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.
While I like TheOatmeal for the most part, he can be a little over the top, and like everyone else, can oversimplify and generalize. He expressed, in his way, some of the frustrations we have with some religions and their fanatics. This response was well written, but also full of generalizations and opinion. I was impressed with your response until you compared the questions,”What happens when you die?” to “What’s 3×3?”. Here is a quote from your response to something TheOatmeal wrote: “In what world are those two ideas parallel, or even comparable?” Look in the mirror. Really? You’re comparing arithmetic to the afterlife? No one, in any religion, any where on earth, knows for sure what happens when you die. It is inherently impossible to know. If you tell another person that you ‘know’ what happens when you die, you are lying, and I’m not sure there is any religion that promotes that.
“the Holy Father pointed out that “the Galileo case has been a sort of ‘myth,’ in which the image fabricated out of the events was quite far removed from the reality.” Lol, you have to love it when the pope uses this to explain the Galileo case but it is also the explanation for his (and almost all) religions
As someone who was raised Catholic, went to Catholic (and public) elementary schools, a Catholic university and has a father who is a Catholic deacon, I think the Oatmeal has a valid point. A huge point. One you obviously missed in your nitpicking. I’m sick how bogged down the Church gets in it’s own dogma. Instead it acts like a dog eating its own tail. The current criticism of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is a perfect example. Thank you, Oatmeal.
“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.””
C’mon mate… .you can’t actually make some decent points about The Oatmeal’s logic by following it up with horrible, faulty logic of your own.
Also, your point about Muhammed was missed as well – by making that joke (and others in the comic) the author was CLEARLY making fun of Islam.
I will admit, I was suprised The Oatmeal “went there” and some thing he said were definitely a stretch if you really back-check, but all in all he did make some decent points and add to the discourse (obviously you felt the need to talk about it… is this not discourse?)
“the Holy Father pointed out that “the Galileo case has been a sort of ‘myth,’ in which the image fabricated out of the events was quite far removed from the reality.” Lol, you have to love it when the pope uses this to explain the Galileo case but it is also the explanation for his (and almost all) religions
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You took this comic way too seriously, do you take every crazy story you read to heart?
Oh wait… you’re Catholic, guess you do.
…
Carry-on then.
Wow, who writes this crap. Believe what you want to believe, but don’t warp reason and logic to try and justify your beliefs. Logic and reason, though powerful, will never be able to squeeze all those animals into one ark….
I read the cartoon and thought it hilarious, and to the point. Cartoons are intended to entertain and provoke, and it appears to have ticked one of those two boxes with most commentators here.
It’s not targeting Catholicism specifically (and to be honest, was quite restrained given the Catholic churches appalling recent record)- it’s targeting theism. When one steps back far enough from first their own religion, then all religion, one realises just how bizarre and potentially harmful it can be, as well as how it is obviously a lie.
While the religious acts are not necessarily harmful themselves, they leave it’s adherents wide open to other things – gullible money-giving victims of creationist con-men, for example. Faith without evidence is not a virtue, it’s a godsend to these charismatic con-artists and cult leaders.
The Oatmeal is a humor-based site…and judging by this pissy, whiny reponse to it you have no sense of humor at all ! that is just sad. Remember the golden rule of the internet : “Arguing on the internet is like running in the special olympics…you may win but you’re still retarded” HAHAHA
You do realize the glaring fallacies you’ve committed in your article, correct? It’s quite hypocritical to claim that the artist of The Oatmeal comic used “a lazy straw man” argument in his “[depiction of] a Catholic priest (with a Roman collar) confidently damning all those who don’t belong to the Church.” While I will agree with you that this is technically a straw man argument (although giving the artist the Principle of Charity would make sense because it’s a humor website), your very acknowledgment of the straw man argument implies that you know what it is and presumable have a bit of knowledge about logical fallacies in general, which is where the problem with your reasoning lies. In point 3 of your article, you claim that embryonic stem cell research is “medical research that profits off of mass killing. This has been done before [Nazi Holocaust], and those who opposed it on moral grounds weren’t ‘anti-science,’ and aren’t today.” and follow with a photo of concentration camp prisoners with the caption “Jewish twins kept alive at Auschwitz for the sake of human experimentation. Were those who opposed this barbarism ‘anti-science’?”
There many things wrong with this argument. It is equivocation (the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense, by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time), affirming the consequent (you are essentially claiming that the following: People who support embryonic stem cell research are alright with medical research profiting off of death. People who supported the killing of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps were alright with medical research profitting off of death. Therefore, people who support embryonic stem cell research are okay with the deaths of prisoners in Nazi camps.). Last but definitely not least, you are committing your very own straw man fallacy by choosing just one facet of stem cell research and its supporters and exploiting and misrepresenting it by implying that the supporters are in favor of “mass killing.”
I entered your article with an open mind but you lost credibility very quickly. Please, before you blame other authors of falsely accusing and exploiting a group of people, make sure you are not doing the same.
First of all, you’re naive to think that any of his points don’t have a large quantity of people that fall into the scenario (minus the very specific such as the Galileo controversy, which I’ll get to). I personally can name at least 1 person in my life for every scenario, which leads to my next point. At no point is he even insinuating that every person in a targeted religion believes that. Reading just the title explicitly states that, “How to suck at your religion” specifically targets the people that make their religions get a bad rap. Furthermore, at the end he dignifies those that do not fall prey to the naivety of unquestionably believing something just because an authority figure tells you it’s so.
The Galileo controversy:
Maybe you didn’t read the whole article you quoted, or like most Catholics, you ignored the parts that make you look bad. “..February 26, 1616, a report was put into the files of the Holy Office which states that Galileo was told to relinquish Copernicanism and commanded “to abstain altogether from teaching or defending this opinion and doctrine, and even from discussing it”. That happened and is taken directly from the article you linked. The point The Oatmeal is making is that the Church told a member to essentially stop his research, science is never advanced by a single person even when only a single person is credited with a discovery. What happened after the fact is null and void to the argument he’s making, which is that the Catholic church has a history of shutting out what can’t be explained by dogma until retracted just before the overwhelming proof is so, that a group being against it just seems like a crazy cult.
You do realize the glaring fallacies you’ve committed in your article, correct? It’s quite hypocritical to claim that the artist of The Oatmeal comic used “a lazy straw man” argument in his “[depiction of] a Catholic priest (with a Roman collar) confidently damning all those who don’t belong to the Church.” While I will agree with you that this is technically a straw man argument (although giving the artist the Principle of Charity would make sense because it’s a humor website), your very acknowledgment of the straw man argument implies that you know what it is and presumable have a bit of knowledge about logical fallacies in general, which is where the problem with your reasoning lies. In point 3 of your article, you claim that embryonic stem cell research is “medical research that profits off of mass killing. This has been done before [Nazi Holocaust], and those who opposed it on moral grounds weren’t ‘anti-science,’ and aren’t today.” and follow with a photo of concentration camp prisoners with the caption “Jewish twins kept alive at Auschwitz for the sake of human experimentation. Were those who opposed this barbarism ‘anti-science’?”
There many things wrong with this argument. It is equivocation (the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense, by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time), affirming the consequent (you are essentially claiming that the following: People who support embryonic stem cell research are alright with medical research profiting off of death. People who supported the killing of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps were alright with medical research profitting off of death. Therefore, people who support embryonic stem cell research are okay with the deaths of prisoners in Nazi camps.). Last but definitely not least, you are committing your very own straw man fallacy by choosing just one facet of stem cell research and its supporters and exploiting and misrepresenting it by implying that the supporters are in favor of “mass killing.”
I entered your article with an open mind but you lost credibility very quickly. Please, before you blame other authors of falsely accusing and exploiting a group of people, make sure you are not doing the same.
Wow. Way to not have a sense of humor. I thought The Oatmeal summarized things quite nicely: Religion is OK unless you are trying to force your beliefs on other people and/or ignore reality in favor of some old fantasies.
The link provided regarding Galileo almost made me spit coffee out my nose. I hope most Catholics don’t take that rendition as fact, since it is a grossly inaccurate portrayal of history. In 1616 the Catholic church declared that the sun standing till and earth moving around it as false and “altogether contrary to Holy Scripture.” This decree is well documented in Catholic records (Congregation of the Index). This, among many other condemnations from various entities of the church which are equally well documented, are why Galileo was so vocal about his theory and supporting evidence/facts. I would have been too, otherwise the progress he made might have been lost to science. Especially in a time when the church held sway over the law and history books.
I hope you can broaden your horizons a bit before passing. Believing 100% in a religious dogma as serious as the Catholic church’s will only lead to a sad existence with a gloomy end.
It’s funny because articles like this are exactly why the comic was made in the first place.
hahahaha, I was born and raised catholic and thankfully renounced my religion, while i am a atheist, I 100% agree with Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal) and this blog pissed me off no end…. stupid bloody religious freaks with nothing better to do that poke holes in a hilarious comic!! (btw, i think your entirely missing the point on it)
This whole reply and most of the responses have totally validated the message of the comic for me.
Thanks for being exactly what i expected.
It’s a satirical web comic that has mentioned Christianity, Mormonism, Judaism, Islam and Scientology. Don’t make it out like it’s one giant crusade against Catholicism. The author even points out he has no problem with people believing in religion or practising their religion, as long as they don’t fall under any of these common problems (which sadly, are big traits in quite a number of religious people).
Take the joke, maybe learn a thing or two, and move on!
The Comic is funny stop reading into the damn thing so much, just live life, and take things as they come. If you don’t like it don’t read it and move on with your life people.
In point 5, you compare opinions to facts. What is 3×3 has a known factual answer.
The known, factual, answer to “what happens when we die” is “we don’t know”.
The cartoonist was pointing out that we should not lie about an unknown answer. We should try to determine the truth. The truth IS out there.
Fortunately, it doesn’t matter since we’er insignificant blobs of meat, so feel free to yell and scream and carry on. It won’t matter in a couple billion years from now.
I find it interesting that so much of the response bites on the fact that the original comic uses hyperbole (a common device in comedy) and that you believe this invalidates the underlying thoughts.
I can exaggerate when describing something all I want. That may make my story ludicrous, but it has no effect on the message.
In my opinion, as an agnostic (not an athiest) is that making claims based upon something which cannot be proven is fine, but you can;t expect others to believe them, and it is responsible to ensure that any children you have influence over are given the opportunity to see that more than one point of view exists in the world. If you raise children Muslim, I think that is fine, but you should not forget to tell them in non-pejorative terms what the basic views of Jews, Catholics, Hindus and the like are.
I can’t remember what the Catholic take on free will is right now and I don’t feel like looking it up. (I’d ask my wife who is a former Catholic but she’s not home.) But on the off chance that Catholics do believe God gave us free will for a reason, this is the single best reason to allow others to make up their own minds.
Of course if free will is a Protestant idea I suppose I’ll now just be ignored. 🙂
You realize that every single one of your counter-points to what The Oatmeal was saying is a straw man argument, right?
Are you seriously comparing stem cell research to the mass murder of Jews in WW2? Is this a joke? Are we all being punk’d? ASHTON!
The author of this article seems to live in a little plastic bubble where there are no christians that take their beliefs to far and follow the bible blindly in some cases and not in others. Also stem cell research compared to the holocaust what kind of person are you?
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Are you seriously comparing stem cell research to the mass murder of Jews in WW2? Is this a joke? Are we all being punk’d? ASHTON!
I’ll mull these points over whilst I think about how badly I was abused at an Irish Roman Catholic boarding school in the 1980’s. I’m sure they will clarify the pain and humiliation. Meanwhile I’ll laugh myself silly at The Oatmeal who has got it bang on the nail. Still, your church owes me big time. Vile organisation.
For your argument for #10, what you’re implying here, is that every single muslim person is a member of the taliban. And as you quoted before, make sure you know what you’re arguing about before you make the argument. I personally, have seen many accounts of bullying/joking towards muslims, including by themselves, than I have christianity. Just thought I’d let you know.
The comments here have gotten out of hand, so I’ll just say “Thank you” for posting a much needed rebuttal.
I visited the link with an open mind. The comic is not funny. I don’t say that because it’s offensive. It’s just not funny, in the way that tying shoe-laces is not funny.
If your religion didn’t require mine to be wrong, I’d be a lot cooler with yours.
See how that works?
It’s called “How To Suck At Your Religion”. Not “Your Religion Sucks.” So get over it.
You DID realize that he said at the end “However, if your religion inspires you to help people and makes you feel better about yourself then you are doing religion right.” right?
He was just saying (In a humorously insultive way)that people shouldn’t take religion and use it to hurt people.
Religion is about love after all, but so many people use it to hurt and control people.
This man was just pointing that out in his quirky way.
I am a Christian, send my kids to Catholic School, and am very comfortable in my faith. And I do not find @oatmeal ‘s comic offensive. In fact it made me laugh, out loud. People can say anything they want, it still does not challenge the wisdom of the gospel. You need to lighten up.
Christians,Catholics, Muslims, Mormons, Athiests, Agnostics. It may not be a religion, but it is a belief. Just as much as some Athiests’s tauntings ridicule Christians, Christians don’t make it any easier on Athiests. Matthew is simply, ironically, trying to make the point that all are entitled to their own opinion. He isn’t “bashing” any one religion or their beliefs, he’s simply pointing out the tactics used by some religions/churches/people meant to hinder or disregard the beliefs of others. Again, this comic isn’t just taking note of one religion. Simply–don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself. It’s bullying. This whole argument is bullying. I have a pleothera of Mormon and Catholic friends and they all ask me WHY I’m an Athiest, I tell them, and they may be judging me, but they don’t BULLY me and tell me I’m wrong. And if somebody does try telling me I’m wrong, I find sitting there silently listening to what they have to say, much more aggressive than arguing with them about the creation of the universe.
PG-rated: “Religion is like a flying unicorn-sloth, it’s great to have. It’s fine to have one. It’s fine to be proud of it. But please don’t bring it out in public and start making it throw it’s poop at people.”
Why are all the atheists here acting so much like “Catholics?”
The entire point of the comic is to point out that there are people who are bad at their religion, meaning they give religion a bad name and use if to influence their own agenda. The entire point of your response is that each of the points he makes are about people who are unhealthily radical about their religion and give “true” Catholics and “true” religion a bad name. Therefor, on almost every point, you’re agreeing with him. But the fact that you’re way too dense and defensive to realize that is making you look like you’re the kind of person his comic is talking about after all.
Your blog, and namely this entire post is the biggest piece of TL;DR (for you ignorant religious fucks, it means ‘Too long, didn’t read’) I have ever seen in my entire life. I don’t know what, or who has lead you to believe that you are actually doing something meaningful here on the internet. But you are sadly mistaken.
I pity any poor bastard who actually read the entire thing. Let alone the poor s.o.b that actually wrote the whole article himself. I don’t know what you think gives you the right to have such a long and boring opinion on The Oatmeal’s incredibly humorous and downright flawless article. But seriously mate. No cares.
You can have your religious ignorance and hours spent wasting away at the computer, trashing out garbage that no one would dare bother to read unless The Oatmeal would kindly link to your blog in order to make you look like a fool.
The premise of this retort assumes atheism is a religious body, you know what they say about assumptions. It also tries to take a comic seriously, two misconceptions makes for a shaky foundation to build an argument on. As you stated in your introduction, it probably isn’t worth the time of a believer to even read it, so why should anyone care about your retort? (Besides self-affirmation, which is why atheists are going to enjoy the comic panel) Common ground found, can’t we all just get along? 😀
The entire point of the comic is to point out that there are people who are bad at their religion, meaning they give religion a bad name and use if to influence their own agenda. The entire point of your response is that each of the points he makes are about people who are unhealthily radical about their religion and give “true” Catholics and “true” religion a bad name. Therefor, on almost every point, you’re agreeing with him. But the fact that you’re way too dense and defensive to realize that is making you look like you’re the kind of person his comic is talking about after all.
I don’t think he’s denouncing Catholicism, I think he’s denouncing the people who use Catholicism as an excuse to spread negativity and their own twisted sense of “righteousness”.
You sir are a moron. And Jesus is a lie.
As someone that was raised a Catholic, I’ve always been confused about this…If you’re going to follow the bible, follow all of it. If you take the bible as fact, why not practice all of your facts? Granted some are very dated (helloo Leviticus) so they aren’t in practice now. Maybe some more of the Psalms and letter’s should be ‘called to the carpet’ so to speak and considered ‘dated’ as well. Having read the bible, no where does it state “Hey guys don’t use your God given intelligence to create better for your fellow man. That means you stem cells!”
But I digress…
The fundamentals of all religions are…be a good person, don’t be a jerk to your fellow man, live a good life, have faith.
If someone is following true to those basics, why get so worked up if someone has a different opinion? Faith? Way of living their life? Making people laugh?
Jesus forgives and we are all God’s creations, who’s to say that His creations aren’t all perfect and wonderful. Who are we to say that He made a mistake? God is light and love.
Go back to the basics. Relax. Enjoy your life and your faith. That’s all He wants.
Oh and to maybe giggle a little bit and not be so serious.
“It’s a webcomic, don’t take it so seriously!”
Not sure if someone already made this point, but you are mis-using the term ‘atheism’ – a more appropriate term is ‘anti-theism’. If you follow the logic: To be athiest, you must be 100% scientifically certain that god does not exist. While I must admit that I fall into this category, I must also admit that there is no proof of this and take it on…. faith. Therefore ‘atheism’ itself is an act of faith and a catch 22.
I believe faith in any god to be complete and utter cop-out on life’s mysteries. Further, if religion hadn’t caused so much strife and despair throughout history, I would be contented to respect your beliefs and accept the various religions around the world as harmless. Since they are the opposite of harmless, I must stand, as an anti-theist, against all organized religion.
Go Oatmeal.
Dear Joe, my english sometimes is a little wonky when tackling complex issues like this one, so I´m going to break my comment into little snippets for clarity and in order to be concise:
1.- Your response is in perfect concordance with the views expressed by Matt in his comic: You are a believer, and as a believer you KNOW for sure that this comic is wrong. That´s not logic, is your belief.
2.- Your argument about parenting is invalid. The hyperbole used by Matt clearly expressed his (our, agnostics) concern of teaching our children something we are not sure is true. You say “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.” IF THE RESURRECTION IS TRUE <— this is the key part in wich your argument fails, you NEED to KNOW that the resurrection is true, and I as an agnostic don´t know that for sure, there is no more proof than the belief of others and words in ancient tomes that cannot be confirmed by any other means.
3.- You make a constant point through your response that religion needs to be shared. Good, I agree. But I do not agree in forced “sharing” I.E. teach it in the school, make it mandatory or constant self promotion. Beliefs are private, intimate, and should be shared only with those who seek it.
Overall the rest is well written but misses the point of the comic, wich is: “How does it feel, uh? How does it feel to be told that you are wrong and you are the ´bad guy´?… bad? it feels bad?… welp, that´s how I feel every time someone tries to condemn me to hell because of my lack of belief.”
Or at least is that how I understand it.
thanks for your time.
I read most of your rebuttal and quite a few of the comments, and it seems to me that many people have missed the point of this comic. The comic stands as a deliberate exaggeration of traits exhibited by people who DO suck at their religion:
There are religious leaders who say those who don’t follow the same creed are going to hell. There are religious leaders who would rather hinder science than see it contradict their faith.
Many parents only inform their children of their personal religious beliefs and prevent them from making their own educated choice of which religion to follow (and some continue to enforce their religion on their children, even if said children no longer wish to practice it).
The author encourages teaching multiple views for what happens after death and allowing the child to decide what to believe, which relates back to the crayon argument because they have used the various colors and chosen which one they like most.
Many people use religion to attempt to enforce their views of sexuality.
Many religious people are intolerant of other religious beliefs.
Some people do unfortunately vote for people based solely on their religious appeal, and as a result end up voting against their best interests.
People send death threats over any number of ‘depictions’ of Mohammed, including the censored rectangle from the South Park episode.
There have been many people who killed themselves for their religion, many of whom have also killed other people in doing so.
At the end of the comic, the author reveals that the world (and religion) would be better off without the people who do these things, but that there ARE people who do good things thanks to their religion. He does NOT critique religion but instead takes aim at the practitioners.
Yes. To the first two sentences. The rest, TL;DR.
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I hope that you will not remove this comment.
Many of your points overlook the simple fact that what you as catholic, and those who are devout in any faith hold as truths are not commonly held by the rest of the world’s population. Along with this comes an air of superiority and condescension, which is why agnostics and atheists will attack and attack.
If you must find solace in a higher being to justify your own existence, I find that sad, but as long as you form logically sound and morally just arguments I have no problem with you, and will not judge you based on it.
This is my response to both The Oatmeal AND Shameless Popery
http://mystqfae.blogspot.com/2012/07/shameless-popery-vs-oatmeal.html