Special thanks to today’s guest script-writer, Karen Armstrong.
-
-
-
October 2009 M T W T F S S « Sep Nov » 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 -
- Vol 4 is here! Big Al is the bumper-sized fourth volume of J&M strips you've all been waiting for. 140 strips, from "added" to "moose" - an ideal present to celebrate Jesus' pretend birthday!
-
- NICE T-SHIRT (Thank you for not provoking my uncontrollable lust). Others available, including NEW "street-safe" styles! Click the pic to see.
comix
Other places
Jesus and Mo is powered by WordPress with ComicPress.
It is licensed under a Creative Commons License:
Thank you!
PZ had a good crack at ripping Armstrong to shreds for that article here: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/the_zombies_will_sup_on_karen.php
The Guardian headline was the highlight for me. Fab again, thanks author.
Hmmm… this is perhaps the first time where the joke didn’t have me in stitches. Too….rote? Sure there is plenty to laugh at with Karen Armstrong but I think the aim here was just too low. OTTH, the mag that Mo is reading is brilliant. I found that funnier than than the main gag.
Very good! John Locke got himself into a huge pickle over this one. He wanted to argue that we have no innate ideas, because if we had them they would have to be true, and because they are not true then…
A lot of people have a problem with evolutionary psychologists for the same reason, I suspect. The fact that some tendencies might be innate says nothing about whether they are true, or good. For example:
The concept of “down” is culturally universal and it develops in every normal human. Is it true? No. Physics teaches us that there is no absoute down, there is movement towards centres of local mass. Its still hard to not believe in “down” though. Same is true of god. It might be innate in much of the population but it doesnt make the belief true.
……”humans fall very easily into despair if we don’t find some significance in our lives”…
Karen Armstrong disappoints me. I thought that when she gave up the nun’s habit she also gave up the habit of talking tosh. She sounds just like Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. How many times must I tell them that in spite of not looking for the transcendent or seeing some significance in my life I have not fallen into despair. I am very happy just being alive. However, I occasionally despair at the stupidity of these people who think they know how I should tick.
What’s the difference between “I pretend to know the meaning of life (and you should tithe me 10%)” and “I pretend to know the lottery numbers (and you should give me $1500)”?
Besides the fact that the latter is a disreputable grifter who does not wear a hat, and the former wears funny hats and is the most honored members of the world community?
Daoloth
Back in the late 80’s, I asked (with honest intention) my science teacher in high school how we determine up and down. He explained that it’s all in relation to the horizon line.
I then asked, but since there’s no horizon line in space, then up and down is really a local determination with no meaning in a larger context.
It took me many more years to learn the lesson of never let people with power over you know you’re smarter.
When did respect change from something that had to be earned to something that could be demanded and bestowed?
nina,
With the invention of honorifics? Your Holiness, Excellency, Highness, Grace, Worship, Emminence, Majesty, Magnificence…
Unfortunately, replacing them with Citizen or Comrade doesn’t noticeably reverse the effect.
One of the best. I recommend PZ’s evisceration of Armstrong on Pharyngula.
While about it, there are also a couple of interesting polls at AOL which can be found at Pharyngula right now. People might want to vote – I did.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
David B
It would save us all a lot of trouble if we just called it Homo Ridiculousus
“Karen Armstrong disappoints me. I thought that when she gave up the nun’s habit she also gave up the habit of talking tosh.”
She did for awhile and then she took it up again – with a vengeance.
As I always say, stupidity will be persecuted to the fulleste extent allowed by law.
“”humans fall very easily into despair if we don’t find some significance in our lives”…
Karen Armstrong disappoints me. [...]. How many times must I tell them that in spite of not looking for the transcendent or seeing some significance in my life I have not fallen into despair. I am very happy just being alive. However, I occasionally despair at the stupidity of these people who think they know how I should tick.”
Sorry, Rosemarie, you might be disappointed about this too, but you should know that you don’t represent the entirety of humanity. Nobody really does. While YOU might not despair at the lack of some significance in your life (and I doubt you actually don’t have SOME significance in it, you’ve just managed to draw it from elsewhere), doesn’t mean that is true of everyone, or that everyone finds it equally easy to derive meaning from more mundane aspects of existance. As long as there is a majority of people that does not tick like you do, the point, unfortunately, still stands.
Brilliant! Love the “Guardian’s” headline, too. Keep up the good work!
To get back to the comic for a bit, I wonder if it is less that humans are ‘meaning seeking creatures’ and more that humans are innately superstitious. While not understanding how things worked, humans might have deduced that there must be something ‘other’ that was in control and needed appeasing if the horrors of life were to be survived, or indeed, if what an individual human wanted was to be provided.
i was disapointed in a way when i discovered a while back that that karen armstrong actually was a deist, as her history of god was one of the cornerstones of my rejection of religion. i wonder if she gets that a lot.
Don – excellent theory – especially when applied to modern politicians having The Honourable in front of their names – sadly rather than reflect reality, more often than not it serves as a reminder to them how they are supposed to be.
Maggs – I dunno about meaning seeking creatures, but our brains are definitely pattern seeking – which is a kind of meaning – mostly I think it stems from our insecurity, so we collectively have to tell ourselves lies to make us feel important. So god/afterlife is just a grandiose version of size doesn’t matter and “it” happens to every guy.
Having a greater than ourself thingy out there that is suposed to be allknowing, all powerfull, and somehow kind, forgiving (blablabla…), is just a way to go back to being an infant, with a parental figure taking care of you and making all the bad things go away.
No need to look to deep into it, leaving all the thinking and responsability to someone/thing else is just the easiest way throw life.
Well, Homo sapiens evolved in Paleolithic era, as a hunter-gatherer species. Then, there was the so-called Neolithic revolution, and nowadays most Homo sapiens populations are producers not gatherers. As a consequence of the Neolithic revolution, slavery was introduced. Slavery was seen as a human condition and nowadays it has been abolished in the whole world. Unfortunately, there are cases of slavery, but slavement is seen as a crime against humanity and it is punished by law. The only “human condition” is the condition of self-development and self-determination.
The best part of the whole thing is that portrait of the pope. I think he deserves a bigger role, maybe as an occasional guest star like Moses.
Headbang, if you read my comments again you will actually realize that I was speaking for myself and NOT for the “entirety of humanity”. I did, however, make a typing error because I wanted to write “seeking” significance and not seeing. Any significance my life may have is for others to see. My two orphaned grandchildren whom I have raised these past ten years probably can.
great one, I love the “vatican to CofE, we want your bigots”
lol
[...] struck me as an interesting term so I typed it into a Google search and turned up this comic strip critique of Armstong’s book. If you’re offended by comic representations of Jesus or [...]
Ayashi
I think you’ve summed up religion perfectly – an intentional continuation of the infant/childhood state well into adulthood – the mental equivalent of failure to launch
Just went through the whole comics (once again), seems the latest research in cognitive psychology agrees with me (http://www.jesusandmo.net/2005/12/16/hole/).
Maybe we’re onto something here …
Ayashi, they don’t even try to hide it. It’s everywhere. It’s in the honorifics they bestow on the clergy. Pope=Papa=Padre=Father. The last one is also used for their god as in ‘Our Father who art in Heaven’. Then there’s Lord which has an archaic meaning of father.
Then there’s all the ‘unless you come unto me as a little child’ and ‘reason is the tool of the devil’ stuff in their holy book and a whole lot more in their hymn books.
Proof that there’s a sucker born every minute.
That link needs to be: http://www.jesusandmo.net/2005/12/16/hole/