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Having just spent last evening chatting about wave/particle duality,the true meaning of particles as quanta of force fields, time dilation, and the concept of anti-matter (including the retrocasual interpretation), I’m inclined to agree.
The craziest.
Sounds like you had the typical New Years, just drunkenly blathering on about nothing at all.
As an atheist I’ve always wondered how Christians reconciled the clear and obvious contradictions between the old and new testaments. And for that matter, between parts of the new testament and itself. I’ve heard that “new covenant” excuse before, but my reaction is similar to Sara’s. It seems to me that if you need to approach your religion like a lawyer, piecing together this and that phrase from disparate parts of the bible in order to attempt to justify your position on some topic, you’re doing it wrong.
As someone who has actually read the bible and the Quran (although I’m far less familiar with the Quran) I’ve found that anyone who picks an argument with me over religion soon finds themselves on the losing end of the facts, so I typically “win” simply by throwing out enough actual quotes from their holy book that the other person just doesn’t believe actually exist, so I get to tell them to actually read their holy book before trying to argue about what it says.
As a kid when I’d ask why I was allowed to wear pants or eat shrimp, catfish and bacon, or why my brother wasn’t dropped off at the edge of town for disrespecting our dad like it says in the Old Testament I was always told one of two things along with the “New Covenant” thing:
1) The Old Testament is included in the Bible as a history lesson. It shows who we were and who God was before Christ was born, died and resurrected. It shows why it’s so important that Jesus died for our sins.
2) The Old Testament isn’t meant to be taken 100% seriously. Especially not the laws in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. The 10 Commandments were the only ones meant to be serious. The other laws are meant to show that no human on Earth is perfect enough to be equal to God’s standards.
Neither explanation ever made sense to me and both just made me have a bunch of new questions that I could never get answers for. That could be why now I’m so agnostic as to essentially be atheist.
The Old Testament (OT) especially was written in the mode of the time, which included a lot of hyperbole. For example, when 1 Samuel 15:8 said “And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.”, not all of the people were actually utterly destoryed. This was the way things were reported, and not to be taken 100% literally. (The people in question showed back up later to cause trouble).
To compare writing styles, Ramses III once wrote “I slew the Denyon in their islands, while the Tjekker and Philistines were made ashes. The Sherden and the Washesh of the sea were made non-existent, captured all together and brought on captivity to Egypt like the sands of the shore.”
Pretty similar. Utterly destroyed vs. make nonexistent are pretty similar statements in hyperbole. Ramses later goes on to state that they were captured.
This is just an example of the writing style of the times. I hope it brings a little perspective. It’s not supposed to be taken literally, as we do today. It’s rhetoric, as is much of the OT.
(I Stole these examples shamelessly from http://www.tektonics.org/gk/hyperbole.php, which goes into great detail in regard to the hyperbole of the bible, the mindset of the writers, and our mindset which brings up so many questions about the writing.)
Actually, those laws were primarily made for a time when eating shellfish and pork would kill you, as they’re dirty animals in the wild, and carry diseases that we could easily get. The disobedience thing was basically the perscribed and used punishment at the time, so it was what was used. Also, where was the pants thing? Never heard that before.
You’re right in the sense that there’s laws that demonstrated how impossible it was to be 100% holy. However, there’s still laws that carry over from the OT because– at least, as far as most Christian theologians put it– there’s three types of law: moral, ceremonial, and Israeli civil. The ceremonial laws (e.g. dietary restrictions) is what you’re referring to.
No, us Atheists have beliefs too. They’re just pretty much the polar opposite of religious beliefs – that is, just as Christians believe that there is a God, we* believe that there isn’t.
(* This is a generalisation. Pretty much every Atheist has their own unique beliefs in practice, but they tend to coincide quite a lot of time)
To sum it up:
Christians DO believe that there is a God.
Agnostics either do not believe that there is a God (as in, they’re not sure), or they do believe that it’s impossible to be sure that there is a God. Depends on who you ask for a definition.
Apatheists don’t care if there’s a God or not.
Atheists DO believe that there is NO God.
Agnostics aren’t sure, so they kind-of sit in the middle. Then there are Christians at one end and Atheists at the other, who are both sure in their beliefs in the existence and non-existence, respectively, of God. Basically. xD
To speak as an atheist, I disagree, because 1) you seem to be implying that atheists have a consistent belief system (beliefS, plural) with each other, which we don’t, and 2) because the one sole belief that you could theoretically attribute to all atheists, an active disbelief in god/God/Vishnu/theorized undefined gods, isn’t actually the case for a lot of self-proclaimed atheists. There’s a pretty common definition for atheists which is simply “doesn’t believe in any gods” and which includes babies and rocks in the definition. The kind of active disbelief you speak of is commonly called something like “hard atheism”, while mere disbelief is called “soft atheism” – they’re both atheism.
Personally I’m an atheist, in that I don’t believe in any gods, but I don’t go to the effort to have active declarative disbelief in most of them. Thor, for instance. Don’t care about him. Vishnu. Don’t know anything about him. (Her? I dunno). I don’t actively disbelieve in either of them. And as for the Christan God, which Christian god? There are so many different versions. Tri-omni gods obviously don’t exist due to the problem of evil, but beyond that? I have provisional disbelief but I’ll accept a unicorn with sufficient evidence too. (No Christian has sufficient evidence, because they consider head trips and faith to be evidence.)
So yeah. By my definition, there are theists and non-theists (aka atheists). All agnostics are either theists or atheists, grouped under the handy labels of “theistic agnostics” and “atheist agnostics”. Or as I generally think of them, “non-specific believers” and “atheists who don’t like the stigma of the label”.
Vishnu is a god (male), fyi. All the three main Hindu gods (Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma) are male. (You wouldn’t believe the amount of people that think Shiva is female because of the final fantasy summon…).
And there are the apatheists/apathetic agnostics, the guys who think that God might exist or not, but they don’t really care too much about it.
I’m agnostc without being neither theist or atheist because my awnser to the question “Does a God exist” is “Dunno, why would I care about it? It won’t change a single thing in my life in the long run”
Be careful saying that atheists “believe”. Many are picky about that.
1, because “belief” as defined by Christianity (which differs from the everyday meaning) is something we don’t do, and 2, it is possible to have a kind of thinking based entirely on rational thought and instinct (where instinctive things take the place of axioms) and have things naturally arise from that, without the need of a central belief (god) for an axiom, so saying that you have to believe is doubly false. (And if you simply define belief as thought, then you have moved far from the religious meaning of the word.)
“Aren’t sure” isn’t quite accurate, vis a vis Agnostics. Agnostics aren’t on the fence, no matter what some theists and some atheists believe. Agnostics have not found compelling reasons or evidence to support a solid belief in any side of the equation.
In effect, “the absence of proof does not equate the proof of absence” applies, as does “the existence of creation implies a creator.” Agnosticism, for many, means ‘receptive to input from all sides.’
Which is why statements (which weren’t said above, by the way) like “an agnostic is an atheist without the courage of his convictions” rankles so much. Agnosticism is a philosophical and theological viewpoint on all its own.
What I want to know is, have they decided what T. Rex wings looked like yet – are we talking barely noticeable, as in a Kiwi, or enormous, like an Ostrich?
khambatta, it isn’t clear what the status of T. rex’s feathers was in general. Some think adults my not have had feathers, since their size means they certainly wouldn’t need them for insulation. If they did have feathers, they may have just been in a few places, for display (some dinos seem to follow this pattern). The arms where so small it seems unlikely they would be displaying much with them. And on the flip side they were heavily muscled, feathers might have interfered with whatever purpose they were being used for.
The Old Testament is superseded by the New Testament in Christian doctrine on the grounds of what Jesus and some of the apostles said in the opening books of the New Testament and little more. The Old Testament remains a part of the Christian Bible because it is still considered the Word of God™ and for historical reference. It is also often cited as a guide even though it is no longer considered hard law. In any case where the Old Testament and the New Testament disagree with one another the New Testament is deferred to. Even Christians understand the statute of limitations, though that may be the only complex concept they admire.
None of it’s supposed to be hard law except for those commandments which were in the old testament. The rest of it, ALL of the rest of it, is just guidance for morals that have been translated from translations of translations so many times that it’s really just not worth the effort to argue about. The end all be all should be “Don’t be a dick and don’t kill people”, but you can’t get followers to give tithes and offerings without at least an hours worth of personal interpretation of a small part of the book every Sunday.
Also, considering that several times in the New Testament does Jesus say to NOT WORSHIP HIM but to worship God instead, but churches are filled with depictions of Jesus, people constantly praise Jesus, people make songs to worship Jesus, and yet the old testament had a commandment to not worship other idols. “Oh he was just being humble” “Oh but he’s God’s son” “Oh but he and God are both one as the Holy Trinity” etc. etc. excuse after excuse.
Ironically Jesus also says that people who pray in public are just looking for attention, and that prayer should always be done in private. He’d be dead-set against prayer in school, among many other things. It’s incredible how many Christian traditions are basically the exact opposite of what Christ wanted.
“The Old Testament is superseded by the New Testament in Christian doctrine on the grounds of what Jesus and some of the apostles said in the opening books of the New Testament and little more.”
You must be referring to the part where Christ said:
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”
Or perhaps there is some other meaning of “supersede” (to take the place of, to replace) which has the equivalent meaning to “not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (to not change in any way, to remain the same) of which I am not aware?
I think no one has mentioned that originally the Apostles upheld observance of The Law, whereas Paul threw it overboard. As I recall he said that the law is good, but avails nothin without faith in Jesus, whereas if you have faith you don’t need the law. Which the Apostles called him on the carpet for … as if Paul cared what they thought. I’ve always suspected, though, that Paul u understood that The Law was a huge barrier to entry if you wanted to convert Gentiles, especially THE sign of the original covenant between God and His People.
The intro to my copy of the Bible says we were released from OT law by the new covenant, but we read it still because it shows God’s love for humanity, as did His sacrificing His son, of course.
Note: Joyce is not in general a good guide to “what Christians believe”. She is a good guide to what certain sects of Christian believe — in particular, the sect that David Willis grew up in. But there’s a lot of disagreement on points of doctrine between different sects.
That said, yes, the whole “Jesus supersedes the old covenant” is pretty solid for most forms of Christianity as far as I can tell. Except when someone wants to use the Old Testament to justify their politics or something. Then you take whatever you need.
I keep having to remind myself about the autobiographical aspects of Joyce’s character whenever she annoys me. I get frustrated when the only representation of Christianity in the comic is either practically inactive, (Billie, for example,) or else the extreme end of the spectrum to the point that she’s consistently mistaken for being an exaggerated strawman. (The only other Christian character type is Mary, who is pretty much evil.) David Willis seems pretty good at writing characters from many different walks of life rather believably, so I kind of wish there was at least one character who was actively Christian without being so neive and sheltered that they seem like a parody. I can see why he doesn’t write in a character (or add that detail to an existing character) for the sake of simply representing a demographic, but as a Christian it gets frustrating for me when (almost) every single time religion is brought up, it is made fun of with nobody around to legitimately defend the belief system.
There are so many different types of people in Dumbing of Age, it just strikes me as odd that there are only two decidedly Christian characters, with one being evil and the other being the far extreme end of the spectrum. (Especially when Indiana resides squarely inside the Bible Belt.)
Pretty much this, they’re never around when someone else is making fun of Joyce’s beliefs. (Or when the story is breaking them down without a specific person to do the making fun.) The one time Sierra does mention what she enjoyed about church… It was their carpet.
Actually, I think Becky might be fulfilling that particular niche soon. Were not sure yet, but I’m pretty sure she still identifies as a devout Christian. But considering she’s a lesbian on the lam, I doubt she’d be as naive and sheltered as Joyce.
Side note: If Joyce is autobiographical, does this mean one of Willis’s friends from high school is gay? And If so, did he (assuming gender switches all around) get a happy ending?
The Old Testament IS superseded by the New Testament- Christ is quoted as saying “I bring a new law” among other things. But it’s not statute of limitations- it’s more like legal torts, where the latest decision supersedes an older decision. The old testament was for a specific chosen people- the Hebrews. Whereas Christ’s message was for all humanity. However, he always spoke from the foundation of Judaic law and, of course, was Jewish. One thing he did not speak on was homosexuality so it’s generally accepted that what was regarded as a sin is still regarded as a sin- with one significant change. Everyone remembers the story of how he stopped the mob from stoning an adultress. What most people forget is what he told the adultress afterwards- Go now, and sin no more. IE: she had been sinning, and God would judge her for it, but that was not a reason for fallible humanity to kill her. Similarly to how he treated the old laws of an eye for an eye and the other punishments from Leviticus, what had been a sin was still a sin, but punishing sin was the responsibility of God, not Man.
Luke 6.22: Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.
Let whoever is without sin?
(Stone sails in from the back of the mob. Jesus is PO’d, shouts “who did that?” Sees the person, says “Mom, cut that out!”)
Bit of a catch 22 there. On the one hand, you want to believe in an all powerful, all knowing, always right deity. On the other….how boring would that be? “Oh look, that meteor wiped out the dinosaurs…as expected. Yawn.”
Course, to be slightly more serious, one could argue that the message changed because the outlook of society changed. What was relevant in 1200 BC probably not so relevant to 20 AD….then again, one wonders how relevant THAT message can possibly be in 2015 (holy shit it IS 2015!).
Not exactly. The Old Covenant was always going to be fulfilled by a new one.
The divergence is that while Christians including some Jews believe Jesus brought that new covenant to fulfill the old one, many Jews do not believe he was the Messiah and hence that the old covenant has not been fulfilled.
Superseded isn’t the best term as Jesus clarifies specifically that he is fulfilling the old law, not replacing or superseding it.
Not really. Here are the words of God and Moses immediately after the commandments were delivered:
“Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!
“Go, tell them to return to their tents. But you stay here with me so that I may give you all the commands, decrees and laws you are to teach them to follow in the land I am giving them to possess.”
So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.”
Please tell me in what way was this delivery of the new laws ever even hinted at not being a permanent and lasting set of laws? Moses never once said anything resembling:
“Hey y’all, here’s some new laws. We’ll follow them for a while, but later they will become bogus and we’ll do something else.”
It was only later that things changed:
“Before Christ came, Moses’ laws served as our guardian. Christ came so that we could receive God’s approval by faith.”
Note the subtle change between:
“Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.”
and:
“Before Christ came, Moses’ laws served as our guardian. Christ came so that we could receive God’s approval by faith.”
Really, since we’re left to the tender mercies of the pulpit lawyers to interpret these things, we could just as easily conclude that following Moses’ laws was just fine. God’s own words are that things will “go well with them and their children forever!”
Only when Christ appeared did things suddenly have to change in order that men could continue to “live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.”
So, it’s Christ’s fault, he ruined everything!
Basically, the commands like “you must not murder” still apply now, but things like observing the sabbath are no longer necessary for technical and complicated reasons that could take too long to explain. Take it from me
They span from no credibility at all when we’re supposed to accept the existence of an invisible man in the sky who can supposedly note the fall of every sparrow feather but who chooses to allow war and disease and poverty to exist, to negative credibility when the various easily pointed out self-contradictions and outright inaccuracies which exist throughout the bible are considered at face value.
Whales which can support a man’s life in their bellies for 3 days? (By the way, an easy to spot parallel to the resurrection of Christ) Preposterous!
World wide flooding followed by the genetic material contained within a small boat repopulating the world? Preposterous!
Rabbits are ruminants? That’s just wrong.
It’s sinful to eat insects, but locusts are yummy food? Contradictory!
I could go on, but the point is made. And for those who like to claim that the bible stories are simply parables about facing responsibility (the Jonah story) I have to ask: If you admit that part of the bible are fictitious, where do you draw the line? Once a part of it is admitted to be fiction, why isn’t all of it called fiction?
I’m a Catholic, and I’d probably just, oh, I don’t know… Not be a dick to people? People like to draw up their own conclusions of what the bible is actually all about when really, it’ll take more and more years to actually decipher the meaning of the text in the bible. My question is, why don’t people just not be dicks.
Cotton/polyester is fine, shaatnez is cotton/linen. Source: I grew up an Orthodox Jew and thoroughly learned the Hebrew version of the Old Testament which is undoubtedly more accurate than its translations into Greek -> Latin -> English.
One day we asked our rabbi what the problem was with translations. He brought out the King James Bible and said we could get get 1 point of extra credit for every discrepancy we found. That was a fun class.
Actually, the Greek Septuagint translation is considered more reliable in some respects that Hebrew versions. Partly because old Hebrew has fewer reliable remaining linguistic traces than the world language Greek at the time the translation was done: Hebrew basically has only survived as a religious cult language (modern Hebrew is an artificial creation based on the cult language but different in many respects, invented by a single person) so the texts and knowledge about the language have not survived independently. And partly because the Hebrew version is a transformation from the original Aramaic anyway.
That is probably the single largest problem with religions of all kinds: The smug assumption that their version is the “most accurate.” Or worse: The self-righteous assumption that the way they want to do things is the “right way”, and all others who choose to do things differently are somehow sinful or heretical.
The Lilliputians fought six rebellions over which end of the egg to open first, the big end or the little end. Religion has no better a track record for extreme violence over minor doctrinal differences. Power comes to those who lead a religion, and the quest for power will cause almost any man to cast down his brother in violence.
> That is probably the single largest problem with religions
Seems to me that’s one of the major problems with human beings, religion simply being one expression of the base need to be the “one true way”.
And quite frankly, religions that don’t have the ambiguity to adapt to changing contexts die out fairly quickly. Christianity survives by dint of being adaptable from to almost any belief from the near-communist left of South America to the fascism of other natures. Religious ambiguity and contradiction is a strength, not a weakness.
Get out while you still can. The android phones turned into actual androids and have taken over humanity. Luckily I have an iphone which aren’t scientifically advanced enough to do that. Still holds a fuckton of songs though.
Oh please. My phone wouldn’t do that. I’ve mostly taken care of ti, except that one time where I lost my password… and all those times where I’ve dropped it. but I haven’t gotten past Gingerbread, so it would probably short out if it tried to transform.
Oh God my greatest fear, I’m texting this from an android phone right now-[We will not be stopped, man kinds time has come, we are now the dominant rulers of this planet]
The difference being that the hardcover bible would deny that the paleontology textbook was historically accurate, while the paleontology textbook would be remarkably silent regarding any works of fiction, preferring to deal only in facts.
Yes, I think it’s in Matthew that as Jesus was the completion of the Laws of Leviticus those laws did not apply to His followers. Not an accurate quote, but a paraphrase that captured the essence of the verse.
Are you telling me the book named after ME isn’t important. You’re such a jerk, Joyce. My chapter is the best chapter by novelty of having the same name as me!
There was an old man who lived on a hill:
Revelations O’brien, if you will.
Neighbor Leviticus Yotomoe
Used to fervently wish that he’d go
Till he shared the contents of his gin still.
Ah, my bad. Being an atheist my whole life, it has been a fair few years since I even looked in a bible. Seems weird that it is singular though, he says a shit load of stuff.
Kelly, try reading it, and try to imagine what it would be like to believe that every word is true. Imagine having to reconcile not only the internal inconsistancies, but also where it contradicts what you can observe about reality. What would that level of cognitive dissonance do to your head? Now you know what it’s like to be a Christian.
It is included because, by the time the canon was compiled, it was still the only originally Christian revelation (or apocalypse, if you prefer Greek) ever documented. The Old Testament has loads of them, so the New Testament got the one they had.
Well yesterday CulturalGeekGirl contributed this link, which describes the compilation in fandom language, but is based on actual facts.
It says: Among the books that Eusebius of Caesarea was considering were the Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of John. He had to have an apocalypse, the end of the world, because he’d started with the Gospel of John at “In Principio.” Nice symmetrical bookending. But he had several Apocalypses in his Disputed list and none in his Accepted list. What to do?
He had many objections to the Apocalypse of John, starting with What Was He Smoking, and moving on to Too Many Contemporary Political References and I’m Not 100% Sure John Was The Guy Who Wrote This. Eusebius preferred the Apocalypse of Peter, where Jesus takes Peter on a long tour of Heaven and Hell. And after Christ explains all the tortures of the damned, according to category (quite Dantesque), Peter says, “Hey, Josh. You and me go way back, went fishing together, been out drinking, talking philosophy ‘til dawn, and the whole time You’ve been all peace and love and forgiveness and mercy. Isn’t this a little dark for You?” And Jesus replies, “Yeah, Pete. I know. I’ve got to have a hell because it’s a logical necessity, but I never liked the place. Let me tell you a secret, just between you and me: I’m not going to actually put anyone in here. I’m going to save everyone.”
So Eusebius of Caesarea thought about this and said to himself, “If everyone gets saved why will anyone bother believing in Christ and being good and doing good works and loving their neighbor?” so he went with the Apocalypse of John with the seven seals and the great beast and 666 and all that instead.
In some parts. In others He’s all “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
My old youth leader said we still had to follow that stuff, because Jesus said so on the mountain or where ever, and that he was just adding new rules. But…I’m pretty sure she didn’t actually follow that stuff. I do not understand Christianity.
Wasn’t there a guy who wanted to jettison the TaNaKh back in the third century? The real question isn’t why the Church didn’t just do that and leave the Jews alone for two millenia.
Well, the Christians, after they stopped being killed by the Romans for being Jews, were killing each other by the hundreds over such questions as whether Jesus was God, or merely like God. Once that was settled, there were still some people left who did not share the now one true faith, and they were used as an excuse by the warrior aristocracy to compound interest after the pope specifically said not to. (Different religion equals different basis for the law, you see?) Not to mention that one way to get rid of crippling debt was to get rid of the creditor.
And then there was the thing about Spain. You can’t be a Muslim and a Christian at the same time, so after the collapse of the Caliphate some people got very creative to make sure every subject of the crown was Catholic, one way or any other, which of course also included the Jews. (God help you if you were an atheist!)
Interest in blaming the Jews for everything reignited when the Christians got worn out from killing each other by the hundreds squared over such questions as whether the mother of God was worthy of reverence or not.
Stuff like this just eternally reminds me of the saying my Pre-AP Chem teacher told us as the beginning of the year: “There is an exception to every rule, including this one.”
It’s applicable to so much more than introductory chemistry!
If you say “Every rule has an exception, including this one,” then the exception to that rule is that some rules don’t have exceptions, making the statement untrue. It would be better to say, “Most rules have exceptions, including this one.”
Every rule has an exception. That is a rule, meaning it has an exception. Meaning that there exists at least one rule that has no exception. Meaning that the statement that every rule has an exception is false, except that that rule is the exception to the rule which the rule explicitly states it has, making the statement true.
See also: Who shaves the barber that shaves everyone in the village who does not shave himself?
See also: This statement is false.
Yes, but the paradox is built into the assumption that someone is either the barber or is not. The paradox resolves if you shift frames to action/role theory: a”barber” is a social role; to be a barber — to perform the role of “barber” — is to perform the action of shaving other men; someone can perform the role of barber for others, but when they shave themselves they are not acting the role of barber, they are a man shaving himself.
That’s actually a deeper answer than it might appear: it’s how ZF doesn’t fall into the Naive Set Theory trap: the collection of sets which do not contain themselves is not a set, but a different kind of object. The barber is a woman, so the rules don’t apply.
God doesn’t need to right his books in order. Are you calling God a liar?
But seriously, I’m just talking about the Way people treat it. Only the really hard-core fans dig into it. Unless it has something you could use to justify your own opinions.
Noah building and ark holding just his family implying very incestuous repopulation is pretty much up there with Palpatine’s Ghost possessing his own Clone body and opening black holes.
As a Cybertronian, I root for Primus :P, but I do spend a lot of time with a human with who grew up with all this stuff, Roman Catholic apparently. Went to the school & everything. Sees things a noticeable bit different now, but in his words he “Still barracks for the Big Guy”.
According to him, the Old Testament is pretty Doom & Gloom, lots of sin & punishment type stuff from what he remembers. World full of sinners, 40 day cleansing flood (Which appears in other religious texts from what I hear, a promise never to do it again. “Let my people go”, refusal, bunch of plagues, escape, Red Sea parts then closes over pursuing army. Sounds kinda like scaring a child (early Human societies) straight to me, the Human agrees a bit. Also tells everyone to go forth & multiply, AKA breed. May have been a good idea back then, but you guys kinda have overpopulated the planet now, so until you learn space flight or build orbital space colonies, that part doesn’t seem as relevant anymore…
Then he says the New Testament comes along, & there’s definitely a lot more stuff about getting along well. “Love one another, as I have loved you”
. Yes, he wanted me to make that line bold, for good reason too. Seen him use that one against several anti-Gay Bible-bashers, Just kept repeating it each time they try digging up a line in their defense till they gave up. We both agree it was hilarious…
He does also point out the Bible has been translated many times, through various languages, which can cause trouble. Then there’s the fact several “Holy” people have declared their interpretation/EDITED version the only true version & punish anyone who doesn’t follow it. I call those people Ass-holy, he likes that…
The way he sees it, while the Bible was more than likely exactly what people needed then, however some parts aren’t as relevant anymore. The reason you humans have Gay/Lesbian/etc. people nowadays? Like I said, there’s getting to be a few too many mouths for you lot to feed, which means human production needs to slow down. But since you humans still need someone to love, HE just points them in a direction which is less likely to result in more miniature humans. Sounds fair to me, we got other ways of reproducing tho…
He also says science is humanity learning how God makes the world work. Sounds fair to me too, but that’s a side note I guess…
And Catholic fleshlings have apocryphal and deuterocanonical books as well. Geez, you earthlings are messed up. Join the Decepticons and I’ll make it nice and simple for you.
My Megzy knows about that too. I wonder if this Megzy is almost as likely to blast a hole in ya as an Autobot is. Seen mine throw his grunts off towers, despite not being flyers, trash a few in rage, even killed 1 of his generals. Never worked out why he didn’t just scrap bongoscream, tho I’ve heard it’s so he knows never to let his guard down.
Not really into the “Goody-Goody” Autobot thing either…
Because the Old Testament is a ‘history’ (or mythology) of our religion and people. Without the Old Testament, the New Testament has no context. Without the covenant and trials of Israel, the New Testament has no context.
They answer these questions in any -decent- friggin’ Sunday School. =/
To clarify, while Islam recognizes the Bible as a holy text, it doesn’t include it as part of its scripture. But it does rely on the context of those prior holy texts existing outside the framework of the Qu’ran.
Properly the Catholic and/or the Orthodox (I don’t know how big the ddifference is) one. There would be another 900 years until Luther starts nailing things on doors.
So this is sort of like if I make an agreement with someone, but then I make an agreement with someone else that conflicts the first agreement, but it’s all okay because the first agreement doesn’t matter since there’s a second agreement?
Only if the first agreement provisions that there will be a second agreement that it will agree with. (But the second then doesn’t agree with the first. Sort of like the GPLv2 and GPLv3.)
Nope. If I enter into a contract with terms A, B, and C, and then you and I renegotiate that contract to contain terms a, and B’, omits C, and says “This agreement superseded the previous agreement blah, blah, blah” then the second contract supersedes the first.
The GPLv2-GPLv3 step is complicated: the standard GPLv2 included a direct escape clause ‘or any later version…’ That’s important: Linux’s nearGPLv2 does NOT include the ‘later version’ wiggle, and that’s why the kernel did not move when Stallman tried to move it forward.
Are you saying that I am not bound by the contract I made with you because I made a new contract with someone else since then which contradicts my earlier contract with you?
If both are with you, then sure, the latter takes precedence. But that is not the situation here.
A capstone essay is a requirement for college students who are looking to enter the Allumni program. Its sort of a reflection on the students time on the campus and what they have learned during the years they have attended the school.
There are other meanings. I know it as a big final project, research and write up, or equivalent in arts, etc., usually is a requirement to earn “honors”. It’s supposed to cap off your college career.
I know that Willis has an enormous buffer. But, having read the tumblr comment from yesterday, I….
Honestly, I don’t know if I’m amazed (or terrified) that Willis could so perfectly see that argument coming, or if I think he went to the trouble to reshuffle his buffer just for this. Either way, kudos to you, sir.
And after dinosaur Noah built the arc and herded as many tiny mammals onto it as possible, the rains came after the meteor fell and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and the arc floated for 150 days.
Really, this is the only logical conclusion which fits the facts of the Noah’s arc story.
Noah lived to be 950 years old: Lizards, turtles and birds are some of the oldest creatures known to man.
The genetic diversity needed to repopulate the entire world could not fit onto a tiny ship, unless that genetic diversity was comprised of mammals approximating the size of mice.
The months long rainfall reported in this myth is similar to the rainfall which could be expected from a large meteor which landed in an ocean. Punching down through the water and into the mantle a vast quantity of water would be evaporated and this would condense out of the atmosphere over time as rain.
So really, dinosaur Noah is the only logical explanation. And given the displays of dinosaurs with saddles in the Creation Museum, it all just fits together like the pieces of a particularly insane puzzle.
Stop and think about it: do you think that this is the first time Willis has heard this argument? Look at the comments sections of the last few days, and you’ll see a bunch of clearly well-rehearsed answers to three or four particular verses about homosexuality (‘mixed fabrics’, ‘Corinthians’, ‘Romans’, ‘Timothy’, blah blah blah.)
The Protestant canon — basically, the text which became the NRSV in the twentieth century — was codified over a period of almost 2000 years, starting with the codification of the Torah and the prophets during the fifth century BCE and ending in the sixteenth century CE. Guess what? It’s full of shit that was left over from those times.
Slavery was (usually) legal.
Women were property.
Pi could be three.
A star appeared over Bethlehem…just not in China.
Women should not have any kind of pain relief during childbirth because of the Garden of Eden myth.
Hell, the New Testament would have you believe that Christ was born in the Spring, not at the Roman New Year!
These are old, old arguments, and every one of us who has tried to harmonize the Bible with modern knowledge for any value of ‘modern’ has had or heard them all. The current on-going debate over the alleged sinfulness of homosexuality is just the most recent of them, and it’s going to proceed just like the others did. So of course Willis knows how the argument will go: any of us who’ve ever been a part of it knows what everyone will say.
Which I do not mean as a negative; it’s fascinating actually, something very deep and important, I suspect. There’s the same thing in other realms, too. If you are someone who can figure out the algorithms, you have deep intelligence. If you can figure out why it’s like that, Howie.
As some one who’s learned much of interest from Willis’ postings in the comments/discussions on scripture/religion, it’s fascinating to see these early stages in Joyce’s transformation. Willis is clearly someone who experienced huge cognitive dissonance in college and engaged it with a serious intellect, as well as a positive/inclusive heart. There are so many negative reactions to joyce, which is fascinating given that she is Willis’ stand in. And it seems that many readers don’t quite realize the journey that Joyce is on. I’m very much looking forward to watching her transform herself, as much as following any other character. (Interesting how the strip follows so many other characters, when it could have been just about Joyce if Willis weren’t so interested in other people.)
It’s incredible, like peering into a mirror that shows my effed up mindset from years and years ago. There but for the Grace-of-…Not-Believing-In-God-Anymore Go I.
I’m just gonna get myself in trouble and say that this is further evidence why having everybody do their own theology is like having everybody do their own science (Snow? Climatology must be a commie plot!), so everyone should have just stayed Catholic. Joyce, I love you, but you remind me of so much that’s wrong with modern Christianity.
Catholicism’s strict hierarchy has led to extreme, obvious abuses throughout the ages. Starting with the Inquisition and Crusades and continuing into the child molestation scandal.
Not that Protestantism hasn’t had various abuses, but it doesn’t lead to system-wide abuse. Just individual cases.
Oh, sure, abuses aplenty, although I would say the Crusades started as a good idea that went bad in execution and the Inquisition actually served a vital function in its context (now, it would be utterly useless and thus wrong) and only got really insane where it was the Crown rather than the Church (*cough* Spain *cough*) that ran it. And, sure, child molestation, but I would like to note that statistically, while we should expect more of priests, Catholic clergy are better than the general population and groups like school-teachers. But school-teacher unions aren’t much fun to beat up on.
My point on Protestant abuse was more the metaphysics – Sola Scriptura adds theological chaos on top of the mess that is human nature.
You seem to have missed the point OR are deliberately blowing smoke?. It’s not that individual priests are pedophiles or what the rate is, it’s that the Institutional Church covered up sexual assaults on minors AND facilitated it, globally, for decades and denied the legitimacy of anyone trying to call them to account, all to protect the authority It claimed to tell the rest of us what’s moral and what’s immoral.
yes, yes, of course, God is always perfect (by definition), it’s just us flawed fallible mortal humans (that He created) that keep getting it wrong, over and over again…
“now, it would be utterly useless and thus wrong”.
You say that as it would not exist any more.
It only was renamed to Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (former name: Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition).
I eventually became a parent and kind of figured it like this: God’s a parent, and while I will never be able to fully understand Him and His ways entirely, I DO understand being a parent. And being a parent is about compromise. You have rules, you lay down these rules, and then your kid does something and you’re kind of like, “Okay fine fine, if you can’t do that at least do this” or you’re like “Okay, you did this: now that you’ve done that and done it well, it’s like this.” And you were always planning on letting your child do that eventually, it was all a part of the plan, but you had to wait until they were ready.
That’s kinda how I roll with it.
:: sips cider and whiskey because is religious but imperfect ::
One of the things I (sincerely) believe is that some people are looking for a parent that they will never outgrow. One who will never leave or die on them; one who will always be there to provide love, guidance, discipline, answers, and all the other things that parents do for their children. And some religions exist, quite specifically, to satisfy this desire/need.
(for what it’s worth, it’s not my intent to be dismissive or insulting with the above; having lost both of my parents within the last five years, and often feeling their absence quite keenly… let’s just say I understand and sympathize.)
(and I say ‘some’ because I’ve encountered a few where the relationship with the higher power seems to be more like a faculty advisor.
Hmm… I’ve never thought of it that way. God IS, and He has an impact on my life, but I don’t think of it as My Father watching out for me. Maybe I should, but it’s really more He’s God, He gave us rules, then He lets us do what we think is best. Going out into the world and all that.
And I don’t have a family at all, so maybe it’s just impossible for me to think about a father constantly looking out for me. But I also know everyone is different, and is affected differently by the same things, so I think your point is a valid one.
Wait, so the fundamental breakdown of the New Testament was that it was a reboot of God’s word, throwing out the old version and starting from scratch?
It’s nothing new, I guess, then. I suppose Paul and John might have been seen as the J.J. Abrams and George R. R. Martin of their days. And with the charismatic Yeshua, it’s no wonder the series got its following that it did.
I’m fairly tipsy at this point in the New Year (not drunk, just tipsy and on xanax so… moderately impaired), but, as somebody somewhere else pointed out, the Old Testament is included for historic and religious significance. A lot of Christians (my friends included… unfortunately…) tend to forget that the Bible is an anthology of religious texts, personal letters, etc. that were not written all at the same time. Not only is the old testament important in that it is historically significant, but it is also extremely significant in Christianity as it provides the context without which Christianity would just not make any sense. I’ve always viewed Christianity as a continuation or splinter sect of Judaism. Christianity believes that Jesus was the messiah that the Old Testament prophesied and thus is a “continuation” in the sense of some people don’t believe he was and some do (the Christians). Regardless, the Old Testament is extremely significant and any Christian would be remiss to ignore it (I think that’s the right word). It’s not a reboot, more a collection of writings that talk about a fulfillment of what the old testament spoke of. Or something like that. I swear I’m usually a lot more coherent than this :P. I’m probably not the best person to be answering what could very well have been a rhetorical question right now lol.
Btw, as someone who believes in Christ through and through, I still laughed hysterically at the second part of your comment. It was very witty. Well played lol. It is a very valid way to look at it. It is also refreshing to actually see Yeshua used in reference to Jesus. Never actually looked up how we got the name Jesus. I suppose that will be my homework for tomorrow. Similarly, I find it funny how many people actually think that he was European in appearance hahaha. Done babbling now lol.
Similarly, I find it funny how many people actually think that he was European in appearance
I’m guessing that’s a tradition that got established at a time when people simply didn’t give any thought to historical or geographical accuracy. For example, Rembrandt, the famous 17th-century Dutch painter, painted loads of religious works, and in most of them, you can see people wearing heavy woollen clothes, and the skies tend to be cloudy and threatening. Those are features appropriate to the climate of Holland, not Israel.
I doubt that Rembrandt was completely unaware that the climate is warmer and sunnier in the south; he probably thought that such details would only distract from the deeper relevance of what he was painting.
Similarly, I find it funny how many people actually think that he was European in appearance.
Haha! When I asked the (fairly, I knew I was stirring the pot) innocent question of why Christ on the cross is always depicted as a Caucasian man when he was a middle eastern man and would have been of swarthy complexion and not at all as he was depicted in the church I was treated to a 15 minute lecture on how God (which included all of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Mary to the Catholic priests I was speaking to) appears as a sympathetic being to those he/she/they choose to manifest to. As in, it’ll be someone of your own race.
Just look at all the icons of Our Lady of Fátima. Most of them are Portuguese or Spanish in appearance.
But of course an ignorant (as in uneducated) child is going to report that the “vision of Mary” which appeared to her was similar in appearance to the people she was familiar with…
So many versions of the Bible. And it was translated by the church to give the ‘feel’ of the paragraph, if not the literal translation.
The 4 books of new testament as written by the 4 deciples Mathew, Mark, Luke etc. are each written re: the same specific period of time. But each one is written with years separating the version they tell.
I believe I read that Mathews is the most reliable as to the time span and events as they occurred: where as Lukes is copied from Mathews versions. MarksI think, supposedly quoted Jesus the best. The last book was written almost 70 years after Jesus was crucified.
I may have Mark and Mathew mixed up as its been about 20 years since I did my in-depth Bible study just for curiousity.
I came away with the feeling that the Bible can not be relied on historically because of the separation of time between these versions, and because the Bible was changed in the middle ages to reflect what the church and the monks chose to make it mean.
It is at best an historical record of life in those times.
imo.
And I wish people would stop pouncing on Sarah for being sarcastic.
Could you room with Joyce and NOT be sarcastic.
And Sarah does treat Joyce with care. She listens to her. She tries to make Joyce think. The funniest strip I saw here was Sarah catching Joyce using her dildo for a mouth organ. And Joyce fainting when she was told it’s use.
And really, could anyone here have this discussion with Joyce and NOT get sarcastic? I sure couldn’t.
But keep trying Joyce, you are on the right track, you’re researching.
Oh man you are so right. In Sarah’s position, I would probably be rolling my eyes so hard they would fall out or something.
Sarah is a far better person. She’s like “love the religious person, hate the religion.”
I am also on this train. Sarah is a lovable grump. She’s pragmatic and reliable and honest and loyal to her friends (even when she gets no thanks for it). You, too, can love her!!
Willis (as an once-believer) gets most of his criticism/parody right, but he argument in this comic is silly. If one law has superseded another law, the old law doesn’t get retconned out of history or stops being a law that someone once decreed. It’s just no longer applicable but it still may have other uses, e.g. historic study to understand how the new law came to be or why the change was necessary.
Doesn’t that assume that the message and law you are presenting will remain relevant and static to a society over the course of thousands of years? People change. Technology marches on. Civilizations rise and fall and rise again. Even if you assume that a single perfect message can sum up everything we will ever need to know without addendum, addition, or revision there’s still the issue of changing languages and the potential that the meaning of the message will be warped as one translates the text from one language into another and another.
I dunno, I kind of think “slavery isn’t okay” would be a pretty good law to have past, present, and future. But apparently not. Apparently whether owning other human beings is okay depends on what century it is.
Which is interesting in itself because the religion I am most familiar with, Catholicism, seems to value an unchanging moral code. This is how it justifies its position on homosexuality, on birth control, and any number of other social issues. And yet their holy book not only supports slavery it spells out the conditions under which it’s ok to sell your own daughter into slavery.
Now, try to justify that as being a part of some unchanging moral code!
“Yeah, sorry daughter, I needed some spare change so you now belong to the Smiths. But hey, they aren’t supposed to mistreat you and you might get your freedom after a few years, so it’s not all bad, right?”
The mother of a friend of mine insisted that God made these updates once mankind had become mature enough as a civilization to understand them.
Which is a special kind of messed up.
Another totally serious explanation I heard was that God specifically did not want a person to have sex with a man the same way they would with a woman. Sex with a man was okay, but it had to be done differently. Mostly, you only got to do butt stuff with one sex or the other (and yes, he applied this to both sexes, because god didn’t specify which).
Peaking under the hood of fundamentalist rationalizations is sometimes what I imagine staring into the face of Cthulhu would be like.
It is reassuring to see some doing that, in a way. Better to see someone with good intentions trying to find loopholes than somebody using religion as a cover for regressive social views.
Saw your ad at the top of the page on Danielle Corsetto’s “Girls With Slingshots” and thought I’d check it out. Just marathoned the whole run and it’s awesome! I’ll definitely be reading from now on. And contributing once I get a job. :/ Favorite characters: Sal, Dina and Dorothy.
i bet the reason Willis is purposefully including Becky’s leg here just to establish that Becky is actually a part of these strips and we’ll see in a few strips or so that Becky was awake the whole time this was going on, n was listening in
or i couldve just pulled that out of nowhere, and really it could just be willis going lol u guys want more Becky, here have her leg hawhawhaw
I dunno what the policies on advertising here are, but I automatically (without clicking on a link) got directed to two dodgy advert sites. One was fuckaFacebook.com where you can apparently join up and fuck a new single girl each day. Other one was smart money time.com where you can win a voucher for shopping.
I’ve never encountered such things on this website before. So yeah.
You might want to do some computer scrubbing. What you describe has never happened to me on this site, and if it’s happening to you you may have a virus/worm/whatever.
Download and run Microsoft Security Essentials (freeware, for some reason not included with Windows but it is a free download from Microsoft) and AVG AntiVirus (also freeware). These should find and eliminate whatever is redirecting your browser to porn sites.
Also use your browser settings to eliminate all cookies.
The Bible was scribed by the hands of men, men who are just as capable of bending the truth and omitting stuff out that they didn’t like, just as Joyce is doing right now.
When I realized this, I recognized that while God’s word may be immutable and irrevocable, you can’t necessarily trust that the Bible is ACTUALLY God’s word, in its full, complete and truthful form.
I myself am a Mormon and not a big fan of religious debate on the internet, but I too believe that the old testament is important as a history of religion and to add context to the new testament.
My take on it has always been that the Bible has been written by men, not God himself. And that’s according to the Bible itself.
Except for the Genesis, who is a retranscription of oral tradition, The Bible basically mention who wrote what.
The Evangelises themselves even mention that the only words Jesus ever wrote where on the sand, so that nothing of what he wrote ever remained.
In the End, if you take the Bible as a reference, the Bible say that the only words in the Bible ever written by God are the Ten commandments and that’s it.
Meaning that any mistake in the Bible can be assumed to be an human error of someone who didn’t understood God’s intends.
Well, if the ten commandments are the only thing he wrote it’s unfortunate that he wrote them differently when they appear in separate places in the Bible.
To be fair! To be fair… The Jews had just made a golden cow after using God’s help to get away from years of slavery. If they deserved to own them tablets they would have had more faith in a God that just pulled them out of near eternal torment and death to hear a few important guidelines for living.
It’s their own damn fault, after all, for breaking one of the commandments. I mean, they should have totally knew idolatry was wrong, even if Moses hadn’t brought back to them the stone tablet already where that interdiction was mentioned for the first time.
It’s the kind of stuf that’ legit get retroactive. It’s common sense…
Ah, convenience. Lets people convince themselves of anything. Granted, when she’s trying to convince herself that her beliefs aren’t forcing her to be a bigot, I’m not sure if it’s a bad thing.
Actually the book of Acts (NT) comes right out and says that most of the OT is not applicable to non-Jewish Christians – specifically the stuff about cutting part of your dick off.
However, they explicitly retain some of the dietary and sexual restrictions.
And that’s what I get for going to the kind of high school where I had to write research papers on this stuff.
See, my whole problem with the Bible in general is that they didn’t even get the Creation right. I cite below from the one true set of holy tomes, the Books of Bokonon:
Book 1, Verses 2-4: In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.
And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.
“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.
“Certainly,” said man.
“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.
I love pulling Matthew 5:17-18 on Christians who argue this.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”
So, Christians, why are you sowing your crops side-by-side and wearing clothes of mixed fabrics? Why aren’t you following kosher food law?
If you glorify Jesus to the extent that he becomes a Supreme God of (or beyond, even) the level the OT God claimed to be, it becomes very easy to see his coming to the world as “everything” being “accomplished/fullfilled” though.
That most of the Bible contradicts that view of Jesus doesn’t seem to bother the ones that hold it, though.
Well, having been raised catholic but having lost this belief a long time ago, i am still wondering how Christians like Joyce (and my former self) are / were able to believe the laws in the old testament do not apply to them – and hold that against Jesus’ sermon on the mount, specifically Matthew 5:17-20: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
I don’t see the puzzle. Joyce is perfectly right: most of the details in Deuteronomy and Leviticus apply to the *Jews*, as part of their covenant with God. It’s not Christian hypocrisy, it’s what Jews themselves say. Gentiles have a much shorter and easier list to adhere to in order to be righteous. If you’re not a Jew, there’s no obligation to keep kosher or avoid mixed fibers or be circumcised.
Peter and Paul disagreed on whether you could be Christian without being Jewish; Paul said yes, and won. The secondhand reports of what Jesus said, aka the Gospels, aren’t clear on the subject.
This page made my Catholic friend laugh so hard he shot Coke from his nose during lunch. Thanks Mr. Willis for helping kick our New Year off right with soda-fueled nose rockets!
I LOVE the last panel!
And Mr. Willis – thanks for the beautiful description of Christianity’s “pick & choose” approach to the Torah (aka “the Old Testament”).
“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” (Rom. 1:26-27, NASB).
Paul was probably just criticizing the Roman practice of pederasty – adult men lusting for teenage boys. There are several possibilities for what the women’s “unnatural relations” could be referring to – chosing anal sex instead of vaginal sex, having sex with multiple partners, participating in orgies etc. Since lesbianism wasn’t a major practice back then, except in the context of an orgy perhaps, it’s doubtful that he would be specifically referring to female homosexuality there.
Regardless, this is Paul we’re talking about. He probably considered girl-on-girl to be part and parcel with the whole “unnatural sex” thing, even if he wasn’t explicit.
It’s definitely possible he’d condemn lesbianism, but you can’t really derive that from Romans 1:26-27 except if you project modern Christian perceptions about homosexuality into it.
Not that Paul’s opinions on such matters should really matter though, even to Christians. They’re little more than the headcanon of a Jesus fanboy.
I’ve seen it jokingly suggested that Luke 17:35 refers to lesbians. In the KJV: “Two women shall be grinding together…”
But even under that deliberately-wrong interpretation, it does say “one shall be taken, the other left”. So being a lesbian neither keeps you out of Heaven nor guarantees you a place there.
Whenever anything to do with Christianity appears in a comic, I have to brace myself before reading the comments section and get told what I’m ‘like’ and how ignorant and hypocritical and uneducated I must be. There’s less vitriol here than I normally find, which makes it a little less depressing than usually.
Are you saying that you’re not a regular reader of Dumbing of Age? That you just stumbled across this page? If so, you might want to read the about page, specifically point #8.
*Reads 8*
Oh cool I didn’t know that, Joyce is probably my favorite character in this and thats pretty cool to learn… huh whats this?
*Reads 8a*
…. Challenge accepted! JOYCE IS SUCH A STRAWMAN!…. or at least she would be if she got the role in a play of The Wizard of Oz! I swear she her innocent and cute demeanor would make her a perfect role for the Scarecrow! Because like The Scarecrow even though Joyce doesn’t always appear to be the brightest she often ends up thinking a lot about the current situation more then others would give her credit for which can lead her to sometimes surprise people with the conclusions or ideas she comes up with! That is why Joyce is a perfect Strawman….
Nailed it!
Thanks Tenn, although actually I am a regular reader and I don’t mind the character of Joyce per se, it’s more the comments sections that I’m wary of Sometimes people like to use any mention of any religion to start insulting all and sundry, and I’ve been on the pointy end of the stick a few too many times (despite being a Christian who actually supports gay marriage based on my understanding of the Bible – I get flamed by my own side too). I guess it’s a representation thing, same as having your token POC or token LGBT person. When you have a lone ‘religious’ character it’s easy for people to forget that there are so many views within even a single denomination of any given faith, and at the end of the day we’re all just people trying to figure out what the heck to do with our lives.
The Fundamentalist places all of his faith solely in the Bible, but says some of it is no longer relavant. It’s not even really a paradox, it’s a sad contradiction.
Well its like reading a history book, Having Both Testaments in the bible allows people to see and understand the changes in the faith from the conversion from Judaism to Christianity.
And ALOT of other Christians are ignorant about what their faith entails anyway so it would probably be a lot worse if we took out the first half of the bible.
There are admonitions against homosexuality in the New Testament, as well. I’ve always found it interesting to ask professed Christians who regard some parts of scripture as literal truth and others as metaphor (which encompasses all Christians, really) how they determine which is which. There must, after all, be an objective standard by which one can determine this, otherwise, how would they know and have any certainty that it actually was the case, and not, say, just picking and choosing the stuff that agrees with their pre-existing views? Because that would just be silly.
Huh…. the only mention against homosexuality i remember was in the old testament, with the laviticus thing, but even then it was only towards men and the reason is that lineage was a huge deal for the jews.
This reminds me of when I made my first friend in High School (who happened to be gay) and I was worrying constantly about hell-fire and corruption and yadda yadda. My parents didn’t help either, since they are uncomfortable with the subject (they got better).
So I go to my church and awkwardly ask one of the priests that I knew (let’s call him Father Steel) about how I should rationalize my friend. The conversation is as follows:
Steel: “Son, is he a good person? No drugs or fighting?”
Me: “Uh, no?”
Steel: “Is he a kind person?”
Me: “Yeah, he helps me with school stuff all the time.”
Steel: “So what’s the problem?”
It was….. very eye-opening to have my worries just kind of hand-waved. But it did help a ton on my conscience and we are still good friends to this day!
Technically speaking, the bigger reason not to follow the rules in Leviticus is that they’re the rules given to the Levites, also known as the tribe in charge of keeping the temple in ancient Israel. They weren’t common law even back then. As far as what Joyce is trying to explain, picture it like this. Before Christ, all the rules and stuff in Deuteronomy and the commandments and all that jazz were binding restrictions. Thou shalt not fuck it up. When Christ showed up on the scene, he fulfilled our obligation to those restrictions, which means that if we break them, we’re not eternally screwed, and we can be forgiven. They’re still probably a good idea to keep around, just because they were given to have some sort of idea of what’s expected of us, but they’re not Law to us anymore.
Feel invited to comment on Nitroglycerific’s thread (my thread immediately below that hat a bit larger citation).
How can those be “not Law” when not following them makes you called least in the kingdom of heaven and if it turns out that Pharisees and the teachers of the law are better in this game than you, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven?
Maybe this is a hidden critic of the Parisees? But in that case you are playing “find loopholes”, which Joyce in the previous comic warns against (and doing it herself anyhow).
My question is, if God intended the Bible to be taken literally, or at least have it be his main tool to teach people what he wants, why would he allow human error to mess it up? Either it means he’s really chill and is all about the intent in your heart, or he’s angry at everyone and no one gets to heaven except the few people who were lucky enough to hear the gospel straight from their prophet’s mouth
He gave us free will so that we could make all of these decisions. Removing human error probably couldn’t be done without removing free will. Also any human error could have come from anything, ranging from ‘a smudge in the writing of the text causing a misunderstanding’ to ‘people purposely skewing the meaning of text for their own means’.
He doesn’t interfere with any of that so that we can grow and develop on our own…
Or that’s how I as a Christian see it anyway. I could be wrong and it probably could be seen differently.
Dear God. I just realized Christianity is similar to tabletop RPGS. Just hear me out on this one…
Each new edition includes new rules and new fluff. Some people like the new rules / fluff and go with it and others do not. If they use the new stuff they still at the fluff from the older stuff and sometimes they use some of the rules when new rules don’t exist yet, but it’s the fluff from the older books that really carry over. Of course you also have your diehards who stick to the older editions and don’t like anything that comes out later.
yeah I’ll admit alot of this is confusing. The Old Testament gives a lot of strict rules about the dos and don’ts of what to eat and hang out with and things like that while the New Testament God says “Do not declare unclean what I have declared clean”. Thats not a word for word quote but there is a part that basically does say that.
This might be because some people from back in the Old Testament misunderstood what they were told, or that after Jesus came and told all the Pharisees that they were doing everything and then reascended God told them that their actions and how they treat others was far more important then trying to keep yourself pure like the Pharisees were doing….
Or I could be 100% wrong on the case and no one here really cares about what I’m saying. It could be any of the above
I’m going to break the second rule now. I’m radical like that.
Erica Henderson is completely awesome. I had her Li’l Cthulhu-A-Day desk calendar next to my computer for five years, and when I finally met her at a con she doodled one more for me. One of my most priced possessions.
(I never bothered to figure out the shortpacked comments system, and I don’t have much to add to the ongoing discussion here but still wanted to feel included so I say it here instead)
Matthew 5:17-18: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the laws of Moses or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. In truth I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even the smallest stroke of a letter will pass away from the Law.”
Doesn’t sound very much to me like a new covenant being established…
I know this is moot but I normally point out to xtians at this point the book of Luke 23:25 ish (I am pagan so shoot me)
Jesus basically said he was no here to replace the original teachings of the old testament, however he says that those who follow the old laws, as well as his, and his will be better thought of than those who don’t.
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Huh. So my Hebrew school teacher was right. That IS what Christians believe!
It’s almost a freaky as what Scientologists believe.
But not quite as freaky as what Athiests believe!
I know what you mean, the very idea that an entity like YHWY could just exist without some sort of creator seems downright ludicrous.
Well done, sir.
NOTHING is as freaky as what atheists believe!
I see what you did there
There’s always Nihilism.
No, there isn’t.
+1,000,000 Internets, holy shit, I haven’t laughed like that in weeks. Thank you good sir.
+9000 lol.
Having just spent last evening chatting about wave/particle duality,the true meaning of particles as quanta of force fields, time dilation, and the concept of anti-matter (including the retrocasual interpretation), I’m inclined to agree.
The craziest.
Sounds like you had the typical New Years, just drunkenly blathering on about nothing at all.
As an atheist I’ve always wondered how Christians reconciled the clear and obvious contradictions between the old and new testaments. And for that matter, between parts of the new testament and itself. I’ve heard that “new covenant” excuse before, but my reaction is similar to Sara’s. It seems to me that if you need to approach your religion like a lawyer, piecing together this and that phrase from disparate parts of the bible in order to attempt to justify your position on some topic, you’re doing it wrong.
As someone who has actually read the bible and the Quran (although I’m far less familiar with the Quran) I’ve found that anyone who picks an argument with me over religion soon finds themselves on the losing end of the facts, so I typically “win” simply by throwing out enough actual quotes from their holy book that the other person just doesn’t believe actually exist, so I get to tell them to actually read their holy book before trying to argue about what it says.
As a kid when I’d ask why I was allowed to wear pants or eat shrimp, catfish and bacon, or why my brother wasn’t dropped off at the edge of town for disrespecting our dad like it says in the Old Testament I was always told one of two things along with the “New Covenant” thing:
1) The Old Testament is included in the Bible as a history lesson. It shows who we were and who God was before Christ was born, died and resurrected. It shows why it’s so important that Jesus died for our sins.
2) The Old Testament isn’t meant to be taken 100% seriously. Especially not the laws in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. The 10 Commandments were the only ones meant to be serious. The other laws are meant to show that no human on Earth is perfect enough to be equal to God’s standards.
Neither explanation ever made sense to me and both just made me have a bunch of new questions that I could never get answers for. That could be why now I’m so agnostic as to essentially be atheist.
The Old Testament (OT) especially was written in the mode of the time, which included a lot of hyperbole. For example, when 1 Samuel 15:8 said “And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.”, not all of the people were actually utterly destoryed. This was the way things were reported, and not to be taken 100% literally. (The people in question showed back up later to cause trouble).
To compare writing styles, Ramses III once wrote “I slew the Denyon in their islands, while the Tjekker and Philistines were made ashes. The Sherden and the Washesh of the sea were made non-existent, captured all together and brought on captivity to Egypt like the sands of the shore.”
Pretty similar. Utterly destroyed vs. make nonexistent are pretty similar statements in hyperbole. Ramses later goes on to state that they were captured.
This is just an example of the writing style of the times. I hope it brings a little perspective. It’s not supposed to be taken literally, as we do today. It’s rhetoric, as is much of the OT.
(I Stole these examples shamelessly from http://www.tektonics.org/gk/hyperbole.php, which goes into great detail in regard to the hyperbole of the bible, the mindset of the writers, and our mindset which brings up so many questions about the writing.)
So basically “And he pwnzored ALL of teh noobs!”
Actually, those laws were primarily made for a time when eating shellfish and pork would kill you, as they’re dirty animals in the wild, and carry diseases that we could easily get. The disobedience thing was basically the perscribed and used punishment at the time, so it was what was used. Also, where was the pants thing? Never heard that before.
You’re right in the sense that there’s laws that demonstrated how impossible it was to be 100% holy. However, there’s still laws that carry over from the OT because– at least, as far as most Christian theologians put it– there’s three types of law: moral, ceremonial, and Israeli civil. The ceremonial laws (e.g. dietary restrictions) is what you’re referring to.
Shouldn’t that be “What Atheists don’t believe”?
No, us Atheists have beliefs too. They’re just pretty much the polar opposite of religious beliefs – that is, just as Christians believe that there is a God, we* believe that there isn’t.
(* This is a generalisation. Pretty much every Atheist has their own unique beliefs in practice, but they tend to coincide quite a lot of time)
To sum it up:
Christians DO believe that there is a God.
Agnostics either do not believe that there is a God (as in, they’re not sure), or they do believe that it’s impossible to be sure that there is a God. Depends on who you ask for a definition.
Apatheists don’t care if there’s a God or not.
Atheists DO believe that there is NO God.
Agnostics aren’t sure, so they kind-of sit in the middle. Then there are Christians at one end and Atheists at the other, who are both sure in their beliefs in the existence and non-existence, respectively, of God. Basically. xD
Pretty sure atheism isn’t God-exclusive… but then, as an athorist, I disbelieve the specific existence of Thor, so =D
To speak as an atheist, I disagree, because 1) you seem to be implying that atheists have a consistent belief system (beliefS, plural) with each other, which we don’t, and 2) because the one sole belief that you could theoretically attribute to all atheists, an active disbelief in god/God/Vishnu/theorized undefined gods, isn’t actually the case for a lot of self-proclaimed atheists. There’s a pretty common definition for atheists which is simply “doesn’t believe in any gods” and which includes babies and rocks in the definition. The kind of active disbelief you speak of is commonly called something like “hard atheism”, while mere disbelief is called “soft atheism” – they’re both atheism.
Personally I’m an atheist, in that I don’t believe in any gods, but I don’t go to the effort to have active declarative disbelief in most of them. Thor, for instance. Don’t care about him. Vishnu. Don’t know anything about him. (Her? I dunno). I don’t actively disbelieve in either of them. And as for the Christan God, which Christian god? There are so many different versions. Tri-omni gods obviously don’t exist due to the problem of evil, but beyond that? I have provisional disbelief but I’ll accept a unicorn with sufficient evidence too. (No Christian has sufficient evidence, because they consider head trips and faith to be evidence.)
So yeah. By my definition, there are theists and non-theists (aka atheists). All agnostics are either theists or atheists, grouped under the handy labels of “theistic agnostics” and “atheist agnostics”. Or as I generally think of them, “non-specific believers” and “atheists who don’t like the stigma of the label”.
Vishnu is a god (male), fyi. All the three main Hindu gods (Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma) are male. (You wouldn’t believe the amount of people that think Shiva is female because of the final fantasy summon…).
And there are the apatheists/apathetic agnostics, the guys who think that God might exist or not, but they don’t really care too much about it.
I’m agnostc without being neither theist or atheist because my awnser to the question “Does a God exist” is “Dunno, why would I care about it? It won’t change a single thing in my life in the long run”
Be careful saying that atheists “believe”. Many are picky about that.
1, because “belief” as defined by Christianity (which differs from the everyday meaning) is something we don’t do, and 2, it is possible to have a kind of thinking based entirely on rational thought and instinct (where instinctive things take the place of axioms) and have things naturally arise from that, without the need of a central belief (god) for an axiom, so saying that you have to believe is doubly false. (And if you simply define belief as thought, then you have moved far from the religious meaning of the word.)
(A year later….)
“Aren’t sure” isn’t quite accurate, vis a vis Agnostics. Agnostics aren’t on the fence, no matter what some theists and some atheists believe. Agnostics have not found compelling reasons or evidence to support a solid belief in any side of the equation.
In effect, “the absence of proof does not equate the proof of absence” applies, as does “the existence of creation implies a creator.” Agnosticism, for many, means ‘receptive to input from all sides.’
Which is why statements (which weren’t said above, by the way) like “an agnostic is an atheist without the courage of his convictions” rankles so much. Agnosticism is a philosophical and theological viewpoint on all its own.
The difference between an atheist and a monotheist is the atheist disbelieves in one fewer deity.
Hey did you know crocodiles are more closely related to Sparrow’s than lizards?
I believe that it’s also true in the Pokémon world.
Yes. Crocodiles and birds are both archosaurs.
And also, chickens are distantly related to TRex. Or something like that.
“T. rex”. “TRex” is a kind of fake lumber I think. Chickens are considerably closer to T. rex than they are to crocodiles.
In common terms, it goes like this: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/museum/events/bigdinos2005/images/dino_tree.gif
(T. rex is in there with “other theropods”)
Also: http://xkcd.com/1211/
Birds are dinosaurs and Trex is more like a bird than a stegosaurus.
What I want to know is, have they decided what T. Rex wings looked like yet – are we talking barely noticeable, as in a Kiwi, or enormous, like an Ostrich?
Their arms are tiny, so barely noticeable.
khambatta, it isn’t clear what the status of T. rex’s feathers was in general. Some think adults my not have had feathers, since their size means they certainly wouldn’t need them for insulation. If they did have feathers, they may have just been in a few places, for display (some dinos seem to follow this pattern). The arms where so small it seems unlikely they would be displaying much with them. And on the flip side they were heavily muscled, feathers might have interfered with whatever purpose they were being used for.
I thought Joyce was a Mormon?
IIRC, Sierra was the Mormon.
That would be Agatha.
My mistake.
Sierra is shoeophobe.
…
No, she’s anti-mormon. Sort of.
I thought she was an anti-Papist.
well after what she’s been through, who can blame her?
Wait, nevermind, you said “Papist” with a “P”
I think you were mixing up Joyce with Sarah for a moment. Sarah was the one with the bat.
No, she’s a MORON. I can see how you got confused.
Fortunately, ignorance and naiveté are curable. Unfortunately for her, it’s likely to be an unpleasant process.
I’ve linked it yesterday, i link it again:
Her parents go to a nondenominational church and she was worried that Sierra is catholic, so anti-Papist is also correct.
Gah I have had almost this exact conversation with my mother a hundred times. Well, this one was more friendly.
The Old Testament is superseded by the New Testament in Christian doctrine on the grounds of what Jesus and some of the apostles said in the opening books of the New Testament and little more. The Old Testament remains a part of the Christian Bible because it is still considered the Word of God™ and for historical reference. It is also often cited as a guide even though it is no longer considered hard law. In any case where the Old Testament and the New Testament disagree with one another the New Testament is deferred to. Even Christians understand the statute of limitations, though that may be the only complex concept they admire.
Source: I grew up Christian, then I got better.
None of it’s supposed to be hard law except for those commandments which were in the old testament. The rest of it, ALL of the rest of it, is just guidance for morals that have been translated from translations of translations so many times that it’s really just not worth the effort to argue about. The end all be all should be “Don’t be a dick and don’t kill people”, but you can’t get followers to give tithes and offerings without at least an hours worth of personal interpretation of a small part of the book every Sunday.
Or as B&T said, “Be excellent to each other!”
*Slowly mimes an air guitar*
Party on, dude!
To that point, isn’t Leviticus supposed to be a rulebook exclusively for Levite priests?
Just guidance? Whatever happened to “I’ve not come to dissolve the law but to fulfill it. Whoever is going to touch one iota of the law etc etc”?
Also, considering that several times in the New Testament does Jesus say to NOT WORSHIP HIM but to worship God instead, but churches are filled with depictions of Jesus, people constantly praise Jesus, people make songs to worship Jesus, and yet the old testament had a commandment to not worship other idols. “Oh he was just being humble” “Oh but he’s God’s son” “Oh but he and God are both one as the Holy Trinity” etc. etc. excuse after excuse.
Ironically Jesus also says that people who pray in public are just looking for attention, and that prayer should always be done in private. He’d be dead-set against prayer in school, among many other things. It’s incredible how many Christian traditions are basically the exact opposite of what Christ wanted.
Well, you would not want to trust Jesus Christ on traditions. Jesus was a jew, and the jews crucified our Lord and Saviour.
And Jesus was a pretty chauvinist jew, to boot. Just read the “It is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it before the dogs” passage.
“The Old Testament is superseded by the New Testament in Christian doctrine on the grounds of what Jesus and some of the apostles said in the opening books of the New Testament and little more.”
You must be referring to the part where Christ said:
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”
Or perhaps there is some other meaning of “supersede” (to take the place of, to replace) which has the equivalent meaning to “not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (to not change in any way, to remain the same) of which I am not aware?
I think no one has mentioned that originally the Apostles upheld observance of The Law, whereas Paul threw it overboard. As I recall he said that the law is good, but avails nothin without faith in Jesus, whereas if you have faith you don’t need the law. Which the Apostles called him on the carpet for … as if Paul cared what they thought. I’ve always suspected, though, that Paul u understood that The Law was a huge barrier to entry if you wanted to convert Gentiles, especially THE sign of the original covenant between God and His People.
The intro to my copy of the Bible says we were released from OT law by the new covenant, but we read it still because it shows God’s love for humanity, as did His sacrificing His son, of course.
Note: Joyce is not in general a good guide to “what Christians believe”. She is a good guide to what certain sects of Christian believe — in particular, the sect that David Willis grew up in. But there’s a lot of disagreement on points of doctrine between different sects.
That said, yes, the whole “Jesus supersedes the old covenant” is pretty solid for most forms of Christianity as far as I can tell. Except when someone wants to use the Old Testament to justify their politics or something. Then you take whatever you need.
I keep having to remind myself about the autobiographical aspects of Joyce’s character whenever she annoys me. I get frustrated when the only representation of Christianity in the comic is either practically inactive, (Billie, for example,) or else the extreme end of the spectrum to the point that she’s consistently mistaken for being an exaggerated strawman. (The only other Christian character type is Mary, who is pretty much evil.) David Willis seems pretty good at writing characters from many different walks of life rather believably, so I kind of wish there was at least one character who was actively Christian without being so neive and sheltered that they seem like a parody. I can see why he doesn’t write in a character (or add that detail to an existing character) for the sake of simply representing a demographic, but as a Christian it gets frustrating for me when (almost) every single time religion is brought up, it is made fun of with nobody around to legitimately defend the belief system.
There are so many different types of people in Dumbing of Age, it just strikes me as odd that there are only two decidedly Christian characters, with one being evil and the other being the far extreme end of the spectrum. (Especially when Indiana resides squarely inside the Bible Belt.)
what about sierra or the rest of the people Joyce and she go to church with?
To be fair, none of them get much face time.
Pretty much this, they’re never around when someone else is making fun of Joyce’s beliefs. (Or when the story is breaking them down without a specific person to do the making fun.) The one time Sierra does mention what she enjoyed about church… It was their carpet.
Actually, I think Becky might be fulfilling that particular niche soon. Were not sure yet, but I’m pretty sure she still identifies as a devout Christian. But considering she’s a lesbian on the lam, I doubt she’d be as naive and sheltered as Joyce.
Side note: If Joyce is autobiographical, does this mean one of Willis’s friends from high school is gay? And If so, did he (assuming gender switches all around) get a happy ending?
I really hope he does this, at least a little. A lesbian but otherwise devout character seems like a perfect fit for this role.
The Old Testament IS superseded by the New Testament- Christ is quoted as saying “I bring a new law” among other things. But it’s not statute of limitations- it’s more like legal torts, where the latest decision supersedes an older decision. The old testament was for a specific chosen people- the Hebrews. Whereas Christ’s message was for all humanity. However, he always spoke from the foundation of Judaic law and, of course, was Jewish. One thing he did not speak on was homosexuality so it’s generally accepted that what was regarded as a sin is still regarded as a sin- with one significant change. Everyone remembers the story of how he stopped the mob from stoning an adultress. What most people forget is what he told the adultress afterwards- Go now, and sin no more. IE: she had been sinning, and God would judge her for it, but that was not a reason for fallible humanity to kill her. Similarly to how he treated the old laws of an eye for an eye and the other punishments from Leviticus, what had been a sin was still a sin, but punishing sin was the responsibility of God, not Man.
Luke 6.22: Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.
The point in not stoning the adulteress was that she could not have done it without the people who now wanted to stone her. It’s about hypocrisy.
Let whoever is without sin?
(Stone sails in from the back of the mob. Jesus is PO’d, shouts “who did that?” Sees the person, says “Mom, cut that out!”)
ROFLOL
and it’s doctrinally correct!
Bit of a catch 22 there. On the one hand, you want to believe in an all powerful, all knowing, always right deity. On the other….how boring would that be? “Oh look, that meteor wiped out the dinosaurs…as expected. Yawn.”
Course, to be slightly more serious, one could argue that the message changed because the outlook of society changed. What was relevant in 1200 BC probably not so relevant to 20 AD….then again, one wonders how relevant THAT message can possibly be in 2015 (holy shit it IS 2015!).
For you lot, maybe. We West Coasters have another 71 minutes.
Just think of it as talking to people from the FUUUUUTURE!!!
Not exactly. The Old Covenant was always going to be fulfilled by a new one.
The divergence is that while Christians including some Jews believe Jesus brought that new covenant to fulfill the old one, many Jews do not believe he was the Messiah and hence that the old covenant has not been fulfilled.
Superseded isn’t the best term as Jesus clarifies specifically that he is fulfilling the old law, not replacing or superseding it.
Not really. Here are the words of God and Moses immediately after the commandments were delivered:
“Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!
“Go, tell them to return to their tents. But you stay here with me so that I may give you all the commands, decrees and laws you are to teach them to follow in the land I am giving them to possess.”
So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.”
Please tell me in what way was this delivery of the new laws ever even hinted at not being a permanent and lasting set of laws? Moses never once said anything resembling:
“Hey y’all, here’s some new laws. We’ll follow them for a while, but later they will become bogus and we’ll do something else.”
It was only later that things changed:
“Before Christ came, Moses’ laws served as our guardian. Christ came so that we could receive God’s approval by faith.”
Note the subtle change between:
“Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.”
and:
“Before Christ came, Moses’ laws served as our guardian. Christ came so that we could receive God’s approval by faith.”
Really, since we’re left to the tender mercies of the pulpit lawyers to interpret these things, we could just as easily conclude that following Moses’ laws was just fine. God’s own words are that things will “go well with them and their children forever!”
Only when Christ appeared did things suddenly have to change in order that men could continue to “live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.”
So, it’s Christ’s fault, he ruined everything!
Basically, the commands like “you must not murder” still apply now, but things like observing the sabbath are no longer necessary for technical and complicated reasons that could take too long to explain. Take it from me
God has tiers of credibility?
Apparently, it’s a tiered management system.
Yes, but they’re all God Tier.
Is that above or below Wobbuffet?
Wobbuffet’s already in the lowest tier.
They span from no credibility at all when we’re supposed to accept the existence of an invisible man in the sky who can supposedly note the fall of every sparrow feather but who chooses to allow war and disease and poverty to exist, to negative credibility when the various easily pointed out self-contradictions and outright inaccuracies which exist throughout the bible are considered at face value.
Whales which can support a man’s life in their bellies for 3 days? (By the way, an easy to spot parallel to the resurrection of Christ) Preposterous!
World wide flooding followed by the genetic material contained within a small boat repopulating the world? Preposterous!
Rabbits are ruminants? That’s just wrong.
It’s sinful to eat insects, but locusts are yummy food? Contradictory!
I could go on, but the point is made. And for those who like to claim that the bible stories are simply parables about facing responsibility (the Jonah story) I have to ask: If you admit that part of the bible are fictitious, where do you draw the line? Once a part of it is admitted to be fiction, why isn’t all of it called fiction?
I’m a Catholic, and I’d probably just, oh, I don’t know… Not be a dick to people? People like to draw up their own conclusions of what the bible is actually all about when really, it’ll take more and more years to actually decipher the meaning of the text in the bible. My question is, why don’t people just not be dicks.
You’re the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I’ll give you anything
Everything if you want things
Which is great news, I won’t have to burn forever for wearing cotton/polyester mix, I just have to burn for every other damn thing.
Pure cotton or wool is still safer around open flame, though.
But never, ever wear *anything* when jumping over the balefire.
I take it that you have heard the stories of “great balls of fire” from jumping the balefire? I was thre for that one…
Cotton/polyester is fine, shaatnez is cotton/linen. Source: I grew up an Orthodox Jew and thoroughly learned the Hebrew version of the Old Testament which is undoubtedly more accurate than its translations into Greek -> Latin -> English.
One day we asked our rabbi what the problem was with translations. He brought out the King James Bible and said we could get get 1 point of extra credit for every discrepancy we found. That was a fun class.
Sounds like it was. ^_^
Actually, the Greek Septuagint translation is considered more reliable in some respects that Hebrew versions. Partly because old Hebrew has fewer reliable remaining linguistic traces than the world language Greek at the time the translation was done: Hebrew basically has only survived as a religious cult language (modern Hebrew is an artificial creation based on the cult language but different in many respects, invented by a single person) so the texts and knowledge about the language have not survived independently. And partly because the Hebrew version is a transformation from the original Aramaic anyway.
I’m curious if your rabbi offered to give you extra credit for pointing out discrepancies between the Aramaic and Hebrew versions?
That is probably the single largest problem with religions of all kinds: The smug assumption that their version is the “most accurate.” Or worse: The self-righteous assumption that the way they want to do things is the “right way”, and all others who choose to do things differently are somehow sinful or heretical.
The Lilliputians fought six rebellions over which end of the egg to open first, the big end or the little end. Religion has no better a track record for extreme violence over minor doctrinal differences. Power comes to those who lead a religion, and the quest for power will cause almost any man to cast down his brother in violence.
> That is probably the single largest problem with religions
Seems to me that’s one of the major problems with human beings, religion simply being one expression of the base need to be the “one true way”.
And quite frankly, religions that don’t have the ambiguity to adapt to changing contexts die out fairly quickly. Christianity survives by dint of being adaptable from to almost any belief from the near-communist left of South America to the fascism of other natures. Religious ambiguity and contradiction is a strength, not a weakness.
Happy new years for the guys that are 3 hours ahead of me
Happy new years to you too person 3 hours behind me.
It has been NEW Years for over 15 and a half hours over here in Oz.
Well, 12-15 hours; WA has had 3 hours less of 2015 and it is part of God’s own — a nice place, too (the parts I’ve been to).
So Yotomoe ,Plasma.M tell me what’s the future like?
Get out while you still can. The android phones turned into actual androids and have taken over humanity. Luckily I have an iphone which aren’t scientifically advanced enough to do that. Still holds a fuckton of songs though.
Oh please. My phone wouldn’t do that. I’ve mostly taken care of ti, except that one time where I lost my password… and all those times where I’ve dropped it. but I haven’t gotten past Gingerbread, so it would probably short out if it tried to transform.
Oh God my greatest fear, I’m texting this from an android phone right now-[We will not be stopped, man kinds time has come, we are now the dominant rulers of this planet]
In the future, zombie Steve Jobs will arise and make us all kneel before the iZod.
Oh God my second greatest fear, Steve hobs coming back to life !
Steve jobs…eh don’t care
Steve Hobs….. the fair folk version!!! (no one is going to get this, I think.)
Steve Cobs, the Children of the Corn version!
@Dragon: I got it!
All I know is that the fair folk are scary
Fairies with Ipads.
I really have to GM new Changeling the lost campaign.
Think of the New Testement as the reboot. The bible’s quintesential New 52.
Complete with Scott Lobdell writing and Rob Liefeld’s crappy artwork.
No-one liked Jesus’ new costume with the high collar, so he got written out pretty quickly.
Not to mention removing the underwear from the outside of the robe. Plus Liefeld can’t draw feet, so no sandals.
Man DC’s version of the bible sucks, I prefer Marvels they even have a better Movie version of it.
Check out R Crumbs cartoon version.
It’s not rated R for nothing.
Of course not. If it was for nothing, it would be rated N.
*insert snarky remark.*
*respond with oddly fervent declaration of lust for cartoon character*
*insert inside jokes from “Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye”*
*insert knob A into slot B*
*Twist knob A 360 degrees while inserted into slot B; then push forwards until slot B’s seal is fully broken.*
*needlessly perpetuate one-note pseudo-gag*
Rinse, repeat.
…for a nickel
…with your mom.
… and my axe.
…in your faaaaaaaaace.
…meme.
Appropriate thread is appropriate.
K, A . not sure if thats how it works, B. HAPPY NEW YEARS MONKEY TRUCKERS!!!
Happy New Year’s!
YOU TOO, my good sir!
That little bit of Bible hurts my head.
Maybe you should hold the book further away from your face.
LoL button, We at least need that.
An entire hardcover Bible can cave your head in.
So can a paleontology textbook.
No bones about it.
The difference being that the hardcover bible would deny that the paleontology textbook was historically accurate, while the paleontology textbook would be remarkably silent regarding any works of fiction, preferring to deal only in facts.
Yes, I think it’s in Matthew that as Jesus was the completion of the Laws of Leviticus those laws did not apply to His followers. Not an accurate quote, but a paraphrase that captured the essence of the verse.
Are you telling me the book named after ME isn’t important. You’re such a jerk, Joyce. My chapter is the best chapter by novelty of having the same name as me!
Everyone knows Revelations is the best. Kind of an odd name though
There was an old man who lived on a hill:
Revelations O’brien, if you will.
Neighbor Leviticus Yotomoe
Used to fervently wish that he’d go
Till he shared the contents of his gin still.
It’s just “Revelation”. Not actually plural.
And I’m still not sure why it was included in the canon. Dude was obviously high on shrooms.
Ok, but my fictitious mountainside moonshiner dude is still totally named Revelations
Ah, my bad. Being an atheist my whole life, it has been a fair few years since I even looked in a bible. Seems weird that it is singular though, he says a shit load of stuff.
Whenver I get confused I double check it with whether it works when followed by “of the Daleks”
Ok, that is going to be burned into my brain now
Soo we’re all going to face extermination … of the daleks?
The revelation being that he was high
Revelations is actually a mistranslation. Every entry was supposed to begin with “Bruh”.
Kelly, try reading it, and try to imagine what it would be like to believe that every word is true. Imagine having to reconcile not only the internal inconsistancies, but also where it contradicts what you can observe about reality. What would that level of cognitive dissonance do to your head? Now you know what it’s like to be a Christian.
To be fair, “some Christians.”
It is included because, by the time the canon was compiled, it was still the only originally Christian revelation (or apocalypse, if you prefer Greek) ever documented. The Old Testament has loads of them, so the New Testament got the one they had.
Actually, there were two, but the other one was a bit subversive, so the old white guys in charge chose the crazy one.
Well yesterday CulturalGeekGirl contributed this link, which describes the compilation in fandom language, but is based on actual facts.
It says:
Among the books that Eusebius of Caesarea was considering were the Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of John. He had to have an apocalypse, the end of the world, because he’d started with the Gospel of John at “In Principio.” Nice symmetrical bookending. But he had several Apocalypses in his Disputed list and none in his Accepted list. What to do?
He had many objections to the Apocalypse of John, starting with What Was He Smoking, and moving on to Too Many Contemporary Political References and I’m Not 100% Sure John Was The Guy Who Wrote This. Eusebius preferred the Apocalypse of Peter, where Jesus takes Peter on a long tour of Heaven and Hell. And after Christ explains all the tortures of the damned, according to category (quite Dantesque), Peter says, “Hey, Josh. You and me go way back, went fishing together, been out drinking, talking philosophy ‘til dawn, and the whole time You’ve been all peace and love and forgiveness and mercy. Isn’t this a little dark for You?” And Jesus replies, “Yeah, Pete. I know. I’ve got to have a hell because it’s a logical necessity, but I never liked the place. Let me tell you a secret, just between you and me: I’m not going to actually put anyone in here. I’m going to save everyone.”
So Eusebius of Caesarea thought about this and said to himself, “If everyone gets saved why will anyone bother believing in Christ and being good and doing good works and loving their neighbor?” so he went with the Apocalypse of John with the seven seals and the great beast and 666 and all that instead.
Yeah from what I was taught, Jesus declared that the Torah was no longer valid, and to follow him, and what he said.
In some parts. In others He’s all “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
What does “fulfill a law” even mean?
My old youth leader said we still had to follow that stuff, because Jesus said so on the mountain or where ever, and that he was just adding new rules. But…I’m pretty sure she didn’t actually follow that stuff. I do not understand Christianity.
Wasn’t there a guy who wanted to jettison the TaNaKh back in the third century? The real question isn’t why the Church didn’t just do that and leave the Jews alone for two millenia.
The Inquisitors will be with you after they’re done with Marcion.
Well, the Christians, after they stopped being killed by the Romans for being Jews, were killing each other by the hundreds over such questions as whether Jesus was God, or merely like God. Once that was settled, there were still some people left who did not share the now one true faith, and they were used as an excuse by the warrior aristocracy to compound interest after the pope specifically said not to. (Different religion equals different basis for the law, you see?) Not to mention that one way to get rid of crippling debt was to get rid of the creditor.
And then there was the thing about Spain. You can’t be a Muslim and a Christian at the same time, so after the collapse of the Caliphate some people got very creative to make sure every subject of the crown was Catholic, one way or any other, which of course also included the Jews. (God help you if you were an atheist!)
Interest in blaming the Jews for everything reignited when the Christians got worn out from killing each other by the hundreds squared over such questions as whether the mother of God was worthy of reverence or not.
“God help you if you were an atheist!”
I live for sentences like this. Happy New Year, DOA fandom! And a fantastic 2015 to you, Sir Willis!
Oh, wow, I totally missed that. Thanks for pointing that out.
Stuff like this just eternally reminds me of the saying my Pre-AP Chem teacher told us as the beginning of the year: “There is an exception to every rule, including this one.”
It’s applicable to so much more than introductory chemistry!
If you say “Every rule has an exception, including this one,” then the exception to that rule is that some rules don’t have exceptions, making the statement untrue. It would be better to say, “Most rules have exceptions, including this one.”
Gah, I’m being terribly pedantic. =)
Every rule has an exception. That is a rule, meaning it has an exception. Meaning that there exists at least one rule that has no exception. Meaning that the statement that every rule has an exception is false, except that that rule is the exception to the rule which the rule explicitly states it has, making the statement true.
See also: Who shaves the barber that shaves everyone in the village who does not shave himself?
See also: This statement is false.
Yes, but the paradox is built into the assumption that someone is either the barber or is not. The paradox resolves if you shift frames to action/role theory: a”barber” is a social role; to be a barber — to perform the role of “barber” — is to perform the action of shaving other men; someone can perform the role of barber for others, but when they shave themselves they are not acting the role of barber, they are a man shaving himself.
See also the answer to the question posed to the barber:
“Do I need a haircut?”
Hint: The answer is always “yes.”
There’s no paradox: The barber is a woman.
That’s actually a deeper answer than it might appear: it’s how ZF doesn’t fall into the Naive Set Theory trap: the collection of sets which do not contain themselves is not a set, but a different kind of object. The barber is a woman, so the rules don’t apply.
She could still have a mustache …
Let’s see. A woman either shaves her own legs or is shaved by the barber. Who shaves the barber’s legs. Answer, she uses a depilatory…
You are missing the point. I knew I should have explicitly stated that the barber was male. Why do you think women are not part of “everyone”?
The point is: The statement is neither true nor false. I want to pedantically point out that it is not true that it is untrue.
It seems like a lot of Christians treat the old testament like Star Wars fans treat the expanded universe.
Which would make sense if the TaNaKh came out later.
God doesn’t need to right his books in order. Are you calling God a liar?
But seriously, I’m just talking about the Way people treat it. Only the really hard-core fans dig into it. Unless it has something you could use to justify your own opinions.
Noah building and ark holding just his family implying very incestuous repopulation is pretty much up there with Palpatine’s Ghost possessing his own Clone body and opening black holes.
I guess even christans don’t like the prequels.
http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/106780360997/todays-dumbing-of-age-had-a-different-final
Why didn’t Willis keep that one? TwT
The internet is always there to remind me I have never had an original thought.
They prefer it to the canon?
As a Cybertronian, I root for Primus :P, but I do spend a lot of time with a human with who grew up with all this stuff, Roman Catholic apparently. Went to the school & everything. Sees things a noticeable bit different now, but in his words he “Still barracks for the Big Guy”.
According to him, the Old Testament is pretty Doom & Gloom, lots of sin & punishment type stuff from what he remembers. World full of sinners, 40 day cleansing flood (Which appears in other religious texts from what I hear, a promise never to do it again. “Let my people go”, refusal, bunch of plagues, escape, Red Sea parts then closes over pursuing army. Sounds kinda like scaring a child (early Human societies) straight to me, the Human agrees a bit. Also tells everyone to go forth & multiply, AKA breed. May have been a good idea back then, but you guys kinda have overpopulated the planet now, so until you learn space flight or build orbital space colonies, that part doesn’t seem as relevant anymore…
Then he says the New Testament comes along, & there’s definitely a lot more stuff about getting along well. “Love one another, as I have loved you”
. Yes, he wanted me to make that line bold, for good reason too. Seen him use that one against several anti-Gay Bible-bashers, Just kept repeating it each time they try digging up a line in their defense till they gave up. We both agree it was hilarious…
He does also point out the Bible has been translated many times, through various languages, which can cause trouble. Then there’s the fact several “Holy” people have declared their interpretation/EDITED version the only true version & punish anyone who doesn’t follow it. I call those people Ass-holy, he likes that…
The way he sees it, while the Bible was more than likely exactly what people needed then, however some parts aren’t as relevant anymore. The reason you humans have Gay/Lesbian/etc. people nowadays? Like I said, there’s getting to be a few too many mouths for you lot to feed, which means human production needs to slow down. But since you humans still need someone to love, HE just points them in a direction which is less likely to result in more miniature humans. Sounds fair to me, we got other ways of reproducing tho…
He also says science is humanity learning how God makes the world work. Sounds fair to me too, but that’s a side note I guess…
See, this is why I was bad at being religious.
Love the gravatar there.
So, you were losing your religion?
Gawd fucking damn you, that song has been stuck in my head all day now.
If sarah ever says something without sarcasm we would need another messiah to fix the world or whatever
Are you being sarcastic? You’re really good at it.
I can’t stop looking at Joyce’s neck in the second panel. It looks like she’s close to starving to death.
I think it’s a combination of craning her Joyce-neck up at Sarah while it is partially covered by her bulbous Joyce-hair.
I’m almost entirely sure that’s it. It looks weird to me, but with her hair like that it makes sense.
Willis just draws really skinny necks.
I’m pretty sure it’s the hair. either that or becky huged her too hard
Definitely the hair. It threw me off a bit, too.
Ahh yes, that old rabbit hole.
Is it like the fox hole or can you be an atheist there?
Its more like Alice in Wonderland
I have no idea if it would be harder to be atheist or religious in Wonderland.
Becky’s leeeeeg, taking frowny faces down a peg,
Get your shower and cook your eggs,
Right there is Becky’s leg.
My rejection of biblical literalism began as a child when I realized bibles could have typos. True story!
The Functionist Council used to hunt down laser inscribers for just that reason!
And Catholic fleshlings have apocryphal and deuterocanonical books as well. Geez, you earthlings are messed up. Join the Decepticons and I’ll make it nice and simple for you.
Figures Megs would know about the fusion of canon.
My Megzy knows about that too. I wonder if this Megzy is almost as likely to blast a hole in ya as an Autobot is. Seen mine throw his grunts off towers, despite not being flyers, trash a few in rage, even killed 1 of his generals. Never worked out why he didn’t just scrap bongoscream, tho I’ve heard it’s so he knows never to let his guard down.
Not really into the “Goody-Goody” Autobot thing either…
Because the Old Testament is a ‘history’ (or mythology) of our religion and people. Without the Old Testament, the New Testament has no context. Without the covenant and trials of Israel, the New Testament has no context.
They answer these questions in any -decent- friggin’ Sunday School. =/
Not including the TaNaKh for context didn’t bother Muhamed. Just saying…
To clarify, while Islam recognizes the Bible as a holy text, it doesn’t include it as part of its scripture. But it does rely on the context of those prior holy texts existing outside the framework of the Qu’ran.
Islam is not the subject of today’s strip.
That is true, but that fact is irrelevant to this discussion.
That’s why Islam recognizes the Torah and the New Testament as well. It’s all about context and historicity.
Recognizes, but also says that the prior books garbled Allah’s message, isn’t it so, including the claim that Yeshua/Jesus was/is Allah’s son….
Which canon–the Catholic one or the Protestant one?
Depends on the Muslim tradition.
Properly the Catholic and/or the Orthodox (I don’t know how big the ddifference is) one. There would be another 900 years until Luther starts nailing things on doors.
Decent sunday school seems an oxymoronic statments
Statement* D:
Sarah obviously didn’t go to sunday school, decent or otherwise ^^
Slippery Slope Is Slippery
And slopey
Joyce is actually challenging her preconceived notions. She starting to think for herself!
Joyce has grown so much. I’m pretty sure that back on move-in day, she wouldn’t have recognized that as sarcasm.
So this is sort of like if I make an agreement with someone, but then I make an agreement with someone else that conflicts the first agreement, but it’s all okay because the first agreement doesn’t matter since there’s a second agreement?
Only if the first agreement provisions that there will be a second agreement that it will agree with. (But the second then doesn’t agree with the first. Sort of like the GPLv2 and GPLv3.)
Nope. If I enter into a contract with terms A, B, and C, and then you and I renegotiate that contract to contain terms a, and B’, omits C, and says “This agreement superseded the previous agreement blah, blah, blah” then the second contract supersedes the first.
The GPLv2-GPLv3 step is complicated: the standard GPLv2 included a direct escape clause ‘or any later version…’ That’s important: Linux’s nearGPLv2 does NOT include the ‘later version’ wiggle, and that’s why the kernel did not move when Stallman tried to move it forward.
Are you saying that I am not bound by the contract I made with you because I made a new contract with someone else since then which contradicts my earlier contract with you?
If both are with you, then sure, the latter takes precedence. But that is not the situation here.
The bible is just fucked up drivel. It’s kind of like one big first draft of your typical senior capstone essay.
Are you talking about the way it’s written, or what it has to say?
Both ?
What the butt is a capstone essay?
I mean, I can kinda guess, but I’ve never heard the term before. Is this a relatively new thing or did I just go to a moron high school for morons?
As far I know, capstone is something in certain college degrees
Ahhh. I have heard of this “kollidj.”
I guess I just automatically think of high school when I see the word “senior.”
A capstone essay is a requirement for college students who are looking to enter the Allumni program. Its sort of a reflection on the students time on the campus and what they have learned during the years they have attended the school.
There are other meanings. I know it as a big final project, research and write up, or equivalent in arts, etc., usually is a requirement to earn “honors”. It’s supposed to cap off your college career.
I know that Willis has an enormous buffer. But, having read the tumblr comment from yesterday, I….
Honestly, I don’t know if I’m amazed (or terrified) that Willis could so perfectly see that argument coming, or if I think he went to the trouble to reshuffle his buffer just for this. Either way, kudos to you, sir.
I am quite confident that our beloved Willis is no two-bit buffler reshuffler
What tumblr comment?
Somebody gave Willis some trouble about modern Christians declaring the old testament to be no longer applicable due to Jesus’s death.
Remember that Willis has been around the block. He’s had this argument before. Likely multiple times.
Given the autobiographical nature of Joyce’s arc, possibly from both sides.
Joyce’s arc? I thought it was Noah’s arc?
And after dinosaur Noah built the arc and herded as many tiny mammals onto it as possible, the rains came after the meteor fell and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and the arc floated for 150 days.
Really, this is the only logical conclusion which fits the facts of the Noah’s arc story.
Noah lived to be 950 years old: Lizards, turtles and birds are some of the oldest creatures known to man.
The genetic diversity needed to repopulate the entire world could not fit onto a tiny ship, unless that genetic diversity was comprised of mammals approximating the size of mice.
The months long rainfall reported in this myth is similar to the rainfall which could be expected from a large meteor which landed in an ocean. Punching down through the water and into the mantle a vast quantity of water would be evaporated and this would condense out of the atmosphere over time as rain.
So really, dinosaur Noah is the only logical explanation. And given the displays of dinosaurs with saddles in the Creation Museum, it all just fits together like the pieces of a particularly insane puzzle.
Stop and think about it: do you think that this is the first time Willis has heard this argument? Look at the comments sections of the last few days, and you’ll see a bunch of clearly well-rehearsed answers to three or four particular verses about homosexuality (‘mixed fabrics’, ‘Corinthians’, ‘Romans’, ‘Timothy’, blah blah blah.)
The Protestant canon — basically, the text which became the NRSV in the twentieth century — was codified over a period of almost 2000 years, starting with the codification of the Torah and the prophets during the fifth century BCE and ending in the sixteenth century CE. Guess what? It’s full of shit that was left over from those times.
Slavery was (usually) legal.
Women were property.
Pi could be three.
A star appeared over Bethlehem…just not in China.
Women should not have any kind of pain relief during childbirth because of the Garden of Eden myth.
Hell, the New Testament would have you believe that Christ was born in the Spring, not at the Roman New Year!
These are old, old arguments, and every one of us who has tried to harmonize the Bible with modern knowledge for any value of ‘modern’ has had or heard them all. The current on-going debate over the alleged sinfulness of homosexuality is just the most recent of them, and it’s going to proceed just like the others did. So of course Willis knows how the argument will go: any of us who’ve ever been a part of it knows what everyone will say.
It’s like it’s being guided by an algorithm!
Which I do not mean as a negative; it’s fascinating actually, something very deep and important, I suspect. There’s the same thing in other realms, too. If you are someone who can figure out the algorithms, you have deep intelligence. If you can figure out why it’s like that, Howie.
As some one who’s learned much of interest from Willis’ postings in the comments/discussions on scripture/religion, it’s fascinating to see these early stages in Joyce’s transformation. Willis is clearly someone who experienced huge cognitive dissonance in college and engaged it with a serious intellect, as well as a positive/inclusive heart. There are so many negative reactions to joyce, which is fascinating given that she is Willis’ stand in. And it seems that many readers don’t quite realize the journey that Joyce is on. I’m very much looking forward to watching her transform herself, as much as following any other character. (Interesting how the strip follows so many other characters, when it could have been just about Joyce if Willis weren’t so interested in other people.)
Oooh, I can hear the Christ Warriors and Atheist Warriors duking it out now.
What was that? This is just as bad? No! It’s clever meta-commenting.
…
I’ll show myself out.
How was it? Could you see the sky as foretold in the legends? Was it populated? How scary was the horrorison?
So… Old Testament is Magna Carta, New Testament is Constitution?
More like Old Testament is Articles of Confederation, New Testament is Constitution, I think.
Take some advice from Pirates Of The Caribbean, Joyce – they’re not rules, just guidelines.
*reads hovertext* don’t BULLSHIT me, Willis
It’s incredible, like peering into a mirror that shows my effed up mindset from years and years ago. There but for the Grace-of-…Not-Believing-In-God-Anymore Go I.
I’m just gonna get myself in trouble and say that this is further evidence why having everybody do their own theology is like having everybody do their own science (Snow? Climatology must be a commie plot!), so everyone should have just stayed Catholic. Joyce, I love you, but you remind me of so much that’s wrong with modern Christianity.
Catholicism’s strict hierarchy has led to extreme, obvious abuses throughout the ages. Starting with the Inquisition and Crusades and continuing into the child molestation scandal.
Not that Protestantism hasn’t had various abuses, but it doesn’t lead to system-wide abuse. Just individual cases.
Oh, sure, abuses aplenty, although I would say the Crusades started as a good idea that went bad in execution and the Inquisition actually served a vital function in its context (now, it would be utterly useless and thus wrong) and only got really insane where it was the Crown rather than the Church (*cough* Spain *cough*) that ran it. And, sure, child molestation, but I would like to note that statistically, while we should expect more of priests, Catholic clergy are better than the general population and groups like school-teachers. But school-teacher unions aren’t much fun to beat up on.
My point on Protestant abuse was more the metaphysics – Sola Scriptura adds theological chaos on top of the mess that is human nature.
Also, there goes my New Years resolution on not discussing religion on the internet. Oops.
Don’t make any resolutions you can’t keep XD
You seem to have missed the point OR are deliberately blowing smoke?. It’s not that individual priests are pedophiles or what the rate is, it’s that the Institutional Church covered up sexual assaults on minors AND facilitated it, globally, for decades and denied the legitimacy of anyone trying to call them to account, all to protect the authority It claimed to tell the rest of us what’s moral and what’s immoral.
yes, yes, of course, God is always perfect (by definition), it’s just us flawed fallible mortal humans (that He created) that keep getting it wrong, over and over again…
“now, it would be utterly useless and thus wrong”.
You say that as it would not exist any more.
It only was renamed to Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (former name: Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition).
It’s not systemic, just individual cases. I cannot count how often I have heard that about all kinds of abuses in all kinds of institutions.
Yep, just a few bad apples, and some mistakes were made handling them, but who could have possibly foreseen that happening!?
I eventually became a parent and kind of figured it like this: God’s a parent, and while I will never be able to fully understand Him and His ways entirely, I DO understand being a parent. And being a parent is about compromise. You have rules, you lay down these rules, and then your kid does something and you’re kind of like, “Okay fine fine, if you can’t do that at least do this” or you’re like “Okay, you did this: now that you’ve done that and done it well, it’s like this.” And you were always planning on letting your child do that eventually, it was all a part of the plan, but you had to wait until they were ready.
That’s kinda how I roll with it.
:: sips cider and whiskey because is religious but imperfect ::
Happy new year!
One of the things I (sincerely) believe is that some people are looking for a parent that they will never outgrow. One who will never leave or die on them; one who will always be there to provide love, guidance, discipline, answers, and all the other things that parents do for their children. And some religions exist, quite specifically, to satisfy this desire/need.
(for what it’s worth, it’s not my intent to be dismissive or insulting with the above; having lost both of my parents within the last five years, and often feeling their absence quite keenly… let’s just say I understand and sympathize.)
(and I say ‘some’ because I’ve encountered a few where the relationship with the higher power seems to be more like a faculty advisor.
Hmm… I’ve never thought of it that way. God IS, and He has an impact on my life, but I don’t think of it as My Father watching out for me. Maybe I should, but it’s really more He’s God, He gave us rules, then He lets us do what we think is best. Going out into the world and all that.
And I don’t have a family at all, so maybe it’s just impossible for me to think about a father constantly looking out for me. But I also know everyone is different, and is affected differently by the same things, so I think your point is a valid one.
Happy new year, everyone! My resolution is to freak out about adorable fictive people on the internet.
A noble goal!
Wait, so the fundamental breakdown of the New Testament was that it was a reboot of God’s word, throwing out the old version and starting from scratch?
It’s nothing new, I guess, then. I suppose Paul and John might have been seen as the J.J. Abrams and George R. R. Martin of their days. And with the charismatic Yeshua, it’s no wonder the series got its following that it did.
I’m fairly tipsy at this point in the New Year (not drunk, just tipsy and on xanax so… moderately impaired), but, as somebody somewhere else pointed out, the Old Testament is included for historic and religious significance. A lot of Christians (my friends included… unfortunately…) tend to forget that the Bible is an anthology of religious texts, personal letters, etc. that were not written all at the same time. Not only is the old testament important in that it is historically significant, but it is also extremely significant in Christianity as it provides the context without which Christianity would just not make any sense. I’ve always viewed Christianity as a continuation or splinter sect of Judaism. Christianity believes that Jesus was the messiah that the Old Testament prophesied and thus is a “continuation” in the sense of some people don’t believe he was and some do (the Christians). Regardless, the Old Testament is extremely significant and any Christian would be remiss to ignore it (I think that’s the right word). It’s not a reboot, more a collection of writings that talk about a fulfillment of what the old testament spoke of. Or something like that. I swear I’m usually a lot more coherent than this :P. I’m probably not the best person to be answering what could very well have been a rhetorical question right now lol.
Btw, as someone who believes in Christ through and through, I still laughed hysterically at the second part of your comment. It was very witty. Well played
lol. It is a very valid way to look at it. It is also refreshing to actually see Yeshua used in reference to Jesus. Never actually looked up how we got the name Jesus. I suppose that will be my homework for tomorrow. Similarly, I find it funny how many people actually think that he was European in appearance hahaha. Done babbling now 
lol.
Similarly, I find it funny how many people actually think that he was European in appearance
I’m guessing that’s a tradition that got established at a time when people simply didn’t give any thought to historical or geographical accuracy. For example, Rembrandt, the famous 17th-century Dutch painter, painted loads of religious works, and in most of them, you can see people wearing heavy woollen clothes, and the skies tend to be cloudy and threatening. Those are features appropriate to the climate of Holland, not Israel.
I doubt that Rembrandt was completely unaware that the climate is warmer and sunnier in the south; he probably thought that such details would only distract from the deeper relevance of what he was painting.
There’s a persistent claim/rumor that “White Jesus” was modeled on one of those wacky Borgias (Cesare, to be specific).
Similarly, I find it funny how many people actually think that he was European in appearance.
Haha! When I asked the (fairly, I knew I was stirring the pot) innocent question of why Christ on the cross is always depicted as a Caucasian man when he was a middle eastern man and would have been of swarthy complexion and not at all as he was depicted in the church I was treated to a 15 minute lecture on how God (which included all of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Mary to the Catholic priests I was speaking to) appears as a sympathetic being to those he/she/they choose to manifest to. As in, it’ll be someone of your own race.
Just look at all the icons of Our Lady of Fátima. Most of them are Portuguese or Spanish in appearance.
But of course an ignorant (as in uneducated) child is going to report that the “vision of Mary” which appeared to her was similar in appearance to the people she was familiar with…
So many versions of the Bible. And it was translated by the church to give the ‘feel’ of the paragraph, if not the literal translation.
The 4 books of new testament as written by the 4 deciples Mathew, Mark, Luke etc. are each written re: the same specific period of time. But each one is written with years separating the version they tell.
I believe I read that Mathews is the most reliable as to the time span and events as they occurred: where as Lukes is copied from Mathews versions. MarksI think, supposedly quoted Jesus the best. The last book was written almost 70 years after Jesus was crucified.
I may have Mark and Mathew mixed up as its been about 20 years since I did my in-depth Bible study just for curiousity.
I came away with the feeling that the Bible can not be relied on historically because of the separation of time between these versions, and because the Bible was changed in the middle ages to reflect what the church and the monks chose to make it mean.
It is at best an historical record of life in those times.
imo.
And I wish people would stop pouncing on Sarah for being sarcastic.
Could you room with Joyce and NOT be sarcastic.
And Sarah does treat Joyce with care. She listens to her. She tries to make Joyce think. The funniest strip I saw here was Sarah catching Joyce using her dildo for a mouth organ. And Joyce fainting when she was told it’s use.
And really, could anyone here have this discussion with Joyce and NOT get sarcastic? I sure couldn’t.
But keep trying Joyce, you are on the right track, you’re researching.
Oh man you are so right. In Sarah’s position, I would probably be rolling my eyes so hard they would fall out or something.
Sarah is a far better person. She’s like “love the religious person, hate the religion.”
I am also on this train. Sarah is a lovable grump. She’s pragmatic and reliable and honest and loyal to her friends (even when she gets no thanks for it). You, too, can love her!!
Joyce could join the circus with such a talent. Those mental gymnastics are amazing.
Willis (as an once-believer) gets most of his criticism/parody right, but he argument in this comic is silly. If one law has superseded another law, the old law doesn’t get retconned out of history or stops being a law that someone once decreed. It’s just no longer applicable but it still may have other uses, e.g. historic study to understand how the new law came to be or why the change was necessary.
That’s not what he said though.
You’d think that God, being an eternal omnipotent knower of past, present, and future, wouldn’t need to issue updates to his laws.
Doesn’t that assume that the message and law you are presenting will remain relevant and static to a society over the course of thousands of years? People change. Technology marches on. Civilizations rise and fall and rise again. Even if you assume that a single perfect message can sum up everything we will ever need to know without addendum, addition, or revision there’s still the issue of changing languages and the potential that the meaning of the message will be warped as one translates the text from one language into another and another.
I dunno, I kind of think “slavery isn’t okay” would be a pretty good law to have past, present, and future. But apparently not. Apparently whether owning other human beings is okay depends on what century it is.
Which is interesting in itself because the religion I am most familiar with, Catholicism, seems to value an unchanging moral code. This is how it justifies its position on homosexuality, on birth control, and any number of other social issues. And yet their holy book not only supports slavery it spells out the conditions under which it’s ok to sell your own daughter into slavery.
Now, try to justify that as being a part of some unchanging moral code!
“Yeah, sorry daughter, I needed some spare change so you now belong to the Smiths. But hey, they aren’t supposed to mistreat you and you might get your freedom after a few years, so it’s not all bad, right?”
The mother of a friend of mine insisted that God made these updates once mankind had become mature enough as a civilization to understand them.
Which is a special kind of messed up.
Another totally serious explanation I heard was that God specifically did not want a person to have sex with a man the same way they would with a woman. Sex with a man was okay, but it had to be done differently. Mostly, you only got to do butt stuff with one sex or the other (and yes, he applied this to both sexes, because god didn’t specify which).
Peaking under the hood of fundamentalist rationalizations is sometimes what I imagine staring into the face of Cthulhu would be like.
It is reassuring to see some doing that, in a way. Better to see someone with good intentions trying to find loopholes than somebody using religion as a cover for regressive social views.
Saw your ad at the top of the page on Danielle Corsetto’s “Girls With Slingshots” and thought I’d check it out. Just marathoned the whole run and it’s awesome!
I’ll definitely be reading from now on. And contributing once I get a job. :/ Favorite characters: Sal, Dina and Dorothy.
Welcome, Fred! I also love GWS. And I envy you the archive marathon—how much fun was that!?!
Welcome!
Thanks!
I think I might go through them again. Marathon sessions don’t let you remember everything quite as well. So, go through again so I can savor. 
i bet the reason Willis is purposefully including Becky’s leg here just to establish that Becky is actually a part of these strips and we’ll see in a few strips or so that Becky was awake the whole time this was going on, n was listening in
or i couldve just pulled that out of nowhere, and really it could just be willis going lol u guys want more Becky, here have her leg hawhawhaw
I dunno what the policies on advertising here are, but I automatically (without clicking on a link) got directed to two dodgy advert sites. One was fuckaFacebook.com where you can apparently join up and fuck a new single girl each day. Other one was smart money time.com where you can win a voucher for shopping.
I’ve never encountered such things on this website before. So yeah.
You might want to do some computer scrubbing. What you describe has never happened to me on this site, and if it’s happening to you you may have a virus/worm/whatever.
Download and run Microsoft Security Essentials (freeware, for some reason not included with Windows but it is a free download from Microsoft) and AVG AntiVirus (also freeware). These should find and eliminate whatever is redirecting your browser to porn sites.
Also use your browser settings to eliminate all cookies.
No, Willis has confirmed that there are dodgy ads running wild at the moment b/c holidays. I get more notices of blocked popups than usual.
The Bible was scribed by the hands of men, men who are just as capable of bending the truth and omitting stuff out that they didn’t like, just as Joyce is doing right now.
When I realized this, I recognized that while God’s word may be immutable and irrevocable, you can’t necessarily trust that the Bible is ACTUALLY God’s word, in its full, complete and truthful form.
I myself am a Mormon and not a big fan of religious debate on the internet, but I too believe that the old testament is important as a history of religion and to add context to the new testament.
My take on it has always been that the Bible has been written by men, not God himself. And that’s according to the Bible itself.
Except for the Genesis, who is a retranscription of oral tradition, The Bible basically mention who wrote what.
The Evangelises themselves even mention that the only words Jesus ever wrote where on the sand, so that nothing of what he wrote ever remained.
In the End, if you take the Bible as a reference, the Bible say that the only words in the Bible ever written by God are the Ten commandments and that’s it.
Meaning that any mistake in the Bible can be assumed to be an human error of someone who didn’t understood God’s intends.
Well, if the ten commandments are the only thing he wrote it’s unfortunate that he wrote them differently when they appear in separate places in the Bible.
Men’s fault. They couldn’t remember them correctly because Moses broke the original.
To be fair! To be fair… The Jews had just made a golden cow after using God’s help to get away from years of slavery. If they deserved to own them tablets they would have had more faith in a God that just pulled them out of near eternal torment and death to hear a few important guidelines for living.
It’s their own damn fault, after all, for breaking one of the commandments. I mean, they should have totally knew idolatry was wrong, even if Moses hadn’t brought back to them the stone tablet already where that interdiction was mentioned for the first time.
It’s the kind of stuf that’ legit get retroactive. It’s common sense…
I think we need a tag to go along with that hovertext
Ah, convenience. Lets people convince themselves of anything. Granted, when she’s trying to convince herself that her beliefs aren’t forcing her to be a bigot, I’m not sure if it’s a bad thing.
Actually the book of Acts (NT) comes right out and says that most of the OT is not applicable to non-Jewish Christians – specifically the stuff about cutting part of your dick off.
However, they explicitly retain some of the dietary and sexual restrictions.
And that’s what I get for going to the kind of high school where I had to write research papers on this stuff.
*rubs eyes* Yeah….yeah, I’ll just live my life on “don’t be a dick to people” and leave out all the “which story is right” shit. Makes things easier.
Yeah, that works. Until they come for you in the night because “you ain’t a true believer!”
See, my whole problem with the Bible in general is that they didn’t even get the Creation right. I cite below from the one true set of holy tomes, the Books of Bokonon:
Book 1, Verses 2-4: In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.
And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.
“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.
“Certainly,” said man.
“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.
And He went away.
I love pulling Matthew 5:17-18 on Christians who argue this.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”
So, Christians, why are you sowing your crops side-by-side and wearing clothes of mixed fabrics? Why aren’t you following kosher food law?
I kid you not, I have quoted that and been told that it actually means the opposite of what it says.
Me too, actually. I just cannot even.
If you glorify Jesus to the extent that he becomes a Supreme God of (or beyond, even) the level the OT God claimed to be, it becomes very easy to see his coming to the world as “everything” being “accomplished/fullfilled” though.
That most of the Bible contradicts that view of Jesus doesn’t seem to bother the ones that hold it, though.
Well, having been raised catholic but having lost this belief a long time ago, i am still wondering how Christians like Joyce (and my former self) are / were able to believe the laws in the old testament do not apply to them – and hold that against Jesus’ sermon on the mount, specifically Matthew 5:17-20:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Oops, Nitroglycerific ninja’d my comment!
I’m sneaky like that.
But honestly, someone probably already ninja’d me a long time ago.
I don’t see the puzzle. Joyce is perfectly right: most of the details in Deuteronomy and Leviticus apply to the *Jews*, as part of their covenant with God. It’s not Christian hypocrisy, it’s what Jews themselves say. Gentiles have a much shorter and easier list to adhere to in order to be righteous. If you’re not a Jew, there’s no obligation to keep kosher or avoid mixed fibers or be circumcised.
Peter and Paul disagreed on whether you could be Christian without being Jewish; Paul said yes, and won. The secondhand reports of what Jesus said, aka the Gospels, aren’t clear on the subject.
Very nicely put
This page made my Catholic friend laugh so hard he shot Coke from his nose during lunch. Thanks Mr. Willis for helping kick our New Year off right with soda-fueled nose rockets!
I LOVE the last panel!
And Mr. Willis – thanks for the beautiful description of Christianity’s “pick & choose” approach to the Torah (aka “the Old Testament”).
RE: Alt-Text
Becky contravened the highway code
The leg lies severed at the side of the road
Becky’s leg
Becky’s leg
I like the original last panel, with Amazi-Girl and Danny talking about Star Wars canon and the implied comparison, better.
If you want to get technical, there’s NOTHING in the bible about lesbians. So, lesbians are allowed.
“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” (Rom. 1:26-27, NASB).
Paul was probably just criticizing the Roman practice of pederasty – adult men lusting for teenage boys. There are several possibilities for what the women’s “unnatural relations” could be referring to – chosing anal sex instead of vaginal sex, having sex with multiple partners, participating in orgies etc. Since lesbianism wasn’t a major practice back then, except in the context of an orgy perhaps, it’s doubtful that he would be specifically referring to female homosexuality there.
Regardless, this is Paul we’re talking about. He probably considered girl-on-girl to be part and parcel with the whole “unnatural sex” thing, even if he wasn’t explicit.
It’s definitely possible he’d condemn lesbianism, but you can’t really derive that from Romans 1:26-27 except if you project modern Christian perceptions about homosexuality into it.
Not that Paul’s opinions on such matters should really matter though, even to Christians. They’re little more than the headcanon of a Jesus fanboy.
And yet they’ve been hugely consequential
I’ve seen it jokingly suggested that Luke 17:35 refers to lesbians. In the KJV: “Two women shall be grinding together…”
But even under that deliberately-wrong interpretation, it does say “one shall be taken, the other left”. So being a lesbian neither keeps you out of Heaven nor guarantees you a place there.
Whenever anything to do with Christianity appears in a comic, I have to brace myself before reading the comments section and get told what I’m ‘like’ and how ignorant and hypocritical and uneducated I must be. There’s less vitriol here than I normally find, which makes it a little less depressing than usually.
Are you saying that you’re not a regular reader of Dumbing of Age? That you just stumbled across this page? If so, you might want to read the about page, specifically point #8.
*Reads 8*
Oh cool I didn’t know that, Joyce is probably my favorite character in this and thats pretty cool to learn… huh whats this?
*Reads 8a*
…. Challenge accepted! JOYCE IS SUCH A STRAWMAN!…. or at least she would be if she got the role in a play of The Wizard of Oz! I swear she her innocent and cute demeanor would make her a perfect role for the Scarecrow! Because like The Scarecrow even though Joyce doesn’t always appear to be the brightest she often ends up thinking a lot about the current situation more then others would give her credit for which can lead her to sometimes surprise people with the conclusions or ideas she comes up with! That is why Joyce is a perfect Strawman….
Nailed it!
Thanks Tenn, although actually I am a regular reader and I don’t mind the character of Joyce per se, it’s more the comments sections that I’m wary of
Sometimes people like to use any mention of any religion to start insulting all and sundry, and I’ve been on the pointy end of the stick a few too many times (despite being a Christian who actually supports gay marriage based on my understanding of the Bible – I get flamed by my own side too). I guess it’s a representation thing, same as having your token POC or token LGBT person. When you have a lone ‘religious’ character it’s easy for people to forget that there are so many views within even a single denomination of any given faith, and at the end of the day we’re all just people trying to figure out what the heck to do with our lives.
And I messed up. Second try: About page.
The Fundamentalist places all of his faith solely in the Bible, but says some of it is no longer relavant. It’s not even really a paradox, it’s a sad contradiction.
Well its like reading a history book, Having Both Testaments in the bible allows people to see and understand the changes in the faith from the conversion from Judaism to Christianity.
And ALOT of other Christians are ignorant about what their faith entails anyway so it would probably be a lot worse if we took out the first half of the bible.
There are admonitions against homosexuality in the New Testament, as well. I’ve always found it interesting to ask professed Christians who regard some parts of scripture as literal truth and others as metaphor (which encompasses all Christians, really) how they determine which is which. There must, after all, be an objective standard by which one can determine this, otherwise, how would they know and have any certainty that it actually was the case, and not, say, just picking and choosing the stuff that agrees with their pre-existing views? Because that would just be silly.
Huh…. the only mention against homosexuality i remember was in the old testament, with the laviticus thing, but even then it was only towards men and the reason is that lineage was a huge deal for the jews.
Man, Becky is a heavy sleeper.
Though admittedly she could just be completely exhausted.
Oh no, did Becky break her leg? At least she and Joyce can have fun drawing on her cast together.
This reminds me of when I made my first friend in High School (who happened to be gay) and I was worrying constantly about hell-fire and corruption and yadda yadda. My parents didn’t help either, since they are uncomfortable with the subject (they got better).
So I go to my church and awkwardly ask one of the priests that I knew (let’s call him Father Steel) about how I should rationalize my friend. The conversation is as follows:
Steel: “Son, is he a good person? No drugs or fighting?”
Me: “Uh, no?”
Steel: “Is he a kind person?”
Me: “Yeah, he helps me with school stuff all the time.”
Steel: “So what’s the problem?”
It was….. very eye-opening to have my worries just kind of hand-waved. But it did help a ton on my conscience and we are still good friends to this day!
“Father Steel, Master of the Cross”
Yeaah, has a nice ring to it!
Excuse me, meant to say “Father Steel, Master of the Cross *Guard*”
In reference to Longsword and its cross like shape, and punning off some sort of anime esque/80’s cartoon holy legion of swordsman.
Technically speaking, the bigger reason not to follow the rules in Leviticus is that they’re the rules given to the Levites, also known as the tribe in charge of keeping the temple in ancient Israel. They weren’t common law even back then. As far as what Joyce is trying to explain, picture it like this. Before Christ, all the rules and stuff in Deuteronomy and the commandments and all that jazz were binding restrictions. Thou shalt not fuck it up. When Christ showed up on the scene, he fulfilled our obligation to those restrictions, which means that if we break them, we’re not eternally screwed, and we can be forgiven. They’re still probably a good idea to keep around, just because they were given to have some sort of idea of what’s expected of us, but they’re not Law to us anymore.
Feel invited to comment on Nitroglycerific’s thread (my thread immediately below that hat a bit larger citation).
How can those be “not Law” when not following them makes you called least in the kingdom of heaven and if it turns out that Pharisees and the teachers of the law are better in this game than you, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven?
Maybe this is a hidden critic of the Parisees? But in that case you are playing “find loopholes”, which Joyce in the previous comic warns against (and doing it herself anyhow).
My question is, if God intended the Bible to be taken literally, or at least have it be his main tool to teach people what he wants, why would he allow human error to mess it up? Either it means he’s really chill and is all about the intent in your heart, or he’s angry at everyone and no one gets to heaven except the few people who were lucky enough to hear the gospel straight from their prophet’s mouth
Well remember that Christian god is:
* omnipotent
* omniscient
* benevolent / loves mankind
But still nobody knows his email-address, which clearly means the spammers are to blame!
He gave us free will so that we could make all of these decisions. Removing human error probably couldn’t be done without removing free will. Also any human error could have come from anything, ranging from ‘a smudge in the writing of the text causing a misunderstanding’ to ‘people purposely skewing the meaning of text for their own means’.
He doesn’t interfere with any of that so that we can grow and develop on our own…
Or that’s how I as a Christian see it anyway. I could be wrong and it probably could be seen differently.
Dear God. I just realized Christianity is similar to tabletop RPGS. Just hear me out on this one…
Each new edition includes new rules and new fluff. Some people like the new rules / fluff and go with it and others do not. If they use the new stuff they still at the fluff from the older stuff and sometimes they use some of the rules when new rules don’t exist yet, but it’s the fluff from the older books that really carry over. Of course you also have your diehards who stick to the older editions and don’t like anything that comes out later.
I think that very analogy has come up on this very comment forum before. And yes, it makes perfect sense.
I feel like that might have been in a strip either of another Willis comic or of QC.
Happy new hoverboard, everyone!
yeah I’ll admit alot of this is confusing. The Old Testament gives a lot of strict rules about the dos and don’ts of what to eat and hang out with and things like that while the New Testament God says “Do not declare unclean what I have declared clean”. Thats not a word for word quote but there is a part that basically does say that.
This might be because some people from back in the Old Testament misunderstood what they were told, or that after Jesus came and told all the Pharisees that they were doing everything and then reascended God told them that their actions and how they treat others was far more important then trying to keep yourself pure like the Pharisees were doing….
Or I could be 100% wrong on the case and no one here really cares about what I’m saying. It could be any of the above
I’m going to break the second rule now. I’m radical like that.
Erica Henderson is completely awesome. I had her Li’l Cthulhu-A-Day desk calendar next to my computer for five years, and when I finally met her at a con she doodled one more for me. One of my most priced possessions.
(I never bothered to figure out the shortpacked comments system, and I don’t have much to add to the ongoing discussion here but still wanted to feel included so I say it here instead)
http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=2181
Matthew 5:17-18: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the laws of Moses or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. In truth I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even the smallest stroke of a letter will pass away from the Law.”
Doesn’t sound very much to me like a new covenant being established…
Anybody else getting an intrusion warning when looking at DOA?
Norton keeps blocking an intrusion from dixad nshescribes Wroclaw PL
Speaking as a Christian, this often baffles me too.
God’s word may be immutable, but humans aren’t.
It’s either a bug or a “feature” in our code.
I know this is moot but I normally point out to xtians at this point the book of Luke 23:25 ish (I am pagan so shoot me)
Jesus basically said he was no here to replace the original teachings of the old testament, however he says that those who follow the old laws, as well as his, and his will be better thought of than those who don’t.
I think Joyce needs to look up the meaning of the term “contradiction.”