Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for January 05, 2015

Calvin just got his Ph.D. from the School of Amorality.

I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.

This is a complaint I have had for YEARS. Thank you Watterson for thinking of that even earlier.

You can be religious without attending church. Are you certain Watterson isn’t?

Having been a fundamental Baptist and now an atheist, I have to disagree, lacking an invisible man in the sky (or some other version of an omnipotent being setting standards of morality), there can be NO absolutes regarding good and bad, only one person’s, community’s, nation’s, or culture’s opinion. The Aztecs didn’t even consider cannibalism bad, the Mayans practiced child sacrifice. By what standard are you going to judge either “bad” without some eternal lawgiver saying so? It’s just your culture and upbringing saying so, so how can you say you are right and they were wrong? I went atheist after trying to prove God’s existence logically and ended up proving to myself that God (at least our Western version) could not possibly exist, but I am still of the opinion that without a God, morality is a compass without a magnetic north, it just points where you think it should.

The problem with moral relativity is that it is assumed that other people agree on the big issues, such as theft and murder being immoral Well, not necessarily so. Calvin proclaimed that all moral systems are equally valid, but what about someone whose system permitted sadistically beating other people to within an inch of their lives just because the victimizer felt like it? Would Calvin then agree that the one out to bludgeon him is also justified under his system?Would Calvin be willing to be a martyr for his stand on moral relativity? I doubt that. And here’s the kicker – moral relativists consider valid all other systems – until they are confronted with someone who’s out to seriously hurt them and they they will backpedal and say certain things are innately immoral. Moral relativity doesn’t work because there are all too many sociopaths and psychopaths out there who feel morally justified in hurting others.

Plato must’ve been so proud of this kid!

Don’t hurt people. If everyone lived by that the world would be much more pleasant.

It seems like Calvin waited to have this discussion until after Santa delivered the loot.

“Don’t hurt people” is not definite enough to be a workable ethic. Various people are hurt in different ways for different reasons and to different degrees. I came across a picture of a poster on the net carried in a demonstration which read “We condemn freedom of speech that hurts other people’s feelings!.” How can we reasonably know what will hurt another’s feelings? What is fine for one is hurtful for another both physically and psychologically. And would any reasonable person refuse to hurt a Hitler, a monster who is out to hurt or massacre others? In our society reasonable people would resist such a monster and try to hurt him in every possible way. Also. the ethic of ‘do unto others what you would want them to do unto you’ is also not workable. I love flowers and love it when people send me flowers as surprise gifts. My neighbor, OTOH, has a serious allergy to flower pollen. If i were to follow that ethic of doing unto others what I want then to do unto me and send my neighbor flowers I would hurt my neighbor. The best ethic I’ve come across is Hillel’s ethic of ‘do not do unto others what is hateful to yourself.’ By NOT doing things that are repugnant o oneself there’s a far greater chance of a general agreement on any particular negative behaviour.

I love bacon….doesn’t mean I’m going to start obeying it, even if a rasher starts talking to me…..

One of Watterson’s standing ironies. Calvin is almost Hobbesian, while Hobbes is Calvinist by comparison.

@Gaijinrabbit: C. S. Lewis describes Hell as a place where the gates are wide open and everyone is free to leave, but some choose to stay because they are imprisoned by their own free will. Some Christians see atheists in this way, and some atheists see Christians in this way.What both groups have in common is that they don’t understand each other.

@Nos NevetsBrilliant post!!

Wow. Calvin’s probably the only one that thinks thoroughly about such an issue. Lol

To be an athiest, you must therefor acknowledge that there is a “god”, as you cannot be a non-god believer without a god figure to disavow. Comments, please

I don’t know about all the other things expressed this morning; but when you are sitting with the laptop in your lap, comfortably sipping a morning coffee, and your wife enters the room, puts her hands on both hips while glaring at you and says,.“Are you going to sit there all morning in your pajamas? Don’t you remember I told you yesterday my mom is coming over this morning? Why is it I have to keep after you?”.Now, thats “relative”…

I wouldn’t have a problem with atheists (it’s their right to not believe in anything) if so many weren’t such hostile jerks toward people who DO believe in Someone or Something. So much for that “tolerance” thing.

Again, check out the link in my reply to exoticdoc2.

That is one element of what makes it very funny. A fairly sophisticated philosophical treatise from a six? year old.

@Get fuzzy 4527Does that mean unicorns have to exist because I say that I don’t believe in their existence? I am not going to debate the existence of God but your reasoning is absurd.

In what way did I support Exoticdoc’s argument? Laws are in place because we, as society, agree there are certain things you shouldn’t do, regardless of your religion or lack thereof. I don’t agree that the majority of people are only good because of some incentive. Unless you’re a clinical sociopath, people are born with a conscience that gives them a sense of basic decency and how to treat other people. And if you want to talk about moral relativism, religion is full of it. Kosher Jews don’t mix meat and dairy; Mormons don’t drink; Catholics don’t allow women as priests. Who’s to say which beliefs are “right”? As for the “invisible man in the sky”, unless you know some who has actually seen God, yes, it is a good representation of religious views- all religion is basically about having faith in something you can’t see.

You weren’t saying you “should” be evil, you weren’t saying anything at all. Your comment is essentially meaningless. You haven’t defined “good”, “evil”, “moral”, or anything else. Explain exactly how my analysis of your dictum would bar Ted Bundy from claiming he was abiding by your system. He examined his values (dead people deserve to be dead), he lived up to them (he killed people), and he was responsible for them (he was eventually caught, confessed, imprisoned, and put to death). Must be a good thing, at least according to your system.