Evolutionist is a term I don’t care much for personally, we don’t have special terms for people who accept germ theory, or gravitational theory. Probably because it lends too much legitimacy to creationism by making evolution sound more like a belief system instead of solid scientific theory.
Yeah, good point. But, in these times when acceptance of science in our culture is oft challenged by religion, I feel that identification of “sides,” evolutionist or creationist, is necessary. But, yeah, I wish I didn’t have to use the term “evolutionist.”
How about we just call the sides ‘Creationists’ and ‘normal folks’? Cause even the Vatican think creationism is wacko and you gotta wake up pretty early to out-fundy the Vatican.
Because there are people who believe in both? Like, the animals were created with the ability to adapt or, rather, have their genes mutate and have nature select the gene combination most likely to survive? Where do these people fit in? Normal Creationist? Creationormalists?
That’s still accepting the principles of evolution and not actively challenging it’s place in the class room or pretending it’s just random guesswork. The only real different here would be what was the initial ‘spark’ o f life, wether it was just random chemical occurance or a divine hand. In the end the principles of evolution remains accepted as truth.
The idea that God created the universe with conditions that would lead to the rise of life and the evolutionary process is “theistic evolution,” or just “evolution,” since evolutionary theory has no position on God one way or another.
I doubt you’ll ever see this, but I wanted to say thanks for giving me the term that has described my own beliefs for years. I’ve known what I believe and could articulate that belief, I’ve just never heard a term before now that described it. So thanks.
Who says webcomics (and by extension, their comments) can’t teach you anything important?
Maybe because some “normal” people do actually believe in creation. Just because some need to beat people over the head with it doesn’t mean everybody does. Just like there are some “evolutionists” who don’t feel the need to call those with a belief system stupid. Almost every culture has an “origin” story. Some of them are out there, perhaps even Christianity’s. Genesis has an account of the beginning. An origin story. Some Christians and Jews believe it’s literal, some metaphorical and some of us really are weird and believe both 🙂 . I get to choose what I believe just as you do, and allow my upbringing, experience, biases and orneriness to affect that decision as much as you do. Many creationists are perfectly normal, and perfectly reasonable – even if you’d never believe we are rational as well.
…I don’t “choose what to believe”. What I believe is compelled by my understanding of the facts, my reasoning ability filtered through whatever cognitive biases I haven’t identified and compensated for.
Knowing myself, and as a friend of someone who believes this is what he does, but has also made the mistake of taking up the bottle as of late (making his memory more unreliable than he gives himself credit for), I can attest that this is exactly what everyone else does. Whether those biases are towards “scientists” (or more likely “professionals” who have their own biases and have no evidence of their own except the reputation of who they consider to be “scientists” or “professionals”), or your parents who taught you all about this world, or some mix because you managed to recognize that all these people are biased. The bias is there, whether you acknowledge them or don’t. They may even be there in a different capacity and you incorrectly compensate for them, but they are there.
Anecdotal evidence isn’t good proof. And why do you have the word scientists in quotes? Just what exactly are trying to imply here?
They can’t be right all the time, but that isn’t the point of the scientific method. People who went to school and perform experiments are better evidence than the Bible or a minister. I identify as Christian and I still say this.
I guess I get what you are saying, but I’d also say you just said the same thing. I can get that feeling of not being able to deny something as truth even if you don’t want to. In that way, it feels like you are not choosing what to believe. But at the same time, that “filtered through whatever cognitive biases I haven’t identified and compensated for” is where I’d put that. And you also choose who you are willing to listen to. When I “converted” from what I was to what I am now (Christian to a Jewish/Christian, not a huge leap, but one that was not popular with many of my friends and family and one that has a very different take on certain ideas that many Christians are very protective of), I made a list of three things that I was not willing to compromise on; the three things most central to the way I functioned and processed the world around me. I was willing to listen to what the man who taught me said and consider anything (not agree to anything, just weigh as objectively as I could) that he said that did not directly contradict those three things. What I’m trying to say is that sometimes you cannot overcome bias, but other times, you can consciously label the biases you do have to filter the content you allow to contradict the biases you may not have identified. Another example might simply be saying that I would never listen to or read a book by Richard Dawkins, and I’m pretty sure most here would not purposely sit down with a Billy Graham or Rebbe Schneerson lecture. That’s a conscious bias that cuts off certain input that might also contradict any number of unconscious biases.
1) Belief is when you take something to be true when you don’t have enough evidence to take a position on it scientifically. Evolution is not a belief position, because it is the best explanation for what we know happens.
2) While you have a right to your beliefs, you don’t have the right to try and attempt to put them on the same footing as generally accepted scientific theory (and the modern synthesis of ToE and genetics is one of the best evidentially supported theories in science). If I had a belief that we all stayed on the earth due to it being made out of molasses, I would be allowed to hold it no matter what, but would not be allowed teach it as science without demonstrating an evidential basis. Teaching that god created the world c.6,000 years ago and everything on it is unchanging is what creationists want to teach, and they have the same evidential basis as my “molasses earth” hypothesis, i.e. the evidence categorically shows it to be wrong.
Even many creationists think it’s crazy, what Joyce is talking about is “Young Earth Creationism” Who believe the Earth is only six to eight thousand years old and all creatures were created at the same time. there are Old Earth Creationists who are more adaptable, who believe that the Six days are actually long periods of time and not actually 24 hour days. And that God created creatures to be able to adapt and evolve. They are more open minded creationists. of course Joyce is clearly a young Earth believer.
That seems an odd position. I assume you don’t go around calling yourself a “round-earther” or a “heliocentricist”, so why use “evolutionist”?
The first time I ever heard the term was when I was being shouted at by a particularly objectionable creationist. He used it as an insult, because that’s what it is. It’s a pejorative term to create the illusion of division in science.
Religion also disregards math, but you don’t go splitting people into religious and mathists. Just stop labeling yourself as evolutionist, you’re only feeding the paranoia by picking an arbitrary side like that.
I’ve found creating “sides” and polarizing to extremes on every issue does a disservice to both sides and just makes everyone sound like either moronic zealots or nihilist robots. I encourage you to paint the world with a little less black/white, and a few more tints of grey.
The only sides in the evolution “conflict” that I’m aware of are people who look at the world around them and try to understand what they see and people who don’t because it’s scary. It’s an issue with nearly as many sides as a line.
Metal is part of Earth…technically plants should be as well (unless maybe you make Life an element). Wood also has nothing to do with wind–that’s just loony.
But really elements aren’t any of those things according to the periodic table.
“I’m an alchemist, myself. I’m disappointed in the lack of four-element theory in our schools.”
It still is, but we call it the four states of matter:
Air = gas
water = liguid
earth = solid
fire = plasma
Very nice . . . but it still doesn’t take into account quark-gluon plasma, Bose-Einstein condensates, neutron degenerate matter, superfluids, and several other non-classical states. (Sorry for the nerdgasm.)
I think only several parts of Christianity who think Dinosaurs never existed or there’s no evolution. A lot of religions out there actually agreed that evolution exist. It’s just that it’s getting more and more complicated with the existence of internet where both sides can argue all day long.
How can we be sure if it’s impossible to piss Dina off if we haven’t seen DoA Dina in a situation that held the possibility of her becoming pissed off?
She’d find time to make merry with other people who treat the Book of Genesis as the official beginning of history in the 1700s? While still being a young white person of the female variety?
Hope she gets adopted by a very wealthy, powerful family and doesn’t mind having her whole adult life decided for her. She’s kinda used to being coddled…
Raptors are much smaller than that, so they couldn’t reach the handle. I’ve always been disappointed in xkcd for continuing the misidentification with deinonychus. Velociraptors would still be dangerous, but they’d most likely only come up to your hip–if that.
So, what does Joyce believe about dinosaurs, really? Does she acknowledge their having lived? That’s what this comic seems to imply, but given how hardcore Christien you depicted her so far, wouldn’t acknowledging dinosaurs bring into question her own beliefs about the origins of man? Wait… that’s where you going to take this, aren’t you? Now how will Ethan fit into this discussion?
Although the templars were once considered a possible contributing force in the extinction of large saurians, it is more fashionable these days to cite post-classical researchers who adhere to the Pope-fireball theory, in which Boniface, in a fit of corrupt rage, is said to have called upon the unholy power of the flame golems of the Roman catacombs to eliminate the proto-avian heresy once and for all.
It’s not like continuing to divide their resources on both saurian-fighting AND the orcish horde would’ve worked out eventually. They were overwhelmed as it was, and the latter threat was far cagier and much more a deliberate, sapient threat, so it was either the dinos or our ancestors. They barely made it out of that age as it is!
This place will let you know all you need to know about how dinosaurs and people co-existed, and how no animals had deadly proclivities until after the original sin.
Likely she acknowledges their existence and extinction thanks to evidence but justifies it by pointing out that it was before recorded history so how do we know?
I don’t think you know very much about how Joyce-like Christians dinosaurs! Not that I can fault you, as you live a very blissful life free of this knowledge, but even Young Earth Creationists believe dinosaurs existed. It’s just… HOW they existed which makes things… interesting…
If you hate humanity, logical thought, and yourself, and you want to hate just one more smug waste of skin, listen to Kent Hovind talk about dinosaurs.
Although, in fairness, the fact that he’s in jail does make me happy.
Yep, that’s true.
But that’s the lazy basics, the problem comes on explaining why they are not in the Bible, where they were on the “seven days of creation”, etc.
I don’t think Joyce is Catholic. Not Roman Catholic, anyway. The Catholic Church has, in theory, not subscribed to a literal interpretation of the Bible for a while.
There’s a theory that the Flintstones live in a post-apocalyptic world. But they have dinosaurs too so I guess people used technology to recreate them.
Yeah, I read that Chick Track . . . back in the day, dinosaurs were called “dragons,” and we hunted them for food. And the brontosaurus runs up a mountain and hides his head in the clouds, ‘cuz he’s too stupid to know that if he can’t see the hunters, they can still see him, and the redneck hunters kill him and turn him into dragon steaks.
I also remember them saying that the air and weather were different after Noahs flood and the larger dinosaurs lungs couldnt handle the it so they died off after a while.
Makes about as much sense as how so many government conspiracy, Kennedy assassination coverup, saucer head, communist, anarchist, and other such theory subscribers and similar ‘radical’ types brush aside anything presenting glaring holes in the reasoning of their beliefs.
It isn’t exactly out of the ordinary, as far as popular sentiments go. The real problem is when seeming smart, rational people have been looking at themselves and humanity through rose-colored glasses for so long that it completely blows their mind whenever they see how,er, imperfect humanity can be for the 1st time…Then the 2nd….Then the 3rd….4th…5th….6th…Gaudammet, Mark Twain, you were a *%#ing oracle!
Oh yes, I saw that too. However, Uncle Rylon typed, “Man, I need to eat a seal.” Nothing about bear, so perhaps he’s not interested in bear meat.
I’d hoped to find a functional link to an import company that sells these products, but no go. (Technically I did find one that formerly sold canned bear, but discontinued it. And they did not have seal.)
I have in my time met some particuarly obstinate creationists that think dinosaurs are made up, but I also think they were geocentrists, so they were majorly out there.
I work with science teachers who are at this level of creationism. It gives me chest pains, so I include science in my history and English classes. Lesson one is that people in the Middle Ages believed the Bible was a science book; hint: it was not a science book and it is not one now.
“I don’t think you know very much about how Joyce-like Christians dinosaurs!”
…wha? I’m baffled. I speak Spanish as my native, but I think there’s a verb missing in there… Know? Believe? Explain? Dismiss? Deny? Did they accidentally the whole dinosaur? what in the hell…?
I still maintain that despite English and all it’s crazy exceptions, it’s the one damn language that’s spoken forwards to backwards. I don’t care if it’s “I before E except after C and a million other cases”, why do all translations come out as “dinosaur woods in was”?
That’s just cultural bias talking. English is very inconsistent on ordering of sentences. English applies adjective modifiers before what they modify, clauses afterwards, and adverbs either before or after. Thus English has elements of a left-branching (modifiers before) and a right-branching (modifiers after) language.
In comparison, Japanese and Turkish are absolutely left-branching languages, in which all modifiers (adjective, preposition phrases, etc.) precede what they modify. Spanish is mostly right-branching with all modifiers coming after (with occasional allowance for numbers in front).
As for why a sentence might be “dinosaur woods in was,” that’s just Subject-Object-Verb order. Subject-Verb-Object languages, like English are only the second most common type after SOV. Arguably, we’re the ones being weird here.
We inherit the branching aspect from Latin, which also has modifiers either before or after what they modify.
Maybe it is a cultural bias, but I still don’t understand why you would have a language that has all the nouns and then the verb at the end.
The dinosaur sentence was probably just too small of an example, I’m in Latin III/IV where the sentences are nearly a paragraph long (gee, thanks Cicero). At that point, verbs start to get funky, where sometimes they’ll be saved until the end of the sentence, rather than the end of the clause, so sometimes literal translations go “He town, taking with him the dastardly, the X, the Y, the Z-various-other-evil-adjectives, ran from” instead of what you would expect, even from languages which follow such rules, with “he ran from town, taking with him…”
Hey Plasma, do you have any advice on getting Gravatar to update when you try to change an image? I uploaded my new Dina but I keep seeing the old Richard grav (yes, I’m the same George, but I used a different email for this site because I wanted to see what my random avatar would be).
Assuming that the gravatar I am seeing right now is NOT the image you wanted to see even after about 5-10 minutes, I can only suggest making sure the image is not too big byte-wise before you upload it.
And I can’t imagine what an angry Dina might be capable of. It’s scary.
“You get your first look at this “five foot paleontology enthusiast” as you enter a clearing. She moves like a bird, lightly, bobbing her head. And you keep still because you think that maybe her visual acuity is based on movement like Ruth – she’ll lose you if you don’t move. But no, not Dina. You stare at her, and she just stares right back. And that’s when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side, from the other two Dinas you didn’t even know were there”
I don’t know. I didn’t care for Dina too terribly much in It’s Walky. Hopefully, we don’t see DoA Dina turn out like that, but I doubt that’s going to happen.
I hope she goes through a similar evolution to the one she had in Walkyverse Prime. I’ll be interested in whatever Willis does with the character, I’m sure, but it’s hard to find her likable as such a hardcore fundie.
I wouldn’t go that far- I like her just fine, because she’s still a good person- but I agree that her sheer level of ignorance gets frustrating. Hopefully Dina’s about to drop some SCIENCE up in this bongo.
She carries them, but her beliefs clearly stem from ignorance, not fear or hate. She might sometimes be fearful or claim to hate because of them, but she’s not a naturally fearful or hateful person. She just doesn’t know any better. I’m an atheist myself, but I don’t consider a person “bad” unless they should know better and still choose to hate.
Most of the times, the quiet ones are the most dangerous… Especially if that one is (phonetically) called “Dinosaur”, you can say that this is as risky as messing with a T-Rex.
I don’t remember what my church believed (Roman Catholic if it helps) or what I learned in Bible school, but I remember always having this belief that God created the garden of Eden, then Adam and Eve, then when they ate the apple and were banished, God decided to create dinosaurs.
Then evolution happened.
…I have…had? had…some really f*cked up beliefs growing up…
I have a hard time understanding how people could believe that creation story as literal.
There are two people, they have two sons; now there are four people. One of them kills another, now there are three people. One of them moves away, but he’s afraid of all the other people, and so… Wait.
Either something here is wrong, or it wasn’t supposed to be literal in the first place. Well, and/or, I guess.
Adam lived to be 930 (Eve wasn’t important enough to get a date). Assuming menopause at middle age (somewhere in the 500s), and a steady rate of one kid a year (allowing for pauses and occasionally twins balancing each other out), that’s at LEAST five hundred people in the second generation.
“And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth” – Gen 5:3 KJV
One could take that literally to mean that Seth was identical to Adam.
It’s okay, there weren’t birth defects until after the flood, because the vapour layer (that fell during the flood) protected the Earth from radiation. This also explains why there were so many people pre-flood who lived hundreds of years; when the vapour barrier protected us, people aged slower.
In the words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up.
See, it’s okay for that to “evolve” because I called it *micro* evolution, and that’s TOTALLY different from *macro* evolution, which is what I call anything I don’t think happened.
Yes, but inbreeding is only a problem because it increases the chance of genetically recessive diseases. The untainted and unmutated genes of Adam and Eve wouldn’t have had those diseases until radiation started mutating them.
I remember my Hebrew school pointing out that Cain’s wife and her extended family just kinda pop out of nowhere, and their first mention makes it seem like they were there the whole time. So perhaps God created other people after Adam and Eve because otherwise where the fuck did they come from?
The usual explanation given in Bible commentaries is based on Genesis 5:4: “The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters.” (NRSV translation) I.e., Cain, like Seth, married one of his sisters, because who else was there to perpetuate the human race with?
Another, less traditionalist theory is that in the original context of the Cain story, Cain wasn’t one of the very first people ever. There are hints of this in the fact that when God condemns him to wandering, Cain protests that anyone whom he meets will recognize him as a murderer and kill him (4:14). (Whom would he have to fear if he really were one of the only people on the planet?) After God bestows the mark on him, Cain not only has sex with his wife, but founds a city (4:17). (Why bother founding a city for just you, your wife and your kid?) So it’s likely that there were independent stories about Cain, living in a society of some sort with other people, that got smooshed into the biblical text as we know it.
Isn’t it supposed to be something to do with that “There were giants on the Earth in those days” bit? And of course there was Lilith, who I’ve heard interesting suppositions about (although I never did care enough to do any research for myself, so take it with a grain of salt). But I’ve heard their kids interbred with the giants or something.
Heck, I remember one girl in our youth group pointing to that “giants” phrase and claiming it proved the existence of aliens… >.>
In a lot of ancient Western myths, giants where barbaric cousins of the Gods, sans divine powers beyond being able to inflict harm toe-to-toe on their divine cousins and magic sky castles. They just simply looked alot like caricatures of brutish mountain men ranging from the height of a dark age house to big enough to see from orbit.
Stories of giants may have began as ‘fish stories’ of sorts, involving local heroes exaggerating just how big an imposing rival they just bested was…
There’s a character running around loose who calls him self Oberon Zell, and he’s only marginally less nutty than Kent Hovind – but look up his essay “The Other People” for an… interesting take on the Book of Genesis.
<—Atheist who keeps three various versions of the Bible handy, for reference.
Oooh! My favorite part of the “Expanded Universe” is Lilith, Adam’s first wife who was created at the same time as Adam, unlike Eve who was made from Adam’s rib.
Or it predates the Hebrews being monotheistic and was awkwardly retconned to apply to the whole world instead of their tribe specifically. (Not sure if that’s actually how it happened, but I find the thought of Bible writing being like comic writing amusing).
At the college I went to there was a “Sushi with a Rabbi” weekly thing, where an Orthodox Rabbi would come and answer questions for a small group of who ever showed up. At one of these events, we were discussing Genesis, and it was explained that “When the bible says that Adam named all the animals before G-d created Eve.” it was suggesting that Adam got to know every animal… biblically… to see if it was a good match for him. After it was determined that none of the animals were a good match, G-d created Eve.
Oh, it was never an explanation of who Adam and Eve’s children bred with, just an example of creation myth oddity. None of the Rabbis I’ve ever spoken with have ever attempted to reconcile any of the problems with the Torah.
I will say, however, that as an explanation, it makes as much sense as any other that attempts to take the creation stories at their word.
To be fair, the Rabbis at the synagogues I went to spent more time reconciling atheism with Judaism than they did reconciling the Torah with reality. “Look, believing in G-d has nothing to do with being Jewish. You don’t need faith to be a good Jew.”
No. No they couldn’t. Hawkman’s had about 10 different origin stories, and during Brightest Day ALL of them became canon. Even the ones from when there was Archaeologist-Hawkman and Space Cop-Hawkman running around at the same time. Don’t even try to understand his origins.
They do have several, but it is never stated that they had daughters, which makes it hard to figure out where Cain’s wife or the rest of humanity came from.
Only three mentioned by name: “The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters.” (NRSV translation)
“And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters:” – Genesis 5:4 KJV
So yeah, there were other people around. No other names were given in the Bible, though.
I might’ve made a mistake (it’s been a while since I’ve actually read that story), but I don’t think that happened until after Cain moved away and met a bunch of people (and was afraid of strangers!).
I used to have this conversation with a Jehovah’s Witness co-worker back when. It was a fun logic chain. “Okay, so Adam and Eve were the first two people, right?”
“Right.”
“And everyone else is descended from them, right?”
“Right.”
“And Adam and Eve were white, right?”
“Right.”
“And evolution doesn’t exist, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, then… Where do black people come from? Or if Adam and Eve were black (not that it matters, they can be any race, right?) then where do white people come from? Where do Asians come from? Where do any of the various races come from?”
“Well, it depended on who they married.”
“But who did they marry? If there were only these two people, and we’re all descended from them, and evolution doesn’t exist, then how come we have different races?”
“It depended on who they married.”
Repeat ad nauseum.
To be fair, he was very good-natured about it, and we did have some fun conversations about religion and things, but I don’t think he ever even realized the flaw in his argument.
Well, at least he didn’t use the old “kinds” argument where they admit that “microevolution” can happen, but bafflingly claim that “macroevolution” can’t happen where one “kind” (no clear definition given) cannot evolve into another “kind”.
Saying that “microevolution” can happen, but “macroevolution” can’t is like acknowledging that someone can walk a few yards many times, but denying that they can ever walk a few miles.
There is no clear boarder between “micro-” and “macro-” evolution, because the latter is simply the nearly inevitable result of many repetitions of the former.
Well, exactly. A penny is a tiny fraction of a dollar. But can one save up a million dollars in pennies? Yes. But it’ll take a really long time. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen, though, if one has enough time…
Fellow Catholic here… I think they told us something about God making other people after Adam and Eve? I never really got a straight answer from Sunday School, but my parents never really taught us to take the story literally.
Catholics (at least, my 8th grade science teacher/confirmation instructor who is now a deacon) believe that evolution is “God’s plan” or some such bullshit.
Catholic position on evolution is actually pretty simple. It’s a thing. It happened. Science is totally real, and science itself is just a window into the beauty of the intricacy of God’s creation. In other words, God created life on the planet, then told it to get around to evolving according to His guidelines. Modern Catholicism more or less views the creation stories as myths intended to provide lessons.
Some people like to think that’s still ignorant or foolish. Though a very, very lapsed Catholic, I still think it’s not only a solid compromise, but kind of beautiful in its own way. It’s kind of sad to keep getting wrapped up and given crap for the fundy viewpoints.
It certainly paints a much more pleasant picture of God than Creationism.
‘I gave you this awesome tool in your head. So go out and learn about the world with it. You’ll learn more about Me by doing so.’ vs ‘I gave you this awesome tool in your head, and made using it a trap, because if you use the tools I gave you to learn about the world, you’ll only see the lies I put into the world to…I don’t know, test you, or something.’
One nice thing to add about Dina’s shirt is that it implies she’s actually trying to be more social by encouraging a discussion she’d enjoy and be able to participate in! She is growing. She is… evolving.
DINOSAUR rage.
Dinosaurs are not dragons. They don’t breathe fire and the creatures with wings were related to, but not dinosaurs, and the wings were forelimbs, not fifth and sixth limbs.
There. Now that I’ve made this correction, hopefully the Wrath of Dina can spare us.
You are correct. No revived fossil Pokemon have the Dragon type. They all have the Rock type instead. Therefore, dinosaurs are not dragons. Dinosaurs are rocks.
Furthermore their shared weakness to the Water type means that it was probably the Biblical Flood that wiped them out and not an Ice Age, especially since Ice is weak to Rock. Q.E.D.
I’m not that old. But when I was younger they still only sold WHOOP and ASS separately and you had to mix it together yourself. Boy I tell ya, kids these days, hard work…. zzzz
Y’know, the server for Willis’s comics was 503’ing me for a few minutes straight, such that I wondered, “What huge thing happened this time? Did Rachel cross the universe barrier and kiss Billie?” Now I see that while it wasn’t quite that huge, and probably not enough, on its own, to crash the server, today’s strip is definitely notetworthy.
Joyce’s eyebrows in panel 3 are so smug it’s causing me physical pain. It’s the look of “I’m obviously right and you obviously wrong, but I’ll humor you and say that maybe we’re BOTH right. That way, I look like a mediator AND I don’t have to support my argument! It’s not like anything short of terrible death would cause me to change my mind anyway.” It is the worst song, played on the ugliest guitar.
You know what they say, “An eyebrow says a thousand words.”
She put all of her character development points into smugness. She’s roleplaying it as an attempt to reaffirm her beliefs in an increasingly contrary world. It’s totally an attempt to set herself up for further development gains further on down the line, though. Nice metagaming Joyce.
Indeed! She used the word “maybe” which is Christian for “I’m not going to tell you to your face that you’re wrong about something you’ve studied for years and I’ve heard a 10 minute explanation about.” (Unless I’m mistaken)
Okay, I really like Walkyverse Dina but you are seriously trying as hard as you can to tip my liking-scales over to Dumbiverse Dina because wow she’s so great oh my god
Oh this brings back memories. Like being told I’d be going to hell for believing in evolution. To replying that I’ll save the person a seat, ’cause being a judgmental prick probably was a nice sin as well.
I’m goin’ to hell
In a handbasket
And I’ll have good company too
Because if I’m so bad
Then there’s no need to be sad
‘Cause everybody else will be there too (including you!)
The Dinaraptor is mostly a cerealvore, but they have been known to eat anything that provokes them. Sometimes alive, if the provocation is especially irritating.
If angered sufficiently they will resort to vegetarian behavior. It’s hard to get them angry at vegetables, but it is an impressive sight to see.My expedition managed to pelt a Dinaraptor with pine cones until it devoured a whole redwood tree. The footage is quite disturbing.
Wow. I can’t actually remember the last time I actually said my horrified reaction to a comic out loud. Bravo.
Ethan, run. Run while you still can. It’s too late for Joyce. Once a Dinaraptor chooses her prey, she will hunt it mercilessly until it is hers. There is no escaping a Dinaraptor.
I don’t know about velociraptors specifically, but I think that most dinosaurs were neither reptile not fowl, to adapt the saying, but that groups descended from them.
Reptilia is actually a paraphyletic clade, meaning it doesn’t include all the descendants of its common ancestor. Yes dinosaurs are reptiles of a sort, but somewhat in the same sense that birds are.
Crocodiles are more closely related to birds than they are to lizards; there’s no good reason to put snakes, lizards, and crocodiles together in a category that excludes birds.
So “aren’t they still reptiles” is really impossible to answer well.
And then there’s Herpetology, which includes reptiles and amphibians, but not birds.
Academia is structurally still having problems catching up with its own discoveries as far as ornithology goes.
Joyce, why must you confuse my brain meats? On one hand I feel sympathy at your lack of experience in the men department and how Ethan is treating you, then you have to remind me that I hate Creationist, “arguments,” and those who use them with a great ferocity.
Plus, well, you angered my favorite character while acting smug, so ya, sympathy mostly gone.
Especially considering that Dina is the polar opposite of Joyce. Dina has looked at herself, seen where she has been found lacking and tried to correct it. She tries to grow, and has put herself in situations that she finds uncomfortable so that she can experience new things.
Joyce on the other hand has pretty much strong armed everyone into playing by her rules. Everyone must respect how Joyce feels, but the minute they say or do something that makes her uncomfortable then she tires to correct them.
While I think that she has radically inaccurate beliefs about what relationships are like, and the only education that can correct that will be pain based, I’m losing a lot of sympathy for her naivety. She has been at university for several weeks, and in all that time she has never tried to challenge herself. She’s just expected everyone to fall into line and respect her issues while she refuses to budge on anything. Joyce has routinely looked at chance to grow and said, “no thanks.” Honestly, she’s easily the most infuriating character in the entire comic, and the only reason she gets away with being stuck in the 1950’s and not challenging herself is that she’s adorable, and she’s coasting on it.
Analagous traits as compared to shared ancestral traits, sweetie. AKA, convergent evolution as compared to inheritance of traits extinct relatives had in common from a common ancestor.
Incidentally, how is her name pronounced? I would think with the long “I” because then it’s like Dinosaur. But at the same time, I always read it with a long “E” sound.
The worst part of this, btw? You could see her actually, like, coming out of her shell before that comment… like… she was opening up and meeting people and now she’s gonna have a breakdown.
I love it when creationists get that “We can’t REALLY know” attitude. Like, you can accept something with zero proof that is impossible to understand but not something that challenges that belief witch has proof and is difficult to understand? Can we really know what happens when we die? Of course not. Can we use science to speculate what bones we find are? Yes.
I think that if god does exist, can’t he be responsible for evolution?
Then they should tell you that that’s the point. You can’t have faith and belief/believe in something if you know, with proof and evidence beyond all doubt, that it exists. Faith suppresses doubt, knowledge eliminates both.
I firmly believe that any decent lawyer ought to be able to get a mistrial declared if either the presiding judge or any jury members were found to be Creationists, on the grounds that they were obviously constitutionally unable to evaluate empirical evidence or logical arguments.
Wow, Joyce, that took talent. After you graduate, you might want to look into working for munitions companies, starting wars in places where peace has broken out.
Am I the only one to think Dina’s explanation is a little… weird? I mean, “Dinosaurs have feathers because they were early forms of birds” is a VERY teleologic way of putting things. As far as I understand it that’s not really how evolution works. (“Birds have feather because they are ‘late forms’ of feathered dinosaurs would make more sense.”) Now Dina sounds like she believes in intelligent design…
It would only be teleological if Dina was implying that evolution had birds in mind as a goal when giving dinosaurs feathers. It’s a very anthropomorphing way to thinking, ascribing purpose to an impersonal mechanism.
I don’t think that is what Dina is saying; she is merely stating that not only did birds evolve from feathered dinosaurs, but birds literally *ARE* feathered dinosaurs, which is true. It’s just that feathered dinosaurs existed earlier in the bird-to-dinosaur lineage.
Yes. Speaking monophyletically (is that a word?), birds are dinosaurs.
Hm, I certainly see how birds can be considered dinosaurs, and “teleological” was probably too strong a word. (Although, now I think about it, the “their feathers were for” is also ambiguous and can be misleading, but it’s so common in popularisation that I hardly even notice anymore.) Still it makes little sense to say that dinosaurs had feathers “because” many of them were early forms of birds. Both assertions are true, but the “because” is wrong. Remove it and I’m (mostly) fine with the rest of Dina’s explanation. (Funny that my gravatar happens to be Joyce…)
Hooh, jeez.
Don’t go up against the dinosaurs, Joyce. Seriously, Dina’s been very, very shy up until now, or at least very quiet — the only thing she’s been able to open up and talk about has been dinosaurs. Question the one interest that she’s willing to talk about…yeah, this won’t go well.
On the other hand, Joyce is almost the same with religion — sure, she’s more sociable overall, but she’s also very passionate about this one thing. Get two people with major interests whose interests contradict each other and who are very willing to argue against each other…
Who’s predicting a pizza fight?
Also, Friday cliffhanger tomorrow, so either Dina lays down an absolute smackdown with as complete an explanation as she can make, leaving Joyce flabbergasted, or Dina just up and leaves, furious as all get-out, possibly venting to Amber when she gets back.
And I just saw a tie-in here. Amber’s mad at/sorry for/awkward around Ethan because she got dragged into a role where she had to be moral support in a vulnerable part of his life. (And I’m pretty sure they were boyfriend and girlfriend before, so she would have been forced out of that role and upset about that.) Dina comes back and vents about how stupid Joyce was on her date with Ethan. Amber reacts, goes to rant at Ethan’s dishonesty, and drops the Gay Bomb. (Causing confetti and sequins to scatter over a 250-mile radius.)
There’s potential tension growing between Amber and Joyce, anyway — Amber seems to care quite a lot about Dina, and hearing about her being shot down when she’s trying to open up may irk her. (…And actually, I don’t think Amber and Joyce have met, have they? Huh. So that means Amber may have an easier time creating a one-tone mental image of her.)
“You get your first look at this “five foot paleontology enthusiast” as you enter a clearing. She moves like a bird, lightly, bobbing her head. And you keep still because you think that maybe her visual acuity is based on movement like Ruth – she’ll lose you if you don’t move. But no, not Dina. You stare at her, and she just stares right back. And that’s when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side, from the other two Dinas you didn’t even know were there”
eh, I’ll be honest to joyce; I see evolution as the best proof there might be a god
because think about it, which of these is a better creation; something that’ll fix and imove itself over time, or something you yourself need to get up and work on if something changes.
thus why do we not say your both right, because…angry dina scares me o.0
One way to look at it is simply to say that everything happened by chance or an omnipotent being created the big bang, galaxies forming all the natural laws to work perfectly to end up where we are today, including evolution.
Since that theory starts before the Big Bang and even includes it, it has a certain draw to it that i kinda like. Can you think of a more solid way to show that you are an omnipotent bieng than to have made the bing bang and in such a way to end up where we are today?
I can’t think of one unless you start tlaking about multiple univeses/big bangs and if you can make one you cna make more 😉
Also, how do you get more comments than a comic with lesbians kissing?
A comic about religion!
Willis is a genius. A bastard, but a genius non the less.
“Can you think of a more solid way to show that you are an omnipotent being” than create to create a universe that has no evidence of creation whatsoever? This is the kind of backwards thinking and intellectual legerdemain that theology has been reduced to.
As you say, the conditions of the universe are such that it gave rise to humanity. I fail to see the force of this argument. The universe is indeed formulated in such a way as to allow life to arise on certain parts of the habitable surface of a planet which is cosmically remote and insignificant on a scale that is difficult to express without hyperbole.
I guess it depends on your religion or which religion you’re talking about. My beliefs include that the point isn’t for us to have any evidence to go on, but instead have faith. When Jesus came to earth preformed miracles and died for me that was all the evidence I need to know there is a god. Its fine if you don’t want to believe in any God at all, but you don’t have the right to make other seem stupid for their beliefs.
I didn’t say anything about stupidity. If you felt that I did, then that betrays a certain defensiveness. I was responding about the use of scientific claims to demonstrate the ingeniousness of a metaphysical entity. By “backwards thinking” I referred to the process of reasoning backwards from an unjustified conclusion. If you want to see that as an assault on your intelligence, it says more of you than me.
And, as a matter of fact, I DO have that right, I simply choose not to exercise it.
As for the point of faith, I can hardly see the willing surrender of critical faculties as any kind of virtue, but you are of course welcome to it.
Considering I just shared an idea, a theory if you will, you were pretty aggressive there. Not everyone talking about religion is trying to convert you so you might want to ease up there.
Scientists share theories all the time. They’re lucky though, they can sometimes test to see if the theories are true. No one can prove what happened before the big bang, not even scientists. One theory is as good as another then, wouldn’t you say?
You shared an idea, but it wasn’t a theory in the scientific sense. And going “well, any theory is as good as another” shows a profound lack of understanding of even the most basic principles of science.
You are, of course, free to believe whatever, but you have to understand that it’s incredibly frustrating when people say things like “well logically God would make a system that fixes itself” or something similar and passes it off as something that would fit in a scientific context, not knowing that it does not and cannot work as a theory because the involvement or existence of God cannot be proved, and the same goes for the opposite.
That’s the main thing. Whether God exists or not is irrelevant. The thing is that, either way, the very nature of God means that he has absolutely no place in any kind of scientific theory. And it’s really, really annoying when people act like he somehow does.
And passing off different ideas as “theories” of equal validity because it’s impossible to observe what really happened is poor form, too. That kind of thinking means intentionally ludicrous theories are just as valid as more serious ones, making the whole thing pointless to even bring up.
Certainly scientists share ideas all the time, and offer robust criticisms of them on the basis of reason and evidence. What they don’t do is complain about aggression when they receive criticism, and they certainly wouldn’t see that as some kind of valid defence.
As you talk about theories and what happened before the big bang, you might be interested to know that the question is quite meaningless. Not meaningless in that “I think asking what the meaning of life is is meaningless” sort of way, but literally meaningless.
The big bang, as the beginning of space, was also the beginning of time. The theoretical models that suggest this are very robust indeed. To add something, particularly an intelligent, creative something, “before” the big bang is to convolute an otherwise elegant model with nonsensical metaphysical abstractions.
As for “one theory is as good as another”, this is what is known as a golden mean fallacy. Just because a particular is unknown does not put all claims on equal footing.
“I didn’t say anything about stupidity. If you felt that I did, then that betrays a certain defensiveness”
You didn’t say anything about stupidity, but you came across in a rather aggressive and dismissive way. So much so, that even though I agree with everything you said, I STILL feel compelled to come to the defense of the original poster you criticized.
Oh wow, we’re so deep in the comments I can’t even reply to most posts anymore.
@ Spex – See this is how you critique a theory. Nobody’s going to feel personally insulted reading that. Likewise, when advancing your own views on fitting god into scientific thinking you never attempt to belittle the individuals who disagree with you.
@Crumplepunch – “What [scientists] don’t do is complain about aggression when they receive criticism”.
Criticism is, in of itself, not aggressive. It is only aggressive if it is voiced in an aggressive form, and that form of criticism IS indeed worthy of complaint.
I suspect that the grumpy Ethan portrait lends my perceived voice rather more vitriol than I actually express.
Even so I make no apologies for being dismissive. Nonsensical ideas effectively exist to be dismissed.
You rather missed my point with the “complaint about criticism” remark. I was pointing out that my aggression, real or imagined, is no excuse for the faulty reasoning I criticize, nor does it invalidate the points I make.
Your argument isn’t a proof of a creator deity at all though. It’s a rationalization of the facts based on a presupposition of an intelligent creator’s existence.
We could debate whether it would have been better for God to create life correctly the first time, or to allow life to evolve with the poor construction, disease, parasites, and other problems we see today. However, this can’t be used to bypass proving the existence of a creator deity in the first place.
In other words, if your argument requires assuming that the creator exists in the first place, then you’re just begging the question, not proving its existence.
I really can’t blame Dina for being angry.
“Hey, did you know your passion that you and a bunch of other people spent their entire lives working really hard on? It’s a bunch of SHIT. DREAMWORKS FACE!” – Joyce
That was a paraphrase BUT IT MIGHT AS WELL NOT BE.
I don’t see why so many creationists, who I am one of, can’t believe anything else. As far as I’m concerned maybe the big bang did happen but it’s because God caused it. I don’t think humans evolved from monkeys but we have seen other animals adapt so maybe other species did evolve.
Actually, yeah, a lot of people argue that the word “monkey” should be used to describe all descendants of a particular primate line, which would include us, all other apes, and our ancestors to the start of that line.
You can believe what you like, but when you bring that nonsense into the public arena or or try to talk about it on the basis that science is based on (Logic, rationality or evidence) don’t be suprised if people who know better strongly disagree with you.
David, it doesn’t matter if you say monkeys or common ancestor of today’s apes. I still don’t believe it.
Pinja, what did I say that was nonsense?
Pat, what facts are you referring to? We have no concrete evidence of any evolution.
Every time we get a new strain of flu virus? That’s evolution. It happens every year.
Also, the e. coli long-term evolution experiment has seen the development of bacteria that could digest material that their ancestors couldn’t!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment Isn’t that neat! It’s the equivalent of people developing the ability to digest wood fiber.
The argument that “we have no concrete evidence of any evolution” is a flat-out lie. Denial of the evolutionary process literally requires ignoring the entirety of the field of biology.
Saying, “We have no concrete evidence of any evolution” is a huge claim, that requires knowing exactly what we do and do not know. Essentially, you’re claiming you’ve proved a negative, like “there are no blue apples”. This is a statement you cannot prove is true even if it is true, but can easily be proven false with a single counterexample.
Now, ask yourself, who told you that? Was it scientists who study the field and know what they’re talking about, or was it people with a religious bias against evolution? I believe you’ll find that only the latter make the claim you did.
Evolution makes numerous predictions, and when we test those predictions, time and time again they have been proved correct, and have not been contradicted by the facts. This is the concrete evidence of evolution that you deny exists, though we have it in abundance.
Dude, we have, literally, tons of evidence of evolution. There are entire branches of science that are based on it. Much of medicine would not exist without it. To say otherwise takes some world class denial.
I don’t really know how to label myself, but I tend to lean in such a theory that the big bang occurred, evolution happens, but that there is an entity that may have started it all.
That would make you an agnostic deist, depending on how soft you are on that “may have”.
The deist position is that there is a creator who set in motion the fundamental laws of nature and then let everything spin off in the direction it went. This would be a deity that doesn’t act directly in the universe, but rather simply allows the universe to roll along according to the rules that deity laid down at the beginning.
“You’re right, Joyce. The only thing we know for certain is Cogito Ergo Sum (there is thought, therefore something exists). That’s a big step upwards from those who think other things can be known for certain, and a bigger step sideways from those who think that faith can be used to get unadulterated truth directly (and for some reason consistently gives people with incompatible faiths incompatible ‘unadulterated truth’s). Now, let’s start talking about subjective probabilities and the tautologous appropriateness-for-use of Occam’s Razor…”
((Ahh, the beautifully low subjective probability tied up in “Maybe Russell’s Teapot /is/ up there in orbit. We can’t /really/ know.”.))
The absolutely beautiful thing about this comment is that while Descartes starts his “Discourse on Method” explaining that his doubts prove that he thinks, which in turn proves that he exists . . . he continues to “prove” that God must exist because he has such a clear and distinct idea of God existing. So Descartes totally jumped the rails, and so quickly, too . . .
This could be interesting. So far the people who have confronted Joyce on her beliefs have either been polite (Dorothy) or just joking and teasing (Walky, Joe).
Dina lacks a lot of social cues and could be pretty harsh in her response. The question is what will she do? Will she deliver a harsh scientific explanation, just insult or Joyce or wordless storm off?
Maybe Dina is the reason Joyce goes to cry in the toilets ?___?
Plus I can see Dina firmly believing in Evolution and that Earth is old just like Joice believes in creation and thinks Earth is probably only six thousand years old, and that Jesus rode dinosaurs.
Well, I don’t doubt Dorothy or Walky’s belief in evolution and the old earth are any less firm than Dina’s, they’re just less likely to take a swing at her when she contradicts that belief 🙁
As a paleontologist who studies evolution (dissertation submitted yesterday!), this is an entirely realistic response. I have definitely done this at family reunions when certain individuals have revealed they recently discovered all those problems with science and how ridiculous natural selection is.
This is why I think schools should indeed “teach the controversy” – even though it shouldn’t be necessary, in the world we actually live in I don’t want supposedly educated adults who aren’t inoculated against this “truth evolutionists are keeping from you” claptrap.
A problem with “teaching the controversy” is that too many people are science-illiterate and not capable to determining what is good evidence and what isn’t . . . and a sub-problem of that is that it’s often the teachers themselves! (For example, people who claim that vaccinations cause autism.)
Stop and think about what you are saying. This would open up the floor for any number of nonsense theories in the classroom at the behest of anyone with a muscular PR machine and a head full of fluff.
“Chemistry is clearly false, because of radiocarbon dating! Alchemy is undergoing a strong revival among the REAL scientific community! Teach the controversy!”
“Well I wasn’t raised to think that we are a tiny, cosmically insignificant planet! I think we should teach astrology as well as astronomy, because the celestial bodies are all about my love life! Teach the controversy!”
“Some verminous professor of calumny at the Flatworld Institute has written a paperback containing PROOF that the roundearthists are wrong! Teach the controversy!”
I mean, I could go on. The stork theory of reproduction. Ectoplasmic metaphysics. Holocaust denial. The phlogiston.
The classroom is not a testing ground for these ideas! If these people want to show that their ideas are true, they should do it with science, not through media pressure and lobbying. To cede this point is cultural and intellectual suicide.
Unfortunately, it’s not one or two lunatics who can be ignored. If alchemy or flat-earthism were being proclaimed from the pulpits, children would have to understand where they were coming from, and why they were wrong. We already teach children the arguments concerning the shape of the Earth, and various alchemical fallacies, and those concerning other errors such as geocentrism and perpetual motion. If people who supported these ideas were being taken seriously today, yes, it would be incumbent upon schools to debunk them directly. Kids are bright, anyway – where math and science are concerned, we baby them far too much.
I remember taking a college-level course that, although it was advertised as one teaching the science of genetic diversification, spent roughly a third of its time addressing creationist arguments, and that shouldn’t happen; it’s like having to convince college students that the freshman’s dream doesn’t work, but that doesn’t happen, because in high school they’re shown the freshman’s dream, and shown it doesn’t work.
The fact is that creationists have a lot of currency in this country, and they’re gaining ground worldwide. Why? Not because of too much respect, but too little – because of stubborn attitudes like this, refusing to acknowledge what is in favor of what should be. Rather than keeping them out by fiat and feeding into their narrative of persecution, let children understand early why these loud fools are wrong.
So your argument is that it should be taught in schools because people already take it seriously? Do you in no way see how this might make things worse?
You are correct in saying it’s not a couple of lunatics that can be ignored. It’s a powerful, cynical marketing machine that needs to be resisted if we are to avoid the propagation of deliberate untruths in the name of education.
On what possible basis can you say that this should be taught in schools rather than colleges? Is it a matter of inconvenience? Do you think you had a better grasp of critical reasoning when you were younger? I genuinely do not understand.
You need to understand that opposition to this sort of thing is not a matter of disrespect (although I certainly do that) but of quality of education. If what there was a genuine controversy in science, then these people would have a point.
But there isn’t. And they don’t.
If their ideas had any weight, there are processes in place for them to present their evidence. As things stand, they are holding an empty sack, claiming it contains a unicorn and saying that anyone who disagrees is outvoted. The USA is a democracy. Truth is not.
It is not stubbornness to resist this kind of bullying nonsense. If I want this sort of thing kept out of science classrooms “by fiat” it is only because I want to keep all things that are anti-scientific out of science classrooms “by fiat”. You are doing yourself a great disservice by capitulating to these tactics.
I do not want to keep things that are anti-scientific out of science classrooms, at all. I don’t want to keep luminiferous aether or humour theory out of classrooms, and I hope you don’t, either. The “marketing machine” you mention thrives on an ignorant misunderstanding of what science is, and one that should not be perpetuated.
No, I don’t think schoolchildren are better at critical thinking than college students, but they’re not incapable of it, and shouldn’t be treated as such. By the time they get to college, there are things they should have already examined critically, and creationism is certainly among them. It should not be possible for the “marketing machine” to walk up to them and say “you’ve been lied to; look what you haven’t seen” and present something to which they genuinely don’t know the answer. That’s become their tactic, and it’s working, because we baby our students, opting not to teach them critical examination on the grounds that they haven’t already learnt it.
“I do not want to keep things that are anti-scientific out of science classrooms, at all. I don’t want to keep luminiferous aether or humour theory out of classrooms, and I hope you don’t, either.”
That is an absolutely fatuous point. Teaching about the history of defunct ideas and teaching defunct ideas as truth are emphatically not the same thing.
I’m not sure how much more simply I can make the point that critical examination of facts is not the business of schoolchildren. I agree that critical examination of facts should be taught, certainly, but the responsibility for evaluating scientific truth claims it is the domain of experts of the field, in this case, biologists.
“The “marketing machine” you mention thrives on an ignorant misunderstanding of what science is, and one that should not be perpetuated.”
Am I being accused of perpetrating misunderstandings of what science is? I would love for you to expound on this.
Of course don’t teach it as a fact! Rather, teach the facts (and lies) creationists use, and the arguments they make, so that students can understand why they don’t imply creation, and gain the tools to recognize why other arguments fail likewise. Because they’re going to hear them, and they need to understand.
Critical examination of facts is absolutely the business of schoolchildren. It’s what they’re there to do – if they’re indoctrinated, and you tell them they’re indoctrinated, they’ll realize they’re indoctrinated, even if they’ve been indoctrinated with the truth. It’s like our bizarre reluctance to teach children even the basics of mathematics, with children graduating high school thinking an elongated ∫ might summon Yog-∫othoth. It’s sickening how we underestimate them; they’re there to learn to think, not just what to think.
You’re not perpetrating a misunderstanding consciously, but by the infantile “this is how it is” CCD-like instruction the students are given, you do so inadvertently, giving “evolution as religion” arguments fertile ground to take root. Anything can be made to look religious when the underlying theory isn’t properly understood. (Dupin’s “algebraists are pagans” speech, written in a time when both mathematics and education were far different animals, comes to mind – as silly as that looks to the modern reader, it’s just a consequence of a since corrected version of this same error.)
That’s easy to avoid. Don’t teach evolution as truth. Just teach the controversy as part of current events in social studies.
If somebody abuses the system for proselytizing then fire them.
I’m not sure how many times I can reiterate this; this issue is not a scientific controversy. This is a media controversy, cynically campaigned with expensive lobbying tactics.
To enact policy as if there was a scientific controversy in the interests of misguided even-handedness is to open the door to anyone who’s political agenda demands a wilful ignorance of reality.
I’ve always found it funny that ICP sort-of stumbled on a common question of first-year physics students (i.e., how magnets do work when the magnetic field always acts orthogonally) – I guarantee it wasn’t intentional.
A science class would be an inappropriate place to discuss ‘the controversy’. A comparative religion class, perhaps where modern issues of religion and philosophy were discussed in a pluralistic sense would be the appropriate environment, but good luck ever seeing that in the vast majority of American schools.
Raen, while I agree with you in the hypothetical realm where all ideas could be discussed and criticized based upon their merits and the objective facts, here in the real world this won’t work.
Teaching critical thinking is important, and I agree it should be done. However, I don’t think that all teachers will do this in an unbiased way on a topic like evolution due to all of the personal bias, misinformation, and the well-funded religious push against it.
Furthermore, I think this would cause problems for many schools, as parents would object to having their creationist beliefs “ridiculed” (as they would see it) in school.
Finally, there are studies that indicate that when you talk about false information, it actually makes it easier for people to accept it as true, even when it’s clearly stated that it’s false. The simple act of bringing up creationism in a science context can help reinforce the idea that it’s science.
So, while critical thinking is important, I think that pretending that there is a real controversy in science regarding evolution and creationism, when there isn’t, has the potential to do far more harm than good.
If creationists want to get creationism in the science classroom, then they should do what everyone else has to do, prove it in the scientific arena first. If they can’t do that, then it doesn’t belong there.
Not really. As I posted above (but with more-evolved grammar here), it would only be teleological if Dina was implying that evolution had birds in mind as a goal when giving dinosaurs feathers. It’s a very anthropomorphic way of thinking, ascribing purpose to an impersonal mechanism.
I don’t think that is what Dina is saying; she is merely stating that not only did birds evolve from feathered dinosaurs, but birds literally *ARE* feathered dinosaurs, which is true. It’s just that feathered dinosaurs existed earlier in the bird-to-dinosaur lineage.
Yes. Speaking monophyletically (is that a word?), birds are dinosaurs. Birds are merely a type of dinosaur, albeit the only kind of dinosaur still surviving.
Also, “evolved for flight” is probably what you want to say here, unless you want a pissed off Dina attack. 😉
But seriously, distinguishing between birds and dinosaurs is a bit trickier than you think. You can’t give a definition of “bird” to prove that it isn’t a dinosaur, because it could be a bird and a dinosaur. You have to give a definition for “dinosaur” if you want to prove whether something is or isn’t a dinosaur.
The fact is, “dinosaur” is defined in such a way that, yes, birds are a kind of dinosaur.
While you are correct that the pterosaurs are not technically dinosaurs, you are wrong about archaeopteryx, which is a kind of dinosaur.
What makes bird dinosaurs is their ancestry: birds belong to a large familly of animals whose latest common ancestors are called dinosaurs. Of course when dinosaur fossils were discovered people didn’t know how closely related to birds they were, so the name does not really reflects the relationship, but birds are still dinosaurs in that sense. Just like, if one day a new species of mammal evolves that lacks mammary glands, they’ll still be considered “mammals”.
I think she only started with “early forms of birds” strictly as a lead in to her second speech bubble, where she explains the common similarity between why dinosaurs and big flightless birds have feathers. “Neither of them use them to fly, sure, but dinosaurs have them for the same reason that an ostrich does, which is etc etc etc”.
I agree — with both you and Raen. It’s that “because” that’s misleading, and seems to imply that “evolution had birds in mind as a goal when giving dinosaurs feathers” as TJ Baltimore put it. (Oh, and I’m not sure we can really say they have feathers “for” insulation either. Rather, they are insulated because they have feathers. Or, maybe they kept feathers because of insulation, but that’s not why they got them in the first place. The main reason why an ostrich has feathers is because its ancestors had feathers too.)
What I do find interesting in *this* instance is that the aggression/potential violence comes from the ‘rational thinker’. Usually it’s the religious person that’s type casted as the aggressor, so much so that it’s a trope.
It’s not ok for anyone to be aggressive over this regardless of what side of the discussion you are on.
The two characters that make me squee, upset about an issue that I am ambivalent about, and somehow this just make me want to hug them all the more.
On a good note, it’s clear from the comments that David knows what he talking about and can make a confrontation without either person being straw… I’m excited.
447 comments and more?! I’m not even going to try…..
But I will mention that someone did call this on a previous strip. I’m a little surprised we went in this direction, but I suppose its an interesting issue that needs to be addressed.
To me, the really interesting point here is finding out how Dina reacts to being told she’s wrong.
Dina seems to be, from what I can tell, a person with Aspergers. People with said difficulty often have a hard time accepting that other people are even able to have a different point of view (and that’s not meant as a metaphor, literally have a hard time understanding other people may have a different point of view.) Being faced with that reality can cause a bit of a mental schism, especially on a topic that is important to them. The result is usually…not great, to be honest.
I think this will be a very telling conversation, but not for the evolution/creation everyone seems to be discussing.
(Though, to everyone here’s credit, everything I’ve seen looked pretty civil. Which is nice to see. Much better than when Penny Arcade approached the subject recently…the rivers of flame abounded.)
Oh Joyce… When will you learn that you can’t blurt out your “God’s way” opinion to others when they are explaining a scientific theory.
Just for the hell of it we need a character that will have a debate with Joyce and poke holes in the bible in front of her. Maybe Mike? I like Mike. Actually I’m loving Dina’s face more XD
Unfortunately, Mike can cause maximum suffering by leaving Joyce to continue spewing her doesn’t-know-any-better rhetoric, so he’s more likely to reinforce her views than anything else.
Don’t really agree with Dina on the feathers use for sexual selection. Mostly because I’m not aware that we’ll ever find out if this was actually the case. Agree about the insulation though. Feathers are lovely and warm <3
Also gotta say I disagree with Joyce. Although I believe the world was originally big bang created and then evolution happened since then going through a large amount of millions of years, I can’t see why God would create something with feathers, on which the feathers serve no purpose (unless through evolution those feathers lost their purpose in time).
If an archaeologist doesn’t know what something is, it’s a religious artifact. If a paleontologist doesn’t know what something is, it’s a sexual display. 😛
I wonder if Dina’s anger is born completely from insulting evolutionary theory or if she’s feeling some cross dimensional rage for Joyce stealing her boyfriend.
On a related note, I have a test tommorrow in Philosophy of Science, and one of our main texts, which we will be tested on, is Philip Kitcher’s “Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism”. It’s pretty good, and I dare any Creationist or ID defender to read it and try to be able to retort it.
It’s important not to confuse “ignorance” with “stupidity”.
If you were brought up in a sheltered environment where you were either uninformed or misinformed about certain things, you would make mistakes of the same kind that Joyce makes, no matter how smart you are.
You only begin to shift from “ignorance” to “stupidity” after being given the facts and choosing to reject those facts for bad reasons.
T. rex came into being almost a hundred million years after the divergence of its line from birds’. In fact, they probably didn’t even have feathers, but more primitive structures, or there’s some evidence even of them returning to scales. (Don’t ask me how that squares with Dollo’s principle, I don’t effing know.)
I was gonna say I feel sorry for Ethan being caught in the middle, but he’s honestly been a fair bit of a douche by even going out with Joyce when he knows he’s gay anyway, so….Yeah, don’t let him get in your way, Dina.
I’m confused as to why Ethan is going on with the whole “boyfriend of Joyce” thing. I mean, he knows he’s gay. Is it just he enjoys her company and doesn’t want to break her heart and lose her friendship? Or is he just letting himself get steamrolled?
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Oh, I’m looking forward to this.
As an avid evolutionist, I concur. ‘Course I’m still a religious person, so…nah, I’m rootin’ for Dina.
Evolutionist is a term I don’t care much for personally, we don’t have special terms for people who accept germ theory, or gravitational theory. Probably because it lends too much legitimacy to creationism by making evolution sound more like a belief system instead of solid scientific theory.
the hilarious part is what she said is what the creationists/ID folks claim is ‘critical thinking’
Agreed
Yeah, good point. But, in these times when acceptance of science in our culture is oft challenged by religion, I feel that identification of “sides,” evolutionist or creationist, is necessary. But, yeah, I wish I didn’t have to use the term “evolutionist.”
I guess it’s just something we’re gonna have to deal with.
It amuses me to think that Joyce is making religion look bad by essentially calling God lazy.
How about we just call the sides ‘Creationists’ and ‘normal folks’? Cause even the Vatican think creationism is wacko and you gotta wake up pretty early to out-fundy the Vatican.
Because there are people who believe in both? Like, the animals were created with the ability to adapt or, rather, have their genes mutate and have nature select the gene combination most likely to survive? Where do these people fit in? Normal Creationist? Creationormalists?
That’s still accepting the principles of evolution and not actively challenging it’s place in the class room or pretending it’s just random guesswork. The only real different here would be what was the initial ‘spark’ o f life, wether it was just random chemical occurance or a divine hand. In the end the principles of evolution remains accepted as truth.
The idea that God created the universe with conditions that would lead to the rise of life and the evolutionary process is “theistic evolution,” or just “evolution,” since evolutionary theory has no position on God one way or another.
I doubt you’ll ever see this, but I wanted to say thanks for giving me the term that has described my own beliefs for years. I’ve known what I believe and could articulate that belief, I’ve just never heard a term before now that described it. So thanks.
Who says webcomics (and by extension, their comments) can’t teach you anything important?
Maybe because some “normal” people do actually believe in creation. Just because some need to beat people over the head with it doesn’t mean everybody does. Just like there are some “evolutionists” who don’t feel the need to call those with a belief system stupid. Almost every culture has an “origin” story. Some of them are out there, perhaps even Christianity’s. Genesis has an account of the beginning. An origin story. Some Christians and Jews believe it’s literal, some metaphorical and some of us really are weird and believe both 🙂 . I get to choose what I believe just as you do, and allow my upbringing, experience, biases and orneriness to affect that decision as much as you do. Many creationists are perfectly normal, and perfectly reasonable – even if you’d never believe we are rational as well.
…I don’t “choose what to believe”. What I believe is compelled by my understanding of the facts, my reasoning ability filtered through whatever cognitive biases I haven’t identified and compensated for.
Knowing myself, and as a friend of someone who believes this is what he does, but has also made the mistake of taking up the bottle as of late (making his memory more unreliable than he gives himself credit for), I can attest that this is exactly what everyone else does. Whether those biases are towards “scientists” (or more likely “professionals” who have their own biases and have no evidence of their own except the reputation of who they consider to be “scientists” or “professionals”), or your parents who taught you all about this world, or some mix because you managed to recognize that all these people are biased. The bias is there, whether you acknowledge them or don’t. They may even be there in a different capacity and you incorrectly compensate for them, but they are there.
Anecdotal evidence isn’t good proof. And why do you have the word scientists in quotes? Just what exactly are trying to imply here?
They can’t be right all the time, but that isn’t the point of the scientific method. People who went to school and perform experiments are better evidence than the Bible or a minister. I identify as Christian and I still say this.
I guess I get what you are saying, but I’d also say you just said the same thing. I can get that feeling of not being able to deny something as truth even if you don’t want to. In that way, it feels like you are not choosing what to believe. But at the same time, that “filtered through whatever cognitive biases I haven’t identified and compensated for” is where I’d put that. And you also choose who you are willing to listen to. When I “converted” from what I was to what I am now (Christian to a Jewish/Christian, not a huge leap, but one that was not popular with many of my friends and family and one that has a very different take on certain ideas that many Christians are very protective of), I made a list of three things that I was not willing to compromise on; the three things most central to the way I functioned and processed the world around me. I was willing to listen to what the man who taught me said and consider anything (not agree to anything, just weigh as objectively as I could) that he said that did not directly contradict those three things. What I’m trying to say is that sometimes you cannot overcome bias, but other times, you can consciously label the biases you do have to filter the content you allow to contradict the biases you may not have identified. Another example might simply be saying that I would never listen to or read a book by Richard Dawkins, and I’m pretty sure most here would not purposely sit down with a Billy Graham or Rebbe Schneerson lecture. That’s a conscious bias that cuts off certain input that might also contradict any number of unconscious biases.
To be fair, it’s good to question things and most people probably do. But to deny a fundamental study is just going too far.
“I get to choose what I believe just as you do”
1) Belief is when you take something to be true when you don’t have enough evidence to take a position on it scientifically. Evolution is not a belief position, because it is the best explanation for what we know happens.
2) While you have a right to your beliefs, you don’t have the right to try and attempt to put them on the same footing as generally accepted scientific theory (and the modern synthesis of ToE and genetics is one of the best evidentially supported theories in science). If I had a belief that we all stayed on the earth due to it being made out of molasses, I would be allowed to hold it no matter what, but would not be allowed teach it as science without demonstrating an evidential basis. Teaching that god created the world c.6,000 years ago and everything on it is unchanging is what creationists want to teach, and they have the same evidential basis as my “molasses earth” hypothesis, i.e. the evidence categorically shows it to be wrong.
This.
Even many creationists think it’s crazy, what Joyce is talking about is “Young Earth Creationism” Who believe the Earth is only six to eight thousand years old and all creatures were created at the same time. there are Old Earth Creationists who are more adaptable, who believe that the Six days are actually long periods of time and not actually 24 hour days. And that God created creatures to be able to adapt and evolve. They are more open minded creationists. of course Joyce is clearly a young Earth believer.
That seems an odd position. I assume you don’t go around calling yourself a “round-earther” or a “heliocentricist”, so why use “evolutionist”?
The first time I ever heard the term was when I was being shouted at by a particularly objectionable creationist. He used it as an insult, because that’s what it is. It’s a pejorative term to create the illusion of division in science.
Religion also disregards math, but you don’t go splitting people into religious and mathists. Just stop labeling yourself as evolutionist, you’re only feeding the paranoia by picking an arbitrary side like that.
Oooh, oooh, oooh! Am I allowed to claim religious exemption for calc 2 if I say it goes against my beliefs?!
I’ve found creating “sides” and polarizing to extremes on every issue does a disservice to both sides and just makes everyone sound like either moronic zealots or nihilist robots. I encourage you to paint the world with a little less black/white, and a few more tints of grey.
I’m partial to painting my worldview in blues and pinks, personally.
Monochrome worldviews are *so* last-millennium.
The only sides in the evolution “conflict” that I’m aware of are people who look at the world around them and try to understand what they see and people who don’t because it’s scary. It’s an issue with nearly as many sides as a line.
I like to tell my students I am a scientist. I believe in physical evidence, and while faith has a place, it cannot deny that fossils exist.
I’m an alchemist, myself. I’m disappointed in the lack of four-element theory in our schools.
Four Element Theory is crack! the universe can’t function with the Element of Ether! Five Element Theory is the way to go.
TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!
Ether!? But the Michelson-Morley experiment proved there was no such thing. Clearly you meant Void for the fifth element. It’s only science.
Void is not a substance, it’s a lack of element.
Ah, but with the molecular model most of everything is simply patches of nothing held together with atoms.
Bah! The fifth element is metal! Typical Eurocentric alchemists, dismissing Eastern advances.
Your avatar changed to precisely the right picture at PRECISELY the right moment. I applaud your luck.
*CLEP CLEP CLEP*
No, he is just using the japanese count instead of the chinese one.
I thought Leeloo was the 5th Element?
Heresy! Everyone knows the fifth element is Surprise!
Metal is part of Earth…technically plants should be as well (unless maybe you make Life an element). Wood also has nothing to do with wind–that’s just loony.
But really elements aren’t any of those things according to the periodic table.
Obviously you have never heard of the real fifth element, phlogiston!
This argument is stupid, ridiculous, and stupid. The Fifth Element is Milla Jovovich and everybody knows that.
“I’m an alchemist, myself. I’m disappointed in the lack of four-element theory in our schools.”
It still is, but we call it the four states of matter:
Air = gas
water = liguid
earth = solid
fire = plasma
Very nice . . . but it still doesn’t take into account quark-gluon plasma, Bose-Einstein condensates, neutron degenerate matter, superfluids, and several other non-classical states. (Sorry for the nerdgasm.)
Heh, we generally tell kids there are three or four states of matter though.
Fire has to get absurdly hot to expel plasma.
But…
where does Heart fit in?
I think only several parts of Christianity who think Dinosaurs never existed or there’s no evolution. A lot of religions out there actually agreed that evolution exist. It’s just that it’s getting more and more complicated with the existence of internet where both sides can argue all day long.
Or I prefer to call it, comedy hours.
JOYCE!!!! DONT BE TALKIN’ NO FOOKIN’ SHIT ABOUT NO DINOSAURS!!! DINA’LL FOOK YOU UP!!!
Your grab fits this comment so well.
I would marry dina in a heartbeat
Me too. Best pair-up ever.
Is it me or does she just look even more huggable?
It’s Dina. She’s always huggable.
I was going to say I wanted to hug her now
She looks a lil’ like shark puppy when she’s mad.
Strangle-able.
Hang on… which she?
Dina, I assume, since Joyce is channeling Mike.
Joyce just did the impossible: Pissing Dina off.
How can we be sure if it’s impossible to piss Dina off if we haven’t seen DoA Dina in a situation that held the possibility of her becoming pissed off?
She was called retarded once. That coulda set some people off.
Joyce subscribes to the ‘Satan-Is-A-Dick’ School of Fossilization.
Ah yes, Baby Jesus University teaches that one, yes?
Dammit Joyce, you realise that you are putting cancer research back by 20 years? 😛
Everyone knows that religion is the cure to all ailments.
True story:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2463#comic
Will she see the invisible next?
I think challenging the theory of evolution, especially of dinosaurs, is pretty much the only thing that COULD piss Dina off.
Religion does that to people.
Dang, I had a feeling this might happen, should’ve commented on that last comic. I have a similar reaction internally when i hear that.
JOYCE HAS ENRAGED THE DINASAUR.
EVERYONE RUN!
NOW YOU’VE WOKEN THE DINOSAUR!
YOU MESS WITH THE DINOSAUR, YOU GET THE CLAWS.
I think you guys mean DINAsaur.
….I’m so sorry.
Meh, top of the thread did it first.
NOW YOU’VE CALLED DOWN THE THUNDER!!!
NOW REAP THE WHIRLWIND!
NOW RIDE THE LIGHTNING!
AND TASTE THE RAINBOW!!
Translation to all of the above: OOOO, YER GONNA BE GETTIN’ SUCH A KICKIN’!
In the FAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
GET READY FOR THE BOOM!
OPEN THE DOOR.
GET ON THE FLOOR.
Everybody ride the Dina-saur!
Wait, NO! It’s walk the dinosaur.
I’d totally bang Dina. Joyce too, once she stops being such a fundie.
EVERYBODY WALK THE DINOSAUR!
She’s opened the door. It’s probably time to get on the floor.
I’ll be walking the dinosaur for the next half-hour.
The implication of this comment…..
And thus, The Lord said: “Boom boom, acka lacka lacka boom,
Boom boom, acka lacko boom boom.”
The word of The Lord.
Oh, damnit. Beaten to the punch.
Now you’ve fucked up.
NOW YOU’VE FUCKED UP!
JOYCE, YOU DUN GOOFED.
You done fucked up now!
You done fucked up now!
Now!
You have!
Fucked up!
Joyce…RUN.
She can’t escape Dina, she’ll get so far and then Dina will already be there. That’s how it works
Dina’s a Weeping Angel. If Joyce blinks, well let’s just say it’s not going to be pretty.
Joyce will be sent to live the rest of her life in the 1700s when everyone was a creationist! She’d love it!
Or to the early cretaceous period. Then she’d have to try and proselytize to raptors and it wouldn’t end well.
She’d find time to make merry with other people who treat the Book of Genesis as the official beginning of history in the 1700s? While still being a young white person of the female variety?
Hope she gets adopted by a very wealthy, powerful family and doesn’t mind having her whole adult life decided for her. She’s kinda used to being coddled…
You can’t escape the raptors.
Dear God…do you mean Dina can open doors?
No, but she appears behind them
Not if you don’t do your homework, you wont.
Must…run…faster!
Raptors are much smaller than that, so they couldn’t reach the handle. I’ve always been disappointed in xkcd for continuing the misidentification with deinonychus. Velociraptors would still be dangerous, but they’d most likely only come up to your hip–if that.
So, what does Joyce believe about dinosaurs, really? Does she acknowledge their having lived? That’s what this comic seems to imply, but given how hardcore Christien you depicted her so far, wouldn’t acknowledging dinosaurs bring into question her own beliefs about the origins of man? Wait… that’s where you going to take this, aren’t you? Now how will Ethan fit into this discussion?
She believes dinosaurs were on the ark.
Which also means she believes humans and dinosaurs were contemporary.
You’re suggesting that dinosaurs weren’t hunted to extinction by mideval knights??
Preposterous!
Umm:
Although the templars were once considered a possible contributing force in the extinction of large saurians, it is more fashionable these days to cite post-classical researchers who adhere to the Pope-fireball theory, in which Boniface, in a fit of corrupt rage, is said to have called upon the unholy power of the flame golems of the Roman catacombs to eliminate the proto-avian heresy once and for all.
Read a textbook, Geeze!
New theory: Dragons are actually misunderstood Pokemon!
http://weknowmemes.com/2012/11/god-could-have-made-pokemon-real/
Boniface? More like BoniFAAAAAAAAAACE!!!!
Or possible Bonerface?
I dunno.
It’s not like continuing to divide their resources on both saurian-fighting AND the orcish horde would’ve worked out eventually. They were overwhelmed as it was, and the latter threat was far cagier and much more a deliberate, sapient threat, so it was either the dinos or our ancestors. They barely made it out of that age as it is!
This place will let you know all you need to know about how dinosaurs and people co-existed, and how no animals had deadly proclivities until after the original sin.
http://creationmuseum.org/
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
At least the petting zoo has a camel and horse/zebra hybrid.
Likely she acknowledges their existence and extinction thanks to evidence but justifies it by pointing out that it was before recorded history so how do we know?
I don’t think you know very much about how Joyce-like Christians dinosaurs! Not that I can fault you, as you live a very blissful life free of this knowledge, but even Young Earth Creationists believe dinosaurs existed. It’s just… HOW they existed which makes things… interesting…
Correct me if I’m wrong, but its “they died out in the Flood, which buried and fossilized them, and they weren’t on the Arc because they were sinful”?
Nope! They were on the Ark, they survived the Ark, and then died out afterwards due to scarcity of food and being overhunted.
…overhunted?
Huh. Makes perfect sense. This is obviously right and I don’t know how I didn’t figure it out already.
Hahahahaha
Oh God… That is by far the most creative and funny explanation! I LOVE it!
I am a Catholic and most of the theories I’ve seen are pretty dull and kinda complex to explain.
If you hate humanity, logical thought, and yourself, and you want to hate just one more smug waste of skin, listen to Kent Hovind talk about dinosaurs.
Although, in fairness, the fact that he’s in jail does make me happy.
Saw it for a couple of minutes some time ago… Let’s just say I’m not a big fan of his theory.
I thought the Catholic church supported the theory of evolution, so long as you believe that God is guiding the process.
Yep, that’s true.
But that’s the lazy basics, the problem comes on explaining why they are not in the Bible, where they were on the “seven days of creation”, etc.
I don’t think Joyce is Catholic. Not Roman Catholic, anyway. The Catholic Church has, in theory, not subscribed to a literal interpretation of the Bible for a while.
I think the phrase you’re looking for is “Great Whore”…
Damn you Fred Flintstone and your Brontosaurus Burger habit!
There’s a theory that the Flintstones live in a post-apocalyptic world. But they have dinosaurs too so I guess people used technology to recreate them.
Combining that statement with what we learned in Jurassic Park, I’m gonna guess a raptor triggered the Apocalypse.
Yeah, I read that Chick Track . . . back in the day, dinosaurs were called “dragons,” and we hunted them for food. And the brontosaurus runs up a mountain and hides his head in the clouds, ‘cuz he’s too stupid to know that if he can’t see the hunters, they can still see him, and the redneck hunters kill him and turn him into dragon steaks.
Comedy gold, right there.
That’s… Hilariously Darwinian.
I also remember them saying that the air and weather were different after Noahs flood and the larger dinosaurs lungs couldnt handle the it so they died off after a while.
Makes about as much sense as how so many government conspiracy, Kennedy assassination coverup, saucer head, communist, anarchist, and other such theory subscribers and similar ‘radical’ types brush aside anything presenting glaring holes in the reasoning of their beliefs.
It isn’t exactly out of the ordinary, as far as popular sentiments go. The real problem is when seeming smart, rational people have been looking at themselves and humanity through rose-colored glasses for so long that it completely blows their mind whenever they see how,er, imperfect humanity can be for the 1st time…Then the 2nd….Then the 3rd….4th…5th….6th…Gaudammet, Mark Twain, you were a *%#ing oracle!
Onward, Christian dinosaurs,
roaming as they roar,
with the Raptor-Jesus,
going on before…
Why do I now imagine Jesus with a jetpack?
Because you read Sinfest?
Or they are into more classical toons like Rocket Robin-hood.
Everything I know about how Joyce-like Christians explain dinosaurs comes from Dr. Dino stuff I read as an adult for my own perverse pleasure.
Man, I need to eat a seal.
Every time I feel bad, I remember that Doctor Dino is in jail. And it makes me happy.
Let that be a lesson to anyone considering tax-fraud.
Render unto Caesar, bongoes.
You can buy various forms of canned seal or walrus on the island of Hokkaido.
http://www.bornplaydie.com/japan/travel/hokkaido/sealcurry.jpg
You can get canned bear also.
Oh yes, I saw that too. However, Uncle Rylon typed, “Man, I need to eat a seal.” Nothing about bear, so perhaps he’s not interested in bear meat.
I’d hoped to find a functional link to an import company that sells these products, but no go. (Technically I did find one that formerly sold canned bear, but discontinued it. And they did not have seal.)
You can get canned seal in Canada, as well. Not walrus, since it’s a local product, and we don’t have many walruses.
I have in my time met some particuarly obstinate creationists that think dinosaurs are made up, but I also think they were geocentrists, so they were majorly out there.
I work with science teachers who are at this level of creationism. It gives me chest pains, so I include science in my history and English classes. Lesson one is that people in the Middle Ages believed the Bible was a science book; hint: it was not a science book and it is not one now.
“I don’t think you know very much about how Joyce-like Christians dinosaurs!”
…wha? I’m baffled. I speak Spanish as my native, but I think there’s a verb missing in there… Know? Believe? Explain? Dismiss? Deny? Did they accidentally the whole dinosaur? what in the hell…?
It’s simple to explain: English weirds verbing.
I still maintain that despite English and all it’s crazy exceptions, it’s the one damn language that’s spoken forwards to backwards. I don’t care if it’s “I before E except after C and a million other cases”, why do all translations come out as “dinosaur woods in was”?
That’s just cultural bias talking. English is very inconsistent on ordering of sentences. English applies adjective modifiers before what they modify, clauses afterwards, and adverbs either before or after. Thus English has elements of a left-branching (modifiers before) and a right-branching (modifiers after) language.
In comparison, Japanese and Turkish are absolutely left-branching languages, in which all modifiers (adjective, preposition phrases, etc.) precede what they modify. Spanish is mostly right-branching with all modifiers coming after (with occasional allowance for numbers in front).
As for why a sentence might be “dinosaur woods in was,” that’s just Subject-Object-Verb order. Subject-Verb-Object languages, like English are only the second most common type after SOV. Arguably, we’re the ones being weird here.
We inherit the branching aspect from Latin, which also has modifiers either before or after what they modify.
Maybe it is a cultural bias, but I still don’t understand why you would have a language that has all the nouns and then the verb at the end.
The dinosaur sentence was probably just too small of an example, I’m in Latin III/IV where the sentences are nearly a paragraph long (gee, thanks Cicero). At that point, verbs start to get funky, where sometimes they’ll be saved until the end of the sentence, rather than the end of the clause, so sometimes literal translations go “He town, taking with him the dastardly, the X, the Y, the Z-various-other-evil-adjectives, ran from” instead of what you would expect, even from languages which follow such rules, with “he ran from town, taking with him…”
…Fascinating as that was, I still don’t understand where and what the verb actually IS in that sentence.
That comment makes me feel like I’m reading the ultimate warrior comics.
I think it’s just a typo.
I heard they no longer teach the “I before E except after C” rule because there are over 900 expections to that rule in the English language.
THANKS QI.
If your beliefs can’t stand up to learning facts, than obviously you don’t believe them.
You think they’ll be proven wrong.
Joyce’s behavior isn’t because she’s Christian. It’s more specific than that.
It is, but it’s probably that her upbringing has kept her insulated from facts in favor of ideology.
There are books, websites, entire organizations designed to keep kids from being exposed to modern thought.
I commend Dina for her restraint.
Yes! GET HER, DINA!
This is my favorite strip of all time. 10/10. Look how happy she is to explain in panel two!!
I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW I COULD GET THIS EXCITED ABOUT SOMETHING
Ha, best gravatar for that comment xD
By far the most amusing DoA you’ve done in my opinion Willis 🙂
Times like these make me wish I had any skill with image manipulation. Words cannot describe how badly I want a gravatar of the second-to-last panel.
You can do it in paint. It’s actually really easy.
I have a mac. The only “paint” I get to work with comes in a can.
And every mac I’ve used had Photoshop on it, so it looks like I can be of little help.
Now that’s ironic. The Mac person lacking tools and skills for image manipulation…
Yeah, I know right? Of course, I remembered that I do have a thing with a crop feature on here, but I still have no skills…
http://i.imgur.com/Z3EEFYI.jpg
There you go <3
Dangit, didn’t post?
i.imgurDOTcom/Z3EEFYIDOTjpg replace DOT with, well, dots
Thanks, but I remembered I had both Preview and Gravatar’s built-in crop feature. Now I just have to get Gravatar to update my image…
I don’t believe that Willis censors links in his comments sections.
Sometimes the spam filter catches posts with links in them.
Give Seashore a whirl.
I HAVE TRIUMPHED!
…dammit Gravatar.
Hey Plasma, do you have any advice on getting Gravatar to update when you try to change an image? I uploaded my new Dina but I keep seeing the old Richard grav (yes, I’m the same George, but I used a different email for this site because I wanted to see what my random avatar would be).
Assuming that the gravatar I am seeing right now is NOT the image you wanted to see even after about 5-10 minutes, I can only suggest making sure the image is not too big byte-wise before you upload it.
You are seeing Richard right? It’s not some weird caching thing on my end?
aaaand there it goes. Yours also changed, amusingly.
I change my grav more often than most people change their underwear.
Which is why I asked you specifically. Also, ew.
EWW? Changing underwear is bad?
I was talking about the thought of not doing it =P. Changing underwear is good!
Washing them afterwards is even better… else … ewwww
We now need Pissed Dina, Bissed Billie, ‘WHAT?’ Alternate Dina, and ‘Squee’ Robin all in the same room…..
Willis is certainly building a great reaction back-catalogue!
Seeing as how Kyoryuger just aired this past weekend, I find this hilarious.
Mostly because when we saw a T-Rex he had a feather mohawk.
Everything Dina does makes her more awesome.
And I can’t imagine what an angry Dina might be capable of. It’s scary.
“You get your first look at this “five foot paleontology enthusiast” as you enter a clearing. She moves like a bird, lightly, bobbing her head. And you keep still because you think that maybe her visual acuity is based on movement like Ruth – she’ll lose you if you don’t move. But no, not Dina. You stare at her, and she just stares right back. And that’s when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side, from the other two Dinas you didn’t even know were there”
It’s always the nice ones that kill you.
They were behind Doors; The Dina’s natural camoflauge.
Would getting on the floor be an advisable defensive tactic?
Dina always hides behind Jim Morrison.
I don’t know. I didn’t care for Dina too terribly much in It’s Walky. Hopefully, we don’t see DoA Dina turn out like that, but I doubt that’s going to happen.
Just out of curiosity, is it possible to get that shirt? Does it like exist? Though I don’t know if I’d want it if it existed, if it leads to this…
Joyce >:(
I hope she goes through a similar evolution to the one she had in Walkyverse Prime. I’ll be interested in whatever Willis does with the character, I’m sure, but it’s hard to find her likable as such a hardcore fundie.
I wouldn’t go that far- I like her just fine, because she’s still a good person- but I agree that her sheer level of ignorance gets frustrating. Hopefully Dina’s about to drop some SCIENCE up in this bongo.
I have difficulty thinking of somebody who carries Chick tracts as a good person.
She carries them, but her beliefs clearly stem from ignorance, not fear or hate. She might sometimes be fearful or claim to hate because of them, but she’s not a naturally fearful or hateful person. She just doesn’t know any better. I’m an atheist myself, but I don’t consider a person “bad” unless they should know better and still choose to hate.
Dina angry is better than all the recent lesbian scenes combined.
Tomorrow, her and Joyce could still kiss
This seems more likely to lead to biting. And not the fun kind.
I love… LOVE how your gravatars are Dina and Joyce for those comments.
DINA SMASH
DINA SORE
Most of the times, the quiet ones are the most dangerous… Especially if that one is (phonetically) called “Dinosaur”, you can say that this is as risky as messing with a T-Rex.
I dunno. If I was a T-rex, I’d ignore us. We’re so insignifigantly sized in comparison to them.
Ants look pretty small to me…
In my case, it’s quite the opposite:
I wouldn’t ignore a human if he annoys me while I’m eating.
Ooooooh it is so on! Do you feel that? That’s how on it is.
Dina is adorable even in fury.
Creationist meets Evolutionist… let the death duel commence!
What have you done, Joyce? YOU’VE DOOMED US ALL!
Quick! To the arks! Bring the dinosaurs!
Perfect avatar for that response.
I don’t remember what my church believed (Roman Catholic if it helps) or what I learned in Bible school, but I remember always having this belief that God created the garden of Eden, then Adam and Eve, then when they ate the apple and were banished, God decided to create dinosaurs.
Then evolution happened.
…I have…had? had…some really f*cked up beliefs growing up…
I have a hard time understanding how people could believe that creation story as literal.
There are two people, they have two sons; now there are four people. One of them kills another, now there are three people. One of them moves away, but he’s afraid of all the other people, and so… Wait.
Either something here is wrong, or it wasn’t supposed to be literal in the first place. Well, and/or, I guess.
Well, you see, in the Expanded Universe, there were all these other unmentioned offspring! We hope.
Adam lived to be 930 (Eve wasn’t important enough to get a date). Assuming menopause at middle age (somewhere in the 500s), and a steady rate of one kid a year (allowing for pauses and occasionally twins balancing each other out), that’s at LEAST five hundred people in the second generation.
I wonder if they ever ended up with two identical kids from separate births? You can only get so many results from two sets of DNA.
Naw, there are millions of possible variations. A couple hundred kids ain’t going to cover it.
From one set of parents (mother and father) you can have 70 trillion possible chromosomal combinations for any child they have.
“And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth” – Gen 5:3 KJV
One could take that literally to mean that Seth was identical to Adam.
Granted, that doesn’t do anything for the third generation’s rate of birth defects, but eh.
It would only make things worse, really. I just thought it would be funny if at baby 400 or so they were like “Didn’t we have this kid already?”
It’s okay, there weren’t birth defects until after the flood, because the vapour layer (that fell during the flood) protected the Earth from radiation. This also explains why there were so many people pre-flood who lived hundreds of years; when the vapour barrier protected us, people aged slower.
In the words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up.
I take it this vapor layer also prevented the issue of lack of variability in disease resistance markers from being a species-destroying issue?
I suppose we just assume that diseases hadn’t evolved yet. Mind we’re already accepting creationism as a grounding for this discussion so… ?
See, it’s okay for that to “evolve” because I called it *micro* evolution, and that’s TOTALLY different from *macro* evolution, which is what I call anything I don’t think happened.
Please tell me this is a joke, because it makes no sense.
It’s not radiation they’re talking about, it’s inbreeding.
Yes, but inbreeding is only a problem because it increases the chance of genetically recessive diseases. The untainted and unmutated genes of Adam and Eve wouldn’t have had those diseases until radiation started mutating them.
Genes don’t work that way!
You aren’t making it up. But he sure as hell did.
And I seem to recall them having a third son after the one died.
Granted, that means they’re still short on females, but, well… let’s not think about that one in any more detail, shall we?
I’m named after the third son! He was Seth. He had lots of kids but nothing interesting happened to him personally.
I remember my Hebrew school pointing out that Cain’s wife and her extended family just kinda pop out of nowhere, and their first mention makes it seem like they were there the whole time. So perhaps God created other people after Adam and Eve because otherwise where the fuck did they come from?
The usual explanation given in Bible commentaries is based on Genesis 5:4: “The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters.” (NRSV translation) I.e., Cain, like Seth, married one of his sisters, because who else was there to perpetuate the human race with?
Another, less traditionalist theory is that in the original context of the Cain story, Cain wasn’t one of the very first people ever. There are hints of this in the fact that when God condemns him to wandering, Cain protests that anyone whom he meets will recognize him as a murderer and kill him (4:14). (Whom would he have to fear if he really were one of the only people on the planet?) After God bestows the mark on him, Cain not only has sex with his wife, but founds a city (4:17). (Why bother founding a city for just you, your wife and your kid?) So it’s likely that there were independent stories about Cain, living in a society of some sort with other people, that got smooshed into the biblical text as we know it.
Isn’t it supposed to be something to do with that “There were giants on the Earth in those days” bit? And of course there was Lilith, who I’ve heard interesting suppositions about (although I never did care enough to do any research for myself, so take it with a grain of salt). But I’ve heard their kids interbred with the giants or something.
Heck, I remember one girl in our youth group pointing to that “giants” phrase and claiming it proved the existence of aliens… >.>
Weren’t the “giants” just people who grew taller than the visiting tribe did?
In a lot of ancient Western myths, giants where barbaric cousins of the Gods, sans divine powers beyond being able to inflict harm toe-to-toe on their divine cousins and magic sky castles. They just simply looked alot like caricatures of brutish mountain men ranging from the height of a dark age house to big enough to see from orbit.
Stories of giants may have began as ‘fish stories’ of sorts, involving local heroes exaggerating just how big an imposing rival they just bested was…
There’s a character running around loose who calls him self Oberon Zell, and he’s only marginally less nutty than Kent Hovind – but look up his essay “The Other People” for an… interesting take on the Book of Genesis.
<—Atheist who keeps three various versions of the Bible handy, for reference.
..um… it’s in the Bible that they had a third son, Seth, patrilineal ancestor of Noah, and “other sons and daughters.” No EU there…?
Oooh! My favorite part of the “Expanded Universe” is Lilith, Adam’s first wife who was created at the same time as Adam, unlike Eve who was made from Adam’s rib.
She also allegedly had wings and flew off after an argument with Adam.
Or it predates the Hebrews being monotheistic and was awkwardly retconned to apply to the whole world instead of their tribe specifically. (Not sure if that’s actually how it happened, but I find the thought of Bible writing being like comic writing amusing).
I’d call that “something wrong here”, personally.
Still can’t see how one can take it literally.
Fair point. I can’t see how it’s taken literally either, but I thought it was interesting to speculate on why it’s so unbelievable to begin with.
At the college I went to there was a “Sushi with a Rabbi” weekly thing, where an Orthodox Rabbi would come and answer questions for a small group of who ever showed up. At one of these events, we were discussing Genesis, and it was explained that “When the bible says that Adam named all the animals before G-d created Eve.” it was suggesting that Adam got to know every animal… biblically… to see if it was a good match for him. After it was determined that none of the animals were a good match, G-d created Eve.
So we’re all the descendants of Adam and everything else–possibly, in a few cases, including Eve.
Interesting theory.
…now I kinda want to believe this just so I can say I have dinosaur blood.
Mine’s just a boring O+.
but then you’d have bird flu
Oh, it was never an explanation of who Adam and Eve’s children bred with, just an example of creation myth oddity. None of the Rabbis I’ve ever spoken with have ever attempted to reconcile any of the problems with the Torah.
I will say, however, that as an explanation, it makes as much sense as any other that attempts to take the creation stories at their word.
To be fair, the Rabbis at the synagogues I went to spent more time reconciling atheism with Judaism than they did reconciling the Torah with reality. “Look, believing in G-d has nothing to do with being Jewish. You don’t need faith to be a good Jew.”
I actually have a Jewish Atheist cousin, oddly enough. He just likes the community really.
Even the porcupines?!
Methinks he gave up on THAT idea after the first date.
I blame it on the hedgehog’s dilemma.
I have it on good authority that the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.
And by ‘good authority’ you don’t mean yourself I hope. 😀
Terry Pratchett reference. Excellent. 🙂
Cain’s wife obviously comes from the same place as Power Girl, Donna Troy, and one or more of the Hawkmen (Hawkmans?).
She came from the golden age?
no wonder she is so bad ass.
Goddamit Superboy Prime, STOP PUNCHING THE WALL.
A parallel universe that went kaput, arcane cloning with a cruel curse for laughs, and could a hawkman/hawkgirl fan fill in for me here?
No. No they couldn’t. Hawkman’s had about 10 different origin stories, and during Brightest Day ALL of them became canon. Even the ones from when there was Archaeologist-Hawkman and Space Cop-Hawkman running around at the same time. Don’t even try to understand his origins.
I’ve heard they had several children myself. Don’t ask me to name them all but I’ve heard a few names bandied about, like Seth.
They do have several, but it is never stated that they had daughters, which makes it hard to figure out where Cain’s wife or the rest of humanity came from.
There is a theory that the Sons of God mentioned in Genesis were fallen angels.
“…other sons and daughters.” Genesis 5:4. Right there.
I mean, really, there’s too much wrong with the Bible to be claiming things that just aren’t.
Seth was Mentioned Child #3, to replace Dead Mentioned Child #2.
There were only three Mentioned Children.
Only three mentioned by name: “The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters.” (NRSV translation)
“And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters:” – Genesis 5:4 KJV
So yeah, there were other people around. No other names were given in the Bible, though.
I might’ve made a mistake (it’s been a while since I’ve actually read that story), but I don’t think that happened until after Cain moved away and met a bunch of people (and was afraid of strangers!).
I used to have this conversation with a Jehovah’s Witness co-worker back when. It was a fun logic chain. “Okay, so Adam and Eve were the first two people, right?”
“Right.”
“And everyone else is descended from them, right?”
“Right.”
“And Adam and Eve were white, right?”
“Right.”
“And evolution doesn’t exist, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, then… Where do black people come from? Or if Adam and Eve were black (not that it matters, they can be any race, right?) then where do white people come from? Where do Asians come from? Where do any of the various races come from?”
“Well, it depended on who they married.”
“But who did they marry? If there were only these two people, and we’re all descended from them, and evolution doesn’t exist, then how come we have different races?”
“It depended on who they married.”
Repeat ad nauseum.
To be fair, he was very good-natured about it, and we did have some fun conversations about religion and things, but I don’t think he ever even realized the flaw in his argument.
Well, at least he didn’t use the old “kinds” argument where they admit that “microevolution” can happen, but bafflingly claim that “macroevolution” can’t happen where one “kind” (no clear definition given) cannot evolve into another “kind”.
Saying that “microevolution” can happen, but “macroevolution” can’t is like acknowledging that someone can walk a few yards many times, but denying that they can ever walk a few miles.
There is no clear boarder between “micro-” and “macro-” evolution, because the latter is simply the nearly inevitable result of many repetitions of the former.
Erg… “boarder” should be “border”.
Well, exactly. A penny is a tiny fraction of a dollar. But can one save up a million dollars in pennies? Yes. But it’ll take a really long time. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen, though, if one has enough time…
The RCC doesn’t have an official position on evolution, as I’m aware. But they have said it isn’t inconsistent with the church’s theology or message.
As Augustine (or was it Aquinas?) said, there isn’t such a thing as contradiction between true things.
Fellow Catholic here… I think they told us something about God making other people after Adam and Eve? I never really got a straight answer from Sunday School, but my parents never really taught us to take the story literally.
Catholics (at least, my 8th grade science teacher/confirmation instructor who is now a deacon) believe that evolution is “God’s plan” or some such bullshit.
Catholic position on evolution is actually pretty simple. It’s a thing. It happened. Science is totally real, and science itself is just a window into the beauty of the intricacy of God’s creation. In other words, God created life on the planet, then told it to get around to evolving according to His guidelines. Modern Catholicism more or less views the creation stories as myths intended to provide lessons.
Some people like to think that’s still ignorant or foolish. Though a very, very lapsed Catholic, I still think it’s not only a solid compromise, but kind of beautiful in its own way. It’s kind of sad to keep getting wrapped up and given crap for the fundy viewpoints.
It certainly paints a much more pleasant picture of God than Creationism.
‘I gave you this awesome tool in your head. So go out and learn about the world with it. You’ll learn more about Me by doing so.’ vs ‘I gave you this awesome tool in your head, and made using it a trap, because if you use the tools I gave you to learn about the world, you’ll only see the lies I put into the world to…I don’t know, test you, or something.’
This is the confrontation that I never knew I wanted.
OH SHIT HERE COME THE PAIN. Seriously, angry Dina scares me to no end, you guys.
One nice thing to add about Dina’s shirt is that it implies she’s actually trying to be more social by encouraging a discussion she’d enjoy and be able to participate in! She is growing. She is… evolving.
Great, now I have the Pokemon evolution music stuck in my head. Thanks.
Dina Saurazu evolved into MAD DINA. Mad Dina learned Rage.
…DRAGON Rage?
DINOSAUR rage.
Dinosaurs are not dragons. They don’t breathe fire and the creatures with wings were related to, but not dinosaurs, and the wings were forelimbs, not fifth and sixth limbs.
There. Now that I’ve made this correction, hopefully the Wrath of Dina can spare us.
“Dragon” is a… nickname?
According to something I saw on Tumblr, there are a lot of fundies who think dragon = dinosaur and it leads to interesting/hilarious art.
That being said, I think Dina’s rage will do hundreds of points of damage, so… not Dragon Rage, just normal Rage.
I don’t think Joyce’s hit point total is high enough for the distinction to matter.
Even at Level 18? Man, her base stats must be terrible.
Nah, Joyce has the special ability “Oblivious” so she takes no damage.
Oblivious would only keep her from becoming infatuated. Which is…ironic…since this is Joyce…
You are correct. No revived fossil Pokemon have the Dragon type. They all have the Rock type instead. Therefore, dinosaurs are not dragons. Dinosaurs are rocks.
Furthermore their shared weakness to the Water type means that it was probably the Biblical Flood that wiped them out and not an Ice Age, especially since Ice is weak to Rock. Q.E.D.
She is going to open a can of whoop-ass.
They keep that in cans now? BACK IN MY DAY WE HAD TO BUY GLASS BOTTLES OF WHOOP-ASS.
BACK IN MY DAY IF YOU WANTED WHOOP-ASS YOU HAD TO GO TO THE LOBBY AND INVENT WHOOP-ASS!
BACK IN MY DAY, YOU HAD TO GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES AND PRAY FOR THE WHOOP-ASS!
BACK IN MY DAY WE HAD TO HIKE A GOOD FIVE MILES TO GET WHOOP-ASS! THROUGH THE SNOW! UPHILL! BOTH WAYS!!
I’m not that old. But when I was younger they still only sold WHOOP and ASS separately and you had to mix it together yourself. Boy I tell ya, kids these days, hard work…. zzzz
I invented WHOOP, and gathered wild ASS to mix it with.
Back in his day, my father was the first man to bring WHOOP to the Americas!
And the glass bottles of whoop-ass didn’t open; so you had to break ’em.
Evolution only occurs over numerous generations. Dina is metamorphosing. OBVIOUSLY.
I propose that she is in fact digivolving. Into WarDinamon apparently.
You know what this means?
http://youtu.be/ImgHoGgCn8U
Y’know, the server for Willis’s comics was 503’ing me for a few minutes straight, such that I wondered, “What huge thing happened this time? Did Rachel cross the universe barrier and kiss Billie?” Now I see that while it wasn’t quite that huge, and probably not enough, on its own, to crash the server, today’s strip is definitely notetworthy.
I PITY THE FOOL WHO MESSES WITH DINA!
I love it when a mess comes together.
Anybody else suddenly hearing the mortal kombat music?
I am NOW.
No, I am hearing the siren from Kill Bill
Your Avatar makes absolutely every one of your comments better. So much better.
And now that siren is playing in my head every time I see it.
which one? I changed my avatar like 3 times today
All these expressions are new, and I love every single one of them.
For your listening pleasure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAwWPadFsOA
As I said in another context, Anger is not a Bug, it’s a Feature.
Dina uses MEAN LOOK
Joyce is unable to run away.
She’s gonna beat Joyce to death with a femur.
A dinosaur femur.
Joyce is going to get ‘B’OWNED.
She’ll learn to Dig Them.
Dina’s about to come at Joyce like a spidermonkeyvelociraptor.
Joyce’s eyebrows in panel 3 are so smug it’s causing me physical pain. It’s the look of “I’m obviously right and you obviously wrong, but I’ll humor you and say that maybe we’re BOTH right. That way, I look like a mediator AND I don’t have to support my argument! It’s not like anything short of terrible death would cause me to change my mind anyway.” It is the worst song, played on the ugliest guitar.
You know what they say, “An eyebrow says a thousand words.”
Man, I really nailed that, didn’t I.
You nailed it like Joe.
Guess we owe him a nickel! Or, no wait…
Screw it I’m making the joke anyway.
It’s even worse than Mike’s eyebrows somehow! I didn’t know you could do that!
That you did.
Man, I didn’t know Joyce had it in her to get to those levels of smug.
She put all of her character development points into smugness. She’s roleplaying it as an attempt to reaffirm her beliefs in an increasingly contrary world. It’s totally an attempt to set herself up for further development gains further on down the line, though. Nice metagaming Joyce.
Nailed it like Mike would anyone’s mother for a nickel.
That is one of most perfect descriptions for a single comic panel expression I have ever heard.
I was about to say this. Joyce has managed to pull off the most punchable facial expression ever.
The cute thing about Joyce here is that she actually thinks she’s being open-minded.
Indeed! She used the word “maybe” which is Christian for “I’m not going to tell you to your face that you’re wrong about something you’ve studied for years and I’ve heard a 10 minute explanation about.” (Unless I’m mistaken)
Okay now I am hearing the theme from Jaws and psycho at the very same time… run for your life Joyce, run, run, run.
Okay, I really like Walkyverse Dina but you are seriously trying as hard as you can to tip my liking-scales over to Dumbiverse Dina because wow she’s so great oh my god
Sorry Joyce, but I’m with Dina on this one.
I literally cannot look at ticked off Dina without hearing Jeff Goldblum say
“Mommy’s very angry”
Not Skyfall?
Oh crap Dina angry RUN JOYCE RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!!!!!!
Dina is about to handle this debate the old fashioned way… BRUTALLY!!
I edited this picture to be more appropriate with current events.
Dina certainly nipped her in the bud. 😛
*badum tish*
See? I knew this would lead to biting.
Oh this brings back memories. Like being told I’d be going to hell for believing in evolution. To replying that I’ll save the person a seat, ’cause being a judgmental prick probably was a nice sin as well.
I’m goin’ to hell
In a handbasket
And I’ll have good company too
Because if I’m so bad
Then there’s no need to be sad
‘Cause everybody else will be there too (including you!)
Who’s awesome? You’re awesome.
And Voltaire. Voltaire is awesome.
Indeed he is.
I usually want to sing God Thinks during these conversations…
dina=fanbase
The Dinaraptor is remarkably restrained. She should tear the prey’s throat out and feast on her entrails! (Like any good predator.)
Dina Frown > Joyce Smile. If there’s a Joyce smiling somewhere, Just counter it with a good old fashioned Dina Frown and it’ll clear right up.
That makes sense, but I’m still waiting for my National Geographic documentary footage of Dinaraptor predation!
The Dinaraptor is mostly a cerealvore, but they have been known to eat anything that provokes them. Sometimes alive, if the provocation is especially irritating.
If angered sufficiently they will resort to vegetarian behavior. It’s hard to get them angry at vegetables, but it is an impressive sight to see.My expedition managed to pelt a Dinaraptor with pine cones until it devoured a whole redwood tree. The footage is quite disturbing.
@George and TPman: Thanks, your entries made me laugh!
=)
likewise, =)
Wow. I can’t actually remember the last time I actually said my horrified reaction to a comic out loud. Bravo.
Ethan, run. Run while you still can. It’s too late for Joyce. Once a Dinaraptor chooses her prey, she will hunt it mercilessly until it is hers. There is no escaping a Dinaraptor.
I don’t know how I didn’t see this coming.
Yes! I think even the hat got angrier as well!
Hah. It’s true. It looks like Dina’s hat’s eyes narrowed slightly.
She still manages to be cute.
They found feather nubs on velociraptors, but aren’t they still reptiles?
Dinosaurs aren’t reptiles at all. Among other things, they’re warm-blooded. They’re their own kingdom.
*class
Hell, not even that. It’s two orders within the Reptilia class.
I don’t know about velociraptors specifically, but I think that most dinosaurs were neither reptile not fowl, to adapt the saying, but that groups descended from them.
Reptilia is actually a paraphyletic clade, meaning it doesn’t include all the descendants of its common ancestor. Yes dinosaurs are reptiles of a sort, but somewhat in the same sense that birds are.
Not ‘somewhat’, in the exact same way, since birds are a subclade of one of the dinosaur clades. (Ironically, the lizard-hipped, not bird-hipped.)
Taxonomy is kind of messy.
Crocodiles are more closely related to birds than they are to lizards; there’s no good reason to put snakes, lizards, and crocodiles together in a category that excludes birds.
So “aren’t they still reptiles” is really impossible to answer well.
And then there’s Herpetology, which includes reptiles and amphibians, but not birds.
Academia is structurally still having problems catching up with its own discoveries as far as ornithology goes.
Not least because reptiles (and birds) are more closely related to mammals than they are to amphibians.
Someone wondered what would happen if Joyce attempted to foist her beliefs on Dina re. dino’s. Know they know.
That they do. So do the rest of us, and it is amazing.
Also, nice Gravatar =P.
Joyce, why must you confuse my brain meats? On one hand I feel sympathy at your lack of experience in the men department and how Ethan is treating you, then you have to remind me that I hate Creationist, “arguments,” and those who use them with a great ferocity.
Plus, well, you angered my favorite character while acting smug, so ya, sympathy mostly gone.
She must learn the ways of the modern world.
There is no greater teacher than suffering, and no greater suffering than the anger of an adorable girl-woman with a dinosaur habit.
Especially considering that Dina is the polar opposite of Joyce. Dina has looked at herself, seen where she has been found lacking and tried to correct it. She tries to grow, and has put herself in situations that she finds uncomfortable so that she can experience new things.
Joyce on the other hand has pretty much strong armed everyone into playing by her rules. Everyone must respect how Joyce feels, but the minute they say or do something that makes her uncomfortable then she tires to correct them.
I still feel sympathy, partly because I grew up around good people raised to believe stupid BS, partly because I know she’s gonna HURT tomorrow.
While I think that she has radically inaccurate beliefs about what relationships are like, and the only education that can correct that will be pain based, I’m losing a lot of sympathy for her naivety. She has been at university for several weeks, and in all that time she has never tried to challenge herself. She’s just expected everyone to fall into line and respect her issues while she refuses to budge on anything. Joyce has routinely looked at chance to grow and said, “no thanks.” Honestly, she’s easily the most infuriating character in the entire comic, and the only reason she gets away with being stuck in the 1950’s and not challenging herself is that she’s adorable, and she’s coasting on it.
Horses have ‘feathers’ too. Under their manes, tiny feather like growths. Does that make them birds 🙂
Well, it makes pegasi slightly more plausible.
Analagous traits as compared to shared ancestral traits, sweetie. AKA, convergent evolution as compared to inheritance of traits extinct relatives had in common from a common ancestor.
Nice try tho’.
Horsefeathers!
What’s the password?
*takes out fish*
*takes out sword*
*puts sword into fish*
Good gravatar for doing Harpo’s bit…
“Creationists think the Flintstones was a documentary” — Bill Maher
It wasn’t? CHILDHOOD RUINED.
Nah, the Flintstones is what’s happening on the ground during the Jetsons.
It’s a two-tiered dystopian society. There are clues, but it’s easy to miss.
incidently “distopian” spell checks to “pianis”. I just wanted everyone to know that. (also see if we can hit 500 posts)
Ugh… Joyce is so usless. Go for the throat Dina!
Holy cats, that’s just about the Only Thing that you could’ve said to piss her off. In its own way, its pretty impressive
This has only reinforced my fears that Joyce will offer to help Ethan “cure” his homosexuality.
To be fair, he’s more or less trying to do that himself…
Go team Dina.
Not only has Joyce uncorked Dina’s dinosaur fury, she’s also managed to piss off the sixth Juyden Sentai Kyoryuger!
You will believe a Dina can henshin!!
dina henshins into kamen rider w fang joker “its time to count up your sins”
TO THE ANGRY DOME!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIkciQjUKkE
CREATIONISM! DINA SMASH!!!
Incidentally, how is her name pronounced? I would think with the long “I” because then it’s like Dinosaur. But at the same time, I always read it with a long “E” sound.
The worst part of this, btw? You could see her actually, like, coming out of her shell before that comment… like… she was opening up and meeting people and now she’s gonna have a breakdown.
YAY DINA
I love it when creationists get that “We can’t REALLY know” attitude. Like, you can accept something with zero proof that is impossible to understand but not something that challenges that belief witch has proof and is difficult to understand? Can we really know what happens when we die? Of course not. Can we use science to speculate what bones we find are? Yes.
I think that if god does exist, can’t he be responsible for evolution?
The fun thing to do in that situation is to come back with “I guess you can’t REALLY know if there actually is a god either, can you?”
Then they should tell you that that’s the point. You can’t have faith and belief/believe in something if you know, with proof and evidence beyond all doubt, that it exists. Faith suppresses doubt, knowledge eliminates both.
Yes. Just “yes”.
I firmly believe that any decent lawyer ought to be able to get a mistrial declared if either the presiding judge or any jury members were found to be Creationists, on the grounds that they were obviously constitutionally unable to evaluate empirical evidence or logical arguments.
Seriously Joyce, you’re only further ruining the image of Christians.
How did I not see this conflict coming?
DINA SMASH CREATIONISM!!!
Aw, man! Someone beat me to it.
Wow, Joyce, that took talent. After you graduate, you might want to look into working for munitions companies, starting wars in places where peace has broken out.
So, where’s the comic again? On this page I only see the title “Feathers”, the navigation menu and the comments. No pictures.
All the previous pages work as expected. Strange… 😐
Dina wants to go ninja on Joyce. No punch.
Dina: “Joyce, don’t make angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
Cue The Hulk TV series theme.
DINA ABOUT TO MAKE JOYCE EXTINCT!!!
Am I the only one to think Dina’s explanation is a little… weird? I mean, “Dinosaurs have feathers because they were early forms of birds” is a VERY teleologic way of putting things. As far as I understand it that’s not really how evolution works. (“Birds have feather because they are ‘late forms’ of feathered dinosaurs would make more sense.”) Now Dina sounds like she believes in intelligent design…
It would only be teleological if Dina was implying that evolution had birds in mind as a goal when giving dinosaurs feathers. It’s a very anthropomorphing way to thinking, ascribing purpose to an impersonal mechanism.
I don’t think that is what Dina is saying; she is merely stating that not only did birds evolve from feathered dinosaurs, but birds literally *ARE* feathered dinosaurs, which is true. It’s just that feathered dinosaurs existed earlier in the bird-to-dinosaur lineage.
Yes. Speaking monophyletically (is that a word?), birds are dinosaurs.
Hm, I certainly see how birds can be considered dinosaurs, and “teleological” was probably too strong a word. (Although, now I think about it, the “their feathers were for” is also ambiguous and can be misleading, but it’s so common in popularisation that I hardly even notice anymore.) Still it makes little sense to say that dinosaurs had feathers “because” many of them were early forms of birds. Both assertions are true, but the “because” is wrong. Remove it and I’m (mostly) fine with the rest of Dina’s explanation. (Funny that my gravatar happens to be Joyce…)
Wait a tick…is Dina’s shirt the equivalent of a shirt worn by Joe that suggests sexual innuendo?
Hooh, jeez.
Don’t go up against the dinosaurs, Joyce. Seriously, Dina’s been very, very shy up until now, or at least very quiet — the only thing she’s been able to open up and talk about has been dinosaurs. Question the one interest that she’s willing to talk about…yeah, this won’t go well.
On the other hand, Joyce is almost the same with religion — sure, she’s more sociable overall, but she’s also very passionate about this one thing. Get two people with major interests whose interests contradict each other and who are very willing to argue against each other…
Who’s predicting a pizza fight?
Also, Friday cliffhanger tomorrow, so either Dina lays down an absolute smackdown with as complete an explanation as she can make, leaving Joyce flabbergasted, or Dina just up and leaves, furious as all get-out, possibly venting to Amber when she gets back.
And I just saw a tie-in here. Amber’s mad at/sorry for/awkward around Ethan because she got dragged into a role where she had to be moral support in a vulnerable part of his life. (And I’m pretty sure they were boyfriend and girlfriend before, so she would have been forced out of that role and upset about that.) Dina comes back and vents about how stupid Joyce was on her date with Ethan. Amber reacts, goes to rant at Ethan’s dishonesty, and drops the Gay Bomb. (Causing confetti and sequins to scatter over a 250-mile radius.)
There’s potential tension growing between Amber and Joyce, anyway — Amber seems to care quite a lot about Dina, and hearing about her being shot down when she’s trying to open up may irk her. (…And actually, I don’t think Amber and Joyce have met, have they? Huh. So that means Amber may have an easier time creating a one-tone mental image of her.)
I read “insulation and sexual selection” as ‘insultation and sexual selection,’ insultation clearly meaning the art of insults.
I don’t know why that made sense, but I imagined a raptor waving it’s feathers to suggest another raptor had a fat ass.
In other news, this just got real.
Oooooh Berserk Button pushed
New TV Tropes entry!
DINA-RAGE.
Don’t move! She can’t see you if you don’t move!
Though that probably would mean Dina would walk into a lot of trees, chairs and doors…
E-bot, to quote Doctor Who from up the thread:
“You get your first look at this “five foot paleontology enthusiast” as you enter a clearing. She moves like a bird, lightly, bobbing her head. And you keep still because you think that maybe her visual acuity is based on movement like Ruth – she’ll lose you if you don’t move. But no, not Dina. You stare at her, and she just stares right back. And that’s when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side, from the other two Dinas you didn’t even know were there”
Correction, not from the side, but from behind the door.
Doors to the left, doors to the right …
Come to think of it, Dina already does have problems with doors.
A little bit of T-Rex in the blood perhaps?
Goddammit, the ONE TIME she smiles someone has to go and ruin it!
I will treasure panel 2, for it’s the only time we’ll see it for months
eh, I’ll be honest to joyce; I see evolution as the best proof there might be a god
because think about it, which of these is a better creation; something that’ll fix and imove itself over time, or something you yourself need to get up and work on if something changes.
thus why do we not say your both right, because…angry dina scares me o.0
I wasn’t going to get into this debate today, but there’s no way I can let that slide.
Something that fixes and moves itself over time makes a creative agency superfluous at best.
If there was a god, why on earth would it make it look exactly as if there was not?
One way to look at it is simply to say that everything happened by chance or an omnipotent being created the big bang, galaxies forming all the natural laws to work perfectly to end up where we are today, including evolution.
Since that theory starts before the Big Bang and even includes it, it has a certain draw to it that i kinda like. Can you think of a more solid way to show that you are an omnipotent bieng than to have made the bing bang and in such a way to end up where we are today?
I can’t think of one unless you start tlaking about multiple univeses/big bangs and if you can make one you cna make more 😉
Also, how do you get more comments than a comic with lesbians kissing?
A comic about religion!
Willis is a genius. A bastard, but a genius non the less.
“Can you think of a more solid way to show that you are an omnipotent being” than create to create a universe that has no evidence of creation whatsoever? This is the kind of backwards thinking and intellectual legerdemain that theology has been reduced to.
As you say, the conditions of the universe are such that it gave rise to humanity. I fail to see the force of this argument. The universe is indeed formulated in such a way as to allow life to arise on certain parts of the habitable surface of a planet which is cosmically remote and insignificant on a scale that is difficult to express without hyperbole.
I guess it depends on your religion or which religion you’re talking about. My beliefs include that the point isn’t for us to have any evidence to go on, but instead have faith. When Jesus came to earth preformed miracles and died for me that was all the evidence I need to know there is a god. Its fine if you don’t want to believe in any God at all, but you don’t have the right to make other seem stupid for their beliefs.
I didn’t say anything about stupidity. If you felt that I did, then that betrays a certain defensiveness. I was responding about the use of scientific claims to demonstrate the ingeniousness of a metaphysical entity. By “backwards thinking” I referred to the process of reasoning backwards from an unjustified conclusion. If you want to see that as an assault on your intelligence, it says more of you than me.
And, as a matter of fact, I DO have that right, I simply choose not to exercise it.
As for the point of faith, I can hardly see the willing surrender of critical faculties as any kind of virtue, but you are of course welcome to it.
Considering I just shared an idea, a theory if you will, you were pretty aggressive there. Not everyone talking about religion is trying to convert you so you might want to ease up there.
Scientists share theories all the time. They’re lucky though, they can sometimes test to see if the theories are true. No one can prove what happened before the big bang, not even scientists. One theory is as good as another then, wouldn’t you say?
Unless it clashes with your belief amirite 😉
You shared an idea, but it wasn’t a theory in the scientific sense. And going “well, any theory is as good as another” shows a profound lack of understanding of even the most basic principles of science.
You are, of course, free to believe whatever, but you have to understand that it’s incredibly frustrating when people say things like “well logically God would make a system that fixes itself” or something similar and passes it off as something that would fit in a scientific context, not knowing that it does not and cannot work as a theory because the involvement or existence of God cannot be proved, and the same goes for the opposite.
That’s the main thing. Whether God exists or not is irrelevant. The thing is that, either way, the very nature of God means that he has absolutely no place in any kind of scientific theory. And it’s really, really annoying when people act like he somehow does.
And passing off different ideas as “theories” of equal validity because it’s impossible to observe what really happened is poor form, too. That kind of thinking means intentionally ludicrous theories are just as valid as more serious ones, making the whole thing pointless to even bring up.
Certainly scientists share ideas all the time, and offer robust criticisms of them on the basis of reason and evidence. What they don’t do is complain about aggression when they receive criticism, and they certainly wouldn’t see that as some kind of valid defence.
As you talk about theories and what happened before the big bang, you might be interested to know that the question is quite meaningless. Not meaningless in that “I think asking what the meaning of life is is meaningless” sort of way, but literally meaningless.
The big bang, as the beginning of space, was also the beginning of time. The theoretical models that suggest this are very robust indeed. To add something, particularly an intelligent, creative something, “before” the big bang is to convolute an otherwise elegant model with nonsensical metaphysical abstractions.
As for “one theory is as good as another”, this is what is known as a golden mean fallacy. Just because a particular is unknown does not put all claims on equal footing.
“I didn’t say anything about stupidity. If you felt that I did, then that betrays a certain defensiveness”
You didn’t say anything about stupidity, but you came across in a rather aggressive and dismissive way. So much so, that even though I agree with everything you said, I STILL feel compelled to come to the defense of the original poster you criticized.
Oh wow, we’re so deep in the comments I can’t even reply to most posts anymore.
@ Spex – See this is how you critique a theory. Nobody’s going to feel personally insulted reading that. Likewise, when advancing your own views on fitting god into scientific thinking you never attempt to belittle the individuals who disagree with you.
@Crumplepunch – “What [scientists] don’t do is complain about aggression when they receive criticism”.
Criticism is, in of itself, not aggressive. It is only aggressive if it is voiced in an aggressive form, and that form of criticism IS indeed worthy of complaint.
I suspect that the grumpy Ethan portrait lends my perceived voice rather more vitriol than I actually express.
Even so I make no apologies for being dismissive. Nonsensical ideas effectively exist to be dismissed.
You rather missed my point with the “complaint about criticism” remark. I was pointing out that my aggression, real or imagined, is no excuse for the faulty reasoning I criticize, nor does it invalidate the points I make.
Your argument isn’t a proof of a creator deity at all though. It’s a rationalization of the facts based on a presupposition of an intelligent creator’s existence.
We could debate whether it would have been better for God to create life correctly the first time, or to allow life to evolve with the poor construction, disease, parasites, and other problems we see today. However, this can’t be used to bypass proving the existence of a creator deity in the first place.
In other words, if your argument requires assuming that the creator exists in the first place, then you’re just begging the question, not proving its existence.
haha wow talk about a gravitar that doesn’t fit, but that I like anyways.
I like redheads. To bad she’s into girls 🙁
She could be bi…
MORTAL KOMBAT!! Creation vs Evolution. Ready? FIGHT!
Joyce vs Dina
HEAVEN OR HELL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVlD-0UOatk
If Dina is an atheist, she doesn’t believe in HELL (until given sufficient reasons to support the hypothesis).
So, it is more like ” HEAVEN or A WONDROUS, MEANINGLESS UNIVERSE THAT DOESN’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU”
so Yay! Angry Dina is best Dina !
He was making a Guilty Gear reference. ;p
I really can’t blame Dina for being angry.
“Hey, did you know your passion that you and a bunch of other people spent their entire lives working really hard on? It’s a bunch of SHIT. DREAMWORKS FACE!” – Joyce
That was a paraphrase BUT IT MIGHT AS WELL NOT BE.
I don’t see why so many creationists, who I am one of, can’t believe anything else. As far as I’m concerned maybe the big bang did happen but it’s because God caused it. I don’t think humans evolved from monkeys but we have seen other animals adapt so maybe other species did evolve.
Nobody thinks humans evolved from monkeys, not even people who like science. Humans evolved from a common ancestor of today’s apes.
Actually, yeah, a lot of people argue that the word “monkey” should be used to describe all descendants of a particular primate line, which would include us, all other apes, and our ancestors to the start of that line.
But people who say “humans evolved from monkeys” don’t mean it that way. It’s phrasing that obscures the truth.
Also, monkeys have tails. We do not.
Goddamit I want a tail. Preferably prehensile.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-YfwccZQILpM/TYya0JgneOI/AAAAAAAAASw/6pYHeCWbXEg/s1600/human-tails-keralites.net15%255B1%255D.jpg
Ask, and ye shall receive
Many species of macaque don’t have tails, but they’re still monkeys by either definition by virtue of not being apes.
A lot of people are then wrong.
You can believe what you like, but when you bring that nonsense into the public arena or or try to talk about it on the basis that science is based on (Logic, rationality or evidence) don’t be suprised if people who know better strongly disagree with you.
Believe what you want.
But if your beliefs contradict facts, something is wrong. And it’s not the facts.
David, it doesn’t matter if you say monkeys or common ancestor of today’s apes. I still don’t believe it.
Pinja, what did I say that was nonsense?
Pat, what facts are you referring to? We have no concrete evidence of any evolution.
“what facts are you referring to?”
Try this, for starters:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
There really is an awful lot of it.
If you’re really interested, I can recommend a few accessible books on the subject.
Every time we get a new strain of flu virus? That’s evolution. It happens every year.
Also, the e. coli long-term evolution experiment has seen the development of bacteria that could digest material that their ancestors couldn’t!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment Isn’t that neat! It’s the equivalent of people developing the ability to digest wood fiber.
The argument that “we have no concrete evidence of any evolution” is a flat-out lie. Denial of the evolutionary process literally requires ignoring the entirety of the field of biology.
Saying, “We have no concrete evidence of any evolution” is a huge claim, that requires knowing exactly what we do and do not know. Essentially, you’re claiming you’ve proved a negative, like “there are no blue apples”. This is a statement you cannot prove is true even if it is true, but can easily be proven false with a single counterexample.
Now, ask yourself, who told you that? Was it scientists who study the field and know what they’re talking about, or was it people with a religious bias against evolution? I believe you’ll find that only the latter make the claim you did.
The fact is, we have tons of concrete evidence of evolution, including direct observation, like the excellent study that Insomniac referred to above, to indirect observation, such as the verification of the predictions made by evolution when looking into the different chromosome counts between humans and other apes (skip to the video near the middle if you don’t want to read through all that).
Evolution makes numerous predictions, and when we test those predictions, time and time again they have been proved correct, and have not been contradicted by the facts. This is the concrete evidence of evolution that you deny exists, though we have it in abundance.
That’s ok. I don’t believe (in) it either – I just use it as a useful tool with predictive value. Which is what “theory” means in practical sciences.
Dude, we have, literally, tons of evidence of evolution. There are entire branches of science that are based on it. Much of medicine would not exist without it. To say otherwise takes some world class denial.
I don’t really know how to label myself, but I tend to lean in such a theory that the big bang occurred, evolution happens, but that there is an entity that may have started it all.
My avatar is as angry as Dina 🙁
That would make you an agnostic deist, depending on how soft you are on that “may have”.
The deist position is that there is a creator who set in motion the fundamental laws of nature and then let everything spin off in the direction it went. This would be a deity that doesn’t act directly in the universe, but rather simply allows the universe to roll along according to the rules that deity laid down at the beginning.
“You’re right, Joyce. The only thing we know for certain is Cogito Ergo Sum (there is thought, therefore something exists). That’s a big step upwards from those who think other things can be known for certain, and a bigger step sideways from those who think that faith can be used to get unadulterated truth directly (and for some reason consistently gives people with incompatible faiths incompatible ‘unadulterated truth’s). Now, let’s start talking about subjective probabilities and the tautologous appropriateness-for-use of Occam’s Razor…”
((Ahh, the beautifully low subjective probability tied up in “Maybe Russell’s Teapot /is/ up there in orbit. We can’t /really/ know.”.))
The absolutely beautiful thing about this comment is that while Descartes starts his “Discourse on Method” explaining that his doubts prove that he thinks, which in turn proves that he exists . . . he continues to “prove” that God must exist because he has such a clear and distinct idea of God existing. So Descartes totally jumped the rails, and so quickly, too . . .
Seriously. And it’s a really bad proof, too.
Joyce, there’s no Heaven or Hell that can keep you safe now.
This could be interesting. So far the people who have confronted Joyce on her beliefs have either been polite (Dorothy) or just joking and teasing (Walky, Joe).
Dina lacks a lot of social cues and could be pretty harsh in her response. The question is what will she do? Will she deliver a harsh scientific explanation, just insult or Joyce or wordless storm off?
Maybe Dina is the reason Joyce goes to cry in the toilets ?___?
Plus I can see Dina firmly believing in Evolution and that Earth is old just like Joice believes in creation and thinks Earth is probably only six thousand years old, and that Jesus rode dinosaurs.
Well, I don’t doubt Dorothy or Walky’s belief in evolution and the old earth are any less firm than Dina’s, they’re just less likely to take a swing at her when she contradicts that belief 🙁
I like to think that here Dina is actually moking Joyce. 🙂
“Oh what! Who’s been intellectually destroyed now, bongo!”
“I’LL CUT YOU bongo!!”
I wonder how I never saw it coming that Joyce and Dina were set on a collision course from the start XD Damn you, Willis! That’s genius.
Well, I think Joyce will end up clashing with most of the cast at some point. It’s just that Dina is unlikely to hold back.
I’d have thought Joyce would clash with everyone *except* Dina. This caught me completely by surprise ^^
As a paleontologist who studies evolution (dissertation submitted yesterday!), this is an entirely realistic response. I have definitely done this at family reunions when certain individuals have revealed they recently discovered all those problems with science and how ridiculous natural selection is.
This is why I think schools should indeed “teach the controversy” – even though it shouldn’t be necessary, in the world we actually live in I don’t want supposedly educated adults who aren’t inoculated against this “truth evolutionists are keeping from you” claptrap.
A problem with “teaching the controversy” is that too many people are science-illiterate and not capable to determining what is good evidence and what isn’t . . . and a sub-problem of that is that it’s often the teachers themselves! (For example, people who claim that vaccinations cause autism.)
Stop and think about what you are saying. This would open up the floor for any number of nonsense theories in the classroom at the behest of anyone with a muscular PR machine and a head full of fluff.
“Chemistry is clearly false, because of radiocarbon dating! Alchemy is undergoing a strong revival among the REAL scientific community! Teach the controversy!”
“Well I wasn’t raised to think that we are a tiny, cosmically insignificant planet! I think we should teach astrology as well as astronomy, because the celestial bodies are all about my love life! Teach the controversy!”
“Some verminous professor of calumny at the Flatworld Institute has written a paperback containing PROOF that the roundearthists are wrong! Teach the controversy!”
I mean, I could go on. The stork theory of reproduction. Ectoplasmic metaphysics. Holocaust denial. The phlogiston.
The classroom is not a testing ground for these ideas! If these people want to show that their ideas are true, they should do it with science, not through media pressure and lobbying. To cede this point is cultural and intellectual suicide.
Pretty much
Unfortunately, it’s not one or two lunatics who can be ignored. If alchemy or flat-earthism were being proclaimed from the pulpits, children would have to understand where they were coming from, and why they were wrong. We already teach children the arguments concerning the shape of the Earth, and various alchemical fallacies, and those concerning other errors such as geocentrism and perpetual motion. If people who supported these ideas were being taken seriously today, yes, it would be incumbent upon schools to debunk them directly. Kids are bright, anyway – where math and science are concerned, we baby them far too much.
I remember taking a college-level course that, although it was advertised as one teaching the science of genetic diversification, spent roughly a third of its time addressing creationist arguments, and that shouldn’t happen; it’s like having to convince college students that the freshman’s dream doesn’t work, but that doesn’t happen, because in high school they’re shown the freshman’s dream, and shown it doesn’t work.
The fact is that creationists have a lot of currency in this country, and they’re gaining ground worldwide. Why? Not because of too much respect, but too little – because of stubborn attitudes like this, refusing to acknowledge what is in favor of what should be. Rather than keeping them out by fiat and feeding into their narrative of persecution, let children understand early why these loud fools are wrong.
So your argument is that it should be taught in schools because people already take it seriously? Do you in no way see how this might make things worse?
You are correct in saying it’s not a couple of lunatics that can be ignored. It’s a powerful, cynical marketing machine that needs to be resisted if we are to avoid the propagation of deliberate untruths in the name of education.
On what possible basis can you say that this should be taught in schools rather than colleges? Is it a matter of inconvenience? Do you think you had a better grasp of critical reasoning when you were younger? I genuinely do not understand.
You need to understand that opposition to this sort of thing is not a matter of disrespect (although I certainly do that) but of quality of education. If what there was a genuine controversy in science, then these people would have a point.
But there isn’t. And they don’t.
If their ideas had any weight, there are processes in place for them to present their evidence. As things stand, they are holding an empty sack, claiming it contains a unicorn and saying that anyone who disagrees is outvoted. The USA is a democracy. Truth is not.
It is not stubbornness to resist this kind of bullying nonsense. If I want this sort of thing kept out of science classrooms “by fiat” it is only because I want to keep all things that are anti-scientific out of science classrooms “by fiat”. You are doing yourself a great disservice by capitulating to these tactics.
I do not want to keep things that are anti-scientific out of science classrooms, at all. I don’t want to keep luminiferous aether or humour theory out of classrooms, and I hope you don’t, either. The “marketing machine” you mention thrives on an ignorant misunderstanding of what science is, and one that should not be perpetuated.
No, I don’t think schoolchildren are better at critical thinking than college students, but they’re not incapable of it, and shouldn’t be treated as such. By the time they get to college, there are things they should have already examined critically, and creationism is certainly among them. It should not be possible for the “marketing machine” to walk up to them and say “you’ve been lied to; look what you haven’t seen” and present something to which they genuinely don’t know the answer. That’s become their tactic, and it’s working, because we baby our students, opting not to teach them critical examination on the grounds that they haven’t already learnt it.
“I do not want to keep things that are anti-scientific out of science classrooms, at all. I don’t want to keep luminiferous aether or humour theory out of classrooms, and I hope you don’t, either.”
That is an absolutely fatuous point. Teaching about the history of defunct ideas and teaching defunct ideas as truth are emphatically not the same thing.
I’m not sure how much more simply I can make the point that critical examination of facts is not the business of schoolchildren. I agree that critical examination of facts should be taught, certainly, but the responsibility for evaluating scientific truth claims it is the domain of experts of the field, in this case, biologists.
“The “marketing machine” you mention thrives on an ignorant misunderstanding of what science is, and one that should not be perpetuated.”
Am I being accused of perpetrating misunderstandings of what science is? I would love for you to expound on this.
Of course don’t teach it as a fact! Rather, teach the facts (and lies) creationists use, and the arguments they make, so that students can understand why they don’t imply creation, and gain the tools to recognize why other arguments fail likewise. Because they’re going to hear them, and they need to understand.
Critical examination of facts is absolutely the business of schoolchildren. It’s what they’re there to do – if they’re indoctrinated, and you tell them they’re indoctrinated, they’ll realize they’re indoctrinated, even if they’ve been indoctrinated with the truth. It’s like our bizarre reluctance to teach children even the basics of mathematics, with children graduating high school thinking an elongated ∫ might summon Yog-∫othoth. It’s sickening how we underestimate them; they’re there to learn to think, not just what to think.
You’re not perpetrating a misunderstanding consciously, but by the infantile “this is how it is” CCD-like instruction the students are given, you do so inadvertently, giving “evolution as religion” arguments fertile ground to take root. Anything can be made to look religious when the underlying theory isn’t properly understood. (Dupin’s “algebraists are pagans” speech, written in a time when both mathematics and education were far different animals, comes to mind – as silly as that looks to the modern reader, it’s just a consequence of a since corrected version of this same error.)
That’s easy to avoid. Don’t teach evolution as truth. Just teach the controversy as part of current events in social studies.
If somebody abuses the system for proselytizing then fire them.
“Don’t teach evolution as truth.”
So they’d be lying, then.
I’m not sure how many times I can reiterate this; this issue is not a scientific controversy. This is a media controversy, cynically campaigned with expensive lobbying tactics.
To enact policy as if there was a scientific controversy in the interests of misguided even-handedness is to open the door to anyone who’s political agenda demands a wilful ignorance of reality.
Magnetism is only a theory. I demand equal time for the theory of metal feeling the emotion of love!
I’ve always found it funny that ICP sort-of stumbled on a common question of first-year physics students (i.e., how magnets do work when the magnetic field always acts orthogonally) – I guarantee it wasn’t intentional.
…please tell me you meant “don’t teach creationism as truth.”
Yah, I slipped up on that one.
Teach evolution as truth, creationism as controversy.
A science class would be an inappropriate place to discuss ‘the controversy’. A comparative religion class, perhaps where modern issues of religion and philosophy were discussed in a pluralistic sense would be the appropriate environment, but good luck ever seeing that in the vast majority of American schools.
Raen, while I agree with you in the hypothetical realm where all ideas could be discussed and criticized based upon their merits and the objective facts, here in the real world this won’t work.
Teaching critical thinking is important, and I agree it should be done. However, I don’t think that all teachers will do this in an unbiased way on a topic like evolution due to all of the personal bias, misinformation, and the well-funded religious push against it.
Furthermore, I think this would cause problems for many schools, as parents would object to having their creationist beliefs “ridiculed” (as they would see it) in school.
Finally, there are studies that indicate that when you talk about false information, it actually makes it easier for people to accept it as true, even when it’s clearly stated that it’s false. The simple act of bringing up creationism in a science context can help reinforce the idea that it’s science.
So, while critical thinking is important, I think that pretending that there is a real controversy in science regarding evolution and creationism, when there isn’t, has the potential to do far more harm than good.
If creationists want to get creationism in the science classroom, then they should do what everyone else has to do, prove it in the scientific arena first. If they can’t do that, then it doesn’t belong there.
Congrats on submitting your dissertation!
Thanks!
How are you going to discuss things that aren’t science in a science class.
I’m not sure I’m crazy about Dina starting off her explanation “dinosaurs were early forms of birds”… seems kinda teleological.
Not really. As I posted above (but with more-evolved grammar here), it would only be teleological if Dina was implying that evolution had birds in mind as a goal when giving dinosaurs feathers. It’s a very anthropomorphic way of thinking, ascribing purpose to an impersonal mechanism.
I don’t think that is what Dina is saying; she is merely stating that not only did birds evolve from feathered dinosaurs, but birds literally *ARE* feathered dinosaurs, which is true. It’s just that feathered dinosaurs existed earlier in the bird-to-dinosaur lineage.
Yes. Speaking monophyletically (is that a word?), birds are dinosaurs. Birds are merely a type of dinosaur, albeit the only kind of dinosaur still surviving.
That doesn’t make birds a type of dinosaur. Birds are warm-blooded and built for flight.
Aside from the flightless ones…but actual dinosaurs couldn’t fly. Pterosaurs and the archaeopteryx aren’t considered dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs were also most likely warm-blooded.
Also, “evolved for flight” is probably what you want to say here, unless you want a pissed off Dina attack. 😉
But seriously, distinguishing between birds and dinosaurs is a bit trickier than you think. You can’t give a definition of “bird” to prove that it isn’t a dinosaur, because it could be a bird and a dinosaur. You have to give a definition for “dinosaur” if you want to prove whether something is or isn’t a dinosaur.
The fact is, “dinosaur” is defined in such a way that, yes, birds are a kind of dinosaur.
While you are correct that the pterosaurs are not technically dinosaurs, you are wrong about archaeopteryx, which is a kind of dinosaur.
What makes bird dinosaurs is their ancestry: birds belong to a large familly of animals whose latest common ancestors are called dinosaurs. Of course when dinosaur fossils were discovered people didn’t know how closely related to birds they were, so the name does not really reflects the relationship, but birds are still dinosaurs in that sense. Just like, if one day a new species of mammal evolves that lacks mammary glands, they’ll still be considered “mammals”.
I think she only started with “early forms of birds” strictly as a lead in to her second speech bubble, where she explains the common similarity between why dinosaurs and big flightless birds have feathers. “Neither of them use them to fly, sure, but dinosaurs have them for the same reason that an ostrich does, which is etc etc etc”.
I agree — with both you and Raen. It’s that “because” that’s misleading, and seems to imply that “evolution had birds in mind as a goal when giving dinosaurs feathers” as TJ Baltimore put it. (Oh, and I’m not sure we can really say they have feathers “for” insulation either. Rather, they are insulated because they have feathers. Or, maybe they kept feathers because of insulation, but that’s not why they got them in the first place. The main reason why an ostrich has feathers is because its ancestors had feathers too.)
I don’t believe in the Theory of American Secession. No, I believe that the USA was created in its current form three thousand years ago by God.
YOU’VE DONE IT NOW.
What I do find interesting in *this* instance is that the aggression/potential violence comes from the ‘rational thinker’. Usually it’s the religious person that’s type casted as the aggressor, so much so that it’s a trope.
It’s not ok for anyone to be aggressive over this regardless of what side of the discussion you are on.
Aggressive? She’s frowning
Hell, Joyce’s breasts weigh more than Dina, she’s not going to start a fight
She’s just going to disembowel Joyce with the hooked claw on her foot, and then feast on her entrails.
Why would she feast on her entrails? Isn’t there more food value in eating the meat parts?
Frowning with intent. Frowning and LEANING.
I don’t know about any physical aggression, but Dina seems to be throwing off some major hate Joyce’s way.
Do they weigh more individually or as a pair?
It’s all fun and games and freedom of opinion, until shit like this pops out of the mouths of the deliberately negligent.
The two characters that make me squee, upset about an issue that I am ambivalent about, and somehow this just make me want to hug them all the more.
On a good note, it’s clear from the comments that David knows what he talking about and can make a confrontation without either person being straw… I’m excited.
Ambivalent? Read a book.
But that’s why I’m ambivalent…
Read a better book.
(These avatars are perfect for the tone here)
Are you also ambivalent about math?
How do you mean, “ambivalent about math”?
Dina… Mad face… Cute…
Don’t care about philosophical debate… Christians… wrong… Skyboatpilot… out
Is it just me, or is the HAT more angry as well?
You have angered the Dina. Pray you don’t anger her further.
Upon seeing the angry, I took a few steps away from the screen.
Yeah, I’m with Dina on that one.
Am I wrong in believing that Joyce got Dina angry in the Walkyverse once upon a time?
Dina, Dina, Dina… who not gonna win this for this reason
God creates Dinosaurs.
God Destroys Dinosaurs.
God creates man
Man destroys God.
Dina destroys Joyce
Have you guys tried making Dina’s face? it’s really fun.
447 comments and more?! I’m not even going to try…..
But I will mention that someone did call this on a previous strip. I’m a little surprised we went in this direction, but I suppose its an interesting issue that needs to be addressed.
To me, the really interesting point here is finding out how Dina reacts to being told she’s wrong.
Dina seems to be, from what I can tell, a person with Aspergers. People with said difficulty often have a hard time accepting that other people are even able to have a different point of view (and that’s not meant as a metaphor, literally have a hard time understanding other people may have a different point of view.) Being faced with that reality can cause a bit of a mental schism, especially on a topic that is important to them. The result is usually…not great, to be honest.
I think this will be a very telling conversation, but not for the evolution/creation everyone seems to be discussing.
(Though, to everyone here’s credit, everything I’ve seen looked pretty civil. Which is nice to see. Much better than when Penny Arcade approached the subject recently…the rivers of flame abounded.)
Oh Joyce… When will you learn that you can’t blurt out your “God’s way” opinion to others when they are explaining a scientific theory.
Just for the hell of it we need a character that will have a debate with Joyce and poke holes in the bible in front of her. Maybe Mike? I like Mike. Actually I’m loving Dina’s face more XD
Unfortunately, Mike can cause maximum suffering by leaving Joyce to continue spewing her doesn’t-know-any-better rhetoric, so he’s more likely to reinforce her views than anything else.
And Dina is now my favorite.
Don’t really agree with Dina on the feathers use for sexual selection. Mostly because I’m not aware that we’ll ever find out if this was actually the case. Agree about the insulation though. Feathers are lovely and warm <3
Also gotta say I disagree with Joyce. Although I believe the world was originally big bang created and then evolution happened since then going through a large amount of millions of years, I can’t see why God would create something with feathers, on which the feathers serve no purpose (unless through evolution those feathers lost their purpose in time).
If an archaeologist doesn’t know what something is, it’s a religious artifact. If a paleontologist doesn’t know what something is, it’s a sexual display. 😛
In this case, though, it’s a reasonable conclusion. Feathers in modern animals almost always get some use as a sexual display.
And she was so happy that someone finally asked…
I wonder if Dina’s anger is born completely from insulting evolutionary theory or if she’s feeling some cross dimensional rage for Joyce stealing her boyfriend.
Holy Hell! There are HOW many comments already?
DAMMIT WILLIS! You broke the internets!
On a related note, I have a test tommorrow in Philosophy of Science, and one of our main texts, which we will be tested on, is Philip Kitcher’s “Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism”. It’s pretty good, and I dare any Creationist or ID defender to read it and try to be able to retort it.
While I disagree with Joyce on this, all y’all need to stop thinking she’s dumb because she’s a fundamentalist.
Seriously.
The FUCK we need to stop thinking she’s dumb because she’s a fundamentalist. She’s the postergirl for creationist stupidity.
It’s important not to confuse “ignorance” with “stupidity”.
If you were brought up in a sheltered environment where you were either uninformed or misinformed about certain things, you would make mistakes of the same kind that Joyce makes, no matter how smart you are.
You only begin to shift from “ignorance” to “stupidity” after being given the facts and choosing to reject those facts for bad reasons.
Thank you very much.
Joyce, don’t make Dina angry. You wouldn’t like her when she’s angry. DINA SMASH!
Holy crap. Joyce broke Dina.
Chicken = T-Rex
I dare you to disagree.
T. rex came into being almost a hundred million years after the divergence of its line from birds’. In fact, they probably didn’t even have feathers, but more primitive structures, or there’s some evidence even of them returning to scales. (Don’t ask me how that squares with Dollo’s principle, I don’t effing know.)
Chickens are too small for Jeff Goldblum to put a saddle and jet engines on, but a T-rex isn’t.
Oh man, just remembered something else that reminds me of what Dina is doing.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/04/09
I was gonna say I feel sorry for Ethan being caught in the middle, but he’s honestly been a fair bit of a douche by even going out with Joyce when he knows he’s gay anyway, so….Yeah, don’t let him get in your way, Dina.
See, Joyce had her shot, and nature SELECTED her for extinction…
I’m confused as to why Ethan is going on with the whole “boyfriend of Joyce” thing. I mean, he knows he’s gay. Is it just he enjoys her company and doesn’t want to break her heart and lose her friendship? Or is he just letting himself get steamrolled?
Because you are what you eat, and Ethan is a flaccid dong.
Wait. No. Yes…
Yes.
Rage Dina is my new profile pic.
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this reminds me a lot of a seen from community. Joyce is Shirley and Dina is Abed, and instead of evolution Shirley was talking about movie stuff.
Once again joyce has offended and pissed off another person
Run for the hills ! run for the hillllls
go angry dina!
YOU CANNOT DENY THE FEATHERS YOU FOOLS!