Unless the high chair prevents him from being inside next to Joyce, it won’t do shit to keep her private, besides He has divine atto-bots inside her brain scanning for sin.
Or lead helmets in a thick coating of rubber. Foil hats actually act as amplifiers for our thought signals, making it easier for god and telepaths in general to read our minds.
I regard that as evidence that such deity as there may be is not benevolent if omniscient, because when someone is stuck in one of these spirals of anguish, your job as a good person is to help them out, rather that use their get out of jail free-card by claiming “free will! keep suffering, can’t do anything about it”.
There is a certain amount of “Helps those who help themselves, e.g. the story/joke about the guy who keeps refusing help during a flood, and questions God when he reaches heaven. God’s response. “I sent a neighbor in a canoe, a rescue team with a motorboat, and a fluxxing helicopter, but you refused it all.”
While He COULD just wipe away someone’s depression magically… but he also created therapists, friends to lean on, the minds that discovered antidepressants, etc.
You forgot that all of this rests on the assumption that god is omniinterested in what humans are up to.
the Greeks thought their gods were mostly interested in their own power struggles and humans were just a means to an end. If one God won out, why should humans suddenly start to be so important that the one god gets involved all the time?
Well sort of. When I was younger I used to wonder why god didnt kill the evil people in the world. Like dictators and serieal killers, all that. I think those were my first baby steps towards atheism.
She has been slowly but steadily breaking out of her faith’s dogma ever since the comic began. The fact she isn’t freaking out is a sign of that progress.
One of the better things about being an atheist is you’re free to do whatever on Sunday mornings. As I’m not a morning person, I usually sleep in on Sundays.
Don’t need to be an atheist to do that, once you realize that a church is simply a human institution fraught with all the usual imperfections of any human institution: petty politics, hypocrisy, all seven of the deadly sins and whatever else someone may devise — Crowley’s musings on the evil and good of humans vs. the evil and good of angels and demons in “Good Omens” are instructive here.
in the Boy Scouts of America Eagles are actually the oldest, as you have to engage in service to the troop and community to advance, meaning even the hardest-hitting, Type-Aest will still need a year or two to advance that far.
The Tiger Cub Scouts are the youngest in the organization overall, and the Tenderfoots are the youngest in the “Boy Scouts” (when you turn 10 you advance from being a Cub Scout to being a Boy Scout. )
13 years old is the theoretical limit on Eagle Scout, with the time requirements. I know this because many of the people in my year could have made this deadline.
None did, of course. The Eagle project at the end requires a level of involvement far beyond everything else, and by then you’ve exhausted all the easy merit badges out of the required ones.
Free Sunday mornings are the best! Leisurely reading or internet surfing while sipping my coffee, everyone else in the house sleeping in, just me & the pets chilling. Today is like a bonus free Sunday morning too! Two of them in a row – I guess that’s what retirement is like?
What if God does eat us? Like our whole life is nothing else but a spice program and our actions the salt and butter and pepper we make our souls juicy and tasty so that God can nom us once we kick the bucket? o.o
That’s a weird thought.
If God relates to us the way we relate to animals, we can only assume that most of his efforts are to us what over-anilizing works of fiction are to our cats.
At some point, I stopped being surprised when I encountered yet another person who believed in an omnipresent, omnipotent god (normally the Christian version) and would try to hide from that god when they sinned.
The conversations with them were both somewhat scary and entertaining as you realized what they thought they were doing and the weird denial they were in.
My college boyfriend’s first roommate and his girlfriend would have sex in the dark completely under the covers so that god didn’t see them.
I read a synopsis of Foucault’s essay on panopticon and it seems like my example shows the failure of the panopticon and refutes Foucault’s points.
Foucault seems to think that the system of believing someone is watching you actually works, but in my example, even though they believed they were being watched, they “sinned” anyways, so the panopticon has failed, not succeeded.
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. . . there was a glare on her screen.
Yeah, seriously. I woulda moved too.
Big chair provides a +5 to stealth.
And 3/4ths cover against ranged attacks.
But how well does it protect against psionic attacks?
Hopefully well enough that my D&D group stops bongoing about my Lurk/Elocator.
hah look at this dweeb still playing 3rd edition
…nah just kidding i miss psions ._.
Now you’re stuck with Mystics, instead.
And that chair does nothing for aerial attacks.
Heh. It’s a redan.
Should Joyce be not-hiding in two of those chairs?
…a la Amber?
No, if she wants to be like Amber, she needs four chairs.
Oops. Yes, four?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/signal/
So then does she also need to have Sal trying to take the chairs back?
Ah, the classic theological debate. Can God create a privacy chair so high even he can’t see over it?
Where else would he eat the sandwich so big he can’t finish it?
He wanted to take a break after creating that rock.
And he had to figure out how to throw that pitch.
Hmm, yes. And if God is omniscient and omnibenevolent, how does he respect the sanctity of the privacy chairs?
He knows what you’re doing, but does you the courtesy of not mentioning it.
Unless the high chair prevents him from being inside next to Joyce, it won’t do shit to keep her private, besides He has divine atto-bots inside her brain scanning for sin.
I thought he was omniscient or whatever
God is everywhere, except in the privacy chairs.
Good news for everyone exchanging bodily fluids in them
this time on dumbing of age joyce escapes the wrath of god
“If God didn’t want me sitting in this chair, he wouldn’t have made it so spacious and comfy.”
If God didn’t want us to eat animals, He would have never made them out of meat.
A remark originally made about people, you know.
Flanders and Swann in “The reluctant Cannibal” if memory serves.
That is as I recall it, too.
People are too hard to catch, and even when you finally do they tend to escape pretty easily. We’re not tasty enough to be worth the effort.
Nothing wrong with being a humanitarian.
As Jake Vest put it, if God didn’t want us to eat cows, he wouldn’t have made them out of hamburger.
The best cows are made out of steak.
Did anyone else lie awake at night thinking they were so bad god would kill them just to take them to hell right then and there?
And then get even more scared cuz God reads minds and he heard you think that and is probably offended you think he’d do that?
That’s what the aluminum foil hats are for. God cant get mad at you if he cant read your mind.
He can get mad at you if you debase yourself enough.
Foil hats don’t work, you need to wear a Faraday cage to block the mental transmissions.
Or lead helmets in a thick coating of rubber. Foil hats actually act as amplifiers for our thought signals, making it easier for god and telepaths in general to read our minds.
I regard that as a reassurance that the Demiurge lacks omniscience.
I regard that as evidence that such deity as there may be is not benevolent if omniscient, because when someone is stuck in one of these spirals of anguish, your job as a good person is to help them out, rather that use their get out of jail free-card by claiming “free will! keep suffering, can’t do anything about it”.
There is a certain amount of “Helps those who help themselves, e.g. the story/joke about the guy who keeps refusing help during a flood, and questions God when he reaches heaven. God’s response. “I sent a neighbor in a canoe, a rescue team with a motorboat, and a fluxxing helicopter, but you refused it all.”
While He COULD just wipe away someone’s depression magically… but he also created therapists, friends to lean on, the minds that discovered antidepressants, etc.
It is curious how such a helpful god as that is indistinguishable from one who doesn’t exist at all.
If god is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, then god cannot be omnipresent.
If god is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omnipresent, then god cannot be omniscient.
If god is omnibenevolent, omnipresent, and omniscient, then god cannot be omnipotent.
If god is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, then god cannot be omnibenevolent.
^ That’s one of the ways I’ve seen the problem of evil worked out.
You forgot that all of this rests on the assumption that god is omniinterested in what humans are up to.
the Greeks thought their gods were mostly interested in their own power struggles and humans were just a means to an end. If one God won out, why should humans suddenly start to be so important that the one god gets involved all the time?
Everyone knows god kills the good people so they can go right to heaven. And by everyone, I mean C.S. Lewis.
Well sort of. When I was younger I used to wonder why god didnt kill the evil people in the world. Like dictators and serieal killers, all that. I think those were my first baby steps towards atheism.
*plays Commodores’ “I’m Easy” on the hacked Muzak*
“I, on the other hand, have been having the best day of my life, and I owe it all to skipping church.”
“Joyce, are you actually giving up your faith?”
“No! No, no, no, no, no, no. Well, yes.”
that’s not how that song goes
Simpson’s
Hoo boy, this one’s uncomfortably relatable.
Oh, Joyce, honey.
Awwww, Joyce.
Those chairs are not that great for privacy anyway
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/02-this-is-the-way-that-we-love/mansomeone/
“He knows when you’ve been sleeping,
He knows when you’re awake,
He knows when you’re good or bad,
so be good for goodness’ sake!”
What? What do you mean that only applies to Santa Claus?!
…I just realized this was a terrible comment without context. I think I do that a little too often.
I just thought that song was always weirdly invasive, and it could apply to a lot of other intrusive things as well.
nah it made perfect sense, you’re fine
Kids these days have the Elf on the Shelf to acclimate them to being constantly surveilled.
When I was growing up I had a dog for that.
Same beard, same god.
those chairs keep out holy ghosts.
All things considered? Joyce could be freaking out about this a lot more than she is.
She has been slowly but steadily breaking out of her faith’s dogma ever since the comic began. The fact she isn’t freaking out is a sign of that progress.
Joyce could get an Steam account, or a Slipshine account. Whatever works for her.
Fanfic-site!
AO3!
Put a sheet on top of the big chairs.
Is Joyce shrinking or are privacy chairs really that big?
Serious question, I’ve never seen one of those.
OK, just Googled it. They really are that big.
New comment: Oh god she’s shrinking. Someone get her one of those medieval stretching things.
Johnny Depp!Willie Wonka: “I know! We can put him in the taffy puller!”
Mr. Teavee: “Taffy puller?!”
Johnny Depp!Willie Wonka: “Hey, that was my idea.”
Willie Wonka has a machine designed to pull me?
Baby steps
I feel sorry for Joyce… a crisis of faith can’t be an easy thing to go through.
One of the better things about being an atheist is you’re free to do whatever on Sunday mornings. As I’m not a morning person, I usually sleep in on Sundays.
Don’t need to be an atheist to do that, once you realize that a church is simply a human institution fraught with all the usual imperfections of any human institution: petty politics, hypocrisy, all seven of the deadly sins and whatever else someone may devise — Crowley’s musings on the evil and good of humans vs. the evil and good of angels and demons in “Good Omens” are instructive here.
I mean, Joyce said it herself. Some prefer to have a more intimate, one-on-one fellowship with God rather than mindlessly attend church.
Or you simply rationalize it with the thought that church is for your benefit, not God’s.
You don’t get lemonade and cookies, though. So church has that going for it.
God is supposedly all-seeing anyway. Like Santa Claus or Superman minus the pesky lead impediment.
“HE IS A SADIST! AN ABSENTEE LAAAAANDLAAAWD”
Where’s a scenery-chewing Al Pacino when you need him?
The guilty (and innocent) flee when no one pursueth.
Alt-text: excellent Simpsons ref.
(Me when David Tennant took over: can’t sleep, Ten will eat me.)
Hah, that was kinda my reaction when I stopped being a scout leader too.
…You were hiding from the accusing eyes of the young scouts?
Young scouts have super sharp vision, which is why they’re called Eagles.
in the Boy Scouts of America Eagles are actually the oldest, as you have to engage in service to the troop and community to advance, meaning even the hardest-hitting, Type-Aest will still need a year or two to advance that far.
The Tiger Cub Scouts are the youngest in the organization overall, and the Tenderfoots are the youngest in the “Boy Scouts” (when you turn 10 you advance from being a Cub Scout to being a Boy Scout. )
EDUCATION!
Thanks o/
13 years old is the theoretical limit on Eagle Scout, with the time requirements. I know this because many of the people in my year could have made this deadline.
None did, of course. The Eagle project at the end requires a level of involvement far beyond everything else, and by then you’ve exhausted all the easy merit badges out of the required ones.
Ah, lower limit. I was confused as I did my Eagle project at about 15 or 16 ( memories fail me now)
Nah, not knowing what to do with my sunday monrnings.
I got kicked out of the Boy Scouts for eating too many Brownies.
Thank you! I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waiters.
Free Sunday mornings are the best! Leisurely reading or internet surfing while sipping my coffee, everyone else in the house sleeping in, just me & the pets chilling. Today is like a bonus free Sunday morning too! Two of them in a row – I guess that’s what retirement is like?
Yes, retirement is great. Though if you’re doing it right, you still don’t have enough time.
Did that chair triple in size or is she REALLY good at curling herself up?
The second one, mostly enhanced by the fact Joyce is a smol bean. ^^
What if God does eat us? Like our whole life is nothing else but a spice program and our actions the salt and butter and pepper we make our souls juicy and tasty so that God can nom us once we kick the bucket? o.o
That’s a weird thought.
If God relates to us the way we relate to animals, we can only assume that most of his efforts are to us what over-anilizing works of fiction are to our cats.
At some point, I stopped being surprised when I encountered yet another person who believed in an omnipresent, omnipotent god (normally the Christian version) and would try to hide from that god when they sinned.
The conversations with them were both somewhat scary and entertaining as you realized what they thought they were doing and the weird denial they were in.
My college boyfriend’s first roommate and his girlfriend would have sex in the dark completely under the covers so that god didn’t see them.
I think Foucault really nailed it in his essay on the panopticon.
Thanks. I had heard of the panopticon, but not Foucault’s essay on it. I’ll check it out. 🙂
I read a synopsis of Foucault’s essay on panopticon and it seems like my example shows the failure of the panopticon and refutes Foucault’s points.
Foucault seems to think that the system of believing someone is watching you actually works, but in my example, even though they believed they were being watched, they “sinned” anyways, so the panopticon has failed, not succeeded.