them is for them to “take a break” from each other
Me too. They both need to sort out reality and their desired relationship with it. Only then will they be able to sort out a real relationship with each other, if they want one.
Joyce is finally getting to get her frustrations out about religion, and the only one who’s left to listen is her closest friend. Shit sucks and I’ve been there
Closest friend no, oldest yes. Dorothy, Joe and Sarah have all shown to be better, closer friends to Joyce then Becky has and thats the main problem here
Becky doesn’t want to be friends with Joyce, she wants to be friends with a Joyce-Bot
A little late to the party on this one but I must say I’m a little surprised these two appear to be so uncompromising. Especially since they both have pretty valid points. Why should Becky keep following a religion that’s been so damaging to her? Especially since for how flexible she supposedly is she still choses to uphold some of the more toxic aspects of it even if that gets in the way of her own happiness. Such as her views on sexual intimacy creating some self inflicted tension between her and Dina.
And Joyce shouldn’t let the abusive expression of Christianity she was raised with dictate the validity of the entire religion. She’s old enough to make her own decisions on that, they both are.
Ironically they’re both giving people whose opinions don’t matter too much power over what they believe.
I dont disagree, but I feel like maybe the answer to this one is that ‘they’re about 18’.
Yup.
Joyce has a choice on what she believes, yes. But she doesn’t really know what to keep and what not to keep because authority figures have been doing that for her all her life, and she has yet to completely detangle and discern HER beliefs from HER GROUP’S beliefs.
What Joyce is doing right now is that she’s trying to distance herself from her religion as much possible, because what’s important to her right now is breaking the hold they have on her brain.
It’s kinda like the psychological equivalent of how the Russian Socialists didn’t have time to determine what “collective ownership” meant during the revolution, when they were too busy trying to avoid getting shot.
Yup. During the walk through the snow, I was saying that Joyce really needed Jacob to bounce this stuff off. Jacob thinks thoroughly enough that he’d be useful at digging into the details, is religious enough to offer a solid alternative perspective, and is kind enough to give her exactly as much space as she needs to figure it out.
There was even a couple of strips where the conversation started. But of course, then drama happened and there wasn’t another such conversation.
1) Yeah as Holly said, they’re like 18, and to use Willis’s exact word for it, were raised in a cult. Neither of them’s been given healthy tools to unpack the trauma there.
2) That also means Becky hasn’t had the time or tools to unpack ‘okay but exactly how much do I think God ACTUALLY doesn’t like premarital hanky panky, and how much do I think that’s something adults tell kids so they’ll be overcome with appropriately straight lust, get married and start popping out babies ASAP?’ Which is part of where her issue re: sex is, since she’s just as ashamed of having Sexual Desires as Joyce is and was hoping her hot atheist girlfriend would likewise be overcome with lust and, unbound by those Christian mores, utterly ravage her and then once it’s happened once it’s not so bad, right? And God will eventually forgive them because they just couldn’t help themselves, they were being controlled by hormones, which is why Dina being a sex-positive aspec who’s very clear that she wants to have sex when Becky does but has no problem waiting because she DOESN’T experience sexual attraction as a constant, inescapable horniness has been such a curveball.
3) I genuinely don’t think Joyce ever experienced faith in the same way Becky did, which means there’s not that same comfort to salvage. Joyce internalized the fear, the eternal damnation, the Do The Right Thing And Think The Right Thoughts Or Else, in part because Joyce is a very anxious person who fears punishment and other people’s displeasure. (Was she always prone to anxiety, or was it the trauma? If anyone figures it out, tell Willis, he wants to know.) Becky internalized the idea that someone lives her unconditionally and will answer her prayers when she’s kidnapped with superheroes and her best friend on a motorcycle, that her mom is happy and watching over her and they’ll see each other again someday. (So you know, also informed by religious trauma, but differently.) I think we have a while to go yet before they get to that particular fundamental difference, and that’s the key to why they can’t come around to each other’s lines of thinking. Until they realize that, I suspect there’s still more anger to go around, because how DARE the other have a different response to their shared religiously abusive upbringings than their own, which is obviously the correct one.
On 3, I feel like as I go through life I encounter two brands of people, people who Feel spirituality in some form and people who don’t, and while how and where you were raised will determine what you end up with anyways and how those tendencies manifest, at the end of the day the people who Feel it will find some way to express or tie themselves to some form of spirituality and the people who don’t will trend agnostic/atheist or just live by the mores, values, and logic of the culture they live in.
Becky clearly Feels god, and Joyce clearly doesn’t. Which was fine as long as Joyce was living in a cult bubble that told her what the rules of reality were and that they included god, but now? Without that artifice there’s nothing for Joyce to believe in. Trying is a logic problem, not a feeling. Whereas Becky has never stopped feeling something was there and can’t understand why Joyce Doesn’t Get It.
Yeah, some people are treating this as a choice that they should sit back and make after due logical consideration, which it really isn’t. Whether it’s as innate as you suggest or not, Joyce doesn’t believe in God anymore, while Becky does. Neither of them can just decide to change that. They could pretend, but core beliefs like that rarely come out of conscious choice – even if we rationalize them afterwards.
Yep. And Joyce isn’t exactly motivated to try and feel God even if that was likely to work, because her idea of a loving God was dependent on the Garden of Eden story literally being true (so that death and such weren’t God’s design,) and original sin being a thing. But now she’s realized that she doesn’t like the idea of original sin, either. The idea that Jesus died for her sins is actively triggering due to Ross and Carol. Becky could ask her to try, but even the stuff that wasn’t dependent on the cult upbringing is stuff Joyce is realizing she doesn’t like.
The thing is, (2) can take decades to unpack, even after marriage. Evangelical Christianity is so hyper-focused on “sexual morality/purity” that a lot of people internalize that more than the other stuff. I have known several ex-vangelicals who, even as liberal Christians, deists, and atheists, would say “Well, I don’t believe in hell, but of course you should wait to get married to have sex. Imagine the guilt if you didn’t!”
Oh, yeah, shame runs deep. One of those reasons why I think both girls could use a therapist experienced with religious trauma and abuse, because while I don’t think Becky needs to drop everything and have sex right now I do think the shame for having sexual desires is unhealthy and she could use some help trying to reduce it a bit.
Yeah, absolutely. But I don’t think she’s there yet – hopefully she gets there eventually.
I think I’ve read a few stories online where even after marriage such christians can be still fucked up by the emphasis on ‘purity’ to the point that they can’t go through with it despite a part of them wanting to. Because they still feel subconsciously it’s unclean. It’s actually really hard to work past for them.
They’re still exchanging words! I count this as a win.
Well, I was hoping maybe Joyce might get to specifics but Becky is too angry and Joyce is too close to her own anger.
I assumed that Joyce doesn’t think Beckys an idiot, just herself, but now I think her anger is at everything in their childhoods which includes the faith maybe faith itself. That is genuinely concerning beyond this. I think it’s fair game to say what you will about christianity and catholicism, 2 extremely powerful religions whose impacts when you consider how they’ve been utilised around the world, but once you go beyond that you’ve ceased to care about power dynamics and your criticism is lazy “skygod” atheist crap.
But back to the argument, this is maybe gonna end in their friendship breaking with both of them speaking past one another. They both seem rigid in at least the question of beliefs from childhood. Joyce wants to abandon everything including belief in god whereas Becky needs Joyce to be at the same place she is because Becky has her boxes, which includes believing in god
I was maybe too kind to Joyce she seems to be unable to interact with anything that reminds her of her upbringing unless it’s like Liz who hates it a lot. But Becky I’m not surprised by, her need for people to stay the same once Becky decides what that is is a long running problem for her, and here we see it manifest. She might have found a way through social pressure or whatever to accept Joyce as an atheist otherwise but here she has a perfectly justifiable reason to be mad: Joyce mocking of belief. So she can hold onto that anger and not face the fact Joyce changed, a thing Becky kind of hates.
Gonna be interesting what the fallout is, I assume Dorothy is on Becky’s side and Sarah and Joe on Joyce’s but Dina will be interesting considering she has been shown to not care for a lot of Becky’s beliefs to the point of anger. Though watching Dina defend Becky while struggling with what she’s defending would be funny.
Feels bad #teamthesekidsneedgoodtherapy
Sarah and Joe, no question. Sarah stands with Little Sis and Joe with his Dammit Feelings Why You Gotta Stealth A Bro. Also, Joyce is his lab partner, they need to get along.
Dina for sure supporting Becky, but that gets complicated since she’s… pretty vocal and open about thinking religion is trash. She and Becky have navigated that so far, though, so I trust Dina’s navigation going forward.
I think Dorothy is likely to do her damnedest to stay neutral. She has to live with Becky, and she genuinely loves Joyce (rather than a box labeled Joyce, as Becky seems to at the moment) so she won’t want breakage on either side f she can avoid it.
If pressed, though, I think she’ll choose Joyce over the girl who’s been passive-aggressively bullying her for X amount of time. Said passive-aggressive bullying is surely a good basis for a request to change roommates if it comes to that. I bet Sal would be willing to have Dorothy instead of Malaya. (The Becky and Malaya war of posturing would be glorious.)
Dang your right about Dorothy, her desire for neutrality will for sure keep her in the middle. Honestly your right on all of them, I especially hope Becky and Malaya end up room mates cause that would be funny, pure chaos right there
The more I think about it, the more I think that Becky and Malaya might even be good for each other. Malaya will push back against Becky’s actual fakey bits the way no one else Becky knows ever does, and the bulk of Becky that actually IS ‘unapologetically me’ might actually give Malaya something to think about.
That would be wonderful, as a non-binary I’d like the most explicit rep in the series to get some development like that
I am signing the “Becky/Malaya as roomies” petition.
Re: roommate change…
Hmmm… Seeing roommate assignments change from becky/dorothy and sal/malaya to becky/makaya and sal/dorothy would be some interesting dynamics… Not only do you have the drama of breaking friendships but in one room you have a lesbian and malaya with her… Complex sexuality. And in the other room you have sal dating dorothy’s ex.
I don’t think Dorothy will have any particular issue with Sal and Danny sating. In fact, I think she’d be legit happy, especially if she sees Danny playfully ribbing Sal. It’s a relationship of equals and people who enjoy each other’s company, not Danny passively following Sal around like a puppy. On the flip side, Sal has never put Dorothy on a That Perfect Girl pedestal, so I don’t imagine that general insecurity/jealousy re: ‘pretty white ex’ would survive past Dorothy’s utter unconcern or Danny’s provable, actual continued affection and care.
She wouldn’t have any problem in the abstract. It’s a bit more awkward living in the same room though.
Yes, especially if Sal and Danny start spending nights together.
Just as importantly, Dorothy has never seemed to put Sal on any kind of ‘unapproachably cool girl’ pedestal, either. Frankly, neither seems to much care about the other one way or the other. They’d be the perfect roomates!
I agree with this analysis.
I don’t think she does think Becky’s an idiot! I think she believes some of the things Becky believes are dumb, and since those things are pretty fundamental to Becky, it’s going to be (understandably) pretty hard to really hear a distinction there.
That’s true. I will say I think they’re both avoiding the central dilemma that Joyce doesn’t believe anymore and is an atheist because that means neither one will have the same belief and so much of their relationship has been defined by having the same perspective.
I think they might finally be broaching that subject and approaching that revelation, however. We’ll see how the next couple of strips go.
It’s building for sure. The avoidance here is at least less successful cause the truth bombs makes avoiding the central dilemma difficult
Sometimes you can’t fix something that’s broken and, in this case, I’m not sure that Joyce’s bitterness and sense of betrayal will ever let her be Becky’s friend again.
It’s the Midwest, give ’em five minutes.
I don’t think that’s likely. To review:
1) When Becky ran away, she came straight to Joyce. Joyce accepted her with open arms, and sheltered her at immense risk of trouble with her landlords.
2) During the first kidnapping, Joyce jumped on a motorcycle, chased down Toedad and Becky, and KOed Toedad right in front of her.
3) In BOTH kidnappings, Becky agreed to offer herself up as a sacrifice to secure Joyce’s freedom.
There’s countless examples of that all throughout the series. As friendships go, this is quite possibly the strongest in the entire series. I doubt it’s going to end after a single bout of unintentional mocking.
That they love each other or think they do is, at least for me, not in question. That they’ll eventually come together and mend fences is also, for me, not in question.
More and more I think that what we’re seeing now is something like the flip side of your point #1. Previously, Becky ran to Joyce, pretended everything was normal, and then snapped and kissed Joyce, who was all NOPE NO THANKS. And that scene ended with Joyce declaring that Becky was more important, she’ll have Becky’s back no matter what. (And, please note, Joyce has been exactly as good as this word.)
Now, we’re seeing Joyce has been pretending everything is fine and normal, until she snapped and ranted, angry and bitter, and Becky’s reaction is NOPE. It remains to be seen whether Becky will stick the landing the way Joyce did. If JOYCE is worth sticking with and supporting no matter what. If she has Joyce’s back in a difficult time.
Based on past behavior, I think that’s a temporary no, and maybe it should be. It still might be a yes, though. We’re not at the landing yet, I feel.
She’s right.
Both She’s.
This looks very bad. Joyce thinks she’s right and don’t wants to change idea, or even pretend to be still able to accept Becky’s point of view. Joyce is just tired of the whole story. Actually, I’m with her. At some point you need to be sincere. Even if that means destroy something that used to be important.
She does need to be sincere, but sincerity is a level or two deeper than the surface layer she’s telling Becky now.
She just start to talk. Let her engine go and Joyce will become unstoppable.
This is getting interesting. Joyce was brought up in the “God is a person and everything in the Bible is meant literally” materialistic branch of christianity while Becky seems to understand that christianity is a way of thinking and acting. I’m curious if their friendship will survive this.
Lol at “understand that Christianity is a way of acting and thinking.”
Don’t No True Scotsman christianity, thanks.
Ehhhhh, that’s actually kind of a loop because that describes all people who think they’re Christians and thus is a more accurate way of saying it than, “A Christian believes X, Y, and Z.”
Or to use a less reactionary example:
1. Joyce was raised to believe that Jedi are only those raised by the Jedi Temple on Coruscant from birth.
2. Becky was raised to believe a Jedi is anyone who believes in the Force and serves the Light.
Yeah, if that were true, Becky wouldn’t believe in the afterlife. That’s more than simple spirituality.
One thing i would love to see pointed out to becky…
She said there were things in the bible that “weren’t important”… So why is she clinging to the whole “no premarital hanky panky”?
I dunno, perhaps because she wants to have sex with someone she has made a important commitment to? It feels weird to say that she should have sex before she’s ready.
I thought it was made clear that becky’s reluctance to have sex was based in large part because of her religious upbringing. (Wasn’t there some line becky had in an earlier comic about “just let me hold on to this part of my beliefs”?)
The thing is I think she believes that’s a good thing for her rather than “scared straight into it.” Not everything is about “do this or you’re bad.”
I mean, my thoughts on Becky are that if she was really ready for sex, she would’ve done it. Instead she tried to find someone to tell her not to. I get the feeling that the religious argument was the mask to cover up that she didn’t feel ready for it.
Actually yeah this part too.
Becky isn’t ready to have sex, therefore sexual purity has to be right.
OTOH, she’s also said she was hoping Dina would blow past her objections and ravage her, so it’s not quite so simple as “tried to find someone to tell her not to.”
Part of the reason Becky’s not ready to have sex is that she’s been taught all her life that sex before marriage is bad. Maybe most of the reason. It’s not really reasonable to think all that washed off with no trace and she’s just clinging to the sexual purity because for some completely unrelated reason she’s really not ready.
How other folks who are in the know have described this to me, it’s that Becky’s hoping Dina will go so wild that Becky herself is not responsible for having sex. She’s supposed to be innocent, demure and chaste, but be innately so sexually enticing that the husband she was supposed to have won’t be able to control his powerful horny desires for her. This doesn’t make Intended Husband a bad person because “guys are just like that, silly” and Becky herself is not responsible.
Which, you know, real fucked up but what the hey.
Yup. 😛
Because trauma and brainwashing work in funny ways. There are a lot of atheist ex-fundies who still cling to the guilt of premarital sex. There are married fundies who are riddled with guilt for wanting to sleep with their spouse. Becky needs therapy for this
2 options spring to mind.
1: Akin to what Zee said, deprogramming your brain takes weird paths. It’s the same as how Joyce took so long after deconversion to question her evolution denial.
2: This is my own theory. I think Becky feels distrustful towards and overwhelmed by her own sexual impulses, like they’re too strong for her to control. Remember that the only time she indulged in them, at Anderson, she got caught and it went bad. So she puts as firm a leash on them as she can, but still really really wants that leash taken away from her.
I can understand not wanting to believe in stuff, but if that’s Joyce’s legitimate reason, then it won’t last.
Huh? Explain.
Her non-jackass mom likely believed it, too.
I don’t think this is mainly about apologizing or even debating atheism vs religion. This is Joyce making a clean breast about what she feels to her close friend who she kept in the dark until now. This is obviously painful for both parts, but without this there is no way to amend their relationship.
Just pointing out to anyone who thinks Becky wouldn’t have taken it any better if they had that conversation earlier before Joyce’s outburst, Becky’s first problem isn’t that Joyce is an atheist. It’s that Joyce thinks Becky’s an idiot for not being an atheist. Has been ridiculing her behind her back for several days while pretending to be her friend, and giving her advice. That’s a betrayal. Of course she’s pissed off.
How is one overheard outburst ‘ridiculing for days’? How has Joyce been pretending to be a friend? She’s been pretending to be Christian while still very much actually being Becky’s friend.
Unless an absolute criteria for ‘Joyce friendship with Becky’, without which no friendship can exist, is ‘Joyce is devout Christian’. In that specific case yes, Joyce is pretending friendship.
Becky doesn’t know this insult session with Liz is a new thing, though. She doesn’t know anything about what Joyce thinks or believes or says when she’s not around. Whether that’s something she’s entitled to know is debatable, but it’s entirely possible there’s a part of Becky that’s feeling equally stupid and defensive about not having picked up on Joyce’s reluctance any time she’s talked about God or otherwise assumed they were on the same page about this stuff, and wondering what else she’s missed.
Kind of. I don’t think Joyce has only been pretending to be Becky’s friend or even that she intended to be mocking Becky, but it’s not at all unreasonable for Becky to think so. When you come across a friend making fun of you behind your back, it’s not strange to assume that’s not the first time.
If i catch someone insulting me behind my back once I’m going to assume they’ve done it before because, why wouldn’t i. It’s not unreasonable
Yeah Becky’s assumption is fair, but that’s what it is. It’s an assumption.
The stuff I said about us in the commentariat using the same words we’re assigning to ten different feelings is appropriate, because Becky and Joyce are both doing that to each other right.
Thank you!
Backy’s completely in the right to feel betrayed by Joyce and the comments section here is why; because the moment a person embraces atheism they automatically and baselessly believe they’re better and smarter than anyone who’s the religion they just abandoned five minutes ago, including everyone important in their life, including Becky, and they act like it too. What Becky says are the important parts are the things that keep the ego in check in that way. Joyce’s is so out of control right now that she thinks there’s the first one ever to realise that there’s a Christian who’s not a good person. Of course this is a standard she’ll never apply to atheism; the existence of an atheist jackass won’t undermine any of her nu atheist sensibilities at all because its foundation is a complete cynicism regarding the fact that people can be good and should try to.
Joyce has given away something that a careful reading has made clear for a few years, now, that she never really understood religion on the level Becky does. Regardless of her personal theological conviction, her level of understanding is less than Becky’s by a significant amount and that’s something that has to sting Becky, to realise not just that Joyce’s understanding is inferior to hers but that having realised that, she can’t do anything about it because Joyce won’t listen.
“because the moment a person embraces atheism they automatically and baselessly believe they’re better and smarter than anyone who’s the religion they just abandoned five minutes ago”
Don’t group everyone like that, not everyone who becomes atheist thinks of themselves as “better” than anyone else, to claim such a thing inherently implies that you’re no better than what you believe of atheists, that you believe you’re “better”. Many of us never cared about what other people believe, and have our own reasons for abandoning that faith, but pride isn’t a part of it. You’re also heavily missing the real issue here. It isn’t that Becky feels betrayed by Joyce for becoming atheist or learning she “didn’t understand religion”, it’s because she was her *best friend* and was lied to and mocked behind her back. I wouldn’t be surprised if within a few strips Becky flat out says she doesn’t care if Joyce is faithful or not, but that she just wishes she’d have been honest with her.
100% agree. To me it felt like Joyce was a fanatical Christian (a lot like born again Christian’s who obsess over what’s a sin and what isn’t. Whereas Becky is a normal Christian, who follows the bible without obsessing over it.
Exactly. Joyce has mixed up her theology, but not actually addressed the underlying baseless self-righteousness in any way. She’s just self-righteous about different stuff now.
I’m not sure that Joyce’s understanding of Christianity is less than Becky’s. It’s certainly different. I prefer Becky’s, personally, but then I’m an atheist, so my opinion doesn’t really count. I’m sure there are plenty of Christians who’d condemn Becky and stand by Joyce’s old approach and others who’d condemn both.
Also note that your take on atheists applies equally well to Christians (or to most religions, generally.) It’s very common, especially in fundamentalist circles, to be very disparaging of non-believers or those of other faiths. There are also old sayings about new converts being more pious or fanatic, which is basically human nature and applies to new atheists as easily as new believers.
“because the moment a person embraces atheism they automatically and baselessly believe they’re better and smarter than anyone who’s the religion they just abandoned five minutes ago, including everyone important in their life, including Becky, and they act like it too.”
Can you maybe phrase this in a not utterly fucking insulting and demeaning light that smears an entire group of people based on nothing more than their belief systems?
I hate the “I’m atheist and therefore superior” folks too, but that’s a fucking small subset of atheists, and that string of bullshit up there really doesn’t seem to notice that.
Reminds me of the person who came in here yesterday smearing everyone religious.
They’re both strings of bullshit and they both need to be called out.
There are more of them today 🤦 exhausting
Tell me about it.
“the moment a person embraces atheism they automatically and baselessly believe they’re better and smarter than anyone who’s the religion they just abandoned five minutes ago, including everyone important in their life, including Becky, and they act like it too.” Stopped reading there. Holy shit. Did you actually read your own comment?
Yes the zeal of the convert has historically only been observed in atheists, of course
I hate when SOME atheists do this. Let me emphasize: SOME. I’m not the most Christian person ever, though I was raised Catholic. I’m a believer in science, but I also believe in God. Not in the same way the church instructed me to, hence why I left it. But I hate when atheists belittle someone with some faith with the science argument. Most Christians believe and acknowledge science, like Becky. She’s dating someone who knows about dinosaurs, she wants to he a scientist and is totally correct in that the takeaway of the bible isn’t exactly “dinosaurs in the ark”. In Becky’s case she’s NOT in denial like Joyce was, her faith isn’t blind. She’s taking solace of all her misfortunes in something spiritual but she’s not blindly accepting religion either and she’s right, no one, especially her shitbag dad should be allowed to take away her ONLY comfort. (And I’m not counting friends, because spiritual health,To me, is deeply personal).
In short, Joyce’s “but science!” argument is at the very least, tone deaf to someone who’s gone through ALL the shit and just needs spiritual solace. She indeed has no right to take it away from Becky.
It’s also an ignorant take on what most Christiand believe.
https://ncse.ngo/creationevolution-continuum
Becky obviously believes in Theistic Evolution (like Roman Catholics and most Protestants do for example).
Joyce seems to have been …some sort of Geocentric given her mention of the sky-canopy.
And Becky’s right on the money with the “important bits part”. I’m Lutheran and I onced asked my pastor what our Synod’s official position on the linked continuum is. And he had no clue. Which tells you how “important” of a subject it is. He eventually just told me to assume we matched the Catholic position.
Well, Becky was also a geocentric young earth creationist up until Dina started showing her real science. I’m not sure she’s settled on any particular other variation – like your pastor, that’s not important to her.
I’m assuming LCMS, then? So far as I know Missouri Synod doesn’t have a lot of hardline doctrine handed down, so you can end up with very traditional high church congregations that tend more towards literalism (including young earth creationism in some cases) and much more contemporary low church congregations that are more socially and religiously liberal and more willing to accept intelligent design and the like. WELS does have a lot of doctrine handed down from the synod council, and I recall sitting down with a pastor at my Lutheran high school to catch up on a religion class, and him telling me how the creation myth and the Big Bang match up because nothing exploding sounds a lot like Gid saying “let there be,” y’know? Meanwhile, ELS is close enough to WELS that they’re in fellowship with each other (i.e., they believe both synods teach the same stuff enough that members of both believe pretty much the same thing) and I can’t really see ELCA churches just going along with Catholicism.
Idk in my experience as someone who was LCMS her whole life and whose mom worked for the church offices there’s a decent amount of doctrine handed down direct from the synod, it’s just not super super enforced like in WELS. Like you could go to 2 different churches in my hometown both the same synod and the pastor would be preaching 2 pretty different positions on the same issue. Heck even the size of the church and demographics have a big big influence on the church community beliefs, and if u get a real zealot type pastor fresh out of seminary you’re gonna have a weird ass time compared to some of the more long time, seen it all, chilled out a bit pastors. Actually caused a big conflict in my childhood church when the senior pastor was planning to retire cuz the junior pastor was much much more Fire and Faith style compared to the more relaxed, “well it’s ok if you’re gay and stuff like gods not sending u to hell over that”
I can see that. It’s been a very long time since I was regularly in an LCMS church (and a couple years since I was in any church at all, but that’s a different matter), and I went to a WELS church regularly for a longer period than LCMS churches.
I do wonder if the WELS call system has something to do with the doctrinal enforcement. When a pastor’s doesn’t have much say in where they get to work, it’s a lot easier to keep them in line. Either way, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a WELS pastor be relaxed and chill about homosexuality, which is a huge part of the reason I don’t care that they excommunicated me.
Whenever I explain Lutherans to people i can usually go “ELCA is the ‘we wanna be a modern church!’ Lutherans, LCMS is ‘Okay but like not toooooo modern right?’ And WELS is ‘If we wanna segregate the men from the women then by god we shall’ sort of church” and most people get a lil bug eyed about it.
That’s not a bad summation. The WELS has some doctrinal stuff I do like regarding fellowship, the nature of the Trinity, the sacraments, predestination, and the way salvation works, and I love the high church pomp and ceremony, but damn if they don’t also have some of the most backward teachings when it comes to gender and sexuality.
I usually describe WELS as the teetotalers’ Synod.
I dunno where you got that idea from. In my experience, WELS folks drink like fish. It IS the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, after all.
I appreciate this is clearly a personal issue for you, but I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of what’s going on. They were both raised in more or less the same fundamentalist evangelical environment that the author of this comic has described as a cult. Even if Becky recently abandoned parts of that belief, she definitely *did* at some point think the world was 6000 years old.
Joyce perspective here appears to be “Well if large parts of the religion we were raised in is patently idiotic and fake, what makes any other supernatural part of those beliefs any more legitimate?” which, while hardly an ironclad takedown of Christianity, is a fairly understandable and coherent question in this context.
Becky *can* move to a softer form of Christianity that skirts around the glaring conflicts with reality, there are already hundreds of millions of people with that stance, and she clearly derives meaningful value from her faith. But Joyce isn’t unjustified in asking what the point in doing that is, or whether doing that is intellectually honest, rather than simply abandoning the whole system of belief.
Joyce’s take is absolutely understandable. I think she should have led with “I dont think you’re an idiot” to Becky rather than the awkward ignoring of the question.
I do t think she thinks Becky is stupid for still believing, and shes trying to work through it herself. I think had Becky not heard her say that she wouldve come to terms with it in her own time and been able to tell Becky she respects her beliefs on it but her own has changed.
Of course Becky showed to feel hurt too, since it feels like joyce was calling her an idiot and stupid for still believing and after they had that whole thing for her mom.
It’s not a good situation for either, joyce was mostly venting her frustrations in what she thought was private and Becky heard her call those who still.believe stupid.
Its prolly gonna get worse before it gets better
Shit, I’m agnostic as fuck, and I utterly loathe this sort of attitude.
It really comes down to one question regarding Joyce: What exactly does she believe in right now?
Even lifelong atheists have positions of belief, be it in people, in the wild randomness of the universe, or even that there can’t be an almighty divine being due to all the shit that happens in the world.
It’s one of the most important factors when it comes to this subject, recognizing that “Faith” and “Religion” are not the same thing. But right now, Joyce is so absorbed in Naytheism, as a result of all that trauma from *vigorously gestures at the last several hundred strips* that she’s cutting herself off from the notion of faith as a whole, and it’s getting kinda toxic.
She’s fully justified in being pissed off, no question, but eventually you have to find a place of peace with it all.
I’m not sure that lifelong atheists really need to have such positions of belief. I mean – “there’s no god” is part of the definition, but other than that.
Everybody has some beliefs of course, but I don’t think atheists really need anything special to replace religious beliefs. Theists can believe in people or in science, along with their belief in God. Atheists can believe in those things too, but they don’t have to.
I like to demarcate the difference as between “trust” and “faith” where “trust” is reliance on something without a guarantee because you’ve seen the something work before, even several times, and “faith” is that same reliance without the evidence.
2+2 will always equal 4 except in some very extreme circumstances that are not common, the same way the speed of light is constant until you hit a black hole or other extreme astronomical phenomenon, and so I trust math and science. Religious adherents only have faith that their god is real.
Much like everyone was insisting about her mockery, Joyce is really talking about her own beliefs here not Becky’s. That’s not the best tack to take and she certainly needs to say it more directly, but she’s talking about why she feels like an idiot, not why she thinks Becky is.
Joyce hasn’t learned yet that she doesn’t have to answer direct questions. #midwest
To preface, there is an obvious difference between an atheist, and a proselytizing anti-theist who voices loudly and argues that anyone who believes in a God or religion (or usually specifically a certain God or religion) is by definition a moron.
With that in mind, I don’t think I’ve ever met an anti-theist who didn’t base a significant chunk of their argument on taking holy books as direct and literal.
That’s a bit valid here, as Joyce WAS the type to believe everything she was taught with blind faith.
I personally just don’t understand why people are so afraid of the concept of compromise that it breeds these fanatics on both sides. Science searches for the ‘how’. Religion, or philosophy if you will, questions the ‘why’.
Science searches for answers, but every infinite will ALWAYS have something beyond to beg more questions.
Unanswered questions spawn speculation. Unanswerable questions bring endless speculation.
Continued thankfulness that we aren’t cutting away at this point. That wouldn’t be suspense building, just frustrating.
Hmm.
Well.
Joyce didn’t say she thinks Becky’s an idiot to Liz so technically that means I’m still right and don’t have to wear that embarrassing gravatar I believed so strongly I’d avoid that I made one way more horrible than anyone could come up with, right?
I mean she’s not calling her an idiot but I was real insistent Joyce was exclusively talking about herself, in that Joyce processed the dissolution of her faith as something completely exclusive to herself and even as a failing on her part that Becky was smart and cool enough to avoid. I still think the failing part is kinda true given how hesitant she is to call herself an atheist, but I think it’s more apparent she does think belief itself doesn’t make sense anymore which, well, there’s a lot to say about that too given how she’s phrasing herself now in this strip.
Anyway it looks like I was totally wrong about the idea of Joyce still admiring Becky’s faith, which in hindsight makes sense since that was mostly inference of their existing character dynamic and how nothing’s really changed between them so far whereas pretty much every other part of The Essay could get triple cited. Joyce obviously still loves Becky, but that’s based on Becky herself, not whether Becky did her upbringing right compared to Joyce.
And I think this strip kind of changes things a lot for how I viewed Joyce: I assumed she understood Becky as happy because Joyce herself did her religion wrong and that Becky was right, but it turns out Joyce thinks every single other Christian processed their faith as Joyce does: a set of rules chiseled from stone that you weren’t supposed to question in the slightest, and Becky obviously must have been questioning herself the same way Joyce did but found the answers she needed to stay faithful and to stay objectively right, which to Joyce would mean the same thing.
Like, Joyce is saying “the universe isn’t 6000 years old” because she processed that as an inerrant fact that God/her pastor/her mom and dad told her so, ergo it had to be objectively correct and anyone who said otherwise was wrong. Faith never had anything to do with it, and Becky doesn’t get that. She started that way too, but whatever it is in her that led to Toedad calling Joyce the most hopeful of the kids because she was the most obedient, she had no problem changing gears.
I had an ultra casual religious upbringing, so if I said “haha sky wizard”, that’d be me talking smack about something I don’t particularly understand or feel. I’d be making surface level commentary on something that means nothing to me.
Joyce did not just believe in a sky wizard, she believed in a sky wizard and fire-breathing dinosaurs and a veil of water that filled the sky that would let people live to 900 years old. Her sky wizard is associated with things that are actually stupid bullshit, it just turns out that Joyce thought everyone believed in the fire-breathing dinosaurs as much as she did.
Hmmm, now I’m going to go in the other direction. I’m not sure Joyce has really gotten to the point of processing what other Christians believe or even what Becky believes.
She’s still talking about herself and why she feels like an idiot. She’s projecting it outward and Becky’s getting caught in the splash, but she’s still talking about her own struggle. She really needs to say that more explicitly – admit that she feels stupid and that it was venting about that that led to her mocking believers in general.
I’ve decided to agree with you in full because if I do it means I can avoid my nightmare fuel avatar lashed together out of my own hubris.
Eh alright I’ll give myself a mulligan and just do two weeks of bad avatar jail time.
Oh that’s terrifying.
It was either this or Minion Joyce.
It needed to instill within me a primal fear and loathing of life itself.
oh, this was the lesser evil.
Welcome to the club, bongo.
I have surpassed you by creating an avatar that scares other people here as much as it does me.
…is it bad that I don’t get what the gravatar is referencing?
This horrible thing.
https://cdn.emojidex.com/emoji/seal/Open_Eye_Laugh_Crying_Emoji.png?1528061919
Ah. I was honestly expecting worse, might be a little jaded. XD
Don’t provoke the Taffy with a challenge like that! You’re toying with powers you can’t even begin to comprehend!
They cannot hope to match my power.
Yeah, but that’s about like giving a regular duck the Chaos Emeralds. We know somethin’ is about to happen, but it’s probably gonna be really stupid and moderately underwhelming.
See that’s just actually good and cool.
It’s supposed to make me go beyond mortal conceptions of fear.
sweet bb jesus 0_o
Oh that is revolting.
Up until this point, I’ve been reading this as a particularly “Joyce is autobiographical” chapter. Now though, I think it’s a “Joyce and Becky are both semi-autobiographical” chapter. Joyce represents all the afeelings of anger, betrayal, and negativity that must have come out of lil’ David when he was decompressing from fundamentalism, Becky represents much-later David, after he came to peace with it on his terms. I think Joyce’s all-or-nothing mentality compared to Becky’s throwing out the crap while keeping the good stuff is evidence of this. Joyce does have positive memories, but she’s not focusing on them right now because her world is completely broken. Becky made her peace with her upbringing, and she’s holding onto the good again.
(Not trying to put words in your mouth of course, this is just my interpretation.)
Two days in a row with no punchline? This is the most srsbizns DoA has ever been, which is remarkable for a story that includes two kidnapping attempts and a murder.
Damn it’s Monday and I don’t have time to read all the comments. But I so relate to Joyce screwing this conversation up.
Becky made a very good point, in the last panel. Yes there are terrible people, who abuse religion to justify doing terrible things; but that does not invalidate the decent people who do believe.Just because Becky has strong theological beliefs, does not make her stupid or childish, and just because her dad was an asshat, does not mean that she has to give up on those beliefs.
I think the difference here is Joyce bought in to the authoritarianism of conservative biblical literalism hook, line and sinker. To Joyce, religion IS community IS family IS morality IS “The Rules” etc. None of it is severable so for her it was like a house of cards. If one faltered a little, the rest could support it, but if one failed completely to her, her faith and trust in the rest all comes down, too. For Joyce all of those things are like a fracture critical bridge. For Becky it’s more like juggling balls. Each ball can fall and it doesn’t necessarily affect the others.
Joyce is more of a rigid, black or white thinker. Becky’s a lot more flexible in her mindset. Becky’s faith can bend to accommodate new circumstances and information. Joyce’s can’t.
And so they’re talking past each other because Joyce is saying my bridge collapsed because this critical support failed and Becky is confused how a juggling ball can support a bridge.
You got it.
Seconded.
Thirdified.
I like to see it like they’re both playing jenga.
When joyce pulled a brick out it all fell down.
Becky managed to get many bricks out and its still standing.
In all seriousness joyce has been uncompromising in the bible and her belief for a while, and she tried to make it work with her new values since she came to college but it’s not meshing for her.
Her family has.fallen apart, people she loves are hated because of it, including Becky. They were put in danger because.of not only Ross’s belief, but the belief of their entire.church ensuring he made bail, not even taking into account Blaine manipulating that belief for his own ends.
Hell, her belief was used against her by “Ryan” in order for him to get closer and nearly sexually assault her. A pastor’s son whom he admits was actually true.
That’s not even getting into the specifics of her mom and brothers, who actively were defending Ross’s actions through the eyes of their religion.
Its not the image she had of what her faith was supposed to be.
Beckham honestly I feel is keeping her faith to help her cope. Her.mom is long dead, dad recently dead and kidnapped her.in order to have her go through conversion therapy most likely, and community she grew up with has completely and utterly turned their backs on her.
Her relationship with God, besides Joyce is probably the only one she feels she still has from her time growing up. So shes holding onto it, making allowances, trying to justify her new scientific ideas with her faith, plusnwithout her parents or friends from before, it’s a.nice feeling having someone watch over you when dealing with so much.
Both are valid feelings in response to the situation, and the nuance comes in how they will be able to deal with each others new look on faith
*sorry for typos, on my phone and very tired
This, this, all of this.
And I suspect part of the issue is that Becky usually thinks of Joyce’s anxieties and obvious neurodivergence as an amusing quirk, and Joyce thinks of Becky’s rebellious tendencies as something that makes her cool and fun, and neither of them ever considered that as a result they have fundamentally different approaches to faith or the traumas they’ve experienced. They know they’re different people, obviously, but I think they’ve brushed off the fact that they don’t think in the same ways until right about now.
wrt the posts about “the sky wizard” commentary, ie surface level commentary that’s used to smugly dismiss religious beliefs, here’s how I’m processing it from Joyce’s perspective:
My religious upbringing was just an aspect of my life. I went to Church because my mom took me every Sunday and once I was old enough to stay alone at home, I stopped having faith because I had nothing gluing me to it. I make this sound shallow and it kind of is, but I’m saying that my faith was based on feelings and didn’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things. After-Church was just something I thought was for playing with other kids.
For someone like me to say “go pray to your sky wizard, nerd!” would be kind of petulant, because for someone like me, someone whose interactions with God were entirely faith-based and didn’t last long enough to become deep, I am mocking something I can only understand as feelings and those feelings weren’t much anyway, and I think, for the most part, North American God-types are about feelings too.
Joyce, of course, is not most of them. She grew up in a fundamentalist cult.
Joyce isn’t really criticizing the God you feel when you pray, she’s criticizing the God she never felt but was told was there and constantly judging her, who let bad things happen to her to teach her a lesson, and who was exactly as real and factual as fire-breathing dinosaurs that were hunted to extinction by man.
Like, here’s the thing; it’s okay to think fire-breathing dinosaurs are fake, they are. If you insist otherwise you’re actually dumb and it’s okay to say you’re dumb.
But God for most of us here isn’t processed like that. God to most of us isn’t a fact, he’s a feeling. He’s something you believe in that can’t be objectively quantified, because if he could you wouldn’t need to believe in him in the first place.
Joyce only knew he was real because she was told he was a fact, much like everything else. God for Joyce lives on the same level of reality as the fire-breathing dinosaurs.
You felt how you felt, but from what you’re saying here (which is the only thing I can go from) you never had faith at all. “going to church because I was forced to and I stopped as soon as I didn’t have to go” and “after-church was just time to play with other kids”, to me, don’t say “I had faith and then I lost it.”
It’s more like I had faith because I didn’t have a reason not to.
God, not even religion but just the existence of God, because religion in my upbringing was so uncomplicated that “believe in God, he’s got your back” was all that it ended up being, was a small part of my life.
Like I was “forced” to go to church in the sense that my mom also made me go to the grocery store with her or do sports that I didn’t like. It was just a part of my life I cared about because I was raised to care about it, and then getting cut loose showed me that it wasn’t so important that I wanted to keep it at it once I was old enough to make that decision.
I just stopped thinking about God the way I stop thinking about guys on Youtube when they stop showing up in my recommendations.
Ah, gotcha.
(Sorry for double post, pls don’t block me, Willis, I got some problems in comment)
OMG, this “God to most of us isn’t a fact, he’s a feeling.”.
That explain things I never could express.
I want to return to my teenage years and tell myself to not worry about not feeling the Holy Spirit at some revival meetings.
You’ve put me a lot to think.
Wait…is Becky cussing too now?????
This isn’t her first F-bomb. When she thought she made Ethan and Joyce break up (which is technically true) Joyce wouldn’t get mad at her, so Becky told her that she should be fucking pissed.
Joyce was mortified but quickly accepted that Becky has been under a lot of stress, leading to an exasperated “gosh dang it, Joyce!”
Becky started cussing earlier than Joyce, this isn’t her first
Creationism and biblical literalism are actually tiny minorities in the religious community, and from what I’ve seen on youtube, are also the biggest source of religious critics and people who have deconverted.
Joyce is pissing me off here. She believed in all that shut herself up until like 2 months ago so she can have maybe a LITTLE patience for other people who still believe. It’s really shitty to act like believing in god is moronic when she herself was a “moron” until like yesterday
The problem is that Joyce and Becky didn’t actually believe in the same thing.
Joyce had rules that were objectively correct because her parents said so, while Becky had faith in a God that loved her.
Right. :/
This is a rough conversation.
Wishing both characters well and that their connection to each remains even as it changes.
I wish they could have a long conversation of being angry, sad, and very real with each other. And at least leave with a better understanding of what is happening with each other and with themselves. Whether they’re still friends is up to them.
Nice fantasy it is the Dumbing of Age so will just hope for survivable damage and not to many tears.
I feel sorry for Joyce. She was raised to believe, and truly believed, in God so much, for so long, that it became a cornerstone of who she was. And now with her faith gone, she doesn’t have a good grasp of who she is, and when she finds someone else who was in the same boat at one point, she latched on for guidance.
And I believe that when she was making fun of people who believe in God (spurred on by her new “moral compass” as it were), Joyce is really making fun and ridiculing herself, because to her, she wouldn’t be so lost right now if she hadn’t believed in Him in the first place.
Booster, interestingly, said that Joyce never believed and is only now acknowledging it.
That was very much my experience. Never really believing but only admitting it to myself in college.
I didn’t believe in God even in elementary school, but adults around me believed so I figured I would get it when I am older and I got the message in Sunday school (after I got kicked out for calling God a murderer and getting very angry over Noah and the Ark) that questioning what adults told me wasn’t done by good kids.
So that’s a big part of why I kinda relate to Joyce if it is in fact the case that she was just giving lipservice. But like so convincingly she’d even fooled herself.
I’d be more sympathetic to Becky if it wasn’t for the fact she wasn’t supposed to be here to overhear this. Of course Joyce shouldn’t be shit talking behind Becky’s back, but Becky just WILL NOT leave her alone or let her grow in any way she deems unacceptable. She’s been trying to push Joyce away from other relationships. She hasn’t gone so far as to actually isolate her, but Becky is wandering in some vaguely Toedad territories here, and the sooner she knocks it off the better
Tbh Becky had no reason to believe that this conversation was taking place specifically because of her absence. In her mind she’d show up, give Joyce a good-natured ribbing about skipping class, and fifteen seconds later everyone would be getting along great. Instead she walks in on a conversation where we have the perspective and nuance to realize Joyce was taking deliberate aim at herself, but coming in partway it looks a lot more hazy, with Joyce seeming to be in full agreement with Liz and just adding more to the “jfc religion as a whole is dumb” pile.
You forget the part where Becky would also make abundantly clear to Liz who Joyces bestest friend evah is, was and always will be, forever and ever and ever
oh, that goes without saying. :/
I’m hoping that this message isn’t lost on her.
Anyway we’re not talking about this enough but: Becky in panel 5, by admitting that she thought Joyce would or already did shake off the adherence of the inerrant facts of their upbringing, that’s kind of signalling that she doesn’t understand Joyce’s perspective either and never really has.
I think that Becky “never thought those were the important parts” is an indication that they were facts until they contradicted, which is a way healthier view on this stuff and she totally could have seen it differently since Becky has been indicated to be subtly rebellious to her dad since childhood (but in a way that makes her a funny affable goofball that Joyce thinks is a huge badass). I wonder if part of that is that Joyce never had reason to doubt authority, whereas Becky had been failed/didn’t buy into it in a way that let her keep the unimportant bits but be open to them being wrong.
I’m kind of writing this to emphasize that these two, for all they love each other and will do anything to make each other happy, are not having the same conversation about the same thing.
Gotta agree with this take, that was my impression too. Joyce has generally been shown as a literalist in her reading of the Bible, while Becky’s view is way more like someone who already took a critical look at what she was taught, probably back in earlier childhood, shook off the clear fantasy and has kept the bits she needs.
Honestly not really. If we go back to other discussions Joyce has had on some of this stuff, Joyce has taken a critical look, maybe not a super in depth critical look but still a critical look, at this stuff and come to an honest conclusion that The Stupid Stuff Is Foundational. Because as she sees it if the stupid stuff isn’t true, original sin isn’t true, and if original sin isn’t true, everything bad in the world is god’s fault.
It’s been a slow creep realizing that, at least as far as writing through the years has led me to believe, Willis may actually be writing these comics as someone raised a fundie, turned atheist, then back to religion again.
For my part, I’ve been an atheist as long as I could choose, but this comic hits that sweet spot of nuance, because in spite of having laughed at church when I was 5 and pretended in youth groups and Sunday schools for friends into my teen years, I didn’t actually lose my faith in God, heaven and the afterlife in general as methods to cope with the loss of my father, aunt, and grandparents, until I was like… 17.
And that really broke me, I would have these massive, spiralling panic attacks where all I could do outwardly was sob and moan, inside the universe was being destroyed on loop and I was consumed with fear. I developed a phobia of earh destroying events, and would frequently have nightmares or melt into panic attacks when anythig triggered that phobia.
I eventually had help from good friends with rationalising my thoughts, learning to accept things I couldn’t change, finding a way to focus on positives and let go of worst case scenarios, and I began to identify through a sort of mindfulness what the actual sensation in my mind was when I was going off the rails, and just put it away. Like, oh, I’m feeling that, it will cause me to spiral into frightened lunacy. Oddly, being able to pinpoint a physical sensation causing the spirals helped me block them completely.
It was a devastating and years long road, the final nail in the coffin was wakig up from a dream about my dad, burning in hell, and he hated me. I woke up sobbing and unable to get my shit together, but somehow that itself was a catharsis. My dad wasn’t in heaven, he wasn’t in hell, he was just gone and it was up to me to be who I wanted to be, not who I thought he wanted me to be.
I’m pretty sure word of Willis is Joyce is based on his experiences, but its been so long I might be taking out my butt
Close, but I don’t think Willis ever went back to religion. Fairly certain he’s still an atheist. I doubt Joyce will ever find her religion again.
Yeah, I suspect it’s not ‘Willis came back to religion’ but ‘Willis has worked through the edgy atheism and anger from being brought up in a cult, and reached a point of being able to recognize non-toxic forms of religion exist and can write a religious character with empathy.’
Not that it’s any of our business either way, but the vibe I get/vaguely recall per It’s Walky reruns and the like is that their breaking from Christianity included a similar ‘wait, did I actually believe to begin with?’ as we saw with Joyce, and that’s one of those things you’re not super-likely to develop down the line. Especially when the cult upbringing interfaced badly with or outright caused some serious anxiety problems.
People are saying this is going badly but I think this is actually going well. It would be nice if this could be a calmer conversation but they’re both saying what they need to say, and without calling names or anything. They’re both saying what the other needs to hear- not to change their minds, but to get a grasp on what’s going on.
My take on Joyce is that she does NOT think that Becky is an idiot, regardless of what Becky believes.
BUT she feels that she herself was an idiot for believing*.
She has not yet figured out how to reconcile these apparently contradictory beliefs, and so is unable to answer Becky’s question.
*This is of course far too harsh. As a child, she believed her parents, as children do. This is normal, and in no way an indication of idiocy.
Here’s the real fun truth: Maybe they shouldn’t be friends?
People grow apart. It doesn’t mean you should be enemies. But that “friendship” level certainly doesn’t exist anymore.
They shouldn’t be friends, not at the moment, not until Becky can sort out her jealousy issues
You know, for all the chatter about how Becky has a right to be offended that Joyce said people who believe in God are stupid—because Becky does still believe in God, and therefore Joyce has called *Becky* stupid, by inference, even if she didn’t say “Becky is an idiot because Becky believes God is real and that God loves her”—I really don’t think Becky believes that Joyce thinks so poorly of her, or that that is at all the real issue she’s having here. Becky isn’t offended that Joyce said something mean that might apply to her; Becky is devastated that Joyce apparently doesn’t share her faith anymore.
I’m pretty sure if Joyce had gone after her and said all the perfect words—“my crisis of faith is MY crisis; it has nothing to do with you; when I mocked the religion we were raised in, I was mocking myself, not you, because my faith is broken, even though I know yours isn’t, and I envy that in you”—Becky would still be angry, and still not be okay knowing Joyce’s bitter, mocking words were about Joyce, and would still probably want to punish her. Because what this is *really* about is Becky either realizing for the first time (or, depending on whether her various little comments in the past few weeks were because she has some suspicions, having those suspicions painfully confirmed—she leapt to “Joyce isn’t a believer any more” fast enough that I suspect this) that she and Joyce *no longer share religious beliefs*. Becky is clearly capable of getting along with non-Christians/atheists, but her friendship with *Joyce* is, at the moment, completely inextricable from their common religious upbringing that has dominated every aspect of their entire lives from childhood.
Becky has managed to negotiate her religion and her faith during all this trauma and upheaval in a way that allowed her to move forward and accept new ideas and a more scientifically-informed worldview with the core of her faith still intact. She wants Joyce to follow her on that same path—to change, but only in the ways that keep her close to Becky, and to otherwise stay exactly the same, in the ways that keep her close to Becky. I think what Becky is really angry about is not that she thinks Joyce called her stupid—it’s the deeply, deeply uncomfortable realization that her closest friend no longer believes the same things as her. It’s about religion, here, or at least about faith and the belief in a higher power, but you could map this conflict—“we no longer believe in the same things”—onto just about any kind of profound ideological schism, and the emotions would be the same.
This could be the end of their friendship. I don’t know. I think it depends a lot on what Becky is willing to accept in Joyce, specifically, and whether she can continue to love someone who surprised her by turning out *not* to be exactly the person she always thought she was, or the precise iteration of that person that Becky would prefer.
(I think Joyce has already proven that she values people more than ideology—she started with Dorothy, she showed it a thousand times over with Becky, she showed it with Ethan—and that’s part of what’s led to the breaking of her faith in the first place! Her faith was ideological, and her ideology broke against her capacity for love. Joyce said she’d choose Becky over religion, and she did, even when it put her into conflict with her family. Joyce really means it.)
Anyway, right now, I have to say Becky’s reaction here is not heartening. She’s shown way, way, waaaaaaaaaaaay less capacity to handle change in Joyce than Joyce has in Becky. I would be pleasantly surprised, if she was able to roll with this in the short term; I would not at all be shocked if she chose to freeze Joyce out for a long time, especially since she’s less dependent on Joyce’s friendship for physical security at this exact moment in time. It would be kind of shitty of her, in the face of that unstinting friendship…but… *points to the strip title*.
I would really hope that even a Becky who did freeze out Joyce to punish her/because interacting with Joyce knowing this about her hurts her would eventually work her way through it enough to reconnect. They’ve been friends since they were little kids! That’s a LOT of shared history.
I agree. Becky was pretty much always going to react badly to this, and I can sympathize with why – she’s hurting, she needs something in her life she still recognizes after everything she’s lost, and she’s clearly really terrified of losing Joyce in specific – while still thinking this isn’t a great sign for Becky and their friendship. If they do have a friend breakup over this, I feel certain it wouldn’t be forever – I think once Becky has time to get through the initial shocked hurt, Leslie or Dina or someone will gently point out that Joyce is allowed to change and Becky’s being a bit shitty in implying otherwise, and that they’ve both been through something deeply traumatic and are allowed to react to that differently, and I think Joyce will eventually decide that no, she doesn’t think less of Lucy or Jacob for being religious while she DOES think Known Atheist Walky is kind of dumb – but that could be a couple years our time. But a friend breakup might be what they need to have the space to process. We’ll have to wait and see.
God that is SO MANY dashes, me.
Haven’t seen that many since the Mega Man X3 speedrunning playoffs of 2002.
dashes are the new period —
I sort of hope they DO have a friend breakup over this. I don’t think it’s one of those things that HAS to happen, but it would make sense, and it would push them both off in interesting social directions indefinitely.
(It might just be me, but oh man, has a friendship that started out as being really admirably devoted started to feel…claustrophobic. It certainly doesn’t help that a day in comic-time can take months to play out in real-time, but it’s been *years*, now, of Becky demanding that Joyce not change in ways Becky isn’t ready for. As a person who is foremost interested in Joyce’s personal growth…Becky and I have different goals, you know?)
I think, re: Joyce’s beliefs, that she’s fairly firm on ‘does not believe in God’s existence’ and has been for a little bit now. She’s been much less willing to ACKNOWLEDGE that fact, even to herself, but she’s actively God Isn’t Real.
I think part of this (per the original sin strip, the ‘everything happens for a reason’ that Becky walked in on, and the Rich Mullins dream and how ‘only Jesus is perfect’ just makes her sad now) is a realization that if God did exist and planned for things to happen this way, she doesn’t like that idea! If God exists, why would He let Becky’s mom die? Why wouldn’t He do something to stop Ross and Blaine from teaming up? (An aside: I would be really interested in knowing what Becky thinks about the same topic. My suspicion includes ‘She ALSO thinks Everything Is In God’s Plan is some bullshit’ and that Early Strip Joyce didn’t really believe in free will the way she does now, while Becky always has. But I’m also still not sure how Becky squares her belief in a loving God with the trauma that’s been her last year, which is one of those Core Questions of Religion everyone has to grapple with.) Even more critically, she sees Jesus dying for our sins as the same paternalistic ‘I’m doing the right thing and you might disagree, but I Know Better as an adult’ that was Ross’s motivation. ‘I would die for you’ is explicitly triggering to Joyce, whether it’s Carol saying it or a song about Jesus. Joyce losing her faith is directly tied to that particular trauma, so it’s no wonder she asks how Becky can still believe after what happened.
However, because Joyce has been so afraid to talk about this, and had so few outlets to process, she didn’t really think about ‘I don’t have to believe in the Ark anymore’ until talking about it with Joe. And I think that also means she hasn’t thought much about ‘so do you think Becky’s an idiot for believing? How about Lucy, or Sierra? How about Jacob?’ Let alone what she thinks about religious but non-Christian friends – at the moment, I suspect she’s not considering them much at all, because she knows functionally nothing about even other branches of Christianity beyond ‘they are wrong and therefore damned.’ I suspect at the moment her thinking ‘I believe in God, I’m an idiot’ is mostly projection of her own self-loathing for believing all these things that she now realizes were ridiculous, but she is at the moment extending it to the congregation that taught them all these things. But she also hasn’t had time to really sort through those feelings, to consider if she thinks her religious friends who never believed the literalism are dumb. I also suspect that right now, coming out of the trauma and acknowledging it for the first time, she doesn’t have the room to really think about the idea that religion isn’t all like what she grew up with – that it goes deeper than ‘not thinking gay people are going to hell’ and grape juice versus wine for communion, but that not every Christian believes in original sin, that not every religion believes God is infallible, that there are religious people who spend a lot of time grappling with how bad things happen to good people and how you can square that with a loving god where Joyce was likely taught* that Abraham was wrong to ask God for mercy for Sodom, because later God had to go back and destroy Sodom anyway.
* Per a recent Willis Tweet which I am including because it really is illustrative of how fucked up this religious teaching was. No wonder Joyce has an anxiety disorder (whether the cult upbringing caused it or exacerbated tendencies that were already there!) That’s pretty awful!
https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1446939909298827266?s=21
Oh, also: Since people are betting they’ll change their gravatars if their predictions are wrong, let me tell you now that if I’m inaccurate here… I will do absolutely nothing. I’ve changed computers like twice since I made the AmeWut grav, I’m genuinely not sure I could find the file again if I needed to reupload it for whatever reason, and more to the point I wouldn’t be able to recognize my comments without it for whatever length of time I wasn’t using the usual one. As it stands I need a moment to readjust whenever one of the regular commenters switches to an all-new one. AmeWut is forever.
Oh no that was just me.
Against myself.
I’ve been diagnosed with an addiction to getting high off of my own cool supply.
Technically I’m not wrong, but I feel like I’m wrong enough that backing out would be cowardice.
Sounds like a reasonable take, Regalli.
Nice to see Becky’s asking the right question.