Do we have a precise definition on infant? I mean, where are we drawing the line here?
dwfanatic
I am not sure what exactly Joyce believes, since, as she’s nondenominational, we don’t know any of the details unless she tells us. But she did describe earlier the sorting of people into Heaven and Hell as occurring after the end of time, which is also Catholic doctrine. So it wouldn’t be unreasonable for her to believe the Catholic definition of heaven as well, which is that you don’t need your friends and family in heaven. God fills that hole in you that on Earth is caused by needing literally everything.
I’m going to post a snippet from yesterday’s conversation so that no one has to go searching through it to figure out what I’m talking about:
Crazy Dina
… Now that I think about it, has Joyce come across a single person who wasn’t either a jerk or someone she thought was probably damned?
Mike: Jerk (Mike)
Walkie: Damnation status unknown, can be considered a jerk
Dorothy: damned (atheist)
Becky: Now damned (lesbian)
Billie: Possibly damned (from lesbian experiences, status changing)
Glasso: Definitely a jerk
Parents: JERKS (written off by Joyce. Reason: Parents)
Mary: Jerk (Unknown by Joyce)
Ruth: Jerk
Dina: Damned (probably an atheist, definitely not Christian)
Forgot Ethan: Damned (gay)
Bagge
That’s very true and a large source of underlying stress for Joyce. Both because she fears for hear friends and because she fears for herself. She said as much to Dorothy at one point – finding out that people who she has been taught her whole life is bad for her is actually good people, is exactly what she’s been told her whole life to be afraid of.
Sarah – does nasty thing with a toy. Not necessarily damned but at risk. A bit of a jerk.
Sal – too cool not to be damned.
Roz – Very damned.
Joe – Very damned, very jerk.
Crazy Dina
Worse: she has no rock – no one she’s allowed to get close to. And in that, if she does go to heaven, she’ll be alone while her friends end up together in hell (which is why I DON’T want to go, and would easily explain Willis’ desire to be damned). If you ask me, THAT’S the part that would create the most stress, why she’s so upset at Becky’s changes and why she might want to convert Ethan from gay-itude – she doesn’t want to be alone for eternity.
No problem, our browser windows do have scroll bars. That’ll have to do.
Pie
You can add scroll bars using the CSS overflow property, and you can add that in the style of an HTML element, although I’m not 100% confident it’ll work here. Let’s try!
Oh darn it! Someone just hug Joyce and tell her that everything is okay and that she won’t be alone for all eternity! Someone let her know she’s okay, and tell her that Heaven is a choice she can make when the time comes based on where her friends have to go, and tell her that Hell can’t be that bad as long as her friends are there to protect her, and that Sarah, Dorothy, Walky, Amber, Dina, and even Mike will make sure she’s okay even if she does have to choose Hell so as not to be alone!
Someone tell her that the Devil can’t be as bad as depicted, he never discriminate against who he allows in, and that if worst comes to worst, that worst will mean that Hell is full of good people too, and that there is nothing to fear! D;
Darn, it! Someone tell ME that! D;
RandomRedMage
I’m of the mindset that too many people are too caught up in their afterlife that their forgetting to LIVE their current life.
I’m not generally like that, but then I hit something that strikes that nerve. Needless to say, existential freakouts ensue.
Fish
Its ok. Its ok. You won’t be alone in an afterlife.
Either there is an afterlife, and you don’t be alone in it (the whole concept seems to be about sorting you with people you’re likely to get along with). Or, there isn’t an afterlife and so you won’t exist to be alone in it.
It’s not just being alone that scares me. It’s the jerks I might wind up with by being a(n overall, I am calling these people jerks, after all) good person.
Kryss LaBryn
That reminds me of a comedic news item I heard a while ago, about how Hell now hosts one of the most vibrant gay communities in the world, and how awesome it is, and how open and accepting. It ended with “Heaven, meanwhile, remains as bigoted as ever.”
*reads “Dina: Damned (probably an atheist, definitely not Christian)“* You know, just for future reference, not all Christians debate evolution vs. creation. There are a lot who actually just think of a middle ground between the two, they’re just not as loud or good news coverage.
Paul
[sarcasm]
Ah, but so-called “Christians” who accept evolution aren’t really Christians, they just think they are.
[/sarcasm]
(Does anyone know how to make angle brackets appear in the text without them being interpreted as HTML tags?)
Tenn
Let’s see…
< = <
> = >
Tenn
<success>Yay, it worked!</success>
Bagge
I dare say the majority of Christians would say this entire list is silly, but that doesn’t matter right now. This is only about the Christianity Joyce was taught, or more to the point, how she herself interprets it right now.
Yeah, I remember reading that the original theory of evolution was proposed by a member of the church. The Big Bang too, I believe, due to its similarities to how God created the universe.
Actually, the Big Bang (Fred Hoyle’s derisive term for the theory,
which ironically stuck) was first proposed by Georges Lemaitre,
a cosmologist and Jesuit priest, when he realized Einstein’s
theory couldn’t describe a static universe. Interestingly, Lemaitre
fought against any religious implications of the theory, saying it was
purely a scientific realization.
No Name
Ah, yes, Lamarck. To bad his theory had a small error (namely, acquired traits could be passed down). We also can’t forget Mendel and his peas.
Bagge
I always thought poor Lamarck got a bit of bad press. He was wrong about the mechanism but he had the general idea right 50 years before Darwin (who of course also was deeply religious).
If one wants to be snarky about it one could always bring up the great Atheist biologist Lysenko…
Actually, the history of Lamarckism is a sad story. Lamarck wrote before Darwin, and his work was not truly repudiated until the emergence of the statistical tools behind population genetics in the 1920’s. Most of what we consider Lamarckism, in fact, was the work of cranks and frauds, either motivated by eugenics or political pressure.
That’s not to say that Lamarck was in any way right — he wasn’t! — but it is to say that the blame he usually gets is not really deserved.
Erin
(Apologies for incoming pedantic mode – this is kinda my thing.)
Modern work on epigenetics is actually starting to make it look like Lamarck was onto something. Turns out some acquired traits really are heritable!
What Lamarck was really missing was the idea of existing variation within a species. He had the basic notion of descent with modification, but he was thinking in terms of one platonic ideal of a species evolving into a different platonic ideal. Darwin’s big breakthrough was the idea that variation within a species is the norm, not an unfortunate deviation from an ideal form, and that variation allows for differential reproductive success of individuals — natural selection.
Poor Lamarck really was pretty close. And even Darwin was still missing several important mechanisms, since it would be another century before we were pretty sure what DNA was and roughly how it works. They both get a lot of undeserved blame and/or credit based on work done by later “Lamarckian” or “Darwinian” researchers.
You seemed to be missing my point: JOYCE perceives this to be the case, not necessarily being true or false in the perception of any others or in reality. Although technically, I could put Dina down as “a little jerkish” due to her interactions with Joyce, but I don’t think I’m going to. I’m going to hold the opinion that Dina is probably more damned due to her beliefs (In Joyce’s perspective) than she is a jerk (which Joyce probably views as exactly how we view her, completely misinformed from the start of her life).
Lord Geovanni
As a Christian it is my belief that many of the things in the bible that dont contridict itself in another part is true but as far as the origins of the world if God is all powerful he could have done creation in 7 days and decided that he would make it seem like that time had been going on longer than it had its one of the perks of being all-powerful
I can’t actually think of where it’s written, but it was pretty generally accepted in the community at my church that there were some sort of one way visitation rights in the afterlife. So if you got into heaven you could go hang out with your friends in hell, but they couldn’t come hang out with you in heaven.
Though I guess that’d mesh weirdly with interpretations of the afterlife that include like nasty hellfire burning torture sort of hell, because why would you want to go hang out with your friends in a place like that?
Maybe you take a protective film with you when you go? OR maybe those sentenced to heaven get sort of a protective bubble, so those who are sentenced to hell, but have lots of friends in heaven can get their sentences laxed by convincing those friends to come visit often?
Yeah, wishful thinking.
Fish
> so those who are sentenced to hell, but have lots of friends in heaven can get their sentences laxed by convincing those friends to come visit often?
I think mormonism has the idea that if your offspring eventually find the right path, then they can choose to accept God for you and free you of hell.
So, yes, this idea is believed in, of having good friends and family to lessen the pain of hell.
Gangler
Actually, we can only perform ceremonies like baptism and marriages for the dead. It’s still up to the individual in question whether they want to accept God.
Mormon afterlife is a bit weirdly structured in that way. It’s assumed that there will still be atheists and people of other faiths in there. If I recall one of the tiers of heavens is just an eternity of missionary work, spreading the good word to other dead people. These missionaries will have to have successfully converted your dead relative before you perform their baptism or they won’t accept it and it’ll mean nothing.
Technically it’s not supposed to be about dead relatives exclusively, but also it’s a total bongo to track down some ancient greek peasant’s information so you gotta start somewhere.
No, always bet on Joyce’s compassion. She’s proven again and again that she’ll always side with the people she loves. She just takes time to adjust her thinking for how she’ll deal with it.
dailybrad
Joyce has a big heart and a powerful sense of family. Before college, that was applied to her flock, so to speak, but her notions of what family is have changed a lot, between Dorothy, “Big Sister” Sarah, Ethan, Billie, and even Walky to butt heads with. She cares about her friends tremendously, and that is hard to reconcile when her flock had her believing that many of these people would have been lost causes or unrighteous, things she has seen to be false.
It’s worth remembering she’s 17 or 18 right now. She has a LOT of contradictions she needs to face. We all did.
Agreed. On the surface, it may look like a kinda ratty thing to do, to try and see if the bible REALLY says homosexuality is a sin, but look at the larger picture. She just challenged her own faith because it seemed wrong to her. That’s not Thats not easy for someone like her.
I guess I don’t understand why Joyce looking up things in the Bible is a bad thing? Like she is very religious and wanted to see alternate viewpoints. I am not seeing how this is a terrible thing to do at all. (If someone wants to actually explain that’ll be cool)
Because she told Becky that she mattered to her more than anything, but then had to double check to make sure that God gave her the A-OK, instead of just going for it because she loves Becky.
Although I doubt it was questioning Becky as having to deal with what she had saying “no” but she desperately wanted a “yes”, so she did the research in hope of being less conflicted about Becky’s situation (I.E. being damned)
Talliemarks
IDK I think that’s really unfair. I mean I understand why Becky herself is upset. She’s in a really vulnerable place and isn’t really in a position to be fair but I don’t think the audience has to agree with her. Joyce is still entitled to her religion. It can be argued that maybe Joyce shouldn’t have mentioned it today, but Joyce didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not wrong to make one’s religious beliefs a priority in your life.
It is unfair, but the comic isn’t named Dumbing of Age for nothing.
JWLM
Ummm…speaking as a Christian-type-religious-type, what Joyce did was wrong: she tried to rescue Becky from damnation as read in the Bible. What she should have done was accept the revelation that Becky, who is clearly a good person and not damned, was lesbian — and worked to save the Bible from that.
The effect on Joyce’s understanding of the ambiguity of the text might have been the same. The effect on Joyce would have been completely different: the one we see leads to claiming that Becky should be grateful to Joyce for salvaging her. The one we didn’t see would lead to Joyce realizing that she found a potential way to save (in the Cristian sense) her old pastor and perhaps Becky’s father. Big, big difference.
391 thoughts on “Research”
Crazy Dina
Like I said before, scared to be alone.
Bagge
Yup, I buy into that reading.
Crazy Dina
And I just remembered that that’s the original depiction of hell – being alone. So Joyce might be living “Hell on Earth” right now! (YIKES!)
Jackson
What? I thought hell was other people!
Crazy Dina
Well played.
Pink Freud
No, Hell is for Children.
das-g
Not exclusively. That’d be Limbo of infants.
Rufus Saltus
Do we have a precise definition on infant? I mean, where are we drawing the line here?
dwfanatic
I am not sure what exactly Joyce believes, since, as she’s nondenominational, we don’t know any of the details unless she tells us. But she did describe earlier the sorting of people into Heaven and Hell as occurring after the end of time, which is also Catholic doctrine. So it wouldn’t be unreasonable for her to believe the Catholic definition of heaven as well, which is that you don’t need your friends and family in heaven. God fills that hole in you that on Earth is caused by needing literally everything.
Chris
Roomies from Hell?
Crazy Dina
I’m going to post a snippet from yesterday’s conversation so that no one has to go searching through it to figure out what I’m talking about:
Crazy Dina
… Now that I think about it, has Joyce come across a single person who wasn’t either a jerk or someone she thought was probably damned?
Mike: Jerk (Mike)
Walkie: Damnation status unknown, can be considered a jerk
Dorothy: damned (atheist)
Becky: Now damned (lesbian)
Billie: Possibly damned (from lesbian experiences, status changing)
Glasso: Definitely a jerk
Parents: JERKS (written off by Joyce. Reason: Parents)
Mary: Jerk (Unknown by Joyce)
Ruth: Jerk
Dina: Damned (probably an atheist, definitely not Christian)
Forgot Ethan: Damned (gay)
Bagge
That’s very true and a large source of underlying stress for Joyce. Both because she fears for hear friends and because she fears for herself. She said as much to Dorothy at one point – finding out that people who she has been taught her whole life is bad for her is actually good people, is exactly what she’s been told her whole life to be afraid of.
Sarah – does nasty thing with a toy. Not necessarily damned but at risk. A bit of a jerk.
Sal – too cool not to be damned.
Roz – Very damned.
Joe – Very damned, very jerk.
Crazy Dina
Worse: she has no rock – no one she’s allowed to get close to. And in that, if she does go to heaven, she’ll be alone while her friends end up together in hell (which is why I DON’T want to go, and would easily explain Willis’ desire to be damned). If you ask me, THAT’S the part that would create the most stress, why she’s so upset at Becky’s changes and why she might want to convert Ethan from gay-itude – she doesn’t want to be alone for eternity.
Crazy Dina
Okay, if anyone knows HTML code for a box with scroll bars, can they PLEASE post it here?
Opus the Poet
Not part of the allowed sub-set of HTML for the comments.
Crazy Dina
Oh… Willis, can we please have them? I kinda blew up the comment section with one post… again. 🙁
Gigafreak
Willis was curiously excluded from the damnings
maarvarq
Given his trolling Shortpacked! related tweet from 7 hrs ago, I am quite willing to say “Damn you, Willis!” 🙂
Lume
DAMN YOU WILLLLLLIIIIIISSSSSSSSSS
Mravac Kid
You have to do it right.
DAMN YOU WILLIS.
There, that’s how it’s done.
Crazy Dina
No, you’re all wrong. You have to say it like a logo!
Which I don’t know HTML formatting for…
Gigafreak
Only people with special permission can post images to this comment section.
The only one with that permission is David Willis and he ain’t sharing.
Damn him.
Crazy Dina
Okay, fine. Willis, post it… Like a Logo!
das-g
No problem, our browser windows do have scroll bars. That’ll have to do.
Pie
You can add scroll bars using the CSS overflow property, and you can add that in the style of an HTML element, although I’m not 100% confident it’ll work here. Let’s try!
Hello world!
Pie
Nope, sorry. Doesn’t work. 🙁
Crazy Dina
Why do I have the feeling that’s going to lead to more exploded posts in the future?
Crazy Dina
Oh darn it! Someone just hug Joyce and tell her that everything is okay and that she won’t be alone for all eternity! Someone let her know she’s okay, and tell her that Heaven is a choice she can make when the time comes based on where her friends have to go, and tell her that Hell can’t be that bad as long as her friends are there to protect her, and that Sarah, Dorothy, Walky, Amber, Dina, and even Mike will make sure she’s okay even if she does have to choose Hell so as not to be alone!
Someone tell her that the Devil can’t be as bad as depicted, he never discriminate against who he allows in, and that if worst comes to worst, that worst will mean that Hell is full of good people too, and that there is nothing to fear! D;
Darn, it! Someone tell ME that! D;
RandomRedMage
I’m of the mindset that too many people are too caught up in their afterlife that their forgetting to LIVE their current life.
Marisa Mockery
Which is longer?
Gojira
The one that definitively exists.
Crazy Dina
I’m not generally like that, but then I hit something that strikes that nerve. Needless to say, existential freakouts ensue.
Fish
Its ok. Its ok. You won’t be alone in an afterlife.
Either there is an afterlife, and you don’t be alone in it (the whole concept seems to be about sorting you with people you’re likely to get along with). Or, there isn’t an afterlife and so you won’t exist to be alone in it.
It is okay. It will be okay. You won’t be alone.
Crazy Dina
It’s not just being alone that scares me. It’s the jerks I might wind up with by being a(n overall, I am calling these people jerks, after all) good person.
Kryss LaBryn
That reminds me of a comedic news item I heard a while ago, about how Hell now hosts one of the most vibrant gay communities in the world, and how awesome it is, and how open and accepting. It ended with “Heaven, meanwhile, remains as bigoted as ever.”
It was pretty funny.
Shadow12000
*reads “Dina: Damned (probably an atheist, definitely not Christian)“* You know, just for future reference, not all Christians debate evolution vs. creation. There are a lot who actually just think of a middle ground between the two, they’re just not as loud or good news coverage.
Paul
[sarcasm]
Ah, but so-called “Christians” who accept evolution aren’t really Christians, they just think they are.
[/sarcasm]
(Does anyone know how to make angle brackets appear in the text without them being interpreted as HTML tags?)
Tenn
Let’s see…
< = <
> = >
Tenn
<success>Yay, it worked!</success>
Bagge
I dare say the majority of Christians would say this entire list is silly, but that doesn’t matter right now. This is only about the Christianity Joyce was taught, or more to the point, how she herself interprets it right now.
Lume
Yeah, I remember reading that the original theory of evolution was proposed by a member of the church. The Big Bang too, I believe, due to its similarities to how God created the universe.
Al Schroeder
Actually, the Big Bang (Fred Hoyle’s derisive term for the theory,
which ironically stuck) was first proposed by Georges Lemaitre,
a cosmologist and Jesuit priest, when he realized Einstein’s
theory couldn’t describe a static universe. Interestingly, Lemaitre
fought against any religious implications of the theory, saying it was
purely a scientific realization.
No Name
Ah, yes, Lamarck. To bad his theory had a small error (namely, acquired traits could be passed down). We also can’t forget Mendel and his peas.
Bagge
I always thought poor Lamarck got a bit of bad press. He was wrong about the mechanism but he had the general idea right 50 years before Darwin (who of course also was deeply religious).
If one wants to be snarky about it one could always bring up the great Atheist biologist Lysenko…
JWLM
Please bring him up. On charges.
Crazy Dina
Positive or negative?
#electrons
JWLM
Actually, the history of Lamarckism is a sad story. Lamarck wrote before Darwin, and his work was not truly repudiated until the emergence of the statistical tools behind population genetics in the 1920’s. Most of what we consider Lamarckism, in fact, was the work of cranks and frauds, either motivated by eugenics or political pressure.
That’s not to say that Lamarck was in any way right — he wasn’t! — but it is to say that the blame he usually gets is not really deserved.
Erin
(Apologies for incoming pedantic mode – this is kinda my thing.)
Modern work on epigenetics is actually starting to make it look like Lamarck was onto something. Turns out some acquired traits really are heritable!
What Lamarck was really missing was the idea of existing variation within a species. He had the basic notion of descent with modification, but he was thinking in terms of one platonic ideal of a species evolving into a different platonic ideal. Darwin’s big breakthrough was the idea that variation within a species is the norm, not an unfortunate deviation from an ideal form, and that variation allows for differential reproductive success of individuals — natural selection.
Poor Lamarck really was pretty close. And even Darwin was still missing several important mechanisms, since it would be another century before we were pretty sure what DNA was and roughly how it works. They both get a lot of undeserved blame and/or credit based on work done by later “Lamarckian” or “Darwinian” researchers.
Crazy Dina
You seemed to be missing my point: JOYCE perceives this to be the case, not necessarily being true or false in the perception of any others or in reality. Although technically, I could put Dina down as “a little jerkish” due to her interactions with Joyce, but I don’t think I’m going to. I’m going to hold the opinion that Dina is probably more damned due to her beliefs (In Joyce’s perspective) than she is a jerk (which Joyce probably views as exactly how we view her, completely misinformed from the start of her life).
Lord Geovanni
As a Christian it is my belief that many of the things in the bible that dont contridict itself in another part is true but as far as the origins of the world if God is all powerful he could have done creation in 7 days and decided that he would make it seem like that time had been going on longer than it had its one of the perks of being all-powerful
Roborat
Holy run-on sentence Batman!
Lord Geovanni
all the better to finish the race first my dear
sps48
Is reposting a tl;dr going to get it read this time?
Crazy Dina
It wasn’t reposed because of tl;drs but because of how it would be difficult to connect due to the locations of the text.
Gangler
I can’t actually think of where it’s written, but it was pretty generally accepted in the community at my church that there were some sort of one way visitation rights in the afterlife. So if you got into heaven you could go hang out with your friends in hell, but they couldn’t come hang out with you in heaven.
Though I guess that’d mesh weirdly with interpretations of the afterlife that include like nasty hellfire burning torture sort of hell, because why would you want to go hang out with your friends in a place like that?
Crazy Dina
Maybe you take a protective film with you when you go? OR maybe those sentenced to heaven get sort of a protective bubble, so those who are sentenced to hell, but have lots of friends in heaven can get their sentences laxed by convincing those friends to come visit often?
Yeah, wishful thinking.
Fish
> so those who are sentenced to hell, but have lots of friends in heaven can get their sentences laxed by convincing those friends to come visit often?
I think mormonism has the idea that if your offspring eventually find the right path, then they can choose to accept God for you and free you of hell.
So, yes, this idea is believed in, of having good friends and family to lessen the pain of hell.
Gangler
Actually, we can only perform ceremonies like baptism and marriages for the dead. It’s still up to the individual in question whether they want to accept God.
Mormon afterlife is a bit weirdly structured in that way. It’s assumed that there will still be atheists and people of other faiths in there. If I recall one of the tiers of heavens is just an eternity of missionary work, spreading the good word to other dead people. These missionaries will have to have successfully converted your dead relative before you perform their baptism or they won’t accept it and it’ll mean nothing.
Technically it’s not supposed to be about dead relatives exclusively, but also it’s a total bongo to track down some ancient greek peasant’s information so you gotta start somewhere.
Spencer
Goddamn it, Joyce, I believed in you!
Tunaro
Baby steps, man. Baby steps up a down elevator.
Cynthia
“What about Booooooooooooooooooooob?”
Mattyos
see…that was your first mistake
timemonkey
No, always bet on Joyce’s compassion. She’s proven again and again that she’ll always side with the people she loves. She just takes time to adjust her thinking for how she’ll deal with it.
dailybrad
Joyce has a big heart and a powerful sense of family. Before college, that was applied to her flock, so to speak, but her notions of what family is have changed a lot, between Dorothy, “Big Sister” Sarah, Ethan, Billie, and even Walky to butt heads with. She cares about her friends tremendously, and that is hard to reconcile when her flock had her believing that many of these people would have been lost causes or unrighteous, things she has seen to be false.
It’s worth remembering she’s 17 or 18 right now. She has a LOT of contradictions she needs to face. We all did.
Crazy Dina
I wonder what contradictions I’ll need to face… Is there a test to see them ahead of time?
OrtyBortorty
If you want to improve the way you think, I’d recommend reading some of the stuff on this website: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/How_To_Actually_Change_Your_Mind The “How to Actually Change your Mind” is a good sequence to start with.
Crazy Dina
O.O maybe later. Like tomorrow, or next time I’m procrastinating. Yikes, that’s long.
Leorale
There’s not any preview, really. Have fun!
Crazy Dina
Gah frell. I don’t have any of the standard stuff (that I know of), so I REALLY have no clue.
OrtyBortorty
There’s also a Harry Potter fan fiction by this guy if you find the sequences too boring: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Methods-of-Rationality
Porthos9438
Agreed. On the surface, it may look like a kinda ratty thing to do, to try and see if the bible REALLY says homosexuality is a sin, but look at the larger picture. She just challenged her own faith because it seemed wrong to her. That’s not Thats not easy for someone like her.
Talliemarks
I guess I don’t understand why Joyce looking up things in the Bible is a bad thing? Like she is very religious and wanted to see alternate viewpoints. I am not seeing how this is a terrible thing to do at all. (If someone wants to actually explain that’ll be cool)
Spencer
Because she told Becky that she mattered to her more than anything, but then had to double check to make sure that God gave her the A-OK, instead of just going for it because she loves Becky.
Crazy Dina
Although I doubt it was questioning Becky as having to deal with what she had saying “no” but she desperately wanted a “yes”, so she did the research in hope of being less conflicted about Becky’s situation (I.E. being damned)
Talliemarks
IDK I think that’s really unfair. I mean I understand why Becky herself is upset. She’s in a really vulnerable place and isn’t really in a position to be fair but I don’t think the audience has to agree with her. Joyce is still entitled to her religion. It can be argued that maybe Joyce shouldn’t have mentioned it today, but Joyce didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not wrong to make one’s religious beliefs a priority in your life.
Avery
It is unfair, but the comic isn’t named Dumbing of Age for nothing.
JWLM
Ummm…speaking as a Christian-type-religious-type, what Joyce did was wrong: she tried to rescue Becky from damnation as read in the Bible. What she should have done was accept the revelation that Becky, who is clearly a good person and not damned, was lesbian — and worked to save the Bible from that.
The effect on Joyce’s understanding of the ambiguity of the text might have been the same. The effect on Joyce would have been completely different: the one we see leads to claiming that Becky should be grateful to Joyce for salvaging her. The one we didn’t see would lead to Joyce realizing that she found a potential way to save (in the Cristian sense) her old pastor and perhaps Becky’s father. Big, big difference.