Do we really gain anything by simplifying people or issues? To say, she's a good person becomes all-encompassing and ignores her inevitable human foibles. WHY pretend they aren't there, or act surprised when they arise? We should know better, since experience most always proves other than the tenuous supposition that things are as simple as we make them.
In the face of Palinism and as raging hangover from Miss Me Yet and his cronies, I'm feeling puckish and pugnacious toward organized religion, and feel drawn or compelled to not-let-slide many apparent glaring inconsistencies on this level.
Virgin Birth? Either god cuckholded Joseph; Joseph was a beard for Mary's sapphic tendencies (or his); or there were a few randy goatherds in the neighborhood and the 'divine visit' was the best she could come up with. Why? A marriage wasn't consummated until it was consummated, so, unless god dropped in on her between the wedding and the first night, she wouldn't have been a virgin. If they were just an 'old' married couple... Liza Minelli's marriage comes to mind, protesting too much. The logistics are far too messy to handle, so they get swept over in the 'it's magic when god (who we cannot conceive of--unless we're seeing him as just like us, but taller and whiter) descends and impregnates a human womb with his omnipotent seed. Why was it necessary for her to be a virgin? Far better, and more consistent with theology, would have been for it to be Mary Magdellen (sp)--since much of the purpose of all this is to remind us of our baseness and the hope/chance for redemption. Let the fallen women birth the savior of mankind from her sullied loins. (Sordid in the parlor; revered in the bedroom... ah, male hyprocrisy as ever)
Noah's Ark? Get real. Where would they store the food to feed the animals? How would they store the animals? Was there an aquarium connected to the hull? As a metaphor or analogy, it's neat, but it's implausible. And, if it's implausible, then we either take it for its metaphorality, or we reject it. Why insist on something that makes no sense? This isn't a matter of faith, either, since there's no actual divinity involved (once Noah got that omnipresent whisper in his beard to build a boat. A boat large and capacious enough to support ALL the animals in the fucking world, for six weeks).
More to the contemporary point, by allowing ourselves to accept received notions uncritically, we 'simplify' our worldview and 'understanding.' But, with a minor scratch of common sense, this fallacious illogic falls apart. If one actually engaged with the drivel of media 'news,' of political speakers and putative pundits, with PR of any sort, the ease with which the bullshit and inconsistencies and hypocrisy if not deceit are READILY apparent & revealed c/should shock people into sputtering tantrums--instead, we just 'hear' the talking points and tune out the rest.
Cognitive dissonance is the lingua franca of our uber-free society. We are too complacent, and complicit, to engage. Easy final example: the wounds of 9/11 and subsequent immediate emotional overcharge left many Americans ugly in their/our bloodlust--willfully saying, 'Fuck Afghanistan. We should bomb it to avenge our noble, innocent dead.' Or, 'so what if a couple guys in turbans got beat up in Indiana, the people are hurting and understandably thought all brown people in turbans are terrorists.' 'What do you mean, Our political actions have stirred Europe against us? We were the victims of 9/11. We won WWII for them. Fuck them.'
Al-Qaida was not Iraq. It doesn't take much to see the linguistic switch (clumsy at that) that, incredibly, shaped 'average' Americans' perception that there is/was NO DIFFERENCE between those who plotted & carried out the 9/11 attacks vs. the nation of Iraq.
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