Becoming The Advocate
If one always argues as the Devil’s Advocate does one eventually come around to the Devil’s side?
It’s interesting to hold an opposite position from nearly everyone you know. Especially about something politically divisive. Everyone assumes you think like they do, lots of offensive stuff gets emailed and linked, people nudge you about things and expect something other than a blank stare. I’m good at the blank stare now. I’m also good at keeping my mouth shut and swallowing anger. People, even good smart people, just aren’t as accepting of differences as they think they are, and it’s just not worth the risk of finding out who can deal with it and who can’t. Yes, this is can be depressing at times.
Sort of related side note:
Last week a friend of a friend (of a friend…) was emailing around this short New Yorker column:
Day No. 1
And the Lord God said, “Let there be light,” and lo, there was light. But then the Lord God said, “Wait, what if I make it a sort of rosy, sunset-at-the-beach, filtered half-light, so that everything else I design will look younger?”
“Im loving that,” said Buddha. “It’s new.”
“You should design a restaurant,” added Allah.
What’s wrong with this picture? The Lord God and Allah are the same entity. How could the New Yorker let that slip? Are they honestly that ill-informed? Or was it perhaps a last minute “diversity-correction”, grepped in to appease the new gods of political correctness. Whatever it was, it completely undermined the whole piece. Successful humor is just not based on alternate universes. The punch-line to a joke can’t come from somewhere outside the setup. “Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the sky was green and there was no gravity.” The Lord God can’t just talk with an accent and then become Allah. The Lord God is Allah, and vice versa.
I had written a few related paragraphs about my thoughts on religion, evolution, intelligent design and a few other topics. Then I deleted them. If you really want to know what I think about any of those, buy me a beer. Or three, I’m difficult to pigeonhole and chatty when I drink.
ps. I will not acknowledge any guesses as right or wrong so please don’t bother.
Joe, it’s a joke dude. Lighten up.
I’m gonna say… “multiple personality disorder”…
It’s interesting, I’ve just entered my first year at OCAD in Toronto, and aside from “Art” and “Design” students labeling each other so they can know who NOT to talk to… in almost everyone of my classes somebody has made a grandeous religious stance that being religious or not being religious is better than the other… It’s weird… You see people shift in their seats and measure each other up… It’s just weird…
Maybe it’s because I’m older and they’re all just out of highschool…
Also, I recently shared your ‘everything on my desk’ with one of my professors since we’re doing a project on objects with personal importance, and starting to talk about profiling…
Thanks for the read… :D
Sorry Eric, the more I think about it the more I think Paul Rudnick’s piece is just a complete disaster.
Yes it tries to make a joke, but it fails almost completely. A central component of the attempted humor is based on a critical ignorance of the beliefs of more than half the world’s population. That’s just not something that can be casually overlooked.
And it’s not as if the broader subject of creation myth is lacking in diversity and richness. What about Brahma? Horus? Why Thor and not Odin? Oceans of milk? “Turtles all the way down?”
Interesting that you start an ontological argument with New Yorker, as the institution is a miracle and thus a proof of…
But yes you are correct. Not the funniest piece they have ever printed.
Last comment, I hope:
Thor was a son of Odin. Apollo was the son of Zeus who himself was the son of Cronus, who, like Aphrodite (sort of), was a child of the Titans. These are further breaks with any sort of parallelism, there’s no reason Jesus Christ, Mohammad, Zoraster, Elijah or Moses shouldn’t appear.
If any of that bothers you, don’t bother reading up on The Angel Moroni. A central figure of mormonism, he is said to be the resurrection of the mortal son of Mormon, who originally lived between the fourth and fifth centuries. That would be post-Christ and just slightly post-creation.