341

Feet
Posted on February 21, 2012 by David M Willis

341 thoughts on “Feet”

  1. Vivvav

    I liked the movie Atlantis (which puts me in the minority), but that part did annoy me.

    1. Mkvenner

      What’s wrong with Atlantis? I enjoyed it.

      1. Aeron

        Nothing except that it was more or less… I’m gonna be nice and use the word “inspired” by much better pieces of cinema; Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water & Castle in the Sky.

        1. Bek359

          But MOST obviously Stargate.

        2. Bek359

          And yes, I made the connection before the Cracked article that came out today.

        3. robopanda333

          i thought it was THE stargate cartoon… untill i found out there was an actual stargate cartoon.

        4. HumanDoctor

          …there was a Stargate CARTOON?

        5. AlienCowThatMoos

          Yes. Don’t track it down.

        6. Aizat

          Rule of thumb: If you have never heard of it, don’t look for it. However if your friend recommends you to watch it, you look for it.

        7. dchorror

          Corollary: Remember that occasionally your friends will be jerks to you for a laugh.

        8. sagara s.

          A stargate cartoon?!
          how have I never heard of this?!

          …it can’t be as bad as Atlantis though

        9. sagara s.

          SG Atlantis*
          I didn’t mind the atlantis animated movie that much–thought it was lack luster, but still good.

        10. StClair

          You might think that, but you would be wrong.

        11. StClair

          From his very first scene, I was thinking:
          “And tonight, the part of Dr. Daniel Jackson will be played by Michael J. Fox.”

        12. Jetstream

          I’d object to it being a riff on Stargate if it wasn’t a million times better than the Stargate film.

          SG-1 was amazing, but the movie was… meh at best.

        13. tahrey

          DAMMIT, you got there before me :p

          Also, probably a small part Mysterious Cities of Gold, but mainly, er…. “strongly inspired by” Nadia and a small touch of Laputa.

          (I would call it a blatant rip-off and go into the reasons why, but much more experienced and qualified people have set up whole webpages discussing the subject that are but a moment’s googling away)

    2. Gadalia

      First words out of my mouth were “I liked Atlantis”. Glad I’m not alone!

      1. Commander Clash

        Ditto

    3. Daeva

      Glad to see that not everyone is in a state of shared disdain regarding this movie. 😀

      1. NF

        I didn’t even know it exists. Does that count as not being in a shared state of disdain?

      2. fellixe

        Haven’t seen it but it does sound like a rehash of the old ‘great white hunter’ meme. “We have all this but no know how to make use. You help us, white king?”

        1. StClair

          There’s a trope for that.

    4. Rex Hondo

      I enjoyed it. If nothing else, the banter between characters is fun, since Joss Whedon was one of the writers.

      1. johannhowitzer

        Hm, having not seen it, that alone makes me curious.

        However, most things I’ve seen that involved Atlantis in any way have sucked overall, so maybe it’s a door I’d better not open.

        1. TheBenenator

          While I haven’t seen it in years, I remember the MacGyver Atlantis movie not being too bad.

      2. Dark_T_Zeratul

        I didn’t know Joss Whedon helped write it. Probably explains why I enjoyed it so much.

    5. gangler

      I absolutely loved Atlantis. Don’t remember a thing about it anymore but I remember absolutely loving it when it came out.

      There was this really badass Atlantis videogame I got in a cereal box. I remember some things about that. The flying level on that was off the hook and there was a gun that shot like flubber or some shit and I think there was a capture the flag mode or something. Had fun.

  2. OhHayMike

    I don’t like that Mary girl.

    1. Mkvenner

      No one likes her.

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        …everybody hates her, guess she’ll go eat worms. 😛

        1. Mkvenner

          But Worms are nurietious and delisious (when perpared properly).

        2. mechaqua

          I like the ones that are multiple colors and sweet!

        3. Plasma Mongoose

          You mean like these?

        4. mechaqua

          Silly those are snakes! but they also look delicious as well.

        5. Daeva

          Nope, gotta be talkin’ ’bout these!

        6. Plasma Mongoose

          Haven’t seen those before, are they soft or hard?

        7. Daeva

          As they are live fishbait and appear to have something of a shell, I’m gonna assume crunchy on the outside with a nice, gooey filling. >:D

        8. Aizat

          And a good source of protein should you got lost in the woods.

  3. Mkvenner

    And this is the person who’s naked most of the day. Hypocrit much.

    1. Reboot

      So, you think Mary should reconsider not being dressed by 3pm?

      1. Mkvenner

        No she should reconsider going to church.

        1. John

          yes, that’s true, if you spent x amount of time naked regardless of what you’re actually doing (sex, reading a book, killing a hobo), you’re morally obligated not to go to church.

        2. lawzlo

          I’m in favor of: being naked until about 3pm, sex, and reading a book.

          Not in favor of: going to church, killing a hobo.

          Also, I just realized that the New Testament can be summed up as “a book about that one time that Pontius Pilate murdered a hobo.”

        3. CP

          Why do people insist on being offensive about such pointless things as this? Saying stuff that far off the mark only happens when you’re intentionally trying to be wrong, but I honestly don’t understand why you bother. It’s like saying “Hey look, someone mentioned the Bible – time for me to do my part in making sure as few people as possible really understand what it says!”

          I mean, sure, disagree if you want, but why actively try to spread ignorance and prejudice? You think people can make a better decision if they have no idea what the Bible is about?

        4. Brendan

          “Really understand”? You mean buy into all the alibis offered in response to changing values, a living testament to the lack of an objective morality?

          The Gospels can be summed up as “that time a cult leader was killed for an act of petty terrorism, drummed up to make him look good.” The halfway point of Exodus through the end of Joshua can be summed up as “the building of a small empire through a divinely-mandated policy of total war.” I remember hearing in a homily once, “Moses was no saint – he saw red and killed an Egyptian!” Yes. And then he went on to lead his army to kill thousands, taking special care to spare none, as did his successor – I wonder if even the priest knew that. Sometimes I wonder how people can sit down and translate the Bible, sentence by sentence, taking special care to get each and every line right – since all these translations are by believers – and still worship by the end.

        5. Pat

          …I think your definition of “terrorism” is even farther off than the typical American’s.

        6. Almighty Atheismo

          That was actually the last nail in the coffin my religion was buried in. I read the bible, front to back, and by the end wanted nothing to do with the religion anymore. It was a few more years before my wishy washy agnosticism became full blown atheism.

        7. Brendan

          What do you call violently disrupting trade to further your religious convictions, then?

        8. R

          Technically it was “perceived terroristic threats” which weren’t actually terroristic threats but talk of the end of the world (the destruction of the temple). He wasn’t a hardened criminal or very destabilizing to anything, , Romans were just always paranoid around Passover.
          At least that’s my understanding. Also these text boxes suck.

        9. lawzlo

          It was intended as a joke, but yeah, it was pretty offensive, so I regret making it. Mea culpa.

          To be fair, I never expected anyone to actually take my comment seriously, so I certainly didn’t intend to “spread ignorance and prejudice.” Just to be certain, I have a general announcement to make:

          TO ANYONE READING MY COMMENTS:
          My comments are not intended as Gospel. If you want to know what’s in the Bible, read the Bible. If you want to know about the history of Christianity, read a book about the history of Christianity. Do not get your information about the Bible from anonymous people on the internet, particularly ones who claim that Jesus was a “hobo,” and most definitely not me.

          Also, “hobos” are migratory workers or homeless vagabonds who travel from around seeking out temporary work, and their history also has something to do with trains. Therefore, that term does not apply to Jesus.

          Although now I have a mental image of Jesus riding in a freight train, dodging railroad bulls, and playing harmonica.

        10. lawzlo

          Also, I’m staying out of the argument which is gonna break out the second people start responding to Brendan’s comment. I wouldn’t touch that hornet’s nest with a ten foot pole.

          Although I gotta say: thank you Brendan, for making my comments look 1000% less objectionable by comparison. Now I’m going to go hide from the flamewar that I see approaching over yon horizon.

        11. ryan

          you forgot eating beans from a can. all self-respecting hobos eat canned beans.

        12. gangler

          What do normal people eat their beans out of?

        13. Ryan

          Tucans.

        14. Rex Hondo

          A hollowed out hobo skull. Why do you ask?

  4. Plasma Mongoose

    But cartoons are awesome.

    Also Mary sure is priggish for a nudist.

    1. Mkvenner

      I don’t think she’s a nuddist, Mongoose.

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        Details, schmetails! 😀

        1. mechaqua

          You can’t prove she is not nudist.

        2. lord of dance

          well shes not nude for one

        3. mechaqua

          You have a valid point however my counter point is she is nude underneath her cloths ergo she is a nudist!

        4. Mkvenner

          I going to ignore you now.

        5. alex

          point of fact; nudists spend their time at home nude, but put on clthes when leaving the house.

        6. Daeva

          We’re all nudists beneath our clothes.

        7. Plasma Mongoose

          *Spoken in Tropese* All WMG way be true until it is Jossed.

        8. Plasma Mongoose

          Holy grammar-nazi bait Batman!

        9. Khrene Cleaver

          Okay, I’ve got to ask where did you find that pic of Velma?

        10. Plasma Mongoose

          If I recall, it was in Danbooru.

        11. Khrene Cleaver

          Thank you my good man I’ll go a search the image boorus right “naouwgh” as the governer of my state of California would say.

        12. Tualha

          Oh! Velma, of course. I was thinking she looked a little like Nenene Sumiregawa.

  5. Xailenrath Omniversal

    Hey, cartoons are a valid discussion tool!

    1. Aizat

      Not where I’m from. People think that cartoon are for kids and I should grow up and watch some mature stuff like crappy and cliched local tv drama or the sadist show known as Indonesian drama.

      1. mechaqua

        I find most cartoons and comic books are better discussion tools then reality tv shows like survivor or true blood, or two and half men they are often more mature too.

        1. Aizat

          I know but it’s either that or talk about football or as you Americans called it, soccer. If I want to talk about video games, it’s Battlefield this, Modern Warfare that or FIFA this Winning Eleven that.

        2. HollyDee

          You know, “soccer” is your word, not ours.

        3. Aizat

          Huh?

        4. f.p.

          It was originally short for “association football,” to distinguish it from other forms of football, such as rugby football (from which American football is derived).

          Of course, if you aren’t British then the point will have still missed its mark.

        5. Aizat

          I’m not British but where I’m from, we use the Queen’s English.

        6. f.p.

          Well in that case, “soccer” still has a valid place in your vocabulary, as it is a of British coinage. It’s just more widely used in the USA because our rugby-derived version became the “default” football here rather than the association version.

        7. HollyDee

          My point was it wasn’t “us Americans.” Even if it WERE the word we chose for it, it’s not like we had a meeting to decide that it was the word we were gonna use.

          Mostly, I just hate when people talk about “us Americans.” I’ve never heard/read anyone using that phrase when it didn’t seem to be DRIPPING with contempt and condescension.

        8. Rachelle_R

          I love that suddenly True Blood is a reality show.

        9. f.p.

          I read it that way too at first, befor I realised I was probably parsing the sentence incorrectly: “[reality tv shows like survivor] or [true blood], or[ two and half men]” Three separate ideas… I think.

        10. mechaqua

          No you read it right the first time. Daeva got the joke!

        11. Daeva

          Wait…it’s not?

          My dreams! THEY ARE CRUSHED!

  6. andrew

    I think the “we;re” is done wrong in pannle 4 but i could be wrong

    1. Darth Shadow

      Nope that’s just how atheists speak.

      We;re odd like that.

      1. Gadalia

        Darth Shadow: +1.

      2. RaijinK

        We might as well go with that and get used to it, since there;s no way any typos are getting fixed before Willis gets back from vacation.

        1. fellixe

          So no point mentioning panel 4’s “..better THAN reading Jewish prophecy…”?

        2. HollyDee

          That sentance was a jumble of typeos too me, two.

      3. Clemsonuee

        Also, as Steve Martin noted, athiests aint got no songs.

        1. Grikmeer

          We’ve got Tim Minchin, Mitch Benn, Bruce Dickinson, and Bad Religion. There’s some pretty good songs between them…

        2. HiEv

          Don’t forget George Hrab. He’s got some catchy tunes, and a fun podcast as well.

        3. Clemsonuee

          I was referring to a song Steve Martin sang with his bluegrass band with that name. I saw them on Austin City Limits and that came to the front of my mind.

    2. Tualha

      Also in panel 4, prophesy is the verb, prophecy is the noun.

  7. jaredstar1

    and so mary starts to show a bit of her true self

    1. fellixe

      Is she naked again? Damn, I missed it!

  8. mechaqua

    Dorothy there is nothing wrong with using cartoons in argument about religion! Religions use cartoons and comics all the the time, for there arguments so you should be entitled to the same privilege!

    Also
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGrlWOhtj3g

    1. fellixe

      I used to really dig my The Picture Bible.

      1. Almighty Atheismo

        When I was a kid I had a bible that had several mini comics throughout it, they also made animated films about time traveling to learn moral lessons from biblical allegories.

    2. Rex Hondo

      She is talking to people who take life lessons from Chick Tracts. She’s just trying to speak their language.

  9. Wonder Wig

    It’s like in Avatar when the white human marine became better at all of the things which the blue giant Na’vi had been doing for thousands of years in a few weeks.

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      Ah, the old Mighty Whitey trope.

    2. Tristan J

      Hah, I was thrown off at first, because I thought you were about to talk about Avatar The Last Airbender.

    3. John

      We’re covering that movie in my mythology class. As a hero story, it works. As a mighty white(y) guilt fantasy, well, there you go again.

  10. Mkvenner

    Dorothy makes a very good point.

    1. mechaqua

      To bad she screws it up by rescinding her previous example.

  11. jaredstar1

    as to what is being said by the characters, i seem to remember somebody once saying that the jews of the time thought that the messiah would be a conqueror or liberator that would free them from the Romans via force (that said i has been a long while since i remember hearing that so i may have it wrong

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      It’s a shame that Brian turned out to be nothing more than just a naughty boy with sex-sex-sex on his mind all the time.

      1. jaredstar1

        are you talking about the life of brian or brian griffen sorry i am confused

        1. Plasma Mongoose

          The good one. 😀

      2. mechaqua

        But he was the messiah because only the true messiah would deny his own divinity!

        1. lord of dance

          and who can forget his many miracles, like finding those berries to feed his people, or getting that old to talk after 20 years of silence

        2. Michelle J Caboose

          ‘E’s not the Messiah, ‘e’s a naughty boy!

    2. Tualha

      In other words, the messiah would bring not peace, but a sword? Hmmmmmm…

      1. Zap Rowsdower

        More specifically, a sword good enough to ACTUALLY OVERTURN THE ROMAN OCCUPATION, rather than, you know, take care of other problems not mentioned in the TaNaKh and leave the Romans to start the 2000-year exile.

        1. Tualha

          Instead of, say, trying to reform Judaism, and instead starting a new religion that ended up taking over Rome and the rest of Europe and persecuting the Jews for centuries? If they’d known that was going to happen, I think Herod would have had a lot of help…

        2. Zap Rowsdower

          Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. Chances are fifty years from now we’ll all be kicking ourselves for not invading COUNTRY X or persecuting GROUP Y today when we had an opportunity before they became a global threat.

  12. Bunk

    Dorothy’s not wrong.

  13. ilvos01

    Yesss Atlantis was awesome.

  14. Roninwolf

    SEMICOLON!

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      I find it interesting that ; is refered to as a semicolon when it’s more like one and a half colons.

      1. lord of dance

        but it does half the job

        1. Plasma Mongoose

          That’s due to union rules.

        2. lord of dance

          its not their fault that they have better negotiating skills and got a better deal

      2. Rognik

        It’s a semicolon because it’s kind of a colon, but not quite.

        And I’m glad I’m not the first to have noticed the typo. It distracted me so much, I couldn’t finish Dorothy’s speech.

        …And Willis is on his cruise, so it won’t get fixed until he gets back. *Sigh*

  15. Gundi

    It’s that darn European superiority complex we inherited. Because, like everything else, America does it bigger and better. (See whut I did thar?)

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      I thought that only applied to Texas.

      1. molochmachine

        Nah, Texas just does it bigger and with more executing of mentally disabled people.

        1. Rachelle_R

          You say that like we’re rounding up autistic children and euthanizing them. I promise you, execution is reserved for murderers.

      2. ryan

        if it helps, my dad believes that america only consists of texas. after 30+ years, i’m still not sure if he’s serious.

      3. Michelle J Caboose

        Actually, it’s just that everything is bigger in Texas.

        Nobody said anything about better.

    2. Tualha

      Oh, is that why there’s so much obesity here, then? 🙂

  16. lord of dance

    well wed have to assume were better at reading the prophecies than the jews or else wed basically be admitting that Jesus wasnt the prophesized messaih

    an another note its always annoys me when someone acts offended by something thats not about them. i know that anyone with half a brain can tell when somethings out of line but whenever someone talks about how offensive they assume something would be to another group it always comes of hollow and weak to me

    1. NF

      As someone who is Jewish, it does offend me when Christians claim that the Old Testament predicts Jesus, and implicitly that Jews are too dense to realize Jesus is the Hebrew Messiah. Especially when the Old Testament is not actually the Torah. Torah = Continuous and mostly faithful reproduction of a Hebrew language original text going back thousands of years. Old Testament = Translation of Hebrew into Greek, and from there into Latin, English, Spanish, German, etc. based on your particular Christian faith, with numerous different translations, errors, and reinterpretations compared to the Torah. 90% of the stuff pointed to in the Old Testament as prophesying Jesus isn’t even in the Torah.

      1. lord of dance

        im sure thats true and a very valid point, but what i was saying is that the very basis of christianity is that Jesus was the prophesized messiah, so taking that assumption into account anyone who doesnt follow Jesus must not have gotten the memo. its not nice, and its generally not actively stated, but you really cant have one without the other. just like the jewish faith is inherently, not actively, implying that christians are a bunch of nutters who followed a false prophet. its not nice but its how absolute faith works

        1. f.p.

          That’s the basis of what eventually emerged as orthodox Christianity. There were and are other ideas of Christianity out there, though not widely popular.

        2. HiEv

          Yeah, but that’s because if it started to look like those “other ideas of Christianity” were becoming widely popular, the orthodox Christians labeled them as heretics and did their best to kill them all. For example: the Gnostics, the Cathars, and the Hussites.

        3. f.p.

          Oh, I’m well aware of that. When I say “not widely popular, I mean currently. It just didn’t seem necessary to go into all that to get the idea across.

      2. mechaqua

        Original Hebrew script wasn’t even used in the translation from Hebrew to Greek it was Aramaic also the TaNaKh is divided into three part the Torah (the law or teachings) the Nevi’im (prophecies) ad the Khetuivim (the writings) if any predictions about Jesus coming it would be in the Nevi’im not the Torah. Interesting fact Messiah is generally translated to mean anointed one and there is mention in the Nevi’im of Cyrus of Persia being mentioned as a messiah as he allowed the Israelites to re settle in the Levant and construct their temple.

      3. John

        Look again! Right there in Leviticus it SAYS, ‘and he shall appear and he will be called Jesus and he will be pasty white and his hair shall floweth like as touched by the herbal essences’. But I understand how that got missed because of the whole shellfish thing. I’d be all ‘goddamnit, my lobster!’ too.

        1. Rachel

          I’m also a Jew, and when I was growing up, I don’t remember ever having studied or read the “Old Testament”. We studied Torah and Talmud. As far as I was taught, which is probably different from many others, the Old Testament has very little, if anything, to do with Judaism. So if some of us haven’t seen these apparently obvious answers, there is a reason for it. Not to say Judaism doesn’t have its own flaws. We’ve all heard the “slaves in Egypt” stuff. My belief is that if you want to have absolute faith in something, great. Good for you. But leave everyone else (and how they’re “wrong”) out of it.

      4. John

        Oh sorry, I misread your comment in my eagerness to make a joke at the expense of the person who says you guys have to be condescended to so select Christians feel smarter.

      5. David

        NF, you’re forgetting that almost all of the original Christians were Jewish and the movement spread as a Jewish sect – just like those we’ve got today. And they were very religious, unlike a lot of Jewish groups, even in Israel today, who see Torah as simply myth. The TaNaKh today is produced by Jews, kept accurate by Jews and accepted exactly like that by Christians. The Dead Sea Scrolls copies confirm that accuracy to 2300 years ago. What they disagree on is how to read the prophecies, and there’s disagreement among Jews as well as Christians about that. Christians (as Jews in 50AD) had the right to their own views like other Jews did. Today’s Christians have changed nothing that their original leaders said when they pointed hundreds of prophecies to the Jew Jesus of Nazareth.

        1. Navi

          “Today’s Christians have changed nothing that their original leaders said when they pointed hundreds of prophecies to the Jew Jesus of Nazareth.” ummm… as a Christian, I can safely say, FALSE, FALSE, and FALSE.

        2. David

          Perhaps you misunderstood me, Navi. Today’s Christians vary a lot in attitude and how they see their faith. But if they don’t agree with what the Apostles and Evangelists said in the New Testament, they aren’t following their professed faith – and yeah, there are some, and always will be.

          There were a lot of questions asked in the century following Jesus’ leaving, as people sorted out what he meant. But by 150ad or so, it was mostly done, and by 325ad at the Bishops’ Council of Nicaea in Turkey, it was had been sorted for over half a century and the long-agreed main statement of Christian faith (now called the Nicene Creed) was ratified at the council.

          And forget Dan Brown; the Pope wasn’t there and only sent two observers, and they could have hardly have burned all old bibles and worked out a new one as Brown said – we have too many much older copies in several languages to look at. In fact, the Emperor had only a few years before asked for 50 Greek bibles for the churches in his new capital, Constantinople. Some of them still exist – and they’re just like other bibles.

      6. Bill M.

        NF, that only works with the older translations. The modern translations skip past the inbetween translations and go back to the original texts, whenever possible.

        Also, I realize the Torah isn’t the Christian’s Old Testament, since the canonized OT ignores certain books (especially I & II Maccabees), but to say that “90% of the stuff pointed to in the Old Testament as prophesying Jesus isn’t even in the Torah” is you pulling stuff out of thin air. First, unless you’re an expert on the Torah, I doubt you know much in there beyond the Shema. Second, lots of Torah scholars say that stuff is in there, but that it just doesn’t point to this Yeshua guy we call Jesus.

        This isn’t even bringing up how educated Jews are today in terms of scripture compared to Jesus’ day, when a boy back then knew the Pentateuch forwards and backwards before either becoming a talmidin of a rabbi, or going back to his father’s trade.

    2. Tristan J

      To be fair to Dorothy, she was specifically brought there to express her opinion on what she would see. Normally she probably wouldn’t bring it up unless she was asked.

      (I may just be projecting myself onto her, though)

      1. David

        Yeah, Tristan, but Dorothy misses the point, as usual. Christians nor Jews are Western; one grew from the other 2000 years ago in the Middle East and ‘we’, both, have followed the traditions. Dorothy seems to be saying that Christians are American and Jews are Eastern, so we shouldn’t try to take them over. A lot of Christians and Jews would take offence at that, like all those who aren’t American (Christians) or are American (Jews).

        1. Heavensrun

          She isn’t talking about “taking them over” she’s talking about “pretending we know better than them just because our book says something different than their book.” Sure, the western =/= christian perspective is a little flawed, but her core point is, I think, a valid one. What basis do Christians have for supposing that their interpretation is more valid than the Jewish one?

        2. Heavensrun

          And not just “know better”, “Know their book better than they do”.

        3. Ducky

          No, that particular interpretation (the one in the sermon that Sierra seems to be commenting on) implies that these Christians actually know better. From what I know about non-denominational evangelical churches (of which this seems to be one), it is endemically understood that their interpretation of the Bible, in whatever form it may be taking at the moment, is the absolutely true one, and they in fact would “know better” than Jews. I do not subscribe to that, being Jewish myself. However, I would not object to a healthy academic debate on what areas of Jewish scripture point to Jesus as a messiah in Christian rhetoric and why.

          (I apologize for being an obnoxious religious studies student. )

        4. David

          Same basis that modern Jews do for preferring their own interpretation, Heavensrun. If you hold something to be true because you believe there’s good reason, then you’re entitled to. Forcing other people to say they agree with you is the bad thing – and many try.

        5. David

          And I agree with Ducky, (we posted together) that talking to other groups and sharing your view is the way to go.

        6. Navi

          on top of the fact that a western Christian pastor is nothing like an original Christian.

        7. David

          Christianity did begin as a Jewish thing, but the New Testament is extremely Gentile. You can even reliably date the Gospels by how much they blame Jews for Christ’s death. There’s a huge disconnect between what Christianity had become by the mid-to-late first century and how it began.

    3. karishi

      I’d say a society will tend to be better if people can get offended on each other’s behalf.
      If a white man can’t call out another one for being sexist or racist, social change takes a heck of a lot longer.

      1. f.p.

        I agree, but only as long as it’s not taken overboard. I’ve seen people in different groups take offense about WASPS getting offended on their behalf when it wasn’t actually warranted for said WASPS to do so.

        1. f.p.

          If that was too unclear: being offended for someone else over something stupid is offensive in itself. It’s condescending.

        2. karishi

          Yeah, I getcha. It’s definitely something that can be taken too far in either direction.
          And it can be tough, because what constitutes a stupid vs a serious offense to be called out is fluid, and can change from social group to social group.

    4. molochmachine

      Yeah, I call bullshit on that. Being offended by slights to others is just an extension of empathy, and without it, disadvantaged and underrepresented groups would be even more powerless in the face of oppression than they already are.

      1. HiEv

        Here, here! Totally agree! +1! Etc.!

      2. karishi

        I can think of two instances where it’s bad to jump to someone’s defense:
        1. If they’re right there and you consistently jump in quickly, it can give the appearance that they can’t stand up for themselves – that they need succor from your group in order to withstand hate from your group. That doesn’t project a positive message even if what you say in their defense is good.
        2. If you jump to their defense over things that aren’t actually offensive, you’re again creating a false sense of weakness about them – they’re so vulnerable that they have to be defended against stupid statement x.

        I guess what I’m saying is it’s a good thing to do, but there are definitely ways to do it wrong.

    5. begbert2

      Technically when the Christians say they have a better understanding of Jewish scripture than the Jews, that’s merely part of their package of thinking they’re more right about everything than everybody else is. It doesn’t even take one shred of empathy to be annoyed at such a flagrant display of selfish self-inflating ego.

      1. David

        Christians began as a Jewish sect, begbert, so they have right enough to comment on their own history. And other Jews have the right to disagree. But I agree with you that some Christians are annoyingly dogmatic that only their own interpretations can be right. But then, some Jewish groups do that, too – look at the arguments in the Knesset in Israel!

        1. sonthedoctor

          David, Christians are a “Jewish sect” like Islam is a Jewish sect, or like Buddhism is a Hindu sect. That is to say, not at all.

          By the times the Christian bible was actually codified 200 years later it was entirely distinct. If you call Christianity a Jewish “sect”, you might as well call Communism one too–after all, Marx was a Jew.

        2. David

          son, I said “Christians BEGAN as a Jewish sect” – and they clearly did. But once most Christians weren’t also Law-following and circumcised Jews, they had to be regarded differently. Islam is derived quite separately and Buddhism doesn’t depend on Hinduism, nor ever did; it just grew up in a Hindu cultural background – as entirely different and as a philosophy, not a religion.

          Christianity is heart and soul Jewish, in background, core beliefs and tradition. It’s just a different Judaism from that practised by modern Jews, diverging principally in believing that the Messiah has already come, and following his teaching.

        3. David

          Oh – and the bible was ‘codified’ much earlier in most details, including almost intact the TaNaKh with its own writings. It ws substantially agreed during the lifetimes of some of the first (Jewish) Christians – and there are extant records to prove this.

      2. karishi

        That overstatement is too flagrant to go untouched.
        Even “the Christians [who] say they have a better understanding of Jewish scripture than the Jews” do not consistently or reliably think “they’re more right about everything than everybody else is.”
        That is not true, and it treats a lot of people like dirt who don’t deserve it. The way you’re phrasing it, you’re saying all Christians – which is a large and diverse group of people – have this offensive “package.”
        Which is wrong.

  17. Tristan J

    Oh my God, I just noticed the ‘All are welcome in God’s house’ sign.

    Hahahahahahaha I see what you did there.

    1. lord of dance

      …i dont…

      1. Tristan J

        ‘All are welcome in God’s house’

        ‘We should be inclusive’

        ‘All are welcome’

        ‘Inclusive’

  18. Jack Faire

    Yeah Atlantis was good but that always bothered me too given that every single person there was supposedly alive when Atlantis first suck beneath the waves so shouldn’t have somehow magically forgotten things they learned as teenagers.

    1. John

      That movie would have made so much more sense if they’d been descendants.

  19. Daeva

    I’m not gonna touch this religious discussion with a ten foot pole, but as for the whole foot thing, I can see why some people might take issue with it, I mean some people regard feet to be the most disgusting part of the body, but it hardly prompts that kind of reaction.

    And while I like the place that Joyce’s heart is at, does anybody else feel as though it comes off a little…I, dunno, patronizing, I guess?

    1. NF

      “I’m not gonna touch this religious discussion with a ten foot pole”

      “some people regard feet to be the most disgusting part of the body, but it hardly prompts that kind of reaction.”

      Wait a minute…Willis, you magnificent bastard, subtly trolling your readers again!

      1. Ducky

        Willis is on a boat in the middle of the ocean right now.

    2. begbert2

      Joyce is a Christian; patronizing comes naturally when you think you’re one of the special chosen few who are bright enough to recognize The Truth.

      On the other hand, though, in this particular strip she said five words, and they were all basically criticizing (or at least gently castigating) her fellow Christian. In the grand scheme of things she’s sort of failing at patronization at the moment; try back later.

      1. Andy

        And condescension and holier-than-thou attitudes come easily when you’re mocking the religious, amirite?

        Seriously, dude, just like there’s gonna be atheists that aren’t utter jackholes like you, there’s also Christians out there that respect other people’s beliefs.

        1. Heavensrun

          In fairness, a lot of atheists are “utter jackholes” because they have been socially brutalized by believers for much of their lives. I’m not saying that excuses overgeneralizing, but keep it in mind and remember that answering vitriol with name calling is like throwing gasoline on an open flame.

        2. Pat

          If somebody is gonna use that defense, then *everybody* is gonna use that defense.

        3. begbert2

          I like how you missed that after agreeing with Daeva’s peculiar assessment of Joyce’s understated comment as being patronizing, I promptly turned around and said it wasn’t really. It’s like you didn’t even read what I wrote!

          But regardless, whether you’re a christian or not, if you’re not being an utter jackhole, you’re not doing it right. So I’ll pretend that I actually was being the jackhole you interpreted me as, just for the internet cred. It’s credible because, like you said, the religious’s literal holier-than-thou attitude (which admittedly is only shared by about 95% of them) makes it plausible.

        4. karishi

          Snrk. And now you’ve moved to bashing “the religious” as a class of people.
          Your statistic of 95% is right there with the lies and the damn lies.
          I’d bet you have a bad sampling.

        5. begbert2

          You’re correct in that my sampling of the religious (by which I actually meant Christians; pardon my misspeaking) shows that 100% of them believe that following religion either grants them a higher likelihood of better placement in the afterlife, or that it is indicative of their foreordination to better placement – meaning that as compared to muslims, buddhists, atheists, etc – every last one of the people holding these beliefs is holier-than-thou by definition.

          I fudged the estimate down to account for limited sampling, and to be nice.

        6. Ducky

          Your science does not match the actual science that is out there. Check some sociology journals; Penny Edgell is an excellent researcher who looks at views in the USA of and about religious people of all faiths.

  20. Alex Stritar

    But, referencing cartoons is the best way to make arguments.

    1. Tristan J

      I disagree. Have you seen those episodes of Family Guy where they make arguments based upon old cartoons? And Family Guy is terrible.

      Quid quo pro.

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        But I wouldn’t use Family Guy as a typical example of cartoons anymore than I would claim that Fox News represents all journalism

      2. lightsabermario

        “Quid pro quo”

        You keep using that word. I donna think it means what you think it means.

        1. Tristan J

          Improbable!

        2. mechaqua

          Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

        3. Daeva

          Stop saying that!

        4. NF

          But I am not left-handed!

      3. begbert2

        I dunno about them, but I got it.

        1. Tristan J

          Fun fact: I wrote quid quo pro by mistake first, but then realised it worked with the joke and went with it.

  21. fellixe

    Irony much, Dorothy?

    1. TeslaSunburn

      Not really no.

      1. fellixe

        Not seeing the irony in her using a secular frame of reference to explain to the Christians the fallacy in their teaching which uses a Christian viewpoint to explain the fallacy of Jewish teachings?

        1. ryano

          To be fair, a secular world view doesn’t elevate any one group as being worthy in God’s eyes. Pointing out that religions do this is simply stating a fact. She has no need to think of theists as being less worthy. While she may think that their beliefs are incorrect, she has no reason to consider them less important human beings.

        2. YeahWhat?

          Technically, any frame of reference outside of the Christian one (and even that if it was a little self doubting) could be used to point out that falacy. I mean, the criticism isn’t that religion makes no sense, it was that there was no hard reason to say one was more right than the other.

        3. molochmachine

          The frame of reference she’s using isn’t proprietary to secular thought. It’s simple logic. Religious scholars of all denominations discuss these matters with the same thought processes.

        4. begbert2

          The difference being that the secular frame of reference is an apt and accurate analogy of what the Christians (as a class) are doing, and Christians are dismissing Jews’ ability to comprehend their own writings. Which is a pretty big difference. Huge. If this were trying to be irony, it would be irony failure.

        5. fellixe

          I don’t believe it is prerequisite to irony that it be incorrect.

        6. fellixe

          Or accurate, even (sorry, it’s early)

        7. Pat

          Early Christians *were* Jews interpreting their own writing.
          And modern Jews have not more or less claim to that history than modern Christians–it’s either all history or all “our own,” not both.

        8. begbert2

          Actually, from what I read the spearhead of early Christendom (the part that wasn’t dying out) was that Saul/Paul guy, who wasn’t a Jew,
          who was marketing it to gentiles, who weren’t Jews. It didn’t really get all that far off the ground with the actual Jews of the time because, well, Messiah=no more romans (at least by time of death), which conflicted slightly with empirical evidence.

          And Modern Jews have an unbroken tradition of interpreting the identical texts they were interpreting back then. There maybe schisms among them, but they’re still all very obviously both a lot closer to the original source material than any modern Christian is. There’s really no comparison.

        9. ryano

          Saul/Paul was originally Jewish.

        10. karishi

          Oh. I thought you meant the irony of the fact that she can’t make arguments that don’t include cartoons because this is a comic.

  22. Michelle

    The problem with the interpretation of the Torah by Christians is the same as the problem of interpreting Nietzsche’s writings today. It’s easy to link things that have already happened with writings before them. You can make spurious links between all sorts of things in the Christian Bible and in the Torah/other texts, just like you can make all sorts of spurious links between the plot of Home Alone and Die Hard. (Thanks, Cracked!) It’s a lot like taking the predictions of various economists and, 6 years down the road, showing that they predicted the downfall of the economy. Okay…but what about all the other people who said something different?

    The fact is that there are several things that are supposed to happen when the Messiah shows up, most of which have not occurred. For example, the Messiah is supposed to rebuild the third Temple; Jesus specifically said that he was the temple…not quite the same thing. Weapons of war will be destroyed. Didn’t happen. And so on.

    Mostly it’s just insulting.

    1. Zap Rowsdower

      Not to mention the whole “all dead everywhere will come back to life” thing, usually handwaved as “he’ll do that next time”.

      1. HiEv

        Yeah, at best when Jesus died he was only able to create zombies out of many dead holy people that, after Jesus was resurrected, finally shambled into town and terrified the people there. (Jesus’ zombie hordes reference: Matthew 27:51-54.) That’s Messiah-lite, at best. 😉

        1. Bill M.

          Actually, HiEv, those zombie hordes, especially since it’s only in Matthew, the book written to a Jewish audience about how “Yeshua” was the Messiah, they’d have been keenly aware of Herod’s edict that to ensure a prooper mourning attitude that several holy men of Israel be slain. And you were partly wrong, those zombies showed up after Jesus’ death, not his resurrection.

        2. HiEv

          Nope. As I said above, they rise when Jesus dies, but don’t make it into town until his resurrection.

          “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

          “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.“

          So, nothing there about slaying holy men, and while the zombies rise just after Jesus’ death, they don’t actually go into “the holy city” until after his resurrection.

          I’m not sure what “Herod’s edict” you’re talking about, but Pontius Pilate was the governor/prefect at the time, and even then, most gospels (including Matthew) blame the Pharisees/Sanhedrin, and not Pilate, for the decision to execute Jesus. Heck, in Matthew Pilate even offers to let Jesus or the “notorious prisoner Barabbas” go, and the crowds insist that Barabbas be released and Jesus be crucified, much to Pilate’s dismay. (The story goes a bit differently in Luke, where even Herod finds Jesus innocent.)

          The only holy man that Herod Antipas supposedly ordered killed was John the Baptist, and even that he did only after being pressured to do so (though Matthew 14:1-2 comments that Herod was originally afraid that Jesus was actually John resurrected).

          (Or were you referring to some other Herod? There were a lot of “Herods” back then.)

        3. Bill M.

          I was referring to Herod the Great, the one ruling when Jesus was born, and had married into the Hasmonean family.

        4. David

          I really don’t go with the ‘zombie’ bit! Zombies are (if they exist) reanimated corpses – all that shambling corpse with bits falling off stuff in the movies, not people come alive again. A Haitian idea.

          In the NT, all the ‘brought back from the dead’ are real people who live a normal life again and look and behave just like everyone else. If you didn’t know them before they died, you’d never guess. What was scary was that they WERE just ordinary – they’d been normal but good people before they died. Not anyone special, just good folk. And they’re alive again! Gives you the willies!

          So, HiEv, it’s not at all like you say. Been listening to scary stories from ‘experts’ who use lurid stuff to scare people into looking the other way?

    2. HiEv

      Aww, come on! Jesus is so amazing, he fulfilled prophecies that didn’t even exist! ;-D

      For example, Matthew 2:15 claims prophecy was fulfilled, however that is just a reference to Hosea 11:1, which was not a prophecy, but a history of the Jews. That mistake is immediately repeated in Matthew 2:17, which is a actually a reference to Babylonian captivity from Jeremiah 31:15, and not a prophecy. Also, just a little further on, in Matthew 2:23 it claims “He will be called a Nazarene” is a fulfilled prophecy, however there is no such prophecy anywhere in the Bible!

      Only the Messiah could pull off so many prophecies that weren’t even prophecies!

      /sarcasm

      1. David

        Good try! It’s opinion as to what’s a prophecy and what’s not, in most cases. Back in the Dark Ages, misguided Christians saw Jesus predicted in almost every part of the bible. They said it needed experts to pick out the ‘true meaning’, so in England, ordinary folk were prohibited from reading the bible for themselves, because they were sure to misunderstand. A lot of people emigrated to North America because they believed differently. But we’re past that junk today.

        You can look this up on the Web, but you can take, say 15 genuine prophecies that Jesus clearly fulfilled (and I don’t mean deliberate fulfilment like ‘riding into Jerusalem on an ass – ie King David’s warhorse – all hopeful ‘messiahs’ did that) and work out the probability that someone in Jesus’ position could fulfil them. You likely know that statistical probabilities are multiplied. So if the chances of him fulfilling the first is 5:1. the second 8:1 and the third 3:1 against, then for these 3 the chance against him doing it is 120:1. Over 15 like this, the odds of him fulfilling the prophecies are billions to one against – or putting it around, those are the odds in favour of him being what he claimed, already lived or not yet born.

        In fact, I’ve counted over 80 such prophecies that I’d think fair, and if even half aren’t true for him, that still leaves an astronomically small chance that Jesus didn’t fulfil the predicted criteria to be Messiah.

        Sorry to go on – it’s the main thing apart from personal experience that made me become a Christian after 10 years of skeptical wondering. And that’s despite my Jewish background.

  23. Kinesthesia

    Thank you Mary for reminding me why your one of the more disliked characters. Also Atlantis: The Lost Empire was a really decent movie.

    1. Aizat

      The sequel was just average. It’s more like a pilot to a TV series than a movie.

      1. StClair

        That’s because it literally was, but the series didn’t happen. (See Five-Episode Pilot.)

  24. Ziggy Stardust

    Holy cheese, I remember that film! Haha yes I get the implications now.

  25. beeftony

    Those are the only arguments I know how to make.

  26. Tristan J

    On a more serious note, I wonder what the deal with Mary is in this universe. So far all we have on her ‘is naked after 3pm’, ‘attends church’ and ‘is kind of a tool’.

    Mostly, the ‘wanting to have a serious discussion with Joyce about the sermon’ thing intrigues me. Why does she want to have a discussion with Joyce in particular? And what about?

    1. lord of dance

      i think she feels that joyce was the only one taking the service seriously enough to have a real conversation about it

    2. begbert2

      She probably thinks that Sierra is a space case and that Dorothy is an atheist. Obviously Joyce is the only one present capable of coherently discussing religion.

  27. Kernanator

    Cartoons are awesome reference material! I do it all the time!

    1. Asuka L.S.

      No doctoral thesis in physics is complete until it references Superman or Dragonball Z.

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        and you cannot hope to understand enviromental studies unless you mention Shinryaku! Ika Musume, let alone explain quantum mechanics without including Haruhi Suzumiya. 😛

        1. Aizat

          I would recommend Mazinkaizer or Shin Getter Robo Armageddon or The Big O for reference material myself. I wanted to include Dragon Ball but Asuka beat me to it. So much for being the No.1 Dragon Ball fan in Malaysia.

        2. Pat

          Well, for philosophical subjects, maybe. Not so much scientific ones, unless they’re intentionally educational.

        3. Aizat

          Super Robots as philosophical subjects? That’s a thought.

        4. Tristan J

          *cough*NeonGenesisEvangelion*cough*

        5. Aizat

          Wait, NGE is a Super Robot anime? I thought it was a Real Robot anime what with the weapons befitting a Real Robot rather than a Super. Then again, I blocked out all memories of NGE. I have to apologize to NGE fans because to me, NGE is not as good as the fans made out to be.

        6. Zap Rowsdower

          It is, however, an excellent case study in the area of the effects fo various stages in the treatment process of mental illness/chronic depression on creative ability and output.

  28. mechaqua

    I feel bad saying this but Dorothy using cartoons as a way to illustrate her point it was much more useful then her statement about western world affirming a story telling trope, also when she rescinded the Atlantis analogy it makes her initial statements came off as being slightly pretentious.

    I also like Sierria’s subtle sarcasm.

    1. begbert2

      Sierra still is a christian, though. How do you be a christian without assuming that the Jews are misinterpreting their own writings?

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        In essense, Christians believe that Jesus is the ‘Son of God’ that the Old Testament fortold, Jews on the other hand, are still waiting for the ‘Son of God’ to arrive.

        1. Zap Rowsdower

          Not exactly. It doesn’t actually say anywhere that Moshiach will be the son of God, just that he’s going to usher in the Kingdom of God and all that jazz. The son of god thing is one of the “Christian-interpretation-only” things that we Jews tend to get irate about.

        2. Heavensrun

          Indeed. Moreover, Plasma’s comment doesn’t actually address Begbert’s question. The -reason- christians believe the messiah has come is because they think they’ve got the right interpretation of the ancient texts, and by extension, anyone who disagrees with them must have the wrong interpretation. Jesus can’t be the messiah and not the messiah at the same time. Not that it’s bad to think you’re right and somebody else is wrong, necessarily, but then the question becomes “where’s your evidence?”.

        3. David

          Spot on! And it’s worth a debate any day.

        4. Pat

          …Why does somebody believing something that you don’t make you irate?
          Isn’t that kinda the definition of not having the same religion?

        5. Zap Rowsdower

          When they believe it, its fine. When they lecture about it and act superior about it and, in some cases, make claims about us being obsolete and primitive, its annoying.

        6. David

          Best thing with people like that is to politely walk away, Zap. Talk with folks who’re willing to listen as well as talk themselves.

      2. mechaqua

        I actually think Seirra was pointing out the most offensive part of the sermon as a way of expresxing her dicontent with mary. Sierra seems like the type of person who prefers the experince of church rather then the message of church to her I think church is away to commune with god, and the message of a pastor is not that important. She has done this type thing before with her statement sbout worshiping at the church of god. This just my opinion.

        1. David

          But still, mechaqua, it doesn’t sound like the pastor was being offensive – just putting his opinion. Though that’s a strong one, as he’s speaking as a leader, so he’d have to be willing to defend his point. What we don’t know is how he gets on with other leaders. I know a similar minister who breakfasts with the local Rabbi – and they both enjoy the debate!

  29. sladoe

    I reference cartoons for church ideals all the time. Worked out fine so far.

  30. Valerie

    Typo in the fourth panel.

    1. Valerie

      Of which my gravatar seems to seriously disapprove.

  31. Blob Marley

    I’m a former Christian, so I voted in that poll with my former denomination. I hope that’s okay.

    1. begbert2

      Curious that Mormon didn’t get its own entry in the poll, considering that one of the cast is one. (Not that it impacts me directly -I’m a ‘not’, obviously– but it’s still odd.)

      1. LiamKav

        Voting with a former denomination has started to become a bit of an issue in the UK. Everytime there is a census, most people tend to put down a Christian denomination because they were baptised decades ago, even if they haven’t been to church since and don’t actually have any religious leanings.

        Then, whenever someone tries to mention how maybe we shouldn’t have prayers before council meetings (which I’m fairly sure most of the country didn’t know happened), we get a “this country is 90% Christian stop forcing your aethiest beliefs down our throats” shouted at us.

        It’s very annoying.

        1. ryan

          that’s why america got it right with the whole “separation of church and state” thing.

          *reads “in god we trust” on money*

          dammit, nevermind.

        2. lordalton

          Don’t sweat it Ryan, ‘In God we trust’ is referencing the deist
          God not the christian one.

        3. Pat

          …How is not doing something for a particular religion a show of ATheist beliefs?

          Yeah, we’ve got the not-terribly-Christ-like Christians here, too, that think that religious freedom is an attack on their religious freedom.

        4. karishi

          Ah, the C&Eers. This is a term you’ll hear mentioned between ministers, referring to an ever-increasing subset of Christians: The ones who only show up for the Christmas and Easter services.

        5. karishi

          pronounced: “SEEanEEars”

        6. Ducky

          I’m sure it doesn’t help that Anglican is the state religion.

        7. Ray Valdez

          I remember Rick Roderick’s videos. Paraphrasing,

          He hated it when people answered those polls for Reader’s Digest
          saying they believed in God and the polls said 90% people in USA
          believed in God.

          How do you measure people that have authentic faith like Aquinas
          ans Kierkeegard?

  32. Aaron

    I cannot help but add two cents, and apologize for what I’m sure is opening another can of worms. But as an ordained Christian pastor (yes, I really am), I have to say…
    …ten points to Dorothy for making an excellent point. And any pastor who gets in the pulpit and talks about how mistaken the Jews are has no idea what Christianity is really about.
    For that matter, I’m certain that Jesus would delight in the modern Jewish doctrine of Tikkun Olam, while being very unhappy with what we’ve done to the Jewish people for the last 2000 years. Jesus was a good Jew, who taught reconciliation and love, and it’s high time we Christians treat the Jews according to our founder’s teachings. If we really believe he was the Son of God, we need to take what he stood for seriously.
    [/rant]

    1. Aegon01

      Amen. 😀

    2. David

      Yes.

    3. Ducky

      May I ask what denomination you are a pastor of?

      1. Aaron

        Sure. I’m an Lutheran of the ELCA variety. Which makes me a wacko liberal progressive Christian, a label I wear pretty well. 🙂

  33. steveha

    Typos: “why do we think we;re so much better than reading”

    0) should be an apostrophe instead of a semicolon in “we’re”

    1) should not be “than reading”, should be “at reading”

    Thanks for making a great comic.

  34. gangler

    Dorothy: “Has it come to your attention that you might not in fact be the one true faith? It’s pretty much your pastor’s word against their Rabbi’s word.”

    Joyce I’m sure will come back with a completely reasonable response and probably cede that it would’ve been nice for the preacher to be more respectful of other faiths. What really interests me is how Mary will respond to this idea. She’s starting to look like she might not be the loving and tolerant brand of Christian.

    1. begbert2

      Correction – it’s their pastor and God’s word against the rabbi’s word. Not that there are any arguments that’ll convince a christian that their religion is untrue, but pointing out the inherent egocentricism of assuming your own special insight and correctness works even less often than most.

      1. David

        Big problem with this, begbert! You’re saying that there is no absolute truth, that everything is relative. I’ve heard people say that as, “it can be true for you, but what I believe is true to me” – which is impossible, but soothing. This is a whole can o’ worms! EVERY faith affirms that they have the truth, which means that everyone else is mistaken. That includes even atheism. Getting along with people isn’t agreeing to hold different opinions as truth to avoid a row, it’s agreeing peaceably to differ as to what the truth is. That’s the root of democracy and it’s never egocentric. People who see no underlying truth in the world are wide open to dictatorship.

        1. jaimehlers

          I have to disagree with that last sentence. Dictatorships and tyrannies start not because people don’t see some underlying truth in the world, but because the they feel that they lack safety.

          Anyway, it would be more accurate to say that there’s no underlying objective/absolute moral truth in the world, that applies to everyone at all times. However, part of having a culture is developing an underlying truth that, while subjective, is felt to be objective by members of that culture. Given that every culture does this, and thus every culture’s truths are essentially subjective, they start out with no special advantage over each other (that is, you can’t point to one and say “this is The Truth”). But it can be determined which work the best in practice (this is, for example, why we know that democracy has strong inherent advantages over dictatorships).

        2. begbert2

          Um, I never said there isn’t an objective truth/reality. I point out (and am annoyed by) the massive egotism in assuming that, all other things being equal, my experiences/beliefs/theories weigh substantially more than everyone else’s experiences/beliefs/theories.

          For example, it’s objectively true that there is a planet earth, and that it’s bigger than the average breadbox. There is both massive agreement on this, and consistent support in the form of objective scientifically-available evidence. On the other hand, while there is widespread (85-95%) agreement that there is some kind of somewhat interactive deity that you can pray to, and all these people think you can figure out something about it somehow, the only agreement about any of this thing’s properties comes from when one person teaches it to another! Independent societies simply don’t discover the same god, the way they discover the same planet beneath them. There is also no objective or scientific evidence for any god.

          Distill that out, and what you get is people saying that *their* prayer and church is better than somebody else’s, on the strengths of: 1) their mommy said so, and 2) their ego. I’ve had christians tell me straight out that the religious experiences of non-christians are fundamentally different and invalid, despite being to all descriptions identical. This is not an objective look at the truth, which is that people in general are prone to having religious experiences, but that there is no tendency for any objective god to be revealed by them.

      2. Pat

        Of course “Other people believe something different!” won’t convince anybody that their religion is untrue. That would be stupid.

        And there’s no egocentrism in thinking that what you think is right is right. By definition, you be believe that what you think is right is right.
        Plenty of religious people admit that they have faith and not proof, however.
        Religious bigots who hate each other are a minority, they’re just much louder than people who sit there peacefully.

  35. LiC

    Atlantis… I dunno… I never hated it, but it just never felt like a true “Disney” movie for some reason. It always feels like it comes up short, not to mention it reminds me a lot of those failed Dreamwork films like that Quest for Camelot movie.

    1. f.p.

      Maybe it’s the merciful absence of showtunes or the failure to ruin a good book or bawdlerize a folktale. Or maybe it’s the somewhat clumsy transition to digital animation techniques? Either way, I appreciate that they tried something different.

    2. TsunamiJane

      My favorite animated movie is a Dreamworks film. “The Road to El Dorado.” I was immensely disapointed when I saw “The Quest for Camelot.”

    3. Ducky

      I think it was the blatant plagiarism, myself.

      1. f.p.

        No, that part is very Disney.

  36. espanolbot

    Wait, but Milo in the cartoon was American not English?

    1. Gentleman Mummy

      Yes…as an actual Englishman, I’m deeply offended. “Atlantis” is yet another in the tradition of awful “White Boy Saves De Po’ Black Folks” American films, and it’s rather careless of Dorothy to imply it as an English rather than American trait in cinema.

      1. f.p.

        Yeah, the English mostly reserve that trope for literature.

        1. Gentleman Mummy

          Exactly! We have Rudyard Kipling, you lot have Cameron’s “Avatar”. It could not be more distinct.

  37. AJBulldis

    Well, it’s not that we’re better at deciphering prophecy, so much as we have the benefit of hindsight.

    1. AJBulldis

      Also I think the poll results so far are interesting: nearly half the responders identify as Christian. I wonder if other webcomics have similar numbers, and if not, why this one does.

      1. begbert2

        My guess would be that americans (as in, USAans) are probably heavily represented in the comic’s readership. Christianity is a big think ’round these parts.

        Plus at least one person mentioned that they put in the religion they *used* to be, so the numbers may be a little bit skewed.

        1. Alex

          Which makes it amusing to be a pagan and read the comments for some of the comics.

  38. katamanda

    I can’t help but admire people who can walk barefoot. All I can think about when I contemplate it is what I might end up standing in/on. i.e glass and poop

    1. uknortherner

      A few years ago when I was backpacking around Australia (late 2006), I remember being surprised at the number of people in the towns and cities who went barefoot and just assumed it was all part of the general laid-back feeling of the place – and the hot weather.

      I tried it a few times when I was over there and after the initial blisters (it’s easy to forget how hot the pavements can get on a sunny day), it was actually somewhat relaxing and certainly no harder than walking with shoes on.

  39. HumanDoctor

    Ah, so mary is still a bongo… glad to know some things are constant in all universes.

    1. karishi

      gravatar win.

      1. HumanDoctor

        It is rather, isn’t it?

  40. f.p.

    I voted “other” in the poll, for deeply heretical views and for practicing completely solo.

  41. Jabberwocky

    To be fair, references to Jesus fulfilling the prophecies were included in the Biblical text. So it’s not really Western-affirmation as much as Dorothy claims.

    1. begbert2

      Which bible again?

  42. Nakama

    I like Dorothy more and more.

    I liked Atlantis as well, but that doesn’t cancel out the ethnocentric approach it had.

  43. Tara

    So it’s like in Atlantis when Disney thought they were so much better at making Nadia than Miyazaki?

    1. f.p.

      Technically, I guess they did, since Miyazaki’s version was never produced. You might be looking for Hideaki Anno. Either way, it was based on works by Jules Verne, so if we’re looking for *original* credit, it should go to him.

      1. Jim

        I think Tara was referring to Laputa: Castle in the Sky.
        Some scenes in Atlantis are almost shot for shot the same as scenes from Laputa…

        1. f.p.

          Why would she write “Nadia” if she meant “Laputa”? Nadia was indeed based on an unused concept by Miyazaki, which was based on two Jules Vern books. It’s just that he never went through with the series himself.

      2. begbert2

        To be fair, the movie version that Jules Verne made was pretty forgettable.

  44. Pat

    They were all Jews at the time, there, Dorothy.
    It’s not like modern Christians only just discovered the Bible and figured it all out from there.

    1. Arkadi

      Who cares? The important bit is that Joyce is One Of Us!

    2. begbert2

      No; there were actually lots of non-Jews around at the time. Like, the Romans, for an example – it took them a while but eventually they got into the Christianity thing bigtime.

      1. Ducky

        Especially when their emperor made it the official Roman religion on pain of death.

      2. Arkadi

        Depends of your definition of “at the time”, I guess. Jesus’s disciples and his original followers were all Jews; it was only after his death that the new religion became popular among Greeks and other non-Jewish folks.

      3. JA

        Christianity is just a form of Judaism, one that happened to favor one particular prophet (never mind that four other people fulfilled the prophesies Jesus did long before he ever showed up).

  45. Kate

    I’m so happy someone else refers to their feet as feeling claustrophobic when they wear shoes. I wear flip flops as often as I can, so when it finally gets cold enough to have to wear real shoes, my toes kind of freak out. Thank you for validating this phrase for me.

  46. adius

    HEY check out the symbolic lighting on the two different types of christians in the second panel!! Don’t tell me I’m the only one who notiiiced

    Or am I just nuts

    1. begbert2

      I was going to say it was just an effect of them being backlit and Joyce’s face being partially turned, but then I noticed that her neck and chest are more brightly lit too.

      You could still be nuts, though. They’re not mutually exclusive.

  47. Nee Hou

    Why do people like to be offensive about the Bible? Ignorance and prejudice make them feel superior, and being in a crowd of them adds to the feeling. With no commandment to be humble and love your enemies, it all escalates until you have a “Cult of the Militant Godless,” and “the New Atheists.”
    Re Dorothy’s comments: The same reason we had to rediscover the technology of the Greek’s Antikythera mechanism to have clocks, and Hero of Alexandria’s steam engine, pneumatics and hydraulics to have so much modern tech. The Greeks and Romans forgot what they had developed.

    1. Zap Rowsdower

      Yes, because people who do have a commandment to be humble and love their enemies neeever act militant, get superiority complexes, or worship ignorance.

      1. David

        No, Zap. They don’t – if they follow the command. Of course, that’s the point; we all have to watch out for hypocrisy.

        1. Zap Rowsdower

          And therein lies the rub. No blanket statement about any one group is ever going to be accurate, particularly any statement of “they’re all meanies”. Thus, its just categorism and an excuse to discard opposing viewpoints out of hand

        2. Zap Rowsdower

          Or blanket statements of “they’re all angels” for that matter. There are people who have such a command who follow it, and there are people who have it but don’t. There are people who DON’T have such a command, but do something similar anyway, and there are people who don’t. The difference in numbers between the “have command” pair and the “don’t have command” pair aren’t THAT different.

    2. begbert2

      Oh! You’re talking about atheists being offensive about the bible. I honestly thought you were complaining about Christians pounding with the thing.

      The reason atheists are offensive about the bible, in my experience, is that anything you say that theologically conflicts with a christian has a chance of offending them (depending on their personality, of course). So to a disturbing number of theists, the mere existence of atheists can offend, and cause hiccups.

      This is not to say that all of us are actually *nice*, even objectively speaking. When everything you say is probably going to offend anyway, why hold back?

      1. David

        Good point. I reckon that works both ways, and those on all sides who take easy offence maybe are worried that their own position is a tad weak. Of course, we aren’t talking about stuff that’s intended to be offensive – that’s indefensible!

    3. gangler

      http://i.imgur.com/9UYGa.png

      1. adius

        Well great, you found a picture of me and showed it to everyone. I hope you’re satisfied

  48. SpaceViking

    Well technically, wouldn’t the first people to have decided that Jesus was the Messiah have been Jews? It’s not like Jesus sprouted, fully formed during the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the founding fathers, and Americans were the first to say the Jews were wrong about their own scripture.

    1. Zap Rowsdower

      Not necessarily, or, at least, not as Christians define the term (there is, as mentioned in an earlier comment, a fairly big difference between the Christian and Jewish perceptions of what a Messiah IS). The New Testament was written 90-200 years after the fact, by which time Christianity was pretty heavily into non-Jewish converts, so we don’t really have much idea of the state and details of Christian dogma back when it was a purely Jewish phenomenon.

      1. Zap Rowsdower

        Also worth noting is that at the time it was rather difficult to walk two blocks in Jerusalem without tripping over a half dozen dudes claiming to be Prophets or Moshiach. Its just that only one of them proved memorable or believable in the long term.

        1. Almighty Atheismo

          My understanding is more along the lines of only one of them had followers persecuted by Nero in extreme and horrible ways. Lending an odd sort of credibility through conviction to the small cult of Jesus Worshipers. Were it not for Nero’s hatred of Christians, the faith probably wouldn’t have gained much of a footing, or at least would have taken a lot longer to take hold.

      2. David

        Nope, Zap. The NT was written within the lifetimes of witnesses – and it’s solidly Jewish. People writing 90-200 years after the fact wrote differently, and it shows. There was a lot of effort put in around 100 years ago to prove your point, and it all failed. Recent research just brings up more and more evidence to say so. The NT is the most authoritative eyewitness accounts we have from ancient times, even including Pliny the Younger’s eyewitness account of Pompeii. It addresses none of the stuff that bothered Christians later, especially non-Jewish Christians, and that’s the best part of the proof. People writing later wrote about what bothered them, as you’d expect.

        1. Zap Rowsdower

          I was wrong, no big surprise there, this isn’t exactly my area of expertise. I’ll accept that they were written in the same generation (quick wikipedia-ing says 20 years after the fact at earliest in all likelihood), but I can’t acknowledge them as “most accurate and authoritative ancient accounts ever”; that sounds like an article of faith to me, not a statement of fact. That a christian believes they’re accurate I see no issue with, but don’t expect one who doesn’t share the faith to take something not written by the man himself or within a year or two of events at face value.

          Unless you have a time machine to corroborate, in which case, MAN, are you not taking full advantage of it.

        2. turkishproverb

          Eh, a monkey could attempt to build those random lines into prophecy about the “chosen one”. Hence there being so many “cults of this being the messiah” related to judaism in record.

        3. David

          That’s a big one, Zap. Let’s put it this way: the bible as a whole, Jewish and Christian, is by far and far and far the best attested document of ancient times for accuracy. Both Christians and Jewish scholars think that.

          And you’re thinking Western, all in books and on disk. Torah was written by Moses after a huge period of oral transmission. I still believe it to be accurate, because Eastern practice was (and is) to encourage memorizing in every tiny detail. A Rabbi’s disciples took pride in being able to quote the master verbatim for hundreds of sayings and descriptions, with others around to laugh at the tiniest mistake. A popular rabbi wasn’t able to speak to every enquirer; his disciples did that and needed to be accurate. And we’re quite sure that the sayings of many ancient rabbis, like Hillel or Akiba, are true to his words. In any case, the rabbi spoke in semi-poetry and vivid stories just to be memorable; it was part of the gift.

          So we can be sure that memories of Jesus’ sayings and doings are quite outstandingly good, and being written down maybe 20-40 years later would be about right – before the memories began to fade. And the written record had plenty of chance to be challenged by eyewitnesses before being finalized. So, yes, it’s outstandingly accurate.

        4. David

          There are zero eyewitness accounts of Jesus in the New Testament. Every book was written by someone who never met him, decades after he died.

        5. David

          You crossed me, David – I left this for a few hours! Read what I put above. What do you think?

        6. David

          I think everyone stopped thinking Moses wrote any portion of the Old Testament long, long ago. The exceptions believe so do because of tradition, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

          I also think calling anything “outstandingly accurate” so long as it’s written within a few decades of the occurrence by people who weren’t there is laughable. Especially when we’ve got two conflicting Jesus birth stories and John doesn’t agree on which day of the week Jesus was crucified.

        7. David

          Wrong century, David. All the early 20th century ‘new thinking’ arguments you’ve quoted were debunked a long time ago. The arguments and counterarguments are freely available on the web.

          My term ‘outstandingly accurate’ is the consensus of the majority of modern scholars and refers to a comparison with all other ancient literature, except a tiny minority of original stuff (like court records, contracts and bills) that’s been unearthed by archaeologists. The accuracy doesn’t just depend on being written close to the event, also on a whole raft of other, easy-to-look-up reasons.

        8. David

          “The accuracy doesn’t just depend on being written close to the event” and “consensus of the majority of modern scholars” are both flat-out lies.

          From Wikipedia:

          According to the majority viewpoint, the Synoptic Gospels are the primary sources of historical information about Jesus.[4][5][6] and of the religious movement he founded, but not everything contained in the gospels is considered to be historically reliable.[7][8][9][10][11][12] Elements whose historical authenticity is disputed include the two accounts of the nativity of Jesus, as well as the resurrection and certain details about the crucifixion.[13][14][15][16][17][18] On one extreme, some Christian scholars maintain that the gospels are inerrant descriptions of the life of Jesus.[19] On the other extreme, some scholars have concluded that the gospels provide no historical information about Jesus’ life.[20]

          And the 17 references linked within that quoted passage, because linking just Wikipedia is kind of flimsy:

          ^ a b c Sanders, E. P. The historical figure of Jesus. Penguin, 1993.
          ^ “The Synoptic Gospels, then, are the primary sources for knowledge of the historical Jesus.” “Jesus Christ.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 27 Nov. 2010 [1].
          ^ a b Vermes, Geza. The authentic gospel of Jesus. London, Penguin Books. 2004.
          ^ The Myth about Jesus, Allvar Ellegard 1992,
          ^ Craig Evans, “Life-of-Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology,” Theological Studies 54 (1993) p. 5,
          ^ a b Charles H. Talbert, What Is a Gospel? The Genre of Canonical Gospels pg 42 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977).
          ^ a b “The Historical Figure of Jesus,” Sanders, E.P., Penguin Books: London, 1995, p., 3.
          ^ a b Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word (Vol. II): Meditations on the Gospel According to St. Matthew – Dr Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Ignatius Press, Introduction
          ^ a b c d Grant, Robert M., “A Historical Introduction to the New Testament” (Harper and Row, 1963) http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=1116&C=1230
          ^ Who is Jesus? Answers to your questions about the historical Jesus, by John Dominic Crossan, Richard G. Watts (Westminster John Knox Press 1999), page 108
          ^ James G. D. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, (Eerdmans, 2003) page 779-781.
          ^ Rev. John Edmunds, 1855 The seven sayings of Christ on the cross Thomas Hatchford Publishers, London, page 26
          ^ Stagg, Evelyn and Frank. Woman in the World of Jesus. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978 ISBN 0-664-24195-6
          ^ Funk, Robert W. and the Jesus Seminar. The acts of Jesus: the search for the authentic deeds of Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco. 1998. “Empty Tomb, Appearances & Ascension” p. 449-495.
          ^ Bruce M. Metzger’s Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament: Luke 24:51 is missing in some important early witnesses, Acts 1 varies between the Alexandrian and Western versions.
          ^ Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994); pages 90-91
          ^ Howard M. Teeple (March 1970). “The Oral Tradition That Never Existed”. Journal of Biblical Literature 89 (1): 56–68. doi:10.2307/3263638.

          You must shut up now. Thread done.

    2. StClair

      No, that was George Washington, astride his horse.
      Then Franklin electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod, and the three of them – Franklin, Washington, and the horse – conducted the entire revolution by themselves.

      1. David

        Does sarcasm become you or belittle you? Be positive!

  49. Fauxlosopher

    They see me tropin’…

    They understandin’…

    1. Daeva

      They browsin’…

      They addicted to Tropes ‘n Idioms…

      1. Maycroft

        word.

  50. omghi

    Wow, you’re extremely wrong. Or you at least disagree with most modern scholarship. Firstly, the NT is not “solidly Jewish,” Mark and Luke both make pains to appeal to gentiles. Paul wrote a lot of letters to gentiles.

    Secondly, most modern biblical scholars think that at the least, Matthew and Luke were not eyewitness and used at least Mark as a source. Q is also a hypothetical source used by them. You say recent research has refuted that, but that’s not so, and consensus is still around some variant of Markan priority and the two-source hypothesis.

    Furthermore, no one actually suggests the synoptic gospels are eyewitness. The traditional view was that they were secondhand, written by dudes listening to Peter and Paul. Modern scholarship puts Mark as an anonymous Christian in Syria using various written sources, and Matthew and Luke using Mark (and probably Q or other sources.)

    So yeah, what you said is one theory, but it’s not even the most accepted one. It’s really impossible to ever definitively date or pin down authorship anyway. And besides again, the Bible is certainly not a good historical source. They were simply not written to be that. An especially obvious example is Luke’s description of the census, which not only disagrees with Matthew, but is not recorded in any other source (you’d think one of the plenty of Roman historians would mention a census of such massive scale), and has an absurd methodology (why would the Romans want people to return to their ancestral home for a census?)

    1. David

      ‘Most modern scholars’? No – but there are some skeptics, and you must have been reading them. The authorship card is one that regularly gets pulled out of the sleeve by cynics. Of course a lot of the NT was written for gentiles – they were getting interested. But Mark (friend of Peter the chief disciple and of Pharisee Paul) was mainly writing to the half-Jewish church and other Jewish population in Rome. And Luke was also companion to the Jew Paul. Christianity is solidly Jewish in origin, totally at odds with all other religions and philosophies around.

      You then go on to quote a lot of early 20th century anti-Christian myths – I won’t answer them all, but you can look it all up online and see the flaws. I’ve just answered the ‘eyewitness’ point higher up this column. And yes, two of the gospels are second-hand – as even modern biographies usually are. No-one says that makes them automatically flawed. In fact, most of Paul’s letters were dictated, not in his own hand, so does that make them wrong?

      You’re out of date on the census stuff. It was a minor census in that area, not a whole-Empire one – and it was one of two. Recent archaeological finds have confirmed this. Ancestral home? That was Jewish; wanting to be recorded in their family homeplace rather than where they happened to be living just then. Jews then (and often now) had a strong sense of place. Joseph was a Bethlehemite and wanted to be ‘counted’ there – of course he did.

      1. David

        Omghi is correct about what modern scholars believe.

        Joseph was separated by ancestry from David by a thousand years. Requiring he travel to his greatgreatgreatgreat….greatgrandfther’s home for a census is unheard of. And there was a small census, but well into Jesus’s childhood, there was no ancestral requirement forcing nine-month-old pregnant mothers to travel long distances for an absurd reason, and it happened long after King Herod was dead.

        Both birth stories try to reconcile prophecy with known facts in different ways. It was known that Jesus was from Nazareth, but prophecy says he has to be born in Bethlehem. Each book tried to solve the problem by making up different but conflicting stories. One made up a census with ridiculous rules. The other had Joseph originally live in Bethehm but relocate to Galilee after fleeing to Egypt to escape a first-borne-killing decree that never happened.

        1. David

          That’s the anti-Christian argument, David, quoting discredited ‘Christian’ and ‘Jewish’ research and opinions from a century ago. It’s put about now by the strident atheists who are more wind than substance – like Dawkins, who even got other leading atheists mad with the idiocies in his ‘God Delusion’ book.

          The census thing – no, no-one was forced to travel to be counted, but it was a point of honour to be enumerated at ‘home’ – however you count that. And it’s not a long journey, only maybe four days on foot, one on a fast horse. There’s plenty of stuff showing how both accounts of the birth reconcile, just as there is with witness accounts brought up in a modern courthouse. In fact, murder mysteries often turn on such stuff, inviting the reader to come up with the reconciliation before all is revealed at the end. Truth works the same way.

        2. David

          “It was a point of honour to be enumerated at ‘home'”, where “home” = “where one trail of my family tree lived 42 generations ago” is a complete fabrication so that the Gospel of Matthew makes sense. There is no truth to it.

  51. JA

    Amen to the third panel.

  52. Cherry

    Ha, I identify with Dorothy.

  53. Patrick

    Since nobody except a hardcore atheist or christian will read down this far, I’ll just say forget the religious debate, and show more Billie.

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