An anti-religious (and specifically, anti-Catholic) webcomic is making the rounds on the Internet right now. It’s part of a webcomic called The Oatmeal, and is called “How to suck at your religion.” I have to warn anyone clicking that link that it’s really offensive: profane, lewd, and blasphemous, all at once. Honestly, if you don’t have some reason to read it, just go ahead and skip it (and this whole post). Whatever your religious views, this webcomic simply doesn’t enrich the discourse, or advance the debate in any positive or meaningful way.
You would think that something this over-the-top would cause even non-religious people to balk at posting it on their Facebook feeds as indicative of their own views. Apparently not. I’ve already gotten two e-mails from people who had friends share it, and who wanted to know how to respond.
There is a temptation to say, “It’s a webcomic, don’t take it so seriously!” But the truth is, while it’s supposed to be funny, it’s also supposed to make a serious point. In my view, it fails on both counts, but I’m really only concerned about the latter. Nearly every panel raises a different argument against certain types of religion, with most of the vitriol saved for Catholicism. Each of these arguments collapse on closer inspection, and it’s clear that the sheer quantity of arguments cannot overcome the dearth of quality of any given argument.
So here are my thoughts, by panel:
- The first panel depicts a Catholic priest (with a Roman collar) confidently damning all those who don’t belong to the Church. This is just a lazy straw man. While She’s canonized thousands of Saints, the Church has never declared anyone in Hell. On a related note, one of the obnoxious things about atheist attacks on Christianity is that they act as if Catholicism and Evangelicalism / Fundamentalism are basically the same thing. On of the things that Dr. Mark Gray said, in the article I linked to last week, was that: “It’s interesting that so much of the rhetoric of New Atheism seems to really be directed at Evangelical Christians—those specifically who take the Bible literally word for word. Many New Atheists seem to think anyone who is religious holds similar beliefs. Yet, this cannot be equated with the mainstream Catholic point of view.” If you’re going to argue against something, it helps to at least understand the thing you’re arguing against.
- This gets the Galileo affair completely wrong. A much-needed corrective here, or a thousand other places, for those who actually care enough about the facts to check them.
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Jewish twins kept alive at Auschwitz
for the sake of human experimentation.
Were those who opposed this barbarism “anti-science”?This also grossly misrepresents why Christians oppose embryonic stem cell research (and falsely accuses us of being against all stem cell research). But I suppose the author has to misrepresent the Christian view, because otherwise, it makes a lot of sense. If human life begins at conception (which, scientifically, it does…. and is the only reason embryonic stem cell research is even possible), we’re talking about doing medical research that profits off of mass killing. This has been done before, and those who opposed it on moral grounds weren’t “anti-science,” and aren’t today. The term you’re looking for is pro-life.
- So… religion is fine, unless you actually believe in it? Should parents not pass their political, ethical or moral views on to their children as well? What parts of parenting would be left if parents were to avoid passing their views on to their kids? The irony here is that silence is itself a statement. Avoiding any mention of God to your kids sends as clear a message as talking about God: specifically, it tells your kids that God’s existence is either untrue, unknown, or unimportant. Because if you knew Him to exist, surely you’d share that knowledge, right?
- This next section is probably the worst, because it’s just an incoherent argument. A kid asks, “Dad, what happens to us after we die?” The author compares providing the Christian answer to this question with correcting your kid for having green as a favorite color. What?? That just isn’t a coherent argument. In what world are those two ideas parallel, or even comparable?
According to the webcomic, good parenting is to pretend to be agnostic, and say that “no one really knows for sure.” Of course, if the Resurrection is true, that claim is false. So to be a good parent, you apparently have to deny the Resurrection and embrace agnosticism, treating beliefs about the afterlife as mere matters of personal preference like having a favorite color. This is just… stupid. There’s just no other way of describing it. Imagine if we treated everything that way. “Dad, what’s 3 x 3?” “No one really knows for sure. What do YOU think 3 x 3 is?”
- The idea that a religion is bad if it gives you “weird anxieties about your sexuality” is naïve. What I mean is that sexuality is much more powerful and truly awesome than the author lets on. If sex is just no big deal, recreational fun, then adultery’s no problem, right?
Of course not. Agnostics and atheists have “weird anxieties” about sexuality, too, precisely because sexuality is powerful, and can cause a heck of a lot of damage when treated carelessly and casually. Everything from broken hearts and broken homes to rampant STDs and AIDS to millions of unplanned pregnancies and abortions would seem to have made all of that really clear by now.
- Religion is bad if you believe enough to try to tell other people that it’s true. Why, exactly? As a society, we freely try to convince each other of specific worldviews all the time, including really speculative ones, like political worldviews. Why is all of that positive, healthy democracy, while treating religion the same way is evil?
The author specifically advocates that good religions are ones that make it hard to join. Again, why? If having the right relationship with God is the best thing, not only for me, but for anyone, then trying to prevent others from that right relationship would literally be about the worst thing that I could do.
- This just grossly misrepresents Christianity. As I said before, if you’re going to argue against something, it helps to at least understand the thing you’re arguing against. In Monday’s post, I mentioned that one goal we should have in inter-religious dialogues and debates is to be able to describe the other person’s position in a way that they would recognize, and acknowledge as their own.
Needless to say, that’s not what happens here. Instead, there’s mockery and sneering of a ridiculous distortion of Christianity: mocking beliefs, in other words, that no Christian actually holds. Edward Feser has a great response to this sort of cheap shot, showing that this same asinine approach could be used to make science look stupid (provided that no one bothered to listen to scientists about what they actually believed).
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Do you need to read the Bible to know
that killing him is immoral and unethical?I don’t think anyone votes based solely on religious beliefs. I also don’t think that being against abortion is a “religious belief.” The belief consists of three propositions: (a) human life begins at conception, (b) the intentional ending of innocent human life is murder, and (c) murder is bad. Which of these beliefs requires being a Christian?
- Invoking the Muhammad drawing controversy is just a reminder that the reason Christians are targeted for this mockery instead of Muslims is that smug atheists are afraid of Muslims. They bully us precisely because we’re not the violent, intolerant psychos that they pretend we are. If there really were a “Christian Taliban,” folks like this would be too afraid to mock us, as they are with Muslims. So in this sense, all of this is a beautiful reminder that, for all our faults, there really is something to Christianity.
- In condemning killing for religion, the author conflates it with “hurt[ing], hinder[ing], or condemn[ing] in the name of your God,” right after a lengthy tirade condemning Christians. Not even a hint of irony.
- Good religion is apparently placebo religion, and it’s okay only as long as we keep it to ourselves. The author then indulges the mandatory use of profanity to show us how calm and reasonable he is.
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| Raphael, Adam and Eve (1511) |
In Scalia’s dissent from Lee v. Weisman, he accused the majority of treating religion as “some purely personal avocation that can be indulged entirely in secret, like pornography, in the privacy of one’s room. For most believers it is not that, and has never been.” This really does capture two competing views of religion.
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| Lucas Cranach the Elder, Head of Christ Crowned with Thorns (1510) |
One view, the view taken in the webcomic, is that religion consists of a set of ideas that we latch on to, not because they’re true, but because we happen to like them. Because our religious views aren’t objectively true, but just subjectively nice, they’re as personal (and insignificant) as our favorite color. It’s just a way of coping “with the fact that you are a bag of meat sitting on a rock in outer space and that someday you will die,” and that all existence is utterly meaningless. But someone who takes this view of religion can’t even be reasonably described as religious. After all, they’re essentially saying, “I know religion isn’t true, but I wish it was.”
But the other view is that religion describes something, and Someone, utterly real… the very ground and sustenance of reality, in fact. What’s more, knowledge of this Truth is the most important knowledge we could possess – the only knowledge that makes an eternal difference, while all other knowledge fleets or fades. But beyond even this, a relationship with this God, our God, enriches our life here on earth, filling it meaning, not as some delusional placebo, but in the way that a story takes on new profundity when you can hear the author explain why he wrote it that way. This is the only view of religion worth taking, since this is the only view of religion that treats it as true, rather than just a nice idea: that is, it’s the only one of the two views worthy to be called “religious.”
Beneath all the smugness, profanity, blasphemy, and sneering hipster irony, the webcomic falters in the face of this: true, substantial, real religion. The comic can mischaracterize and distort, but in the face of actual Catholicism, it’s silent. It has no coherent or compelling answer in response to the Catholic claim. Snark simply has no retort to truth.
Update: Marc Barnes (Bad Catholic) responds to the same webcomic, quite wittily.
Update: Thanks to all who have commented so far. I obviously can’t respond to every one of you, but I’ve written a follow-up post responding to some of the general trends that I’ve seen.
You are all retarded
It takes amazing audacity for a catholic to call a comic “really offensive: profane, lewd, and blasphemous, all at once.” Really? Want to know what most of the rest of us consider really offensive, profane, lewd and blasphemous all at once? A “religion” whose priests and bishops, and cardinals perform sex acts with children which resists all efforts to prosecute those criminals–indeed hides them from prosecutors for years! Guess what? For the most part, atheists/agnostics/non-believers don’t have weird anxieties surrounding sex, because enjoying sex is a perfectly normal part of being human. Only when it’s used to control another, in a relationship in which there is an large imbalance of power–like when an adult has sex with a child and even more so when an adult in a position of power, like a priest, abuses that power, is it a problem. Whatever two consenting adults do in private is no one’s business.
It takes an almost unfathomable amount of arrogance to believe the catholic church is a source of morality.
There are too many holes in your arguments, so I chose No.5 to comment on.
Except for the book named “Bible” and a bunch of people telling you so, how do you know sure where you are going to after you died? Your thought of afterlife conflict with that of thousands of religions on this planet. It is not comparable to math, which can be verified logically.
I have two questions :
1) You said the oatmeal is condemning Christianity of condemning others. Yes, he does. But, he just pointed to your double standards. Thou shalt not Judge – Luke 6:37. Don’t deny that Christians don’t judge other peoples on daily basis who are not Christians. Like you judged Muslims in this passage of yours of being oppressive.
2) I am a Agnostic. I don’t know about the presence of God. But, i have never done any bad thing in my life. Never. I have never hurt any person even verbally. I usually help poor and give a helpful hand to one in need. I have no angst against Religious or Atheists. To say, i am indifferent to anyone. I don’t discourage religious people of their believes. But Nor do i preach anyone about God. I never pray, not even once. I just do good deeds. Cause i believe that if there is a supreme being watching us all then i don’t think cares about our faith on him, he cares about Good work we do here on earth. Cause doing wrong repeatedly and then praying for forgiveness; i find this extremely hypocrite. What do you think, am i a good person. Will i attain Heaven, if i suppose there is one.
You clearly missed the entire point of his post. You say near the end that REAL religion isn’t arguable against with his reasoning. I agree.
His comic wasn’t mocking the religion, or any religion. It wasn’t at all advocating atheism.
The ending of the comic says how to be “good at your religion” in case you missed that part, you close minded fool.
He clearly believes religion is a good thing and every single example above. I am a christian and totally agreed with his entire post. The only thing he was trying to get across was to not be a dick about your religion. WHICH IS PART OF THE RELIGION!
His post, if anything, was Pro-Christian.
“If human life begins at conception (which, scientifically, it does…. and is the only reason embryonic stem cell research is even possible)”
Unfortunately, science also tells us that being gay is genetic, yet Christians including Catholics paraphrase verses in the bible to justify their bigotry and fear of things that they don’t understand. This kind of hate has caused me to leave the church that I once love, for it seems that man as strayed from the teachings of love, charity, and respect, and instead has turn to hate, fear, and greed.
Homosexuality is not genetic. New research says it may be epi-gentic (when small molecules bind to the DNA to activate and deactivate genes), although it may just be a fluke.
*Sigh* Look, to me, religion is like a, and I’m being crude right now, a penis. It’s fine that you have one, just don’t whip it out in public and please don’t try and shove it down some unwilling person’s throat.
Panel number 5 is not incoherent at all.
Did you even bother to read what you wrote or what you were writing about?
“3X3” is a statement of fact, “I like X” is a statement of opinion. The author’s point in that panel was that you shouldn’t force people to consider a certain opinion to be a fact, especially if they are impressionable children.
Just as you couldn’t and wouldn’t tell a little girl her favourite colour is purple, end of story, you shouldn’t be telling someone automatically that a supernatural entity exists and that it has a certain moral code you should follow or else you will burn forever, end of story.
I would like to simply respond to some of your criticisms of Oatmeal’s comic:
1. Minimal swearing is not profanity.
2. An absence of any sexual organs, intercourse or remarks does not count as lewdness.
3. Blasphemy is a pointless criticism since it essentially means “You are wrong because you question my beliefs!”
4. The comic focuses on individuals and their use of religion in everyday life, not the religions themselves, yet you have misconstrued the simple message of a comic with the title “how to suck at your religion”.
5. You have no right to claim to be Pro-Life when the only thing you value is human life, a life no different to any other animal you would probably kill. Admit it, at this point the only way we can truly justify meat eating and not killing humans is nepotism. In any case, could you please give us an alternative to stem-cell research to help solve the problems of inherent disabilities which your kind and loving God allowed to exist? In addition, if it was wrong to end lives so we could save present day ones that need more help than them, why would God also allow for so much sperm to be wasted during sex, or for miscarriages to occur?
6. The comment on section 5 was probably the worst I have ever read. “3X3” is a statement of fact, “I believe in/like X” is a statement of opinion. With statements of opinion you need to clarify that it is what you believe in, and not fact, especially since you can’t prove what you believe in to be true.
7. Not much to say on panel 6, I agree with your points there, although that does not justify religious teaching on sex.
8. On panel 7, we can at least prove political views with empirical evidence. No sufficient proof is ever given to prove the truth of a religion.
9. The point in panel 8, as previously stated, is that there are people who do act like this, who mock other religions despite the fact that their beliefs are just as silly. The comic is about individuals who abuse religion, not religions abusing people.
10. You would be surprised how many conservatives and liberals have focused their campaigns on things like gay marriage, patriotism and abortion. Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney all claimed Obama was declaring war on religion and Christmas, while people who wanted to focus on the economic (and more important) side of things like Ron Paul ended up losing to those fanatics.
11. You again show how much you misunderstood the message of the comic, it’s about how people abuse religion in general, be they muslim, Christian, whatever. The Muhammad “no drawing” panel is clearly a target against muslim extremists. Also, you clearly do not watch Pat Condell videos, or listen to anything Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris have ever said, because all these fine folks rant about extremist Islam with just as much vigour and passion as with Christianity.
12. You have no proof God exists, at least not as an interventionist God. Even if you claim a non-intervening God exists what differentiates Him from no God? You claim to “know” God and “Truth” when all evidence seemingly points against such.
Catholic webcomic here ->http://saintsandangelswebcomic.weebly.com/
and the weekend comic here -> http://saintsandangelswebcomic.weebly.com/on-the-grapevine.html
You have severely misinterpreted the comic. It is not at all an argument against religion. It is not saying “all religious/catholic people do this.” It’s simply stating that some individuals do use their religion as a force of bad rather than good, and that those people…well, shouldn’t.
Thanks all for their nice, informative and really excellent comments. But today I want to say about religious faith. We some have strong religious faith on the other hand someone has no faith at all. Is there any way to measurement the depth of religious faith? I was always confused about the depth and power of my faith on my religion. But today it is clear to me some days ago I got a nice application which is able to measure the religious faith. It is really funny too. I like to share this with all to you. I think you all will also get a lot of fun and will be astonished too.
This Faith Announcer Application is used to Announce Religion Faith.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.faithannouncers&hl=en
This was a joke, right? Because it was even funnier that the comic strip.
Knowing or being aware of the fact that none knows the truth about weather a certain “god’ exists , forces an individual to take responsibility for themselves. Believing in an invisible being who saves people if they are good is an ancient fear based idea for those who cant or won’t ask real questions about ones reality. Instead of saying I have faith in something made up by man , say I have faith in myself and for the choices I make ….. try it ! believing in any “god” is why so many of us are divided. Believe in being who and what you are. Believe that no one who has ever died is ever coming back in the same way ever, believe that the darkness that we came from is where we will return once again. Believe it ,because its all we really know if we know anything at all. I promise, it will make you a better person overall, because lying to ones self is the biggest way to cheat this experience.
There is something seriously demented in your introduction.
“Apparently not. I’ve already gotten two e-mails from people who had friends share it, and who wanted to know how to respond.”
They need you to tell them how to respond? Good god…
I think you missed the fact that the comic is about how to suck at your religion … it does not say that everyone sucks at it. So if the panels don’t coincide with your beliefs, maybe according to The Oatmeal, you don’t suck at your religion. I would think you’d be GLAD that the comic doesn’t resonate with you because if it did, it would be criticizing you.
He doesn’t mention muslims too much because they aren’t such a vocal problem here in america. And he’s not reacting necessarily to the public face of the catholic church, he’s reacting to every post church lunch conversation that ever happens.
It might not be the church directly that judges, it’s the people. However, I can point to multiple priests who refused to marry my mom and dad (mom white, dad native), how unjudging indeed. My grandmother, my mom, everybody who casts stones from their glass houses. It’s a poisonous thought encouraged by the pattern you espouse–namely “hey this is totally the truth and I need to tell everyone”. It just encourages an egoic thought pattern that loves to assert it’s own superiority. You love thinking you’re better than others. We all do, it’s part of being human. This is why we have to clip those wings, not justify it, not tell that tendency it is right and that it’s rightness will lead to eternal damnation or salvation. That is the beginning of an act of violence. “I’m right, you’re wrong” is where it all begins. This is why we typically espouse a more agnostic view of things. It’s the only truth–none of us really know. And it avoids that possibility for violence.
At the end of the day, the comic resonates so well with many of us ex-catholics because it addresses those notions we encountered everyday or at best, every church day. Judging. Shaming. And downright racism–if not explicit, implicit in all of the imagery. (Even as a 6 year old, I had a problem with a white god–shouldn’t he be something we can’t imagine? Why is Jesus white? –he doesn’t look like me.) And yet again, there was a sense of superiority. Only we have the one true way. If you’re in another country and never had a chance… well for no reason you’re going to heaven. But if we tell you and you don’t convert, now you’ve broken god’s law and you’re going to hell. Every conception of god is a little too human. God–if he existed–just wouldn’t do those things. Which is why I’m an ex-catholic.
A syllogism:
(1) My viewpoint is better than all of yours;
(2) “The Oatmeal” is without sin;
(3) Therefore, all arguments against this comic are invalid.
My issue with your rebuttals is that you take a number of premises to be obviously true, but its clear that those premises are not accepted by everyone (and sometimes not even the majority).
For example, the claim that life starts at conception (that the creation of an embryo is the start of ‘life’, whatever ‘life’ is defined as).
A further implied premise is that there is inherent sanctity and value in preserving life (sounds ridiculous not to accept that last premise on its face? I respectfully disagree, as it is quite possible to build a solid system of ethics – essentially grounded in selfishness, aka solipsism or the golden rule – that doesn’t assume a priori that life is sacred or inherently valuable).
I think the majority of your differences with the comic stem from the basic distinction between truth and belief, which you basically sum up in your last paragraphs. Any nonbeliever is going to acknowledge your religion as a set of beliefs, and will use reasoning to attempt to understand where those beliefs come from (you were indoctrinated, you use them to cope with existence, etc). I happen to think these common reasons given for people accepting religion are quite reasonable, from a nonbelievers standpoint.
The difficulty is that as a believer, you clearly don’t want to acknowledge your religion as just one possible set of beliefs, but rather as truths, even as you acknowledge those truths are accepted on faith. As such you’d feel justified in exclusively sharing only those beliefs with your children, rather than show them different sets of beliefs (different religions, atheism, etc), and allow them to accept whichever set of beliefs most appeals to them. But you see, this *is* indoctrination. Its just that the word ‘indoctrination’ has a stigma associated with it. For good reason…
By the way, you make the counter argument about arguing what 3×3 is. “Dad, what’s 3 x 3?” “No one really knows for sure. What do YOU think 3 x 3 is?”
The thing is, though you pose it as an absurd response to a child, it really isn’t. What the father could be explaining in that instance is that the question “what is 3×3” is referencing a self-contained, man-made system (ie mathematics), that we accept to be meaningful and useful – on faith! Well, not just on faith because real world results match up with predictions made by the system (a big reason why it carries more clout with many atheists than a religious system).
So essentially, the answer “3×3 is 9” is incomplete and not inherently obvious. That’s just shorthand for a much longer answer: “3×3 is 9 if you accept a long list of axioms and rules that make up the structure of mathematics, and the reason you would do well to accept mathematics as true is because it has a longstanding record of accurately predicting observable outcomes when applied to our physical reality”.
This next section is probably the worst, because it’s just an incoherent argument. A kid asks, “Dad, what happens to us after we die?” The author compares providing the Christian answer to this question with correcting your kid for having green as a favorite color. What?? That just isn’t a coherent argument. In what world are those two ideas parallel, or even comparable?
According to the webcomic, good parenting is to pretend to be agnostic, and say that “no one really knows for sure.” Of course, if the Resurrection is true, that claim is false. So to be a good parent, you apparently have to deny the Resurrection and embrace agnosticism, treating beliefs about the afterlife as mere matters of personal preference like having a favorite color. This is just… stupid. There’s just no other way of describing it. Imagine if we treated everything that way. “Dad, what’s 3 x 3?” “No one really knows for sure. What do YOU think 3 x 3 is?”
How are these to comparisons different?
I don’t know about how you are at religion, but you suck at understanding humor when it deals causally with your religion.
the irony in this response is staggering…and laughable. The number and quality of examples could fill an honors English thesis. And Auschwitz? Really? Atheism does not mean moral-free. That inclusion made me sick, between smirks at the weak writing and C- student argument. (a C- if you had an excuse to suck at identifying and using literary tools, and debate….like being a sophomore in high school who hates English.
Please tell me you did not use The Holocaust as one of your examples. It is a known fact that people within the Catholic Church, helped Nazi war criminals escape to South America, on these things called Ratlines. So, please, don’t use that as an example. (They helped Dr. Mengele escape. FYI) Seriously, google it, watch documentaries, it’s there, it’s fact.
Actually, the world pretty much agrees on the answer to 3×3. The afterlife, not so much. And, views aren’t true, they’re held. Only facts have the potential to be “true.” In my view, this response is guilty of many of the same things as the original post.
Ha! This comment thread makes the comic even funnier!!!
(Ex-catholic coming from full catholic background, family and education): What about catholic church and women equality? Gay rights? Unpunished pedophile crimes commited by members of the church? Anyway, hi from the 21st century.You’re welcome to join us here anytime.
You are in seminary to be a priest with this narcissistic, intellectually arrogant, prideful, disrespectful, sarcastic, caustic, judgmental, snide attitude? It is clear you are intelligent, your time studying law has prepared you to rebut comments to your blog posts, and that you are quite prideful. All of this does not bode well to a priest in training. You are quite manipulative and use guilt like a knife. The way in which you presented the entirety of your comments sneered at and were snide toward the individual commenting, unless they were praising you. If you are to continue in the seminary to be a priest, then please take what I have mentioned to heart and work to fix these inequities within yourself. You are held to a higher standard by your choice of occupation and lifestyle. I post this not in disrespect, but in distress that a man vying for the cloth could be so hurtful to those with differing views; especially, when the religion you espouse is adamant about how to go about interacting with love, an open heart, patience, consideration, and kindness with those of opposing beliefs no matter how they act and react toward you.
I thought some of it was actually spot on. Especially towards the end. Instead of murdering each other in the name of religion, why not love, help,care for each other in simple goodness. Because it’s the right thing to do, not because some omnipotent ‘being’ either exists or does not exist whom promises a forever after death in this great wonderland in the sky called Heaven. Why thrust one’s beliefs onto anyone else?
Can we at least all agree that the Bible is a mere book of stories, told and retold by men, reinterpreted by men over time? Cannot refute Science either. Also, if there were any TRUE religion of God, would it not be Judaism? As it is told, the people of that time period spoke Hebrew or Arabic.
The only reason there are people arguing in this comment section, the only reason reason people argue creationism at all, is because of ONE simple yet at the same time complicated question: Is there a God? Here’s the answer: No one knows. You don’t know. I don’t know, and I don’t care. However, I do know that the reaction and crass summary of catholicdefense.com is unwarranted and childish. It’s a humorous internet cartoon. It’s not like someone killed millions of people because they don’t like your beliefs *sarcastic throat clear* christian crusades.
The entire argument that the author of the oatmeal was trying to make is that if you believe that gays are unnatural, or that you should hinder science which uses otherwise wasted biological matter, or any other sort of douche bag move then at least do it quietly out of respect for others and the comfort that they find in the various things you don’t believe in. I myself am an atheist and was raised roman catholic spending 10 years in Sunday school (during their normal sessions) and even was confirmed and quite honestly I believe not in any religion but in the power of religion itself. And having read many other blogs and such from the same author on the topic of religion he feels the same way and only used such crude, inaccurate, and over generalized exaggerations to make his point in a humorous manner. The point in which is that over all religion is great in that it helps those get through their times of need by giving hope and comfort and that’s great, but just do that in a way that doesn’t offend and belittle others’ beliefs and actions as if what makes them happy and doesn’t hurt anyone is wrong. Now having said that the comic is a little hypocritical sure but then again I also personally believe that humor is the most powerful way for people to bond as long as everyone present is able to laugh at themselves when a joke is made about them. This goes for the churches of any religion because frankly every religion has at least one thing that even the patrons of the faith think is ridiculous. So by all means please pull the stick out your butts and just let it go since it’s not like the author came to your door and slapped you in the face while calling you an idiot. Just ignore the comic and move on with your day because while you specifically may not like the material there are at least a couple million people who found this material funny and cheered up a little the same way your religion cheers you up and no one bothers you for it.
Hm that’s a good point, let me think for a bit
Oh wait, MY MISTAKE, it’s absolute BULLSHIT.
Science adjusts its beliefs based on what’s observed.
Faith is the DENIAL of observation so that Belief can be preserved.
If you show me
That, say, praying works,
Then I will change my mind
I’ll spin on a fucking dime
I’ll be embarrassed as hell,
But I will run through the streets yelling
It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it!
There’s a great sky wizard!
And while the legacy of the bible seems Infinite
Christians somehow forget all the poo it has in it!
You show me THAT it works and HOW it works,
And when I’ve recovered from the shock,
I will take a knife and carve “FANCY THAT” on the side of my cock.”
You wrote the better part of 2,000 words and spent who knows how many hours skewering a web comic. Do you feel accomplished now? Get a life. The Oatmeal is parody and sarcasm and yes, sometimes explicit. If you can’t take it, then don’t read it. Keep your tantrums to yourself and stop cluttering my Facebook feed.
so stupid. your entire religion is just the world’s first sequel. “Coming this Christmas! God II: Jesus, Son of God!” pathetic dopes.
A lot of activity on this post recently! Must have been shared on some forum. Good thing the comments are classy 😀
<– Continued
9. You are right in saying that being against abortion is not a religious belief but the political leaders have made it a religious debate, their reasoning are (a) it says so in the bible
10. I honestly do not give a shit about Islam, and you should not either. They are just unfortunate enough to go through their crazy phase (crusades, Inquisitions & holocausts) in modern times since they sadly started much later. Actually their stuff is much tame compared to what the Catholic Church did but well that is the past and who wants to dwell on that.
11. I honestly do not know what you are even trying to say here but going on a limb I think you are saying that he himself is condemning killing in the name of religion while he just said, not very long ago, that it is bad for religious people to condemn others because they are not following their holy laws? Now that is wrong.
12. No, all religion is placebo religion unless proven otherwise just like all medicine is placebo medicine unless proven otherwise.
13. Profanity is also a tool for people trying to be heard it is seldom used and is highly effective, demonstrated by the fact that you wrote a whole article about it.
14. *BONUS* You should have read the comic strip with a bit more of an open mind since all through it the artist says, “YOU suck at your religion” not that the religion sucks. He is actually pointing out all the crazy things people do in the name of religion.
Just because you believe something does not make it true. Big difference between fact and faith. Learn the difference, Joe, before saying nonsense such as, “If you knew him to exist….”
The majority of your response lacks the straight, logical response that the author of the comic would probably entertain. Many of your points rest on opinions and mistakenly claim to be opinionless. You need to be able to step out of being Catholic to give a good catholic response…your response is swallowed by it. Also, there’s nothing remotely entertaining about debating abortion…”scientific life” may begin at conception, but it is only your belief that at conception a mother holds a person (differentiating from “life”…it takes Faith to say that a fertilized egg is anymore alive than a bag of peanuts). Others believe the opposite… There’s no arguing faith…so that’s the end of the debate.
I was raised in a Catholic family, but managed to escape Catholicism by my early teens, and all religion by my late teens.
I found the oatmeal comic spot-on with all of its points, presented in a humorous non-hateful way.
It is true that most (not all) kids are indoctrinated into the church before they understand that religion is mythology, not history (mythology = stories without evidence, history = stories with evidence). Parents (who were likely indoctrinated the same way as kids) do not represent their religion as “one view of many”, they represent it as “the right view”. Kids therefore fall into line and it becomes imprinted on them by trust/authority figures before they develop critical thinking skills. A violation of trust by parents, in my opinion.
I believe that religion hurts itself by clinging to views that are made obsolete by our accumulation of additional knowledge. For example, the extreme view that killing a fertilized egg is ‘taking a life’ is rubbish. If that were true, then men would be committing genocide every time they masturbated and aborted the opportunity for millions of swimmers to compete for an egg and develop into a human being. Before 24 weeks, we KNOW that there is no frontal lobe, therefore no mind, no awareness, no experience, no consciousness. After 24 weeks, if a choice has to be made between the mother and the fetus, the mother is the right person to decide, not old white men, and certainly not a mythical god. If you believe that a god is involved in minutia like a pregnancy, then surely you must also believe that plane crashes, tsunami’s, cancer, etc. are all his will.
When religion is administered as coaching, helping people who are struggling in some way, then I think it can be pretty benign. But when religion is administered as doctrine, as though the stories are history, not mythology, then it gets negative. Give me money / follow these rules or else / women are not as good as men / gays are sinners / believe, don’t think / etc..
Having said all that, I really don’t care. Religion is dying, and it can’t be stopped. It won’t die off in my lifetime, but the more educated the world becomes, the less religious it becomes. Religion is already in rapid decline in countries with the highest-ranked public education.
That you wrote this lengthy post and only shows that you do care and that the comic did in fact start a debate 😀
Roman Catholics need to devote their energies to the much bigger threat to the Church, the cause of so many members leaving for Evangelical and other Churches, the foundation of sand, namely the Church hierarchy’s response to the child abuse scandal and all that that indicates about the hierachy and Vatican. Many members continue to blindly trust the hierarchy to do the right thing, but arrogance, evasion, and (according to US States’ Attorneys) criminal financial manoeuvering remain the norm. The members need to rise up and demand honesty, humility, compassion and a the kind of church Christ would run. Otherwise, more will lapse, or turn to fundamentalist ideologies which alienate more people from religion.
This article or rebuttal, is sheer nonsense
The most stupid part being where he says that Christian Talebans don’t exist and that the “peacefulness” of Catholics shows that there’s “something to Christianity”
Well, how should I put it? You can no more rape and kill in the name of the Christ like you did in Latin America during the colonial times or burn witches alive in public because we WILL NOT LET YOU do so!
You haven’t become more humane, it’s just that in traditionally catholic countries, the people is now educated enough not to let you commit the atrocities you used to perpetrate, that’s a harsh truth for you, but a truth still
Now go one, censor me, as any coward
You forgot about the crusades….
I like how you gloss over the most important point, the point about killing, while you dwell on the technicalities. You sir, suck at your religion.
Your argument seems to hang on your view that the author is misrepresenting the catholic church as a whole. This comic is about how those who have faith can get along with both people of other faiths and agnostics/atheists. It is about not using a religion as an excuse.
Above, you criticised the Oatmeal for comparing teaching your children your views to forcing them to have a particular favourite colour. Do you agree or disagree with the basic argument?
Are you against abortion in all cases? Why is the life of the foetus, which has no memory, more precious than the mental and physical health of the mother? Pregnancy is not without its’ risks, an unwanted pregnancy carries the risk of permanent disability, infertility and death. Yes, you personally can hold the opinion that a foetus has some intrinsic value, such as soul, which means killing it can never be excused, but no one has the right to forbid others to seek an abortion, their beliefs do not have to be yours. Imagine you are driving a bus when the brakes fail, you can either kill a pedestrian and save the 30 on the bus or you can avoid the pedestrian but cause the death of all those on board. What if you recognise the pedestrian as a leading researcher who is invaluable to helping cure cancer? If he lives he will most likely save millions, so then is his life more valuable because of who they are and what they can do? What if the pedestrian is: the president, a cardinal, a doctor, elderly, your elderly relative, your sister, a pregnant woman, a child, your child? What if the cancer researcher is on the bus and your child is the pedestrian?
Abortions should be available for those situations were carrying a child to term would kill the mother or cause irreversible harm (including mental harm). Campaign for better education, for contraception and let the health system continue to provide safe abortions for those who are desperate,
Why is monogamy desirable? If procreation is the aim of sex then it could be argued that we should all be attempting to procreate all the time. Why should we wait for marriage? Why do we not allow children to procreate once they’ve gone through puberty, why the arbitrary age of consent? When did we decide this age? It used to be normal for marriage at age 11 followed by pregnancy soon after. Are cultures where having many wives is normal wrong? I only ask these questions, I don’t ask them because I necessarily believe any of the arguments that are implied. I simply wish to raise questions that I believe everyone should think about before coming to an opinion they want to express to others.
Whilst I am an atheist I have absolutely no problem with discussing points such as sexuality, the ethics of stem cell usage, anything, as long as the discussion and arguments are well presented and well argued. I have had many discussions with people of all faiths and differing views and they have always been interesting up to the point where someone pushes their opinion as the only possible one because of their religion. Explain your reasoning in a way that has a hope of persuading people who don’t share your belief, just because they don’t share your belief doesn’t mean they can’t share your opinion. That is what this comic is about, promoting reasoned arguments and meaningful discussions.
I do not mean to criticise you but I believe that your blog is a perfect example of “How to suck at your religion”. You offer no concrete reasons for your views. The comic angers those who wish to act in a manner similar to the ‘bad’ examples. If you already follow the ‘good’ examples the reaction will be general agreement and a smile at the slightly over exaggerated examples.
Also, did you suggest that a Christian Taliban would be a good thing? Do you agree with the suppression of others who don’t agree with you? People fear the Taliban because they murder others. Do you wish that Christians should kill to gain the fear of others.
Galileo WAS imprisoned for his beliefs on astronomy.
saying it didnt happen, doesnt make you right.
It makes you look like an ill informed dick.
I think the Oatmeal’s take is brilliant. I think the most important thing to keep in mind is the importance of church/state separation. Believe what you want. Your god(s), should She/He/It/They actually exist will sort it out. If not, the dogma and doctrines of many, many religions and believers have caused untold suffering for nothing.
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/71/db/07/71db070a15dadfba57c33bd98dc6e7ae.jpg
“specifically, it tells your kids that God’s existence is either untrue, unknown, or unimportant.”
There you go mate. You got this much right, now you can delete the majority of your text.
https://richarddawkins.net/2014/11/catholic-archbishop-ebola-is-punishment-from-god-for-homosexuality/
I guess it’s easy to be offended when you belong to the last pathetic remnant of an ancient empire, that pooled a bunch of beliefs into a religion designed as a psy-ops campaign to prevent dissolution.
Stupid is forever, and if you’re religious- you’re stupid.
Gutless prick, Jesus was a ZOMBIE…
God sucks cock and swallows everyday of the year.
Amen.