407

Proven
Posted on February 22, 2013 by David M Willis

407 thoughts on “Proven”

  1. Skull025

    Joyce’s Mind = Blown

    1. Jen Aside

      At least she’s recycling?

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        I would have thought that her recycling bin be much bigger.

        1. GoldStarz

          But if the recycling bin was bigger, the pipe would lean the other way and Joyce might actually LEARN something. And you know we can’t have that.

        2. invisiblemoose

          It is regularly emptied.

        3. Neospector

          Great, now I can only think about little tiny brain gnomes.

        4. HiEv

          I believe that they’re called “homunculi“.

        5. Brian

          She’s homeschooled with what looks like a month’s exposure to the outside world.

          Her recycle bin hasn’t had the time to receive the information necessitating enlargement.

      2. wynne

        At first glance I thought that the recycling bin meant that she’s going to think it over again, but that is probably not the case.

        1. George

          Could still be foreshadowing, though.

        2. Ivan

          I agree with the post below… just not the unbelievable amount of Fundies who read this thing, and have to start with the dogma, the defensiveness, etc. Save it for when you’re standing outside the Jesus/Dinosaur museum in Kentucky.

        3. Boom

          Your lack of faith disturbs Jesus Lizard!

    2. jiynx

      not really. she probably tuned her out somewhere in the first ten seconds.

      i’ve spoken to too many ‘church’ christians to argue with the final panel. that’s basically how it works.

      1. Isolde

        Ouch. Harsh and a little narrow minded of you to think we all are like that.

        1. Jesus DeSaad

          I’d say the “Harsh and narrow minded” comment belongs to the Church Christians she’s encountered.

        2. JoustComics

          Yeah cuz those Church Christians she’s talked to probably just attribute the opinions of a few encounters to all others they’ve never met or known before in a blanket way of thinking… oh wait.

        3. TexasRed

          Or she could be one of those unfortunates who is absolutely surrounded by those kinds of people and there for has a wide base to work from….or she’s watched Bill O’Rielly.

        4. f.p.

          Jynx didn’t say “all”. Jynx said “too many.” Jynx is right, without being either harsh or necessarily narrow minded. Your response, on the other hand, by jumping to this accusation, may very well describe itself.

        5. Shivore

          Except she said that’s basically how it works, implying that with churchgoing Christians that’s how it always is.

          Love it how whenever Christians are slighted, people jump to say it wasn’t a slight at all, but if it happens to any other faith it’s okay.

        6. Shivore

          Sorry, didn’t mean to say okay, meant to say its recognized as an insulting slight. Too early, need coffee…

        7. Vonnegut

          It’s really a shame what an oppressed group Christians are. Maybe if they were only a bigger percentage of the population.

        8. Viktoria

          Or if there were more Christians in public office. Maybe even Christians fighting to get religious teachings added to school curriculums.

        9. Jath

          Christian isn’t even a group, though. It’s the metagroup of a few main metagroups (Catholics and Protestants, some argue Anglicans and Orthodox), and some smaller ones (like Mormons). Saying “all Christians are like this” is like saying “every country in Asia is like this.” Heck, many countries have different languages, and many of the religious denominations don’t actually use the same languages (formally: obviously most Churches speak the language of wherever they are for sermons and such) and the same Bible (Mormons have extra documents, the main Protestant Bible considers several books apocryphal that the Catholics don’t, etc.) Presbyterian women in certain Presbyterian sects can’t even talk in Church while the Lutherans have female pastors.

          Catholics have Roman Catholics and Old Catholics and nondenominational Catholics (mostly because they don’t like papal infallibility: some of them stick with the Roman Church, but don’t really agree with it most of the time) and a dozen other splinter groups.

          Protestants have pretty much everything. There are Lutherns and Baptists and Quakers and the Amish and Seventh-Day Adventists and the Church of Christian Science and nondenominational Christians (who are usually more Protestant but lack a specific sect; they tend to relatively liberal in my experience) and and O/A variants of some of these and Presbytarians and maybe Anglicans (they’re complicated) and sectless churches like some televised megachurches, the WBC, etc…

          There are groups of Protestants that will tell you other groups of Protestants are actually evil sinmongers (especially fun: Jack Chick, famous for his Chick tracts, has published a bunch about how Catholics, Mormons, etc. are actually evil demon worshipers and Muslims are secretly a Catholic movement.) A vast majority of Catholics ignore major Catholic rules, especially those regarding birth control in marriage.

          I grew up in a Lutheran church, and I went to a Pentecostalist church one day (it was a friend’s home church). It actually scared me because there were people having what looked like seizures while they babbled and the service was so long we started at 9 and had a lunch break and someone got mad at me because I was wearing pants. :X Saying “Christians are like this” is kind of ridiculous.

          (on an irrelevant note: I am super duper surprised Joyce hasn’t tried giving her http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1038/1038_01.asp . It’s a particularly bad one: I got one in real life once and I actually still own it because I don’t think people trying to be funny can get this hillariously bad).

        10. Jath

          Oh gosh that post is way too long I need to learn to shut up
          tl;dr: Christianity is really diverse and half of us hate each other so it’s silly to make blanket statements

        11. Tylertlat

          “Maybe if they were only a bigger percentage of the population.” Yeah, then we could be even more dismissive of the double standard

        12. jiynx

          actually, it’s speaking candidly from experience from within that yes, we ARE in fact living up to the stereotype of being unable to handle information that contradicts precocieved notions without a great struggle.

          maybe THAT is what mohammed was talking about…

    3. DudeMyDadOwnsADealership

      More likely Dina = Talking to a wall.

      1. Furie

        Maybe if she keeps at it that pipe will loosen and break and new information will be registered with Joyce? Maybe? Yeah, probably not.

        1. dcmeserve

          Last time* it took an alien mind-erasing device to accomplish that. Looking forward to seeing how it can happen without aliens.

          That’s assuming this is going to remain an alien-free universe.

          * Roomies

  2. Piemanpie24

    Willis, this isnt a sexy cliffhanger. I feel cheated.

    1. David Herbert

      Ladies talking about science doesn’t do it for you?

      1. Yotomoe

        I personally have a thing for people explaining why dinosaurs had feathers.

        1. Valdrax

          How… vanilla of you.

        2. SW

          Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It’s the difference between using a feather and using a dinosaur.

        3. George

          You win the thread.

        4. Arkadi

          Yes you do XD

      2. Krogaladin

        Dina knows how to give a boner.

        1. Yotomoe

          She digs them.

        2. ilvos01

          She digs my feathery dinosaur boner.

        3. ilvos01

          Hey can I delete that? I got my email wrong.

      3. Osaru Sensei

        “Oh, I love it when you talk dirty to me…”

        Bonus points to whomever get the reference.

        – Because I’ve forgotten where it came from lol.

        1. Somebody

          Isn’t that from a song?

        2. Osaru Sensei

          No, but I sorta remember the circumstances:
          a couple is talking -> the girl (I think it was the girl anyways) rattles off some technobabble and the other party responds with above quote.

        3. Osaru Sensei

          Found it.

          Mass Effect 2 conversation between Gabby and Ken in engineering.

          Gabby: The new armor reinforcements really threw off the gravimetric profiles. But engines are good to go. I rebalanced the Gillbourne coefficients and adjusted the anterior intakes on the second tier stabilizers.
          Ken: I love it when you talk dirty.

      4. Tualha

        There’s only one lady talking about science. The other one is all blah blah we can’t know anything so goddidit.

    2. Thor

      Not a sexy cliffhanger? Are you dead below the waist? I want to carry Dina’s babies in my womb RIGHT NOW, and I’m a dude.

  3. John Smith

    Holy crap, Dina, you are awesome

  4. Sensedog

    Well, Dina is awesome. That would sum-up my thoughts on this.

  5. TaZZerath

    Dina’s Ultimate Weapon: the Power of Facts

    1. Aizat

      Facts don’t work on some people.

      1. cookie1995

        Dina uses Facts

        It doesn’t affect Joyce

        1. Mr. Random

          Dina use teleport!

        2. HK-A6A7

          It’s supper effective!

        3. begbert2

          Galasso uses pizza!

          It’s supper effective!

        4. dcmeserve

          Try orange juice. It’s breakfast effective.

      2. Arkadi

        “Some”? I wish.

    2. KishinD

      What a crappy weapon! Facts hardly ever work.
      In fact, they backfire. Joyce should walk away from this even more convinced of young earth creationism. Confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and avoiding cognitive dissonance… if you don’t make an effort to fight your brain, you will give huggles to your ignorance.

      “It’s easier to fool a man than to convince him he’s been fooled.” Mark Twain

      http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/

      1. N0083rP00F

        Ah don’t worry because when she writes that paper latter on she will be shocked and won’t understand why she got such a bad review.

      2. JA

        That’s very true. Some people, even when confronted with irrefutable facts (ex. Nate Silver’s election prediction based on statistics, but let’s not get much farther into that!), refuse to be swayed by reality, and in fact, will dig in deeper and become even more intrenched in their misinformation, because the simple idea that they may be wrong is too much for them to handle.

  6. HK-A6A7

    That last panel?
    Was how my mind worked during High School.

    1. Arkadi

      That’s pretty much how everybody’s brain works, unless you learn to reprogram it.

      1. Armchair Warrior

        I enter every potential debate with the assumption that I’m incorrect, and then I try to work out the closest approximation to the truth I can.
        .
        .
        .
        People often find talking to me weird.

        1. Arkadi

          And it *is* weird, in the sense that few people do that XD Most people engage debate -consciously or not- as a contest for status in which the important thing is to have the last word. I usually try to avoid debates altogether.

  7. David Herbert

    Quick Ethan, stand up for your lady love. Unless Dina’s looking like a better option.

    1. Wonder Wig

      Dina is always the better option.
      A)
      B)
      C)
      D)
      Dina) x

      1. DEG1377

        More like:
        A)
        B)
        C)
        D)ina x

        amirite?

        1. Plasma Mongoose

          YES, yes you are. 😀

      2. Resne

        A) Dina
        B) Dina
        C) Dina
        D)ina

        Take your pick.

        1. Tualha

          It never occurred to me before how apropos Dina’s name is. I see what you did there, DW.

  8. Aizat

    So, that’s how Joyce’s mind work. Mine is more or less an enigma wrapped in mystery wrapped in tinfoil.

    1. CanvasWolfDoll

      good on you for having tinfoil. makes it much easier to reheat and have it for lunch!

    2. Bekah

      Your mind is a baked potato made of magnets?

      1. Robert

        No silly. He’s saying it’s a magnet that tastes like a baked potato which can cause cancer.

        1. Bekah

          I have a sudden urge to lick a magnet with sour cream and chives.

        2. Mushi_Jones

          Your icon matches your posts too well XD

        3. Narf

          Seriously! Are you Emily, Bekah?

      2. Tylertlat

        What WOULD happen if you microwaved a magnet? I must know… to Youtube!

        1. thomas0comer

          Basically it fries the magnetron. Unless your microwave is poorly constructed, nothing too flashy.

    3. JA

      Your mind is a baked potato?

      😛

  9. Plasma Mongoose

    This is Joyce’s brain.
    This is Joyce’s brain on science.

    ANY QUESTIONS?

    1. Skull025

      Yes.
      WHAT IS THIS MAGIC?!?

      1. Aizat

        No, Friendship is Magic. Science is a rat.

        1. hmrc4evr

          I thought the rat was sciences’ helper??

          Crap-I just made a Beekman’s World reference.

          I feel old.

        2. AlmightyAtheismo

          I watched both beakman’s world and Bill Nye as a wee youngun, before I even had science classes. I always found Bill to be the superior molder of young minds, at least I learned more from the science guy.

          Perhaps Joyce would be better able to absorb a show aimed at science beginner’s. Here’s Bill on evolution. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svHQ4BQY__o

        3. Somebody

          Too bad some people had to get butt-hurt and complain about how he’s denying the existence of God and “God is definitely real, non-believers are ignorant”.

        4. N0083rP00F

          “We’re going to need another Timmy!”

        5. JA

          YES!!!! Love that show.

        6. That Damn Rat

          I’m science now?

        7. Arkadi

          Maybe. Are you distinguishable from magic?

      2. Blue

        Sufficiently advanced enough to be indistinguishable from science. ;D

    2. Aizat

      Yes, can I eat Joyce’s brain?

      1. Ancestral Hamster

        No, Aizat! Don’t do it! It’s not worth it! Life is still worth living!

        (Besides, if you are going to kill yourself, there a less painful ways of doing so rather than eating Joyce’s brain. *Shudder*)

  10. NCP19

    If we ever get a Jurassic Park IV, I hope they show more feathers.

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      In Jurassic Park V, they evolve the dinosaurs so much that they turn into birds. (This will save the studios a fortune on special effects).

      1. Queen Anthai

        BIRDEMIC

      2. Shade

        Been done.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu0v8I-0iwU

        1. TPman

          …. what?

        2. Shade

          It’s sad how the giant chicken is the least ridiculous thing in that scene.

        3. Plasma Mongoose

          Unfortunately that prize goes to the ‘quality’ acting.

        4. Tualha

          Wasn’t there some guy named Hitchcock or something who did a movie like that?

        5. Andrusi

          Hehe. Hitchcock.

          (It’s not a penis joke, it’s a joke about chickens.)

      3. Makkabee

        You mean Alfred Hitchcock made Jurassic Park IV back in the 60s?

        CURSE YOU, BRITISH FILMMAKERS WITH ACCESS TO TARDISES!! You’re always stealing future Americans’ ideas and making them look like derivative hacks!

        1. HLY

          your welcome. it’s what we do

        2. Narf

          So you can pilot a TARDIS, but not differentiate between a contraction and a possessive pronoun? Fascinating!

    2. MR C

      if we ever get jurassic park 4 i hope it’s just jurassic park 1 in 1080p

      1. HiEv

        Yeah, but with all the science fixed so the raptors are feathered and the size of chickens. That would be hilarious. 😀

        1. John

          They should get Dina to write it.

  11. The Sound Defense

    Joyce is apparently not an acknowledgement kind of girl.

  12. Johnpocalypse

    That piece of paper isn’t going anywhere useful.

  13. Count Dracula

    I’m glad Joyce chooses to recycle in her metaphorical information sorting system. You always have to think about metaphorical mother Earth.

  14. RaijinK

    Weird. The dialogue is coming out of Dina’s mouth, but I can only seem to read it in the deep, booming voice of Galasso.

    1. Osaru Sensei

      I hear it as some sort of alternate-universe-genderflipped Officer Nogata from Police Academy 3 and 4.

    2. HLY

      because it is fact – and thus Dina can channel the unstoppable power that is our lord Galasso

  15. John Madden

    Her head is gonna explode, isn’t it?

    1. Arkadi

      It that was all it took for fundies’ heads to explode, we’d all be covered in goo by now.

  16. Z3tto

    To be honest, Dina always struck me as very non-confrontational, but I guess intelligent design is one of her few berserk buttons.

    1. Gordon

      No, DINOSAURS are her berserk button.

      Intelligent design just happens to be one of the few things that mashes that button.

      1. Yotomoe

        Dinosaurs are the button and Intelligent Design is the hammer.

        1. TPman

          And you should never hit a button with a hammer.
          Fingers are sufficient.

        2. Rachel Roth

          Yeah, but hammers make a bigger boom.

    2. Bekah

      young earth creationism =/= intelligent design

      1. Heavensrun

        You accidentally got a / in there. Lemme fix that for you.

        young earth creationism == intelligent design.

        Anybody that told you otherwise was -lying-. The intelligent design movement began as a tactical move from people who were creationists with creationist textbooks who had tried to get creationism into schools and had been shot down on the premise that it wasn’t science. (because it isn’t.) Creationist textbooks were modified with a literal find/replace putting ID in for creationism and “a designer” in for “God”.

        They are the same thing, put forth by the same people, with the same goal.

        1. Bekah

          Cite your source?

        2. DEG1377

          You can support a creationist/Intelligent Design view of the universe and NOT support the idea of young earth creationism.

          The “young earth” part is the important qualifier to that statement.

        3. Bekah

          ^This^

        4. insomniac

          You are wrong. “Intelligent design” is a phrase made up by the Discovery Institute to try and get creationism into the schools. It was blocked when challenged in court. http://ncse.com/creationism/legal/intelligent-design-trial-kitzmiller-v-dover

        5. Bekah

          You’re missing the key distinction. There is not one form of Creationism, just as there is not one be-all form of Christianity. Intelligent design differs from young earth creationism. They are not the same thing. They are very similar, but tomatoes aren’t apples just because they’re red fruit.

        6. Raen

          I agree with you that intelligent design is not necessarily young-earth creationism, but only because there are a few proponents of gap theory among them. Google “cdesign proponentsists.”

        7. Tualha

          Here’s a good article on what Raen’s talking about:

          http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/11/missing-link-cd.html

          See also Monkey Girl by Edward Humes, which explains the Dover trial with lots of background.

        8. JA

          I think we can all agree that, regardless of whether it’s young earth or old earth, ID is not, in any way, science.

          As soon as a supernatural element is imparted in the discussion, it ceases to be science.

        9. ninja_jesus

          For any aspect of the Creation hypothesis or the Intelligent Design hypothesis to be true, the concept of a “Creator” or “Intelligent Designer” must be proposed; without this single variable being true, neither of those two hypotheses are valid.

          This is what people mean when they say that Creationism (Day-Age, Young Earth or otherwise) and Intelligent Design are the same; they both contain the concept that “someone or something must be affecting the Universe somehow, resulting in the abundance of life on Earth”. To extend your analogy, a tomato isn’t an apple, but both of them share the same hypothetical gardener.

          And I submit to you that method makes no difference when the actual relevant dispute is whether or not a gardener was even there in the first place. You cannot invent a new scientific field of study from an idea that doesn’t even have a lick of evidence or fact behind it, that runs based on fantastical wishful thinking, or else that entire field of science is wrong by default.

        10. Valdrax

          It’s true that that’s the origin of Intelligent Design and also the true beliefs the majority of its flag-bearers.

          However, that doesn’t mean that advocates of Intelligent Design aren’t willing to include under their umbrella other forms of Creationism that embrace the scientific age of the Earth and/or don’t stick purely to the Biblical story. ID’ers aren’t exclusively young Earth types. That’s the shield that lets them pretend to open-mindedness.

        11. dcmeserve

          I don’t see “young earth” to be an important qualifier at all. The important part is the denial of evolution as the means by which life has attained its current forms.

        12. insomniac

          This is true. Now, a lot of people assume that “intelligent design” refers to any idea that there’s design to the universe or the natural process–the sort of thing that’s usually called either “theistic evolution” or “religion.”

          It’s not, because “intelligent design” is a fancy word for creationism. Someone who believes God directed the processes that result in evolution doesn’t subscribe to “intelligent design,” in the same way that a man in North America who loves his son should not join the North American Man/Boy Love Association. (“Yes, he’s a man in North America who loves a boy, but that is NOT THE SAME THING.”)

        13. MR C

          either one is stupid compared to science

        14. Lu

          I’m sciencier than you!!!

        15. Valdrax

          Woah, woah. Theistic evolution != intelligent design. Intelligent design explicitly refutes evolution, whereas theistic evolution is the belief that all the evidence science gives us is real, and thus that just must be how God did it. None of this “irreducible complexity” nonsense.

          It’s just Science without the belief that God doesn’t exist.

        16. insomniac

          That’s what I said, yes.

          Especially since science doesn’t have an opinion on God one way or the other.

        17. adrien

          I think they were indeed the same thing initally, but then intelligent design evolved.

        18. Jesus DeSaad

          >I think they were indeed the same thing initally, but then intelligent design kept up coming with excuses to justify its existence.

          Fixed that for you.

        19. miyto

          same thing, less words.
          When propagating a flawed idea and the flaws are made relevant to your audience you need to mask them or switch them for new ones.
          Intelligent Design had to change over time to survive, enough complaints have been sedated by the excuses that ID survived using that adaption.
          I think adrien had stated the correct amount of info to sneak the point across a closed-minded individual’s mind-sensor, what was said after was too long and used too much snark to be heard.
          (I have had this problem often enough to notice what the correct amount of info is, right after I passed it)
          I really wish people would listen to the whole truth before zoning out…

        20. Andrusi

          The joke, you murdered it.

        21. Narf

          Thank god SOMEONE got it, I was seriously afraid everyone was too caught up in righteous indignation to notice. 😀

        22. Tualha

          However, it’s significant that Joyce isn’t doing the whole, “intelligent design”, nudge nudge, wink wink, we’re totally not talking about god in the classroom your honor, thing. She wears her creationism proudly. Stupid, but at least more honest than the IDiots.

        23. HiEv

          You’re sort of both right and both wrong.

          Young Earth creationism and intelligent design are both forms of creationism. Intelligent design does not necessarily require a young Earth, but it can be compatible with it.

          “Intelligent design” is basically just creationism in a cheap suit. It pretends to be science, but without all of the hard work or evidence required for actual science. The Kitzmiller v. Dover trial demonstrated that creationists just tried to use different words to skirt around the laws preventing the purely religious claims of creationism from being taught as science in public schools.

          So while all forms of “young Earth creationism” can be said to be “intelligent design” claims, not all “intelligent design” claims fit with “young Earth creationism”, as some versions fit with “old” Earths, non-theistic creators, or possibly even other deities (though this is rarely acknowledged).

        24. jaimehlers

          This is true.

          And all forms of creationism are based on circular logic. They presume that which they seek to prove.

        25. GShyft

          The only problem with your statement is that any discussion of origins that attempts to tell us anything about what happened before recorded history must become circular. Science must be built out of observation. No one observed the events before recorded history (at least they didn’t write it down.) so science should concern itself with observable phenomenon. Origins debate will always start with conjecture that cannot be proven no matter which side we speak of. The nature of science leaves it incapable of dealing with the supernatural (whether or not it exists) because science is limited to the natural.

        26. Li

          See, people who make statements like this usually have a fairly dim understanding of the science they’re attempting to discuss.

          Science need not enter into discussion of supernatural anything in order to discuss the origins of the universe, and yes, science can in fact talk with authority about events that occurred before the start of written history. That you believe it can’t seriously just means you need to get thee to a college-level astronomy class.

        27. HiEv

          Your statement that attempts at discussing prehistory must become circular is utter nonsense. You don’t need someone to directly observe something in order to figure out what happened.

          If I come across a car wrapped around a telephone pole, I can look at the skid marks across the ground, the direction the broken glass flew, the angle of the telephone pole, and with an extremely high degree of certainty state that the car was not built around the telephone pole, but instead crashed into it at a high rate of speed. With enough details I might even be able to estimate with high accuracy how much speed and exactly why the driver ended up hitting the pole.

          You see, actions have consequences, and we can observe those consequences and determine what most likely happened. We can even verify what we think happened by testing for various kinds of things that would falsify our hypothesis. The more resistant a hypothesis is to attempts at falsification the stronger it is. And the stronger it is compared to any other competing hypothesis, the more likely it is. This is how science works. That’s not circular, it’s simply probability based on objective evidence.

          So science is concerning itself with observable phenomena, but that doesn’t limit us to only talking about things that happened during history recorded by human beings. Nature itself is a record that gives us a window into the past.

        28. Bekah

          This is the point I was making. Joyce is specifically a young earth creationist.

      2. Somebody

        Why does it matter when neither are science and Joyce is a fictional character?

  17. Chaz

    What?? No Joyce/Dina makeout for this Friday? I am /shocked and appalled./

    It’s painful for me to love that visual of Joyce’s brain.

    1. Yotomoe

      Never Fear! Yotomoe is here! I shall bring you the Joyce/Dina you desire!

      1. Yotomoe

        Here’s what you all asked for.

        1. Undrave

          I didn’t ask for this.

          But I will gladly take it! 😀

        2. HEYOUGUYZ!

          I heard somewhere that in any scene where too people are that close to each other for more than a couple minutes, the only options for relieving the tension are to kiss or to kill. I’m glad you picked the nonviolent resolution.

        3. Chaz

          I was kidding but the fact that you went through and did it anyway means so much. I’m not even sure what it means. But so much.

        4. Osaru Sensei

          Yotomoe style strikes again!

        5. Osaru Sensei

          rather, Yotomoe

        6. hmrc4evr

          For some reason I’m now imagining Joyce dressed as the Moe Moe Z Cune from
          Akibarangers.

        7. Black Cat Godess

          I must now love you forever, for I have now found someone outside my group of friends who knows of Akibaranger.

        8. Tualha

          Yeah, cause I’d much rather see Dina kissing someone who doesn’t want it (aka sexual assault) than see her using reason and facts in a conversation.

          Nice artwork, though 🙂

        9. Narf

          Ahaha, did you give Joyce an ahoge? Because it totes works for her. 😀

    2. Nono

      Dina is this close to Ethan’s nipples through his shirt.

      Perhaps this situation can be salvaged.

  18. Xartarin

    A couple lines are strangely blue.

  19. Yotomoe

    Mike’s brain is simply 2 boxes. One with every person on the world’s mom on it and the other with ever nickel he has received thus far by sleeping with them.

  20. ridtom

    Oh no Joyce she’s got you cornered! Quick, what would Billie do?!

    1. Yotomoe

      Drink booze? Stab everything? Call her a nerd?

    2. John

      Don’t know exactly, but I’m pretty sure it would involve swapping spit.

  21. Beachfox

    Much, much hotter then making out.

    But I’m a gay guy geek, so perhaps I shouldn’t be listened to.

    1. Undrave

      Well so is Ethan and he doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe Dina will inspire him to become a paleonthologist himself!

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        They both like massive bones at least. 😛

        1. Andiemus

          Hey-yoo.

  22. alicemacher

    …Dina didn’t explode. She just looked at Joyce with laser-pointer focus and gave her some truth.

    Me –> My Bunk

    1. Undrave

      TRUTHI N THE FAAAAAAAACE!

    2. AsimovSideburns

      Six creationists came to convert me, once. And the best of them caught the attention of this.

      She’s an Indiana College student. Five-foot tall, paleontology major, cunning dinosaur hat.

      She is my very favorite character.

      1. Viktoria

        ASDFJKLF, are you talkin’ about a fanfic?

        1. AsimovSideburns

          I just changed up a quote from Firefly 🙂

      2. Tualha

        Ooh, cute avatar, who is it?

        1. Kryss LaBryn

          That’s Sette from Unsounded, an excellent webcomic.

          http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/

        2. Tualha

          Mmm, I remember reading part of that once. Nice artwork. Thanks.

        3. Somebody

          Why is the site called “casual villain”? She can’t possibly be evil.

  23. Yotomoe

    I’m sorry but Dina’s eyebrows and mouth are bugging me. They’re grey and it’s like…all my eyes can focus on.

    1. Kernanator

      Same here. It’s like being stabbed in the eyes.

  24. TimeLoss

    This week I have learned two things:

    That dinosaurs had feathers, but more importantly Dina is pronounced Dee-na.

    In the two years I have been reading DOA Ive had it wrong, now my brain is almost incapable of pronouncing it right!

    1. Regalli

      Wait, her name’s pronounced Dee-na? When’d we learn that? I thought her name was still a dinosaur pun!

      1. David

        It has always been pronounced “dee-nah,” in any universe and in any year.

        1. MR C

          wait…….*computing*…….*sizzling sounds and smoke from the ears*………
          i think you just broke my brain

        2. Love is Mathematical

          how…. how did I know this? From the first reading? I’ve been haunting way too many name websites.

        3. tahrey

          Probably just from, yknow, general life experience.

          I don’t think I’ve ever heard that name pronounced “Dy-na”, like, ever.

          Except in my head those couple of times where it’s been pointed out her full name is Dina Sazaru and a cortical syllable emphasis switch momentarily shorted out.

        4. DudemanJones

          Well, there’s always the song “I’ve been workin’ on the railroad,” which contains the well-known lyric “Dinah won’t you blow your horn,” but… well, that’s spelled with an h, so…

  25. Ragnal

    Well that explains a lot. Hey, guys, who put the tube-thingy in the garbage and didn’t do it properly?

    1. TPman

      They were probably confused since the aluminum was recyclable but the recycling bin was only for paper. The “half in the garbage, half in the recycling” compromise didn’t really work out.

    2. Raen

      Some dude named “Josh,” I think… the Avalon guy?

      1. Raen

        Yeah, the Avalon guy. Tried to throw it away, long time ago, but missed.

  26. numaron

    I just noticed that this comic has tooltip comments.
    This changes everything!

    1. TPman

      Why yes, it has been there for several years and not just this week.
      If you go through It’s Walky! you’ll notice it is there intermittently. It is something you should do.

      1. tahrey

        Oh great, now you tell us, after I already archive binged the once.

        Until the strip early last week with the “wait, I can add HOVERTEXT?!” tooltip, any time I’ve moused over a Willis strip it’s merely provided the strip title, same as is written below it at the head of the news/comments column.

        Are you being serious that some of the older ones have it as well, or just trolling? I’m going to have a serious battle on my hands between my OCD and my ADHD to not go check through every single one again if so.

        1. Mr I

          He’s messing with you

        2. Random832

          I think there were a handful of earlier ones, but he never did it consistently. I certainly remember it being an issue before this week.

          That might have been Girls With Slingshots, though, now that I think of it.

        3. HiEv

          Yeah, Girls with Slingshots just lost the entire archive of alt text for all of the old strips when the servers died. Only recent GwS strips will have alt text now.

        4. George

          I think he’s talking about how, before all of it was lost, there’d be a few strips with alt-text and then a few without until at some point Danielle decided to just make it a constant thing.

  27. John

    I’m kind of hoping Monday’s strip involves Dorothy tagging in.

  28. Philippe G.

    I was hoping for a Joyce/Dina kiss today. You know, for the sake of consistency.

    1. Yotomoe

      once again! Here ya go!

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        Then Billie walks in and says “At least it isn’t me this time”.

        1. N0083rP00F

          Then Billie walks in and says “Why isn’t me this time?”.

          There, fixed it for you.

  29. Joel Rice

    Pamela’s taking a long freaking time to take their drink order. Also if Dumbing of Age is supposed to be in a more realistic, real world setting then why does Gallasso still act like.

    I got to admit. The last panel took me a couple of extra seconds to figure out. Then oh how I guffawed.

    1. Regalli

      It changes the universe, but the people in it haven’t changed core personalities. Joe still sleeps with anyone female and consenting, Mike is still Mike, and Galasso will still conquer us all.

  30. PainfulBuggery

    Woah boy. I live in Alabama and I’ve been in Dina’s position many times over.

  31. Angel

    Dina is my favorite now.

  32. Red

    I knew I liked Dina for a reason. /swoon

  33. Kernanator

    Why are Dina’s eyebrows and mouth grey? It’s really weird, and I can’t stop seeing it.

    Also, I’m pretty sure most people’s brains work that way.

    1. George

      Cracked.com found a study showing that that’s literally true, even for people who have had the effect explained to them (because, of course, we’re also hard-wired to think that will never happen to us).

  34. Lu

    The final panel is so true it physically hurt to watch, like a punch to the gut.

    Ow. My head.

  35. Charles RB

    Forget it, Dina. It’s Joycetown.

  36. Astraea

    Sad as it is, that last panel doesn’t surprise me. I’ve taken a little college psychology, and, once well-formed, people’s schemas of how they categorize and organize new information doesn’t change much. With Joyce’s religious beliefs as strong as they are, anything against them will be easily disregarded, no matter how compelling. And honestly, we all do this in our own way – our brains prefer to disregard what doesn’t fit into what we know, as a way of making the already hard work of our brains a bit easier… though, I’d like to think none of us do it to as intense a degree as Joyce…

    1. David

      Yeah, there’s a reason I didn’t mark the right-side box “religion.” It’s bigger than that, and applies to basically everybody to some extent.

  37. Plasma Mongoose

    I decided to do an edit of todays comic cos WHY NOT!

    http://plasma-mongoose.tumblr.com/post//here-is-another-edit-of-todays-edition-of-willis

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      I really need to learn how to do more than like something on Tumblr, I need to be able to post a reply as well.

      1. Jackson

        Tumblr is hard.

        1. Valdrax

          It’s hard, and nobody understands.

        2. Plasma Mongoose

          It is tricky, I used a number of websites over the years and I usually can figure them out quite easily but Tumblr is kinda tricky in parts.

    2. Narf

      Your edits of this fine comic make me cringe.

  38. iggzy

    Why do I feel like Dina is a female version of the real Willis?

    1. Bekah

      Because Joyce is a female version of real Past-Willis?

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        So Joyce will evolve into Dina and then go back in time.

        1. George

          So she’s arguing with herself now?

    2. Viktoria

      Joyce is actually mostly autobiographical, he’s said.

    3. David

      Dina knows way more about dinosaurs than I do.

      1. tahrey

        Wait, what?

        1. davidbreslin101

          Makes sense. I could write a story about rocket scientists, look up loads of facts, ideas and jargon for them to use in conversation, and still I’d know less about rocket science than a real rocket scientist…..

        2. insomniac

          Yeah, any writer needs to either be a genius-IQ master of every discipline and field of study known to mankind (which, believe it or not, is not actually implied by “writer”), or at some point they’ll need to write a character who knows more about a topic than they do.

          There are plenty of ways to do it, mostly involving researching individual factoids that suggest a wider body of knowledge from the person rattling them off. For an example of how not to do it, watch any TV show with a “smart” character, and watch the supporting cast turn into bumbling idiots so our genius looks smarter by comparison.

        3. HiEv

          Some of the better writers consult with scientists in the relevant areas to add to or correct the words of their characters and/or the plot.

        4. Pinja

          If you write any character with who has any sort of expertise they’re going to know more about it than you do. Sure a lot of author write about stories set in careers they have or had (Lawyers writing legal thrillers, long history of scientists writing sci-fi) but any story with characters from a wide range of backgrounds will involve knowing more information than all but the most accomplished poly-maths would know.

          Also, writers assume characters are more three dimensional than are written. There are things writers know about well developed characters that they will never get a chance to write our would never need to. Also there is an assumption character would have lived day to day lives for years and the writer would only ever write about small portions of that.

          …

          Hard to explain but I have heard many author give that sort of answer.

  39. Gnome

    Oh if only Joyce wasn’t a brainwashed loon, she might actually learn something while attending an institution of higher learning. Seriously, why is Joyce even in school? Oh wait, she’s just looking for a husband. Completely forgot.

  40. David Burnward

    I want to marry Dina like legit please tell me this girl is based a real person

  41. HEYOUGUYZ!

    I like it when introverts prove articulate. Take it, extrovert-dominated world!!

  42. Bio D

    I feel like this is as close as Dina will come to adding “Motherfucker” to the end of a sentence.

    1. tahrey

      She doesn’t even NEED “motherfucker” when she has “acknowledgement”.

      Though I’m not entirely ruling out the late appearance of a punctuative “bongo”.

    2. Lu

      EVOLUTION MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU UNDERSTAND IT!?

      So you understand the concepts I’m saying to you!? DESCRIBE WHAT DINOSAURS LOOKED LIKE! Did they look like a bongo!?

      1. George

        WHAT?

        1. Lu

          *BANG*

        2. Andiemus

          I got it.

        3. Lu

          Strangely appropriate avatar.

          MARK IT ZERO!

  43. JoeMerl

    You know, I don’t think Joyce would bother arguing either way about the feather thing, since they could or could not have feathers whether or not evolution were true.

    It is nice to see that she recycles, though. XD

  44. Jesse

    I only just realized, Joyce is basically a female Ned Flanders.

    1. Theozilla

      What’s really sad though is that even Ned Flanders (he has had pre-marital “hanky panky”) is more open to having his pre-conceived notions challenged than Joyce currently is.

    2. tahrey

      But without the Hidely-ho Neighbour Ned-isms, glasses, or stupid sexy skiing gear.

      Same natty taste in knitted sweaters and tank-tops, though. And at some point she might bust out the pushbroom mustache.

      1. N0083rP00F

        Don’t forget the “Finger Razors” that make hedge-trimming as much fun as sitting through church.

      2. George

        Great, now I really want to see Billie have a “stupid sexy Joyce” moment, because it would totally work with her character arc and give us sexy Joyce. Only problem is, I think Joyce’d more self-aware about skintight outfits than Ned is, so I don’t see how it’d happen.

        1. Jesse

          Quick, someone draw that!

      3. Lu

        …So basically Joyce is a younger, female Rick Santorum?

  45. Kasamari

    As fond as I am of Joyce as a person, this is the kind of thing that annoys me about anyone in general. I do my best to not let it change my opinion of someone, but sometimes when they turn away from any kind of proof outside of their preconcieved notions and pretend it isn’t there, I kind of want to go “Mike” on them.

    1. Zababcd

      Hypocritical! When the little squiggly red line told you you’d spelled ‘preconceived’ wrong, you just ignored the contradictory evidence and went ahead with your spelling anyway.

      Joking, although you did spell it incorrectly.

      1. HEYOUGUYZ!

        pwreakawnsceaved

        1. VizardJeffhog

          I BEFORE THE E EXCEPT AFTER C, DO YOU SPELL IT

        2. George

          That rule is so weird.

        3. Andy

          Welcome to a language that’s part French, part German, and all frakked up.

  46. Harry

    I have never loved Dina more than I do right now.

    Also, awesome 4th panel. Lulz.

  47. Notebooked

    “You stare blankly at me, like a doll. Is this acknowledgement?”

    Dina then proceeded to rip Joyce’s heart out of her ribcage and throw it on the floor.

    1. HEYOUGUYZ!

      KALIMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!

      1. Zoey

        rofl!!!!!

    2. Notebooked

      I have the feeling that, if Joyce responds to this with her typical “oh these silly nonbelievers” shtick, she’s going to find that Dina won’t roll her eyes and humor her as easily as the others. (I’ve seen Joyce have two types of reaction to this sort of thing: Frantic overreaction and, when she’s feeling more mature, chuckling holier-than-thou-ness.)

      The others do it because they’re pretty well-adjusted, I think — they know she’s going to think whatever she wants, and they know they don’t have to care about what one person thinks. They screen out her screening-out, and keep believing that it’s none of their business, and she’ll eventually get out into the real world and learn. Dina seems to take other people more seriously, or at least she’s not as good at screening them out, so it’s quite likely Dina may well serve the role of the real world.

      1. Alex Stritar

        I wish Dina was the real world, or just existed in it. I think we could all use someone as awesome as Dina in real life.

        1. Notebooked

          I think It’s Walky!Dina was cute and nice. I think this Dina is amazing. I just like that she’s–I think the official bio in the DoA book is that she isn’t shy, she’s just quiet. It’s Walky!Dina was quite awkward socially and wanted to be better at getting to know people — this Dina doesn’t seem to think that’s a pressing need, exactly. She’s just quiet and thoughtful and incredibly focused on certain things, ‘certain things’ being dinosaurs. That’s why I think Joyce won’t get away with this — Dina cares a lot about her dinosaurs. (Heck, it’s even in her name.) Others may manage to shrug and ignore it, but this is a very personal nerve that has been touched.

          …I got off-track there. Anyway, yes, I know what you mean. I like Dina–you don’t see characters like her often.

        2. insomniac

          DoA-Dina is still awkward, socially, to the point that she asked Amber to teach her how to deal with people, and needed tips like “look the person you’re talking to in the eyes, not at their mouth.”

        3. Notebooked

          Yeah, I know she is, but she doesn’t see the need to learn social skills as such a pressing need. (Or at least, she didn’t, until her run-in with Raidah at the mall.) They’re awkward in different ways — Walky!Dina was very polite and had social skills, but was bad at interacting with strangers. DoA!Dina has very little social skills overall, but doesn’t seem to be as anxious around strangers.

          Still, you’re absolutely right — my bad for forgetting to bring it up.

        4. Lu

          Your yelling is giving me a headache

  48. Uniqueantique

    Not acknowledgement, screening out.
    Dina, you are about the cutest thing ever. You are fighting a losing battle.

  49. mistergray

    Dina is the best and my favorite character in here. She is awesome and I totally agree about the bird and dinosaur relationship.

  50. mistergray

    also I would so date her 🙂

  51. Crumplepunch

    I await in suspense for that piece of paper to somehow corkscrew past the filter.

    1. George

      Glad I’m not the only one who thought that. Either that, or Dina starts a massive SCIENCE rant that overloads the filter and makes it fall in the box.

  52. Leon

    Rejecting all fact and reasoning. Joyce is a true Christian.

    1. Jacob

      Please don’t lump all Christians with close-minded Fundies like Joyce. I’m Christian, and I’m one of the most science-oriented people I know, and coming from someone who went to an Arts and Sciences Academy, that’s saying something.

      1. Lu

        I have a creationist friend, I would say deeply religious but that’s probably a matter of definition of what “deeply religious” is.

        I explained evolution to him once, he was kind enough to hear me out. At the end he asked me, if evolution is how life happened, then “where does it leave God? It obviously can’t be true”

        Here’s the thing: You can say that God directs evolution, but strictly speaking God doesn’t really enter into it. And I think that’s why denial of evolution is so important to Christians and to a lesser degree theists in general: There’s no point in creating a watchmaker for a watch that created itself.

        Or if everything requires a creator, then the creator necessarily must have been created.

        So the way I see it, you can’t apply logic or science to that. If you are religious, you have to take it on faith. So you pick faith over logic and reason. That doesn’t make you an asshole, or an idiot, or less of a person in any way, but it seems to me it does make you, well, illogical and unreasonable.

        1. Random832

          That’s like saying there’s no point in John Conway since the gliders work on their own.

        2. Lu

          It really isn’t like saying that.

          Unless you’re saying God didn’t actually create the universe, he merely discovered an aspect of reality and modeled it through abstractions and mathematics.

      2. Lu

        P.S.: I’m sorry if I come off as a dick. I simply can’t understand how you can genuinely be science oriented and also believe in God without having to selectively and arbitrarily shut off science/logic, which looks a lot like denial to me.

        1. Valdrax

          I guess I take the simple approach.

          The questions man can answer with science and reasoning, should always be answered by it: where do we come from, how does the universe work, how do we end disease and suffering, is there anyone else out there, etc.

          The questions that can’t answer with science are where religion and philosophy step in: why does the universe exist, does life have purpose and what is it, what is right and wrong, is there such a thing as justice, does death have meaning and purpose, etc.

          Nothing in science that I’ve seen precludes God. Just certain narrow, literal interpretations of parts of the Bible. And God is more than just a book anyway.

      3. Tualha

        It seems to me that you must be science-oriented with certain exceptions, then. You’re probably fine with being rationally skeptical about most scientific theories; evolution is well supported, so you accept it as probably true; cold fusion hasn’t held up, so you reject it. But hey wait, here’s an old book that says a man walked on water, multiplied loaves and fishes, and came back from the dead. Yeah, I’ll totally buy that, no evidence required.

        You see the dissonance here?

        1. ForceUser

          Faith is kinda hard to explain really, to believe something without having experienced it yourself. Well I guess in that way it’s kinda like the big bang. You weren’t there but you believe it happened because of the evidence scientists prove you. In a way you believe in the scientists since you didn’t interpret the data yourself. I guess our criteria on evidence/raw data is just different.

          That said I am also someone who has been able to come to peace with being a religious person AND an avid follower of science. I love everything to do with science, from how we’ve recently been able to see the connections between atoms to being able to see the aftereffects of the big bang. To me every new discovery, every new insight is more proof of how big and powerful God really is.

          We both have the same information in front of us, what differs is in what we accept as the truth, our interpretation of those facts. My whole life everything I’ve read in religious texts and religious leaders have told me to think for myself, examine everything closely and learn as much as I can. Perhaps it’s different in other places in the world or I just was super lucky with awesome parents?

        2. Anonymous

          All is doubted. The Big Bang is/was a working model, ‘working’ in that it stood up to everything thrown at it. At the slightest hint that something could undermine it, people are all over it, eager to see if more can be learnt about how things actually work.

          Experiments can be repeated by a person and consistently give the same results. Those experiments can be repeated by others and consistently give the same result. One can even take pains and go to great length to perform them oneself and see the results given directly. For all the laboratories and scientists involved, such cases lack any evidence to the contrary, and to be untrustworthy would require a vast conspiracy of scale and complexity several times the scale and complexity which tends to spring information leaks like a rice sieve.

          Complex patterns emerging from simple rules is a trivial concept, and moer and more overwhelming evidence to support that viewpoint is acquired the more investigations are done. The sort of extraordinary claims made by the faithful require extraordinary evidence, and they lack that extraordinary evidence. Repeatable evidence from all sources backs up working models, which is why they’re used in practice, but the tales told by the faithful have effectively no bearing on reality, which is why for all practical purposes they fall within the category of fiction rather than suspected facts.

        3. Lu

          Or to put Anonymous’s statement shortly, in science it’s not a virtue to affirm the same things on Monday and Friday regardless of what happened during the rest of the week.

          In Religion, it’s the whole point of the “faith” thing.

  53. Jesus DeSaad

    -Sigh-even if a creationist invented a time machine,
    that could jump back in time by 2000 years each time he pushed a button,
    so he could meet Jesus,
    and he then pushed the button a 32720 times out of curiosity,
    and came face to face with dinosaurs,
    he’d still try to find an excuse to disregard all evidence contrary to his faith.

    1. ForceUser

      -sigh- even if a scientist invented a time machine, that could jump back in time by 2000 years each time he pushed a button, so he could meet Jesus he’d still try and find an excuse to disregard all the miracles contrary to his fai.. erm science.*

      The dinosaur thing though, that would be AMAZING. I’d sign up for that in a heartbeat. I love dinosaurs and would love to see actual ones if it was ever possible.

      *Just a little bit of fun. Anything can be turned around to suit someone and even the smallest comment can be changed to mean something exactly the oppisite or what was never meant.

      1. Sigma Octantis

        Well, thing is, somebody who says that didn’t understand science. One of the most important things in science is to assume that what you know is wrong. You can never know the truth. Maybe it’s a good approximation, but there is still more to uncover. So going back in time and finding things that prove our view as false, that’s a scientists wet dream.
        That’s the reason science works. If it wasn’t that way, we would still think light travels through ether, and that classical mechanics is right.

        Yes, I understand you wanted to be funny, you probably were, but I really hate the “every argument can be turned around”-argument.

        1. insomniac

          Not that every scientist lives up to the ideal, but yeah. Scientists may have their pet theories and notions, but overturning an existing theory or model is what every scientist dreams of. Not just for the advancement of knowledge and TRUTH, but for the fame, recognition, tenure, and deviant science groupie sex.

        2. HiEv

          Seriously. If I invented a time machine and could prove that Jesus died on the cross, and when he did the earth broke open and the saints rose from the dead and walked amongst the people (Matthew 27:51-54), then I’d surely be able to rack up at least two Nobel prizes. Why would I deny that evidence?

          Saying a scientist would disregard evidence like that is to deny the understanding of what it is to be a scientist. Good scientists let the evidence lead them to the conclusions. Only bad scientists start with a preconception and try to force the evidence to fit it. Most scientists would love to be the discoverer of new science that overturns old ideas, but they’re usually also very careful to not be fooled into seeing what they want to see. No scientist wants to be the next Pons and Fleischmann (the scientists who jumped the gun and claimed to have discovered cold fusion before they’d properly verified it).

          Of course, all I’d be able to prove is that these events happened. That would not prove that God was the cause. “Miracles” can be just as easily explained by pixies as they can by gods. You have to have actual objective evidence of a causal relationship before you can attempt to prove what caused something.

        3. Sigma Octantis

          Ahh yeah, the deviant science groupie sex, the reason I’m studying Physics.
          Though I haven’t seen a female in over one year, so I’m starting to feel a little cheated.

      2. George

        Let’s be honest, if a real scientist saw a dude multiplying loaves and fishes, regardless of circumstances or what it meant for the rest of his worldview, he’d start work on a loaf-and-fish-based perpetual motion machine/infinite energy generator so that he could get, just, ALL the freakin’ money.

      3. Crumplepunch

        You’ve made this “scientific faith” point before, and it only gets sillier as time goes on. How exactly do you define faith? Different people have different working definitions, but mine is “belief in a proposition despite having no evidence in it’s favour and/or evidence to the contrary.” After all, if there is evidence, there is no need for faith.

        This is emphatically not what scientists do, and to suggest that the positions are somehow equivalent is a calumny against thought.

  54. tahrey

    Yoinking the “You stare at me blankly, like a doll” line…

    Also this reminds me heavily of a mix of my school days, and some of the more mind twistingly ignorant people I ran across at university (and then evening-class college). Mind twisting in that it hurts your brain to try and determine first how they managed to pass the selection criteria and tests, then how they scraped the money and wherewithal together to actually attend… and then, hardest of all, why they wanted to come and supposedly “learn” in the first place.

    1. Miles Dryden

      Remember, Joyce doesnt want to learn, she just wants a husband.

  55. David P. Summers

    I have to say that, as a scientist, we should be clear on what science says about faith. The idea that it is either faith or science and that one has to destroy the other is, IMO, wrong.

    Yes, the scientific explanation (though I never liked that phrase) is as Dina explains. The problem is how that applies to faith. Is it possible for God to make is seem that dinosaurs were older than they were. Sure it is, if you believe in an omnipotent god. What does science say about that? Nothing unless you can find a way to test it. Otherwise, it is a matter of faith, not science.

    So both people have perfectly valid views. Joyce’s faith leads her to believe something that is not scientifically testable (not verifiable _or_ refutable). Dina, however, relies on the scientific explanation which is also good.

    1. Lu

      Joyce’s “explanation” however has scant explanatory power, so while it might be awesome at being an article of faith, it really, really blows as an explanation.

    2. Kryss LaBryn

      But they aren’t both valid. One has solid, scientifically-proven evidence behind it, and the other one is just saying, “Ah, but you can’t prove that God wasn’t behind it all.” And I’m sorry and I don’t mean to offend, but “You can’t prove it’s false” just isn’t a valid argument.

      Look, I can’t prove that trans-dimensional aliens didn’t spirit Hitler away at the end of WWII, to a secret Nazi training camp at the centre of the earth, so by the same argument, saying that that is what happened is valid.

      Sure, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that doesn’t mean they will always be right. Heck, I’d even argue that for anything that isn’t subjective (like whether or not strawberries taste better than blueberries), no, opinions are not all equal. Certainly if one side has solid evidence behind it and the other one doesn’t, it’s pretty easy to come to the conclusion that the side arguing against said evidence without actually coming up with any supporting evidence that refutes the original evidence is objectively wrong.

      That’s probably why, for example, if someone is accused of murder, with a ton of evidence against them, they can’t just say “My evil twin did it” and sit there looking smug, and actually get off.

      Does he actually have a twin? Is said twin evil? Can you document in any way that the person caught on film stabbing the guy 20 times actually was that twin and not him?

      Saying “You can’t prove God isn’t involved” and saying that’s a valid argument is like saying you can’t prove the evil twin didn’t do it, and expecting that to be a valid defense. One can say it, but that doesn’t make either one “valid”.

      1. George

        In my opinion, there’s only a problem if one tries to interfere with the other, not when people simply try to reconcile them. So while you’re technically right that Joyce’s view isn’t “valid”, that’s because she takes an anti-scientific Creationist approach, and doesn’t use the “you can’t prove God isn’t involved” idea to reconcile her faith with the world around her.

        I’m Atheist, but seeing people attack the ways religious people learn to accept science just bugs me. You’re just going to confirm some people’s belief that faith and science are opposed and end up making things worse.

    3. John

      Last Tuesdayism is undisprovable. It’s also completely meaningless.

      Stipulating an omniscient, omnipotent being, there’s no reason that it could not have created the entire world last Tuesday, in a state entirely consistent with having existed for billions of years: brains fully formed with false memories of events before last Tuesday already in place in them, photons appearing to have originated at stars thousands of lightyears away already in flight a few lightdays from Earth, an Earth with geological layers, fossils, and so on all made exactly as if they had been laid down over the course of billions of years, and so on. And since this being is stipulated to be omniscient and omnipotent, this fakery can be perfect… there’s no way to tell that it’s only faking being billions of years old.

      But because this fakery is perfect, because there’s no way to distinguish between last Tuesday’s faked-up universe and an actual billions-of-years-old universe, because everything about it is entirely consistent with a universe billions of years old, the idea that it’s “really” only a few days old means nothing. We can still do science as if the universe were billions of years old, and it will all still work. It will tell us things, let us make predictions, about how the universe was faked. Using geology to figure out where resource deposits would have formed if the world was really billions of years old will tell us where our omni^2 being put them when it faked the thing up last Tuesday. Using archaeology to figure out how species would have evolved if they hadn’t all been created as-is last Tuesday will tell us what the things created last Tuesday are like, and let us make predictions about how they’ll change from here on out. Using astronomy and cosmology to figure out what the background radiation of the universe would have been if it had been formed from a ginormous explosion billions of years ago rather than being created ad nihilum a few days back gives us accurate numbers (It works, bongoes!). And so on, for everything ever.

      So, since everything works exactly as if the universe were billions of years old, and being only a few days old affects exactly nothing, there isn’t any practical sense in which you can say that it’s not billions of years old.

      The problem with Young Earth Creationism and Young Earth Creationism Under A More Deceptive Name “Intelligent Design” is that they’re not merely saying that the universe is not really billions of years old, but just looks as if it were, but trying to put forth another model for how it works that isn’t consistent with the billions-of-years-old model. They’re not just saying that dinosaurs were never really living creatures, just faked pre-fossilized remains stuffed into appropriate rock layers when God built the whole thing in a week a few thousand years ago. They’re claiming that dinosaurs were living creatures that co-existed with humans and Noah put two of every kind of them on a boat (and they give the dimensions of the boat, just to fully illustrate how ridiculous that idea is) when God killed everyone and everything not on the boat by covering the entire planet in water, and coming up with frankly insane explanations for how those events occurred – where the water came from, where it went, how the dinosaurs died out and got fossilized and buried, and so on. And the model they’re trying to put forth is wrong. Period. End of story. It does not match the world as observed.

    4. David P. Summers

      To address a number of responses to my comment….
      -People should be careful throwing around the word “prove”. The fact is that science is, and must be, falsifiable. The theory that Dina has about dinosaurs is, IMO, strong and compelling. But it is not something that should be regarded as stopping the possibility of disagreement, no matter what the source.
      -Faith indeed doesn’t offer the kind of logical arguments that can be tested and potentially disproven as science does. That is why faith is different than science. The problem I have with creationism is not that people believe things they have faith in, it is that it attempts to use science in place of faith, when each has its own reasons. People (and so far as I can see Joyce is in this category) would simply accept things they believe out of faith as faith.
      -Arguing that something seems absurd isn’t scientific. You mock “last Tuesdayism”, but the fact remains that since you can’t test whether it is true or not, science does _not_ argue against it. That you find it absurd is a measure of your own faith that the universe doesn’t work that way, not a scientific theory.
      -Is faith inferior to science? That is, ironically, also not a scientific question. Science has a certain popularity because it has brought numerous real gains to society. But whether one or the other is “better” is a question of philosophy.

      1. John

        You clearly didn’t read my comment.

        That Last Tuesdayism (which is not mockery, or at least not mine; it’s the accepted term for the thought experiment I outlined) can’t be disproven is the absolute first thing that I wrote. My point was that because it can’t be disproven, because there is no way to distinguish between a universe that is actually billions of years old, and a universe that was created last Tuesday in every way as if it were a universe billions of years old, that it doesn’t matter if it was created as-is last Tuesday or formed over the course of billions of years. For all practical purposes, we can treat it as if it were billions of years old, and everything we’re doing will work right. You can take as an article of faith that it was created as if it were billions of years old last Tuesday (or a few thousand years ago; it makes no real difference), and it doesn’t affect anything. I won’t argue it, though I personally find it simpler to make the pragmatic assumption that the universe is really exactly what it looks like.

        My second point, however, is that Creationism is not Last Tuesdayism. It is not proposing a universe that was created a few thousand years ago in a state precisely consistent with being billions of years old. It’s proposing a universe that was created new a few thousand years ago, and all of the geological, archaeological, paleontological, astronomical, etc., evidence of it being much, much older than that is the result of processes that occurred over the course of those few thousand years. This is not undisprovable, and it has in fact been disproven, repeatedly. If you take as an article of faith that the Creationist explanation for the current state of the world is correct, you are wrong, and if you try to do things with the “science” that explanation implies, your things won’t work.

        1. insomniac

          ANGRY BILLIE YELLS TRUTHS!

        2. Lu

          “Rip and tear”?

        3. insomniac

          YOU ARE HUGE! THAT MEANS YOU HAVE HUGE GUTS!

        4. Lu

          HERE COMES THE NIGHT TRAIN!!!

          I LIKE WHAT I SEE! AN IMPORTANT LOOKING FOSSIL!

          ISOTOPE DATING! NOW THEY’RE RADIOACTIVE! THAT CAN’T BE GOOD!!!

      2. HiEv

        The real problem with arguing that both views are equally valid is that you totally ignore the problem of plausibility.

        From the scientific point of view, whether a claim is valid or not has to do with its plausibility, which is built upon several factors including objective evidence for the position, support from and non-contradiction with other accepted areas of science, and the ability to withstand attempts at falsification. A claim which is capable of doing all of those things is more plausible, and thus more valid, than a claim that can do none of those things.

        When objectively attempting to determine the truth of reality (i.e. whether a claim is valid), this makes science far superior to blind faith.

  56. The1exile

    I like to imagine Joe being where Ethan is right now.

  57. ADHadh

    OK, that last panel is terrible. It’s like that REASON wrench from Better Days. Well, maybe not as bad, as it’s somewhat funny.

  58. Buckybone

    4th panel: CREATIONIST LOGIC http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/oklahoma-hr1674-science-evolution-climate-change

    1. Ray

      The fourth panel could be applied to so many things. It would even work both ways for climate change, since at this point the whole “global warming is manmade and will doom us all” is as much preconceived notion for people as it is science, and these same people don’t like to hear any scientific work suggesting that the old scientific work that “proved” manmade global warming might be wrong. Hint: new scientific work overturns old scientific work all the time.

      And that’s your daily dose of political flame bait. Sorry. Feel free to shake your fist, ignore, and move on.

      1. Cope

        I’ll leave this here.

        http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

        1. Li

          That is beautiful and I will save it for this argument is an old one and needs thorough, exhaustive debunking but that doesn’t mean we should all have to exhaust ourselves responding to it. 😉

  59. Cope

    Man, don’t get creationists started on “new information”.

    1. Gordon Blvd

      ROFLMAO!!!! sooooooooo +1 :0

    2. Tylertlat

      As someone who’s leaning towards ID, I laughed at this.

  60. VizardJeffhog

    DINA YOU CAN WIN THIS

    TURN YOUR FILES OF REVELATION INTO A GIANT FOSSIL OF FACTS

    WATCH THAT LITTLE PIPE FLY AS THE SHEER WEIGHT OF YOUR FOSSILIZED BOMBSHELL OF TRUTH COMES DOWN FROM THE HEAVENS OF NEW INFORMATION, RIGHTEOUSLY LANDING IN THE BOX OF SCIENCE

    BRING JUSTICE TO THE MIND OF JOYCE WITH RAW DINOSAUR POWER, SO ALL NEW INFORMATION MAY CEASE BEING IMPROPERLY RECYCLED

    1. VizardJeffhog

      UNLEASH THE DINASAUR FROM WITHIN

  61. davidbreslin101

    I, too, am willing to accept blank, doll-like stares as acknowledgement. It happens when people are so awed by what I’m telling them about the life-cycle of the Brazil-nut tree, they forget to use facial expressions.

  62. Sir Robin

    I want yet another Joyce date to end with punches

    1. Zach

      This ^
      Totes this^
      It would be babies if it happened, and I would give you a nickle.
      Did I miss any memes?

      1. George

        FAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCEEEEEEE

  63. Tenn

    *BA-DUMP*

    I seem to have fallen in love with Dina.

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some bodily fluids to mop up.

    1. Tenn

      Ethan avatar: highly appropriate. Also: completely wrong.

  64. Kitschensyngk

    A recycle bin? Wasn’t Joyce raised to believe that environmentalists are godless hippies?

  65. Ronnie

    …If this continues much longer, I will probably consider more than once deleting this from my speed dial. Yet your strips are such an addiction…. Damn you, Willis. I don’t want to watch but I can’t look away!

    1. Ronnie

      Also, I must say: What kind of world do Walky’s characters live in where a benign ball of joy like Joyce gets laid into and an entity of pure malice, hatred, and murderous intent like Malaya walks the earth pretty much opposed only by the windmills in her head?

      1. MilesDryden

        OMG. Malaya is the Anti-Joyce!

      2. Notebooked

        Separate ones! DoA and Shortpacked! don’t exist in the same continuity, after all!

        …And now I want to see what Malaya’s like here. Either before she became a spiteful angry-face-on-legs, or after. (Potential for character development there, after all! And Leslie’s in a teaching role, so a relationship with a student would be out of the question anyway, so maybe there’s no romantic misfire to sully their platonic relationship? And no Robin to compete with for affection, so she may genuinely be turned into a slightly better person?)

        (…Actually, isn’t Billie sort of DoA’s Malaya?)

      3. bunivasal

        To be fair, Joyce is rebuffed by Dina, and her seemingly positive nature belies a stubborn intransigence that people might find deeply offensive.

        Malaya, on the other hand, sees life as a gameshow. She’s not here to make friends, and most people either seem to recognize that instantly or are disarmed by personal problems that make it impossible for them to see past her breasts.

      4. George

        One where Joyce, devoid of both malice and social awareness, finds herself talking creationism in the same room of a girl for whom the truth about dinosaurs is the most important thing in her life. And then another where Malaya, full of rage and spite, lives with one guy to apathetic to hate her and another too infatuated to see her faults, while working at a toy store full of nerds where her only interactions are with clueless people, people angrier than her, or people whose experience in retail and/or fandom has taught them that it’s not worth engaging trolls like her.

  66. Tom T.

    To be fair, if someone showed up uninvited on my date and started arguing with me, I might just stare blankly too.

    Besides which, however maddeningly slippery it might be to say so, none of what Dina said is incompatible with Joyce’s creationist assumptions.

    Joyce’s world-view is essentially that we are living in the Matrix. How does one argue out of that assumption?

    1. Anonymous

      Inception comes to mind. More directly, ‘reality checks’ to train yourself to do constantly so that you notice when you’re dreaming.

      Going back to the original analogy, Anderson was /correct/ to live under the impression that his world was real until (extraordinary and consistent, mind you) evidence to the contrary started popping up. If he were the sort of person who would start living under the impression that his world was fake without evidence, then he would be the sort of person who would live under the same impression even if born centuries earlier into a non-fake world, and he would be a very risky person to be around even if he happened to be right by pure accident/coincidence.

      –Well, that’s for ‘why one should snap oneself out of that sort of assumption if one finds oneself in it’. As with a religious robot in a certain Asimov short story, there’s the ‘axioms’ problem… in practice, when you have someone who start from the assumption that the world is fake or there’s a giant puppeteer controlling everything or everyone else are human-eating aliens, there’s little to do except restrain them so that their arbitrary axioms can’t result in them successfully taking actions which would harm others.

      1. George

        Personally, I’d be more inclined to put up with them until they started to talk about harming others. People whose world views are based on ridiculous assumptions are often fun to listen to as long as they’re not dangerous.

        1. begbert2

          Oddly, I find religious people talk about harming others a LOT. They just don’t usually talk about themselves doing it; they talk about how their divine ruler whose orders they obey does it or has a standing plan or system in place to do it on a mass scale, often but not always in the afterlife. (Or sometimes their leader allows a devil to do it for them.)

          Typically people like this aren’t a problem, except the odd one that gets a wild hair up their ass and decides it’s time to take God’s will into their own hands. (Or to vote for somebody else to.) This is NOT common. How to deal with it? Well, we have these things called laws, which are fairly good for dealing the stabby types at least after the fact, but I’m still working on a solution to the ‘schoolboard’ problem. Ask again later.

        2. George

          Well, yeah, I probably should’ve added a “personally” in there. Although talking about how someone else is going to hurt a person can itself hurt in certain circumstances.

        3. George

          Oops, wrong email.

  67. bibulb

    “I am not a doll.”

  68. Anonymous

    “Yes! A single page, into that empty box for Science, where everything has been in the Pre-conceived Notions box before!”

    Then I saw the chute.

    In any case, approval of Dina’s response. *smiles*

    Unrelated, I have to remember to recontemplate various previous strips in the context of the almost-forgotten PSL concept. *nostalgia*

    1. Lu

      Wouldn’t it be funny if Dina’s speech accidentally went into the “Science” bin and caused Joyce’s mind to BSOD?

  69. John Biles

    Faster Dina, KILL KILL!!!!

  70. Intie

    Since my anti-Joyce (and Dorothy) comments keep getting deleted, I won’t even try.

    Anyway, good try Dina. But don’t waste your energy.

    1. David

      I don’t see any deleted or spamfiltered posts from you.

      Though general rule-of-thumb, not directed at you but at folks in general: Posts about how specifically you want to graphically murder certain characters is often kind of creepy, and so I tend to ditch those.

      There are buttloads of anti-Joyce comments here. Hell, there’s one a few comments down by fruitpunchtsunami. There’s one directly above yours. It’s not the content, it’s the execution.

      1. Lu

        If people are suggesting Joyce needs to be graphically murdered, that really blows. I hate what she said, but that doesn’t mean I’d hate her, even if she wasn’t a fictional character.

        I still think what she said was dumb as rocks, but that doesn’t make her any less sweet or endearing. At worst she just needs to accept that ideas she grew up with aren’t necessarily true or the alpha and omega. People can change, but even when they don’t, you take the good with the bad.

  71. bunivasal

    I think both girls are now sitting on Ethan’s lap.

    1. Aeron

      Shame that it’s wasted on him.

    2. Jason

      This is what I see every time I look at this strip now. Two little sisters bouncing on Daddy’s lap.

      I do not mean that to sound sexual. Ew!

  72. Insanely Asinine

    Dina I thought she was awesome before but now…holy shit. I want this person to exist!

  73. Kryss LaBryn

    And then, by sheer coincidence, while hitting the “Random” button on SMBC, I get this:

    http://www.smbc-comics.com/?db=comics&id=2703#comic

    Apt. Most apt.

  74. Lucy

    @tylertat
    I’m pretty sure she was being sarcastic.

  75. fruitpunchtsunami

    I officially cannot stand Joyce now

  76. Noel Schornhorst

    Her eyes are black and glassy… like a DOLL’S eyes…

  77. Vree

    You should read more on dinosaurs Willis so that Dina would come off more convincing. 🙁

    I’m disappointed with her manner of speech, it is too vague.

    He should be naming species, referencing discoveries, the sort of stuff to show she knows what she’s talking about, not just stating an opinion.

    1. Vree

      Yeaaah I’m sorry Willis I don’t think you can DO science-babble too well.

      The characters tend to come off too vague, something-I-read-in-a-paper-and-it-convinced-me.

      I assume because David’s own knowledge on feathered dinos is not deep enough to make any deeper references buuuut

      1. Raen

        Keep in mind, she is a frosh.

      2. John

        Fitting that into the comic strip format would be a problem, especially if you want to have room for at least a talking head and a gag in the last panel. (Though, really, it’s panel three that has the payoff today.) Comic strips are deceptively tight on text space. It’d be like trying to publish your dissertation via Twitter.

        Though, I’ve gotta say, a full-page-sized strip with panel after panel after panel of Dina burying Joyce in wall-of-facts would be hilariously awesome.

    2. Elliott Belser

      Specific example off the top of my head: “There is a fossil in China called the Mei Lung that we can tell was birdlike because it slept on it’s wing the same way modern pigeons do!”

    3. David

      This is a four-panel comic strip, man. Dina gets to talk about dinosaurs in two of them. This is a story, not a term paper.

      And, believe me, I know from experience, the more specific you get, the easier it is for folks to ignore the larger point and poke holes in the smaller pieces. Imagine I had Dina mention Specific Evidence A From Scientist Dudemeister Which Was Discovered In The Year 20XX. Scientists aren’t exactly a monolithic group. Some will disagree with Dudemeister’s findings even if they agree with the larger, vaguer picture which Dina is explaining. One faction will talk nothing about how ridiculous it is that Dina mentioned that guy and not some other guy. Another faction will talk back. And who knows, maybe Dudemeister’s findings will be overturned next year. In a metatextual way, that will hurt Dina’s argument even if she is generally right about the subject. It becomes a dumb distraction.

      It is best not to overreach and forget what this individual strip is actually about, which is Dina and Joyce’s interaction.

      1. Andiemus

        This comes off as more rage-induced anyway. I certainly can’t name specific scientific findings when I’m seeing red.

      2. kingleon

        As a paleontologist, I will authentic that this is a very authentic response for a freshman undergraduate with an interest in paleontology. I didn’t really learn the literature too well until grad school myself.

  78. Arkadi

    Wow, Dina. So you really were able to talk that much all along? <3

  79. John Harmon

    That final panel will become a meme, I know it.

  80. David P. Summers

    I am taken aback by some of the bile thrown at Joyce. Yes, her views are based on faith and not science (as I talk about above), but all she has done is give her own views on the subject.

    1. John Harmon

      She took tons of scientific testing, evidence, and downright fact and just dismissed it all with “We can’t really know”.

      When you do that, you deserve everything you get.

      1. David P. Summers

        So you are condemning her for her beliefs (putting faith over science) or for expressing them?

        I am a scientist. Many of my relatives have beliefs that some would label “fundamentalist”. I am saddened by the attitude that one side has to eliminate the other.

        1. HiEv

          I don’t think he’s doing either of those things. I think he’s just expressing the frustration some people feel when someone blithely dismisses the millions of man hours put in by tens of thousands of scientists to carefully uncover, study, and verify the facts in an objective manner and lay it out for anyone to check for themselves.

          The only thing we’d really like to eliminate here is scientific ignorance, which I hope you would agree is a good thing to eliminate.

        2. David P. Summers

          Well, all we know is that Joyce has chosen a belief out of faith rather than science. One certainly disagree with her, but the attacks on her as a person (well, as a character), such as you “deserve what you get” give me pause.

          Well, I understand trying to trying to fight ignorance since I’ve spent some time trying to educate people that science and faith aren’t enemies that have to try and destroy each other.

        3. Andiemus

          The thing is, she did it first. She’s saying that because the Bible says something the efforts of people who investigated and discovered something in the real world can be brushed off. This is still ignoring the consequences of such things as denying evolution and dismissing scientific research as fundamentally inconclusive.

        4. Andiemus

          Oh, and yes. They are.

        5. John Harmon

          Using “faith” and “religion” as the ultimate excuse to blatantly spread ignorance and use it as a foundation to raise future generations is rather terrifying, and dare I say dangerous. When it comes to that, I really don’t care about being polite about my dislike of it.

        6. insomniac

          The former. Putting deliberate ignorance over learning and fact is a flaw, even if you call it “faith” in provably untrue things.

    2. George

      The problem is that, really, basing one’s views on faith OR science should never be a choice. As Multiplex put it, “truth cannot contradict truth”. There’s no reason to judge people who try to reconcile their faith and modern science (directed evolution, “God caused the Big Bang”,etc.) but if it’s scientifically proveable you kinda have to accept what was proven. Rejecting science in favor of what you believe gives us things like anti-vaccination movements and climate change denial.

    3. Viktoria

      You don’t get to walk around talking about how the earth is flat and not expect people to point out that that is stupid and wrong. And if there is a nationwide movement to teach children that the earth is flat, and congressmen defund NASA because they are tools of Satan for promoting a round earth, then people are going to be angry about the flat-earthers, because that belief is actively harming people now.

      Joyce chose to say the sky is green. At some point, people are going to tell her to look up.

  81. jamesrandi

    David “Subtle as a Sledgehammer” Willis.

    1. HiEv

      Unfortunately, some people don’t notice anything less subtle than a sledgehammer. :-/

  82. Taigan

    “Next I will use science to show why your boyfriend loves the cock.”

  83. Wazat

    That last image is glorious. I love it.

  84. Andiemus

    The thing I’ve always said with this classic debate is, if you have objective proof of God’s existence, why the hell are you talking to me? Find the nearest peer-reviewed journal and get yourself published. Literally every single field of human study will change forever. Paradise Lost goes from mythological fiction to historical fiction. Physics gets turned completely on its head. Medicine and biology have to expand to accommodate this new fact. They won’t just give you all the Nobel Prizes, they will rename the prizes after you.

  85. Fitz

    hey guys im sorry if i offend anybody but i do not get how people can not understand evidence creationists use deductive thought where many science oriented people use inductive reasoning and are able to change yet deductive reasoning uses undeniable truths, creationists consider god creating the earth an undeniable truth yet is is very easily debatable for carbon dating therefore making it deniable yet since Joyce’s find is wired deductively with her ideas of truth being infallible to her and therefore making her impossible to change her stances on issues so heres the point Joyce will not change no matter what so Dina should not try for it will be a fruitless endeavor which will simply have no affect on Joyce for her deductive mindset.

    1. Andiemus

      You’re misusing the word deductive. It’s not that the truths used are undeniable, it’s that if the premises are true, the conclusion can’t be false. It is entirely possible for Joyce to be merely misguided, and when she understands how unrealistic her homeschool science education was then she’ll adjust her worldview accordingly.

  86. me

    Funny how the average person is always aware of the superiority of science to religious beliefs when a lot of scientists weren’t. Minor players to be sure- Einstein, Oppenheimer, etc. We are never so ignorant as when we assume we know all that is important on a subject. Nothing amazes me so much as someone who can look at our existence – from the atom to the universe and say to themselves, “This is all the result of some huge accident, and means nothing.” If there is no ultimate accountability, the only behavioral recommendation that matters is,”Don’t get caught.”

    1. insomniac

      That is fantastically circular. “This must be true because it would be bad if it wasn’t true.”

      1. HiEv

        That’s not so much circular as it’s an appeal to consequences.

        However, no matter how much it would suck if you blew $100 on lottery tickets and didn’t win a darn thing, that doesn’t change reality and magically turn them into winning lottery tickets. Reality is what it is, whether you like the potential consequences of that reality or not.

    2. Viktoria

      I hope you realize how scary people like you are. “There is no morality in a world without God”. You are saying that if you ever suffer a crisis of faith, if you ever question your particular Zeus, then you’ll probably go on a rape-and-murder spree. After all, no God, no morals, right? I really hope that you live far away from me.

      1. me

        If there is no accountability, then not only are your misdeeds of no import-neither are the things you do right.
        “It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, “whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,” and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.” –John Adams
        With no accountability they are the same.

        1. Andiemus

          Oh, so it’s not that you can actually prove that God exists, it’s that you’re scared he might not. Reality is not subject to your personal insecurities.

        2. Arkadi

          So you’re saying that we need accountability. Yes. That’s why we have courts and prisons.

        3. insomniac

          That you want there to be a God is not actually proof of divine existence or justice.

          Also, right and wrong do not rely on the application of punishment for wrongdoing. “I do the right thing in exchange for bribes, and avoid the wrong thing for fear of punishment” is the moral reasoning of an infant.

    3. Proxiehunter

      If nothing we do matters then all that matters is what we do. Hell, I’m a theist and I don’t look to my gods to tell me right from wrong. That’s what my free will and reasoning process are for.

      1. Andiemus

        That sounds oddly like a firefly reference.

        1. insomniac

          It’s an Angel reference.

          But Whedon’s existentialism shows up in both.

        2. Andiemus

          Oh yeah. That’s right. Sounded like something Simon would say though.

    4. Andiemus

      False dichotomy. You’re assuming the only alternative to deliberate action is random chance. Also, the existence of God does not make morality objective. It just makes your personal code of ethics exactly the same as a particular god’s subjective opinion on the subject, and the best part? That doesn’t have to change whether God exists or not. People base their thoughts on morality on fictional people all the time.

    5. Fady

      ” If there is no ultimate accountability, the only behavioral recommendation that matters is,”Don’t get caught.””

      Well, that’s why we have forensic science.
      We’re working hard to make sure people are held accountable for their actions.
      You’re welcome??

    6. Jackie M.

      People who don’t believe in a higher power aren’t refusing to commit crimes because they’re afraid they’ll be caught, but because they know harming other people is wrong, and it would eat at their conscience to do so. They don’t murder because, if there is no heaven, that life is gone forever. Completely snuffed out, and only tragedy and guilt remains. We are moral because we value humanity as a whole, and we believe this is truly our one shot at life. (Obviously a generalization, as I can’t speak for every non-believer.)
      I agree with what some others have said, if the only thing stopping you from hurting people is the threat of eternal torment, not your love for your fellow human, then I find that to be really frightening.

  87. Li

    Creationism is a perfectly valid system of personal beliefs, right up until the point when it starts being forced on others who do not share those beliefs.

    That is the point where creationists should expect to be asked to defend their presumptuous and unreasonable behavior: that is the point where it starts to matter what you can prove and whether your beliefs can withstand the same intense scrutiny as scientific theories.

    You can either say “it’s what I choose to believe” and be immune from criticism OR you can say “it’s what you need to believe too”, but you can’t do both.

  88. HLY

    damnit dina, I want a joyce doll now….

  89. M.N.

    Guys its unreasonable to say that without a belief in god people are inherently evil is a bit unreasonable and i agree entirely with Li in that i do not want people to attack my beliefs as i am a Muslim and i do not try to get into other’s religious beliefs as long as you leave me and my beliefs alone. So stop the name calling and live with another, it is for the better, it does not matter what each person believes it is their business as far as im concerned, it is not yur job to convert evryone to your way of thinking

  90. tb

    It seems to me that the real challenge would be to use the same last panel in multiple strips with regard to different characters, changing the label on the middle box, and seeing who else it might apply to.

  91. Skydron

    It’s most likely obvious to everyone, but I’m still going to say it.
    Joyce = Extremely naive person

  92. Cyan1deDr3ams

    I love this Dina chick. Also Joyce is sweet but decidedly…annoying.

  93. Cyan1deDr3ams

    I realized that all I talk about is evolution too…and I even have that same dinosaur hat…and a bunch of dinosaur and evolution shirts…I pretty much AM this Dina character. Eeep.

  94. xero

    so my take away from this is she can get science if you hit her with enough of it at once to unbalance the chute

  95. TFielding

    They should find somewhere to agree, like Robert Bakker, Christian Minister and Paleontologist.

  96. Joel

    Please stick Joyce in an ethics class next term. I’d love to see you deal with the question of: “Can we be good without God?”

  97. Lord Geovanni

    Kinda disturbed at how Amber was around millions of years ago stuffing feathers inside of her pretty sire I should have met her so I could help put things in her

  98. Onion

    For some reason, I once saw this strip on a Bionicle forum. I was so confused as to what it was at the time, and since I started reading this comic I thought Dina looked familiar. Now everything has been pieced together.

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