Discussion (24)¬

1. CliffB says:

   September 25, 2019 at 1:32 pm

   Not having heard of this, I googled it. I’m relieved to see it is not designed to celebrate suppression of free expression but to encourage the repeal of mediaeval anti-blasphemy laws.

   I was surprised and disappointed to see that Scotland still has such laws, and less surprised to see that Northern Ireland does too.

2. Keltic Green says:

   September 25, 2019 at 2:48 pm

   Hi, I think it should be ‘…make them feel the same pain…’ in the third panel. (I know that’s being really pedantic).

3. Author says:

   September 25, 2019 at 3:04 pm

   Well spotted Keltic Green. Fixed now, thanks.

4. E.A. Blair says:

   September 25, 2019 at 3:08 pm

   Who needs a special day? Hardly a day passes when I’m not guilty of blasphemy by one definition or another.

5. Tinkling Think says:

   September 25, 2019 at 3:43 pm

   “The Big Bang” is a metaphor, a simplification, a way of picturing something only deeply complex mathematics can adequately describe; it is not something we “believe in”, just a fuzzy model of a description of a process that happened a few years back.

   Evolution is a process that can be seen happening even today, that has been happening for thousands of millions of years globally and that Man has used for his own benefit to make foods, cattle and dogs. Selective breeding to create rat-dogs and Alsatians is merely pocket-sized Evolution directed a little to serve a purpose. Again, it is not something to be believed nor believed in, it just is. Anyone who has seen two different breeds of dog or sheep or other cattle, anyone who has eaten corn flakes or carrots or tomatoes has seen the results of evolution.

   And, incidentally, has encountered and eaten genetically modified organisms or G.M.O. foods. Few, if any, foods are not G.M.O. in these enlightened, Science-driven years.

   Mocking Quantum Mechanics, Cosmology, Hausdorff Dimensions, Bose-Einstein Condensates, Fermionic Matter, Virology, Metallurgy, Ballistics, the process of the birthing of a cosmos and its subsequent evolution or the process of the evolution of living critters is not mocking our fundamental beliefs as none of those are “beliefs” in the religious sense. They are tools, models, explanations, useful pictures that help us predict how the universe can be used for our benefit.

   Mocking them just makes the mocker look stupid, weak-minded, ill-educated, childish, ineducable and a bit of a prat.

   As opposed to mocking religions which makes the mocker look clever, wise, educated, brght, experienced, well-read and a fully adult human being.

   Mo’, Jesse, it’s a game we’ll always win because it’s a game of wits and one side is unarmed.

6. Ben Elms-Lester says:

   September 25, 2019 at 4:33 pm

   I did a proper laugh out loud.
   Superb again!

7. Michael says:

   September 25, 2019 at 4:58 pm

   Most creationists accept what they call “microevolution” changes in how organisms function. After all, they can’t deny antibiotic resistant bacteria. But they do reject what they call “macroevolution”, one species changing into another.

   However creationists have a problem with the aftermath of the Noachian Flood. They admit that Noah’s Ark (which wouldn’t be seaworthy, but that’s another discussion) would have been too small to fit all of the species of animals on the planet. So creationists came up with “kinds”, cattle kinds, dog kinds, bear kinds, etc. that Noah put on the Ark. After the flood, these “kinds” speciated into the different species we see today. According to creation.com (which I will not link to), the Flud took place at 2304 BC ± 11 years. So in 4300 years the cat kind evolved into everything from lions to house cats, which is hyper-evolution.

8. pink squirrel says:

   September 25, 2019 at 5:04 pm

   international blasphemy day! Is there a prize for the most extreme blasphemy – I can think of several winners straight off!

9. Necessary Evil says:

   September 25, 2019 at 5:35 pm

   One does not believe in evolution and other scientific principles. Science is not a belief system. One does not believe or not believe in gravity. When people say they don’t believe in evolution, what they mean is that they don’t understand evolution. Therefore, in any discussion or argument with a creationist, one should always ask if they understand evolution, not if they believe in it. If they say they do, then ask them to tell you its flaws. (If they understood it and hadn’t found flaws then they wouldn’t be creationists.) If they say they don’t understand it, then gently point out that they can’t reasonably criticise something they don’t understand. This isn’t a foolproof way of undermining a creationist’s beliefs however. When I confronted a Young Earth Creationist with the idea that you’ve only got to look at the sky at night and see stars that are measurably millions or billions of light years away to know that the universe must be older than the 6,000 years or so that he claimed, he told me that he wasn’t an astro-physicist so how could he comment?

10. Son of Glenner says:

    September 25, 2019 at 6:10 pm

    Necessary Evil: “Convince a man against his will, you’ll leave him unbelieving still”!

11. M27Holts says:

    September 25, 2019 at 9:18 pm

    Blasphemy day? Thats every day for me probably…

12. Wee Jim says:

    September 25, 2019 at 10:10 pm

    Believers are very enthusiastic about the “Big Bang”, in fact. They believe in it literally as the moment of creation rather than a complex mathematical/physical concept.

13. Laripu says:

    September 26, 2019 at 12:50 pm

    Apparently Catholicism sees evolution as consistent with Christianity. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_and_the_Catholic_Church

    I don’t understand that. Without Adam, Eve, and the fall, there’s no need for the sacrifice of Jesus, hence no Christianity.

    Apparently they re-interpret the whole story as humanity’s sins and humanity’s fall, with Adam and Eve as a stand-in for humanity. I guess you can interpret anything as anything, especially if the money keeps rolling in.

    I like the creation story for its metaphoric power, even though it’s – of course – untrue.

    Eve was convinced to transgress by a supernatural entity, soon after her creation. How difficult could it be for a supernatural entity to convince a child of anything?

    I prefer to think that Adam didn’t eat the fruit because he was stupid or duped. He ate it because his only companion was about to be cast out, and he didn’t want her be punished alone.

    That way, the story isn’t a metaphor for sin, but a metaphor for the Cruelty of Creation and of the necessary self-sacrifice for love. He was prepared to follow his love into hell.

    But what do I know? I’m just a lousy atheist in the US bible belt.

14. Tinkling Think says:

    September 26, 2019 at 1:17 pm

    Laripu, perhaps Adam followed his only companion out of the blessed gardens where they were and into the thorny, nasty, lands of mortality becase she was the only nookie around?

    Never underestimate the power of testosterone to dull the male wit.

15. M27Holts says:

    September 26, 2019 at 3:38 pm

    I wonder what homo sapiens sex life would have been like if the female signalled her ovulation like the rest of the primates?

16. Jim Baerg says:

    September 26, 2019 at 5:14 pm

    pink squirrel “Is there a prize for the most extreme blasphemy”
    I think it should go to someone who claims that Lord God: Creator & Ruler of the Universe, needs him to give a message to humanity.

17. Laripu says:

    September 27, 2019 at 1:07 am

    Tinkling Think, you’re probably right, that’s probably the point of the story, isn’t it. It’s about a snake with an apple in it’s mouth … obvious, right?

    Either way, I like to interpret it as rebellion against a tyrant. You can’t fight infinite power except with solidarity and self-sacrifice. How could Adam not side with one like himself against Yahweh the dictator?

    Anyway, it’s all just bullshit.

18. Tinkling Think says:

    September 27, 2019 at 8:22 am

    Your rebellion against a tyrant, Laripu, makes more sense than my Adam chasing nookie. For one thing, Adam masturbated for centuries and probably never, ever had true nookie. Eve was, in essence, a second right hand.

    Which would make Cain and Able, and any other dribblings, identical clones, too, so sex with them would not be incest. Indeed, using the Adamic tree as the human family, we’re all just masturbating no matter whom we do it with. Wich is a rather icky interpretation of the story though, as wanking is considered bad by the R.C.C., it does explain the “original sin” even if the priests are too coy to make it clear.

    My thought about Adam being lonely so he followed the only available poon apart from the goats is nowhere near so nice as your heroic uprising against a fascistic daddy.

    Indeed, the more one considers mine, the icckier it gets.

    Yours may be bullshit, but it’s cleaner bullshit than mine.

19. two cents' worth says:

    September 28, 2019 at 2:04 am

    In When God Was a Woman, Merlin Stone argues that the story of Adam and Eve was developed after a goddess-worshipping matriarchal
    group was conquered by a patriarchal group that worshiped a male god. The story “was designed to be used in the continuous Levite battle to suppress the female religion. … Symbols such as serpents. sacred fruit trees, and sexually tempting women who took advice from serpents may once have been understood by people in biblical times to symbolize the then familiar presence of the female deity. In the Paradise myth, these images may have explained allegorically that listening to women who revered the Goddess had once caused the expulsion of all humankind from the original home of bliss in Eden.”

    Getting back to J&M’s banner, maybe the story of Adam and Eve in Eden is a metaphor for how human beings perceived life before they had evolved to the point where they had self-awareness, and when they lived in an environment where food was plentiful. Eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge and being expelled from Eden could describe how they felt once they had self-awareness (including the awareness that they would not live forever) and the environment had changed so that food was harder to find. Self-awareness should have developed in males and females at the same time, but maybe the story has Eve eating the fruit before Adam does because females noticed their self-awareness before males did–or maybe the story has Eve persuading Adam to eat the fruit because the myth was started by a man who missed suckling and wanted to blame females for the fact that it was hard work to find food.

20. M27Holts says:

    September 28, 2019 at 5:17 pm

    Creation myths are abundant in all cultures. I am currently reading Dawkins latest book “outgrowing god” and it pretty much sums up all the anti holy book material that I have read in the past 10 years…

21. Alexander Jones says:

    October 1, 2019 at 5:34 pm

    Necessary Evil: “One does not believe in evolution and other scientific principles. Science is not a belief system.” Unfortunately, it sort of is: there’s no a priori reason to accept it.

    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science, in particular “Naturalism’s axiomatic assumptions”.

22. M27Holts says:

    October 2, 2019 at 7:03 am

    I think that Necessary Evil meant that science is not a dogmatic belief system based on unverified and unproven acceptance criteria…

23. Son of Glenner says:

    October 2, 2019 at 11:30 am

    Alexander Jones & M27Holts: It may have no a prior reason for acceptance – but it works! When it makes predictions, if they don’t “come true”, they are discarded in favour of others, until predictions are made which do come true. And so on, building on what has gone before.

    When religions make predictions, they seldom come true (except occasionally by chance), but the religions just stick with them anyway, because they are “the word of God”.

24. RMS says:

    November 4, 2019 at 6:57 am

    how’s this for secular blasphemy: libertarian = littlebrainian