Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “gotcha,” shows the canny barmaid asking a “gotcha” question in response to Mo’s beefing about gotcha questions.
Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ gotcha
October 11, 2023 • 9:00 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
A comedian – one of the MST3K Mads, name of Frank – once remarked (paraphrased)
“gotcha questions” – also known as “questions”.
He’s got a point – but still, I think there is something about “gotcha questions”.
One interested thing about “gotcha” questions is the way they often generate elaborate standard responses all structured around how stupid/unsophisticated that question is — and what it says about the person asking the question.
“Why was an all-powerful God forced to follow a Forgiveness Protocol in order to forgive?”
“Why would you even ask that? There’s so much ignorance in that question I can only assume it’s fueled by hate.”
Then there’s the “ooo, blah blah blah, look how they can’t even give a straight answer” that can follow a “gotcha question”.
… of course, this all plays out live on a video, recording, or public space somehow – almost never in conventionally published written material.
Note that knockdown arguments and circumlocution can be found – it’s just the conflation of them with … I guess, illegitimate discourse.
A good one!
How “What is a woman?” ever became a gotcha says a lot abo modern politics. In the space of a year, the UK’s Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, has gone from saying that “it is wrong” to say that only women have a cervix, to claiming that about one in a thousand women have a penis, and now saying that a woman is an “adult female” as though he knew the blindingly obvious all along. (Oddly, he’s used “adult female” at least twice without specifying “human”.) It is difficult to know how to trust someone who has such difficulty stating a simple biological fact.
The trouble is that, in British politics, the only people who seem prepared to say what a woman is are those on the right, and their other views and policies are downright destructive of the UK.
Agreed. The left need to dump the nonsensical, misogynist, and homophobic gender identity ideology stuff.
At the weekend, Labour Party members and trade unionists were amongst the crowd screaming “Nazi scum” at a Jewish woman at the Let Women Speak event in Liverpool as she was condemning the horrors of Hamas’ treatment of women during their incursion into Israel and describing her family’s treatment in the Holocaust.
What do Christians say about the ‘Who created God?’ question? Do they say that the implicit premise is false and that God was not created? Could say the same for the universe, but I guess that leads to other doctrinal issues 🙂 I was listening to Christian radio when a little girl asked ‘Why does God exist?’ I don’t recall anymore how, if at all, it was answered. The language of religion is spectacularly loose. People can (and do) make stuff up.