Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for February 08, 2012

I told Dino to take swimming lessons.

You just can’t kill an idea. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but there will always be someone to believe that the earth is flat, or that the answer to a complex question is “really quite simple.”

Just don’t let the kids read about what Noah did after he landed.

“Mr. Trudeau? Ken Ham is on line 3 …”

And I was just discovered that in an alternate universe, which I can see just outside my window, Hitler sends an airship into the centre of the hollow earth. Don’t you dare tell me that isn’t true :/

The story of Moses also has a bathtub edition.

Found at a climate blogspot; evidence of DylanThomas?He seems unwell? Have they got to him? What’s going on?

AnonymousJan 28, 2012 11:06 PM

Dear ReadersWe must beware of the worshippers of Gaia and her prophet,

Al-gore. Have you seen this.

I have found evidence of a warmenist preaching at some hidden

coven. I link to his mumbling amateurish presentation.

(click on the left of his screen to get a blurry slide)http://www.softconference.com/ACSchem/player.asp?PVQ=HJDL&fVQ=FJKHLL&hVQMy analysis of his stuff is that we may get another holocene

optimum. Great. Optimum is good.

Of course he says we are going to get bad AGW. How would he know.

He is a glaciologist, not a climate analysist.

I am alerting you to this poisenous nonsence. We must prevent

their interpretation from becoming widely publicised. We must produce our own true facts to compete with theirs. We must make our own interpretations and presentations. We must not go gentle into that good night.

I wonder where this is going. Next caller, perhaps, Newt?

“Hello, MyFacts, I’m trying to prove that increased co2 is a cause of global warming, rather than a follower of rising temperatures, you got anything for me?”

“Of course, we have a whole slew of scientists who know where their grant money is coming from and are willing to falsify any manner of data. Where would you like to start…”

I was once a pretty ardent left-winger, but I have been more and more alienated by attacks on sincerely held religious beliefs, like the one in today’s strip.

I put my faith way ahead of my politics. The left used to be the side doing the work of Jesus, i.e., caring for the poor and the like, so it was a good fit. Not any more – I feel religious believers are increasingly the object of ridicule by the left.

It saddens me.

This must be the Texas home school center. Committee approved for our next generation.

Max Leon Forman – " Education seems to be in America the only commodity of which the customer tries to get as little as he can for his money."

Isn’t anyone bothered that people like me (who are somewhat skeptical that the recent increase in world wide temperatures should cause the expenditure of billions (?trillions?) of dollars on revamping our economy) should be lumped in with holocaust deniers and evolution deniers?

Why can’t Americans be as smart as Trudeau and his fellow liberals?

Hey! UFOs exist!It’s unlikely that Unidentified Flying Objects are Alien Spacecraft, but they are Inexplicable Atmospheric Phenomena. It’s just that telling the press that you’ve seen an IAP doesn’t get the same reaction as if you’ve seen a UFO.

Why bother to disprove it? It’s just wrongthink.

If two of every species on earth were on Noah’s tiny ark, it would have sunk. Not to mention that one species would have had many more for lunch in that confined space.

Besides, what was the point? The Almighty could have just created replacement life after drowning everything, right?

“The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself”! —John Ciardi

Or someone who thinks [insert dictator here] is awesome.

To me, what’s really creepy is Austin’s apparent enthusiasm for what he’s doing. I get the impression he may know that what he’s selling is bunk, but doesn’t care. Austin’s appearance may be that of the self-satisfaction a con man feels when he puts one over on a sucker.

This is great but for accuracy should have the guy from India, a prison or such.

If you read the Bible carefully, you’ll realize that pi is exactly 3 — bad news for all those show-off nerds who memorize all those extra digits.

Hey Richard S. Russell, let’s see what “facts” you have to support evolution. You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about. For instance, there is no evidence to support global warming. Or for that matter, that man has anything to do with the hole in the ozone layer. The geological column does not actually exist anywhere on earth. Oh, if anyone is wondering? Job’s description of Behemoth probably wasn’t based on a mutant elephant with a cedar-like tail.

That was Galileo’s problem. He asked far too many questions! But that’s ok since there are Galileo deniers out there somewhere.

As Bill Cosby said, “Have you looked in the bottom of that ark?”

Don’t forget the 9/11 Truthers and the Birthers. And a believer in one will fall for others.

When did today get declared “Go off your meds day?”

No one told me, I would have joined in the fun!

Those on the Christian Right are so eager to have the government force their morality on the rest of us when it comes to birth control, abortion and gay marriage (things never mentioned in the Bible); but when it comes to feeding the hungry and taking care of the sick (things demanded of us in the Bible), they say it should just be voluntary and the government should have no part in it. Their views are hypocritical and they must be called out.

The problem with the myFACTS business model is that we have so many people like Only a sinner saved by grace who are willing to share that “knowledge” for free! Then again, they don’t usually include the bathtub teaching models at no cost…Brilliant satire by GT. Looking forward to tomorrow’s strip.

Always found it interesting how “the flood” wiped out all the marine dinosaurs, fish, seabirds, manatees, and, well, whatever. Then there’s how did that “dead” and “extinct” olive tree grow so quickly??

Belief in supernatural beings (like God and the Holy Spirit) is safe from rational attack, because our reason can only examine nature.

But we must look at closely at nature (“skeptic” is from Greek skeptein, examine closely). What reason or science discovers can’t depend on “belief.” Any intelligent design that reason discovers is a scientific discovery, not a supernatural discovery (God, the living Christ, etc.) made by belief.

Here’s how you can resolve this phony conflict between science and religion:

God gave us reason (science) so we could discover how nature works. Science still hasn’t worked out the full picture, but the most comprehensive and intelligent design so far has been Darwin’s theory of evolution.

I believe in reason/science’s God-given capacity for understanding God’s creation. Just don’t let God interfere with our reason and science by introducing “miracles.” God’s real miracles are thinkers like Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein with their genius for discovering “intelligent designs.”

This is right up DT Pi’s alley. He has a M. Div.

NG49, who said the fish (and creatures that swim) went extinct? If they did, why are they still here? Some philosophies hold that, since they didn’t participate in the sin of the generation, they merited to survive.

Wow, I’m more confused than normal.

I think I walked in the wrong door. I was looking for something funnier than that today.

My wife overheard this remark from a fellow student at one of those elite, liberal, liberal-arts colleges: “I’m not an atheist. I believe in the Bible.” Belief in the Bible is not the same as belief in God. Even if believe in God and the you accept the unity of God and the Logos (Word), there is no reason except human theory and supposition to assume that the Bible is anything but a collection of writings about God. Not even Paul claims that he is a prophet and everything he writes is perfect and infallible. We have no way of knowing how many changes were made to the texts before they were fixed in their canonical form. We have no way to be certain that the texts have been correctly understood and translated. For the Bible as we find it to be infallibly correct would have required not the single miracle of revelation to the authors of the various books, but an entire string of miracles, whereby ever editor, copyist, council, and translator has also been divinely inspired. The same 4th century authorities who chose which books would and would not appear in the New Testament also declared the Pope to be the ultimate authority inreligious matters and the Emperor of Rome to be appointed by God to rule the world. There is a difference between believing in God, and believing that Jesus was God’s Son; and there is a difference between believing that and believing that the Bible is “inspired”; and there is a difference between believing that the Bible is inspired and believing that it is infallible, and there is a difference between believing it is infallible and taking it literally. A wise bishop, a long time ago, said it well: “You can take the Bible literally, or you can take it seriously. But you really can’t do both.”

How is ridiculing a real scientific argument against macroevolution a proper means of disproving it? Trudeau,as talented and intelligent as he is, seems to employ ridicule often.

Last I heard, nobody has found evidence to support evolution. That may be why it is still referred to as a theory.

Creationism does not need to disprove evolution. Evolution is only a theory. It cannot be recreated in the lab, and there is no one living that was there at the dawn of time. Like Creationism, Evolution must be accepted by faith. Everyone can feel free to believe what they wish to believe. Even Charles Darwin himself stated that evolution was only one theory on the origin of man.