In conversation with people who are conservative in matters of religious faith and such, I’ve noticed that almost any rational idea is described as “Westernised”.
This is ironical, because one of the largest populations of religious fundamentalists in the world today (if you define fundamentalism as belief in the literal truth of an ancient text) is in that most “Western” of countries, the US of A. Opinion polls regularly indicate that more than
50 per cent of Americans are Creationists, specifically Young-Earth Creationists: in other words, they believe that the Adam and Eve yarn, the Flood and so forth really happened and that the universe is only a few thousand years old.
Recently, film critic Roger Ebert wrote a deadpan piece titled “Creationism: Your Questions Answered”, in which he purported to have clarified these beliefs. Anyone who has followed Ebert’s writings will know that he is not a Creationist himself.
The piece was intended as a gentle parody: though its tone was poker-faced, there was enough in it (in my view, at least) to make his real intentions obvious.
(“Q: Why would God create such an absurd creature as a moose? Ans: In charity, we must observe that the moose probably does not seem absurd to itself.”)
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So he probably didn’t expect people to conclude that he himself subscribed to such ideas as the Earth being created in finished form on the night of October 23, 4004 BC. But this is exactly what happened, with the piece sparking thousands of comments —and much jeering — across the www. “His site might have been hacked by Creationists. But how do people who are that backward figure out how to hack a website?” wondered a commenter on Reddit.com (https://bsmedia.business-standard.comwww.reddit.com /r/atheism). “Two opposable thumbs down” quipped someone else, a riff on Ebert’s trademark “Thumbs up/thumbs down,” movie-rating system.
Ebert’s response was to write an eloquent blog post titled “This is the dawning of the Age of Credulity” (http://blogs.suntimes.com /ebert/2008/09/), where he commented on the decay of our instinct for satire and irony: “To sense irony, you have to sense the invisible quotation marks. I suspect quotation marks may be growing imperceptible to us. In a time of shortened attention spans and instant gratification, trained by web surfing and movies with an average shot length of seconds, we accept rather than select.”
Anyone who relishes a dry, understated sense of humour will know what he means. The Internet has greatly diluted our ability to read between the lines — to read intelligently rather than take everything at face value. In email conversations, most people realise you’re joking only when you include a smiley icon next to the relevant sentence: it serves as a signpost that says “Laugh here!” However, I have to admit that Creationism is a special case.
A commenter on Ebert’s article drew my attention to something called Poe’s Law, which states that “without a blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing”. In other words, no matter how over-the-top such a parody may be, there will always be someone who cannot tell that it is a parody, having seen similar ideas from real fundamentalists.
Coincidentally, moose stew is the favourite dish of a Creationist — who may well be the US vice-president soon. On the comments section of a blog, there was a persuasive reply to Ebert’s moose question:
Q. Why would God create such an absurd creature as a moose?
A. So I can kill it and make soup. The Lord be praised — Sarah Palin
But Palin deserves a column entirely to herself. More on her soon.