382

Primarily
Posted on April 20, 2016 by David M Willis

382 thoughts on “Primarily”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    What were the poo emojis translated from in Aramaic?

    1. Vagabond J

      Yes.

    2. Darkoneko

      Yes.

    3. Bicycle Bill

      What are “answers in Genesis” … or is that where Joyce keeps reiterating the story of Creation rather than evolution?

      1. SmilingNid

        Still love the idea of people running around poining at a tree claiming it disproves seeds.

        1. Tim

          “Pointing at a tree claiming it disproves seeds”? Never heard that one. I’ve heard of people pointing a live black and white moths claiming it proves they turned into… live black and white moths?

      2. Mordecai

        https://answersingenesis.org/
        “Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth.”

        AKA creationist nonsense

        1. Riku

          I remember taking an old testament class in college because I found the subject matter interesting and when it came time for the paper I couldn’t think of what to do it on so I decided on proving the story of Noah’s Ark actually happened. Almost all of my sources were Ken Ham and I can just picture my teacher (who knew I was an Atheist) laughing his ass off when he was reading it.

        2. kkiten

          That’s actually the most hilarious thing I’ve ever heard of.

        3. Shade

          Their arguments not to use page is a useful resource though. More creationists should read that one.

        4. Bacchante

          No, they really shouldn’t. Answers in Genesis is more or less a laughing stock amongst truly rational persons; mostly because creationism is an indefensible position.

          I think that if you’re a Christian you should just be a Christian, though… there’s nothing wrong with living your life the way you want to live it so long as you’re not trying to force it on other people.

        5. ProfessorChump

          So as a non-believer let me attempt to explain why an origin story contrary to Genesis is such a big deal for fundamentalists. All of the framing of the creation story, the order of creation, the role of man, the resting on the seventh day is essentially unimportant, except it is used to establish the most important concept in Christianity. Because Adam and Eve gave into the Serpent’s temptation and ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they and ALL of their descendants are damned because that original sin creates a gulf between God and his creations (his human creations) that is essentially infinite because God is perfect and what seems a slight imperfection to humans is an unacceptable flaw to true perfection; to bridge this essentially unbridgeable gulf required an extraordinary action, not by humans who simply can’t do it, but by God who became human in the form of Jesus and took the entirety of humanity’s completely just punishment onto himself allowing us to be with God again if we simply accept that gift. If evolution is true then the story of the original sin is false and if the story of original sin is false, the fundamentalist reasons, then there was never a need for Jesus and he cannot occupy the central role Christianity assigns to him and then the whole of Christianity is false. Sheer bloody-minded literalism destroys itself when faced with reality; allegory is the only way out.

        6. Shade

          Probably should read closer, arguments NOT to use. As in a page explicitly outlining arguments so bad even AiG says you shouldn’t use them.

        7. Bacchante

          Yup, I really should. GG me.

        8. hof1991

          The gospels and Jesus didn’t/don’t have much to say about dinosaurs. Genesis is an odd hill to die on for fundies, since you can throw out most of it or read it the way Jews actually do without affecting a bit of Jesus and the gospels. It’s more of an anti-evangelization technique. Proclaiming barely relevant things as essential (fundamental) just gets in what Jesus and the gospels are saying.

        9. jy3

          But if the Creation didn’t actually happen in seven days six thousand years ago, how can we justify hating the gays?!

          I wish I were making this up.

        10. Mokurai

          Answers in Genesis says otherwise. Ken Ham and many of his colleagues say that if Adam is not historical, nobody can believe that Jesus can redeem us from the Fall, and we are all going straight to Hell.

          It is one of the greatest comedy sites on the entire Web. I particularly enjoy them fighting over relativity when trying to solve the two starlight problems: How did light travel several light years from the creation of the stars to the creation of Adam two days later, and how did light from distant galaxies travel 13 billion light years in less than ten thousand years? But there is far more hilarity than that.

      3. Kamino Neko

        Answers in Genesis is a Creationist website that stockpiles the stock nonsense Creationists are supposed to toss out when faced with science.

      4. Swissaboo

        “Answers in Genesis (AiG) is a non-profit, fundamentalist, Christian apologetics ministry with a particular focus on supporting young Earth creationism (YEC), rejecting the scientific consensus on common descent and on the age of the Earth.”

        Joyce is not PERSONALLY reiterating the story of creation rather than evolution, she’s going to people who have put much more effort into rationalizing the matter than she can on the fly, and linking their answers on the matter.

        1. StClair

          A convenient combination of “appeal to authority” (a really big thing throughout Church history) and “so you can/have to do as little thinking about these questions yourself as possible.”

        2. Needfuldoer

          So, basically it’s “How to answer questions like a parrot to protect yourself from potentially unpleasant subjects”?

        3. Cerberus

          Yup. That sort of thing’s actually pretty common among reactionary groups. Because the important thing is to “win” every interaction with the “other side” rather than potentially risk growing as a human being.

        4. Swissaboo

          Eh, I’m going to so the same thing on the other end of the argument. There’s no reason for me to independently discover the evolutionary history of the eye when other people have, you know, already done that.

        5. Betty Anne

          Yes, but here’s the problem: the answer regarding the evolution of the eye covers a rather long span of history and medical science. The answer Joyce wants to provide is usually a portion of a line in a book that’s been relatively unchanged since King James.

          Which is harder to read up on and independently verify?

        6. thejeff

          Though the stuff you get from Answers in Genesis is actually not just a Bible quote, but complex pseudo-scientific reasoning for why the Bible is right and evolution is wrong.
          That said, you’re basically right and it’s one of the big problems with debating Creationists, particularly the Intelligent Design types. One of the most basic tactics is to pose some simple question that seems reasonable at first glance and ask “How do you explain that?”. The biologist isn’t likely to know of the top of his head since it’s a big field and this particular thing hasn’t come up before so he can’t give a good answer and the creationist scores points and sounds convincing. You come back for another debate and the biologist has researched the question and discovered that the problem is well understood and has a convincing answer, but the creationist isn’t interested – instead he throws out 4 or 5 more questions of the same basic type and the biologist looks like an idiot again. Known as the Gish Gallop after a prominent Creationist practitioner.

          Debating is easy when your model gives the same answer to everything – God did it – and you don’t care about just making stuff up to stump the other guy.

        7. Truk2

          Debating – the art of awarding points to the most skillful and manipulative liar.

          Science – the art of taking the time to filter out wrong results and rely on appropriate confirm-able facts rather than quick or easy answers.

        8. StClair

          I’m fully willing to acknowledge that I take many things on faith that I have no direct experience of – such as the existence of not just continental drift, but other continents, period. I believe in the available evidence, and personal verification of it is not a priority in my life.

          On the flipside, if God is so determined to convince me of an old universe that He will create an apparently perfect simulation of one, well… congratulations, you win, Lord. I can no more out-skeptic a literally omnipotent creator, who controls all of my sensory inputs, than I can beat Him in a rock-lifting contest.

        9. jy3

          Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Dina would be perfectly justified in doing a line-by-line rebuttal, even of an argument in Joyce’s own words, consisting entirely of links to the talk.origins archive.

      5. WaytoomanyUIDs

        All you need to know is that it’s run by that Australian nutjob behind the creation “museum”, Ken Ham

        1. Scott John Harrison

          I always get confused if Ken Ham is the Audtralian creationist or the New Zealand one.

        2. Flame_Warp

          New Zealand is ray comfort.

        3. Kitanin

          The convenient mnemonic is that New Zealand looks kind of like a banana.

        4. WaytoomanyUIDs

          And Kent Hovind was the one from Florida jailed for tax evasion and fraud. It gets confusing

        5. Torechwen

          Was Hovind the slightly-older-earth dude who the super-young-earth-dudes think is controversial and compromising with evolution even though he’s still a creationist, or was that somebody else?

        6. Lumin

          What? Ken Ham is an Australian? I’m sorry, world! My sole comfort is that he must have gone to America because he couldn’t get enough people here to take the idea of a Creationist museum seriously.

    4. Baronbrian

      Nope. Greek. They’re Paul’s poo emojis.

      1. Kamino Neko

        ‘Nope. Greek.’ is an odd translation for poo.

    5. GMan003

      זבל, although I’m not sure what vowels would be used with it.

      1. Rachel @ Last Res0rt

        Hebrew is not known for having vowel movements.

        This is where the source material comes from for the Five Constipated Men in the Five Books of Moses.

        1. SDGlyph

          *slow clap*

        2. Clif

          All the claps.

        3. N0083rP00F

          I read that as bowel movements [glasses were smudged] but that would explain the nephew of Abraham.

      2. Lauren

        Zevel, but that’s “trash,” not “poo.” It’s a little confusing because another word, אשפה, means “waste” in general, both the stuff you put in your trash can and human/animal waste. Poo is “tzoah” (צואה).

        1. GMan003

          In Hebrew, yes. My sources say that, in Aramaic, it meant “to defecate”.

    6. Dana

      Dina needs to find coprolite emojis.

      1. DSL

        Just send a photo of Laura Dern exploring the giant stegosaurus plop in “Jurassic Park,” which Dina at least appreciates for its entertainment value.

        1. Bicycle Bill

          Wasn’t it triceratops scat?

    7. Paradoxius

      Actually, they were translated from Early Modern English, which was translated from Latin, which was translated from Greek, which was originally written by native Aramaic speakers after being passed down for at least the better part of a century by oral tradition.

  2. Doctor_Who

    Everything comes down to poo.

    1. Mr. Random

      From the top of your head, to the sole of your shoe.

    2. mystseekyr

      whether it is cancer or a touch of the flu. We can figure out what’s wrong with you by…

      1. 42

        By testing what comes out of you

        1. Scar Man!!!

          Is this like some rhyme you hear in medical school?

        2. Akiosama

          Scrubs, my man… It’s all about Scrubs.

        3. Scar Man!!!

          So… it’s from Scrubs?

        4. Some1

          This thread rhymes and for that I love you.

  3. Darkoneko

    Oh noes, not the poo emojis !

    1. Deanatay

      Don’t worry, they’re _smiley-face_ poo emojis.

      So it’s poo, but happy.

      1. N0083rP00F

        In monochrome they look like vanilla or chocolate soft serve.

      2. DSL

        You’ll need a Hankey.

    2. Gigafreak

      Joyce’s response is full of shit on a rather literal level

  4. miados

    got to adapt to the middle man if you have to deal with them so to speak

    1. Yotomoe

      The proper term would be Evolve.

      1. AgentKeen

        Now I want a gif/image set of dino-hat Dina evolving Pokemon style into triceratops hoodie Dina, but then Dina jumps in front of it yelling “THAT’S NOT HOW EVOLUTION WORKS!”

        1. JonRich

          This. This, so much, so very, very much. To the point where I’m hearing the in-game evolution music (specifically, from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald/FireRed/LeafGreen). Duh-nuh, Duh-nuh…(I’m really bad at writing out music sounds. Just watch the clip if you’re not sure what I’m talking about).

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr3NdHKmMWU

        2. ischemgeek

          … One reason why I think I have a lot in common with Dina: I was the kind of kid who explained Pokemon as, “Okay, so this guy has these monsters that he can store in these little balls called pokeballs, and he can bring them out to fight if he wants to. When the monsters get enough time fighting, they go through something that’s called an evolution but is really more of a metamorphosis, and…”

        3. jy3

          From what I’ve heard, they went with shinka (evolution) because the word for “metamorphosis” is hentai.

          Yes, it’s pronounced and written exactly the same as that hentai

        4. StClair

          Bah, go with “henshin” (transform!)

        5. TachyonCode

          “Transform” gives the impression it’s a reversible process… so unless the Pokeymans have changed a lot in the latest release, that’d be an inappropriate term to use.

      2. Some1

        Quick question Yotomoe..

        On that big collection of drawings posted yesterday, on the second to last one with Sal being disgusted. Who is the other character?

        1. Yotomoe

          Walky. The bottom two are both the Walkerton twins.

        2. Some1

          My first guess was Faz

        3. Yotomoe

          Faz has different eyes.

        4. Some1

          Yotomoe stared deep into Faz’s eyes. “I love you Faz”, Said Yotomoe and then they kissed and got a super pregnant, the end!

          Bonus points if you get the reference.

  5. Toby Mobias

    So much green in this comic. COINCIDENCE?!

    1. Michael Haneline

      I THINK NOT

  6. gkheyf

    poo emojis?? science has met its match!

    1. Jay Eff

      Yeah! Take that, science!

    2. miados

      It took me so long to realize it wasn’t a chocolate pudding emoji

      1. Opus the Poet

        Chocolate soft-serve, there used to be a vanilla one too.

        1. N0083rP00F

          Wasn’t he the sidekick to that martial artist that practiced Fist-of-the-nose-hair?

  7. Mr. Mendo

    Poo emojis, breaking and entering, Joyce’s fallen in with a bad crowd!

    1. Deanatay

      At this rate, she’ll soon be *gasp* staying up past her bedtime! And drinking CHOCOLATE milk!!

  8. jimmy joey

    sounds like dina’s got a good old fashioned flame war on her hands. she’s recruited just the right person for it, too

  9. Loki

    I am a tad surprised at Joyce using poo emojis.

    1. Briny

      She’s having a rough time, right now.

      Seriously, I wouldn’t even mention Sour Cream & Onion chips to her right now.

    2. Needfuldoer

      Maybe in a way she knows the answers she’s using to refute Dina’s links are actually feces, and this is how she’s expressing it?

  10. chris73

    I’d actually like to see more science vs creationism arguments on here so hopefully this’ll lead to more

    1. Doom Shepherd

      “This is not a productive area of discussion.” – Henry Kissinger’s Head, “Futurama”

      1. chris73

        But it would lead to more drama, I could see people taking sides, Dorothy would be torn…

        Mostly I just like the drama (but I do dislike fundies)

        1. Deanatay

          Science v Creationism isn’t really an argument, because neither side can accept the other basic tenets – basically, what they argue FROM. It basically boils down to two people making emotional appeals, and yelling at each other. Basically, ABUSE.

          Angry man: WHADDAYOU WANT?

          Man: Well, Well, I was told outside that…

          Angry man: DON’T GIVE ME THAT, YOU SNOTTY-FACED HEAP OF PARROT DROPPINGS!

          Man: What?

          A: SHUT YOUR FESTERING GOB, YOU TIT! YOUR TYPE MAKES ME PUKE! YOU VACUOUS TOFFEE-NOSED MALODOROUS PERVERT!!!

          M: Yes, but I came here for an argument!!

          A: OH! Oh! I’m sorry! This is abuse!

          M: Oh! Oh I see!

          A: Aha! No, you want room 12A, next door.

          M: Oh…Sorry…

          A: Not at all!

          A: (under his breath) stupid git.

        2. No Name

          As far as I know, literally the only person (at college) who would be on Joyce’s side in this matter is Mary; Becky converted when she met Dina and no one else was raised Young Earth Creationist.

    2. TheDudeManGuy

      I hope to god (oh the irony) it doesn’t. It’d just be a waste of time. Knowing the author, we all know how the “argument” would end, and at this point I’m 90% sure there aren’t any Christians (or at least any creationist Christians) reading this. It’d just be a waste of time.

      1. Briny

        The assumption that all Christians are YECs is a faulty one.

        (It’s always fun providing imperical evidence that there are non-Creationist Christians to people who never considered challenging their assumptions yet call themselves “Skeptics”.)

        1. qman

          God, being an unfalsifiable concept and all, is not incompatible with science and scientific theories, it’s all the other disprovable stuff piled on top at issue. Christians who discount most of the Bible as written and instead only follow the core concepts may not have any arguments to make there.

          That said, there are still problems with the core concepts I find irreconcilable.

        2. Rutee

          No, strictly speaking, an unevidenced, immaterial entity affecting the universe through mechanisms completely unexplained is kind of against scientific thought, ti’s just not really doing so in an important way so nobody really cares. It’s way too much effort for absolutely no gain unless you’re one of those fedoras who wants to chalk everything bad up to religion.

        3. ischemgeek

          It’s not so much ‘against’ scientific thought as ‘outside’ it.

          Science, by nature, is a form of methodological naturalism. It is an empirical method that deals with the natural and real. Something unnatural, like a supernatural being such as a deity, is outside of the scope of science.

          On the other hand, we can find a complete dearth of evidence that a deity/ies exist. If a god existed, he/she/it/they would inherently be unbound by the laws of nature as an unnatural being. Hence, the best way to look for god is to look for a phenomenon that breaks a significant number of the known laws of nature, which we are unable to explain within the known laws of nature even after decades of study and effort. There have been many candidates in the past, but all that has ever resulted is a greater understanding that the universe is vaster, weirder, and far more complicated than we ever imagined.

          Which is definitely something. It’s just not god.

          Should be noted though that even if something does eventually pop up that is unexplainable by science, that does not mean it is god. Could be the universe is even weirder than we thought yet again.

        4. Gigafreak

          We must also remember that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Gods could potentially exist and just sorta… be doing nothing. It’s why I’m agnostic rather than atheist.

          Since I shouldn’t disbelieve in any one god over another, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a whole bunch of well-known deities’ names on index cards, drawing one card at random each morning, and substituting that deity’s name into “oh my god” types of phrases for that day. But then I’d probably get flak when it’s Satan’s or Beelzebub’s turn…

        5. leftwingfox

          “We must also remember that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. ”

          Sorry but that phrase bugs me, because it gets misused a lot.

          “We haven’t really looked there yet.” is absence of evidence. “We looked and didn’t find anything.” is evidence of absence.

        6. Lumin

          It depends what you regard as evidence. Certainly “If we can’t explain it, it was supernatural” isn’t an adequate conclusion, but if you assume that “even though we can’t explain it, it definitely wasn’t supernatural, because nothing is,” you have pre-judged the question and so might not perceive something as supernatural even if it was, and even if other people said they had evidence that it was.

      2. Arian

        There are certainly people reading who describe themselves as Christians; I’m one, and I’ve seen a fair few other people posting that they were. Whether Joyce’s church would call any of us that is another matter. 😛 For my part, if someone asks me online whether I am, my reply is, “Tell me what your definition of ‘a Christian’ is, and then I’ll tell you whether I’m in that set.”

        1. hof1991

          Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.

          That’s from that hippie and flaming liberal John Paul II.

        2. nothri

          For better or worse, I was baptized a Lutheran. I like this, because historically it means my church has a grand tradition of taking the “you aren’t christian if you believe in X” people and replying “Actually I am Christian, here’s a bunch of reasons why you are terrible, and by the way go fuck yourself” and nailing it to their door.

      3. Rutee

        There’s not a lot of other ways for it to end, because YEC, the variety Joyce holds to, is demonstrably wrong

        But the point isn’t really the argument. The point is how the characters react to what’s happening. It’s only pointless if it doesn’t end up contributing to ANY ongoing arcs.

      4. Leila

        Yeah, so my Catholic school taught biology, which I tuned out, since I was into Bill Nye the Science Guy and was reading more science at home than the textbooks covered. The only thing I remember from 7th grade bio at a Catholic school was our (male) teach saying, “So if I’m reading the textbook right, women are fertile three days out of the month…”

    3. Fwip

      Wait, in the comic or the comments?

      1. chris73

        Oh sorry I meant in the comics, definitely not in the comments

    4. LeslieBean4Shizzle

      Why? Such arguments are always pointless.
      I had the words “almost” and “mostly” in there, but upon reflection, I removed them. The times when they apply are so rare as to be practically non-existent. Online anyway. I suppose one might have slightly more luck in person. Slightly.

      1. LeslieBean4Shizzle

        OH. I thought you meant in the comments as well. Nevermind.

      2. Rutee

        I’ve actually learned a fair amount from line-by-line refutations and the like. Calling it useless assumes that A: the only utility is in convincing YECs, and B: that absolutely none are ever convinced. It’s rare, but it’s not a fucking unicorn (either that or I’ve seen a lot of unicorns)

  11. AeromechanicalAce

    Dina should counter with a link of Bill Nye’s debate with Ken Hamm

    1. Mollyscribbles

      You do realize that Joyce links Ken Hamm’s website and on it he explains how he totally won the debate.

  12. Carms

    Joke delivered.

    1. StClair

      That might have given me an actual triangle grin.

      1. JessWitt

        You might need to see your doctor about that.

    2. Bagge

      I love Dina’s journey into gaining a sense of humor.

    3. butts

      DEPLOYING JOKE……..

      JOKE DEPLOYED……..

      ESTIMATED SURVIVORS………… 0.0

      1. Gigafreak

        I like how the significant figures only give one point after the decimal. It implies that perhaps the error margin allows for 0.04 survivors: the joke-apocalypse destroyed all of humanity except for this one guy’s exceptionally lively left testicle.

  13. shadowcell

    “Joke Delivered,” another excellent Dumbing of Age book title

  14. Stephen R. Bierce

    Added to Dina’s To-Do List: go get Becky a cheap cellphone.

    1. Leorale

      She could use some of her $200-girlfriend-money that her parents sent her and get her a tablet to use with wifi. A really uncomfortably extravagant gift.

      1. Cerberus

        Oh man, that would so be a Dina thing to do and it would make Becky so very uncomfortable considering she felt awkward simply about being treated out to a fancy dinner.

  15. Vagabond J

    *Snatches back the keys to the music locker and haphazardly selects a song about dinosaurs*

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYKupOsaJmk

    1. Sokol

      How about a song for Joyce? I’m a Russian Atheist, is Battle Hymn of the Republic what you call “Jesus music?”

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jRnL6fRdcc

      1. Dallas

        No, that’s American music.

        1. Durandal_1707

          More specifically, that’s Union Army music. The propaganda Joyce has grown up with is more likely to foster Confederate sympathies.

    2. Stephen R. Bierce

      In response, I was going to choose Hoodoo Gurus’ “I Want You Back” official video, but it’s not currently available on YouTube or Vevo. :/

  16. Mr. Random

    Once had an argument online where the character limit meant we each had to put things into separate comments. So it got to the point where we would refute each comment separately. Eventually, we were both having at least 25 different discussions with each other ranging from the Crusades to Muslim independence and nationalities.
    I doubt we each got our points across, but it was and has still been the most interesting argument I have ever had to date.

    1. TheDudeManGuy

      Once did the same thing, except our discussions were on social policies (not religion). We started out talking about medicare and ended up on topics ranging from Euthanasia to the United States Prison system.

    2. Cassidy

      Yeah. If you both understand how, you can even have the sort of conversation linearly. To quote Empire Star, “Merely order your perceptions multiplexly, and all will be made clear”.

    3. StClair

      Sounds like one of those “chess master plays two dozen people simultaneously” things.

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        I have noticed on IRC that the chat often drifts into two different threads, you write in thread two while waiting for the responses to your last bit in thread one.

  17. Kernanator

    The faces in this arc have been amazing.

    1. JessWitt

      Yep, they get better with every storyline.

      1. Kernanator

        Honestly, if there was a storyline that was nothing but characters making increasingly more ridiculous distressed faces, I would not complain at all.

        1. No Name

          I would, it would mean the characters are under duress. But then again, when aren’t they?

  18. Lapin

    And now I’m getting flashbacks to the first time my mother guilted me into attending a church her friends attended and they started “joking” with me about my science degree and evolution, and using that /condescending/ tone and my temper snapped.

    Two of them were so “upset” they were “crying” (aka attempting to move heartstrings I don’t possess), by the time I was done ripping them and the Young Earth theory to pieces, and while I didn’t change any of their minds, my mother’s friends no longer attempt to interact with me. So I win.

    1. JessWitt

      It was for the best, especially since they couldn’t respect your work.

      1. Lapin

        Eh. I’m actually not really proud of that moment. They were (and still are) ignorant as fuck and enjoy it, and I let them rile me up, which shows my own immaturity. This panel makes me think of it, and while I’m not sorry about the things I said, I’m sorry I was so insecure I lost my temper over moronic ideas held by idiots.

        1. JessWitt

          Regardless, it’s a nice reflection of how you can better yourself, be more mature if not already.

    2. Some1

      Your’e a regular Clarence Darrow

      1. Lapin

        I was a regular immature brat with a temper problem. I mean, they still don’t talk to me, and we all like it that way, but I’m actually kind of really embarrassed that I let myself get so worked up. It was dumb and ridiculous.

        1. Arian

          I agree with JessWitt’s comment above. You understand that on that occasion you acted like an immature brat with a temper problem. There’s going to be other occasions when you run across people who are thoroughly ignorant and enjoy it, so before then you can work out a plan for Not Getting Riled, and acting in a way that you can respect yourself for when you look back on it. Every cloud, etc.

        2. StClair

          Double agreed.

        3. Hrovitnir

          I dunno, it may not be the ideal course of action but I hate this idea that when someone is being deliberately hurtful (or hateful) it’s terrible for anyone to call them out on it – because those people know damn well that making it a scene will reflect badly on you. Eugh.

    3. Needfuldoer

      Just more of tge world’s Marys. You were there respecting their beliefs, that shouldn’t have been a prompt for them to mock yours and attempt to “convert” you.

      “If you need the promise of a divine reward to be a good person, then you’re not a good person.”

      1. StClair

        The converse is also true, and a dismaying number of believers seem unable to comprehend how or why a person would behave in a “moral” fashion without the threat of eternal torture. (IMO, that’s not ethics, that’s Stockholm syndrome.)

    4. JohnF

      I hear you Lapin. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a pastor talk about “those evil, satan deceived scientists” and follow up with “of course, I’m not talking about you John”.

      St Augustin (now there’s a man tied in knots over sexual identity crises) made the interesting and, imho, valid point that we have two sources for God’s Word: Scripture (the revealed word) and the Universe (the manifest word of God). It sometimes seems they contradict each other, but as the word of God cannot contradict the Word of God (yes, I know there’s plenty of contradictions, just in the 1st three chapters of Genesis, but bear with me), any perceived contradiction must mean a lack of understanding of one or the other. St Augustin said that invariably people misinterpret scripture.

      This makes up for a lot of his rubbish, such as original sin, the immaculate conception and homeousioun.

  19. Henry

    -twitches involuntarily at the mention of “Answers in Genesis.”-

    1. Jay Eff

      You weren’t expecting “Answers in Genesis,” were you??

      1. Mycotic

        No one expects the answers in genesis!

      2. Shaith

        They’re like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expects them.

        1. TheHabbadasher

          Their three chief weapons are fear, indoctrination, willful ignorance, and a devotion to a completely literal, and completely ahistorical, interpretation of the bible.

        2. thejeff

          “I’ll come in again.”

  20. Charles Phipps

    I’m surprised Joyce has never visited a Creationist museum. They have huge dinosaur sections.

    1. Charles Phipps

      And yes, they all died in the Flood.

      1. Charles Phipps

        Ah, Answers in Genesis is a specific link, not an actual, “Just read the book of Genesis.”

        1. Mollyscribbles

          and the website of the Creation Museum people.

      2. ScarvesandCelery

        I was reading an article that was trying to make the “The Dinosaurs were wiped out by the great flood” argument yesterday. I’m no scientist, but I was pained by the lack of a proper scientific approach. It’s doing exactly what you shouldn’t do: instead of using all the available data to reach a conclusion, it has an already decided conclusion, and is cramming in the data to (awkwardly) fit that conclusion.

        1. Airyu

          this is a good description of the entire answers in genesis site. i heard of it for the first time from this comic, went browsing, and oh my am i sorry i gave it pageviews.

    2. Rutee

      There aren’t actually that many of them, and I think the big ones are pretty far out of state for her.

      But I doubt she’s rejecting Dina’s links because they mention dinosaurs on their own. It’s that they’re talking about dinosaurs AS THEY ACTUALLY EXISTED. Which, you know. Is bad for creationists.

    3. Scott John Harrison

      Dina would love the Creation Museum – you can ride a Triceratops.

      http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/The_Creation_%E2%80%9CMuseum%E2%80%9D

      but I believe it is not accurate.

      1. Roborat

        I suspect that it would give her an aneurism.

  21. Yotomoe

    (no more malaya…or Sal)

    1. Jay Eff

      Hey, it could be worse! Everyone like Dina!
      (though Malaya gives us…diff’ernt things.)

      1. Yotomoe

        Most people like Dina!

        1. Emily

          Them’s there are fightin’ words.

        2. Spencer

          Some people don’t like Dina as much as everyone else!

        3. Emily

          Sure, people like Toedad.

        4. Deanatay

          You mean, like:

          Scrap! Duel! Brawl! Tussle!

    2. Cephalo the Pod

      Sal will be back (with Walky) by the 22nd.

  22. DinaWho

    DINA IS BACK 😀

  23. TheOthin

    So that’s who Joyce was talking to.

    http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/complain/

    http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/roundtheclock/

    1. Pl0x

      No, it was Dorothy. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/checkingin/

    2. Showler

      At this point, Willis is clearly determined to give us a sufficiency of false leads to cover up who she has been texting with until he chooses to reveal it.

      1. Bagge

        I mean, she HAS obviously texted with all of them – here we learn that she answered to Dina, and we can take for granted that she has seen Dorothy’s text.

        That is wonderful and beautiful – she has all these friends that reach out to her.

        As for TheOthin’s question, who was the other person in those specific conversations who Joyce could open her heart to… yeah, I agree that we have a lot of people to choose from (including Sarah: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/deviations/).

        As many other people have said before me, Joe looks like a more and more likely candidate. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/sorry-3/

        1. Cerberus

          Yeah, I think it’s turning out that she’s been in text contact with all her friends. And that strength they are giving is what’s getting her through all this.

        2. Bagge

          The one person who couldn’t text with her – Becky – made sure to bum a ride to give her suport in person instead. Joyce have a horrible time right now, but she has A LOT of friends who look out for her.

        3. StClair

          you mean “sinful people leading her astray.” :p

        4. Bagge

          Oh God, I hope Carol doesn’t look at her phone.

  24. LimeSheep

    people arent required to know science, dina ;|

    1. Deanatay

      *climbs up above LimeSheep, glares down at them*

      BUT THEY SHOULD BE.

    2. Bagge

      ….but, but, but… it’s SCIENCE!!!

      1. Bagge

        Related: Girlgenius, panel 3
        http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20130802#.Vxd7npN95Bw

        Warning: Some rather confusing, but nevertheless really heavy, spoilers. Do not click link unless already into girl genius

    3. EmbraceEvil

      doesn’t make creationism anymore reasonable, or any less cringe-worthy tho

  25. Charles Phipps

    There’s no contradiction between God and evolution. It does, however, make God into a fun mad scientist who likes to put things in a pot and mix random chemicals to see what happens like Doctor Manhattan crossed with a good version of Doctor Sivanna. Albeit, that does open the odd factoid of whether God would be mixing the chemicals of its various lab planetoids because it would get a result or because it saw it would do so–cause and effect gets blurry with omniscience and quantum mechanics.

    1. Charles Phipps

      I’m a theist but my views on trying to attribute every hole in science to God are….not favorable.

      1. LeslieBean4Shizzle

        I’m a polythiest myself, but I do enjoy Christian history and mythology. Gnostic angels are fucking awesome. Not to mention scary as all get out.

        And yeah, I have never understood why some people don’t think science and faith mix. In the ancient world, they attributed things they didn’t understand to gods but they still tried to understand how they worked.

        But yeah, those Gnostic angels, man. Fuckin’ sweet.

        1. hof1991

          If you like the Lucifer TV series, the books are a lot better. Gnostic angels galore.

        2. Scar Man!!!

          Wait, so does that mean that G-d in that series is closer to the Demi-urge?

      2. Huttj509

        My view is basically “it might be G-d, but that doesn’t mean we stop looking.”

    2. LeslieBean4Shizzle

      The thing I find sad is that the scientific method and most of the observations that eventually led to the theory of evolution by natural selection were all made by Christians. Catholics specifically. How soon they forget.

      1. trlkly

        And Catholicism accepts evolution. Problem is, Joyce is not a Catholic, and is in a sect more likely to think that Catholicism and the Pope are the Antichrist.

        On a more personal note, it’s also part of Joyce’s attempt to hold on to as much of what she was raised with as she can. I have to admit, I held on to it, too, for a while. At least, I fell for the Apologetics. What’s weird is that I had previously thought it didn’t really matter.

        1. LeslieBean4Shizzle

          Never said Joyce was. Since I grew up in the same general region where Joyce lives, I am aware of the difference.

          Just sayin it was Christians who figured most of this stuff out in the first place. People tend to forget that.

        2. Boxilar

          Yup. Galileo’s big sin wasn’t insisting on heliocentrism, it was calling the Pope an idiot. In print. Where.everyone could see it.

      2. Huttj509

        Honestly, the young earth hyper-literalist movement in the USA is, well, less than a century old. I think part was backlash to “those godless commies,” IIRC.

        Crud, I feel bad saying that without a citation, but I’m not sure where to start looking for one.

        1. EvolutionistX

          Check out the Scopes Monkey Trial. IIRC, the anti-evolution side was argued by William Jennings Bryan of “You will not crucify us on a cross of gold” fame. His stated motivation for opposing the teaching of evolution had less to do with science or theology and more to do with opposition to “social darwinism” type thinking.

        2. Rutee

          I can’t say I’ve read his private memoirs, but that absolutely doesn’t hold with his arguments in court. His arguments are very much about materialism, and its inappropriateness.

          There’s a /reason/ he lost the trial as it was actually intended.

        3. Rutee

          Not quite, it’s a bit closer to 150 years old. It’s pretty old for an individual religious movement, but it’s fairly young in comparison to its attached religions.

        4. Boxilar

          Hyperliteralism got going good in the mid 19th century, mostly in response to scientific advances spurred by the industrial revolution. Science was seen as suddenly having rational nonsupernatural explanations for the world and religion reacted by taking stories that has always been viewed as allegorical and making them historical fact.

      3. Rutee

        Yes, but those christians are, ipso-facto, not Real, True Christians.

    3. Fwip

      No contradiction between evolution and the raw concept of a deity, but there is a contradiction between evolution and specific claims of God, such as a deity that made the universe six-thousand years ago or all organisms in their present form.

      Also, omniscience must know the outcome of things by definition. If you don’t know the outcome of all things, you’re not omniscient… Though you may know a great deal.

      A deity that experiments rather than simply knows is a curious one.

      1. Charles Phipps

        Actually, that’s one of the things which is the contradiction of omniscience as it actually calls into question the notions of free will and action. You could easily say, “I know I will do X because I decide to do X.” But if you’re able to decide and can see all outcomes then you become able to alter the cosmic state of the universe. But are you omniscient to yourself so you KNOW YOUR OWN future actions? It’s turtles all the way down. Which is why I prefer to see my God as a big fluffy Cthulhu with heaping doses of Good Yog-Sothoth. It’s an utterly alien but benevolent mind (and I say benevolent with the caveat it’d by nature completely incomprehensible but I tend to think the best of people).

        1. Charles Phipps

          Sorry, unsurprisingly, I teach philosophy and love issues of Determinalism.

        2. Fwip

          Free will is illusory. Decisions are either predicated upon circumstances (which include internal circumstances) and, thus, would always happen the way they did under those exact circumstances, or they are not, in which case, no deciding factor controls them and they are effectively random. In the former case, you have no control over your decisions because they (and your opinions about them) are all shaped by causal chains beyond your control; in the latter case, you have no control over them because they are random.

          Free will persists as an illusion only because we are not totally cognizant of our decision-making mechanisms. If we were, as an omniscient being would be, our decisions would be plainly evident as the outputs of complex systems. Such a being would know its own fate, from the beginning to the end of time. It must, or it is not omniscient.

          This isn’t necessarily self-contradictory so long as you subscribe to divine simplicity, where the foresight is integrated into the divine being; no parts exist that can then modify themselves in response to the foresight because the foresight is innately part of it. Otherwise, though, it’s a paradox, yes.

          I fear, also, the idea of a divine being as benevolent but also somehow alien is contradictory; if it is benevolent, it must somehow be familiar to you or else its definition of benevolence and yours could never match up. If you do try and take it that way, you get Calvinism, and nobody likes that. Not even Calvinists, I don’t think.

          I enjoy talking about this stuff too. As you might’ve guessed.

        3. LeslieBean4Shizzle

          See, I can never get behind that free will is an illusion thing. As soon as you can question that fact, you can consider options that run counter to your automatic internal reactions. You can question your own actions and adjust your behavior accordingly. That’s one of the points of self-reflection – to learn to spot one’s own assumptions and prejudices and question them.

        4. Fwip

          You don’t need free will to do any of those things, is the thing. A complex system can self-adjust and self-evaluate without ever being anything but purely mechanistic.

          Determinism doesn’t mean you’re a glassy-eyed automaton. Your actions are simply the output of a truly staggeringly complex system.

          In simplest form, you are your brain (setting aside embodied cognition for a moment). If you accept this statement, then follow it up with this: Your brain is made of atoms and molecules, all independently interacting according to the laws of physics.

          Do those atoms or molecules have free will? Do the laws of physics? If not, then why should the output of those processes (you) have it?

        5. LeslieBean4Shizzle

          Yeah, no. Like I said, I hate that argument because it assumes that the consciousness created by those molecules can’t make decisions. A living, thinking, self-aware human is more than the sum of its sub-atomic particles.

          I could go on, but I really don’t want to. I jumped in here to discuss the interplay of faith and science, not this.

        6. Fwip

          I don’t see there as a greater interplay of faith and science than questions like these, myself. Questions of cosmic significance, nature, purpose, etc.

          As far as your response… I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that humans can’t make decisions from. Determinism doesn’t say that either; merely that those decisions are a predetermined outcome of the complex system that is the universe.

          Think on what your definition of a decision is for a moment and you’ll realize it’s deterministic: Given an exact set of specific circumstances, a person will make decision X. If this is not the case, then their decision-making was random, since their decision had nothing to do with the reality surrounding them.

          Humans are collections of particles. Living, thinking, self-awareness; these are things that molecules do, when put in the right shape and given enough time.

          If you don’t wanna discuss that, well… To each their own.

        7. trlkly

          No. That is a false dichotomy. A choice is not determined or random. It is a weighted value. You must have less than 100% certainty or else there is no choice. A choice requires at least two options, with at least some probability that either one is taken. That’s what choice means. If I was always going to do one thing, then I never had a choice in the first place.

          You’d think this idea would have gone away when we found out the probabilistic nature of the quantum world, and the fact that our minds run on electricity, which is also in the quantum world. Determinism doesn’t work in a quantum world. There is merely the illusion of determinism because, at macro levels, the probabilistic nature of reality mostly cancels itself out.

          As for your claim that we are merely groups of nonliving molecules, that is belief, not a fact. Christians are substance dualists, who believe there is something called a soul that is more than the sum of the parts involved. That soul is what continues to have an afterlife, even though the molecules are no longer active.

          And, finally, nothing you are discussing is about faith. It’s pretty much the opposite. You are pushing for naturalism, which has no faith component. That’s fine, but you need to be aware that you are ultimately witnessing for that point of view.

          And unless you want Christians to be able to tell you that you’re going to hell, it’s probably a good idea to actually stop when someone asks you to stop.

        8. Fwip

          @trikly:

          Firstly, you might wanna check with Calvinists first who, despite (typically) believing in an ephemeral soul, are some of the strongest Christian advocates for determinism. Calvin argued, centuries before I did, that an omniscient and omnipotent God would know every choice ahead of time. The idea is also embedded in Islam, where concepts like al-qadar exist. Just because I don’t believe in any sort of soul doesn’t mean that this isn’t a theologically important concept. Arminianism largely predicates God’s goodness on this not being true and, in the context of the comic, elements of Arminian free will theology drip from the brand of evangelicalism that Joyce subscribes to.

          So, yeah, this is a theological discussion. It has colossal implications for huge numbers of people.

          Second, if you want a discussion to end, you might not want to take it as an opportunity to throw your own point of view into it. It had clearly stopped, and yet you decided to spend four paragraphs disagreeing with me before you said it should be put to a halt. Either you’re interested in discussing this point or you want me to stop talking about it, but you can’t really have both, y’know?

          Third, I don’t need to resort to materialism to argue that determinism must be true. I just do so when it’s clear the person I’m talking to is a materialist, since it greatly simplifies the discussion.

          Fourth, quantum effects don’t disprove this idea any more than the unpredictability of subatomic particles do. Quantum randomness is something that may be a fundamental part of reality, but it might also simply be that we are accessing a scale of reality so infinitely smaller than our own that our ability to probe for information to any degree of certainty is limited. It isn’t really any different to describe it one way or the other; the equations are simply modeling observations of behaviour and would be the same either way.

          Fifth, even quantum randomness was a real feature of reality and events truly did happen without cause (pity help us), it wouldn’t make free will any more real. We’d still ultimately not have any more or less control of what decisions we make.

          Sixth, our brains do not run on electricity. Neurons use differences in potential across the membrane as a signaling mechanism along dendrites and axons; openings of ion channels cause changes in potential that propagate throughout the cell until they reach an ion-gated or ionic strength-controlled section of the cell, at which point the changes in ambient charge produce a reaction (release of neurotransmitters, in the case of an axon). If you want to say our brains run on electricity, so does every single other cell. This isn’t tremendously relevant, but it annoys me when shows and movies have the brain look like a collection of wires, when everything’s really analog.

          Seventh, and finally to the good stuff, your definition of choice is a curious one.

          Ask yourself about some choice you’ve made in your life. Any choice. Ask yourself “What would it have taken to make me choose the other option(s)?”

          Once you’ve done so, you’ll realize that the very asking of that question demonstrates the falsity of the free will hypothesis. Your choice is controlled by circumstances, and those circumstances are things you never have control over; even your actions to change them are decided by other circumstances before.

          Unless your decisions are utterly random, they are dictated by something, usually a huge number of somethings. Where you see a possibility of doing something else, all I see is hidden variables that you haven’t noticed. There is a possibility of you walking instead of taking the bus, but it’ll only be taken if you feel like you’ve been sitting too long and need to stretch your legs, and you only decided to sit for as long as you did because you needed to study, and…

          And so on.

          You get the idea.

        9. vivid

          makes perfect sense to me, i think where people get lost/get upset is that they tend to think agreeing with determinism means making choices is impossible/meaningless and that we should just give up, or something like that.

        10. Fwip

          Aye, but even if all that were true, it doesn’t make it any more or less wrong. Reality is independent of what we want it to be, y’know?

        11. Boxilar

          I think the better way to put it is that your brain is made up of neurons each acting on the other. We’re the end product of billions of years of evolutionary programming with powerful in built programming that directs and shapes our actions and decisions. I don’t know if free will is an illusion or not, but if it exists at all, it happens within a very narrow set of parameters. Sometimes I think that the people seeking “enlightenment” are trying to break out of those constraints.

        12. Charles Phipps

          Well the context of free will in determinalism is that you are able to choose whatever benefits you best according to your beliefs, environment, and the conflicts between those two. Which may follow a specific ordered lead but since that ordered lead is, “The person who is you as decided by these factors choosing these things” the idea of stating free will is an illusion is a meaningless one.

        13. Marie

          Isn’t this what happened to Sapphire?

      2. LeslieBean4Shizzle

        @Fwip:
        Only if one insists on being super literal (which they do). To use Genesis as an example, it claims that God created plants, then fish, then birds, then land animals. If you assume that “birds” means “flying insects” and assume that “land animals” means amphibians then that is actually the correct order.
        Genesis claims that this happened in a matter of days, but what is a day for a deity? Or, to put a more literal spin on things, someone in the ancient world might interpret a fade-cut as a day-night cycle. If “god” was using modern cinematic techniques to explain evolution to Moses, and then Moses had to go write it down after the fact, it might have ended up sounding something like Genesis.
        Again, not a Christian, but I have always found this rather fascinating. And I find it equally disappointing that this never seems to occur to any Creationists.

        1. Rutee

          ….

          It doesn’t occur to Creationists because so much of it is horse hockey. I mean, ‘land animals’ means amphibians? Fundamentalists often rely on ‘simple, literal’ readings that are more like bible codes, but ‘birds’ for ‘birds’ and not ‘insects’ is just the bloody text (and I’m pretty sure it’s the text in hebrew, greek, and the like). It’s easy to read the whole thing allegorically, but word cyphers based on how we would like to think Jewish people understood concepts (Because it makes a message fit together) is honestly even less worthy of respect than AIG repetition.

        2. Fwip

          A better answer might be “If God wanted to explain this, why not do so in a clear and unambiguous manner?”.

        3. trlkly

          No, a better answer would be to stop witnessing. No one is trying to convert you to Christianity, so don’t try to convert them away from it.

          He’s just pointing out that Christians have options when it comes to reading and interpreting Genesis. It’s kinda important to the comic. Your desire to “discuss” theology by trying to discount it doesn’t have anything to do with the comic.

        4. Airyu

          How is fwip explaining their point witnessing? No one said anything about getting people to not believe in god. And the DoA comments section has plenty of threads not directly about the comic. If you don’t want to read a comment, you aren’t obligated to. Geez, this is why I stick to patreon comments lately; people don’t like anyone except themselves talking over here.

        5. Lumin

          It’s not everybody, I don’t think it’s even individual people every time they post, and some people just have an adversarial way of posting even when they don’t actually mean to suggest that your opinion isn’t welcome. If I were you, I’d just not respond to anyone who uses a tone you don’t appreciate. Or alternatively, respond to the ideas and disregard the tone. This is by far the most consistently civil comments section I post in, and it’d be a pity for you to feel excluded because of a few replies that were less so.

        6. Boxilar

          My dad was a “casual Christian”. His upbringing made it nearly impossible not to believe in a supreme being, but he also thought fundamentalists were full of it. My father was a man who experienced enormous personal growth in his lifetime. He grew up in the Jim Crow south and was a staunch segregationist in his youth. By the time he passed away, he had moved so far away from those views that in the 1990’s he was saying that gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military and there should be some allowance for gay couples marry. Mom was never a fundamentalist, but she was religious and we got carted off to church every Sunday morning. Dad stayed home and watched political talking heads argue. My parents were both avid readers and encouraged it in their children. So inevitably things I read conflicted with what I was being taught in Sunday school. Mom waffle, but Dad came up with an elegant answer that allowed me to deal with the discrepancy. He said that God had spoken in terms a bunch of illiterate shepherds would understand. He figured old Joseph and company might not have understood evolution or quantum physics or the mind boggling.amount of time it took, so it became the story in Genesis. That was when I was ten or so. Later in life, as adult, I became close friends with my dad and discovered through conversation that he thought that religion as a whole was mostly bullshit. I asked why he had given me the explanation he had and he said, “Because you wouldn’t have accepted that the whole thing was crap. You needed a half way point. So I gave you one.” It’s been 15 years since he died, and I still miss him terribly sometimes.

        7. Fwip

          Your Dad sounds like he was an awesome dude. My mother – who is still with us – came from a fundie background, and that’s sort of what I got raised in, but she never stopped encouraging us kids to form our own opinions.

          Personally, that’s the answer I used to accept – that God was giving the dumbed down version – but, over time, I accepted it less and less. India, for example, has texts dealing with billions of years of time that date back long before Moses was having Genesis transcribed, and Anaxemander and other Greeks were discussing evolution (albeit in a veeeery remedial form) in the 500s BC.

          But… Eh. To each their own.

      3. Time Sage

        I like to think god is playing a cosmic version of spore. Also the dinosaurs died because they were a failed experiment (Also an experiment in killing things!)

        It’s telling that I avoid churches like the plauge.

      4. EvolutionistX

        Don’t think the Bible claims anywhere that all animals were created in their current form.
        And “omnipotent god can’t experiment” seems contradicted by the whole course of humanity pre-Noah followed by god wiping the slate clean and starting humanity over. Not to mention all of those times when, say, god was going to do X, but Abraham or whomever talked him out of it.

        1. Rutee

          “Omniscient”, not “Omnipotent”. An omniscient god, by definition, has no need of an experiment, because they know the outcomes of their actions. Also, literally everything else. If you argue that God was experimenting ‘pre-flood’ (FYI: ‘the flood’ absolutely did not happen)

        2. David M Willis

          After every Creation Day, God said that what he had created was “good.” Therefore, animals did not evolve, because that would suggest that they weren’t actually good enough, thus making God a liar.

          TRUE STORY

        3. trlkly

          But that’s because he did it 6000 years ago. Evolution happened before then, between that huge gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2.

          TRUE STORY

        4. David M Willis

          evolution happened before god created plants and animals, sure

        5. trlkly

          Ah, but he didn’t create. He said “let there be,” which meant he was recreating what had already been there.

          I’m surprised you never heard of it. I figured as a former fundamentalist, you’ve have been through all the ways Creationists try to justify these things.

          It’s called the Gap theory. Any excuse to keep the Bible as literal.

        6. ischemgeek

          Not a fundamentalist, but I have also seen Christian apologetics which argues that the Genesis 7-day story is not incompatible because nothing says the ‘day’ had to be 24 hours because the sun didn’t exist for the first X number of days (I am not Christian so am fuzzy on the creation story. I got myself expelled from Sunday school and that was pretty much the end of religion for me). Completely uncertain how popular that tack is, but I remember reading some historical documents from around when Darwin was defending On The Origin of Species by some Christian scientists who were trying to persuade other Christian scientists that evolution was not incompatible with the Bible, so it’s about as old as evolution as a concept.

        7. Boxilar

          ischemgeek, that’s more or less what my dad told me to keep me from losing my shit over the internal conflict between the creation story and the natural history I read about in my dinosaur books. I think he believed in a higher being, but he mostly thought religion was horseshit.

        8. Carriethedragon

          Those are two really interesting interpretations… that would’ve been considered complete bunk by most of the fundamentalists I know! What ischemgreek is talking about is what I believed for a long time. That was a pretty liberal viewpoint to some of my friends. As for what trlkly is talking about… that would’ve been nothing less than heresy. And throughout my life and variety of beliefs, I never would have given that idea a second glance.

        9. Smiling Cat

          Fun fact, God actually said “Good enough” in a huff of frustration after six days of struggling to get everything perfect. Then later decided to wipe things out in a cleansing flood and try again.

          (or that might have just been me painting miniatures. I often confuse myself with God.)

        10. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          I thought he goofed off for 6 days and then pulled an all-nighter…

        11. StClair

          Also familiar to any programmer, and related fields. (See xkcd 349, for example.)

          One of my favorite God-as-programmer jokes is that buried somewhere in the platypus genome is the line “## drunk fix later”.

      5. JohnF

        The whole “6 thousand year” thing is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word “nom”, which may mean a day, a week, or any period of time, not necessarily uniform. Apart from the order being a bit out, that makes Gen 1 make more sense. I was told this by the Reader at the local synagogue, by the way, and I’d trust his understanding of Hebrew better than those with a degree from Ron Hubbard University.

        1. Rutee

          His understanding of the hebrew is absolutely going to be better, but IIRC they get the 6000 years by using the bloodlines in Genesis 2, Deuteronomy (IIRC), and the like, not Genesis 1 direct translations

        2. trlkly

          It’s kinda hard to argue it’s a mistranslation when the text specifically cites “evening and then morning” each time.

          The real answer is that thing that fundamentalists hate. It’s a metaphor. It’s not supposed to be taken literally.

        3. Gigafreak

          Fundamentalists hate him! One weird trick to interpreting scripture!

        4. Fwip

          Genesis is many things, but I don’t think we should discount the idea that this is really what some – nay, perhaps the majority – ancient Hebrews actually believed.

          Genesis is similar in many ways to other creation myths from the area it was written in (though its style is also a fairly magnificent rebuke of those myths as well). We don’t presume the Egyptians saw their creation story as metaphor or their gods as allegories. Why assume so for the Hebrews?

          If you have an answer for that, please share it; I find ancient Semitic beliefs pretty fascinating.

        5. Smiling Cat

          Hey, you try to explain the creation to a bunch of barely more than hunter gatherers with no sense of the scientific underpinnings of the universe and see how well they repeat it when they write it down thousands of years after the fact. 🙂

          Reason #302899 why I can’t be a biblical literalist.

      6. Rutee

        It’s only weird if you assume omniscience. Omniscience is a claim that Christians made of their god, but it’s by no means the standard for deities in religions the world over. If it were, trickster deities would be totally out of a job.

        1. Rutee

          oh, wait, you mean curious as in ‘seeks knowledge’, not a polite euphemism for weird.

        2. Fwip

          I actually did mean the euphemism for weird; your response is correct.

        3. Fwip

          Actually, in a double-correction, I want to add that I don’t want negative connotations on that either; I mean curious to say unusual and intriguing.

    4. Rutee

      No, that’s.. that’s a series of leaps that aren’t necessary based on the concept of the god that Christians tend to hold to. An omniscient god knows exactly what the results of his actions are. He can set the conditions on earth, down to the last molecule, and knows how every seemingly-random event will turn out. Evolution doesn’t require a mad science god, as such. YHWH set things up so that they’d create an EArth that had humans at the point in history they showed up, etc.

      I mean, omniscience brings its own problems for theology, but here, it’s actually pretty solid.

  26. Bagge

    Dina promised to save Becky… now she know the depth of lies she has to save her FROM.

    I love her thousand-mile-stare in the last panel. “and then they disregarded the fossil record…. why would they disregard the fossil record?”

    1. Charles Phipps

      Now I’m totally thinking that’s what she’s thinking.

      :thumbs up:

    2. Rukduk

      “Erosion is such a simple geological concept. How can they ignore that?”

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        I thought the idea was that God is a forger, he created all those strata and fossils as props to test peoples’ faith. God lied to people to help them see his Truth.

    3. Cerberus

      Yup, to Dina, Becky’s background and the worldviews that she’s escaped from, are as alien as flying saucers and acid blood. And she’s been getting as much of an education about that as Becky has been getting an education on evolution and dinosaurs.

  27. Vonniesaur

    Dina is me
    (But I communicate with people primarily through webcomic links and Neko Atsume pictures)

  28. Mo

    THAT IS ONE BIG PILE OF SHIT

    1. Rukduk

      This is why we need a thumbs up or like system here.

  29. Charles Phipps

    On a less scientific note, it’s unfortunate Joyce really can’t appreciate of Dinah and Becky’s happiness. No sooner does one hurdle get crossed than another emerges because the entirety of her worldview is one long interwoven thread which needs to be tugged on.

    1. Cerberus

      I think it’s more Joyce reflexively negatively reacting to evolution-related links rather than realizing that it was intended for Becky. Like, ooh, how dare this evil-utionist “attack” my faith with these dinosaur links, I’ll show her! Cause I’m guessing Dina’s not the type to realize that she should text, hey, Joyce ignore, these are for Becky.

  30. Idontcarenomore

    As much as I dislike the Creationism, I consider it nonsense, I recognize the rights of those who do believe it.

    Dina deserved the blast of Genesis imo. She was being rude I think.

    Joyce is allowing Dina to use her cell to talk to her gf, she should respect Joyce’s beliefs and keep her messages general.

    Now is not the time to ignore her knowledge of Joyce’s beliefs and deliberately do it her way anyway. Be polite.

    1. Charles Phipps

      I’m disinclined to agree as Joyce is basically butting into someone else’s conversation. If she’s letting her use the phone to communicate with Becky, let her. If she’s going to refuse, refuse. Letting her use the phone is not a right to let her comment on the content.

    2. ObiKemnebi

      Dina wasn’t being rude, she was just trying to connect. She has difficulty talking to people and understanding social etiquette, as she has admitted on numerous occasions. And talking about dinosaurs doesn’t inherently attack Joyce’s beliefs; even creationist have to admit that dinosaurs /existed/, regardless of whether they believe in evolution. Some flirty pun about stegosaurus or whatever does not immediately equate to “Hey let’s talk about how God’s not real”.

      1. Briny

        I’d grade on a curve with Joyce, right now- she’s having a bit of a time, back home, and Dina presumably either knew that or has someone who can explain that.

        I mean, if everyone was grading on a curve for me because I only know one topic to talk about, and I knew it, I’d try to be understanding in turn.

      2. ischemgeek

        Thank you.

        I relate to Dina immensely. Dina was offensive to Joyce, that does not mean she was intentionally engaging in rudeness.

        People need to appreciate exactly how hard of a time Dina has on the social front. If you have ever experienced culture shock – that feeling where you don’t know the social rules in a place, everything is different from what you’re used to, you’re not comfortable with how they speak, and their belief systems are alien and incomprehensible to you – that’s basically what being autistic is like all the time. It’s a combination of “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing” and “I don’t know what any of this means” and “What the fuck is that supposed to be?” and “For all that is good, I hope I don’t piss anyone off.”

        Only it’s like that all the time.

        That’s what Dina’s dealing with: Joyce operates on an alien and incomprehensible set of rules to Dina. Yeah, it’s fairly obvious to a non-autistic why Joyce would get pissed off (and even to an older and more experienced autistic like me – that said, 18YO me would have probably made exactly the same mistake because I was, if anything, even more clueless than Dina. Dina, at least, is able to recognize when others are upset with her before they explode at her. I wasn’t), but Dina probably was genuinely blindsided by Joyce’s reaction.

        1. StClair

          Oh yes.

          There was a time in my twenties, when I was pretty deep in the SCA, when I felt like I understood medieval social rules better than the modern ones.

        2. ischemgeek

          & the pissoff to me is that in large part it doesn’t have to be that way. Like, as an autistic person, I have learned far more about how to do social effectively from other autistic people than I have ever learned from OT or “social skills” classes.

          (social skills classes IME teach social anti-skills by which I mean things that actively make it harder to effectively social – mainly because they come from the POV of making the autistic person normal as being the priority, as opposed to making the autistic person able to actually read and handle situations, which is the priority of most autistic people)

    3. Rutee

      …Oh my jesus. Joyce’s rights were not under threat, you fucking tool. For fuck’s sake, she’s only getting the links because Becky is the one Dina is trying to talk to.

      1. trlkly

        I don’t disagree that Joyce’s rights have not been threatened by a freaking text message not even meant for her. But UI don’t think he’s a tool because he has unusual ideas of what is and isn’t rude.

        What’s rude is that Joyce is reading messages intended for Becky, and not even passing them on to her. Especially after all that talk of her being family now.

        I give her a pass, since she’s trying to hold on to her crumbling beliefs, but it’s still a shitty thing to do to her new sister.

    4. Cerberus

      Actually, this raises an interesting point. Does Joyce realize that Dina is using her cell to try and reach Becky? Like, Joyce clearly has been treating her phone as a lifeline to sanity and hasn’t been letting it out of her sight. And no one talked to her about using her phone for contact with the outside world and it wouldn’t be something Becky would bring up what with dodging Carol and dealing with the constant awfulness of La Porte.

      It seems only Dina was clued in to this potential avenue of communication and Joyce and Becky simply aren’t realizing it’s an option. Which is probably half of why this blew up. A text of dino stuff that Joyce knew and understood was for Becky would probably get a huff, but I think this got sent because Joyce assumed that Dina was texting her and so felt the need to “defend” herself.

      For her part, Dina is realizing her miscalculation. Which is good for potentially deescalating things.

      1. Tadpole7

        I agree with Joyce probably not knowing, so her reaction to dinosaur links makes sense. Also if Becky knew that Dina was texting her stuff she’d be peering over Joyce’s shoulder every time she used the phone.

        Also this is a learning experience for Dina in dealing with intermediaries when trying to communicate with someone else. But I do think that this can be cleared up now that Dina’s aware that there is an issue.

    5. Gamaran Sepudomyn

      Besides the fact that Dina is sending pictures to Becky anyway, politely correcting someone who’s being an idiot by sending them a well-researched explanation isn’t wrong in any sense.

  31. Charles Phipps

    Random Aside: Did we ever get her opinion Jurassic World?

    1. ObiKemnebi

      Joyce probably didn’t watch it because gore and depictions of mere mortals attempting (and in some way, on any level, succeeding) to play God.

      Dina thought it was fun because dinosaurs, but had to necessarily point out every inaccuracy in it.

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        Haven’t seen any of the movies, but I thought things always go wrong. Shouldn’t that show that humans being punished for meddling in God’s domain?

        1. ObiKemnebi

          Yes, but the fact that they were /able/ to bring dinosaurs back at all is a sinful presumption on man’s part. It’s not just that we /shouldn’t/, it’s that we /shouldn’t be able to/.

    2. Bagge

      The raptors should have had feathers and been the size of a dog
      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/five/

      1. SgtWadeyWilson

        Which, considering the fact that the original source material specifically stated that the geneticists filled in the gaps of DNA they were missing with DNA from frogs, is a strange thing to expect. This is even addressed briefly by characters in Jurassic World. Their dinosaurs were always hybrids.

        1. Bagge

          …do you suggest that Dina’s stand on Dinosaur-related topics might be rigid and unflexible regarding fictional shortcuts?

        2. SgtWadeyWilson

          I’m just relaying information from a good book I read, I don’t expect to change a fictional character’s opinion. That would be crazy.

        3. The Candyman

          That didn’t stop the dinosaurs in the first Jurassic Park from being completely accurate by 1993 standards. Not updating them for 2015 is just irrational fear of change (which is so meta I can’t even imagine).

          Plus the movie just wasn’t very high quality in general.

        4. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          Also, the Stegosaurus was actually a step backwards in accuracy, while the mosasaurus, which was completely new, was still incredibly inaccurate.

      2. Boxilar

        The “raptors” in.Jurassic Park were most likely Deinonychus. It’s the closest animal in size and build. I guess Velociraptor sounded cooler, but Spielberg wanted something bigger than a Cocker Spaniel as his monster. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinonychus

        1. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          They’re not anything like any real animal. Real non-avian maniraptorans had sizes both larger and smaller than JP “raptors”, but nothing really in that size range. Moreover, all maniraptorans have extensive feather coverings, including full wings. And above all, no dinosaurs could pronate their hands. Even sauropods couldn’t, leading to weird, twisted looking front feet with inwards-pointing toes.

        2. insomniac

          In fairness, the feathered raptors were purely speculative in 1983.

    3. Deanatay

      Isn’t Random Aside one of Jen’s siblings?

  32. trlkly

    Dina of all people should know the secret to deal with this sort of situation: steganography! Sure, it has nothing to do with dinosaurs really, but it’s close enough that surely she’s looked up the words.

    Just leave a message to have Becky call you. Then tell her how to decode your seemingly innocuous messages to get a link.

    Or, I guess, she could just give her the URL to a page, and paste links there. But that takes away the fun!

    1. Matt Heath

      She tried to look it up but the definition was camouflaged.

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        Now I want to hear the Alan Parsons Project doing a song Steganography. With a hidden message in it when played backwards, of course.

    2. StClair

      Not to be confused with stegosaugraphy, which is either drawing on the side of one, or analyzing its tracks; I’m not entirely certain.

  33. Shanunu

    Doesn’t that seem rude, though, thinking “oh, this perdon isn’t gonna like this but I’m not gonna coddle ignorance” like… how badly does it hurt Dina if one person doesn’t want to see dinosaurs

    1. Rutee

      If she were actually texting Joyce to text Joyce, it would be 100% super rude. But she’s texting Joyce so Becky can read them. Becky has expressed an interest in Dina’s interests and in trying to learn what her crappy homeschooling didn’t teach her. Joyce is looking in on their conversation (which is slightly rude but totally understandably so; heck, Becky might just be leaving links open), and doesn’t like what Dina’s sending.

    2. Will

      It doesn’t matter much if one person doesn’t wanna see dinosaurs. Joyce can just not open the links and pass the cell to Becky.

      But this is akin to censorship, Joyce doesn’t wanna Becky looking at dinosaurs. Which is one of the few ways Dina can connect with her girlfriend who’s away. Joyce is the onr being unreasonable here.

      1. Heavensrun

        Eh, we don’t actually know if Joyce didn’t give the links to Becky, we just know she responded with commentary.

    3. trlkly

      Quite a lot when THAT IS WHAT SHE WANTED TO TALK TO HER GIRLFRIEND ABOUT.

  34. caesaria82

    Smiling Sarah is the most beautiful thing and I never even knew that’s what was missing in my life. I’ve had a really bad day and this whole interaction is really what I needed right now. It’s SO CUTE.

  35. Briny

    Sarah’s one of my favorites. Good to see her in. Dina & her are an interesting double-act.

  36. butts

    So, uhm… Are we really never going to deal with that whole “you’re her rebound” “I KNOW” thing? I mean, we zoomed in on Dina’s face all shadowed-like, and then it sort of… never came up again.

    1. Sporky

      IDK if you’re new here, but the pacing tends to be pretty slow. As it should be, since it takes like 2 months for a single day to pass.

      It will get addressed. Eventually.

      1. butts

        That’s not the point. It’s just, it came up suddenly, pretty much out of nowhere, and it’s all dramatic, and then the next thing you know, Dina and Becky are together and it’s just being completely ignored.

        1. Mollyscribbles

          Not entirely; Dina is expressing an interest in communicating with Becky but between the fact that Joyce has to pass along messages and Dina isn’t sure how to communicate outside of interesting dinosaur facts she’s having difficulty figuring out how to broach the topic.

        2. Spencer

          It’ll probably start being addressed in full once Joyce and Becky come back.

  37. vivid

    dina vs joyce rap battle

    someone write this and i will draw it

    1. Sporky

      dina fuses with becky, fusion raps “stronger than you”

      1. vivid

        the two of us aint gonna follow your rules, come at me without any of your fancy links to young earth creationist propaganda

        1. Bagge

          Go ahead let me at your arg’mentation
          I will tell you all the secrets of radiation
          You can’t handle our dating
          But your stubbornness is aggravating

          We are made
          O-o-o-o-of
          Sci-i-e-e-ence

    2. Some1

      Joyce: hey Dina can’t see you see that all you mean to me, is someone who’s refuted in my Jesus DVDs. Sure you might be dating Becky, but I’ll be fair, everyone deserves someone who cares.

      Dina: Joyce, you seem a bit upset, what it something I said? hopefully I can avoid fucking with your head…when I lay down truths with actual proof, that tell you all you need to know about getting screwed.

      Joyce: you’re clever Dina, I’ll give you that, but also clever is the worm in my crap. But Jesus forgives and so I should too, once I flip over some tables on you.

      Dina: let’s end this quick, I don’t want to deal with your shit. You brain is like a dinosaurs, tiny and stupid, with a smell like anything else prehistoric. But you should be able to understand this simple equation, when I tell you that this battles over and that you weren’t created.

      1. inqntrol

        Here, I offer you an internet. +1

      2. Rukduk

        Walky (from in the background): OOOOHHH!!!

      3. Deanatay

        WHO WON??

        WHO’S NEXT??

        YOU DECIDE!!

      4. Heavensrun

        I can’t even kinda see the rhyme or rhythm of that last part.

        1. Some1

          I was really tired when I wrote that, I’m surprised I made it as good as I did.

        2. Heavensrun

          Fair enough. I kinda sounded meaner there than I meant to anyway, so I apologize.

  38. Sporky

    The second panel is actually very funny though. I love Dina’s sense of humor tbh.

  39. kkiten

    Help this is so cute.

    1. Hrovitnir

      So very cute. Dina is generally cute and the joke was great.

  40. vivid

    self-indulgent drawing of dina with my own character get http://sayahomu.tumblr.com/post/143101160024/dina-is-a-lot-like-peyton-i-just-had-to

    1. Yotomoe

      If you won’t indulge yourself, who will?

      1. SgtWadeyWilson

        You, usually.

    2. Bagge

      Awesome!!!

      I’m sure Dina is a fan of stars. Because to make a dinosaur you of course first need stardust.

      1. StClair

        also an essential ingredient of apple pie.

  41. Bagge

    I love how Dina apparently spends her weekend bugging Sarah.

    1. inqntrol

      That’s what friends are for, am I right?

      1. Bagge

        You are completely right!

      2. BenRG

        It’s probably a good thing because, without Joyce, I think that Sarah would otherwise have isolated herself and possibly gotten a bit too wrapped up in her melancholy,.

        1. StClair

          Agreed.

  42. Darwin

    Thank you for reminding us of the pure adorbs that is Dina. I just want to put a blanket on her and bring her to a party so she can enjoy it without seeing all the face.

  43. Rukduk

    Did…did Joyce just accidentally give Dina PTSD?

    1. modulusshift

      Clearly you haven’t read Answers in Genesis articles. :/ talk about moving the goalposts. I feel like you could prove basically anything they say is wrong, and they’ll just go back, reinterpret one verse of the Bible, and come back and say you’re still wrong on the rest, all while claiming you’re the one who interprets the evidence to fit the source.

  44. BenRG

    I’m pretty sure that, one day, Becky will try to break up a venomous verbal argument between Joyce and Dina and Dina will ask her not to do so. “This is our normal form of social interaction and we both find it comfortable and enjoyable.”

  45. Jack

    Yessssssss, my favourite pair together again. I might ship Becky/Dina but I friendship the hell out of Dina and Sarah.

  46. G127

    Creatonism is of course completely silly, but sending a constant flow of evolutionary links to someone that has no interest in it, is not all that nice. Sending bible related replies and poop-emojies seems like a good response. (just like sending evolution supporting arguments is a great way to respond to someone trying to convert you.

    1. trlkly

      For the last time, the messages were not meant for Joyce. They were meant for Becky. Joyce shouldn’t even be reading them.

      1. G127

        They where send to he phone. If you send me stuff on my phone, I’m gone read it.

        1. Spencer

          I mean, it’s the only way she can communicate with her girlfriend.

          Like, yeah, I do think the dialogue about how she knows it makes Joyce uncomfortable but she won’t coddle her ignorance is pretty jerky, especially given that Joyce is in the middle of a massive crisis of faith right now. I suppose the distinction for me comes from whether she’s just sending these directly to Joyce’s phone knowing it makes her uncomfortable, or if she’s appending a little “please forward this to Becky” to it to make it clear that it’s not really meant for Joyce.

        2. G127

          I don’t know: I’m just trying to imagine the reverse. What if my friend had no phone and her girlfriend was constantly sending me texts like ‘can you please tell x that jesus loves her and that she should really read chapter y, verse p. I’d be pretty annoyed. (and probably give my friend the phone so that she can just call her girlfriend, after which the texts can stop for a while)

        3. Spencer

          I do think it is obnoxious of Dina to disregard Joyce’s feelings, but at the same time she really has no other way to contact Becky. She should, at the least, express a little decency beyond “I’m going to send things I know pisses her off but it’s okay because reasons.”

        4. Daibhid C

          It’s almost as if Dina isn’t very good at processing other people’s feelings or something!

        5. ischemgeek

          Dina strikes me as someone who is not even very in-tune with her own feelings. If you have a hard time processing your own feelings, it’s even harder to process others’. Particularly if you’re an empathetic person by nature – then you run into a thing where you’re a bit of an emotion sponge and you don’t even know what you’re feeling and lack the emotional processing skill to be able to tease out how much of what you’re feeling is your feelings, how much is sympathetic emotion for other peoples’ feelings, let alone being able to identify the emotion and deal with it constructively.

          It’s one of the most difficult things about my autism actually – I am generally indifferent to my social cluelessness now that I have a good system of social flow charts memorized and am largely able to navigate social settings without pissing people off, but my alexithymia is a major pain in the rear because it basically makes it impossible to process events emotionally in real time – which means that I wind up being that person standing there awkwardly, stiffly patting a crying person’s shoulder going, “Uh, there, there?” while thinking oh crap is this the right way to go about it why are they crying what is the matter what do I do to help please don’t fuck this up, self, it’s too important to fuck up!

        6. Lumin

          I’m glad you post about this. It’s really illuminating and helpful.

        7. insomniac

          To quote Liz Lemon:

          “Noo! Don’t be cry!”

        8. ischemgeek

          @insomniac: I get the feel that I am missing a pop culture reference here.

        9. Hrovitnir

          That’s actually a good way of looking at it, and in that situation it would wince but I would definitely not respond the way Joyce did?

          If I let you use my phone to communicate with your phoneless girlfriend I’m not going to police what you talk about. Really.

  47. Palamdrone

    Sega Genesis explains everything.

    1. Airyu

      omg <3

    2. Spencer

      That explains all the Sonic turns to Jesus art.

      1. Deanatay

        Answers In SEGA Genesis

        1. inqntrol

          Sega does what Nintendon’t.

  48. Stranger

    “Uh oh, someone is challenging my deeply held beliefs in nonsense, better try to drown out the argument with poorly researched rebuttals!”

    1. Bagge

      Heh, re-“butt”-als.

      heh?

      heh?

      …ok…

  49. Cerberus

    Of course, she flirts and checks in with dinosaur links, it’s such a Dina thing to do and it’s probably a thing where if Becky was getting them and not locked in the emotional hurricane that is La Porte, she’d be touched by them. I love these queer nerds too much.

    Also, I love that Dina is practicing the comedy that Becky was talking to her about. Cause I love that they both listen to each other enough that they really take the other to heart. Oh, does my girlfriend babble about dinos all the time, well that’s pretty interesting, I should use my first breaths of internet time to look some of that up. Oh, does my girlfriend babble about how to crack a joke to lighten the mood, well, I should practice that myself on my own. Again, these two are too cute.

    And ah man, poor Joyce, at home, on edge, and she assumes that Dina is “attacking her beliefs” by sending her a bunch of dino links, and not realizing that Dina was just trying to reach out to her girlfriend in her very Dina way.

    And I love Dina in the last 3 panels. The maturity to recognize that maybe her first approach is not adequate, the continued way she is shocked to learn the depths of the world Becky and Joyce came from and how far removed it is from reality, and a realization that she may need another approach to send her messages of love and support. It’s a major growing moment for her and it also shows that as much as Becky is receiving an education in evolution from Dina, Dina’s been receiving an education in a whole subculture she didn’t even know about before meeting Joyce.

    And it’s adorable that she reacts very similar to some of the comment thread when Willis drops some fucked up tidbit from his past. It’s just so far out of her life experiences.

    1. Bagge

      Dina and Becky continue to be adorable! I love how they fumble their way forward in the relationship.

      Dina may not know alot about flirting, but as long as some of those dino-links are about horns or frills I’m sure she will catch Becky’s attention.

  50. Joey245

    Ah, Dina, how I’ve missed thee.

    1. Spencer

      IKR. For the longest time I couldn’t care less about Dina and now I’m all “why are these not-Dina jerks getting in the way of Dina.”

  51. Heavensrun

    I want so badly to see Joyce get stuck enrolling in a bio class. I realize it can’t happen until the next semester comes along, but It would be amazing.

  52. Warclam

    Fun fact: the newly-named Apatoraptor pennatus, I’ve just found out, was named by my cousin’s ex-boyfriend’s cousin. OK that’s a bit distant and I haven’t actually met him… I didn’t say it was a very fun fact.

    1. BenRG

      It still makes you a dinosaur by three degrees of separation… or something…

    2. Paul

      Apatoraptor? There has got to be a story there. As in “Let’s name this raptor after that name everyone was forced to use for Brontosaurus and hated.”

      1. Random832

        “The generic name is derived from the Greek goddess of deceit, Apatè, and Latin raptor, “robber”, in reference to the specimen hiding its true identity for many years. ” – meanwhile, “The composite term Apatosaurus comes from the Greek words apatē (ἀπάτη)/apatēlos (ἀπατηλός) meaning “deception”/”deceptive”, and sauros (σαῦρος) meaning “lizard”;[20] thus, “deceptive lizard”. Marsh gave it this name based on the chevron bones, which are dissimilar to those of other dinosaurs; instead, the chevron bones of Apatosaurus showed similarities with those of mosasaurs.[18][21] “

  53. Paul

    Please, Dina, just send Becky some virtual hugs. Joyce will forward those.

  54. wakeangel2001

    answers in genesis, I’m surprised someone would actually reference them unirionically. I thought they faded away with Kent Hovind, VenomfangX, and the rest of the creationists who fell in the first great youtube war.

    1. Roborat

      I had completely forgotten about that. It was highly entertaining to watch those exchanges.

  55. smooti

    Poor Dina. I remember when I finally gave in and stopped trying to discuss topics like that with YEC relatives and friends. Most of the time it ends in hurt feelings and no one having learned anything that stuck.

    1. Willoughby Chase

      I’m sorry, but dating via links isn’t standard? I may have to revise my communications etiquette.

      Here, have some love English-stylee

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNU5KVa_Tu8

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        In other news, courting by throwing toys at their head may lead to assault charges.

    2. Willoughby Chase

      Sorry, I did not intend that to end up as a subcomment to yours

  56. Sovnyavitch

    To all the people defending Dina on the grounds of autism; perhaps you should consider that while she might “refuse to coddle” Joyce, polite interaction is by no means hard to learn and so Dina should not be coddled for refusing to consider more carefully how she treats someone doing her a favour

    1. Lumin

      But she is now considering it. That’s why she’s asking Sarah for advice. She’s saying that initially her only thought was “Science is science, dammit!” But she has realised that she’s made Joyce unhappy, so now she needs a different plan. She isn’t sure what that should be, so she’s seeing what Sarah suggests.

    2. Lumin

      As for “polite interaction is by no means hard to learn”, I think you mean it wasn’t hard for you. Some others find it inexplicably arbitrary and illogical: impossible to deduce by reasoning, and counter-intuitive even when you know in theory what you’re meant to do in this situation. I’m in favour of giving Dina the credit for asking someone else to help her when she doesn’t know herself what the best course is.

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        This. I have a more general rant about how in all areas you find people who are good at something assuming that because they are good at something it must be easy for anyone.

    3. bryy

      “To all the people defending Dina on the grounds of autism”

      Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand here is where you should have stopped.

    4. ischemgeek

      Speaking as an autistic person: it is for me. Mainly because most of society refuses to teach politeness / cognitive empathy explicitly. They just expect you to be able to pick it up as you go and yell at you or beat you up when you screw up. Which is about as useful as yelling at or beating someone with dyslexia for being unable to read without giving any extra help or accommodation.

      You need to realize that Dina has never been taught how to social in a way that is cognitively accessible to her. She has been (unintentionally) set up for failure on the social front.

      I relate to her a lot because I genuinely was just that incompetent on the social front at her age. The whole shocked-and-hurt that others are hurt thing is very familiar to me.

      I would have less sympathy for her if she continued to refuse to consider Joyce’s viewpoint, but she doesn’t. She realizes she screwed it up, accepts that the bad reaction was her fault, albeit unintentional fault, and seeks out someone who understands the rules and can explain them in a way Dina understands. In that respect, she’s a good seven years ahead of where I was on the social front at 18. At 18, I wouldn’t have even realized that Joyce was upset, to be frank.

  57. Guairdean Beatha

    Pooh emojis? http://textemoticons.net/winnie-the-pooh/

  58. JBento

    Damn it, Joyce, I was starting to like you! But AiG? No! Bad Joyce! Bad! Back to penultimate place again!

  59. Laya

    I only just now got the Dina/dino thing

  60. Reltzik

    I’m…. with Joyce on this one, actually. While I don’t agree with her religion and AiG is the last refuge of the inept, link-spamming of undesired content (even if it’s meant for someone else) deserves a bit of push-back.

  61. Mokurai

    I find it odd that so many US Protestants swear by the King James/Authorized version of the Bible, a Church of England translation, when the Church of England put so much effort into persecuting Protestants, including the Puritan Separatists who colonized Massachusetts, and there were two wars between the Puritan Roundheads and the C of E Cavalier forces. Certainly Catholics and Jews object vehemently to the KJV, and have their own translations, and there are plenty of other translations.

    Oh, wait, sorry. That has to do with the evidence-based world.

    1. Jhon

      But the KJV translators were Inspired by God! Because they prayed for His guidance!

    2. Paul

      Certainly Catholics and Jews object vehemently to the KJV,

      Oddly enough, I once heard a Catholic priest say that the KJV was a decent translation if your native language is Elizabethan English. I asked if there hadn’t been progress made since then in translating Hebrew and Greek, and in finding older sources, and he said not really–scholars knew ancient Greek and Hebrew pretty well back then, and the new sources aren’t all that different. I have since had reason to question his statement, though. Especially since there are allegedly a few verses in the KJV that appear nowhere else.

      The KJV OT is supposedly based on the Hebrew text that Jews used at the time (and today), while the Catholic translation (the New American Bible in the USA) supposedly uses multiple ancient sources that don’t necessarily agree. So, depending on how well the KJV was translated, Jews might find it a more agreeable English translation than the NAB.

      1. Scar Man!!!

        At least for me, the Stone translation is best. Or at least the commentary is the best

  62. bryy

    Oh man, I can see perfectly where all this is going to culminate in the JoycePlot.

    I really fear this is going to ultimately end with Joyce’s mom disowning her. And also blaming Becky for Jocelyn.

  63. Jhon

    > ischemgeek:
    “expelled from Sunday school”?
    You are my hero!

    1. ischemgeek

      Sunday school teachers don’t take it well if you call God an evil murderer and a monster in response to learning about the kill everyone in the world part of the tale of Noah. And I refused to apologize and Dad was an atheist so it just stayed there.

  64. Cody B

    I’m pretty sure I’d join Patreon for Joyce/Dina texts.

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