Zen Pencils by Gavin Aung Than for October 07, 2013

Great sentiments. One little comment – Sears-level tube telescopes are shaky, which is why few people use them after a few days, because of the headaches, or the inability to stay steady on one spot in the sky for a few seconds. If you really want to introduce a child to astronomy, spend the extra money to get a good scope from a company like Celestron. And be prepared to stay outside with your child to share the experience, because otherwise it’s going to feel like you’re using it as an excuse to get them out of the house so you can watch more TV.

15 million degrees? good thing you’re a scientist.

I’m waiting for the nut comments.

@alananda: don’t forget veterinarians.

Great job, Gavin!

The cure for the big pandemics will never be reveal as long as the pharmaceuticals have the control of the scientists. It is more profitable to relieve a pain than to cure it….

Fantastic piece!! And a truly wonderful quote!

A wonderful comic – It should be shown at school board meetings all over America.

Similarly, the statement presumes that science and the supernatural cannot coexist. []In reality, many legitimate scientists the world over are openly religious; they have learned how to be professional, and so do not let religion and science intrude into each other. (For example, in addition to being a geologist and geology professor, James Talmage was also a high-level clergyman in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Talmage famously took part in a three-way debate during the 1930s concerning whether or not evolution should be considered a part of the church’s theology; in contrast, a lot of other denominations at this time were still considering the concept of evolution to be Satanic.)[]Furthermore, the “Kirk Cameron” model of creationism isn’t the only concept of creation out there. Rather, you also have various groups of Old-Earth Creationists who argue that God set the creation process in motion. These views range from the “Watchmaker” hypothesis (God assembled the mechanism and set it in motion) to a hypothesis which holds that God has periodically nudged and fudged things as needed to get certain results.

My son is a vet, and he has to undersatnd the client and the patient. Sometimes the client holds the clue to what’s wrong with the patient.

It was our drive to understand the order in the universe that separated us from the rest of the animals that inhabit this planet.We were the only ones to look about our world and askourselves “Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why”.We earned the responsibility to care for it all.

All of the scientists I know (and know of) would do science for free if they didn’t have commitments to their families.

Homeopathy is a science, and it works. It doesn’t belong with being a psychic or a creationist.

All of the things mentioned have their place (and their relative importance depending on where you are in life). Lovely cartoon, however, just to get people thinking and talking.

Just a bit of FYI… Newton was first and foremost a theologian. Check his biography.I believe the same was rue for CopernicusGalileo was well versed in Theology, as was Descartes.

Either way, though, I’m getting tired of seeing people on both sides of the issue stereotype each other. They do a big disservice to their own respective causes when this happens.

so lovely

We are still “evolutionizing” aren’t we? Gary

So what you do when you don’t understand something is call names. Fab’lous.

I am impressed Mr. Plait, and many of the rest of you judging by your comments, are aware of the faith held by all those working on the human genome project, Newton, Einstein or any other scientist.

Apologies for the improper verb usage in my comment. Noticed this after posting. I will attempt to be more thorough in my proof-reading

Love the way Creationism/ID is dismissed as unscientific out of hand. Evolution and the "old earth " theology surrounding it have enough holes in then to drive a Peterbilt through…with much room to spare. Scientific inquiry should be free to seek out and understand but it must also be free from all preconceptions, including those of the evolutionists. If one enters the search determined to find conclusions supporting his hypothesis the results will be skewed no matter what.

An example being the inability of many to consider a cataclysmic flood on a planet mostly covered with water but insisting on one on a planet covered in sand and rock.

@MissionLDB – creationism and ID are NOT scientific because, at least in the versions I’ve seen, they don’t make predictions that can be tested. Instead, most ID people point to the Bible and say “well, it says so, so I’m going with that.” If you have to take it on faith that something happened, then it isn’t science.

Regarding the “holes” to which you refer, there’s a difference between a theory not being complete and it being wrong. The “holes” are just places where we don’t yet have all of the information we need to fill in those gaps. But, that is part of science: searching for the answers to those lingering questions. Evolution might not be complete, but no one has yet to prove it false. If you can, feel free to start writing your Nobel Prize speech.

As for your flood comment, I’m not sure what you’re getting at… there are geologists that are looking for indications of massive floods during human history and trying to determine when, where, and why they happened. And when they present their results, other scientists can go out and test the original work and see if it holds up. If not, back to the drawing board where they collect more data and test new ideas. That’s called science.

What we think we know changes and evolves as we explore the world around us. That’s the beauty of science: there is always something new to learn.

too bad. There is no cure for smallpox, nor polio. There are vaccines to prevent these but no cure if you get it. A scientist would know that.

Wow! all these years of being a Creationist, and I never realized that we don’t believe in dinosaurs! Nor did I realize that we’re on the rational lever of psychics. Here I thought we had a perfectly legitimate, if unpopular view, on a scientific theory which is no more provable than anything else in science. I’m so glad this strip opened my eyes!

I would be impressed with religion if one of the holy books, that wrote down God’s pronouncements, had stated that we should tremble at his creation of this one universe because he made hundreds of billions of galaxies made up of billions of solar systems that we would eventually find using polished glass and the scientific method.

So many lies and yet it’s full also of truth. The researcher shouldn’t have dismissed the Spiritual side so easily. I am also a scientist of the highest grade (Doctor of Research in Geochemistry) but more important a friend of Jesus!