Joyce is implying that Dorothy is lucky that she will have people to write her jokes, because her own sense of humor is cheesy/terrible. At least that’s what I took away from it.
It means put Dorothy in a war zone, death camp, zombie apocalypse, etc. that she has to endure, and face her own inevitable mortality that her principles won’t help one bit while she’s at it, and there’s a good chance her atheist principles will be replaced with “Save me, Jeebus!” or “God, Allah, Buddah, L. Ron Hubbard, I love you all!”
Atheists are usually found in places very far from foxholes at that, or at least it seems that way.
But the proverb does reek of borderline reasoning, yes.
I still think Dorothy will cave, on account of her being no Ernest Hemingway or Kurt Vonnegut. Her atheism strikes me more as glorified agnosticism due to fear making the wrong call, and also an extension of her persona as an intellectual.
Tread quietly…it’s the very rare awesomeface. Do not make any loud noises or you may spook it. The wild awesome face tends to be a wide grinned matter of fact looking species. But sometimes it’s plumage takes the shape of a smug smile. This, is of course, the former.
Cool, thanks, never heard that phrase before. But I’m afraid I still don’t get the presidential speechwriting bit. Like I said, the whole exchange was entirely lost on me.
Those speech writers didn’t hlep Bush much, unless you go along with the theory that Bush made all those speech mistakes on purpose to deflect some of the blame for his unpopular decisions during his terms.
Dorothy could feel Joyce’s breath on the back of her neck, a warm tease that made her think of other things. “Can’t she even understand that Sal would kill me for even thinking about her in that way.” she thought as the breaths became shallower and more rapid. “Bad enough Sal already sneaks in and out to visit her, now this?” the inner monologue continued. “Joyce, I thought Sal wanted to take you for a ride…” Joyce’s eyes opened. “Oh yes, I had forgotten about that.” Joyce’s breathing became deeper again. “Where was it you wanted to take me?” she sweetly sang towards Sal, her puppy dog eyes looking up into the steel-eyed biker chick.
I think any dream where I was having sex (sort of) with my squeeze and he suddenly turned into evil cut rape man on me could legitimately be categorized as a bad one.
Yeah, clearly I worded my comment badly. The point I was trying to get across was that her dream had gone beyond being merely bad, and was now officially fucked up.
humm? So Joyce became frightened of Ethan for a moment because she flashed on her dream of the attempted rape she underwent at the party. Got that. Ethan is sorry for scaring her, got that. Now it get wierd. Dororthy knows about Joyces scare I think..so why would she say such a stupid thing? That while “there are no Athiests in foxholes” I guess Dorothy is saying that er….Ethan is a foxhole and a play on words of the overly religious Joyce being an athiest? haha yeah right
A commonly held belief amongst some religious people is that there are “no atheists in foxholes”, i.e., when we’re in a scary dangerous situation (like war) we all suddenly become religious and pray to be kept safe. This is of course complete nonsense, but it’s where the phrase comes from.
There is some truth to that argument, but I think it actually works against them. In their least rational and most emotionally traumatised state of mind one might do something equally stupid and irrational, such as attempt to bargain with a non existent higher power. That is basically what the argument is saying. Now, to me, that doesn’t say much for people who do it in a safe familiar situation where they don’t have the excuse to behave so irrationally.
I think the more general sense of the claim is that all atheists already believe in God, and are just lying about it or perhaps in extreme twisted denial during peacetime. Facing the horrors of war is supposed to have scared us into admitting what we already knew.
It’s basically just sophistry. Almost as bad as Pascal’s Wager (one is better off acting as if they believe in God even if they don’t because the ‘stakes’ are so high). But anyway, the “atheist in a foxhole” saying is just a common misconception amongst religious believers, so they can continue to believe that their beliefs are universal.
It reminds me of someone who tried to use a similar kind of sophistry to claim that science was “faith-based”. His reasoning, such as it was, was that science was forced to make certain assumptions, and then presuming that one had to have ‘faith’ in those assumptions. Ergo, science is faith-based, and atheists (who ‘believe’ in science) were faith-based believers.
Actually, Pascal’s Wager is, “If you think Christianity is a good and healthy way to live, you have a lot to gain from living it if it’s the real deal, so why not be a Christian anyhow?” It actually drives “true” Christians lolnutz, because if you’re not “the Elect,” or you are in it because there is something to be gained aside from acknowledgement of the love of God and obedience to His divine plan, you’re not a “real” Christian. (But setting fire to homosexuals and venerating wealth above people, that’s totally cool.)
I kind of think that the “no atheists in foxholes” is just as much an insult to religious people as it is to atheists, as it does tend to suggest that religion is a fear-based adrenaline reaction, roughly as noble as pooping one’s pants.
My proposal: I won’t hold the idiocy of the noisy/proselytizing Christians against the usually-pretty-okay Christians on the street; I won’t hold the smug-about-it rudeness of the sexist Dawkinsites against the usually-pretty-cool atheists; and I hope you will judge me based upon my own stupidities without tarring all pagans with the same brush (or believing anything you hear about us on television unless they’re saying that Charmed is an emetic).
“I had an atheist last night. After five minutes she was screaming “Oh, my nonexistent supreme being!” After ten more minutes, she was screaming “There *is* a god!” –The Unknown Comic, 1984
Yeah, she probably just thought that Joyce had a sex dream – and that’s probably the part of the dream Joyce is thinking about too. Her reaction to Ethan in yesterday’s strip did not look like ‘oh god he’s going to rape me’.
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BA DUM DUM TSSSH
Wah-wah-waaaaaaaaah
Bum bum bah-dum, WHAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOoooooo
That was too funny 😀
Dorothy’s face in the last panel will make a nice gravatar image.
Also, Happy New Year!
Was thinking the same for Joyce.
Walky’s face is good too
‘Who else but Dorothy?’
Cue canned laughter.
Give it some time Dorothy. Walky will be entering your fox hole soon enough.
Will he discover religion when he does?
He’ll discover something alright.
Something so wonderful it’ll make him believe in god?
The G in G-spot stands for God.
Dotty is THAT GOOD? No wonder Danny didn’t want to break up with her.
…Disgruntled aside.
Does it count if he screams God’s name?
According to at least one church bulletin board all over the interwebz, no.
Nobody help me. I’m gonna try to figure it out myself….
no such thing as an athiest in a foxhole.
But then, the speech writers part…
Cos Dotty hopes to become President one day.
Yes, but why does the skill of speech-writing help Dorothy or Joyce in this situation?
The implication is that Dorothy’s joke is awful.
It is not a joke that a speech writer would have given her to tell.
Joyce is implying that Dorothy is lucky that she will have people to write her jokes, because her own sense of humor is cheesy/terrible. At least that’s what I took away from it.
I still don’t get it.
“no such thing as an athiest in a foxhole.”
What do these words mean/where do they come from?
Never mind, research got the better of myself.
It means put Dorothy in a war zone, death camp, zombie apocalypse, etc. that she has to endure, and face her own inevitable mortality that her principles won’t help one bit while she’s at it, and there’s a good chance her atheist principles will be replaced with “Save me, Jeebus!” or “God, Allah, Buddah, L. Ron Hubbard, I love you all!”
Atheists are usually found in places very far from foxholes at that, or at least it seems that way.
That is the theory. It does not pan out in practice.
http://militaryatheists.org/atheists-in-foxholes/
With a perfectly unbiased source, of course.
But the proverb does reek of borderline reasoning, yes.
I still think Dorothy will cave, on account of her being no Ernest Hemingway or Kurt Vonnegut. Her atheism strikes me more as glorified agnosticism due to fear making the wrong call, and also an extension of her persona as an intellectual.
I know there is a dick joke in that statement somewhere, I just not sure where it is exactly.
There was a dick joke in your mom last night.
for a Nickel.
Are you implying that your dick is a joke?
Are you implying that I’m refering to myself?
The only other reference that would make sense is Mike, and if that were the case, you’d’ve come down with a terrible case of the face-fisting.
Would he contract fist-AIDS from it?
And all the others. Fistiphilus and such.
One of the many types of FisTDs.
Alla the internets – just take ’em, already.
Touché
Awesomeface spotted in panel 4.
Tread quietly…it’s the very rare awesomeface. Do not make any loud noises or you may spook it. The wild awesome face tends to be a wide grinned matter of fact looking species. But sometimes it’s plumage takes the shape of a smug smile. This, is of course, the former.
The final panel escapes me entirely.
Perhaps this will help.
Cool, thanks, never heard that phrase before. But I’m afraid I still don’t get the presidential speechwriting bit. Like I said, the whole exchange was entirely lost on me.
She’s saying that it’s not a joke a speechwriter would recommend. In other words, it’s a bad joke.
Not even here or there with the situation, either. She’ll need more than a writer, or she needs to consider a better career path.
Those speech writers didn’t hlep Bush much, unless you go along with the theory that Bush made all those speech mistakes on purpose to deflect some of the blame for his unpopular decisions during his terms.
Don’t blame the speech writers for the speaker’s incompetence.
How about blaming them all?
Panel four Dorothy reminds me of Groucho Marx for some reason.
Perhaps its the eyebrows.
Same. The first thing to pop to mind.
Eh, not that funny. Keep trying though, Dorothy.
Look at Walky’s face in the last panel. He’s smiling. He totally digs it. They have the same silly sense of humor.
Sigh. I actually really like the two of them together in DOA.
Dorothy could feel Joyce’s breath on the back of her neck, a warm tease that made her think of other things. “Can’t she even understand that Sal would kill me for even thinking about her in that way.” she thought as the breaths became shallower and more rapid. “Bad enough Sal already sneaks in and out to visit her, now this?” the inner monologue continued. “Joyce, I thought Sal wanted to take you for a ride…” Joyce’s eyes opened. “Oh yes, I had forgotten about that.” Joyce’s breathing became deeper again. “Where was it you wanted to take me?” she sweetly sang towards Sal, her puppy dog eyes looking up into the steel-eyed biker chick.
Come now, there’s enough of that everywhere else, we don’t need it here too… Okay, maybe we do.
I think that dream was not “bad” as much as it was “fucked up”.
Fucked up and bad seem to be in the same general area.
Rarely do you hear the phrase “fucked up” and there not be some negative implication to it.
True. What I was trying to say was that her dream had transcended being merely “bad”, and had crossed over into the realm of being “fucked up”.
I think any dream where I was having sex (sort of) with my squeeze and he suddenly turned into evil cut rape man on me could legitimately be categorized as a bad one.
Yeah, clearly I worded my comment badly. The point I was trying to get across was that her dream had gone beyond being merely bad, and was now officially fucked up.
True, but saying “bad dream” won’t necessarily cause people to ak what happened in the dream the way “fucked up dream” will.
I dunno, I’ve had people ask me regardless.
Damn, Ethan is tall
Joyce is afraid to get near Ethan. After all, he may be a lustwolf in sheep’s clothing.
BUH DUM TSH.
humm? So Joyce became frightened of Ethan for a moment because she flashed on her dream of the attempted rape she underwent at the party. Got that. Ethan is sorry for scaring her, got that. Now it get wierd. Dororthy knows about Joyces scare I think..so why would she say such a stupid thing? That while “there are no Athiests in foxholes” I guess Dorothy is saying that er….Ethan is a foxhole and a play on words of the overly religious Joyce being an athiest? haha yeah right
No, Dorothy is the foxhole–Joyce is hiding behind her as someone would hide in a foxhole during war. Dorothy is also an atheist.
I have got to start paying more attention to the staging.
Wait, it’s still the day after the WTF?! Dream?
G.damn, this comic’s pacing….
Dorothy…
THAT JOKE IS BAD, AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD!
That Meme is old and you should feel old!
This place is a butt and you are also a butt!
I’m missing the context here, huh?
Foxhole?
A commonly held belief amongst some religious people is that there are “no atheists in foxholes”, i.e., when we’re in a scary dangerous situation (like war) we all suddenly become religious and pray to be kept safe. This is of course complete nonsense, but it’s where the phrase comes from.
There is some truth to that argument, but I think it actually works against them. In their least rational and most emotionally traumatised state of mind one might do something equally stupid and irrational, such as attempt to bargain with a non existent higher power. That is basically what the argument is saying. Now, to me, that doesn’t say much for people who do it in a safe familiar situation where they don’t have the excuse to behave so irrationally.
I think the more general sense of the claim is that all atheists already believe in God, and are just lying about it or perhaps in extreme twisted denial during peacetime. Facing the horrors of war is supposed to have scared us into admitting what we already knew.
It’s basically just sophistry. Almost as bad as Pascal’s Wager (one is better off acting as if they believe in God even if they don’t because the ‘stakes’ are so high). But anyway, the “atheist in a foxhole” saying is just a common misconception amongst religious believers, so they can continue to believe that their beliefs are universal.
It reminds me of someone who tried to use a similar kind of sophistry to claim that science was “faith-based”. His reasoning, such as it was, was that science was forced to make certain assumptions, and then presuming that one had to have ‘faith’ in those assumptions. Ergo, science is faith-based, and atheists (who ‘believe’ in science) were faith-based believers.
Actually, Pascal’s Wager is, “If you think Christianity is a good and healthy way to live, you have a lot to gain from living it if it’s the real deal, so why not be a Christian anyhow?” It actually drives “true” Christians lolnutz, because if you’re not “the Elect,” or you are in it because there is something to be gained aside from acknowledgement of the love of God and obedience to His divine plan, you’re not a “real” Christian. (But setting fire to homosexuals and venerating wealth above people, that’s totally cool.)
I kind of think that the “no atheists in foxholes” is just as much an insult to religious people as it is to atheists, as it does tend to suggest that religion is a fear-based adrenaline reaction, roughly as noble as pooping one’s pants.
My proposal: I won’t hold the idiocy of the noisy/proselytizing Christians against the usually-pretty-okay Christians on the street; I won’t hold the smug-about-it rudeness of the sexist Dawkinsites against the usually-pretty-cool atheists; and I hope you will judge me based upon my own stupidities without tarring all pagans with the same brush (or believing anything you hear about us on television unless they’re saying that Charmed is an emetic).
Are you trolling at the end, there?
Ah. Thank you enlightening me.
A more logical saying should be “There are no atheists during bouts of great sex”.
“I had an atheist last night. After five minutes she was screaming “Oh, my nonexistent supreme being!” After ten more minutes, she was screaming “There *is* a god!” –The Unknown Comic, 1984
That’s only because “Oh My Universe of Wonder” doesn’t flow as well.
Either way a foxhole may be involved.
Assuming foxhole is a euphemism of cause. 😉
What accent is that, PM?
y’know, over at shortpacked it’s sometimes easy to forget how tall Ethan is…
He’s not all that tall; everyone else here is just really quite short.
You’re not the foxhole, Dorothy. You’re the whole fox. Mrrar!
Foxy, foxy~
DOROTHY WINS
Delivery, Joyce. The best speechwriter on Earth can’t help with delivery.
…wait a minute… Dorothy knows what happened at the party… gods, what the hell is WRONG with this girl?!
Yeah, but she doesn’t know what Joyce was dreaming about. It’s probably in response to Joyce’s reaction to PDA.
Yeah, she probably just thought that Joyce had a sex dream – and that’s probably the part of the dream Joyce is thinking about too. Her reaction to Ethan in yesterday’s strip did not look like ‘oh god he’s going to rape me’.
That she’s stupid?
Well, like Joyce was saying…Dorothy doesn’t always say the right things.
<3 Dorothy
Let’s be war buddies; Waist deep in big muddies, side by side. I’ll be your atheist of a fox hole any time.
I….don’t get it.
Google “No atheists in the foxhole,” it may help you out.