The Duplex by Glenn McCoy for May 16, 2010

Not just the smoke but we took out the ivy on the trellis with the BBQ fire last year!

Fang dropped his beer again.

More of the rodent revolution? Where ya at Doc?

It’s good to see that all squirrels aren’t as stupid as Bob.

You picked a fine place to BBQ, Eno. You deserve the second-hand smoke.

it appears there is unrest in the kingdom

something didn’t happen to make people hate god, thumper. people everywhere are brought up to believe this tub of s…. without reservation or proof. it takes a while for some people to open their own eyes and see for themselves that the whole god thing is based on faith and hope and no fact.

so bow your sanctified head and pray to your gods and kill for your gods and sacrifice for your gods like people have done since they crawled out of the caves. I hope that makes you think you are safe and secure and have a place in heaven waiting for you. Peace and contentment should be everyone’s goal.

now, as for myself, I live on skull island , in the pacific. MY god , Kong , lives on my island with our tribe and from time to time requires that we sacrifice one of our virgins to him so that the rest of us can live in peace. We have peace and contentment enjoyed by all (with the possible exception of thos e virgins) MY religion is the right one… not YOURS!

I have faith!

Without getting too deep into this, I simply want to state that not all atheists fit into Nab’s model.

Nab also uses a pathetic argument technique - stating that the only way to argue against what he says is to not say anything. Well, if Nab’s position was so obviously valid, then he wouldn’t have to say anything, either.

Nabuquduriuzhur: I had a GED student who was disruptive, claimed to be an Anarchist. I old him I could take him outside and beat the bleeep out of him and there would be no consequences. He said he’d call the police. I simply said, sorry, in an Anarchy State there is no police and there are no laws. He never did graduate.

Well said, Doctor Toon. Another day, another toon to comment on.

methinks nab protests a little too much about atheism. why obsess on a subject if you know zilch about it to begin with? maybe there’s a deep dark attraction there nabbo?

Haven’t weighed in yet, but the reason atheist challenges to intrusive Judeo-Christianity make the news but challenges to, say, intrusive Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism doesn’t is because we don’t have intrusive Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism in American culture. We aren’t expected to swear by Mother Ganges when we go to court, nobody’s pushing to teach Reincarnation as part of the Biology curriculum at P.S. 42, nobody’s trying to get statues of the Buddha put on the grass at City Hall.

The A.C.L.U. will sue to get your Nativity Scene off government property, true. But they’ll also sue to allow at least as much recognition of other religions’ observances as the government allows Christians. Since the Constitution does not allow one religion to have any special status over another in government affairs, if you open the door to Jehovah you have to let in Allah, Krishna, Amaterasu, Gaia, Baal, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorn…

Hey nab there is no God , if you believe in one fine . but think about it your god is a alien who came here thousands of years ago to a people who didnt understand what it was so to them its was god but now open your eyes we are not alone . and why does the vatican have a space observatory ? hmmmmm

The smoke from Eno and Fan’s BBQ has what to do with atheism?

comicgos, this strip is alluding to Genesis, Chapter 4. Eno’s clearly making a burnt offering to the Squirrel God, but his sacrifice is finding no favor and is being rejected, like Cain’s. God wants acorns!

I like the idea of athiests and hope you guys grow in strength and numbers because, if I’m right about an afterlife with God, I’ll not only end up with a bunch of goodies, but I’ll get your goodies too. Unfortunately for you, I will be rubbing it in and you will be totally aware of it wherever you are.

If I’m wrong about God, we’ll all break exactly even by splitting absolutely nothing, and neither you nor me will even know that nothing just happened so you won’t be able to rub it in whatsoever.

Faith and hope ain’t a bad thing, kids.

fritzoid:

Thanks for keeping the strip funny! Great burnt offering comment!

Me?

I just took the BEST of what I learned in Sunday School and Church and decided that I was MORALLY OBLIGATED to stop believing in a conscious, preferring, creating, plan making God.

My responsibility is to humanity, the earth and life, not to some adult constructed imaginary friend.

I reserve my Awe to all life and the cosmos.

When (if ever) I truly believed, God was the placeholder for the “WHAT IS.”

Having left God behind I still seek the “WHAT IS.”

I don’t like the word atheist. It is not truly descriptive of what I and many others are. I’m looking for a proactive rather than a reactive word that really describes us.

Thanks to all the others who are willing to name their unbelief. We are not alone and we are FOR something far more than we are AGAINST something.

OOOPS!

I must have fallen off my stump!!

Now I’m going out there and show those squirrels a thing or two about Bar-ba-Que.

Many atheists say “look at how bad this or that religion is how can there be a god”. But the fact is that all these religions were made by man and have nothing to do with the existence of God. People are free to do whatever they choose, don’t point at them as proof that there is no God. There is no proof either way.

I call myself an agnostic because I can’t claim to know one way or the other whether a god or any gods exist. I call myself an atheist because I believe there are no gods. I could also call myself Christian (I don’t, though; it would piss too many people off on both sides), in that I believe Jesus’s ethical teachings were worthy of emulation (how we should behave towards other people, not how we should behave towards God), although I would deny him divinity. Someone once said “If Jesus was right, does it matter whether he was God?”, but many many Christians would say that acknowledging the divinity is of vastly more importance than following his teachings. In other words, “Salvation isn’t WHAT you know, it’s WHO you know…”

grazer argues that he has less to lose by believing there is a god than by believing there is none (Pascal’s Wager, as it’s commonly known), but which god is it safest to believe in? There are many people who believe in a god or gods which are different from his, and they demand different things from humanity. Even people who worship the same god can’t agree on how to go about it, and are happy to consign each other merrily to Hell as heretics. Whoever’s “right”, whether those who believe in no god(s) or those who believe in a particular god, nearly everybody else is wrong. Some religions at least squeeze in room for “virtuous pagans”, those whose beliefs are incorrect but whose actions were nonetheless without fault.

Everybody disbelieves in almost every god that has ever been proposed. Atheists just disbelieve in one more than most.

@ poohbear8192,

Are you sure that you are not an agnostic? Agnostics are those who admit that they don’t “know” what the truth is. They are as open to the possibility that God does exist as to the possibility that He does not.

Atheists on the other hand are as convinced as any other religion that their belief is the truth and all others are wrong.

I have seen posts here that criticized what the poster called “blind belief.” Some of the atheists who post here go ape if anyone simply mentions what they believe… or posts a quote from the Bible (for whatever reason). The least mention of religion incites hateful posts. Which makes me wonder, is “blind unbelief” any better?

My own belief is that it is best to learn as much as possible about all beliefs and, if I find something good, I adopt it into my own life.

I believe that, if I pray about something sincerely and honestly with no prejudice about whatever it is that I am praying about, that the knowledge of what the truth is regarding the matter will be made known to me.

My religion of choice encourages the members to seek for answers to questions and not simply accept what anyone says on their word alone.

@ fritzoid,

My own take on the differences among the various religions is that they are like the blind men who wanted to know what an elephant was like. The only thing they agree on is that, the elephant does exist.

I believe that all of them, Pagans, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Winter-een-mas have something good to offer.

To tie this back into Genesis 4, the vast majority of people’s conception of God’s demands upon them is simply a matter of their life circumstances. Cain was a farmer, and sacrified the fruits of his harvest. Abel was a shepherd, and sacrificed a lamb. If grazer had been born in Saudi Arabia, India, or China, he’d likely be just as devoutly espousing the beliefs to which he’d been raised.

Throughout history, there’ve been no shortage of people willing to bash in someone else’s head with a rock if they felt their own religious beliefs were being dissed, especially if it seems like the disbelievers are gaining ground. This has been true even when the religion they profess expressly forbids killing. Most Christian traditions have Cain currently residing in one of the deeper pits of Hell, but there are others who maintain that Cain received his judgment and punishment in life (it’s questionable whether Jewish religion even contained a Hell, before they encountered the Greeks); after all, he still became the founder of a mighty nation. He, a farmer, was cursed by God such that the earth would no longer bring forth crops for him, and he was condemned to walk amongst men, bearing the mark that was both the constant reminder of his guilt as well as his protection from further punishment by men. I’ll say one thing about the God of Genesis, you knew where you stood with Him…

Psalm 14:1

The fool hath said in his heart, “There is no God.”

The sinner here described is an atheist, one that saith there is no Judge or Governor of the world, no Providence ruling over the affairs of men. He says this in his heart. He cannot satisfy himself that there is none, but wishes there were none, and pleases himself that it is possible there may be none; he is willing to think there is none.

From Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary on the Bible

Good stuff, fritzoid.

I figure there’s lots of gods to go around. I suggest picking one that’s rich, powerful, famous and generous and pays close attention to you. I personally like the way the wild One in the bible does things.

Incidently, I no longer waste my faith and hope on any religious system whatsoever. Even my main man Jesus agrees with me on this.

I figure if God exists, he’s not giving me his number but he knows mine. (Yeah, I know – “He’s got your number, all right!!” Ha ha.) If he wants to talk, he knows how to get in touch. Until then, I’ve got other stuff to do than hang by the phone…

(thebird55, citing Biblical authority to support Biblical authority is circular reasoning. It holds no water with anyone who’s not already on your side.)

Hey, Eno’s hot dogs didn’t get completely burned!

And what’s all this about atheism?

grazer, if I misread your beliefs in your earlier post (as it appears from your later post that I have, at least in part), would your inclusive (benign) afterlife nonetheless be available to those who, in life, did not believe in the existence of same?

Bertrand Russell was once asked what he would say if, against his every expectation, he found himself after death face-to-face with (a) God. He answered “I would say ‘Sir, you did not give us enough information.’”

My sister is a Christian, and we talk about this stuff often, and we manage to do it without fighting. For my sake, she hopes that after my death I’m pleasantly surprised rather than unpleasantly surprised.

It’s difficult to parse out exactly what Dostoevsky’s beliefs were, because he was capable of writing (more or less) convincingly from the perspectives of atheists and believers, saints and sinners, from all positions along the two axes. But I’ve heard it argued that the closest thing to his true “vision” is found in the sermon of the monk Zosima in “The Brothers Karamazov” - in short, “Everybody is guilty of everybody else’s sins, we are all our brothers’ keepers. Nobody deserves to be saved, but ultimately everybody will be.”

(Or, to quote from my own sacred text, “Use every man after his desert, and who shall ‘scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.”)

thanks shytimes

chinook2 check Friday’s and Saturday’s The Duplex.

Maizing:

Sorry, I can’t call myself an agnostic.

I am FOR a world in which humans seek the good within themselves, not in an arbitrary man imagined god.

I believe that we need to take responsibility for what we love and care about.

Sometimes we have to contend with those who wish to impose their version of the truth on us while claiming it comes from God. We should contend among ourselves about “The Good,” not as a God commanded set of rules but as a necessary and proper human invention.

Putting it off on God does not work. God is an unnecessary human invention.

Having God on “your side” may be easier than a simple human debate, but in the end, I believe that it is dishonest. The hard path of honest God free dialogue is the better way.

And again I am in dire danger of falling off my stump!

I do like, though, your open questioning attitude towards truth. I just don’t think it comes from God.

I worship duct tape. It has a light side, a dark side and it holds the world together.

I saw a cartoon just recently (can’t remember where): Two bearded wise-man types are passing a road sign pointing the way to “Trooth”. The caption reads “Well, that’s probably as close as we’re ever going to get.”

Fun conversations, all of you.

I recently discovered that “truth” is nothing more than the absence of lies.

Actually if lies are absent and truth is absent what is left is political rhetoric. d*mn them all, vote ‘em all out.

fritzoid:

I was not attempting to support biblical authority. I was not attempting to enter into the debate on the existence of God. I was only giving food for thought. I know from experience that arguing with fools is foolish. There are none so blind as those who will not see. There is nothing in the Bible that anyone can show you to prove the existence of God.

That is why it is called ‘faith’.

“Faith is believing in what you know ain’t so.”” – Mark Twain

Faith is useless in debate. Faith is useless as a support for your own position, or a counter to anyone else’s. Faith is what you fall back on when you have nothing substantive to offer. One person’s faith does nothing to change the minds of anyone who does not already share the same faith. Faith is plugging your ears and saying “La La La, I’m not listening.” Two people may have equal faith in contradictory positions, and one of them must certainly be wrong. If you’ve got nothing other than faith to rely on, it’s fine for you, but it adds nothing to a discussion of other people’s differing viewpoints. “Because I said so” is an insufficient answer to any question.

We have the evidence of our senses, which may be deceptive, and we have our abilities to reason, which are certainly limited, but faith is a chimera. There’s nothing there that can be of any use to anyone but yourself.

The idea that any sort of supreme, omnipotent, interventionist deity would rely on faith to make his/her/its nature and/or wishes known is the strongest argument I can think of against the existence of any such deity. It seems to me a monumentally dopey way to run a universe. Of course, my saying this doesn’t prove the nonexistence of God/a god/gods. But it’s a hurdle over which all proposed conceptions of deity have, thus far, been crippled in my eyes. My respect for the office of “God” is such that I am forced to conclude it is vacant.

Minions! Your debate is moot! Your souls all belong to the Robot Satan!

I consider the existence (or non-) of Robot Satan to be moot, because I deny the existence of souls…

I know faith, by it’s very nature, is useless in a debate. I as much as said so. That is why I am not debating. I am not trying to change your view.

No, wait, let me point one thing out. You said, “The idea that any sort of supreme, omnipotent, interventionist deity would rely on faith to make his/her/its nature and/or wishes known is the strongest argument I can think of against the existence of any such deity.” You are forgetting ‘free will’. He does not want to control us. If he intervened in ways that were obvious, he would be doing just that. It’s odd that Coyote would bring up Futurama. Have you seen the episode where Bender plays God?

Okay, you have drawn me into this. I guess I’m just a fool, then. It is the ‘evidence of my senses’ and my reasoning that tells me there is a God. I’m talking science here. There is nothing in science that contradicts the idea of a God, and many questions are answered if you allow for His existence. Far from “La, La, La…”, I have listened very carefully. It’s just that I have drawn different conclusions from the data than you have. I submit that your ‘faith’ in science has blinded you. You have bought into the idea that God and science are incompatible. They are not.

Are we done with the atheists yet?

comicgos:

Not that anybody will probably read this but:

Nab started the Friday debate by challenging us atheists. He did so again today. We responded. Perhaps we should thank Nab for giving us a forum in which to express our views. Non-atheists had a chance to express their views too. Not too shabby.