aback

Oh, and as requested – SPOING mugs. (Thanks, Simon.)


Discussion (54)¬

  1. Nickopotamus says:

    Brilliant 😀

  2. azurefrog says:

    I’ve never quite understood what people mean when they say “atheist fundamentalist”. Does anyone have a good definition?

  3. r00db00y says:

    Someone who strictly, devoutly and dogmatically believes in the fundamentals of atheism. D’UH!
    Yer not very smart for one o’ dem scientician bluuh’ks, are ya 😀

  4. Toast in the machine says:

    How about:
    Atheist fundamentalist (n) derog.: one who consistently poses questions which highlight the illogical, irrational, immoral, impossible or self-contradictory nature of the religious beliefs of the speaker.

  5. jerry w says:

    Jesus has a navel? Hmmm, that raises some questions……..

  6. Bodach says:

    Azurefrog, “atheist fundamentalist” is normally used by the religious to convince themselves that atheism is a specific belief structure with rules, catechisms, and structure like the church, instead of just not believing in gods. Our being outspoken, like our lovely and “shrill” barmaid, really pisses them off.

  7. dyl says:

    jerry,
    naval; yes. Butthole; No.
    Does that answer your questions?

  8. dyl says:

    um… navel…

  9. TallPaul says:

    @jerry_w “Jesus has a navel?” – well of course, he was “born of the virgin Mary” wasn’t he so he’s going to have a navel just like the rest of us.

  10. Dave A Non-Celebrity says:

    Hey, Jerry!
    Navels arise at birth, not (immaculate, so they say) conception! – That’s science, you know!

  11. Dick M says:

    Uh, Dave, if I remember the way the catechism goes, the Immaculate Conception was the conception of Mary, not Jesus. No?

  12. gös says:

    Dick M:

    Both. Both Mary and Jesus were conceived immaculately.

    I’m not making this up.

  13. richH says:

    im pretty sure immaculate conception just means free of sin, and therefore would have nothing to do with what body parts jesus does or doesn’t have. on an related note, alot of peopl reckon that the word virgin i the bible is a mistransltion of young woman and has nothing to do with sex. im guessing the implication being either she wa unmarried at the time or it as a teenage prgnancy, which makes sense with shorter life spans and all.

  14. kiyaroru says:

    Mary was the Immaculate Conception. This means she was born without Original Sin. She was conceived in the conventional manner.
    Jesus was conceived in an unconventional manner. Since he was God and his own father he was probably without Original Sin. But I could be wrong.

  15. Don says:

    Mary was born without Original Sin, because god willed it. So if he could just cancel Original Sin, why all the blood sacrifice stuff? Force of habit?

    Also, I seem to remember that a lot of early representations of Adam & Eve hid the midriff area with foliage because they weren’t sure what the safe line was with navels for those who were never born. Any art historians here know if that’s right?

  16. Colonel Leisure says:

    I love the summery feel today’s comic conveys.

  17. Daoloth says:

    I believe that eventually it was concluded that Adam must have a navel, similarly his blood would have started with oxygen in it, the trees in the garden of Eden would have been created with growth rings etc etc.
    Of course this was why there were fossils, created as if the earth was old, but actually just there as a test of faith.
    This was until the nutters like Ken Ham at “Answers in Guinesses” realised that movies like Jurassic Park was losing them the kiddies and they changed their strategy. Check out his Creation museum- it has dinosaurs with saddles. Its a hoot.

  18. Jdhuey says:

    Doesn’t ‘un-fucking-believable’ come more trippingly to the tongue than ‘unbe-fucking-lievable’?

  19. Jdhuey says:

    @Daoloth,

    Actually, the entire universe was created just last Tuesday, it only appears to be about 14 billion years old. Of course, if God wanted the universe to appear to be that old, who are we to argue?

  20. Simon Bishop says:

    Dear author, thanks very much for adding mugs to the J&M shop. I’ve ordered some. Now, if you could possibly add dinner plates, tea plates, cereal bowls and serving dishes, I could completely replace the Denby crockery that I currently have at home. It’s a bit bland and lacks a certain “je ne sais spoing.” Thanks.

    http://www.cafepress.com/jmoshop

  21. DĂ­dac says:

    Not only Jesus has (according to Christians he is alive and well, 2000 years old and seems barely 33) a navel, but also an umbilical cord and (being Jewish) an excised prepuce (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Prepuce). Curiously enough the uncircuncised European Christians venerate lots and lots of remains of the Holy Prepuce but no veneration of the Holy Umbilical Cord has been attested.

  22. sweetpitifulmercy says:

    So spot on. Good work author!

  23. I like the way the starfish in the third frame miraculously transmutes into a seagull – unbe-fucking-lievable!

  24. mateo-argentino says:

    You are right, lets think whay could have caused it:
    a) God did it.
    b) The seagull its flying, the starfish is still lying in the sand.

    You know, it looks like you are looking for a gap in the comic – Any size considered.

  25. David Marjanovi? says:

    “Answers in Guinesses”

    Consider this stolen.

  26. David Marjanović says:

    (This time my name should come through.)

  27. mateo-argentino says:

    haha, “seagull its flying”…I used to be very good at english but Im getting rusty…

  28. channeller says:

    @ Daoloth -“Answers in Guinesses” Brilliant! I bet if there was such an organisation, they’d find a lot more truths than that shower!

  29. jerry w says:

    The seagull swooped down and ate the starfish.
    Much like Stephen Segal, the seagull doesn’t keep kosher either.
    And don’t get me started about bacon.

  30. Next week the barmaid will perform an example of her negative stridency. She likes to be thorough about these things.

  31. llewelly says:

    naval; yes. Butthole; No.
    Does that answer your questions?

    Wait a minute. If Jesus had no butthole, he’d fill up with feces …
    oh, ok, on second thought, that explains so much.

  32. Stephen Turner says:

    Looks as though Mo should be spending less time with his Nintendo Playbox and more time at the gym. Or with his seventy-whatever women.

    Whatever about his other orifices, J should have holes in his hands, feet and one side.

  33. Submoron says:

    Re the immaculate contraption (contraception?): One (catholic) version has the archangel Michael as Mary’s father. I lost my hagiological dictionary years back so I can’t check that. Obviously, God couldn’t be Mary’s father or Jesus would be the product of incest; come to think of it though…
    Another very good cartoon, Author!

  34. Waldemar says:

    read more on holy navel and jesus’ praeputium (foreskin) in wikipedia, search for “praeputium jesus” ! Jesus has had chopped about 13 of these foreskins, I think, author would have some nice ideas about this theme …

  35. Necessary Evil says:

    Could the atheist fundamentalist not be someone who has a real fear of the supernatural – the fear if it existing. Atheism provides a nice comfy world view wherein everything spooky is disbelieved in. If I ever did encounter some phenomenon whose only explanation was that the supernatural does exist then I’d be totally freaked out – scared shitless. Fortunately I know that that will never happen! So atheist fundamentalist is diametrically opposed to religious fundamentalism. The main advantage of the atheistic sort is that the fear can only be imagined whereas with the religious sort it’s real.

  36. Necessary Evil says:

    I reallise I’ve contradiced myself in the previous posting. The first line should be: Could the atheist fundamentalist not be someone who has an imagined fear of the supernatural – the fear if it existing?

  37. Mr Gronk says:

    Quite an interesting thought, Necessary Evil. IMHO if something exists in our universe it must, by definition, be natural. If (BIG “if”) any “supernatural” events have ever taken place, they must be subject to natural laws. It would merely be that we haven’t figured what those laws are yet.
    Incidentally, Mrs Gronk and I sometimes have a big chuckle at these ghost hunting TV shows, where a bunch of suggestible imbeciles go into an ancient building, switch the lights off and proceed to scream and give each other the willies every time the building creaks. But it occurs to me that even the most hard-headed rationalist would feel ill at ease in such surroundings – those sort of fears are hardwired into us.

  38. JohnnieCanuck says:

    Clearly, the seagull is directly over the starfish and not being transparent, it hides the starfish.

    There’s few things stranger looking than a seagull in the process of eating a starfish, with a couple of the legs down its very stretched throat and the rest hanging out of its mouth. There’s a lot of standing around and waiting involved, though what exactly is happening, I’ve never figured out. There aught to be some parallel here with the religious and their dogma but nevermind…

  39. rcw says:

    Unbeliv-fucking-able !

  40. Daoloth says:

    I think Necessary Evil has nailed what the theists think about atheists. We either hate or fear that it might all be true. Thats why a lot of our arguments just bounce off them. The universe just look like a place of supernatural justice to them.

  41. Toast in the machine says:

    We either hate or fear that it might all be true.

    Speak for yourself. I can honestly say, I don’t think it’s ever occurred to me that it might all be true: it takes very little consideration for it to fall hopelessly apart.

    Now that I am thinking about it, I don’t fear it at all either. I live at least as ‘good’ a life as anyone else. If people like me go to hell, heaven would be a very empty place.

  42. Hobbes says:

    No butthole? That could make a guy real mean!

  43. Poor Richard says:

    Perhaps a fundamentalist atheist meets fundamentalism on its own terms. I think Mark Twain did this: his answer to a literal god seemed to be a literal Satan. But I don’t know where f.a. goes after that–one would hope she/he would not be deluded by the notion that there is a god who is simply not simple.

    JohnnieCanuck: Have you ever seen a bird, say a brown thrasher, whack a snake to death and then take all day to swallow it? Now you might be able to get a drop or two of myth out of that.

  44. Daoloth says:

    @Toast- I meant that this is what the theists think about the atheists. ie. That we are avoiding facing up to the reality of a universe with a giant cosmic CCTV in it.
    Did anyone else read me to mean the other way?

  45. Mr Gronk says:

    No, I read you right Daoloth. Gosg, what a scary “reality” we’re running from. Whereas the theists face the reality of personal extinction and an indifferent universe square on, don’t they just?
    (spoing)

  46. Mr Gronk says:

    That’s gosh, not gosg, BTW

  47. Kinkazzo says:

    Didn’t they also retrieve Jesus’ bones, i.e. a vertebra, a hip and a left foot toe. After which the Protestant Anglicans wanted to cancel Easter, as resurrection was thus negated by the evidence…? I agree: CANCEL FRIGGIN’ EASTER!

  48. jerry w says:

    Oh, SPOING mugs.

    For a moment, I thought you were making SPOING rugs available for praying.

    Can there be any greater irony than getting on your knees to pray for success in a holy war on the rest of the world?

  49. JMo says:

    Kinkazzo–But what would we do without all those Cadberry Eggs with the delicious cream filling. Allways seemed like a religious exercise to me…

  50. Toast in the machine says:

    Sorry Daoloth, my mistake. A little too post haste, as it were.

  51. Grumblefish says:

    Is this the start of a ‘Powers of 10’ tribute? Perhaps the next few strips are going to zoom out to show the earth, solar system, galaxy, etc. while J+M discuss the Abrahamic creation myths and how earth is obviously the only important part of the universe.

  52. Stephen Turner says:

    Poor Richard: there is already a myth like your bird and snake one. Supposedly, the Aztecs had been told that they would found a great city as soon as they saw an eagle perched on a cactus with a snake in its beak. They were nomadic warriors who founded TenochtitlĂĄn (Mexico City) on seeing their sign.

    (I wonder how many witnesses there were!)

  53. Stephen Turner says:

    I miss the edit function. The cactus/eagle/snake is the emblem of Mexico, it’s on the flag and the coins.

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