What DID he think he said?
Cidu Bill on Jul 8th 2010
For what it’s worth, there were two metatexts for this one: “Semmelweis reflex” and “Alternative Title - Cognitive Heuristic Shortcuts Commonly Employed by Members of Primitive Hominid Societies on Undeveloped Class M Planets.”
Filed in Abstruse Goose, Bill Bickel, CIDU, comic strips, comics, humor | 28 responses so far
furrykef Jul 8th 2010 at 04:08 pm 1
Panels 1 through 4 are what he thought he said. It’s just that when some atheists talk about why they don’t believe in God, all some people can hear are the words of the devil.
Elyrest Jul 8th 2010 at 04:09 pm 2
Bill, the 1st guy actually said “Before I can believe in a God, I have to see some kind of empirical evidence.” The 2nd guy interprets that mentally as the 1st guy being Satan and condemning all the people of the world to disgusting horrors.
Jordan Jul 8th 2010 at 04:09 pm 3
Guy on the right believes in God. Guy on the left doesn’t. Saying so causes guy on the right to imagine guy on the left as Satan himself. (Guy on right seems a touch narrow-minded. The first five panels are the guy on the right’s delusion, the rest is reality.
What I think is funny is that the guy on the left didn’t even say he flat-out didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t believe in God. He just expressed a cautious amount of skepticism. One could imagine the guy on the right’s reaction if the guy was a fundamental atheist or the like.
George Jul 8th 2010 at 04:10 pm 4
Weird. I’m not much for Silence of the Lambs, but that’s the second time I’ve seen that fava beans in the last few days. Was it posted here not too long ago? Maybe it was facebook….
Omar Jul 8th 2010 at 06:02 pm 5
That’s the reaction of religious people, specially fundamentalists, when someone doubts the existence of a god
mitch4 Jul 8th 2010 at 06:04 pm 6
All these excellent answers. You folks are preachin’ to the choir. Wait, I mean …
Rid Jul 8th 2010 at 06:28 pm 7
Yeah, that’s pretty much how delusional all religious people are.
And we let them hold public office.
George P Jul 8th 2010 at 07:54 pm 8
I don’t think the people we elect are like that; they just play the voters who are like that to get elected.
Gilgamesh Jul 8th 2010 at 07:56 pm 9
A religious person demonizing anyone questioning his/her specific belief. Yep, slice of life.
So true RID, have you seen the political ads in the South? In addition to all the guns, horses and “I’m tougher than my opponent” messages, at least one makes fun of a candidate because he is insane enough to want “evilution” taught in public schools.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJG-7s1e5eM
Oh woe are us, won’t somebody think of the children?
Rid Jul 8th 2010 at 09:40 pm 10
Then they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. it’s as simple as that. You’re religious? You are not welcome in an enlightened country.
Elyrest Jul 8th 2010 at 09:47 pm 11
Rid - I’m pretty un-religious myself, but your lumping all religious people together into one group and then slamming them is just as intolerant as you seem to feel they are. People have a right/need to believe in things whether you or I believe in them too.
Rid Jul 8th 2010 at 10:07 pm 12
Not if their beliefs are inherently harmful. And who’s responsible for all the warfare and violence in the world, again? Religious or irreligious people?
Elyrest Jul 8th 2010 at 10:16 pm 13
Rid - Your parameters are too simplistic and narrow. I would have totally agreed with you at one time, but it isn’t as easy as pro or con religion. Religion is a catch-all word that covers a million different beliefs. Some good and some bad. You shouldn’t judge just by the bad or you’ll end up with a very unbalanced and pessimistic view of the world.
Mark M Jul 8th 2010 at 10:53 pm 14
“Not if their beliefs are inherently harmful.” Really? I’ll be sure to ask all the religious people I know what violence are they planning today.
OMJulie Jul 9th 2010 at 12:02 am 15
Well, I was PLANNING to finish the pipe bomb and the effigies today, but work got kind of crazy and now I’m exhausted. So I guess I’ll have to postpone until the weekend.
Or I could just be a religious person who is also a reasonable human being with an open mind and intellectual capabilities and just BLOW YOUR MIND right now instead.
Funny comic, btw.
Nicole Jul 9th 2010 at 12:09 am 16
now we are talking
Mark M…. many intolerance are based in religion. The most obvious is the disenfranchisement of gays, and the oppression of women. Slavery was often justified using the bible, and many people physically abuse their children based on ’spare the rod….’ Google Nate Phelps for an interesting read of what religion can do for a person. Nate is the now atheist son of Fred Phelps of “God hates F a G s” fame. (lets see if that gets through the filters)
As for violence .. well 9/11 jumps to mind, mothers drowning their children to save them from satan, people praying for their children and letting them die rather than taking them to a doctor, in Africa — people are tortured because they think they are witches. Plenty of violence is religious based.
Of course not all theists are violent, but those are the ones who don’t actually follow the words in their ‘holy book’
All that being said… I don’t really give a hoot what others believe as long as they don’t hurt others or expect everyone else to follow their irrational belief system. (note … I do not mean this as an insult .. but as a statement of fact .. religion is faith based and faith by it’s nature is irrational .. if it wasn’t it wouldn’t be faith, now would it ? )
OMJulie Jul 9th 2010 at 12:11 am 17
Does anybody understand what the metatext means? I think Semmelweis was the guy who discovered that hand-washing cuts out disease, correct? Was he also some kind of religious maniac?
OMJulie Jul 9th 2010 at 12:40 am 18
To clarify, Nicole…
“Of course not all theists are violent, but those are the ones who don’t actually follow the words in their ‘holy book’ ”
Did you mean non-violent theists don’t follow their holy books or violent theists? Because most religious texts overtly preach non-violence.
Personally I think theist vs nontheist is a pretty unfair comparison even if you only stick to current issues, since openly-acknowledged nontheists/atheists are still comparatively pretty rare. I see what you’re saying about a lot of violence and intolerance having an ostensibly religious rationale behind it - that’s definitely true and it’s pretty upsetting. But there’s also plenty of violence and intolerance in the world that has no religious basis whatsoever. Correlation does not imply causation, as they say.
I generally don’t care what anybody believes either as long as they aren’t hurting anybody, but I sure don’t like being unfairly stereotyped. And it’s pretty hypocritical to use bigotry-inducing “All members of X group are Y” reasoning to dismiss X group for being closed-minded, of all things.
Winter Wallaby Jul 9th 2010 at 12:56 am 19
Nicole, atheists as a whole worldwide don’t seem any less violent than theists. Communist countries were mostly atheist, and were plenty violent without religion as an excuse.
People often like to be violent, and religion can give them a good excuse for it, but without religion, they just find other good excuses.
OMJulie Jul 9th 2010 at 01:12 am 20
I generally don’t care what anybody believes either as long as they aren’t hurting anybody, but I sure don’t like being unfairly stereotyped. And it’s pretty hypocritical to use bigotry-inducing “All members of X group are Y” reasoning to dismiss X group for being closed-minded, of all things.
That was in reference to Rid’s comments, btw, not Nicole’s.
Igelino Jul 9th 2010 at 04:46 am 21
OMJulie: does this help?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmelweis_reflex
Ian Osmond Jul 9th 2010 at 07:01 am 22
Rid #12: Yes, that’s true. Religious and non-religious people ARE responsible for all the violence and warfare in the world!
Well, all the human-caused deliberate violence, anyway.
Yes, religion can be one excuse for violence. But so can any other cause.
Tom T. Jul 9th 2010 at 07:14 am 23
Theologically, it’s entirely sound to believe that God (or a god, if one prefers) is only knowable through faith, and that insistence on empirical evidence will only lead one to see the work of the devil. After all, any empirical evidence can always be explained away as something other than the work of God. It’s necessarily a dead end.
OMJulie Jul 9th 2010 at 09:00 am 24
Igelino: Yes, that completely clears it up! Thank you!
John Small Berries Jul 9th 2010 at 09:56 am 25
Theologically, it’s entirely sound to believe that God (or a god, if one prefers) is only knowable through faith, and that insistence on empirical evidence will only lead one to see the work of the devil.
From a Christian scriptural perspective, though, not really - after all, in John 20, Thomas refuses to believe his fellow apostles’ claims to have seen the resurrected Jesus “except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side”. Jesus appears a few days later and enunciates a special blessing for “they that have not seen, and yet have believed” - but only after offering Thomas exactly the empirical evidence he demanded; he didn’t condemn Thomas for insisting upon proof (”ask and ye shall receive”, after all).
Furthermore, in Mark 16:17-18, Jesus explicitly promises a list of empirical evidence by which one may know believers: “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” Some of them are pretty hard to verify, or can be interpreted ambiguously, but others are easily testable - quaffing a glass of Drāno with no ill effect, for example, would certainly be somewhat persuasive to me.
Lihtox Jul 9th 2010 at 11:16 am 26
Getting back to the comic for a moment: I read the comic in a different way: if Satan appeared before you like that, it would be pretty strong empirical evidence for the Christian worldview, but I’m rather not be provided with said evidence thank-you-very-much.
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Holy War. Do note, however, that “religion” encompasses a wide range of beliefs; “religious” is not a synonym for “Christian fundamentalist”. If one’s criticisms about religion are not applicable to Buddhism, Quakerism, Baha’i, etc, then one should tighten the beam on one’s flamethrower a bit. So much of this sort of argument consists of Christian fundamentalists and dogmatic atheists shooting at one another, with the rest of us hiding behind rocks trying not to get hit by either side.
Tunasammich Jul 11th 2010 at 03:05 pm 27
As an atheist myself I’m fully aware that when the non-religious want to be aholes they just use evopsych and act like science says women and racial minorities are inferior and should be oppressed.
Todd Jul 12th 2010 at 04:32 pm 28
Bill, why haven’t you banned Rid from posting here? He has long since proved that he is a pathetic little troll.