Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for October 17, 2010

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    freeholder1  over 13 years ago

    Atheism. Kills the soul And the imagination as well as the body. Definitely the worst.

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    freeholder1  over 13 years ago

    And the naturalism worship of evolutionists runs a close second.

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    Sisyphos  over 13 years ago

    Go back to sea, fishies. There are still people who believe in conversion by force.

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    GROG Premium Member over 13 years ago

    Athiests & Evolutionists don’t kill in the name of their gods.

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    Dutchboy1  over 13 years ago

    Hey Grog, you ever hear about Hitler, who tried to kill off a whole group of people because he thought that they were less than human, less fit to survive, and so shouldn’t be taking up resources from the “master race”? How about Stalin, a devout atheist, who killed off millions of his own countrymen and women… and other atheist leaders like him, also guilty of such atrocities? Atheists and evolutionists have perpetrated some truly horrific crimes against humanity in the last hundred years in the name of the religion of evolution.

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    pouncingtiger  over 13 years ago

    This strip is a good one for Bill Maher.

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    kreole  over 13 years ago

    Religious wars are fought over beliefs, not facts.

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    SardonicPenguin  over 13 years ago

    @ Dutchboy1 Hitler was a catholic, a deeply religious catholic , and Stalin was a former orthodox priest. Both of them had the religious upbringing that allows ‘true’ believers to maim and murder in the name of a holy book.

    And frankly, there is no such things as religion of evolution. There is, just, science.

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    elbee57  over 13 years ago

    Hey Wiley, first the Muslims, now the creationists. Hope your insurance is paid up.

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    AKHenderson Premium Member over 13 years ago

    Hitler and Stalin slept through the “Thou Shalt Not Steal” lecture.

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    Hugh B. Hayve  over 13 years ago

    Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, Joy to you and me…

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    cdward  over 13 years ago

    I’d guess atheists, agnostics and religious types of all stripes kill others who disagree with them at about the same rate.

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    Sandfan  over 13 years ago

    Deities do not kill people. Humans do it in their name in order to justify their own cruelty and lust for power.

    As has been stated, evolution is science, not religion, and acknowledgement of its reality does not preclude belief in a Supreme Being.

    The blood soaked history of Christianity and Islam that continues to this day should give any rational person doubts as to the legitimacy of any organized religion.

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    bmwk12ltc  over 13 years ago

    here’s the right answer: http://comics.com/9chickweedlane/

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    Dunwich Premium Member over 13 years ago

    Meh, if it’s not religion then it’s nationalism, or revolution, or something else… I just want to know where I get my naturalism worshipers.

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    Kylop  over 13 years ago

    Fish! They’re smarter than we are

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    kcollier  over 13 years ago

    The only way to prove you don’t understand today’s strip is to argue over religion.

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    Charles Brobst Premium Member over 13 years ago

    All wars are fought over resources. Religion is just an excuse. Stalin, Mao, and the Khmer Rouge now, had no excuse.

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    jhampa  over 13 years ago

    This guy is the best. Love his perspective and I am sure he will be up there with the Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes in no time at all. His story lines are fun to wait for.

    As for this toon, well its too true. There was a comment by some Tibetan Lama, “When the Buddha gave the message the world moved forward three steps, when they formed the communities it moved back two.”

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    FresnoDude  over 13 years ago

    Todays 9 Chickweed Lane has an interesting perspective on God: http://comics.com/9chickweedlane/

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    ArtboyJim  over 13 years ago

    All I can say is if you read the cartoon and decided to argue about religion you’ve proven the point of the cartoon.

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    cleokaya  over 13 years ago

    Perfectly put Wiley.

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    Commentator  over 13 years ago

    Happy looking fish in panel 4.

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    langr53  over 13 years ago

    Dang - where’s my fishing pole?

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    PhantomPlumber  over 13 years ago

    Funny, we’re over 30 comments in, and while there’s lots of religion v atheism posts, no-one has really attempted to rebut the actual point of the strip: that these supposedly peaceful, loving, caring religions are constantly trying to kick six shades of brickdust out of each other.

    Personally, I reckon the fact that there are competing religions which have been fighting for so long without any one of them gaining ascendancy suggests that, if there truly is a God, none of the religions are right and God isn’t on any of their sides. Indeed, if there is a God, I suspect He’s long since given up on humanity and gone to have a crack at making a better world with better creatures somewhere else.

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    Dumbfounded  over 13 years ago

    @ReFlex-76, you mean people like Richard Dawkins, who regular uses it? Or Ernst Mayr, who describes himself as one? Or Thomas Huxley, who was using the term as far back as the 1870s?

    Funny, I take these people very seriously.

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    WaitingMan  over 13 years ago

    Poll I’d like to see; Percentage of people who consider America a Christian nation who support capital punishment.

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    lazygrazer  over 13 years ago

    The irony… Scientific discoveries will verify the existance of God long before religious traditions do.

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    Verna Savor  over 13 years ago

    I agree with you plumber…

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    johndoe4024  over 13 years ago

    On the money grazer.

    Evolution simplified? Things change over time. But to exist so they can change, they need to have been created.

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    Justice22  over 13 years ago

    I take the cartoon literally and agree with it. I do not believe religion is bad, just some of the people who practice it to extremes. I believe in the example of Jesus. He preached LOVE and it would be nice if everyone did. Mohammed began his religion to stop wars. The Old Testament used by both Christians and Muslims should be tossed into the past.

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    Testel  over 13 years ago

    Attention, normal people. Save your typing fingers. Trying to teach a Christian about science is like trying to teach a six year old how to drive a car.

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    michaelhs  over 13 years ago

    This is priceless! Right on the nose. I shared this on my blog: http://hulshofschmidt.wordpress.com/

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    enarvaezb Premium Member over 13 years ago

    The comic is right, the longer we take to accept and respect that everybody is entitled to their own view, the sooner we are going to be in a peaceful world. It’s not about who is right or wrong, it’s about respect.

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    W6BXQ, John  over 13 years ago

    bmwk12ltc and FresnoDude,

    For undescores in links put a backslash (\) before each underscore so it is correct here. eg: http://comics.com/9_chickweed_lane/ is posted as

    h­ttp://comics.com/9\_chickweed\_lane/.

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    Can't Sleep  over 13 years ago

    Say Wiley, do you ever sit back and look at the cartoon you’ve just finished, and muse, “This’ll drive ‘em nuts”?

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    GreenBikeGuy  over 13 years ago

    If religious dogmatists have to sink THIS low to get people to hear their rants (i.e. posting flames to webcomic pages, where such conversations are totally inappropriate), doesn’t that say something about how few people listen to them?

    Don’t break the pattern, folks: ignore these jerks.

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    Dutchboy1  over 13 years ago

    Hey SardonicPenguin and baslimthebegger and others like them, evolution most certainly IS a religion. A few years ago, I remember hearing an interview on the BBC where a microbiologist who was an evolutionists was interviewed regarding his research into the patterns that need to exist in the DNA molecule for it to perform the most basic biological functions. The researcher (sorry, I don’t remember his name) found that these patterns are so complex that (his illustration) ‘even if the entire universe were the primordial soup and were given TRILLIONS of years to cook, it would still never achieve that level of complexity’. The interviewer then made the obvious connection and asked him if it was a miracle from God, and I thought that the guy was going to have a stroke. The microbiologist said that “That IDEA is intolerable, there must be some UNKNOWN CHEMICAL MECHANISM responsible for it”. So this evolutionist microbiologist would rather PUT FAITH in an ‘unknown chemical mechanism’, for which there is NO PROOF, than put faith in God, for which he himself provided the proof. So yes, evolution IS a religion.

    Oh, and Baslim, my religion is not at fault for producing any psychopaths, it’s those who have twisted what the Bible says for their own political gain, like the Catholic church, which has so much blood on its hands, who have produced so many psychopaths. And even then, while they have killed hundreds of thousands, atheists and evolutionists have outdone them by killing their millions. Hitler and Stalin were NOT deeply religious (try reading some books for a change instead of using the pages to role joints) but were freed from any moral restraint by the theory of evolution so that they could do what they did.

    You hit the nail right on the head, Plus4.

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    mikie136  over 13 years ago

    creatures in nature kill and maim each other as much as man does. the rule in nature and darwinism is survival of the fittest.

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    Dtroutma  over 13 years ago

    It doesn’t even take an opposable thumb to recognized that “Man” invents his religions as a rationale to do what sharks recognize as their “true natures”. Actually, often proved is the fact that nothing can start a feeding frenzy like “religion”.

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    timbob2313 Premium Member over 13 years ago

    amazing. The comments saying that evolution is BS. Unfortunately attempting to argue with anyone who only has faith to argue with will get you nowhere. Studies at UofM have shown that when facts are presented to these people they simply ignore those facts and shout louder. Thus it is with all religionists. I do not believe in a god, however if any scientific evidence-not faith-is ever presented than I might change my mind. But I have never even heard of any scientific proof that god exists-intelligent design is not science, but faith. But Wiley hits another one out of the park. As he always does.

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    Redhead55  over 13 years ago

    Very well put PhantomPlumber.

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    RadioTom  over 13 years ago

    The only TRUE religion is…

    SPAM!

    Please to flag it in adoration….

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    antideus  over 13 years ago

    To: Sardonnic Penguin Dutchboy1 has a baseless argument. Yes, both Hitler and Stalin were probably atheists at the time of their atrocities. But they were not fighting over whose religion was best, they were tyrants who had a political philosophy and a racial philosophy that they wanted to force on the world. They were also power hungry. They did not, in fact, kill in the name of any god. Dutchboy’s use of these 2 men to show that atheists also kill is way off point.

    Your facts were incorrect. I have never read anywhere that Hitler was at any time especially devout, but he was at one time a Catholic. That part is true. But it wasn’t his religion or lack of religion that made him misbehave as a human. Secondly, Stalin was never a priest of any religion. He did study in a seminary, but was expelled and did not finish. So he was never a priest. He later read the “philosophy” of Lenin and decided to rebel against the state as a Marxist. It is not clear at all that either man’s religious background/upbringing had any significant influence on their behavior as heads of state.

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    Jmarkoff  over 13 years ago

    Hitler and Stalin were against Darwin. The Nazis banned Darwin and burned his books. Stalin perscuted Darwinists in a similar manner.

    The Bible is full of historical and scientific errors as well as bad advice.

    Jesus had his flaws and bad behavior. In Matthew 8:28-34 Jesus allowed an entire herd of pigs to be stolen and killed. In Matthew 18:7-9 Jesus told people to to cut off their own hands, feet, eyes and sexual organs that can “cause you to sin.” Every intelligent person knows that the brain is where all “sin” originates. Sin can be prevented by talking with a counselor or seeing a therapist, not mutilating one’s own body. In Mark 11:12-14 Jesus kills a harmless fig tree out of spite. Jesus often contradicted himself, saying we should honor our parents but also (in Luke 14:26) saying that we must “hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself” in order to be Jesus’ disciple. So much for Christian family values! Jesus’ doctrine is harmful and unhealthy.

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    GeraldTarrant  over 13 years ago

    So…believe it or not, but the the removal or religion probably wouldn’t have changed too much history as far as wars and humans liking to bash each other’s heads in. Most wars are political, regardless of whatever religious covering they throw on it to justify it. Humans just love to hurt one another, and if you take away the excuse of a god, they’ll just find something else to justify their behavior.

    Just my $0.02

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    person918  over 13 years ago

    ok, evolution is not about the “creation of life,” i.e. basic chemicals making the jump to complex self-replicating “organisms” (though admittedly our definition of what constitutes “life” is currently so shaky that this is an extremely difficult “step” to coherently define) but rather the way in which organisms change genetically over time. evolution is caused by: 1) self replicating organisms 2) genetic variation between generations 3) environmental pressures that make certain traits more desirable than others (or something along those lines, I may be a bit rusty on this)

    in any case, these concepts have certainly been empirically tested, as with fruit flies in experiments specifically designed for this purpose, not to mention bacteria consistently demonstrating this principle by defeating our antibiotics over and over again, as well as humans creating our own crops and farm animals through thousands of years of selective breeding. I’m not sure if actual speciation has been empirically demonstrated as of yet, but it is the logical next step. there’s a reason that everything from fish to humans have spinal columns, and everything from insects to humans demonstrates bilateral symmetry: we’re all related.

    does any of this preclude a creator god? no. but the thing is, any time a scientist says “and that’s when god steps in,” we lose any chance we may have had to learn more about the subject.

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    SardonicPenguin  over 13 years ago

    @ Dutchboy1; I’ll play along.

    Did you consider that perhaps this microbiologist of yours simply whipped up his calculator and determined that the propability for an unknown chemical mechanism was much greater than existance of a bloated leprechaun who made it all happen with a whip of a magical wand?

    Nevertheless, do consider writing down the program you were listening or watching - and do not forget to add a date and time when it all happened.

    If you do not - I could simply, in similar fashion, claim to have listened to a radio interview with the Pope on BBC radio one. The really funny thing with that interview was that the Pope showed a bit of honesty and admitted that there has never been a god or gods - it has just been one huge pyramid scam.

    In any case, “Natural selection is an immensely powerful yet beautifully simple theory that has held up remarkably well, under intense and unrelenting scrutiny and testing, for 151 years.”

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    Logicman  over 13 years ago

    antideus – Yes, and there is no proof that God does not exist either. ALL of us admit that there has been more harm done in the NAME OF religion, but I would hope that all of us realize that it is the perversion of religious beliefs, and the smallness of human intellect that is the real problem, not the concept of a deity itself. Give it a rest man, this is an argument that nobody can win, and if we keep at it EVERYONE will lose. Practice tolerance people – the opposite of live and let live is kill or be killed – which of those two philosophies sounds more sustainable in the long term?

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    gosfreikempe  over 13 years ago

    Elbee57: I’ve never heard a scientist uttering death threats to a creationist. Thanks for validating the cartoonist’s premise. It wasn’t a scientific poll, but I’d say it’s valid.

    To the religious folks:

    do you believe in gravity? Do you believe that ice will sink in water?

    If you answers are 1. yes, then 2. no, then you believe in science. We live in a universe where Physics Works. If you don’t believe that, then your education is lacking.

    Whether or not evolution trumps religion, and no matter which religion is right or wrong, we all live on this earth, and denying that different points of view may be valid is futile. If we work TOGETHER as Jesus (fictional or otherwise is immaterial) intended, then the world will be a better place.

    And if God planted the dinosaur fossils to confuse us (an unlikely scenario in my opinion), then the North American First Nations are right, and God is a Trickster.

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    BuckNacre  over 13 years ago

    “You can worship stones, but don’t throw them at me.”

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    Trisha_Evenstar  over 13 years ago

    This strip is brilliant!

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    1stHoneygirl  over 13 years ago

    I just choked on my coffee reading this. it is too true though.

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    sszibler  over 13 years ago

    Like :-)

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    Spyderred  over 13 years ago

    Seems that the problem arises when religion becomes nothing but a shill for power. And that tempts when religion tries to overcome and destroy facts.

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    Varnes  over 13 years ago

    Like Buddha at the sermon when he didn’t say a word, If you think you heard a flower, It’s a flower that you heard. Like Crockit at the wall lookin’ back at Tennessee, The living costs you plenty, but the dyin’s still for free…

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    gosfreikempe  over 13 years ago

    Durchboy: My beloved wife has reminded me that science will still work when there’s nobody left to believe.

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    MatureCanadian  over 13 years ago

    Don’t forget that there was a little loss of temper by a certain carpenter when he caught the money lenders in the temple. All was not sweetness & light, even in the new testament. The prophesies in Revelation had to come from somewhere and look pretty bleeep accurate when applied allegorically to today’s society.

    Great one Wiley. Smart fish. I don’t blame them a bit, wish I could join them and just opt out!

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    billdi Premium Member over 13 years ago

    “Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity–a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.” Sam Harris, The End of Faith

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    gosfreikempe  over 13 years ago

    baslimthebegger said: Ellbee557 was being ironic about Wiley’s willingness to stir things up (unless some other remark has been removed).

    Upon reading his comment, you may indeed be right. However, he’s still proving the premise of the cartoon, in that some religious zealots of every stripe are quite willing to murder people who don’t believe in their point of view.

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    deadheadzan  over 13 years ago

    Brilliant!!!

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    cdward  over 13 years ago

    PhantomPlumber, I will attempt to respond to your query with at least a modicum of reason.

    First, I agree that the religions of the world – or to be more precise, members of the religions of the world – regularly violate the principles of those very religions. I believe this is inevitable because human beings of all stripes have a very hard time dealing with the idea that others could possibly disagree with them.

    My own religious tradition does not insist that it has a monopoly on the truth or that we are the only true faith. That’s God’s realm. We would only say that this is our best understanding of God. Alternatively, we look at the world as a vast story being told, and our religious tradition is one small thread in that story. It is of little consequence to me if others enjoy “ascendancy.” I don’t try to make anyone believe anything, but for those fellow travelers who want, we tell our story together, worship together, and walk together.

    If I thought God’s existence depended on or could be judged by the behavior of people, there would be little point in believing. If I thought the church were a behavior modification program, then I assure you, I would bail because it would be a perfect failure.

    I would suggest, however, that whether God exists or not is not up to any of us, and I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see. Perhaps all of us can approach that question with a little less certainty and a little more humility, allowing for the possibility that we don’t know everything.

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    yyyguy  over 13 years ago

    a lot of religion in the comments today. to which i ask… what if evolution, rather than being diametrically opposed to creation is merely the method used FOR creation? can man truly know God’s methods, intents, or thoughts? i believe in God, but not in religion.

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    cdward  over 13 years ago

    There are so many posts that seem to be so absolutely certain about pretty much everything. The only thing I’m certain about is that anything - any movement, any philosophy, any political party or government that involves human beings WILL also and necessarily involve a certain level of internal/external strife with the potential for violence.

    The fact that there are atheist tyrants only proves that atheists are people. The fact that there are religious tyrants (pick your brand) only proves that they are people, too. To try to prove one group or the other invalid because of the behavior of their leadership is dishonest.

    My take on religions in general is that they are groups of people trying to make sense of their experience of life, and that they have experienced (or heard of the experiences of others) a connection with something beyond the normal human realm. Is it God? I believe so, but as I said above, we’ll all just have to wait and see.

    I do have to comment on jmarkoff’s misuse of Jesus: Jesus often took arguments to their logical conclusions in order to show the absurdity of some situations. When he said, “It’s better to cut off your hand that to burn,” etc (and he did not mention sexual organs), he is noting that it’s impossible to earn God’s love or salvation - it’s either given already or it’s not. (I know, this is kind of shorthand, but the post is getting long).

    Last thing (I promise): Many Christians believe Darwin was right about evolution, and to us, it seems in perfect harmony with our faith.

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    Varnes  over 13 years ago

    Dutchboy, which part of the statement “Evolution theory does not preclude a creator, is it you don’t understand?” What, God’s not capable of such detail? Found it more interesting to just snap his fingers, when he got bored? That’s the dogma isn’t it? God got lonely and decided to entertain himself watching us go crazy? (Sounds kinda like Michael Vick) and blaming us, because he made us that way? It never occurred to you that, if there was a god, he could have caused the process that science describes as evolution? God,(He or She or Both, hey, there is a feminine and masculine side of, well, a lot of things!), isn’t smart enough, have enough power, to pull it off? Earth calling Dutchboy, Come in Dutchboy…

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    freeholder1  over 13 years ago

    I knew it would be fun to throw a fresh bone out.

    A) Hitler was a member of the catholic church, which means nothing in any shape for Christianity. His basic philosophy was theosophy. look it up. The Aryan beliefs come from that.

    B) naturalism is the belief system behind evolution. It suggests nature is responsible for everything and is the base worship system for every religion from the East, most of the old Greco-Roman beliefs, astrology and much of the New Age drivel. Most of those are what started many more wars than any Christian systems.

    And evolution is as much a religion as Catholicism, being constantly questioned by it’s own discoveries, like DNA in dino bones, alternate genetic code crossover results in experiments, DNA showing we have only limited at best relation to our ‘ancestors” and other evidence. So the term evolutionist is indeed a serious word.

    Calling ti science when it refuses to to accept anything that brings it’s system into question like the God gene and sudden appearance proofs merely means you’ve been duped.

    Note: Everyone is entitled to their view. God gave free will that our forefathers left in the Constitution. The problem most Christians have is that we know other views send people to Hell and eventual eternal suffering.

    Grog, old fella, atheism kills the soul as does nature worship. Lost souls mean more than lost lives.

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    rockngolfer  over 13 years ago

    I did a science fair project on evolution in about 1964 and it stirred up a lot of the parents.

    If you have a cat, or better yet a dog running around your house, where did your pet come from?

    You see how genetics works in 5,000 years. How about in 4,600,000,000 years?

    In conclusion, Stephen Hawking sees no need for a creator.

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    freeholder1  over 13 years ago

    Nice to see everyone bit at the bones thrown. Hilarious to see all the “educated, erudite” atheists who don’t even realize that atheism is a belief in no religion or God that is a Religion making it a self-contradiction to begin with.

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    freeholder1  over 13 years ago

    Naturalism is the core belief that drives all Eastern religons, the Greco-Roamn and European religions and much of Africa in varied forms. Making it the cause of more wars than anything Christians have had anything to do with and making the cliche about Christian wars an obvious lie.

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    freeholder1  over 13 years ago

    Evolution is a religion now. It is really reincarnation translated back to the natural evidence that started that part of Eastern belief. Real questions about gentic code changes caused by viruses raised in the UT Arlington study make it’s core notion that we all came from the same start questionable. Real lack of evidence has long ago led many Real scientists who aren’t Christians to jump to the sudden appearance theory (that the fact the math is ALL wrong for the time of Darwin’s evolution theory to occur) which better defines the existing evidence and those folks keep getting shouted down by the “priests’ in academic circles. Then 5 years ago a research tested dino bones for evidence and found DNA which blows a lot of evolutionary theory up and requires revision for it to stand. That evidence (published in journals and in Newsweek) has been summarily ignored, making the researcher their “Galileo.” It started out as a theory but has become a belief system like Catholicism and acts the same way.

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    threeguysmom  over 13 years ago

    Wiley, Wiley, Wiley,

    You sure got everyone stirred up today. Good job. Makes for some interesting discussions. What can you think up next for everyone to discuss?

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    rockngolfer  over 13 years ago

    LOL I was looking to come back to this comic on the EDITORIAL list.

    Found it!

    @antideus, although rather verbose you expressed the closest to my attitudes and beliefs on the subjects.

    I feel that belief in some form of diety held tribes together, and this propensity united people against common enemies.

    So maybe it is in our DNA to believe in something?

    I used to confound people when I was working overtime for 32 years, I would deliver food to food banks and Frozen turkey and everything for a family’s Thanksgiving dinner. I still help people jump-start cars and such. I do little things to help. Some people are astounded to find out I am an atheist.

    And I agree that was a great cartoon today.

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    mirthiful  over 13 years ago

    Wiley, you know you’re doing it right when you get so many ruffled feathers! I do love how happy he looks in panel 4.

    I personallly think the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the most peaceful… and I’ll fight for that to the death. :)

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    Downundergirl  over 13 years ago

    Thank you Wiley,

    and Mirthful! All hail FSM! Be touched by its noodly apendage! http://www.venganza.org/

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    PhantomPlumber  over 13 years ago

    @cdward - excellent response. You’re quite right - it’s not religion that’s at fault per se, but the small number nutcases that religions attract. Unfortunately some of these people seem to think that the way to salvation by their particular deity involved trying to convert as many other people as possible (see also, “He who dies with the most conversions wins!”). If only people could find contentment in their own beliefs without feeling the need to inflict them, sometimes violently, onto other people.

    But until that happens, maybe the Bible and other religious tomes need updating to make them a bit more explicit: “Thou shalt not kill. No, seriously, thou shalt not. No killing! Killing bad! Got that? No, not even if the other guy believes something else. Killing is off the agenda. Period!” Of course, it’ll make the books a whole lot longer…

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    lindz.coop Premium Member over 13 years ago

    baslimthebegger, cdward, and others – so true that all sides can be reconciled – that is if we want to. Otherwise, we can just fight about it.

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    AKHenderson Premium Member over 13 years ago

    PhantomPlumber,

    Ancient tomes can’t be updated, since no text can be updated legitimately by someone other than the author, but the linguistics can be better understood.

    The Sixth Commandment has already been clarified. What King James’ contractors translated as “kill” more properly translates as “murder,” a subset of killing; this is reflected in the NKJV and other translations.

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    Joseph Krois  over 13 years ago

    A fish with hands walks the shore… Time is turning for the Nevermore… Nature wills and will not be denied… Short term ambitions though likely to abide… Mammals wiser than man turned back… To the seas with reason and in fact… Lived in peace and life and love… Turned their fins on the world above… But as mankind teeters on the brink… The non-denominational can only think… That their GOD has left them naught… And the self-righteous will succeed as thought… To the inevitable day with all hatred spent… And humanity just a forgotten event…

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    antideus  over 13 years ago

    Part of the debate on this site is over whether or not atheism or evolution is a religion. Well, it isn’t and it is. How’s that for clarity! But it is true because it all depends on how the word is used. As you will note below in the definition of “religion” found on a website, there are four definitions of the word. #3 is archaic, meaning it generally is no longer used in that context. #1 is the most widely used meaning of the word. Atheists take umbrage with being called a religion because it is definition #1 that they have in their mind. That’s quite normal since this is THE MOST COMMON definition. Those who are using that word to say atheism is a religion are actually using either definition #2 or #4. Atheism is surely a belief. I personally believe that there is no god or creator. I used to believe very sincerely. I today see no proof of the existence of god as attempted by the organized religions. To me they do not hold up. Evolution is a theory, it does have facts to support much of the theory, and more is yet to be learned as science proceeds over millennia. To me neither atheism nor evolution are religions in the normal context of definition #1. I do not rule out the possibility that science may some day prove that there was a creator. It may more likely, to me, prove that there is a “creative force”. The current definition of god or a creator in almost all religions is a man-made concoction to make this god fit our human understanding and so has been defined in human and personal terms. This is done as a claim without and evidence of proof. For example, to use the Bible or Qur’an (or any similar document) as “the word of god” “or the word of allah” is to beg the question. It assumes that there was a god to have issued those words, when the existence of this god is still in question. It is a logic error. Please note at the very bottom of the definition (below) the antonym (the opposite) of the word religion is “atheism”. With an open mind, I continue my journey in seeking the truth. If some others want to believe blindly in what they have been told or taught without doing their own personal study and investigation, then knock yourselves out. May “The Force” be with you.

    re•li•gion noun \ri-ˈli-jən\ Definition of RELIGION 1 a : the state of a religious b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance 2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices 3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness 4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith — re•li•gion•less adjective Examples of RELIGION

    Many people turn to religion for comfort in a time of crisis. There are many religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. Shinto is a religion that is unique to Japan. Hockey is a religion in Canada. Politics are a religion to him. Where I live, high school football is religion. Food is religion in this house. Origin of RELIGION Middle English religioun, from Anglo-French religiun, Latin religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perhaps from religare to restrain, tie back — more at rely First Known Use: 13th century Related to RELIGION Synonyms: credo, creed, cult, faith, persuasion Antonyms: atheism, godlessness
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    CroakyMcInselbrook  over 13 years ago

    I often like to take an argument, and make a non-argument of it… for instance, seems like everyone here has at least slightly different “beliefs.” But I think (hope) we can all agree on a few things:

    1: There are good and bad people in all walks of life. 2: Killing people is typically bad (if not necessarily). 3: Christians are smelly pirate whores…

    don’t respond to that… it was a joke… If it wasn’t funny to you, replace “Christians” with “Athiests”… “Politicians?”

    But seriously guys… we can disagree our whole lives and not change a thing… I think the important thing is finding common ground… for instance, I’m not religious, but I follow the golden rule (more than some religious people, I may say)…

    Because I feel pain, I assume others can feel pain as well… I’ve suffered, it sucks, so I’m against human suffering… That means I wouldn’t hurt someone else for my own pleasure (stealing a lambo. raping a young woman. shooting a dooshbag. etc.) however, I’m not willing to pawn my computer so children in 3rd world countries can eat tonight… neither are you apparently…

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    Dutchboy1  over 13 years ago

    I find it interesting that, while creationists, for the most part, are calm, reasonable, and present logical, factual arguments, diehard evolutionists, also for the most part, are rude, insulting, call names, and present few, if any actual facts. I give you sayhowURfeelingB4URgone, Clark Kent, Varnes, baslimthebegger, SardonicPenguin, Jmarkoff, timbob2313, and Grog as exhibit A. Funny isn’t it how it always seems to work out that way with this kind of debate.

    One last thought. If evolution is a proven fact, why do they have to resort to outright fraud to prove their theory, such as Piltdown man, which turned out to be a combination of human and chimpanzee skull fragments? Piltdown man was ONE fraud that was found out. How many other frauds in evolution have NOT been uncovered? Makes you think, doesn’t it.

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    kaystari Premium Member about 12 years ago

    Please do some actual real research before pulling out the mythical arguments that everyone uses but no one knows the truth about. Galileo indeed. I mean research that checks both sides and isnt bias.

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