Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for December 01, 2016

they definitely need that nap… the wildfire wore them out

poor kids look exhausted.

Awwwwwwwwww. I still have foreboding, but I think it’s so romantic. They do need sleep, I hope the driver has had enough.

To sleep perchance to dream?

Now that’s “sleeping together”.

I find it very touching how Toni expresses how deeply and strongly she loves Brad. May they both have a long, happy and prosperous life together!

I think that sometimes you’re just too tired to dream. But, if they do, (like the movie, Inception) we’ll be sharing it. I really hope that it is all smooth sailing from here on.

Nope. That was the foreshadowing. Tomorrow it’ll be “Screeeee-WHAM!”

I don’t actually want that to be tomorrow’s strip, but it would be a totally predictable follower to today’s conversation.

And the “surprise guest” will be Zane, showing one of the Happy Couple how to get around in a wheelchair.

Or maybe Cutter John.

Don’t go there, Greg!

I was hoping they would be atheists… oh well, nobody’s perfect

I think they might have had a fright or two during that firefight.

Everybody else sees them as sleeping. I assumed they were praying, offering thanks for coming through the fire okay, and for having each other.

@Mikeyj

“I was hoping they would be atheists… oh well, nobody’s perfect.”

Some of us spiritual-but-not-religious types believe in spirit, but not especially in the Judeo-Christian idea of God. Whether you’d call us “atheists” is debatable.

@flagmichael

“Whatever the world is, it is not what we think it is.” People who think they understand the world have not seen much of the workings.

For a nice graphic of “seeing the workings”, on Wikipedia, see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Universum.jpg/435px-Universum.jpg

Do personnel transports like that have seat belts?

It’s a firetruck.

got nothing more to add. take a break guys.

Since her father is dead, who is going to walk her down the aisle? Not necessary to have anyone, but…

Oh, they are soooooo married.

We put this quote in our wedding bulletin. “If you live to be 100, I want to live to be 100 minus 1 day so I don’t have to live a day without you.” From Winnie the Poo

If one of them dies, I’m done with this strip…

“You know what we should do together instead of talk about this?”

.

Get married, already?

gotta wonder why we’re seeing zero changes to the Beta site after weeks of input.

Hope it’s a long drive, I mean ride, back to Pitts. Hope the driver isn’t napping as well.

Several people have had the same thought I did, that the driver would fall asleep while driving at highway speed and cross the center line or median into a head on collision with a gasoline (petrol) tank truck. The survivors will be horribly burned.

Uh, I would expect, by now, they would know each other well enough to know each other’s beliefs.

It WOULD make a great segue to a dream sequence… wouldn’t it?

Charles Schulz would have disagreed with you Mikeyj. He wasn’t afraid to discuss politics, psychology or religion in his comic strip (which was the best comic strip in history, IMHO.) Not only did it work, it actually improved it and made it the iconic strip that it is.

By the way, A Charlie Brown Christmas will soon be on TV. If you’d like, I can send you a special version where Linus recites a section of The God Delusion instead of the account of Christ’s birth.

NO DOUBT! They must be EXHAUSTED!

Oh, gads! Will people, PLEASE, just lay off NG and Mikey. That type of bullying is exactly why some atheists i know feel stuck in a closet, while others bravely express who they are despite that bullying. Hey folks, they have the religious freedom to not have a religion and that is fine. People also have the freedom to have non-Abrahamic panoply religions while yet others are agnostic. You be you, but for freedom’s sake don’t pile on others when they are themselves just because it does not match you. There are many variations in the world, and that is a good thing.

A friend of mine had a touching thing he said to his wife at an anniversary party: " I hope I pass away first, because I don’t want to live a day without you." She passed away in her early forties, leaving him with two young sons.

I don’t see this as bullying: @Night-Gaunt49I am not particularly religious, but you should not push your atheist feelings on those that don’t believe as you do, any more than they should push theirs on you. YOU believe death is the end of life. OTHERS do not.

or this.

@cj7oleON THE OTHER HAND, to some religious people, you NEED to be saved. ME I am live and let live. So long as your beliefs do not hurt anyone, or force anyone to comply, have at it.

@Dsnerkerbut there is no guarantee that you will be, or that it exists. FAITH is a BELIEF system, not factual. YOU CHOOSE to believe something, without proof.

We’ve never seen the DeGroots attend a church service, have we? They would seem to be agnostics. If the wedding is officiated by a member of the clergy, that would be the first time they’ve been shown to be believers, wouldn’t it? It would therefore make a lot more sense for this to be a civil ceremony, officiated by a Justice of the Peace.

If whoever’s driving is asleep, they’ll soon find out if there’s an afterlife.

So Toni would rather die first and let Brad have the heartache of losing his soul mate? Isn’t that a little selfish?

This ain’t a comic. It’s an illustrated novel!

For the record, I think this is the first time Team Evans has shown an unmarried couple sleeping together (gasp!)

Nobody knows if there is a God. I don’t and neither do you. You may believe in God, which is your privilege. That’s called faith. Don’t confuse Atheism with Agnosticism.

It doesn’t make any difference at all what people believe about an after life. Whatever the reality is, it exist for everyone. Certain beliefs about life after death give comfort to many people and that is fine.

Nobody has to Prove their beliefs to anyone. We are all allowed to believe whatever we choose. We can believe in any type of god, or multiple gods, or purple unicorns. If your belief gives you comfort, Great! You just can’t try to force your beliefs on anyone else.

Shadowbeast, the original posts by Mikey and NG were a little goodnatured joke and an explanation – neither of which woukd have been jumped on if they had not involved atheism. Then those two were jumped on by people engaging in direct attack bullying. After that both of the original two became defensive. So, NO, making an innocent joke or giving an explanation that involved no attacks that woukd have raised no hackles otherwise are not “starting it”. Bullying for them having different personal choices was “starting it”, though.

.

Now, i know and have known many atheists and as a group they do not differ from any other other groups in levels of charity or morality, except that this can be said: with all else being equal, the charitable acts of people who expect no individual reward for them may well evidence a higher degree of altruism.

There is no magical 2nd life. Wishful thinking does not make anything true.

Seismic, i am hoping that one of thier friends got the legal qualifications for that state to marry them.

Seems like statements were made as absolutes. whne questioned, it was called bullying….

LOL, wonder if Greg thought he might initiate such a heated discussion of religion !

how do those seatbelts work?

Of course, how we read it is ultimately moot. What matters is that people treat each other and their differences with respect, try to do some good in the world, and examine their own behavior and words to see where they might invite misunderstandings. In fact, in many religions and in philosophy the last is considered highly important.

Joke:

An Atheist dies. As he is entering Heaven he remarks to St. Peter: “I’m really surprised to be here. I thought that being an Atheist, I was surely going to Hell.”

Today’s strip is very poignant for me because my wife, my beloved soul mate, died before me, almost seven years ago. The sorrow never goes away, just recedes a little.

Nothing bad’s gonna happen. Or else that wedding dress contest was for nothing. Methinks December 5 is going to be a strip to remember.

More albums of relevant strips have appeared in

.

http://luannfan.com/collections/

Laputan speaks with authority about what Toni says, my own wife says the same thing. The rest of us just haul out the soap boxes and pontificate. No need to argue, our position on faith is like a magazine. If you like it or it works for you, then you subscribe to it. But, if your friend subscribes to another magazine, you don’t push into his house and trash it. This calm, co-existence doesn’t work if the other fellow wants to chop off your head, then you kick in the unwritten commandment: Thou shalt crush them and exterminate them lest they exterminate you. Once again…..Let loose the dogs of war.

This set of comments from

.

http://luannfan.com/collections/volume-24-dirk-returns/

.

answers questions some people posed today:

.

QUOTE. Behind-the-scene commentary from Greg Evans:I hate to admit this, but it’s hard to let a good villain leave. And as villains go, Dirk’s one of the best. So here he is, back once more, professing to have changed, apparently by having found religion.

.

In the Vol 19 comments, I said that one topic I avoid is religion. This includes using phrases such as “Oh my God” in the strip. It’s something teens tend to say a lot, but the first time I had Luann say it, long ago, I got several letters from offended readers. Since then, I’ve cleverly used OHMGAW which no one’s complained about. END QUOTE

If you believe that death is “the end”, then that is as much of a “belief” as any other. Calling someone childish for believing anything else is…. quite childish, and even more foolish.

God no God that will be answer when u die Amen

OMG (AW). You guys are cosmic anyway. Jeez (lol).

Well, … today’s strip put ME to sleep. zzz. Also kudos to argybarg2 for writing today’s punchline yesterday!

Today’s strip called to mind Mark Twain’s comment Go to heaven for the climate, hell for the company.

Okay, people, how about we all take a short respite from the “religion” debate? Pinch-hitting for the absent IamJayBluE, I offer the following:

“I’m A Believer” (♪♫)

“Happily Ever Afterlife”

“Zs The Moment”

“Sweet Dream Baby” (♪♫)

“We’ll Have Some Of Doze”

“Caught Napping”

Looks like we are on track for the wedding in Dec as planned…. and no injury or loss of life (Greg doesn’t go there either). Did someone say it was supposed to be on the 11’th? what are we going to do for 10 days?

My recollection may be off, but I thought Toni said she got her car from “an uncle”, and in another strip said she was raised by “her aunt” after her parents died. I don’t remember any clue that the aunt and uncle were necessarily married, they could have been siblings of one parent or both.

It’s possible that Toni got her uncle’s car because he Didn’t Need It Any More. It’s also possible that Toni and Fishbait moved to Pitts upon the death of the aunt. Both of those are pure speculation on my part, except that Toni has referred to Fishbait as her only relative (presumably forgetting about Shannon) multiple times.

I line up with those who think the whole idea of a bride being “given away” by a male relative is an outdated manifestation of the whole “property/ownership” thing, which I find primitive and offensive. Others are welcome to disagree. I should probably mention here that I’m a guy.

From what we know of Toni, I don’t think she would think any of her relatives has any business “awarding” her to Brad. The uncle we’ve never seen? Her parasite brother? Maybe Shannon, but that’s about it…

And count me among the atheists who get annoyed when I identify myself as atheist, get jumped on by half a dozen believers, and am then accused of being confrontational because, of course, if I’d kept my mouth shut about my beliefs nobody else would have found it necessary to get angry and upset.

I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but it absolutely does happen. For a lot of atheists (Hard/Soft, Strong/Weak, capital-A or small-a), it’s just not worth saying anything at all.

And speaking of Shannon, I feel that Brad has missed a bet by not having a conversation with Toni about what the two of them want to do about her (It’s possible they have, offstage). They both care for Shannon a lot, and neither of them seems all that confident of Fishbait’s parenting skills.

I’m not suggesting that they need to adopt Shannon, (possibly over her objections), I just wonder that they don’t seem to have addressed this issue before. Kind of like Toni asking if Brad believes in an afterlife, long after they presumably decided on who would perform the ceremony. Really?

Sleep, blessed sleep! Just what they need!

No doubt many of you saw the actual photo of exhausted sleeping firefighters that has been making the rounds of Social Media today….

I believe I’ll have another beer!

Old joke. Sorry.

I lost an hour’s sleep last year on Halloween. I was out walking my dog and saw a guy pushing his car, with two kids inside. One was done up as a Fairy Princess, the other was some sort of goblin pirate. It was about eleven, pretty late for the kids.

I thought having your car break down was a pretty sucky way to celebrate Halloween, so I called AAA and used one of my service calls (I get four, annually). I stayed with him till the tow truck arrived in half an hour — only it wasn’t a tow truck, it was a kind of diagnosis/first aid van. The van could diagnose the problem, but couldn’t fix it, so we had to call for another service vehicle, who was able to get the guy squared away another half hour later.

I spent a full hour waiting for two tow trucks because the Auto Club member has to be there with his card. When all was done, the guy asked if he could give me something for my trouble. I told him: “Just remember this, the next time anyone tells you that atheists have no morals. When someone tries to insist that a person who doesn’t know God can’t know right from wrong — remember tonight.”

And off I went.

Spoiler: if that smile does not get to you then nothing will!

Truncated Splr Lert: Highly unorthodox.

PT 2In relaying that command to his wife, Adam insisted that they not even touch it. The tree of life also was symbolism, that only God could give life. The angels and the flaming sword simply served to impress upon Adam and Eve that there was nothing they could do to gain back what was lost. It was too late.

As for the discussion on the afterlife, it’s also noteworthy that of all the people recorded in the Bible who were resurrected, like Lazarus, none of them claimed or related any after-death experience of any kind, They were simply dead. And that goes along with the thought at Eccl. 9:5 that says the dead are conscious [or aware] of nothing. It also says the soul dies. When God created Adam, it said the man “became a living soul”, it didn’t say he was given a soul. So according to an accurate understanding of the Bible, there is no part of a person that lives on after death, God can bring a person back to life simply by recreating them. He doesn’t need a soul floating somewhere to do that.