pow2
August 6th, 2014
I asked the famous biologist Jerry Coyne to edit this one from last year, and he agreed! It’s much more scientifically sound now. Thanks, Jerry.
Oh, and yes, somebody really did say “Kaboom! Pow! Lights out! Party’s over!“…
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You won’t convince anyone using all of those long words and scientific terms. Can’t you use simpler, more realistic examples such as talking snakes or unicorns ?
Good to see you teaming up with Professor Ceiling Cat. Science Roolz!
Good ‘toon – and in the interests of divine perfection, there’s a double “the” in panel 2.
Really digging at banana man, it’s a bit like mocking the afflicted but funny
If (or rather,since) the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming, why are there still creationists? But perhaps your approach is the best, to expose them as Darkness Risible.
To me, the barmaid’s list is proof that there IS a God. There’s just no reason to believe anything in those books Jesus and Mo believe.
@IanB
Whether or not mocking the afflicted is a good or a bad thing surely depends on the affliction, doesn’t it? PoliCorr. is an establishment attempt to stop us mocking those afflictions that need mocking.
There’s a theory about evolution
Another about intervention
But the resulting mess
One must confess
Is a creature that spawns much pollution
Please proceed, SUNNY, to describe the manner of god Barmaid’s list proves the existence of, so that we may mock it. Or, who knows, perhaps you will convince us to believe in it.
That one is lyrical, Nassar. Well done!
Great collaboration, Author. Yes, we can list off all the evidence, from every single scientific discipline save possibly economics (is that a science?) and they will still tell us there is no evidence. Kaboom. Pow.
Kaboom. Pow. Party’s over. Another T-shirt, eh.
Nassar, that is amazing. I think that’s your closest yet to the limerick form. Now, if you just got the first two lines to actually rhyme…
Wait, wait. You mean that a movie that was produced for the specific purpose of promoting creationism had evolution proponents on it that didn’t offer evidence of evolution?
Holy cow! That must mean that there can not be any evidence of evolution, anywhere! They’re right! That must mean that creationism is true by default!
Dipshits.
There is not much way to be nice about this. I wrote the original almost 10 years ago and not much has changed other than the shrinking minions of the Religiously Impaired ™ are getting more shrill in their denial of the undeniable. http://www.ruthlessreviews.com/962/fuck-creationism/
I’ve got a book in my library that proves, beyond any doubt, that creationists are all evolutionary throwbacks with IQs lower than those of chimpanzees. Not one of the creationists quoted was able to provide any evidence to the contrary. So, kaboom, pow, lights out, party’s over for creationism.
My sister told me, “humans are not animals.” I said so are we vegetables or minerals? Crickets. Sad. Very sad.
Here you go, CJ. http://youtu.be/sF19L00KbAI We can say that a human is not merely an animal. It depends on context.
Hypersapien, Nice summary.
Hopefully with the Author’s permission, Hypersapien, I did a panel about Comfort’s movie about the time of this original post that I think explains why the evolution experts weren’t very convincing.
http://pictoraltheology.blogspot.com/2013/10/cold-comfort.html
Chiefy, the problem is they don’t mean “not merely”. They mean “not an animal”. As if humans are somehow very different and special, as if we have no connection to all the other life on the planet and are superior to all other beings. As if God gave us dominion over all other creatures.
And they mean it. To be an animal is insulting to them. They don’t want to identify with our essential animal nature, so they deny deny and deny. This leads to all kinds of perverse behaviour, like pretending we don’t ever fart, shit, or have genitalia under our clothing. Like pretending we don’t like, want and have sex and that babies are delivered by storks.
I find it all infuriating. We are so very obviously animals. Big naked apes, to be specific. We enjoy evolutions experiment with the big brain, but we did not evolve this big brain in order to conquer other animals. Many other animals do very well without our massive brain. We evolved our big brain so we could fuck over others of our kind, and avoid being fucked over in our turn. Or to put it more kindly, to exist as social creatures in a complex society.
If we refuse to recognize our essential animal nature, there’s no hope that we may use our big brain for the real benefit of our species. We’ll use it instead to devise ever more efficient ways of murdering each other. And the evolutionary experiment of the big brain will turn out to be a failure, an adaptation that went too far, like the teeth of the sabre tooth tiger. Sigh.
Humans not being animals is an example of the equivocation popular in theist circles. There is a definition of the word that means non-human, ah, animal. They’re (possibly deliberately) confusing the two. Like confusing the meanings of the word faith. I’ve gone round and round that circle many times.
Love your insights Author. Hi to all you patrons of upper intellect and the Cock & Bull!
I’ve recently perused the archives (took me all of 23 days: “I don’t know; I was very drunk at the time.”) so I guess I’ve been eavesdropping and need to introduce myself. Next round on me, Barmaid.
I have to agree with SUNNY. When asked about God, I reply: “Not the one you’re thinking about.” If pressed: “God (for lack of a better word) to me is the sub-atomic reaction that powers all life and thus the human brain to draw such a conclusion.” Also, religion is used by the powers that be to regulate the masses: (to paraphrase Carlin) THEY only want you smart enough to do the paperwork or run the machines; they don’t want you capable of cognitive thought. Thus, the education system.
Did someone say: “Regor, you’re drunk; go home”?
Yeah, I know, Darwin. I keep giving people the benefit of the doubt, even when I’m sure they don’t deserve it. I have given up faith; now if I can give up hope as well, I’ll be happy. It’s a process.
The ‘human animal’ question is a great filter for identifying mainstream religionists.
I haven’t met a Catholic/Protestant/Baptist/Episcopalian/Buddhist who doesn’t believe, in their soiled, dirty souls, that humans have somehow completed evolving and are the predestined masters of all they survey because of this.
Welcome, Regorski, and well met! Appreciate the pint of the barmaid’s finest, but pie will do, too!
Author – IMHO, referring to “transitional fossils” in P2 is redundant wrt to a similar assertion in P1. I’d suggest mentioning a different piece of evidence, e.g. antibiotic resistance as in the original.
Regorski, I have to ask: Why would you use the word “God” to describe things like quark-gluon interactions and electromagnetic fields? We already have a word for those things. It is “physics”.
b.t.w. No, nobody said “you’re drunk, go home”. Rather, “Maybe you’re drunk, so you’ll have to explain it a little more carefully”. 🙂
(Though from your picture, it looks like you might be having a bad day…)
Chiefy:
Well done on giving up faith and hope. Now you’ll have more time and energy to devote to charity (always the odd one out, to my mind).
I agree with Mark. If you want to call reality “God,” go ahead, but it doesn’t add anything meaningful to the discussion. I don’t care for it because it’s not mockable. Unless you get all woo with it and refer to consciousness as the source of the universe, or something. I can get down with mocking that. If you go back and mock something again, does that mean it’s remockable?
hotrats, though charity compels me to try to reach those gone astray into young Earth creationism, I must admit I have given up on the AIG crowd. Reasoning with them is like trying to convince schizophrenics that the voices aren’t real. If only they would take their medication! I thought about posting this cartoon on their Facebook page, but I fear it would only invite troll attacks.
Chiefy:
That’s AIG as in Answers In Genesis? Ken Ham? The guy who thinks ‘The Flintstones’ is a documentary, and built a museum to match? Medication won’t help, though an actual lobotomy (as opposed to the virtual one he volunteered for) might lower the volume a bit.
Actually I love guys like this, doing our work for us (ie making religion look absurd). The really sad thing is that the US is a good 50 years behind Europe in cultural progress, as evidenced by a majority of of its citizens still clinging to superstitious mythology, the unelectability of professed atheists, and the frankly scary ‘One nation under God’ added to the Pledge of Allegiance during the communist witch-hunts of the 50’s.
Yep. You can’t mock AIG, they are their own parody.
Regarding us in the US, I love this quote:
I find it remarkably fitting that, when they were added to our pledge, the words “under God” bifurcated the phrase “one nation indivisible.”
~ Neil Carter (@godlessindixie)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2014/08/07/religious-liberty-is-a-two-edged-sword/
Hey, Mark I knew someone had a better word for it.
It’s religion I have a problem with (and government a close second).
Chiefy, consciousness is remarkable enough on it’s own, I don’t need a make-believe entity to justify it. Also, lots of people find me totaly remockable.
The avatar is a facial reconstruction of Otzi, the ice man.
basically then ray comfort is saying ‘god’ is a liar
because IF god created the world then that creation includes the geological/fossil record, examination of which indicates the earth to be around 5 BY. therefore if that cant be made to reconile with genesis [which some xians apparently manage to somehow] then either the word of god [ the bible ] or the act of god [ the fossil record] is a lie
therefore Ray Comfort is accusing his god of lying
chromosome 2
in and of itself is proof enough
white+squirrel, the first time I heard of chromosome 2 was in your comment, so I Googled it. Cool! Thanks!
As they slouch out of the C&B.
Thinking chromosome 2 chromosome 2 chromosome 2
Thank you white squirrel.
I should have muttering.
Hey SUNNY,
Not to mention his inordinate fondness for beetles.
Not to mention his inordinate fondness for Nematodes
what sort of ‘god’ would create a parasitic worm like Wuchereria bancrofti
What sort of god would create a numb-nut like Ray Comfort?
White Squirrel, I’ve heard it said – by the likes of Comfort and Ham – that the fossil record was deliberately planted by God as a test of faith. It also apparently ‘stretched’ the light from the distant stars and galaxies at the moment of creation 6018 years ago (!) to make it appear as though the light had taken millions and billions of years to get here.
And millions of fucking idiots swallow it, hook, line and sinker!
Folks, not to be repetitive, as so very many regulars here have noted this but what so of loving, merciful big daddy fairy would create toys that are subject to tooth decay and the resultant agony, or the pain of back damage?
“It’s a test …”.
Only a demented monster would test its pets with toothache. And what possible quality could it be testing? For what reason?
I have never had reasonable, or even sane answers from any religiously diseased or priest about why myopia. Nor why so many priests wear corrective prosthetics for poor eyesight instead of just praying it away.
One would suppose that a loving big fairy that can cure tumours in some of its believers would be kindly disposed enough towards its own priests to give them good eyesight. It’s not that difficult a trick.
On the subject of things like chromosome 2 being evidence for an evolutionary process, those who are mentally ill, the sick religious, are actually correct in suggesting that it may not be. JHV builds a spacetime and populates it with a planet and some fake stars. It creates a humanoid thing out of mud and stuff and – and here’s the clever bit – it keeps the design blueprints for it is a most conservative deity. It adjusts the blueprints to use them t make green things, blue hexapods, little worms and a host of other creatures.
Chrmosome 2 is an example only of the same design being used, with a few tiny alterations, by a deity smart enough to be able to create a trilliard species from the one base formula. Instead of being evidence of the silly idea of evolution it is instead absolute proof of how brilliant and wise and wonderful JHV is.
And now I’m off to be be sick …
“… what *sort* of loving …”
Edit function?
The same “chromosome 2” argument could, of course, be used to dismiss much of the so-called evidence for evolutionary processes. Indeed, it is so very easy that I wonder why the creationists don’t use such?
Acolyte of Sagan asks: “What sort of god would create a numb-nut like Ray Comfort?”
Loki? Kichaha? Dormannu? Sort demented deity with the same sense of humour as a laughing torturer watching ants burn?
Not all gods are nice guys.
One need only determine which class JHV and Allah fall into. They will have their publicists write them up as GoodGuys(TM) as all politicians do but normal, non-deluded folk who can reason should be able to see the truth.
So, are the two most popular deities evil?
Worse than Loki?
Worse than Athark the Ant-Burner?
AAAaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggghgghgg!
“….Some sort of demented …”
deliberately planted by ‘God’ as a test of faith
yes that could be argued,
but that path leads to zero social, ethical and /or scientiific/technological progress
for that reason I reject ‘faith’
as it ultimately leads to stagnation of humanity
technological progress offers a chance for humanity to survive the ultimate death of the Earth/solar system
it may be that the chance is lost or wasted – but at least there exists a chance
religion on the other hand only offers certain eventual extinction
I know which I choose
fossils and geology and light deliberately planted by ‘God’ as a test of faith
why ?
many christians are able to have faith and accept the scientific evidence
therefore
how is faith tested
and also
given the nature of ‘god’ according to the myth there would be no way of telling which is the correct response?
given that ‘god’ is supposedly unknown and unknowable
what ‘god’ considers ‘true faith’ cannot be known
thus ‘faith ‘ is pointless
if for no other reason that if ‘god’ exists then NO-ONE knows what it would consider as ‘true to faith’
therefore ‘god’ is esentially a meaningless term
it might or might not exist
i really dont care
‘God’ might or might not exist
Problem the exact and precise nature of ‘god’ is yet to be determined [and probably never will be given its non [material] existence
and until we determine its nature there is no way to say if it exists or not
you might label as ‘god’ the ‘causal factor of the universe.
something caused the universe to exist and you could call that ‘god’
but [ and this is a key point] would it be sentient/aware
if it exists then it would not share our level of sentience even if it had any
and therefore may as well eb called non sentient in human terms
‘god ‘ if it exists has no regard or interest in humans
thus ‘god’ is probably non sentient and lacks any interest in humanity
in which case what value ‘faith’
abrudged version of above =
‘god’ is immaterial
white squirrel I once read a short SF story wherein there were two characters, a dead man and a creator. The premise was that the creator was unending and all-powerful (ring any bells?) and that it gets terribly, terribly bored so it makes universes to play with. Every so often it makes sentient, thinking creatures to live in them and every once in a while it takes a dead one, copies its thinking patterns into a space-time matrix and sets it free to produce new stuff for the immortal to think about. (Spoilers) The current dead thing just happens to have been a human, one of the very, very few the immortal has bothered to copy into an effectively unkillable frame. It, the copy of the dead human, decided that the entire purpose of this universe is immoral, horrible, insane, nasty and intolerable and makes it its “life’s” work to find a way to end itself. The creator, being a little bored with being itself unending, agrees that this is a worthy project.
Now, I am not even momentarily suggesting even in jest that JHV/Allah is a cruel, nasty being that gets bored and makes toys to play with …
But it does neatly explain everything.
Even suffering. Copies of the dead that have suffered a lot might be able to think of something copies of dead people who haven’t would not. Suffering changes your mental map.
It’s a scary thought, isn’t it? That some might be chosen to be duplicated as immortal thinking machines for a callous deity that is so bored it spends trilliards of years making such things?
Sithrak from Oglaf.com would be kindness itself compared to such a thing.
If it’s true that fossils were deliberately planted to test my faith, then it ‘worked’. They tested it to destruction. I leave the last word to Bill Hicks:
Does that trouble anybody, that God might be… fucking with our heads?
I have trouble sleeping with that knowledge… some Prankster God running around,
“Hohoho – (digging) we will see who believes in me now…I am God, I am a prankster, I am killing me!” .
You die and you go to St. Peter, “Did you believe in dinosaurs?”
“Well yeah, there were fossils everywhere (trapdoor opens) aaaaaaarrrh…”
“You fucking idiot! Flying lizards? You’re a moron! God was fucking with you!”
(voice fading away) “It seemed so plausible…”
“Enjoy the lake of fire, fucker!”
LastResort, the story you are thinking of is The Last Answer by Isaac Asimov — © 1980.
chiefy, thank you, you are perfectly correct. The reason I didn’t associate it with The Good Doctor may have been that “The last Question” is also his and I didn’t think anyone would be able to do both.
Both of those stories are like “By His Bootstraps” by Mr. Heinlein, they are so good, so classic so powerful that they effectively killed off the genre they started. No one can ever do another like them without being compared to them and without coming off as the lesser.
“The Last Answer” would be a brilliant story to leave as a pamphlet in churches of all sorts though doing so in Islamist churches would be dangerous. It could also embroil one in copyright issues.
I would love to have the courage, and energy to do it.
Again, chiefy, thank you.
I was reading a book about prehistoric animals with my eldest grandson yesterday and we came across a picture of a brontotherium.
“It looks like a rhino but with two horns”, said my grandson.
“Mmm, it does rather”, I replied.
I could see his little brain turning over for a moment or two, and then he said “So did the two horns get joined together, and that’s where rhino’s come from?”
How does a four year-old instinctively grasp the basic idea of evolution where so many supposed intelligent adults refuse to do so?
The question “What kind of a god would …” isn’t really relevant to the existence of “God”. The fact that we even ask this question here is evidence that we have heard so many believers saying “God is good” that we have internalized it and just *assume* that God is good.
But what reason do we have to think that God is any more good than a kid burning ants with a magnifying glass? Maybe God is a sadist, who enjoys bringing pain into the world, but is easily bored by it, and therefore has not imposed the maximum possible pain and suffering to the world.
For a rather amusing discussion of that issue, read the excellent essay on the God of Eth at http://www.csicop.org/si/show/god_of_eth/ . In this article, Booblefrip and Gizimoth debate “the problem of good”: If God is all-evil, how can there be good in the world?