Or maybe 3D figurines will be added to the store at some point? I might like a Dina or a Carla. A RPG game would be interesting, though I don’t know how much suspense you could generate trying to make the necessary roll to eliminate the clump of hair in the shower drain.
Been playing Among Us, can’t help but following up on the “God looking pretty sus” line…
“Yeah, God, what were you doing in Nav anyway?” “I had the take-the-wheel task.”
“Found the body in Storage, and God was standing right there.” “It was MY BODY!”
“I’m sus on Jerry. He wasn’t doing tasks.” The O2 alarm went off and I ran straight to Admin to fix it! If the atmosphere craps out WE ALL DIE! Did you expect me to do nothing?” “No! You should have kept on tasks – Specifically the worship-me task – and trusted in MY fixing it!”
“I’m not really sus on God, but he’s spent all game on cams watching everyone and not actually doing tasks, and he hasn’t even told us who did it when the murder happened right in front of his cameras. The task bar’s exactly one crew’s tasks short of full and God’s been doing zilch while we get murdered.”
Every game God joins gets glitched – He gets two roles, DadGod and SonGod. The best time was when DadGod was the imposter and killed SonGod, but then lost because SonGod glitched *again* and completed everyone’s tasks as a ghost.
#pedantry AND since in context it’s not a question about God’s existence but about how a certain chain of events would be proof of the relevance of a God, “We don’t know” is a valid answer for theists and atheists alike.
They aren’t discussing existence, but rather proposed mechanism of operation. “I don’t know,” how god allegedly works is synonomous with, “in mysterious ways.”
Part of the problem is that different people have different definitions for such terms as agnostic (it is impossible for anyone to know if God exists), atheist (knows God doesn’t exist), deist (believes God exists, but doesn’t believe in the church and its hierarchy). Then you also have the religious agnostic: “I don’t know if God exists. However, I believe that I should act in the way that God, if he exists, would want me to act.” Then you get the question of whether, if God exists, God cares if I believe in him or not. Also whether you should do evil if God asks you to. (My personal take on that one was that God asked me to do evil, I have considerable doubt about whether the message came from God.) Then you have the gnostics who believe that they know the truth, but nobody else does.
And nw we come to solipsism, which states that you can’t know anything other than your own mind. In this regard, Descartes said “I think, therefore I am”. What most people don’t realize is that it follows that it is impossible to know what you are, or whether what you see, hear, smell, etc. is real or an illusion.
… so much to unpack here, but I’ll limit myself to two points.
1) You’re talking about strong atheists specifically, and not atheists in general.
2) Faith (as a an epistemic method, rather than just hopeful optimism or honoring deals/relationships) is a lot more specific than being certain. It essentially boils down to basing one’s sense of certainty on believing really hard, rather than on anything more substantive. To the degree you’re basing something on sound reasoning or hard evidence, you’re not basing it on faith.
I have faith sound reasoning. Somewhat less in hard evidence, as the hard evidence doesn’t always mean what you think it does, but still faith in hard evidence.
I have a somewhat weaked, but still significant, faith in the positive value of talking to a higher power whether there is someone on the other end of the line or not.
I have a very low degree of faith in consensus reality. But in most cases, it’s still the way to bet.
Okay, didn’t word it specifically enough. The sort of faith that says “this approach has a tendency to work fairly reliably, so I’m going to trust it” is manifestly not the sort of faith used by most believers to believe in the existence of a god. I was trying to draw a category distinction, which if successful would have categorized the faith-in-reason-and-evidence approach as being fundamentally different from faith-in-god’s-existence.
And I personally tend to put more faith in evidence than in sound reasoning. I’ve seen way too many people fall victim to bad reasoning while mistaking it for sound reasoning, and I’m not (quite) arrogant enough to believe that I’m immune to thinking something’s sound when it really isn’t. At least with an evidence-based approach I can fact-check. (Not attacking you there, just sharing my perspective.)
As for whether there’s positive value in talking to a higher power regardless of whether it’s real or imaginary, I’d say it depends on what you come away thinking that the higher power is saying. *side-eyes at least 95% of the Christian Right*
“Bad reasoning” is literally what Becky’s doing here to. “My life has worked out, which proves that there is a loving and proactive God” only works as an argument if your ignore all the people whose lives don’t end out working out for the best. It’s a very egocentric point of view and is usually resolved by thinking either:
1. They lives haven’t worked out yet, or
2. They need to love God in order for him to love them back and allow them not to starve or whatever.
Becky is the plane that returned to the airfield full of holes, turning around and saying the places with the holes need more armor, not the places that mysteriously had none.
On further thought I think the proper term for what Chaucer59 is describing is, “Anti-Theists.” Faith stands up without evidence, and against evidence to the contrary. So to have formal (rather than colloquial) faith in the lack of god or gods would be to believe they don’t exist even when it is proven that they do.
Even Strong Atheists don’t typically hold that they would refuse to believe in the face of irrefutable proof.
Thank you Reltzik for going after this. A lot of the faithful really don’t understand what atheism is about. To put it laymans terms I think Ricky Gervais sums it up well, an atheist doesn’t believe in 2600 gods including Yahweh the same way a given faithful doesn’t beleive in 2599 gods of other religions. Or as de Laplace put it, “I had no need of that hypothesis.”
Now that said, I would put my position as a reasonable but strong atheist. Which is to say, I beleive there is not a little black teapot orbitting out past Mars and too small for us to see with our telescopes and probes, and I beleive there is not any god. Should someone produce any concrete evidence contradicting those postions, then I would happily evaluate the evidence. And if it held up under skepticism, I would be open to conducting further research and considering the possibility that it is now real. (be it a god or a teapot) This is essentially the stance of Strong Atheists. see: Russell’s Teapot
Actually, there might now be a teapot out near Mars. If Elon Musk knew about Russell’s Teapot and thought it would be funny to troll the world, he could have put a teapot in the trunk of that Roadster he launched. There’s at least some chance that he knew about it – if for no other reason than that I sent a tweet about Russell’s Teapot at him a few months before the launch.
For sure, and it would be awesome for some billionaire to troll earth that way, and really, should be (comparatively) cheap if they added it as a payload to a probe they lifted up anyways. But as yet, the odds of them managing something like that without leaks at this stage is pretty low.
Although I know if I was designing the PCB’s for any onboard electronics, I’d be sneaking in all kinds of subversive humour.
I consider myself an atheist-leaning agnostic. I haven’t seen definitive proof there isn’t anything out there, nor have I seen definitive evidence there is. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but at the same time I’ve never seen an event credited to divine intervention that couldn’t also be explained by science.
The point of Russell’s Teapot and similar arguments is that we never bother with splitting any of these hairs with anything but religion. No one would ever describe themselves as the equivalent of “atheist-leaning agnostic” about anything else with no evidence for it.
Yes, it’s true that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it’s also not evidence of presence and there are an infinite number of things for which we have no evidence that we don’t have definite proof against, that we don’t bother reserving judgement on.
Also, absence of evidence is evidence of absence if you expect presence to lead to evidence. Like if there was a powerful being that wanted to help people, I would expect it to be more noticeable. If it cared about our belief, I would expect it to send more messages than a few guys in one tiny part of the world.
Absence of evidence is less useful with the Deist god, that started the universe and is just watching us like a reality TV show.
Absence of sufficient evidence is not sufficient evidence of absence, but it is necessary evidence of evidence.
Whereas absence of necessary evidence is sufficient evidence of absence.
However, the god hypotheses that still survive are by craft or selection the ones that make no predictions, and therefore require no necessary evidence. Nevertheless, it seems absurd to choose one and believe it without evidence.
Which is again, the point of Russell’s teapot. Unfalsifiable and unverifiable (at least at the time.) It is not only absurd to believe in it, but also absurd to withhold judgement and claim to be agnostic about it.
For many atheists, God falls into the same category. Bending over backwards to avoid making even claims of unbelief without proof is something none of us do in any part of our lives except talking about the existence of God. It is absurd to hold this one idea to a standard we do not hold anything else.
Actually, since actual atheism culturally incurrs a significant amount of debate (due to the prevalence of religion) I’m not sure that your claim is defensible.
Annecdotally (so uselessly from an evidentiary standpoint) my experience with atheists is that far more atheists have attended church, read the bible and other religious texts, than faithfull have studied atheism. I’m also subject to a bias because I do read more relgion v. atheism texts and discussions, and also that I naturally hang out with like minded folks, and so do not meet a higher sample of faithful to provide a better experiental dataset.
Finally, one thing I do consider and worry over is that I was raised areligously by two very different atheists. One was a communist and had essentially just drank different koolaide, but the other made it clear that our explorations in life were encouraged and supported. I also had access to a Bachelor of Religious studies, and was able to discuss and ask about many different relgions and facets thereof.
A large number of atheists were believers. Or at least were raised in the community, but many believed, too. So they can understand how the faithful thing because they remember thinking that way. Very few Christians were atheist, if only because of the base rates.
Similarly, I used to be libertarian, so feel I can still reasonably emulate them. Emulating conservatives, not so much.
Though it’s not uncommon for atheists raised in a particular faith, particularly a toxic one, to not have a good grasp on how broad religious experiences actually are.
An atheist who was raised fundamentalist treating Catholics or mainline Protestants as if they’re Biblical literalists, for example.
This isn’t limited to atheists of course. Many religious people have very distorted views of everyone outside their own tradition – see Joyce for examples.
For me, it’s less “I am 100% certain God, as Christians describe him, does not exist,” and more “I’m too lazy to bother praying or offering worship to anything.”
I wouldn’t define it as faith. I’m an atheist because of, well, lack of faith and feeling. Even when I was a child, and was getting dragged to the evangelical church my mom was super in to, I just…didn’t feel anything. All the supposed love and confidence that all the other kids and the preacher and whoever talked about, it was like they were seeing a color I can’t see. I’ve never felt any kind of divine presence in my life, or around me, I’ve never seen any evidence that wasn’t able to be explained by logic, and honestly, I just don’t care, in a very benign way. Religion doesn’t bother me, but it also has no effect either. ‘Faith’ implies feeling to me, and I don’t feel any way about deities or atheism.
Objectively speaking I would not be cool with God’s methods. Just saying, a handful of people got kidnapped, and a guy died, so Becky can go to school. Not cool God. Not cool.
Also if we’re speaking just in totals and not malicious motives and stuff, 3 guys died. More than a few people are probably traumatized. Like if I were god I would’ve just made Becky’s dad not a complete tool. Like he could still be an ignorant and intolerant jackass, but just not such a big one that he aides a kidnapper/murderer.
You’re not taking this god’s goals and objectives into account. Suppose the goal is to entertain and maybe educate and teach third party observers so they would be better people. Might that justify that god’s actions?
Now of course, allowing Mike to die would be unforgivable.
I could hypothesize a God that isn’t an asshole, even given the state of our reality. Maybe God created the universe as an experiment to see how quantum mechanics and relativity would work when combined during the Big Bang and is keeping the universe around to study black holes. This God would be only dimly (if at all) aware of and mostly apathetic towards the self-replicating chemistry stuff happening on the surface of a few space-blobs that have yet to combine their masses into singularities worth studying. When we start manufacturing black holes as power reactors, THAT’S when God will finally start noticing us and be confused as all fuck.
The most believable non-asshole God, roundaboutly paraphrasing Douglas Adams:
The idea of an Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omnipowerful, etc. Capital G God is ridiculous in the sense of, here is a being with an upper limit (even if that limit is theoretically infinite), which can or has only created inferior products. A bit depressing, isn’t it?
Contrast that, the theory of evolution states that we came from the tiniest specks of life, building off of the simplest compounds to create more complex forms until we eventually reached where we are now, and we’re continuing to grow and improve. So “God” as defined as the thing that created the universe without having to be created, sure, that absolutely exists/existed. Is it the same as the Christian (or any other) God? Jury’s out on that.
I once had a debate with a Christian who responded to my comment on how Satan only had the power God allowed him to have: Yes, the Created cannot surpass the Creator. “Oh, so that’s why cars can only go as fast as the fastest human can run, and planes can’t fly.”
“Thing that created the universe without having to be created” doesn’t necessarily exist in any meaningful sense and certainly not in the sense religious people mean it.
“What came before the big bang?” doesn’t have an answer because there was no flow of time that would allow for the word “before”. It’s not actually a question, it’s more like a divide by zero error in that you’re asking it wrong.
That does raise philosophical questions that may or may not be raised by actual origin mechanics. But to the example I point out, yeah nothing is north or North, but there’s still stuff past it, above and below it. This requires a frame of reference outside the topology of the globe to perceive but doesn’t mean those places don’t exist.
But that’s just relevant to the globe. I don’t know what (if any) equivalent questions exist about the origin of the universe, but despite the question being perhaps mathematically flawed, it’s good to be driven by curiosity and willing to ask. When people are told not to ask questions, we lose explorers and discovers to grey beaurocratic tedium.
more that I reject the idea that something big and strong had to make us small and weak things but am totes down with the easily demonstrated “small simple things combine to make increasingly bigger and more intricate things” scenario
also just rejecting the notion of the beginning (or end) of Everything as a thing I need to worry about, bc it makes my head spin thinking of “what if all of creation DIDN’T happen” and also why do I even need to contemplate it, it’s here and *probably* not going away
I’ve always viewed God as a parent watching a child struggle with climbing a jungle gym. They may slip and fall, bang their knees, cry and get frustrated, but if we just pick them up and life them to the top, they haven’t grown.
Them overcoming the trials and achieving the goal themselves helps them grow, and makes them into a better person.
We’re the stupid children, trying to grow as a species. He’s watching and supporting us, but we need to grow on our own to become the people He knows we’re capable of being.
Putting aside the ‘should you help someone struggling with something’ issue and the ‘does struggle make you a better person’ issue for a second, I’d argue that any God who watches and supporting while one of their followers is going around kidnapping and trying to torture they’re daughter? Yeah, that God is an asshole.
Just to add: the Christian God (who is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent) would be able to just magically grant the necessary growth (and even the memories) without us needing to go through the trials. That may seem lazy, but… well, considering how very much worse than banged knees the various failings have been, and the fact that the many different ways various parts of humanity seem to be trying to “grow”, at least a little more intervention might be in order.
Particularly given that this claimed support God’s granting seems, to many of us, to be just as easily explainable by non-divine hypotheses.
#NotSerious
But maaayy-be, god killing a 2:1 ratio of assholes vs. ‘we didn’t wish them ill’ is a decent trade off. I mean, I’m against religion etc.. anyways, but if there were an arbitrarily violent god who had to sake their bloodlust in order to not kill orphans and babies and level cities and wipe out (almost) all life on earth repeatedly, maybe trading Mike to get Blaine and Ross off the table is worth it.
Given that God could have killed them with lightning bolts or aneurysms, the approach of traumatizing a whole lot of people with the kidnapping thing leaves a lot to be questioned.
… also, are we really going to put Mike into the not-an-asshole category?
Re: Mike’s quality as a person. I was never one (that I can recall writing) of discarding Mike. I think there was more to his character and would love to see an arc that explains his change from flashback Mike to freshman Mike. Because although in the same body and name, they really seem like two different people, and yet even freshman Mike wasn’t solely motivated by malice. Hurtful yes, but in each case there seemed to be a point to it, with growth for the poked.
To ignore that is to lump vaccine needles in with stillettos and rapiers and bullets, because they all poke holes in people.
Okay, so all three were different types of asshole. I can still say that needles, stilettos, rapiers, and bullets are all pointy that can poke holes in people, even if they’re pointy in different ways and even if some might have different purposes in poking those holes.
Absolutely, but to do so without acknowledging the difference that 3 do it to harm while 1 is to aide and protect is to mis-represent the beneficent nature of one of the hole-pokers by lumping it in with the malicious hole-pokers.
Sure was! He claim to be making Amber stronger was just the same as Blaine’s and no more since than Ross’s claim to be making Becky safe for the afterlife.
But he did realize that at the end and acted on it, which makes him better than either of those two. Who knows what would have happened had he survived.
Never claimed he wasn’t, but Mike was also demonstrating capacity for growth, and he had a more nuanced backstory revealing that he wasn’t always this hostile. That development and change is what I find interesting about him. So I put forth the argument that he was worth a closer look everytime someone says he is just ‘an abuser’ and writes him off. That degree of black and white thinking is a dangerous afront to any critically thinking person.
Also, I didn’t classify Mike as benevolent. I simply made an example that demonstrated that just because things are similar, doesn’t make them the same, which is the only point I made about Mike in the first place. But, as is demonstrated again and again, those who have written off Mike are unwilling to consider any degree of nuance in the argument, or in his character. One wonders if that unwaveringly inflexible conviction exists on topics more important than a comic character.
The frustrating thing with talking about Mike here is that while a nuanced view of him is certainly possible, there’s always been a strong contingent that’s had that benevolent take on him – far beyond any nuance and well before he showed any change. The “asshole sage” view.
Despite his own realization that he was using the same justifications for his abuse as Blaine, we still see people paint him in the entirely benevolent light with his sacrifice just being the natural result of him being a good asshole, instead of at least partly a reaction to the realization that he was abusive.
The frustration with that can spill over onto those with more nuanced views.
I think she’d be fine with it. She’s dating an a proud atheist after all. I think Becky would be more upset Joyce felt she needed to keep it a secret instead of confiding in her as her “Best” best friend.
I don’t know, that kind of change in Joyce might hit differently. Also she didn’t react super well to Joyce being angry about related things in a previous instance. I know if I had the memory of this being said to me in this context I’d be hesitant to tell her about such a thing too.
I think it’s a little different here though cause the context of that conversation was before most of her friends got kidnapped and nearly killed. Joyce even had it the roughest during that experience what with being kidnapped a second time. It would be pretty cold of Becky not to understand Joyce’s new perspective on religion after that. She’s been kidnapped once herself.
Also I think Becky was more upset that Joyce was being whiny and dismissive with her when she was looking for comfort and validation. Not entirely because Joyce was trivializing their shared religious beliefs.
I don’t think it would go very well because it is Joyce specifically. It’d be like if the one person you could always count on to be interested in a topic lost all interest and doesn’t enjoy long talks about it any more, so you have nowhere to channel that specific energy to any more. That hits harder than people never being interested to begin with.
I don’t think this gives Becky nearly enough credit. For the entiredy of DoA’s ten year run and funnily enough probably the same amount of time for Becky and Joyce in universe they have been nothing but unquestioningly and unashamedly supportive of each other. Becky came out to Joyce first… I mean unless you count Kaitlin? Was that her name? The girl Becky smooched on at Anderson. Joyce is who she came to when she ran away from home and had no one to turn to. They believe in each other MORE than their religion.
Anyway they’re closer than family. Even counting Joyce’s dad and Joyceline. I don’t think Joyce’s new lean toward atheist would even be a test. Maybe it would cause some short term tension but that’s it. And it’s not like they couldn’t still talk about faith. Joyce still retains all that knowledge. The faith aspect is almost arbitrary.
Me saying that I don’t think Becky will take it well isn’t me saying, I think they will grow to hate each other, it is me saying, I wouldn’t be surprised if Becky had an emotional outburst and it was a point of contention for a period of time then they will eventually reconcile.
I am giving Becky the exact level of credit I think she deserves considering the last time Joyce’s struggle with faith came up, she was snappy about it and called it a phase – and Becky has been through a lot emotionally, a comfort changing can cause overreactions when already emotionally struggling (we know Becky bottles things up).
Also, it might seem arbitrary to you, but not everyone WANTS to still talk about faith after losing it – the knowledge is not the issue. Especially because you know, Joyce is associating some of her religion with trauma, and may prefer not being triggered by it.
I feel like I need to clarify when I said “almost arbitrary” I didn’t mean it in the context that it was dismissive of Joyce’s trauma connected to it, but that their shared faith is almost arbitrary to their friendship and that just because Joyce is an atheist doesn’t mean they’ve somehow lost a connection in their friendship. Joyce’s past still happened. She doesn’t just forget how they both were raised because she no longer has confidence in her religion. Even if she never wants to talk about religion again it is still something they both share.
In my inherently flawed opinion as an outside viewer and not the creator of these characters., when this topic eventually comes up in would almost feel like a non conflict, unless Becky takes it personally. Most likely somehow blaming herself for Joyce’s disillusionment.
Becky’s definitely seen enough over the last semester (‘if this isn’t literal truth, then original sin isn’t, and then nothing is,’ ‘I’m not sure I felt God,’ and Joyce’s nihilist moment at the birthday party, among others) to suspect there’s a break in Joyce’s faith. Very probably more awkwardness since, since they spent break together. I’m not sure if she’s realized it hasn’t healed, or just how deep the breaks are. I kind of suspect she might be trying to get Joyce to reassure her nothing’s changed, or at least that the change wasn’t THAT bad, so it’s okay, right?
Also I’m pretty sure that from Becky’s perspective, the only things that HAD to happen for her to get that student ID were Ross kidnapping her the first time, Robin stalking Leslie and giving Becky the opportunity to take her phone, and Robin hiring her. Robin dropping out assured she’d do so guilt-free, but it would have had the same effects if Robin had lost (given Becky was smart enough not to make Robin winning a term of her enrollment), and I suspect she considers the Second Kidnapping Twitter Thread the big surge that made Robin winning even in consideration. (Given how bizarre Robin’s voter base would’ve been without Inspirational Lesbian Tweet Thread – and hell, how bizarre WITH it – that checks out.) So, no murders, no traumatizing the rest of her friends to nearly the same extent. And I don’t think she realizes just HOW traumatic that first kidnapping was for either Joyce or Amber/possibly also AG, but it’s not been explicitly spelled out the same way. (‘I will die for you’ is explicitly-to-us a trauma trigger, reinforced by Carol’s immediate echoing it, and I think the thing that’s really made her reassess whether she’s okay with Christianity as a concept because of its similarity to ‘Jesus died for our sins’; I’d have to go back and check, but recounting the car chase to Danny is one of the first times Amber actively describes AG being in control as dissociation and not a form of ‘compartmentalizing’ because of how scared SHE was in this very risky situation where AG wasn’t allowing herself to stop, and how nonetheless she wasn’t the one in control.)
I’m beginning to wonder if Becky is still feeling the faith as much as she claims. Her constant reminders of how great God is sound a bit like her constant reminders that her parents are dead. It appears to be her way of dealing with emotional things.
idk, I’m not excited about the confirmation hearings and their “yeah well I can totes be a hypocrite if it means we win… AND YOU CAN USE THAT AGAINST ME”
Yeah, I must apologize as I was more thinking about a personal issue of someone trying to screw my kids over. Over there, you have my sympathy for what’s coming next between the vote and office. (And I have little doubt, for years of litigation and allegations afterwards)
That’s it Joyce, plausible deniability in your responses when Becky is around. Honestly I half want Sarah to just blurt it out in front of Becky and force Joyce to talk about it.
Also, how long did it take y’all to talk about your change of faith?(assuming you had one)
Was gonna refute you because I still had her original size in my head, but yeah, lots of the characters seem to have developed more full body types. I never noticed the progression. Is Willis portraying the freshman 15, or going for a more authentic relatable look I wonder.
Dammit, when I was giving her a middle name on patreon for my ‘yelling at the characters’ bit, I gave her a matriarch middle name. It was Sarah though. Wrong one!
I find this kind of unassailable faith and dodging of any kind of questioning pretty annoying in real life. It is…marginally less so when it comes with punchlines, but this is definitely my least favorite side of Becky.
Cuz God never shows up to represent, doyee. Alternatively, God’d technically have to be tagged in every single comic, and that still wouldn’t be any help. (just like real life)
Well we know where we’re going
But we don’t know where we’ve been
And we know what we’re knowing
But we can’t say what we’ve seen
And we’re not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out–Talking Heads “Road To Nowhere”
I was more targetting the ‘in’ being vestigial on both inflamable and ineffable, thus claiming that the bible says repeatedly that god is fallible. But then I became lazy (ier) and disinterested in grooming it into a better joke.
But that’s only if things can ever be completely effed, and that is categorically untrue. No matter how effed things are, they can always get more effed. There is no effing bottom.
“The Contrôleur could not but think that it was a rather clumsy device to bring those two together that necessitated the death of six hundred innocent persons, but not being well versed in the ways of omnipotence he made no remark.”
Every day thousands of people die, and not always because of natural causes. But of course, when one good thing happens to you it must mean there’s a benevolent allmighty god that watches over everyone.
I think Becky tends to see what she wants to see, at least where Joyce is concerned. She was convinced that Joyce was lesbian, despite evidence to the contrary. Despite being a longtime friend, she did not recognize the signs of trauma in her friend. So, I think that Becky is oblivious. Like Joyce, the homeschooling didn’t do her a lot of good.
She’s definitely seen the cracks before this point, but I’m a bit more forgiving at the moment and thinking her awareness it’s BROKEN, not just some cracks, is either not there or very unconscious. Becky wasn’t the one Joyce confided in about the Rich Mullins dream, or how deeply ‘I will die for you’ from Ross at gunpoint and then Carol affected her. Becky’s faith was resilient, after all, and Joyce was even more of a Bible nerd than she was! Obviously that means Joyce can pull through and things won’t have changed QUITE that much. (Especially since Joyce is pretty much Becky’s only tether back to her upbringing, with both parents dead now. Hank’s nice, but I don’t think he’s quite FAMILY the way Joyce is. Joyce being an atheist is one more fundamental shift in Becky’s life after what seems to be a year or so of Deeply Traumatic Loss of Community and Family – we don’t know when exactly Bonnie died, but there’s some vague indications it’s fairly recent. And it’s a fundamental shift that would give her more in common with Dorothy, and I really do think Becky’s hostility there is that she’s afraid of being replaced.) Seeking reassurance, is my current read I think, especially since Becky tries so hard not to show how badly all of this has affected her. (Remember, she only starts crying over Ross’s body after everyone else leaves the basement. I don’t think she wants to let them see.)
If Joyce did spend the break with Becky, I wonder how that went in terms of religion – did she go to services with Becky to keep up appearances? Did she manage to hide her loss of faith the whole time?
Seems weird if she managed that, but it’s breaking this obviously this quickly after they come back to school. Of course, that’s largely dramatic need.
Could be she’s managing to keep Precisely This level of facade, and Becky wasn’t ready to push until Dorothy insecurity came back in play. Or that, like Amber and her phone, spending a month in forced proximity burned out what ability she had. (Though given Joyce’s lying skills, that seems way less likely to me. Maybe she could sit through services and Becky’s still trying out new churches, so she can beg it off with ‘I’m not sure I felt God,’ especially since Joyce is still denying it to herself on some level? All of that’s no-prizing until proven otherwise, though.)
So is Panel 5 Joyce’s face “Crap am I being outed” or “Crap am I going to have to choose between lying and outing myself” or “Crap I’m not sure I can lie convincingly” or “Crap did I really sound like that oh wait I did crap”.
I feel like Becks has come around to the idea that any extant God is like the Great Old Ones—a being that we do not and cannot fully understand, and she’s comfortable with it.
When I became an atheist, I told as many people as possible. I’d rather rip that band-aid off than have someone resent me for deceiving them. Having said that, we all know how Joyce is with ripping off band-aids. (Looking at the dead toenail incident.)
I have to say, Becky is currently displaying the behaviour that annoys me the most by decent people who still believe in deities (the not-decent people have a whole set of behaviours that annoy me separately from this). This whole “god cannot be understood or held responsible” thing just rubs me the wrong way.
Ugh… what I get for not letting myself think for a minute. Comparing god’s allegedly mysterious helpless irresponsibility to an addict is an insult to those fighting addiction.
I’m sorry if my post caused any hurt, it wasn’t intended to be hurtful to any real person.
Really don’t know if you’re trolling. If god is infallible, why does it need to test creation? There is no point to a test when you have the answer key, are marking it yourself, and are the keeper of the marks. Does it need to prove to Santa that it has been good?
Also, all the stupid little things that kill us by the millions kinda disproves our strength.
Dear Abby once ran a letter from someone who said “My brother, a God-fearing Christian, just committed suicide. How can you tell us God never gives us more than we can handle? Clearly God did!” Abby apologized and never used the line again.
As someone with a chronic illness, I hate that line so very very much. I may be “handling” my suffering, but if there’s a god out there doing this to “test” me then he’s incredibly sadistic and cruel.
I get really tired of how fundamentalist faith often portrays disabled/chronically ill people as if we’re just there to inspire others, or they imply our suffering is somehow our own fault, or a test, or any other number of useless brush-offs from people who clearly have no idea what it’s like to live with something like this.
Agreed, sympathy, and hard same. Sometimes the hand you get dealt just sucks, and there’s nothing that could’ve been done to prevent it sucking, and nothing that can be done with it that doesn’t suck. Hearing crap like this only makes us dislike the people saying it.
I respect people’s freedom to believe what they want but gotta say, as someone with a debilitatingly painful chronic illness, this comment kind of sucks. :/
Like, maybe don’t imply people who are actively suffering are just being tortured every day as some kind of test…and then try to claim a god that would do that is benevolent and loving. Because…yikes.
Doesn’t really jive with the book of Job, really. Lots of tests, and then rubbing overwhelming power in the face of the guy he brought low. Sounds more like a cat playing with a mouse it caught.
You’re saying he hits us because he loves us. You’re saying that your God is abusive. Which yeah ok that fits the whole jealous god thing he warned us about in Exodus
I had a Theology teacher who told us “God is the name we give to the way we relate to the universe.” The interesting bit was this was a Catholic Priest.
I still don’t understand how religion can be a thing because of this exact issue. How are so many people comfortable believing in something so baseless?
The same reason it’s been a thing throughout history: because it conveniently handwaves away anything that’s uncomfortable, unknown, or too complicated.
And in the wrong hands, it’s also a way to galvanize opinions, justify behavior, and take advantage of others.
As a sidenote of my reply to OP, yes, that is an an entirely valid if more blunt view of looking at it – though I’d like to say it typically goes deeper than simply handwaving. There is a lot of culture and tradition built around many religious beliefs, to cushion the adherents from those discomforts.
Back when religions were first conceived, most of the world was a big question mark on how it functioned. Likely, a lot of what people thought back then were baseless, since they have neither the means, the rigor or the interest to confirm/deny them.
In the modern day, a lot of religious people can accept there are no logical grounds for their beliefs and limit how much they let them impact their day to day lives.
Me being religious, I understand the concept is Implausible and completely without verifiable basis – so I don’t treat it like science. In purely logical terms, it’s just something I like to think is true. The emotional benefits and the sentimental value doesn’t have to be impacted by that at all.
I like Carl Sagan’s take that ancient people were investigating the universe the best way they could; to honor that curiosity if not the results, as we stand on their shoulders. Recognize the past without being stuck in it.
That is beautiful, but also implies a bit of an idea that our religious fervour should be directed to anthropology, history and humanities and less to … well, religious fervour.
A thing I think people are missing is Becky’s expression in panel 3. She has her own grief going on, but is plastering over it with “God works in mysterious ways” and a grin because it’s the only way she knows how to deal with it. We see a single break in her armor in panel 3, but then it’s right back to cheerful ol’ Becky. I think she’s leaning hard on religion as a support system right now, and if/when Joyce lets her down on that front, it’s going to hurt real bad for both of them.
Good point, especially with such a large, held smile. I’m not sure she’s hitting the same crisis as Joyce, or at least not to the same extent, (her faith survived Bonnie’s death, after all, and I do think it was genuinely fairly solid back then,) but there’s no God Answers Lesbian Prayers moment with Ross’s death the way there was during the first kidnapping that let her make sense of it. And even if there was, the fact that everyone else was kidnapped, that Amber had to deal with her dad kidnapping her and dying, that Mike did die as a result of this… she was the primary victim of the first kidnapping, and I genuinely don’t think she knows just how badly that gun in her face still hits Joyce. There are way too many primary victims for this. If her dad just dropped dead, she’d probably still have mixed emotions, but at least it wouldn’t have hurt everyone else in the process like this did.
(I think in general, Becky would be struggling more with the problem of theodicy, of how a God can be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent in a world where evil exists. By contrast, Joyce is struggling with a solid mixture of ‘what is true, if all these things my parents told me weren’t?’, a realization that she didn’t have faith so much as fear of damnation and a want to feel God in the first place, and the accompanying realization that she doesn’t really like some of the core tenets of Christianity, because she’s seen people use that exact same logic and phrasing to point guns at her face. Wouldn’t be shocked if there is some theodicy under it, too, given the semester she had, but there are a LOT of issues Joyce’s faith wasn’t built to withstand that she’s grappling with now.)
..part of me worries greatly for when becky’s world comes shattering down around her, when she realizes that god can’t fix everything. i personally don’t know if there’s a god, but if there is, they can’t fix everything like becky wants. i’m scared for her.
Usually the result of that is one of three things happening.
(A) Rationalizing that it’s somehow part of God’s just and loving plan and trusting that she’ll find out the details either n the future (be it in this life or the afterlife), or just trusting without needing to know the details at all.
(B) Reevaluating the doctrines and coming to a different understanding of God, maybe as one that doesn’t intervene much and leaves people to their own devices, or one that isn’t omnibenevolent, or something like that.
(C) Deconversion. That is often stressful and painful, but growth often is. It’s not all that horrific of a fate.
Of these it’s (A) that worries me most, since it will be a lapse into a dangerous sort of facts-denial. But I’m not that concerned overall.
What DOES concern me is that this is Act I of DoA Season 2. Whenever a character lists a whole bunch of good things happening in their life in the middle of Act I… boy, that does NOT end well.
But her world has already crashed down around her? And she obviously still has her faith? And at the end of the day, why is it important for her to deconvert?
I get that this an atheist/non-religious fan base but why is it so hard for people to believe that the believers…actually believe? That we really mean it when we say we have faith? And that it actually does give us peace even when shit goes down?
Don’t get me wrong, Becky’s beliefs are not the same as mine. I follow a wisdom tradition. But I still relate to her being a lesbian and having a dead prejudice parent. I understand where you’re coming from, but can you give us wacky spiritual people some credit? We’re smarter and more resilient than you might realize.
(Also I hope I don’t come off as mean spirited. I just want people like Becky and I to be more understood. Sometimes I feel very talked down to in liberal/LGBT spaces.)
I will say, yes, I understand that it’s Willis’ story and he isn’t religious. I absolutely respect that he can write the narrative however he chooses. I’m certain he wants to drive home certain themes and lessons, and I don’t want my comment to be mistaken as a call for a different type of representation.
I don’t think they are saying she has to deconvert, they’re just concerned Becky may have a crisis of faith when she realises God can’t/won’t fix everything bad into something ‘better’ and that sometimes there isn’t a mysterious reason behind every single thing good or bad that happens. That sometimes it is just the human factor that results in bad thing X and good thing Y.
That doesn’t mean she has to deconvert. You absolutely can grapple with your view of God without losing your faith when you are as comfortable in your faith as Becky is.
Baby Steps Sarah. Becky’s got eighteen years of toxic theist brainwashing to overcome before she understands that God is real, and he’s a nasty, vile SOB who gets off on watching his creation suffer and fail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1grhmdzoHrw
My feeling on this strip generally? Becky’s laying on the faith thing a bit harder than she had before the skip. I think it’s possible she has a hunch about Joyce’s views and she’s trying to get Joyce to prove that hunch wrong and reassure her that she hasn’t changed much. You know, tying back to that thing she said back at the beginning of the comic. It’s, er, not going to work out the way she hopes.
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that’s how His ways are MYSTERIOUS
God looking pretty sus
none of that better happen again, tho, lest Sarah gonna get Old Testament on them
(Joyce fwiw) https://www.heroforge.com/load_config%3D11104558/
(hey also Becky… sorta) Becky https://www.heroforge.com/load_config%3D11103679/
Issat supposed to be a little Dina-saur egg?
Initially read those links as “Hero of Age” and was curious what Wilis was up to
I wondered if there was some Walkyverse MMO I hadn’t heard of…
I’d play the heck out of it though.
Or maybe 3D figurines will be added to the store at some point? I might like a Dina or a Carla. A RPG game would be interesting, though I don’t know how much suspense you could generate trying to make the necessary roll to eliminate the clump of hair in the shower drain.
Been playing Among Us, can’t help but following up on the “God looking pretty sus” line…
“Yeah, God, what were you doing in Nav anyway?” “I had the take-the-wheel task.”
“Found the body in Storage, and God was standing right there.” “It was MY BODY!”
“I’m sus on Jerry. He wasn’t doing tasks.” The O2 alarm went off and I ran straight to Admin to fix it! If the atmosphere craps out WE ALL DIE! Did you expect me to do nothing?” “No! You should have kept on tasks – Specifically the worship-me task – and trusted in MY fixing it!”
“I’m not really sus on God, but he’s spent all game on cams watching everyone and not actually doing tasks, and he hasn’t even told us who did it when the murder happened right in front of his cameras. The task bar’s exactly one crew’s tasks short of full and God’s been doing zilch while we get murdered.”
Every game God joins gets glitched – He gets two roles, DadGod and SonGod. The best time was when DadGod was the imposter and killed SonGod, but then lost because SonGod glitched *again* and completed everyone’s tasks as a ghost.
Oh god, they look like shaven dwarves.
Like you grabbed Gimli, shaved his beard, “there, this is Becky”
Yeah, that’s my complaint, but they’re mini figures, so they gotta be thicc to survive printing 🤷
“We demand rigidly-defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!” 😀
See Joyce, atheism isn’t so different from faith!
Only problem is, now you have no one to complain to.
#UmmActually “I don’t know” isn’t atheism, it’s agnosticism.
Give it time.
#UmmActually In this case, agnostic-atheism.
#pedantry AND since in context it’s not a question about God’s existence but about how a certain chain of events would be proof of the relevance of a God, “We don’t know” is a valid answer for theists and atheists alike.
Which is the point here, right?
Yes. I’m engaging in the time-honored tradition of explaining the joke.
They aren’t discussing existence, but rather proposed mechanism of operation. “I don’t know,” how god allegedly works is synonomous with, “in mysterious ways.”
Faith: “We don’t know how God works (but we’re sure about what He wants us to tell you to do).”
Agnosticism: “Actually, we don’t know that God works.”
Atheism: “Who is this ‘God’ person, anyway?”
A-religiousness: “What the hell are you talking about?”
Buddhism: Shit happens.
Catholicism: If shit happens, you deserve it.
Zen: What is the sound of shit happening?
(Actual Zen Buddhism: Shit is the reward for shit happening.)
Atheism: I don’t believe this shit.
Agnosticism: What is this shit?
Actual Buddhism: Shit happens because of the shit you did a long time ago.
Also, formally agnosticism is, “I can not know.” It is actually a stronger stance than it is typically credited for.
Part of the problem is that different people have different definitions for such terms as agnostic (it is impossible for anyone to know if God exists), atheist (knows God doesn’t exist), deist (believes God exists, but doesn’t believe in the church and its hierarchy). Then you also have the religious agnostic: “I don’t know if God exists. However, I believe that I should act in the way that God, if he exists, would want me to act.” Then you get the question of whether, if God exists, God cares if I believe in him or not. Also whether you should do evil if God asks you to. (My personal take on that one was that God asked me to do evil, I have considerable doubt about whether the message came from God.) Then you have the gnostics who believe that they know the truth, but nobody else does.
And nw we come to solipsism, which states that you can’t know anything other than your own mind. In this regard, Descartes said “I think, therefore I am”. What most people don’t realize is that it follows that it is impossible to know what you are, or whether what you see, hear, smell, etc. is real or an illusion.
Then it starts getting confusing.
Atheists have faith. Sure, it’s backed by sound reasoning, but you don’t say, “There is no God,” if you’re not certain.
… so much to unpack here, but I’ll limit myself to two points.
1) You’re talking about strong atheists specifically, and not atheists in general.
2) Faith (as a an epistemic method, rather than just hopeful optimism or honoring deals/relationships) is a lot more specific than being certain. It essentially boils down to basing one’s sense of certainty on believing really hard, rather than on anything more substantive. To the degree you’re basing something on sound reasoning or hard evidence, you’re not basing it on faith.
Hear! Hear!
I have faith sound reasoning. Somewhat less in hard evidence, as the hard evidence doesn’t always mean what you think it does, but still faith in hard evidence.
I have a somewhat weaked, but still significant, faith in the positive value of talking to a higher power whether there is someone on the other end of the line or not.
I have a very low degree of faith in consensus reality. But in most cases, it’s still the way to bet.
Okay, didn’t word it specifically enough. The sort of faith that says “this approach has a tendency to work fairly reliably, so I’m going to trust it” is manifestly not the sort of faith used by most believers to believe in the existence of a god. I was trying to draw a category distinction, which if successful would have categorized the faith-in-reason-and-evidence approach as being fundamentally different from faith-in-god’s-existence.
And I personally tend to put more faith in evidence than in sound reasoning. I’ve seen way too many people fall victim to bad reasoning while mistaking it for sound reasoning, and I’m not (quite) arrogant enough to believe that I’m immune to thinking something’s sound when it really isn’t. At least with an evidence-based approach I can fact-check. (Not attacking you there, just sharing my perspective.)
As for whether there’s positive value in talking to a higher power regardless of whether it’s real or imaginary, I’d say it depends on what you come away thinking that the higher power is saying. *side-eyes at least 95% of the Christian Right*
“Bad reasoning” is literally what Becky’s doing here to. “My life has worked out, which proves that there is a loving and proactive God” only works as an argument if your ignore all the people whose lives don’t end out working out for the best. It’s a very egocentric point of view and is usually resolved by thinking either:
1. They lives haven’t worked out yet, or
2. They need to love God in order for him to love them back and allow them not to starve or whatever.
Becky is the plane that returned to the airfield full of holes, turning around and saying the places with the holes need more armor, not the places that mysteriously had none.
On further thought I think the proper term for what Chaucer59 is describing is, “Anti-Theists.” Faith stands up without evidence, and against evidence to the contrary. So to have formal (rather than colloquial) faith in the lack of god or gods would be to believe they don’t exist even when it is proven that they do.
Even Strong Atheists don’t typically hold that they would refuse to believe in the face of irrefutable proof.
Today’s Jesus and Mo seems very, very relevant to this.
Thank you Reltzik for going after this. A lot of the faithful really don’t understand what atheism is about. To put it laymans terms I think Ricky Gervais sums it up well, an atheist doesn’t believe in 2600 gods including Yahweh the same way a given faithful doesn’t beleive in 2599 gods of other religions. Or as de Laplace put it, “I had no need of that hypothesis.”
Now that said, I would put my position as a reasonable but strong atheist. Which is to say, I beleive there is not a little black teapot orbitting out past Mars and too small for us to see with our telescopes and probes, and I beleive there is not any god. Should someone produce any concrete evidence contradicting those postions, then I would happily evaluate the evidence. And if it held up under skepticism, I would be open to conducting further research and considering the possibility that it is now real. (be it a god or a teapot) This is essentially the stance of Strong Atheists. see: Russell’s Teapot
Actually, there might now be a teapot out near Mars. If Elon Musk knew about Russell’s Teapot and thought it would be funny to troll the world, he could have put a teapot in the trunk of that Roadster he launched. There’s at least some chance that he knew about it – if for no other reason than that I sent a tweet about Russell’s Teapot at him a few months before the launch.
For sure, and it would be awesome for some billionaire to troll earth that way, and really, should be (comparatively) cheap if they added it as a payload to a probe they lifted up anyways. But as yet, the odds of them managing something like that without leaks at this stage is pretty low.
Although I know if I was designing the PCB’s for any onboard electronics, I’d be sneaking in all kinds of subversive humour.
Thank you for bringing up Russel’s Teapot.
I consider myself an atheist-leaning agnostic. I haven’t seen definitive proof there isn’t anything out there, nor have I seen definitive evidence there is. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but at the same time I’ve never seen an event credited to divine intervention that couldn’t also be explained by science.
The point of Russell’s Teapot and similar arguments is that we never bother with splitting any of these hairs with anything but religion. No one would ever describe themselves as the equivalent of “atheist-leaning agnostic” about anything else with no evidence for it.
Yes, it’s true that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it’s also not evidence of presence and there are an infinite number of things for which we have no evidence that we don’t have definite proof against, that we don’t bother reserving judgement on.
Hear, hear!
Also, absence of evidence is evidence of absence if you expect presence to lead to evidence. Like if there was a powerful being that wanted to help people, I would expect it to be more noticeable. If it cared about our belief, I would expect it to send more messages than a few guys in one tiny part of the world.
Absence of evidence is less useful with the Deist god, that started the universe and is just watching us like a reality TV show.
Absence of sufficient evidence is not sufficient evidence of absence, but it is necessary evidence of evidence.
Whereas absence of necessary evidence is sufficient evidence of absence.
However, the god hypotheses that still survive are by craft or selection the ones that make no predictions, and therefore require no necessary evidence. Nevertheless, it seems absurd to choose one and believe it without evidence.
Which is again, the point of Russell’s teapot. Unfalsifiable and unverifiable (at least at the time.) It is not only absurd to believe in it, but also absurd to withhold judgement and claim to be agnostic about it.
For many atheists, God falls into the same category. Bending over backwards to avoid making even claims of unbelief without proof is something none of us do in any part of our lives except talking about the existence of God. It is absurd to hold this one idea to a standard we do not hold anything else.
I think believers understand atheism about as often as atheists understand the faithful. If you haven’t been both, you’re missing some context.
Actually, since actual atheism culturally incurrs a significant amount of debate (due to the prevalence of religion) I’m not sure that your claim is defensible.
Annecdotally (so uselessly from an evidentiary standpoint) my experience with atheists is that far more atheists have attended church, read the bible and other religious texts, than faithfull have studied atheism. I’m also subject to a bias because I do read more relgion v. atheism texts and discussions, and also that I naturally hang out with like minded folks, and so do not meet a higher sample of faithful to provide a better experiental dataset.
Finally, one thing I do consider and worry over is that I was raised areligously by two very different atheists. One was a communist and had essentially just drank different koolaide, but the other made it clear that our explorations in life were encouraged and supported. I also had access to a Bachelor of Religious studies, and was able to discuss and ask about many different relgions and facets thereof.
A large number of atheists were believers. Or at least were raised in the community, but many believed, too. So they can understand how the faithful thing because they remember thinking that way. Very few Christians were atheist, if only because of the base rates.
Similarly, I used to be libertarian, so feel I can still reasonably emulate them. Emulating conservatives, not so much.
Though it’s not uncommon for atheists raised in a particular faith, particularly a toxic one, to not have a good grasp on how broad religious experiences actually are.
An atheist who was raised fundamentalist treating Catholics or mainline Protestants as if they’re Biblical literalists, for example.
This isn’t limited to atheists of course. Many religious people have very distorted views of everyone outside their own tradition – see Joyce for examples.
Faith is a specific type of confidence that is based on belief rather than evidence.
For me, it’s less “I am 100% certain God, as Christians describe him, does not exist,” and more “I’m too lazy to bother praying or offering worship to anything.”
That’s not how the word ‘faith’ is normally used.
If I say that I’m sure there are no packs of lions in Antarctica, you wouldn’t call my certainty on that fact, “faith”.
I wouldn’t define it as faith. I’m an atheist because of, well, lack of faith and feeling. Even when I was a child, and was getting dragged to the evangelical church my mom was super in to, I just…didn’t feel anything. All the supposed love and confidence that all the other kids and the preacher and whoever talked about, it was like they were seeing a color I can’t see. I’ve never felt any kind of divine presence in my life, or around me, I’ve never seen any evidence that wasn’t able to be explained by logic, and honestly, I just don’t care, in a very benign way. Religion doesn’t bother me, but it also has no effect either. ‘Faith’ implies feeling to me, and I don’t feel any way about deities or atheism.
There are BILLIONS of people to complain to, and as a bonus we can actually have face-to-face conversations with them.
We can just complain to other people instead of a god.
Real people to complain to cost $170 for each one-hour session.
Imaginary people listen for free.
Jesus! What is your internet bill like?
No-one on the InterNet listens.
Though, mind you, I have been consulting my therapist by way of Skype since March.
Type harder. Use Caps.
Sorry I didn’t quite catch that.
;-P
this reminded me of the Epic Rap Battle between Sister Teresa and Sigmund Freud.
I love that battle.
allll we have to do now
is take this lies
and make them true some how
Objectively speaking I would not be cool with God’s methods. Just saying, a handful of people got kidnapped, and a guy died, so Becky can go to school. Not cool God. Not cool.
Also if we’re speaking just in totals and not malicious motives and stuff, 3 guys died. More than a few people are probably traumatized. Like if I were god I would’ve just made Becky’s dad not a complete tool. Like he could still be an ignorant and intolerant jackass, but just not such a big one that he aides a kidnapper/murderer.
You’re not taking this god’s goals and objectives into account. Suppose the goal is to entertain and maybe educate and teach third party observers so they would be better people. Might that justify that god’s actions?
Now of course, allowing Mike to die would be unforgivable.
Yeah this was the strongest argument I felt in terms of being atheist. Clearly any gods that do exist are assholes and unworthy of worship.
Have you noticed that Life is cruel and senseless?
I could hypothesize a God that isn’t an asshole, even given the state of our reality. Maybe God created the universe as an experiment to see how quantum mechanics and relativity would work when combined during the Big Bang and is keeping the universe around to study black holes. This God would be only dimly (if at all) aware of and mostly apathetic towards the self-replicating chemistry stuff happening on the surface of a few space-blobs that have yet to combine their masses into singularities worth studying. When we start manufacturing black holes as power reactors, THAT’S when God will finally start noticing us and be confused as all fuck.
The most believable non-asshole God, roundaboutly paraphrasing Douglas Adams:
The idea of an Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omnipowerful, etc. Capital G God is ridiculous in the sense of, here is a being with an upper limit (even if that limit is theoretically infinite), which can or has only created inferior products. A bit depressing, isn’t it?
Contrast that, the theory of evolution states that we came from the tiniest specks of life, building off of the simplest compounds to create more complex forms until we eventually reached where we are now, and we’re continuing to grow and improve. So “God” as defined as the thing that created the universe without having to be created, sure, that absolutely exists/existed. Is it the same as the Christian (or any other) God? Jury’s out on that.
I once had a debate with a Christian who responded to my comment on how Satan only had the power God allowed him to have: Yes, the Created cannot surpass the Creator. “Oh, so that’s why cars can only go as fast as the fastest human can run, and planes can’t fly.”
Didn’t get an answer to that.
“Thing that created the universe without having to be created” doesn’t necessarily exist in any meaningful sense and certainly not in the sense religious people mean it.
Early universe cosmology is weird.
“What came before the big bang?” doesn’t have an answer because there was no flow of time that would allow for the word “before”. It’s not actually a question, it’s more like a divide by zero error in that you’re asking it wrong.
Like asking what is north of the North Pole.
That does raise philosophical questions that may or may not be raised by actual origin mechanics. But to the example I point out, yeah nothing is north or North, but there’s still stuff past it, above and below it. This requires a frame of reference outside the topology of the globe to perceive but doesn’t mean those places don’t exist.
But that’s just relevant to the globe. I don’t know what (if any) equivalent questions exist about the origin of the universe, but despite the question being perhaps mathematically flawed, it’s good to be driven by curiosity and willing to ask. When people are told not to ask questions, we lose explorers and discovers to grey beaurocratic tedium.
“Mu.”
more that I reject the idea that something big and strong had to make us small and weak things but am totes down with the easily demonstrated “small simple things combine to make increasingly bigger and more intricate things” scenario
also just rejecting the notion of the beginning (or end) of Everything as a thing I need to worry about, bc it makes my head spin thinking of “what if all of creation DIDN’T happen” and also why do I even need to contemplate it, it’s here and *probably* not going away
I’ve always viewed God as a parent watching a child struggle with climbing a jungle gym. They may slip and fall, bang their knees, cry and get frustrated, but if we just pick them up and life them to the top, they haven’t grown.
Them overcoming the trials and achieving the goal themselves helps them grow, and makes them into a better person.
We’re the stupid children, trying to grow as a species. He’s watching and supporting us, but we need to grow on our own to become the people He knows we’re capable of being.
YMMV, though. After all, faith is personnal.
Putting aside the ‘should you help someone struggling with something’ issue and the ‘does struggle make you a better person’ issue for a second, I’d argue that any God who watches and supporting while one of their followers is going around kidnapping and trying to torture they’re daughter? Yeah, that God is an asshole.
Just to add: the Christian God (who is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent) would be able to just magically grant the necessary growth (and even the memories) without us needing to go through the trials. That may seem lazy, but… well, considering how very much worse than banged knees the various failings have been, and the fact that the many different ways various parts of humanity seem to be trying to “grow”, at least a little more intervention might be in order.
Particularly given that this claimed support God’s granting seems, to many of us, to be just as easily explainable by non-divine hypotheses.
Such behavior might make sense for a non-omnipotent, non-omniscient creator being. One who has only lesser tools to use to create something greater.
It is every (good) parent’s wish for their children to surpass them.
#NotSerious
But maaayy-be, god killing a 2:1 ratio of assholes vs. ‘we didn’t wish them ill’ is a decent trade off. I mean, I’m against religion etc.. anyways, but if there were an arbitrarily violent god who had to sake their bloodlust in order to not kill orphans and babies and level cities and wipe out (almost) all life on earth repeatedly, maybe trading Mike to get Blaine and Ross off the table is worth it.
Given that God could have killed them with lightning bolts or aneurysms, the approach of traumatizing a whole lot of people with the kidnapping thing leaves a lot to be questioned.
… also, are we really going to put Mike into the not-an-asshole category?
If I were God the weather would be a lot stormier, I can tell you that.
Re: Mike’s quality as a person. I was never one (that I can recall writing) of discarding Mike. I think there was more to his character and would love to see an arc that explains his change from flashback Mike to freshman Mike. Because although in the same body and name, they really seem like two different people, and yet even freshman Mike wasn’t solely motivated by malice. Hurtful yes, but in each case there seemed to be a point to it, with growth for the poked.
To ignore that is to lump vaccine needles in with stillettos and rapiers and bullets, because they all poke holes in people.
Okay, so all three were different types of asshole. I can still say that needles, stilettos, rapiers, and bullets are all pointy that can poke holes in people, even if they’re pointy in different ways and even if some might have different purposes in poking those holes.
Absolutely, but to do so without acknowledging the difference that 3 do it to harm while 1 is to aide and protect is to mis-represent the beneficent nature of one of the hole-pokers by lumping it in with the malicious hole-pokers.
Mike’s classification as benevolent is stretched to the extreme.
Sure was! He claim to be making Amber stronger was just the same as Blaine’s and no more since than Ross’s claim to be making Becky safe for the afterlife.
Mike was an abuser.
For “since” read “sincere”.
But he did realize that at the end and acted on it, which makes him better than either of those two. Who knows what would have happened had he survived.
Never claimed he wasn’t, but Mike was also demonstrating capacity for growth, and he had a more nuanced backstory revealing that he wasn’t always this hostile. That development and change is what I find interesting about him. So I put forth the argument that he was worth a closer look everytime someone says he is just ‘an abuser’ and writes him off. That degree of black and white thinking is a dangerous afront to any critically thinking person.
Also, I didn’t classify Mike as benevolent. I simply made an example that demonstrated that just because things are similar, doesn’t make them the same, which is the only point I made about Mike in the first place. But, as is demonstrated again and again, those who have written off Mike are unwilling to consider any degree of nuance in the argument, or in his character. One wonders if that unwaveringly inflexible conviction exists on topics more important than a comic character.
Oh well.
The frustrating thing with talking about Mike here is that while a nuanced view of him is certainly possible, there’s always been a strong contingent that’s had that benevolent take on him – far beyond any nuance and well before he showed any change. The “asshole sage” view.
Despite his own realization that he was using the same justifications for his abuse as Blaine, we still see people paint him in the entirely benevolent light with his sacrifice just being the natural result of him being a good asshole, instead of at least partly a reaction to the realization that he was abusive.
The frustration with that can spill over onto those with more nuanced views.
“trading Mike to get Blaine and Ross off the table is worth it.”
Heresy I tell you, heresy
Well, we are dealing with a hypothesis that god exists, so ya-know, yeah.
Robin DeSanto: has better methods of helping people than God.
Presumably, Becky thinks that God made it so that it worked out in the end.
And she’s objectively right.
However, God is an atheist and a pornographer.
*looks at Willis*
I wonder how Joyce would feel about that since she’s his avatar.
Wondering if Becky knows Joyce is atheist-y right now and is doing a bit until Joyce tells her.
I think Becky is legitimately unaware of Joyce’s newfound faith(or lack thereof as it might be.) The only question is, how is she going to react?
I think she’d be fine with it. She’s dating an a proud atheist after all. I think Becky would be more upset Joyce felt she needed to keep it a secret instead of confiding in her as her “Best” best friend.
I don’t know, that kind of change in Joyce might hit differently. Also she didn’t react super well to Joyce being angry about related things in a previous instance. I know if I had the memory of this being said to me in this context I’d be hesitant to tell her about such a thing too.
I see the point.
I think it’s a little different here though cause the context of that conversation was before most of her friends got kidnapped and nearly killed. Joyce even had it the roughest during that experience what with being kidnapped a second time. It would be pretty cold of Becky not to understand Joyce’s new perspective on religion after that. She’s been kidnapped once herself.
Also I think Becky was more upset that Joyce was being whiny and dismissive with her when she was looking for comfort and validation. Not entirely because Joyce was trivializing their shared religious beliefs.
I don’t think it would go very well because it is Joyce specifically. It’d be like if the one person you could always count on to be interested in a topic lost all interest and doesn’t enjoy long talks about it any more, so you have nowhere to channel that specific energy to any more. That hits harder than people never being interested to begin with.
This is definitely the reason why I’m kinda worried that Becky wouldn’t react well to learning Joyce is now an atheist.
I don’t think this gives Becky nearly enough credit. For the entiredy of DoA’s ten year run and funnily enough probably the same amount of time for Becky and Joyce in universe they have been nothing but unquestioningly and unashamedly supportive of each other. Becky came out to Joyce first… I mean unless you count Kaitlin? Was that her name? The girl Becky smooched on at Anderson. Joyce is who she came to when she ran away from home and had no one to turn to. They believe in each other MORE than their religion.
Anyway they’re closer than family. Even counting Joyce’s dad and Joyceline. I don’t think Joyce’s new lean toward atheist would even be a test. Maybe it would cause some short term tension but that’s it. And it’s not like they couldn’t still talk about faith. Joyce still retains all that knowledge. The faith aspect is almost arbitrary.
Me saying that I don’t think Becky will take it well isn’t me saying, I think they will grow to hate each other, it is me saying, I wouldn’t be surprised if Becky had an emotional outburst and it was a point of contention for a period of time then they will eventually reconcile.
I am giving Becky the exact level of credit I think she deserves considering the last time Joyce’s struggle with faith came up, she was snappy about it and called it a phase – and Becky has been through a lot emotionally, a comfort changing can cause overreactions when already emotionally struggling (we know Becky bottles things up).
Also, it might seem arbitrary to you, but not everyone WANTS to still talk about faith after losing it – the knowledge is not the issue. Especially because you know, Joyce is associating some of her religion with trauma, and may prefer not being triggered by it.
I feel like I need to clarify when I said “almost arbitrary” I didn’t mean it in the context that it was dismissive of Joyce’s trauma connected to it, but that their shared faith is almost arbitrary to their friendship and that just because Joyce is an atheist doesn’t mean they’ve somehow lost a connection in their friendship. Joyce’s past still happened. She doesn’t just forget how they both were raised because she no longer has confidence in her religion. Even if she never wants to talk about religion again it is still something they both share.
In my inherently flawed opinion as an outside viewer and not the creator of these characters., when this topic eventually comes up in would almost feel like a non conflict, unless Becky takes it personally. Most likely somehow blaming herself for Joyce’s disillusionment.
I wouldn’t bet on it. This is how she acted before everything went down. I think she’s just super into god.
It really feels like it. I mean, she could have been shouting about being a lesbian, and instead she puts Joyce on the spot.
If Becky were doing a bit she would be a lot more obvious about it. (See her and Dorothy.)
… then again, she might be collecting Joyce-faces.
Becky’s definitely seen enough over the last semester (‘if this isn’t literal truth, then original sin isn’t, and then nothing is,’ ‘I’m not sure I felt God,’ and Joyce’s nihilist moment at the birthday party, among others) to suspect there’s a break in Joyce’s faith. Very probably more awkwardness since, since they spent break together. I’m not sure if she’s realized it hasn’t healed, or just how deep the breaks are. I kind of suspect she might be trying to get Joyce to reassure her nothing’s changed, or at least that the change wasn’t THAT bad, so it’s okay, right?
Also I’m pretty sure that from Becky’s perspective, the only things that HAD to happen for her to get that student ID were Ross kidnapping her the first time, Robin stalking Leslie and giving Becky the opportunity to take her phone, and Robin hiring her. Robin dropping out assured she’d do so guilt-free, but it would have had the same effects if Robin had lost (given Becky was smart enough not to make Robin winning a term of her enrollment), and I suspect she considers the Second Kidnapping Twitter Thread the big surge that made Robin winning even in consideration. (Given how bizarre Robin’s voter base would’ve been without Inspirational Lesbian Tweet Thread – and hell, how bizarre WITH it – that checks out.) So, no murders, no traumatizing the rest of her friends to nearly the same extent. And I don’t think she realizes just HOW traumatic that first kidnapping was for either Joyce or Amber/possibly also AG, but it’s not been explicitly spelled out the same way. (‘I will die for you’ is explicitly-to-us a trauma trigger, reinforced by Carol’s immediate echoing it, and I think the thing that’s really made her reassess whether she’s okay with Christianity as a concept because of its similarity to ‘Jesus died for our sins’; I’d have to go back and check, but recounting the car chase to Danny is one of the first times Amber actively describes AG being in control as dissociation and not a form of ‘compartmentalizing’ because of how scared SHE was in this very risky situation where AG wasn’t allowing herself to stop, and how nonetheless she wasn’t the one in control.)
I’m beginning to wonder if Becky is still feeling the faith as much as she claims. Her constant reminders of how great God is sound a bit like her constant reminders that her parents are dead. It appears to be her way of dealing with emotional things.
Perhaps she is having a bit of a crisis herself?
I love scenes where characters use the exact same words to say different things.
I didn’t see that aspect of it when I read it. Now I do, and I’m glad!
It’s also really fun in court to use another parties own claims and arguments to undermine their own claims and arguments.
idk, I’m not excited about the confirmation hearings and their “yeah well I can totes be a hypocrite if it means we win… AND YOU CAN USE THAT AGAINST ME”
Yeah, I must apologize as I was more thinking about a personal issue of someone trying to screw my kids over. Over there, you have my sympathy for what’s coming next between the vote and office. (And I have little doubt, for years of litigation and allegations afterwards)
That’s it Joyce, plausible deniability in your responses when Becky is around. Honestly I half want Sarah to just blurt it out in front of Becky and force Joyce to talk about it.
Also, how long did it take y’all to talk about your change of faith?(assuming you had one)
I mean, it might be amusing for dramatic purposes…
…. but definitely don’t do that IRL. Outing someone is not cool.
Becky’s kinda thicc tho
Was gonna refute you because I still had her original size in my head, but yeah, lots of the characters seem to have developed more full body types. I never noticed the progression. Is Willis portraying the freshman 15, or going for a more authentic relatable look I wonder.
Becky has a middle name!
Joyce is having a challenging day!
I like how Ross apparently pointed his thumb at the list of Biblical matriarchs and went, “Yep, those two right there. That’ll do for girls’ names.”
Fortunately, he knew “Sarah” and “Rachel” and “Rachel” were taken, so we’ve got a complete set.
Complete? Where’s Judy?
Judith isn’t traditionally held to be one of the matriarchs. The matriarchs are Leah, Rachel, Rebecca, and Sarah.
Thanks for the clarification!! The more you know…
And Ruth, or are you counting Other Rachel separately for Double Rachel Power?
Dammit, when I was giving her a middle name on patreon for my ‘yelling at the characters’ bit, I gave her a matriarch middle name. It was Sarah though. Wrong one!
He actually landed on Debra first, but decided that a female religious leader was just too anti-biblical for him to endorse.
She is a Real Girl now? Was she a wooden puppet before?
Well these lyrics do kinda fit
“I’ve got no strings
To hold me down
To make me fret
Or make me frown
I had strings
But now I’m free
There are no strings on me.”
No, before she was a web comic character.
I find this kind of unassailable faith and dodging of any kind of questioning pretty annoying in real life. It is…marginally less so when it comes with punchlines, but this is definitely my least favorite side of Becky.
Did y’all ever notice God never gets tagged? If God for real they’d be tagged.
That’s just what The Willis wants you to think!
God died during the winter break OHHHHHHHHH!
Well, that explains 2020 then.
Nah, Yahweh left in 2019. 2020 is the universe unraveling as His Name fades…
Cuz God never shows up to represent, doyee. Alternatively, God’d technically have to be tagged in every single comic, and that still wouldn’t be any help. (just like real life)
On the contrary! Willis shows LOTS of characters that aren’t tagged.
They’re just, you know. MINOR characters.
INSIGNIFICANT.
IRRELEVANT to the story.
Glad we could clear that up.
Well we know where we’re going
But we don’t know where we’ve been
And we know what we’re knowing
But we can’t say what we’ve seen
And we’re not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out–Talking Heads “Road To Nowhere”
I might have done more with the George Michael softball in the alt text, but I kind of have other things on my mind today. :/
Sorry things are bogging yer down. :/. Hope things get better fer ya.
I think you still managed to wham it out of the park. And I hope your problems go go away.
*plays this on the nearest Muzak* Now I wonder about everyone else’s middle names
So would you say it’s… ineffable?
I don’t know about ineffable, it seems pretty effed to me.
If it’s already completely effed, then it can’t be effed any further, and thus it is ineffable.
Exactly. What we’ve all failed to realize is that ineffable has similar origins to inflamable. It’s not negating effability, but rather is vestigial.
So you’re saying it has vestigial effability?
I was more targetting the ‘in’ being vestigial on both inflamable and ineffable, thus claiming that the bible says repeatedly that god is fallible. But then I became lazy (ier) and disinterested in grooming it into a better joke.
So the joke was effable, but the motive for the joke was ineffable.
Yes. 😀 InExactly.
But that’s only if things can ever be completely effed, and that is categorically untrue. No matter how effed things are, they can always get more effed. There is no effing bottom.
There’s always another effing turtle.
Good Omens reference?
Shame we didn’t get to see what lives in the forbidden zone
Dude, it was ominous foreshadowing. The big reveal is happening in ’42.
Just to clarify, that’s 2142.
Faith…
Faith of the Heart!
It’s been a long road for Becky getting from there to here.
It’s been a long time, but wintertime’s finally here.
And Becky will see her dream come alive at last, she will touch the sky.
“The Contrôleur could not but think that it was a rather clumsy device to bring those two together that necessitated the death of six hundred innocent persons, but not being well versed in the ways of omnipotence he made no remark.”
– “The Vessel Of Wrath” by W. Somerset Maugham
Every day thousands of people die, and not always because of natural causes. But of course, when one good thing happens to you it must mean there’s a benevolent allmighty god that watches over everyone.
Things just happen, what the heck.
Everything’s the big bangs fault.
A long time ago the universe was created, this has upset a lot of people and is widely regarded as a bad move.
With your avatar that should really include references to mothers and nickels.
I think Becky knows, or at least suspects, that Joyce is no longer as faithful. Thoughts?
I think Becky tends to see what she wants to see, at least where Joyce is concerned. She was convinced that Joyce was lesbian, despite evidence to the contrary. Despite being a longtime friend, she did not recognize the signs of trauma in her friend. So, I think that Becky is oblivious. Like Joyce, the homeschooling didn’t do her a lot of good.
I think it would be very cruel of Becky to talk as she’s been talking, if she indeed suspected Joyce of no longer believing.
So I don’t believe Becky suspects — if she does, it will greatly lower my estimation of her.
She’s definitely seen the cracks before this point, but I’m a bit more forgiving at the moment and thinking her awareness it’s BROKEN, not just some cracks, is either not there or very unconscious. Becky wasn’t the one Joyce confided in about the Rich Mullins dream, or how deeply ‘I will die for you’ from Ross at gunpoint and then Carol affected her. Becky’s faith was resilient, after all, and Joyce was even more of a Bible nerd than she was! Obviously that means Joyce can pull through and things won’t have changed QUITE that much. (Especially since Joyce is pretty much Becky’s only tether back to her upbringing, with both parents dead now. Hank’s nice, but I don’t think he’s quite FAMILY the way Joyce is. Joyce being an atheist is one more fundamental shift in Becky’s life after what seems to be a year or so of Deeply Traumatic Loss of Community and Family – we don’t know when exactly Bonnie died, but there’s some vague indications it’s fairly recent. And it’s a fundamental shift that would give her more in common with Dorothy, and I really do think Becky’s hostility there is that she’s afraid of being replaced.) Seeking reassurance, is my current read I think, especially since Becky tries so hard not to show how badly all of this has affected her. (Remember, she only starts crying over Ross’s body after everyone else leaves the basement. I don’t think she wants to let them see.)
“Nobody likes a Debby Downer”
If Joyce did spend the break with Becky, I wonder how that went in terms of religion – did she go to services with Becky to keep up appearances? Did she manage to hide her loss of faith the whole time?
Seems weird if she managed that, but it’s breaking this obviously this quickly after they come back to school. Of course, that’s largely dramatic need.
Could be she’s managing to keep Precisely This level of facade, and Becky wasn’t ready to push until Dorothy insecurity came back in play. Or that, like Amber and her phone, spending a month in forced proximity burned out what ability she had. (Though given Joyce’s lying skills, that seems way less likely to me. Maybe she could sit through services and Becky’s still trying out new churches, so she can beg it off with ‘I’m not sure I felt God,’ especially since Joyce is still denying it to herself on some level? All of that’s no-prizing until proven otherwise, though.)
Most likely it’s dramatic need.
Friends put friends on the spot, right?
So is Panel 5 Joyce’s face “Crap am I being outed” or “Crap am I going to have to choose between lying and outing myself” or “Crap I’m not sure I can lie convincingly” or “Crap did I really sound like that oh wait I did crap”.
I can’t tell. It’s a crapshoot.
It’s uh. All of the above.
Crap
“Daaah, piss.”
-Sniper
Miles and Peter B. energy aside, that really was a perfect answer from Joyce. God’s ways are a mystery, after all.
God works hard for Becky. Praise!!!
I feel like Becky is onto Joyce and she’s just trying to coax it out of her….with a 500lbs hand.
Sarah, just spare the gal for now will ya
I feel like Becks has come around to the idea that any extant God is like the Great Old Ones—a being that we do not and cannot fully understand, and she’s comfortable with it.
I think that was her faith from the start.
Spare a thought for all the generations of theologians trying to prove God’s existence before student ID cards were invented.
When I became an atheist, I told as many people as possible. I’d rather rip that band-aid off than have someone resent me for deceiving them. Having said that, we all know how Joyce is with ripping off band-aids. (Looking at the dead toenail incident.)
I have to say, Becky is currently displaying the behaviour that annoys me the most by decent people who still believe in deities (the not-decent people have a whole set of behaviours that annoy me separately from this). This whole “god cannot be understood or held responsible” thing just rubs me the wrong way.
“Mysterious ways” a convenient way to plaster over the plot holes in their narrative.
Maybe it’s an addict?
Ugh… what I get for not letting myself think for a minute. Comparing god’s allegedly mysterious helpless irresponsibility to an addict is an insult to those fighting addiction.
I’m sorry if my post caused any hurt, it wasn’t intended to be hurtful to any real person.
Poor Joyce This situation seems really heavy.
Becky is draining Joyce’s sanity reaaally fast…
Private conversation incoming
God made us strong. He tests us to demonstrate this.
Really don’t know if you’re trolling. If god is infallible, why does it need to test creation? There is no point to a test when you have the answer key, are marking it yourself, and are the keeper of the marks. Does it need to prove to Santa that it has been good?
Also, all the stupid little things that kill us by the millions kinda disproves our strength.
Dear Abby once ran a letter from someone who said “My brother, a God-fearing Christian, just committed suicide. How can you tell us God never gives us more than we can handle? Clearly God did!” Abby apologized and never used the line again.
As someone with a chronic illness, I hate that line so very very much. I may be “handling” my suffering, but if there’s a god out there doing this to “test” me then he’s incredibly sadistic and cruel.
I get really tired of how fundamentalist faith often portrays disabled/chronically ill people as if we’re just there to inspire others, or they imply our suffering is somehow our own fault, or a test, or any other number of useless brush-offs from people who clearly have no idea what it’s like to live with something like this.
Agreed, sympathy, and hard same. Sometimes the hand you get dealt just sucks, and there’s nothing that could’ve been done to prevent it sucking, and nothing that can be done with it that doesn’t suck. Hearing crap like this only makes us dislike the people saying it.
I dunno, He tested my mom with cancer and she died.
I respect people’s freedom to believe what they want but gotta say, as someone with a debilitatingly painful chronic illness, this comment kind of sucks. :/
Like, maybe don’t imply people who are actively suffering are just being tortured every day as some kind of test…and then try to claim a god that would do that is benevolent and loving. Because…yikes.
Doesn’t really jive with the book of Job, really. Lots of tests, and then rubbing overwhelming power in the face of the guy he brought low. Sounds more like a cat playing with a mouse it caught.
Hey, He made up for it. He gave Job an entirely new and better wife and kids.
Well, okay then.
That’s a nice sentiment, I suppose, but it doesn’t hold up to any sort of scrutiny.
You’re saying he hits us because he loves us. You’re saying that your God is abusive. Which yeah ok that fits the whole jealous god thing he warned us about in Exodus
Joyce is in the atheist closet. Barely admitted it to herself yet, and no idea how it will affect her enthusiastic believing bestie.
I had a Theology teacher who told us “God is the name we give to the way we relate to the universe.” The interesting bit was this was a Catholic Priest.
Huh, I like that.
“Rebecca Leah”, eh? Two names from the Bible, if I recall correctly. (Really, The Bible is my worst Jeopardy! category, bar none.)
I still don’t understand how religion can be a thing because of this exact issue. How are so many people comfortable believing in something so baseless?
The same reason it’s been a thing throughout history: because it conveniently handwaves away anything that’s uncomfortable, unknown, or too complicated.
And in the wrong hands, it’s also a way to galvanize opinions, justify behavior, and take advantage of others.
As a sidenote of my reply to OP, yes, that is an an entirely valid if more blunt view of looking at it – though I’d like to say it typically goes deeper than simply handwaving. There is a lot of culture and tradition built around many religious beliefs, to cushion the adherents from those discomforts.
Back when religions were first conceived, most of the world was a big question mark on how it functioned. Likely, a lot of what people thought back then were baseless, since they have neither the means, the rigor or the interest to confirm/deny them.
In the modern day, a lot of religious people can accept there are no logical grounds for their beliefs and limit how much they let them impact their day to day lives.
Me being religious, I understand the concept is Implausible and completely without verifiable basis – so I don’t treat it like science. In purely logical terms, it’s just something I like to think is true. The emotional benefits and the sentimental value doesn’t have to be impacted by that at all.
I like Carl Sagan’s take that ancient people were investigating the universe the best way they could; to honor that curiosity if not the results, as we stand on their shoulders. Recognize the past without being stuck in it.
That is beautiful, but also implies a bit of an idea that our religious fervour should be directed to anthropology, history and humanities and less to … well, religious fervour.
getting “Into the Spiderverse” vibes there…
A thing I think people are missing is Becky’s expression in panel 3. She has her own grief going on, but is plastering over it with “God works in mysterious ways” and a grin because it’s the only way she knows how to deal with it. We see a single break in her armor in panel 3, but then it’s right back to cheerful ol’ Becky. I think she’s leaning hard on religion as a support system right now, and if/when Joyce lets her down on that front, it’s going to hurt real bad for both of them.
Good point, especially with such a large, held smile. I’m not sure she’s hitting the same crisis as Joyce, or at least not to the same extent, (her faith survived Bonnie’s death, after all, and I do think it was genuinely fairly solid back then,) but there’s no God Answers Lesbian Prayers moment with Ross’s death the way there was during the first kidnapping that let her make sense of it. And even if there was, the fact that everyone else was kidnapped, that Amber had to deal with her dad kidnapping her and dying, that Mike did die as a result of this… she was the primary victim of the first kidnapping, and I genuinely don’t think she knows just how badly that gun in her face still hits Joyce. There are way too many primary victims for this. If her dad just dropped dead, she’d probably still have mixed emotions, but at least it wouldn’t have hurt everyone else in the process like this did.
(I think in general, Becky would be struggling more with the problem of theodicy, of how a God can be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent in a world where evil exists. By contrast, Joyce is struggling with a solid mixture of ‘what is true, if all these things my parents told me weren’t?’, a realization that she didn’t have faith so much as fear of damnation and a want to feel God in the first place, and the accompanying realization that she doesn’t really like some of the core tenets of Christianity, because she’s seen people use that exact same logic and phrasing to point guns at her face. Wouldn’t be shocked if there is some theodicy under it, too, given the semester she had, but there are a LOT of issues Joyce’s faith wasn’t built to withstand that she’s grappling with now.)
..part of me worries greatly for when becky’s world comes shattering down around her, when she realizes that god can’t fix everything. i personally don’t know if there’s a god, but if there is, they can’t fix everything like becky wants. i’m scared for her.
Usually the result of that is one of three things happening.
(A) Rationalizing that it’s somehow part of God’s just and loving plan and trusting that she’ll find out the details either n the future (be it in this life or the afterlife), or just trusting without needing to know the details at all.
(B) Reevaluating the doctrines and coming to a different understanding of God, maybe as one that doesn’t intervene much and leaves people to their own devices, or one that isn’t omnibenevolent, or something like that.
(C) Deconversion. That is often stressful and painful, but growth often is. It’s not all that horrific of a fate.
Of these it’s (A) that worries me most, since it will be a lapse into a dangerous sort of facts-denial. But I’m not that concerned overall.
What DOES concern me is that this is Act I of DoA Season 2. Whenever a character lists a whole bunch of good things happening in their life in the middle of Act I… boy, that does NOT end well.
But her world has already crashed down around her? And she obviously still has her faith? And at the end of the day, why is it important for her to deconvert?
I get that this an atheist/non-religious fan base but why is it so hard for people to believe that the believers…actually believe? That we really mean it when we say we have faith? And that it actually does give us peace even when shit goes down?
Don’t get me wrong, Becky’s beliefs are not the same as mine. I follow a wisdom tradition. But I still relate to her being a lesbian and having a dead prejudice parent. I understand where you’re coming from, but can you give us wacky spiritual people some credit? We’re smarter and more resilient than you might realize.
(Also I hope I don’t come off as mean spirited. I just want people like Becky and I to be more understood. Sometimes I feel very talked down to in liberal/LGBT spaces.)
I will say, yes, I understand that it’s Willis’ story and he isn’t religious. I absolutely respect that he can write the narrative however he chooses. I’m certain he wants to drive home certain themes and lessons, and I don’t want my comment to be mistaken as a call for a different type of representation.
I don’t think they are saying she has to deconvert, they’re just concerned Becky may have a crisis of faith when she realises God can’t/won’t fix everything bad into something ‘better’ and that sometimes there isn’t a mysterious reason behind every single thing good or bad that happens. That sometimes it is just the human factor that results in bad thing X and good thing Y.
That doesn’t mean she has to deconvert. You absolutely can grapple with your view of God without losing your faith when you are as comfortable in your faith as Becky is.
Baby Steps Sarah. Becky’s got eighteen years of toxic theist brainwashing to overcome before she understands that God is real, and he’s a nasty, vile SOB who gets off on watching his creation suffer and fail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1grhmdzoHrw
“God must be real. Someone up there is out to get me.”
A convincing argument.
My feeling on this strip generally? Becky’s laying on the faith thing a bit harder than she had before the skip. I think it’s possible she has a hunch about Joyce’s views and she’s trying to get Joyce to prove that hunch wrong and reassure her that she hasn’t changed much. You know, tying back to that thing she said back at the beginning of the comic. It’s, er, not going to work out the way she hopes.
you do (not) gotta have faith
Evangelion 5.55?