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.
-
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).
-
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.
 |
| 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.
 |
| 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.
BA HA HA HA HA HA I didn’t even bother to read all this. You all need to get a clue and stop jamming your “morals” down other peoples throats. Who gives a shit? It is a comic. Don’t like it? Don’t read it! HIS VIEWS on religion, and I stress HIS, I feel are quite accurate and the only reason most of you fail to see it, is because you are it. That is all I am going to say.
…also, flying spaghetti monster!!
THE OATMEAL RULES!!
As a fan of the Oatmeal: Shut the hell up. Don’t like it don’t read it? Can’t that be said for you as well? You sound very young and stupid. You’re not helping our argument (Oatmeals) by your retarded post, and you didn’t even read all of wjhat the guy said. You are a prick and not needed on EITHER side. The Oatmeals entire POINT in the comic is that we need less pricks like you in the world, religious or otherwise. Take a look in the fucking mirror, dude.
To criticize someone for not realizing that not everyone treats the Bible as literal word-for-word text, and to then turn around and take a webcomic, a very clear satirical social commentary, literally word-for-word……well, one must see the hypocrisy.
…This! The point of comedy, then taken out of context and read literally, is at the heart of what the Oatmeal was saying.
Thank you and good night.
…and here here!
THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT!
While we know for sure that the answer to “what’s 3 x 3?” is 9, no one knows for sure what happens after you die. So your argument (among many others in your post) is irrelevant.
(gets out the popcorn)
*Steals some of Jay’s Popcorn*
Personally I think you could argue this comic better.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla
ps. I don’t believe everything that happens to Beetle Bailey when I read his comic strip..
Wait a second… so a comic about people who use religion to do bad things is perceived as an attack on Catholicism as a whole? Puh-lease… In taking offense to the comic, you only prove his point further. Once you get your head out of your dogma and realize the difference between fact and faith, you’ll go a long ways. Your article is the joke here, not the comic.
I am religious, I also read this comic, and you reaaaaalllyyy need to get a sense of humour. It was really not necessary to write a whole article in response! If you don’t like the humour (which is fair enough) then don’t read it!
TL DR
Wow, this just underscores how crazy and messed up Catholics really are. Keep up the good work. I’m sure the Jeebs himself is getting a kick out of this.
You guys are way tooo uptight. Its a webcomic, its just a guy making a comic about his thoughts and adding some funny flair to it. If your truley offended by something so silly, maybe you should just smoke a bowl.
Why so serious? It’s just a laugh.
AMEN!!!!
Your only real defence in this article seems to be “It’s not true, because I say so”. There’s very little evidence here to support your side of the argument (and any evidence at all is used to correct menial points).
OH NO, HE DREW A ROMAN COLLAR?! You mean, that inanimate object around a man’s neck which gives them catholic superpowers? Oh wait, no, it’s made up bullshit.
If that’s your only real defence then no wonder you believe in Catholicism. I believe in Superman. Why? Because I say he exists. Try and prove me wrong, I’ll just use the ‘catholic method’: burying my head in the sand and shouting :”LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH”.
I remember my Lutheran Pastor had the same sort of collar. I don’t think it is specifically a Catholic thing. Now the crazy hat, yeh, that is pretty much a Pope only thing, at least in Christiandom.
I honestly just believe (see what I did there?) that you (the author of this article) were not smart enough to Understand Mr Inman’s points on religion. Specifically points 1, 4 and 5. While 1 was kind of incoherent, 4 and 5 just seemed to miss the argument completely.
The Oatmeal is God.
BAHAHAHAHAHAHA
So if there’s a really big book, like The Lord of The Rings, and it says there are Hobbits in it, then are Hobbits real?
PROVE THERE ARE NO HOBBITS!
They are real, cause it says so right in the book! That big, thick, book with words in it.
May the Spirit of Gandalf serve and protect you, always.
Freedom.
Actually they’ve (Archaeologists) proven there were Hobbits.:) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/insidenova/2011/03/hobbit-update.html
Actually Hobbits there were Hobbits. 🙂 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/insidenova/2011/03/hobbit-update.html
Is this real life?
Or is it just fantasy….. caught in a landslide, no escape from reality….. oh sorry i thought we were doing queen for a minute.
I stopped reading after the line that said you need to know what you’re arguing against. The Oatmeal is decidedly NOT anti-Catholic, nor is this comic intended specifically to be about Catholicism. Furthermore, the guy is a comedian, thus he speaks in hyperbole. The general message at the end is a good one, in my opinion. That religion, in some cases is used in an incredibly negative fashion, and that’s the issue he’s taking with it.
“That religion, in some cases is used in an incredibly negative fashion”
Voltaire made a pretty good song that mocks at that side of religion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-PX2Z4r-e4
Oh god this is awful.
your post was just hotlinked by the Oatmeal. Enjoy all the undue traffic you are about to receive
lol
I read the Oatmeal’s comic and this “rebuttal” from start to finish. Basically, you are underscoring every one of the Oatmeal’s points for me.
The most telling statement of everything you wrote here is: “Because if you knew Him to exist, surely you’d share that knowledge, right?”
And the unwavering assurance of every religious person I’ve ever met that the fantastical creature known as “God” absolutely exists because they KNOW he exists is precisely what gives the rational, free-thinking segment of society absolute fits.
And that’s where you – and every other organized religion – lose me. Every. Single. Time.
This!
Thank you! This.
Yes!
His article was better, and more convincing, than yours. Nice try though
This is the stupidest piece of shit I’ve seen this week. And I live in southern Oklahoma.
Wait, Resurrection has been proven as a fact?? how did i miss that? could someone please link me to the explanation?
I learned that in Farcical Mythology 102 in college. It was in the same class where I learned that Chuck Berry is la Chupacabra and that the Slender Man married Chloe Kardashian.
When will people realize that religion is for weak minded fools? Christianity and Catholicism are just rip offs of older religions.
But people keep on drinking that Jim Jones kool aid…
See, we can’t say things like this. This kind of stuff is why Christians think all atheists and other nonbelievers attack them.
Joe,
I would say that just because he wrote a diatribe against religion doesn’t mean he hates it. His tag at the end states if religion give you peace and makes you want to make the world a better place then that’s great. I the idea is that if you share your religion, fine. If you force it? Not fine.
As for the commentors saying The Oatmeal’s writer is a bad person? He just raised about $200K for charity – cancer research and environmental protection. He’s a good guy who is good at extreme sarcasm. Most of his posts? Talking bobcats and quizes about ferrets – all very harmless and fun.
Man, some of you guys need to read this. More words do not mean better writing, especially if you’re trying to put a point across.
http://www.squidoo.com/Clear-Concise
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Wow, Sure wish I could see the world in such black and white as you apparently do.
How about this? Stop fighting over your religion being “right” and just treat people kindly? Don’t force your beliefs on an ancient book on others, but reach out and listen to others with problems, help when you can, listen when you can’t…
Maybe then you will understand this comic.
AMEN.
AMEN.
YES!!!
Your points started out well reasoned enough, but I think in your attempt to completely destroy any credibility of “The Oatmeal’s” point, you have yourself
1. Arguing that something is not valid because of logical fallacy–is itself logical fallacy.
2. In section 9, you summarize: 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?
Then post an image of a nearly grown human fetus, and raise the question “Do you need to read the Bible to know
that killing him is immoral and unethical?”
Perhaps a better image would be one of a fertilized egg at the point of conception.
3. How many people were burned for heresy by the Catholic Church? Heresy as simple as preaching the bible? But we don’t have to go to the Tudor Dynasty for find scandals involving the Catholic Church.
One could make single page comic entitled “How to suck at your religion” and show an caricature of an Alter Boy.
See this? This is how you put across a point.
The author has taken the time to break down their individual supporting arguments into a simple numbered list. Web pages, whilst still a literary medium, are not the same as news articles, or books, and it’s rare for the reader to spend their time going over every word. Bullet points and listing serve not only to clarify the points made, but also make the reader more likely to actually read them.
”It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” – Carl Sagan
“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?”
You DO NOT “KNOW” that a “god” exists. You BELIEVE IT. That’s what you guys call it – faith.
The same’s with ethical norms – you do not know what is right, you believe that something is right and not. You believe any murder is bad. Someone on the other side of the world believes that murder is always good. Then there’s someone who believes murder isn’t wrong in some cases. And yet, there’s no single truth. Because views are subjective and not something to measure scientifically.
You can tell your children about your views, but you shouldn’t force them to think exactly like you do. That’s the point.
That some people may believe murder is good, does not mean murder is good. It means they are disordered. There is objective truth in this world even if the whole world refuses to see it or submit to it.
you believe in fairy tales
I believe in fairy tales and dragons…not so sure about this religion stuff though =p
oh really?… the comic was made for a lot of things the pope has said and not just the pope a lot of religious people… you are saying that the part of Galileo wasn’t true just for an article that wrote a person that din’t put any bibliography on it? Please… This is just ridiculous…
I love how you internet fools actually get into pointless debates in the comment section. Must be nice to have so much free time on your hands!!!
The Oatmeal was ON POINT btw
Actually, number 5 is called “being honest”. You don’t actually *know* that you have a soul which goes to heaven after you die, you have no evidence for it nor any way to test that souls exist or that heaven exists. You only have faith that this happens.
Admitting that you have no evidence for your faith-based beliefs is not denying anything nor is it agnosticism. So I’m guessing that the rest of you so-called points are just as inane as this one.
So if god does not exist, and having followed catholic faith is doomed to failure then who is going to call me a fool?
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Hi, non-Christian here. Where exactly do you make your point in a level-headed, fact-based manner in this comment?
Rob,
I deleted the original comment for its combination of profanity and brazen bigotry, but your response was classic. You could pretty much copy-paste it for about a hundred and fifty of the other comments here.
I.X.,
Joe
So the creator of the universe, THE WHOLE Universe, billions and billions of lights years and constantly expanding. An unknown amount of planets and stars, so much that we cannot comprehend. Also multi-universes and parallel universes. Creator of subatomic particles that come together to make atoms which then form molecules, which then became protiens, rna, dna, cells, life, bacteria then continued and constantly continues until today at this very moment in time of the billions of year old universe where on this planet out of many many planets there exists a bunch of talking apes who hold themselves in such high regard that they claim to understand how the universe and existence itself exists based simply on books created a few thousand years ago that were based upon other books and continue through generation of generation of indoctrination. These same talking apes that think they know the universe simply based on their 5 senses, when millions and millions of years ago creatures of this planet didnt even have a sense of hearing and even before that a sense of sight. So this same creator of the Universe, this vastly expanding universe with so much life and wonder, is specifically looking at earth and saying, “Allow me to use my petty human emotions and say, yes, yes, good job Chick-Fill-A, good job not supporting the gays!”
This ^^. Don’t forget “Let’s pray for Johnny to get an ‘A’ on his math test tomorrow.”
“I’ve already gotten two e-mails from people who had friends share it, and who wanted to know how to respond.”
I find it interesting that people feel compelled to respond. Can they not simply turn the other cheek as Christ does? Or (as caricatured in the webcomic) must you shove your belief down the throat of every last person that disagrees or makes a joke. I know Jesus died for our sins, but I was pretty sure when he left he didn’t put you in charge of the morals police.
Can you please direct me to that Bible verse?
excellent
oh, touche brother, touche. Noting lack of “religious” responses here.
It worries me that people need to be told how to respond. Think for yourselves!
wow! fun way to pass your time, hve the oatmeal comic open in a window and lol at the explanations provided here… so much fun.i totally disagree with you on everything just because you lack a sense of humor and posted a huge and tedious reply about a COMIC! GO OATMEAL!
THIS.
this.
Is anyone else horrified by a comparison of Auschwitz to stem cell research?! I find that to be offensive and disgusting. The long-term, conscious, desperate suffering of millions of people who starved and watched their loved ones starve, shot, murdered – that’s comparable to extracting cells in a lab? This is one of those moments where, as a Jew, I wish the holocaust example was off limits to Christians. To use it to make your terrible, typical Christian argument is sick, and makes me wonder exactly how persecuted you believe yourself to be. Get a life.
I am equally horrified; I stopped reading right there. Anyone who equates the two can not be expected to have anything of value to say about pretty much anything. I wish Christians would spend as much time fighting genocide throughout the world as they do protecting stem cells.
So I’m not the only one who was disturbed by that and found in in very poor taste…
No, you’re not the only one; I scrolled down to these comments for the same reason.
Sir, I have rarely seen rhetoric as repugnant as your attempt to exploit the torture and extermination of millions of my people to score cheap political points against an Internet cartoonist. Whether it’s right or wrong, a desperate woman deciding she cannot raise a child cannot be compared to a nation embracing pure, unmitigated hatred as its guiding principle. Please retract this disgusting argument.
agreed
agreed
ABSOLUTELY! Wholesale slaughter and attempted obliteration of an entire religious/ethnic/cultural group has absolutely nothing in common with stem cell research. It is truly horrifying to compare the use of undifferentiated cell lines to the torture and murder of 6 million people in the Holocaust or any other genocide.
The embryos used for stem cell research are the leftover embryos from IVF that get thrown in the trash if not used for research. I think they need permission from the couple who was attempting to get pregnant to use those leftover embryos for research purposes.
Not alone, Rachel, not alone. You can in no way compare the use of leftover embryos that will thrown in the trash to the murder of millions of people.
like
Actually the comic is spot on. If religion had a sense of humor, your reply would not exist. Thank you for proving the point of The Oatmeal!
If it’s so wrong about your beliefs, then you shouldn’t be offended… right?
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*Insert meaningless point here backing up my own views and criticizing all who don’t agree*
Teehee
You say that this grossly misrepresents Christianity, and yet on this same blog there are two articles that I can scan and within 15 seconds can grasp the following: 1) You are willing to ask an old friend how you can get him to convert to your religion, and 2) You are willing to actually tell people that without God their life has no absolute purpose.
Nothing further is needed to prove The Oatmeal’s point, because your blog did the work without you having to type this article to defend yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PvkeuA9TZc
I believe in that the Hindu gods and the Jewish God work together sort of like The Office with Steve Carell. Prove me wrong?
Loki’s still pissed that Eris went over his head when she put bacon bits in Xenu’s halal chicken casserole.
Oatmeal’s comic was meant to be allegorical, not taken literally. Mr. Heschmeyer, you have missed the point so compeletely, I am at a loss for words, other than to say your rebuttal offers many direct examples of sucking at your religion.
I took it the same way. Humor. I didn’t take offense at all. I mean anything that says “boner demon” and a “flaccid penis is a righteous penis” is obviously humor. It’s not true to my Catholic faith so I didn’t take offense. I actually shared it.
+1
Three things to add here:
1) The jabs in the comic are primarily aimed at the people with the loudest voices, the ones you hear the most. Anymore, the religious groups (such as the westboro baptist church) are causing a bad name for those religions who wish to practice it the way they are taught to practice
2) As with any scientific theory, the theory of god does not have enough physical or factual evidence to support it, aside from a guy named Moses writing a few books, spreading it to the Israelites, and it getting passed down and expanded upon over generations (not to say Moses started the whole thing, but he got it in writing), many of the books weren’t even written by those who witnessed, it was a story about a guy, told by a guy, who knew a guy, that told a few other guys, and eventually someone wrote it down. It’s one of the worlds oldest games of ‘telephone’. Point is, there just isn’t enough evidence to support or refute the existence of a ‘deistic being’.
3) Most of these comics are based on views, then expounded on for the sake of humor. Don’t take them as ‘fact’, just as I don’t take the bible as ‘fact’.
Well said. I agree.