Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 22, 2021

well, at least they’re both right.

Science doesn’t can stand on its own. The church is not needed.

I have been told it is possible to reconcile religion and science, although I do not see how. I do know many scientists are religious. Also many practicing theists, including Jesuit priests, have become leading scientists.

In the other hand, while listening to what passes for radio in the American south, I have heard fundamentalist preachers condemn their fellows for even suggesting that it might be possible to reconcile the Bible with scientific fact.

I like the bobber with the sign.

I didn’t know that amoebas have ribs.

One of my major problems with the BIBLE fundamentalists is they are insulting God’s creativity and cleverness in creating life. God’s smarter than you are, guys.

The Church dogma will not accept scientific fact so compromise is not possible

I really don’t think that this is how it was …

From the perspective of a rational atheist, what religions look like is the longest running con in history. Though before there were professional counselors… and for that matter, hospitals, they may have had a tad more utility.

First step for Wiley’s “reluctant soul”.

I wonder when Wiley will take on some of the creation myths (of which there are many) generated by non-Christian peoples around the world.

For instance, Chinese civilization actually has several myths that deal with creation. One of them involves Pan Gu, a semi-divine individual who was the first born human. According to Anne Birrell’s 1993 book “Chinese Mythology: an Introduction”, pages 32 – 33:

“Heaven and earth were in chaos, like a chicken’s egg, and Pan Gu was born in the middle of it. In eighteen thousand years Heaven and the earth opened and unfolded. The limpid that was Yang became the heavens, the turbid that was Yin became the earth. Pan Gu lived within them, and in one day he went through nine transformations, becoming more divine than Heaven and wiser than earth. Each day the heavens rose ten feet higher, each day the earth grew ten feet thicker, and each day Pan Gu grew ten feet taller. And so it was that in eighteen thousand years the heavens reached their fullest height, earth reached its lowest depth, and Pan Gu became fully grown. Afterwards, there was the Three Sovereign Divinities. Numbers began with one, were established with three, perfected by five, multiplied with seven, and fixed with nine. That is why Heaven is ninety thousand leagues from earth.”

It’s all done with mirrors.

To paraphrase Ricky Gervais: If you remove all religious knowledge and all science knowledge, science is the only thing that will return to the same conclusions.

Easier reconciliation: Teach the science and just the science.

Trump Disciples all believe that Trump is a Christian.

I wonder if any scientists believe that.

.

Also, climate change is a Chinese hoax and science is totally wrong about that, right?

Still doesn’t make the Earth 6000 years old.

Has it been 9 months? I’m looking forward to Homer’s rebirth.

organized religion IS why the world is in the shape its in since the first alter was built. Read your own bible, just one of maybe thirty different bibles but they all say the same thing in thirty different languages, lets kill em and we’ll show them we have the greatest GOD!

I prefer the philosophy of one Mr. A. E. Neuman….“What me worry?”

Fundamentalist preachers are in a business and make up the rules to keep the $$$$ flowing in. Many scientists are also religious and understand that bible stories are allegory and treat then as the lesson they intend, not fact. We do not take creation in 7 days as the usual timeline but understand that evolution happened over long periods. A fundamentalist would condemn me to hell for writing that.

I am an absolute atheist. While I grew up Jewish, there’s simply no way the god that Jews, but especially Christians believe in could possibly exist. When someone asks me to prove that, I have one answer: Auschwitz! No god who they always say is loving & merciful would’ve allowed that. And for the various Christians who say Satan was behind that, they conveniently forget that their own beliefs say that Satan was subservient to god! No god would’ve permitted the Armenians to be massacred by the Ottomans. No god would’ve permitted Pol Pot to kill 2 million Cambodians. No god would’ve allowed Stalin to kill millions of Russians & other people in the Soviet Union. No god would permit slavery, yet the bible has rules for how to treat a slave & Exodus has rule for when a father may sell his daughter into slavery!

Quantum physicists and Eastern mystics have much in common concerning their description of the essence of reality and existence.

Best sound effects this side of Don Martin!

Several options: preadamic man, gap theory, day-age creationism, old earth creation. Btw: the Catholic Church officially believes in evolution—theistic evolution.

Dogma.

Looks good to me. Now, how’s the war going?

“Conservative” “christian” cults, Evil-angelicals, and “preachers” who want to control your mind, body, soul, and wallet are probably not going to concern themselves with science. Unless science can buy them yet another mansion and biz jet.

For some, having faith can be comforting, and give them a feeling of being looked after, rather than being self-responsible. The real danger is to become obsessed by your belief, for it may lead one to irrational thinking and actions.

Science: Questions that may never be answered.

Religion: Answers that may never be questioned.

Succinct, no?

Science and Religion are both based on beliefs.

Science is based on beliefs rooted in evidence.

Religion is based on beliefs rooted in faith.

Evidence is constantly changing as it is investigated and challenged. Faith is constant and is never investigated or challenged.

Many people don’t like change, so many people prefer Religion over Science. They live in a binary world much like computers: if it is not zero then it MUST be one. No other numbers can exist.

Personally, I do investigate and challenge my faith. So when I get to the “Pearly Gates,” St. Peter will probably say, “Oh, it’s YOU. I was told to put you in with the other trouble makers.”

The Big Bang Theory as I understand it, there was nothing, the universe pops in to being and starts to fill the void, a lots of stuff happens, I am born, eventually I will die, at some point the universe will or will not stop expanding, collapse on itself and blink out of existence.

Now the nothing at the starting point may have only been nothing f Newtonian view, it may havaeebeen filled with a whole bunch of quantum particles

I’ve also heard scientists ridicule anyone who is religious.

Interesting that you numbskulls always have to attack religion. This would be considered the devils work. Instead of finding things to be contentious about, how about finding things to agree on (advice to others, finding ways to reduce our carbon footprint ). Yes, religion and science can compliment each other and yes there are a few things that do not seem to be able to be reconciled. There are some top scientists that are religious and some that are not. Let’s all say, who cares and leave it at that

Galileo said that if science disproves your interpretation of the Bible, then you are interpreting it incorrectly. No wonder the authoritarian religious leaders of his day had it in for him.

Now, as for the comic. Supposedly the first chapter is spiritual creation. It was, separating light and dark (laundry jokes aside), then separating water and land, then plant life, then stars, moon and sun (this is where I scratch my head as I am not sure how this order would work), then sea life up to man.

Is this not the same progression as evolution except for the sun and stars were already there?

I would have expected that POIT to be a PATOOEY.

I bet most readers thought the first panels related to Covid-19. but appearances can be deceiving, especially in Non Sequitur. But, then again, maybe the whole arc is a play on attitudes about both Covid-19 and the Beginning.

I love it that there was already a sign saying Eden.

Compromising with religion is making a deal with the devil

I don’t have enough faith to believe that everything just happened, the probability is just too minute

One very hot summer day, while mowing 10 acres of knee-high weeds with a very compact 12hp rider, I experienced a flash of lyrics out of nowhere.

It began with the phrase I am here as I have been since the third day.

I could see more lines rolling down. At that point I knew from long experience with pen and paper, that if I tried to remember the lines, they would fade, but I tried anyway, and they did. That first line is all that remains in my memory. But it seems that was enough.

I think I was being assured that, all other arguments aside, Earth abides. I have been content to know that ever since.

And all the arguments about the beginning boil down to this: the question for humankind is not about the beginning, but what we are going to do from this day forward.

I had some primordial soup for lunch the other day.

KVELDULF offers an interesting observation, but no conclusion. I give it a 75.

I’m not a theist, not at all. I could go on for hours about why not. But I have a lot of experience with friends and colleagues who are theists and who are wonderful people. When I was in my late teens I started to work with various groups of Christian pacifists and socialists, and they were some of the best people I’ve even known. I don’t argue religion. I do promote science. But I don’t believe that “science” is the whole of life; my own work is in the arts.

The problem is that people keep relating religion with God.

Poit………. Many decades have passed since that term was planted in my adolescent cerebrum…..Shades of Don Martin and Mad Magazine!

Interesting statistics: 2 per cent of Americans read comics and 4 per cent of Americans are atheists. There seems to be a consensus that most comic authors are atheists, but no numbers, and nothing on what percentage of comics readers are atheists.

Adam and Eve didn’t work, so tried and tried and tried until we got covid,

After reading the comments, let me lighten things up a bit.

How many amoebas does it take to change a lightbulb?

1…2…4…8…16…32…64…128…

OT is not a Christian Book IMO. It’s the Torah

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

Religion is made up stuff to keep the masses in line, and to financially enhance it’s leaders.

Archeologists and some biblical scholars have figured out that the Old Testament (the Torah) was written some time during when the first Jewish Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians around 586 BC by the High Priests (because they had nothing else to do-the Temple was destroyed) and based on stories that were floating around. We know how the New Testament was written, starting with the First Council at Nicea. All based on stories and “inspired writings” (another term for B.S.).

Ya gotta remember that no one was along with Moses taking notes, and the Egyptians have no written record (and they recorded everything) of the Exodus.

Evidence is great.

With a few changes, the ’toon could be a COVID-19 Delta Variant ’toon.

POIT… Don Martin lives!

As I get closer to death I try to find faith in an afterlife. Guess I will find out when I die, but will I know I found out?

The Bible was never meant to be taken literally. That arose from the Protestant split, and they needed something to replace Papal authority. They declared the Bible inerrant, and started a whole bunch of other problems.

“Human knowledge is invariably limited and partial. There is only so much any one person, however intelligent and informed, can reasonably claim to know with certainty. Whatever he knows is necessarily mediated through his instruments, his senses, his reason, his brain. It is impossible for him to have access to an unmediated vantage point independent of his instruments and apart from his organism whence he could check to see whether his mediated knowledge corresponds to reality as such. No matter how well it can be explained, reality remains essentially mysterious. And on the great questions of what it means to be born and die, do good and evil, the natural sciences are silent.” – Stephen Batchelor

“Where there is no evidence, science can say nothing.” – Thomas Huxley (paraphrased)

“Why is life?” can be read as a question of causation, or as a question of purpose. Science explores the former, religion/philosophy explores the latter.

and again, “do unto others…”. sorry that this one is already coloured.

The history of religion is about who has the biggest god.

The universe is 13.7 billion years old. There are more stars in it than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of this tiny insignificant speck we call Earth, which has only existed for 4.5 billion years. Modern Humans have been here for about 200,000 years. Given these facts, belief in a personal god is, to me, completely irrational.

“And then he painted the new universe in a thin, even coating of magic white”

…and never the twain shall meet

Scientific facts: The sun revolves around the earth; nothing is smaller than an atom; you can’t split an atom; if a man goes faster than 35mph he won’t be able to breath; man will never fly …………..

Religion in the American South is a brand unto itself. I deeply question whether it is based in theology, or the politics of power and control of others.

The pope was a chemist, and didn’t become a priest until he was in his 30’s…

It seems to that the problem people on both sides have is an inability to imagine that an eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnitemporal being could be subtle. Which is kind of odd, given that the general consensus is that this being puts great stock in faith, and faith requires the absence of undeniable fact, a condition which is not really compatible with a being who is really obvious.

“Truth cannot contradict truth” — St. Thomas Aquinas→ Pope Leo XIII→ Pope John Paul II. Leo XII-Biblical interpretation must be re-investigated if it conflicts with an established scientific truth (think Kepler, Newton, Bohr). John Paul II- Evolution is more than a theory.

And, on the 9th day, Adam & Eve discovered Sex.

And God looked upon it and said: “Oh my goodness Gracious, we can’t have them doing disgusting things like that in my Garden. They will ruin the rose Bushes and they are Frightening the Horses.”

So, God added Thorns to his prize winning Rose Bushes.

But that didn’t stop Adam & Eve so he tossed them Out of the Garden.

My favorite “real scientist who played a fictional scientist on TV” said it well. https://youtu.be/qZh1MrDHLoY

I thought everyone knows: It’s Turtles… All the way down.

Yeah, sorry folks, you can reconcile religion with good, hard science, but when it comes to things that can’t be demonstrated by the scientific method, you have to choose one thing or another you want to believe in!

Hope this doesn’t push the policy prohibiting promotions (it’s a propos), but if you’d like to learn more, see https://www.amazon.com/Creationism-Science-Scientific-Evolution-Evolutionism/dp/1987703480/ I think you’ll find it quite different from the vast majority of books on the subject.

It’s actually much easier than one might expect, if one keeps an open mind on both fronts.

After the Big Bong……???

My faith tells me who created us, science tries to figure out how…They are not diametrically opposed.

On the one hand,Albert Einstein said there had to be a God,because it was impossible to create such a wonderful world without an architect.

On the other hand,I judge people by whether or not they’re on Spencer Tracy’s side inINHERIT THE WIND

I have often wondered. Since before the Fall, Adam and Eve were immortal, they could have lived for a very long time, yes, even geologically speaking, in their little garden. Everything else was evolving around them, so that explains the dinos, etc. They could have even been different than we are now, and they could have also evolved somewhat. Just an idea.

“God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.” Henri Rousseau

Actually, my church calls the vaccines a literal godsend and told everybody to get their shots to look out for one another and live up to the teachings of Jesus.

Being “religious” and “having faith” are two very different things.