Awhile back I posted a film clip featuring a wonderful wedding sermon. Today, I thought I’d post my favorite funeral sermon. This scene is from the movie Schizopolis, one of Soderbergh’s lesser known films. If you’re feeling a little left of your own mind, let me assure you the rest of the film is no closer to normal than this scene.
* By ‘Honest’ I might mean ‘cynical’ in which case I think we can dispense with the ‘Overly’ part of the title.
I am totally off my game here, so I’ve decided to try and jump start my blog with a new weekly feature. I’m calling these ‘Uncommondays’. I thought about calling them ‘Queered Quickies’, but that isn’t really my cultural capital. Angstie Mondays? Yeah, those I can relate to, and I’m guessing most of you can too. So, I thought it might be fun to throw a little curve-ball at the start of the work week.
Well, fun or not, I’m gonna!
…and I thought I would start this off with a picture I took in early September. Who would have thought I would have met this character in a bathroom in Alaska. Oh the bathroom part makes sense, but I didn’t expect to see him this far North. I mean, Anchorage is a long way from Lake Titicaca. I can only hope the poor guy found some Cappuccino!
Y’all might have noticed a little clip making the rounds on the net lately. It’s a debate between Jamie Kilstein and John Fugelsang over the existence of God. It occurs on Totally Biased with Kamau Bell, and frankly, the whole thing is a lot of fun.
Yes, I am going to take a stand against fun here. I mean, someone has to do it!
Seriously though, it’s hard to dislike this piece, because all three come across as funny and likable, and all three make interesting points, though I have to say the best point Kilstein makes is the one he attributes to his girlfriend. I’d have to give the edge to Fugelsang on this one though. His humor was the edgier of the bunch, and definitely the most thoughtful. If I had to pick a winner, …or even if I didn’t, I’d give it to the believers in this one.
Lest you think I have already give up the gripe and joined the fan-club though, let me get to the problem. Okay, I don’t really have a problem with anything in this video. I don’t literally agree with a lot of the points made by any of these guys, but I’m happy to have a laugh and take it as food for thought. What bothers me is the way some folks are touting this as a model of religious discussions and debate between different viewpoints. By some people, frankly I mean the folks at Upworthy.
…and I like Upworthy, but that’s not going to stop me from cappin’ on them.
…the bastards!
By ‘bastards’ in this case I mean Joseph Lamour, who has this to say about the segment:
If you’re religious, think about the last time you had a talk with an atheist about religion. If you’re an atheist, think about the last time you talked religion with someone who was devout.
Now think how you would have liked that to go.
Okay, Lamour isn’t really a bastard, but dammit, I’m trying to pick a fight here, so I’m calling him one anyway. Someone has to be the bad guy amidst all this goodwill and nice-ossity.
…dammit!
I should add that Upworthy puts this page under the following title: “A Debate Between An Atheist And A Christian Has Quite A Surprising Result.”
So what’s the problem?
Well first, I’m still looking for my surprise. Believe it or not, a polite and friendly conversation doesn’t count as a surprise ending for some of us. These happen all the time; ugly conversations too, but friendly and polite conversations about religious topics are not that rare. If that was supposed to be the surprise, then I’m a little disappointed. I feel like a kid who just got a Happy Meal without a toy. And no, I don’t want the damned cashier to give me one now; it’s too damn late dammit!
I do damn-say.
I do!
Okay, but what’s the real problem with this piece? It’s this. There are reasons this debate went so well, and those reasons should make it perfectly clear why this bit of comedy fun isn’t really a model for how these discussions are supposed to work. If this is a fun chapter in the story of interfaith discussion and debate, it is ultimately a unique chapter, and it isn’t going to set the tone for the rest of that story. Sorry, it just isn’t.
For one thing the Christian wasn’t very ‘Christian’, so to speak. That might actually be because he was too Christian for Christians, though I suspect many would respond that he wasn’t Christian enough, and of course he may well be right to say that Jesus wouldn’t be either, cause Christianity is a tough club and the Prince of Peace may well be barred entrance at this point, and well, …fun with identity-belief games. The point is that he wasn’t representative of Christianity as it is conventionally defined in the public eye. That may be a good thing in itself, but let’s be honest, it’s one of the reasons this debate went so well.
Fugelsang’s values, at least as he represented them in this discussion, don’t necessarily clash with those of Kilstein or any number of secularists such as, …well, myself. He may well have values to which we object, but he did not put those values front and center in the discussion above. Fogelsang may believe in something we don’t, but in this discussion he did not threaten many (or perhaps any) secular ideas about how to live and behave. Put a conservative Christian up there, standing up for conservative Christian values, and we would have a much deeper clash between all the parties involved. I suspect that both Kilstein and Bell would have had a much more difficult time relating with God’s man in this debate had he taken a different approach to the issues in question.
Is Fugelsang’s faith better, more accurate, or more true than that of the folks we normally associate with the label? Well that’s a battle between him and them (though I kinda hope he win’s it). For the present, the point is that he is for many of us in the just-say-no-to-God club the kinda Christian we can readily get along with.
So, perhaps it isn’t so surprising that the folks in this debate got along after all.
More to the point, look at the contours of the debate. These are comedians; they are playing for laughs. Each makes his points, but not one of them really scrutinizes the claims made by the others. In fact, each gets by with a lot of shaky reasoning and imprecise language because we don’t normally expect rigorous arguments from comedians. We expect to laugh. …and if a comedian also gives us something to think about, well hey, then that’s a plus. But we don’t sit in the front row and shout “red herring” at folks like this. And apparently they don’t do it to each other either.
…which is another reason why this turns out to be a friendly debate. The poison pens and trashy talk comes out on this issue when people actually begin to take apart each other’s reasoning on the subject. That’s when it starts to get personal, not necessarily because the other guy is calling you names, but because your own thinking is actually on the line in such a debate. …and okay, because people also call each other names. Discussions about religion get a lot more heated when people actually respond directly to the arguments of the other person, …when they say things like; “that’s not true!” or “that’s totally irrelevant.” It’s at such moments that people start to pepper the discussion with additional phrases like “…you stupid git” or “you miserable cur!” It is much easier to keep it calm when folks just outline their basic point of view and move-on. It’s counter-arguments that turn up the heat on iterfaith conversations, and those really didn’t happen here.
Which means none of these guys got called-out on their cheap shots, their wonky reasoning, or their not-literally-true claims. None of these guys even had to make up his mind as to just how serious he was about the claims he made on the topic, much less answer a direct challenge to the truth of those claims. The tougher arguments don’t necessarily happen because people are trying to be mean, but because there are genuine questions about whether or not some points of view are just wrong, and once you put those questions on the table, the pulse rates start to go up. Counter-arguments are where the shit gets real, and counter-arguments didn’t really happen here.
Counter-arguments didn’t happen, because of course this wasn’t really a debate; it was a venue providing each party with a chance to highlight aspects of their comedy routine, and each did so with remarkable skill. In short, this was comedians doing what comedians do.
The debate wasn’t ugly, because they never really got to the ugly questions.
Beware to look at the snow; the snow looks back at you!
The other day I opened an email from a friend in the lower 48. It said; “-28, wow!” I had no idea what he was trying to tell me. Turns out, he had looked up the current temperature in Barrow.
Hey, look graffiti!
…sort of.
(Click to embiggen!)
Smiley face
Life in the 907, Yo!
Still the 907, plus a little more.
Y’all are just jealous, because I live on the beach!
Course the water is not in liquid form.
Allied Health Students, no doubt.
I heard it was Vin Diesel
Top of the World
Frost forms like this everywhere, and it’s kinda cool, no pun intended.
More on the area code.
Sundry Snow Tags
Beware to look at the snow; the snow looks back at you!
This was after about two and a half days of blizzard. The odd thing is that I don’t actually think it snowed, but apparently the wind blew straight at my door for awhile.
I don’t remember the joke, but it triggered the effect again. My black friend wasn’t black anymore; he was a machine and his face changed into a sort of digital display inside of which numbers and digits buzzed and whirred far too fast to read. I could tell he wasn’t pleased.
“Do you see me laughing?”
The face of my other black friend appeared above me. (Apparently I had precisely two of them in this story.) He seemed to be leaning over the wall I was sitting against, and he was smiling. The smile seemed to suggest that we were still friends, but that he too wasn’t pleased with my last comment.
I gave a weak smile, ‘no.’
“Maybe that’s because it wasn’t funny.”
“I know,” I stammered and cringed; “I don’t mean to be a jack-ass; it’s just that I can say that sort of thing with my indigenous friends and they laugh about it.”
“Well, we don’t think it’s funny.”
I told him I understood. I said I was sorry and that I will try to be more sensitive about things in the future.
The face above me looked across the street at our companion; “Have you explained that to him?”
“No, he turns into a magic parking meter whenever I attempt ethnic humor. I’ll apologize and discuss it with him when he changes back in a minute or two.”
“That sounds like a plan.”
***
Okay, those are pretty much the final moments of my dream this morning.
…Okay, I really do hate quote mining, at least when it masquerades as serious scholarship. But the collection of quotes on my Facebook page is not serious scholarship, or at least that’s not what I had I mind when I collected them. I just thought they were cool. So presenting (for your entertainment) a few of my favorite things:
***
“It is not that humans have become any more greedy than in generations past. It is that the avenues to express greed had grown so enormously.”
– Alan Greenspan
***
“The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.”
— Will Rogers
***
“Tables, chairs, and open chests would have suited Jesus best. He’d have caused nobody harm. No-one alive.”
– Judas (Jesus Christ Superstar)
“Supporting Israel doesn’t mean you’re pro-Jewish. It just means you want all the Jews a half a world away to fulfill our Biblical prophecy.”
– “Reverend” Jim Osborne (of the Landover Baptist Church)
***
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
– Author Unknown
***
“A great many things are dying very violently all the time. The best days for violent deaths are Tuesdays. They are the yellow paint days. Saturdays are second best, or worst. Saturdays are red paint days. The great death game is therefore a contest between red paint days and yellow paint days. So far yellow paint days are winning by 31 corpses to 29. Whatever the color, a violent death is always celebrated by a firework.”
– Smut, Drowning by Numbers
***
“America! You’re an unfriendly waitress with bad cappuccino.”
– The Foremen
***
“He said, that’d be the last thing I ever do is shoot mahself, …which it was.”
– Vernon Florida.
“right after daddy gets home from the bar
visits his bookie and steals a new car
he’ll drive to the strip club
and if daddy plays his cards right
he’ll bring home your new mommy tonight”
– Lullaby, Stephen Lynch
***
“We’re raising up our standard, so you can lower yours.
We’ll see ya slashed and slandered and abandoned on the shores.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Bring on the media whores!”
– The Foremen
***
“When you get in bed with ultimate evil, my friend, it always takes the covers.”
– The Tick
***
“Neither party ever gains any insight or learns from these encounters. They never sit down and discuss their differences. Repeated defeats do not teach Bluto to honour Olive Oyl’s humanity, and repeated pummellings do not teach Popeye to swallow his spinach before the fight.”
– Walter Wink, Facing the Myth of Redemptive Violence
***
“”Jesus… ah, son, let me tell you about Jesus. You see, son, Jesus is a man, but sometimes, he’s also an idea – kind of like Salvadore Dali painting. You ever see a Dali painting, son? You ever see that melting clock face picture? Jesus is like that. Like a bunch of clocks, melting against various wood finishes. Jesus is like… well, it’s kind of like this, son. Picture an apple covered in a layer of smooth butter, and lacquered with sweet syrup. Now picture this candied apple resting upon a melted clock – you know, like that one in the Dali painting. Now picture the melted clock spinning, and slowly turning, and in the background, the Moscow Red Army Choir is performing Ave Maria.
“You see, son, Jesus, well, Jesus is kind of like that. Now you go and reflect.”
“I’ll fold you into my wallet and spend you on a whore.”
– The Terror
***
“Every time a child gets health care, an angel loses its virginity in a rather inventive manner.”
– Mrs. Betty Bowers
***
“And if I want to eat your soul, I’ll just throw it on the griddle. Don’t need to make a deal. I don’t need to tell a riddle. And fuck Charlie Daniels! I don’t care if he can fiddle. I’m Satan.”
– Stephen Lynch
***
“There’s a mackerel of a cornflake for you.”
– Line cut from A Clockwork Orange
***
“The position that private action, however deplorable, is not a fit subject for government action puts libertarians in the position of repeating simultaneously all the things that are wrong with the world and their resolute determination to do nothing about them.”
– Andrew Sabl
***
“You could call us Aaron Burr from the way we’re dropping Hamiltons!”
– Lazy Sunday
“In the Beginning there was nothing, not even time. No planets, no stars, no hip-hop, no rhyme. Then there was a bang like the sound of my gat. The universe began and the shit was phat.”
“Shout-out to the girl who wanted the Japanese kanji for “luck” to represent her Irish heritage.”
– S.K. Williams (employee at a tattoo shop)
***
“A bit more violent than Brahms, but it’s pretty good.”
– Lemmy
***
“Vilmar, a traveling salesman, whose 10.4 year old Opel became stuck in a 3 meter deep snow bank during blizzard in rural Schleswig-Holstein. It took Vilmar several hours to trudge through the deep snow drifts to the nearest farm house with a light on. Frozen half to death, Vilmar finally reached the front door and knocked on it. When Berke, a grizzled old farmer, answered the door, Vilmar pleaded for a place to spend the night. “Sure, young man, I can give you a place to sleep,” said the hospitable old man. “But, I have no daughter for you to sleep with.”
– Dingfod from Freethought Forums
northierthanthou 