It’s extra funny because Hitler was a devoted christian. Just as Mussolini and also as the Spanish and many Latin-American facists. They all made it very clear in their letters, propaganda and public speachs.
Read Hitler’s Table Talk, he expresses more pagan beliefs than Christian. He makes statements to the effect that the RCC should be a powerless church with a weak leader. He claimed Jesus was an Aryan and other lies. He had an Anti-Christian Martin Bormann in his inner-circle & was an admirer of “God is dead” Nietzsche, thus Hitler’s wish for “Übermensch.”
Mussolini came to power on an Anti-Cotholic ticket, and had to deal w/ the RCC after he was in power. See the book “condemned to repeat it” by Allison, Adams & Hambly.
How do you tell when a politician is lying? There lips move.
@Far The “anti-christianity” of the Nazis was because they rightly saw the christian churches as potential nexuses of dictatorial powers in opposition to their own. Aside from Bormann and Rosenberg (who was heavily marginalised for being too nutty), the Nazi hierarchy didn’t want to destroy christianity but to subvert it to their own use (i.e. do to the cult what Constantine did back in the 4th century, and many rulers since), thus the invention of “German christianity” during the Nazi regime, and the attempt to corral all the protestant sects into it.
And you also have to remember, Hitler did believe in the christian god, he thought he had sent him (Hitler) down to earth to lead his (god) favoured Aryan people to dominance over the world. The table talk snippets denouncing christianity all happened either soon after prominent christians questioned the wisdom of Hitlers varied genocide programmes (we all know how well Adolf reacted to criticism) or when the war was obviously lost (and Downfall showed us how babyish he was when things weren’t going his way). He wanted Germany to be christian, just not the kind of christian it then was.
I’m tickled by the presented incredible savvy of distrusting politicians while defending a 2000-year-old story of guys saying they saw a dead guy once after he died, written forty years after it happened.
I think pointing out his pagan beliefs or what not is in danger of being a “True scottsman” fallacy. as in “he doesnt adhere to what i’d call and X so he isnt an X” which is exactly what millions of christians say bout millions of christians. And conveniently ignore their differences when it comes to “Christians vs Y”.
Cus if we are going to talk about people who aren’t “real” christians i’d point out all the ones who for some weird reason celebrate a pagan holiday in winter dedicated to celebrating the rise of the winter court of Faeries and the astrological continuation cycle in which people hang poisonous plants and decorate evergreen trees to be homes for Faeries.
When you’re on a webpage with like 1000 comments, and a good portion of those comments are from people saying “yes, this was my life, this was my life exactly,” and it’s from content created by a guy who lived this for twenty years, clearly the course of action you’ve chosen here is the best one.
C’mon. Keep on calling all of us liars. Remind us why we left.
@Cronomatt Well, I grew up in a situation similar to Joyce’s and I remember hearing the rumor that Hitler was partly Jewish. This rumor was connected to a theory that because the Jews were God’s favored people, they either did awesome things or were mini-antichrist’s.
More like control issues and inability to cope with not being able to make their children’s decisions for them forever using Christianity as a shield happened.
The fuck happened to all that stuff I learned in Catholic school? Love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, don’t be stupid judgmental dicks (yes, that was an actual lesson I got in sixth grade, exact words), casting stones? Did they stop teaching it?
They Aren’t Catholic, Though That Is A Lesson I Learned Growing Up (Raised Presbyterian If That Makes A Difference) Seems Fundamentalists Thrive On Hypocrisy.
Catholic != Fundimentalist Protestant, and in both cases Actual Doctrine != People’s Interpretation Thereof*, and Interpreted Doctrine != Actual Behavior.
* One of the more infuriating examples I’ve encountered within Catholicism – it’s been said by multiple Popes (notably Pius XII who said it first, and JPII who expanded on it) that evolution is not incompatible with God (basically ‘God gave us souls’ is the important part, and ‘evolution gave us the form we have’ doesn’t contradict that), but I’ve encountered a whole whackload of Catholic creationists, who bust out the idiotic ‘Humans and Dinosaurs coexisted’ and ‘if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?’ crap.
Not Hitler. Hitler used vaguely Christian ideas to help his build to power, but ultimately, the Aryan outlook became a cult of its own with him as its leader, based on a mix of Catholic and Teutonic ideals.
Probably. Of course, most of those “Christian one-percenters” are happy to wait for their God to do the bombing and ethnic cleasing for them (I think it’s called ‘the rapture’) That’s an improvement.
@Totz the Plaid
That’s probably because the Nazi party’s official name was “National Socialist German Workers’ Party”. But since they weren’t socialist (by the definition of socialist at any point in time since its creation), a lot of them were not German (Hitler was Austrian)(I mean okay technically Austrians are German it’s just that at the creation of Germany as a country, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Prussia were NOT friends), etc.
If they did appeal to anyone with socialist ideals, it was only because the mark was worth less than the shit they wiped off their asses at the time. And they only got power because Hitler was really charismatic and the party in power thought “oh he’s just a figurehead, if we get him on our council he’ll just be a charismatic puppet” and then it turned out he was a domineering asshole who also happened to be charismatic.
(… Sorry my History Professor last term has his doctorate in Modern European history so he went way in depth on WWII and how it all happened. You do not want to see how many pages of notes I have from those lectures.)
Chill out, Li. Hitler wasn’t Christian, not really. He paid lip service to Christianity because he knew that was what would get him elected, and no, he never officially left the Catholic church (again, probably because it was a better political move to stay there), but he personally disliked religion and did not consider himself religious.
We like to pretend that no one has ever done anything terrible in “our” camp (whatever camp that may be); we tell ourselves that Nazi Germany was atheist and Communist, even though neither of those things are true. (The Nazi party was capitalist, and in America we thought they’d drive out the awful Communist influence from that country, which had been rising of its own accord). In America, “eugenics” had also taken hold, and when Germany first started segregating its population, some in America complained that they were “beating us at our own game”.
We can’t afford to forget shit like this just because it’s ugly. And in our current climate, we can afford it even less.
I reiterate: it’s comforting to pretend that no one can look like us while being vile, because then we ourselves are protected from being vile. But it’s especially egregious to protect ourselves from the idea of a Christian Hitler while foisting the blame for him off onto other persecuted minorities to help give us more reason to hate them.
I’ve never met anyone who thinks that Nazi Germany was communist; it’s pretty universally known that they were fascists, and anyone who knows the first thing about WWII history knows that they were explicitly out to destroy communism. And it’s also universally acknowledged that the people of Hitler’s Germany were mostly Christians (I can’t speak for Totz the Plaid, but I’m certainly not arguing against that point). So I have no idea where you’re getting “we tell ourselves that Nazi Germany was atheist and communist” from
And nobody’s burying their heads in the sand when it comes to Hitler’s personal anti-religion, that’s just the truth. Again, he may have officially been Catholic, but he was by no means a practicing Christian.
Hitler was as much a Christian as many Americans, who consider themselves to be Christians, despite not being devout. It is stupid to try to disown him simply because you dislike what he did – that just opens the door for some other charismatic madman to pull the same trick.. And regardless of Hitler, many Germans were devout Christians who were perfectly okay with having the Jews shipped off “for the good of the state”. Maybe they wouldn’t have wanted to see all of them massacred, but that doesn’t help the victims of Hitler’s giant organized pogrom that we now call the Holocaust.
For that matter, it doesn’t help the thousands upon thousands of Jews who were killed by Christians in Europe due to other pogroms. Or the millions of Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike, who were killed by other Christians.
What jaimehlers said, with a healthy heaping of “lucky you, you’ve escaped our propaganda machine”. But don’t for a second think that “atheist Communist Nazi Germany” is something I made up. No. It’s a quite popular little lie.
Additionally: fascism is totally unrelated to economic systems. Nazi Germany was both fascist AND capitalist.
I’m not trying to “disown” anyone. I am an atheist. I have no reason to try and sweep Christians who do horrible things under the rug. They disgust me.
But Hiter actually was not a Christian. He may have professed to be so in public, but he made numerous private statements to his associates stating his distrust and his dislike of religion. Yes, he was nominally Catholic, but as someone mentioned below, you have to actually believe in the stuff to be part of it, and it doesn’t appear that Hitler did. That’s what separates him from a “Christmas and Easter Christian.” He actually just didn’t believe it.
And Li, I never said Nazi Germany wasn’t capitalist. I said they weren’t communist. Fascism is opposed to communism. So when I said they were fascist, I meant that that meant the weren’t communist.
Regardless of whether Hitler was Christian or not, he still used Christianity to control others and convince them to perform atrocities. Regardless of whether he actually believed in God, he still used belief in God to rally other believers under the flag of Nazi Germany. It doesn’t matter if he was sincere or not. Religion is culpable either way, for being a tool that has such power over a person that it can convince them that killing hordes of innocent people is for the best.
I was raised Cath & spent a few years in school, and the Chicago region never taught any such Fundie Jesus riding dinosaurs bullshiit. And I paid attention, because I got kicked out for kickng ass by 5th grade.
My entire family back to the early 1930s all went to cath School in Pittsburgh. Never EVER were they taught such shit. They glossed evolution with “we came from the sea” and taught dinos like a science should be, sticking to “periods” without getting into years, but never once teaching the 6 day creation as a 24 hour human day.
I don’t know where you met the Catholics YOU know, but I’ll bet there is moonshine involved.
Not only are Joyce’s parents not Catholic, they almost certainly don’t consider Catholics to be Christian. In fact, if they’re anything like most Fundamentalist Christians I’ve known and read, they consider Catholicism to be a Satanic counterfeit of Christianity, designed to fool people into damning their souls while thinking they’re saving them. Sometimes there are implied connections to ancient Babylon.
I’ve always wondered what those people think of Orthodoxy. Reading those anti-Catholic screeds, I usually get the distinct impression the author doesn’t realize that they exist… the closest is typically mention of “Catholics slaughtering true Christians” in the fourth crusade, but in light of the typical claim that things started downhill with Constantine, that just ends up raising further questions.
Agreed, also because they’re completely wrong. Nazi Germany was (technically) religious, they’re thinking of Soviet Russia, as it was anti-religion due to the communists. I know I sound like a bible-thumping redneck when I say that, but I’m not, and it’s the truth; the USSR grouped capitalists and religious organizations together due to the tendency towards corruption and taking money.
Stalin was an atheist who forged an ego cult for himself, and cut out other religions to keep them from competing with Stalinism… technically Communism isn’t anti-religious.
Depends on what you choose to call “communism”. Lenin was using rather scorching terms for religion in general. But of course, “practiced” communism had only comparatively loose ties to the views and theories of its nominal founders.
Communism is based on an atheistic worldview: Karl Marx stated that a society of non-exploited, non-alienated human beings would have no use for religion. It was his followers who went from “no use” to “must be destroyed”, but that may also have to do with the fact that religious institutions of the era -starting with the Catholic church- were often ultra-conservative and basically preached against social reform and workers’ rights.
This is what I meant. Marx’s creation was close to one of the church’s most heavily abusive eras, and his doctrine was that people would reject all forms of capitalist corruption and greed, let the people control everything, and once people got used to it and relinquished the idea of a person having more stuff than another, government, along with other forms of control over people, would be unneeded and cast aside.
Nazi Germany, on the other hand, was Facist, which is a bad mix of capitalism and totalitarianism. Hitler, in fact, used religion to get people on his side and influence them to come under his regime’s command (the US, also in fact, used this and continues to use this method).
It is not that so much as that religion tends to actively placate people being exploited by systems not built to protect them from exploitation. The idea is that people will keep their heads down and not make waves even if they are being abused by a feudal or a capitalist or a whatever system if they believe they will be reward in the afterlife, while people who do not believe that will fight harder to make things fair in this life. Communism as Marx imagined it was a socially just system where people would be treated fairy and cared for generously by their fellow man, the idea is that when you have that you no longer need God to fill that role.
I do not really think that religion and social revolution are incompatible, personally, but that is the general idea.
Damn right. I take back what I said a couple nights ago: this is why I can’t stand Christians. As if all atheists are automatically heartless, amoral, murdering rapists, and all Christians are good, innocent people who would never, ever do anything bad. Y’know, fear of god isn’t the only reason to be a good person, and I am very disturbed by Christians who think it is.
Actually the bible can be used to justify almost anything. God gives his blessing on incest, murder, genocide and slavery… But of course it’s the atheist moral compass that it’s off. At least atheist don’t try to defend themselves with God told me to do it….
Actually, God was not fine with incest once he made up his mind and dictated Mosaic law. People like Adam’s or Noah’s immediate descendants or Abraham (marrying his half-sister) preceded that.
Problem is, people who use scripture to defend their actions, tend to be selective in their quotes. My point that you can find a quote in the bible to justify almost anything still stands. If you go by the spirit of the teachings of Jesus, he would be mortified by lots of things done in his name, both in the pat and the present.
Anyone who uses scripture has a tendency to be selective in their quotes, whether defending their actions or not. Taking things out of context is an underlying problem with using a book as big as the Bible to create an argument.
If Joyce, Dorothy or Roz were my sisters, I’d have used the bible to convince them incest was just fine! Or hit them over the heads with it! Same if my Sis was Sandra Bullock, Salma, and a host of other chicks!
Unless they were Kardashians… then I’d have used it to encourage human sacrifice of virgins – and with THEM, probably have to start (and finish) before the end of 2nd grade AND live near a volcano.
The scary part is the implication that these people would absolutely rape and murder and steal all the time if they weren’t afraid of God.
Thank goodness for “Murder Simulators” as Jack Thompson calls them, otherwise I might actually have to go out in the real world to get my murder fix. 😛
You know, your use of the word ‘all’ in “all atheists” kind of makes it sound like if most, or at least a good portion of atheists are heartless, amoral, murdering rapists.
I’m Jewish, and I don’t think anyone needs to hate these people. A simple befuddled head shake and a long drawn out sigh should do.
Obviously, I don’t speak for everyone in my particular minority group, and everyone is of course welcome to react how they want, but if I let all the uninformed, preposterous things people say make me hate them, I’d lose myself. I mostly just pity neo-nazis when I come across the insane conspiracy theories I read online, and Joyce’s parents certainly don’t seem actively hateful on that level…just immersed in a framework of ignorance that allows them to perpetuate some recognizably harmful beliefs. I can’t hate them. I can really only feel sorry for them.
In their minds they’re trying to protect a loved one. It just sucks that the bubble they’ve chosen to immerse themselves in causes that behavior to manifest in a really ignorant way.
On a side note, being bi as well, I await Ethan meeting Joyce’s parents with a strange mix of dread and excitement.
Unfortunately logic all-too-often doesn’t work in these case. They just tell themselves that logic and critical thinking are tools of Satan to try to make them doubt their faith and dismiss them out of hand.
There’s no expectation that her parents are any different. In fact, given that they’re older and likely are quite aware that they are wrong (at least on a subconscious level), they probably are downright vicious to anyone that disagrees with them or who can argue against them.
Bonus points: Joyce sees nothing wrong with physically assaulting someone who does something she doesn’t like (Joe), wonder what’s gonna happen when the climax of this storyarc arrives. Will we be seeing some violence from the good parents there?
you did notice the main aim were atheists… The main statement being without God there can be no morality… not that i want to interfere with your right to be offended so you can show off how you rise above it, and feel better…
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but the final panel happens to contain Joyce expressing concern that someone with my heritage is being compared to Nazis, and her own father trying to JUSTIFY said comparison by claiming a genocidal dictator that killed many people with that heritage potentially shared it, correct? That is a thing I am allowed to offer personal perspective in response to, no?
Not trying to disregard that Joyce’s parents have seriously unfortunate attitudes towards Dorothy’s atheism expressed in the comic, and of course people are allowed to respond to that, but I fail to see where I was out of line.
“not that i want to interfere with your right to be offended so you can show off how you rise above it, and feel better”
Also not trying to be impolite, and I truly apologize if I’m misinterpreting, but I get the sense you’re being really condescending here. Again I was just offering my personal perspective. I explicitly said I didn’t speak for anyone, and didn’t put down anyone for feeling differently than myself. That was uncalled for.
you do realize it’s a comic? Nobody is doing anything, it’s all just a drawing on a screen… There are no parents to defend here. If you feel the need the need to either defend to condemn, it should be the author.
Having said that, the true party to be offended would be devout christians, since the author is actually making a joke at their expense. the hitler was a jokes are pretty much done to death, and hardly ever have any true merit. So it is already silly being offended by them.
coming from a country where jewish organizations (well mostly one) have taking offense to a level that most Jews say, give it a rest already, and we are talking a country were a picture of a pig was deemed offensive, i find your offense mildly amusing. It’s a joke, no offense was intended. So lighten up.
Even within the context of the comics there was no offense. Even you argue there was no malice against Judaism within the context of the strip, so there would be no reason to be offended.
But then again if yo feel the need to be offended be my guest. As long as you remember that there is a right to free speech, but there is no right not to be offended.
Basically every comment on every comic on this site is responding to the ideas presented in the comics. That doesn’t mean anybody is actually unaware that the characters aren’t real, but some of the ideas they present ARE real. But there is no reason for anybody to condemn the author for portraying those ideas, as they are not his own ideas. Anyways, and correct me if I’m wrong, but Sgore is not actually offended. The only person who seems offended here is you.
Sgore is (again, correct me if I’m wrong) talking about a real reaction to the real ideas that are presented by these fictional characters, as someone who is hurt by those ideas. Many real people do believe such things about atheists and Jews. I’ve met people who really do believe Hitler was Jewish, and use that as some sort of criticism of Jews. Who are you to say whether she can or cannot be offended by them? She didn’t express any offense at the comic, anyways, but merely expressed her opinion on the ideas contained therein.
And the comic DOES refer to Jews. Joyce’s mom’s comment is about atheists, but her dad’s comment is saying Hitler was possibly Jewish, which is the comment to which you seem to think Sgore is taking offense. But as someone who identifies as both atheist and Jewish, I can tell you both of those ideas are offensive, but that doesn’t mean anybody should blame Willis for representing them here. I don’t think anybody here is offended at the comic’s existence, and an open discussion of the offensive ideas that are represented in it does not indicate oversensitivity to the comic itself. Discussing hateful and hurtful beliefs and why they are hateful and hurtful doesn’t mean anybody feels they have a “right not to be offended.” I, and probably most other people, really wish harmful beliefs about Jews didn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean anyone feels like they have some special right to not see them; discussing these ideas and how they make us feel isn’t demanding special treatment.
Maybe you should lighten up. Again, you’re the one who seems to be offended by Sgore offering her opinion, here.
I can personally confirm this, i have had the conversation in the first three panels verbatim with my extended family. something that is worrying when you are the atheist mentioned.
This isa response to several at once, so not all comments relate directly to the parent post.
First off, I believe very much in free speech, and everybody’s right to express their opinion. Just like others I like to express mine. I don’t mind a discussion, as long as it’s done on the basis of arguments. I try never to take things personal, nor make things personal. Since I don’t know anyone here in person, me responses are always based on (my perception of) their comments, and never intended as personal attacks.
As a former Catholic turned Atheist (yes, actually had my name removed from the baptismal register), i’ve first hand experienced some of the believes expressed in this comic. However I never came across anyone that actually believed Hitler was (part) Jewish. The statement would be considered ridiculous. But then again, I never considered there might be countries (in the western world) were people might actually give any credit to that notion. On that basis I saw little offense in that remark. In fact I see it as a comment on the intelligence of the dad, and the (to put it polite) overly devout in general.
There is a large group that believe Atheism to be the root of all evil. Every day all religions demand their share of respect while offering none in return. Being both gay and Atheist i’m used to being insulted by religion on a regular basis.I have more than once heard the comment about Nazis being Atheist, because God fearing men would not do that. And colored as my judgement might be, i think this comic was more about Joyce’s parents views on Atheists than on Jews.
Of course it’s about atheism more than Judaism, because they’re talking about Dorothy, who’s an atheist more than a Jew. (Is it even true that she’s part Jewish? I don’t remember that being mentioned anywhere else, but that’s really irrelevant anyways.) But their apparent views on Judaism are questionable, too. And comparing someone who is part Jewish to Nazis is kind of not okay, even if the main issue is their atheism. So yeah, I think these views are offensive to both Jews AND atheists AND, in particular, atheistic Jews. And just because the atheism is the focus doesn’t mean you should just dismiss any offense expressed by Jews. I get that you identify with the hatred of atheism shown here, but why must that result in you dismissing anybody identifying with the antisemitism and telling them to “lighten up” just because you think it affects you more? This isn’t a “who-do-the-Browns-offend-more” contest.
And there definitely are people out there who believe Hitler was Jewish. A small minority, to be sure, and of course it’s ridiculous, but the belief does exist.
You’re kidding me right Luggs? “It’s just a comic” and “Lighten up, it’s just a joke.”
It is a very distasteful joke. It seems these past few strips haven’t been about “Haha, look at the funny”, they’re showing how Joyce has grown. In doing so, Willis showed a lesson that she’s learned, and it’s a lesson that most of us have gone through at one point or another.
I feel for Joyce. I grew up in a religious household, and I had my own beliefs shaken by my own research. When I tried to leave that belief system behind, it offended my family. But I digress.
Everyone has a right to their opinion. They also have a right to have opinions on someone else’s opinion. I’m not going to infringe on your right by saying “get off the internet troll.” I don’t have that right, and I wouldn’t want it. I am, however, going to use my right to leave an opinion about your opinion, and question your character as a person for questioning someone else’s character for being offended by you insulting them.
End rant.
Missed the Your heritage part… Hate to break it to you, but Dorothy is depicted as Atheist, not as Jewish. The comment from the mom within the context was aimed at Atheists and not Jews. The she is part Jewish remark would be a statement she’s not a “full” Atheist. So even the simple premise that Joyce feels the need to defend Dorothy by making a claim she’s not a real Atheist could be considered offensive. It’s again referring to a widespread misconception that morality stems from religion. While scripture is filled with things that would now be considered immoral. For example God seems to approve of slavery.
Just to make a point, i’ll use a quote from Leviticus, since bible thumpers like to use Leviticus to point out why Gay people are immoral:
However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
Actually despite the lie Joyce told her parents about going to church with Dorothy, I’m pretty sure “she’s part Jewish” is a response to the Hitler comment.
As in, “How dare you compare my friend to Hitler, her family is more closely related to his victims than WE are.”
She didn’t lie, she took Dorothy to church that one time and brought Sierra along. It’s heavily implied that Joyce and Sierra have been going together every week, which is probably the girl she told her parents about. Her parents were the ones that assumed “oh this is Joyce best friend? She must be the religious one that goes to church with her.”
This hadn’t occurred to me. I feel even ponder towards Joyce with that in mind. (Not that I was super resentful about the “lie” before, but I could see why it would be hurtful to Dorothy?)
It implies no such thing. What it implies is that it’s not okay to compare a Jew to Nazis. Saying she’s part Jewish doesn’t take away from her atheism, but it does make the comparison to Nazis particularly distasteful. You can be a Jewish atheist, depending on how you define Jewish. I’m one. Joyce isn’t saying, “Well, she’s Jewish, so she’s not REALLY an atheist, so you can’t compare her to Nazis.” Being Jewish makes the comment particularly terrible, but there’s no implication there that the comparison of atheists to Nazis is any more apt if they aren’t Jewish.
You seem to think that Joyce saying she’s Jewish is taking away from her atheism, but it isn’t. It’s like if Joyce’s mom had said, “Left-handed people like her are what cause the Holocaust,” and Joyce had replied, “Mom, she’s Jewish!” That isn’t saying that under other circumstances, the comparison between left-handed people and Nazis is just fine; it’s just saying that in this case, the comparison is particularly awful because she is Jewish.
Someone obviously doesn’t quite grasp the distinction between practicing and ethnically Jewish. Same goes for the distinction between “devout christians” and fundamentalist flat-earthers.
Yes, Joyce’s parents are fictional. However, you do know that there are millions of Christians just in America who have exactly the same opinion as them, right? The authors are making a point about the attitudes that many Christians hold, not because they’re reasoned out or well-considered, but because of nebulous feelings and things they were taught as children.
Yes, that means that a lot of Christians believe that atheists are morally deficient, capable of doing any evil, simply because they don’t believe in gods. They don’t believe it because atheists actually do evil things, they believe it because they can’t imagine someone being able to be moral without a god telling them how to be moral.
The problem is, when you’re depending on something or someone else to provide you with your moral center, it’s easy to justify doing horrific things if you can convince yourself – or be convinced – that they’re actually moral to the external source of your morality.
Now, I live in Texas, and I’ve been in a lot of different churches from different Protestant traditions, and that’s not how I’ve ever heard this argument presented*. It’s not “atheists can’t be trusted because they have no fear of God and therefore no morality,” it’s “the atheist position is untenable because even they believe some things are inherently morally correct or morally wrong, which implies some kind of authority for morality, which implies God.”
Anyone who makes that first argument is either ignorant and unaware of the Scripture itself, or malicious. For example, in Romans 2:14-16, Paul implied there is that the law (summed up in “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Love God with all you have”) is written on our hearts by nature. There are other references to unbelievers having consciences elsewhere, as well as our natural consciences being corrupted and therefore unreliable, but if we had no moral center without Christ, we could never see that Christ fulfills the moral center we have and come to know and love Him.
I am aware that posting these sorts of things will most likely make me seem like a raving lunatic, so you don’t have to tell me that I sound like one. 🙂
*I could just be lucky, and I will accept the testimony of witnesses that they have seen such a thing preached in churches.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that, sure, some people who claim Christianity say this, but I’ve never seen it officially taught, and those who say these sorts of things are ignorant of what Christianity actually teaches.
I will agree that anyone who says something like “the fear of Hell is all that keeps me from committing evil” is either a dangerous madman or clinging to an ignorant position through sheer bullheadedness.
I’m a Jewish Atheist, and I immediately saw red after reading the last panel. I’m not sure I would be able to keep myself from screaming at anyone who actually said that to me.
Yeeeeah…I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, hoping it’d turn out they were more like Joyce…more set in their ways, but still ultimately well-meaning, just rather ignorant and sheltered from different points of view. Then they just snapped right to Godwin’s Law. Fuck those peeps, fo shizzle. [/Robin]
As for Joshua…I won’t think less of him if he doesn’t help Joyce out here, just because he hasn’t been around long enough for me to think anything of him at all. I’ll definitely think *more* of him if he does help his sister out, though.
Fear not, for I too know the sting of *shudder* being mistaken about a minor point on the Internet! Alas, you’re quite correct about Poe’s Law not applying, however; the Browns are all too accurate to real life.
Wouldn’t that be like Inverted Poe’s Law? I thought Poe’s Law was that no matter how over the top you made a parody of extremism, someone would mistake it as a depiction of the real thing. Or is it? Damn, now I’m not sure!
Poe’s law: If an authors intent on the subject is not clear, then it could easily be seen as both a parody and a real depiction. At least that what I was told it was told.
Poe’s Law: Any ‘fundamentalist’ piece given as satire will be mistaken for the real thing; there is no position so radical that it has not been taken by a fundamentalist of one side or the other at some time.
Corollary: real fundamentalist positions will be derided as satire by defenders/attackers of the position.
Poe’s Law works both ways – basically it can be stated that real fundamentalism (religious or political) is indistinguishable from parody, so you can never know which is which.
Well then, I’d say up till now Poe’s Law actually held…though I’m not currently seeing anyone treat Joyce’s parents as anything other than the genuine article.
Regarding Joshua, I think what’s important is that he is being supportive of Joyce, even if he’s not explicitly defending her. He knows his parents are a lost cause and not worth the struggle, but he still seems sympathetic to what Joyce is going through.
A good point, and despite what I said before, I think that if Joshua doesn’t do *anything* to show Joyce his support, even if it’s literally behind their parents back, I will think a bit less of him. Downgrade in perception from ‘suspiciously neutral’ to ‘suspicious’ anyway.
Yeah. Fuck them. Mr. & Mrs. Brown are hateful scum. They have leapfrogged the Wilcoxes and Siegals in my mind. All three sets of parents are utterly vile, though.
Some people are interpreting Mrs. Wilcox’s attitude towards Danny’s breakup and “new girlfriend” as her being judgy and emotionally abusive. I still think we’ve seen way to little to justify that position, and that her attitude is kinda understandable given the circumstances.
While I’m not thrilled with the Wilcoxes’ attitude in that conversation, the place where Mrs. Wilcox really steps over the line is demanding if Danny’s new girlfriend is as good as Dorothy. Leaving aside the unfair ridiculousness of the question (“Well, on a rating scale of one to ten…”), what, exactly, is she expecting him to say? “No, mom, she’s not. I guess I’ll go break up with her right now and stalk Dorothy until she changes her mind about breaking up with me, or, failing that, remain ever romantically alone because no woman can ever compare to the one who dumped me.”
As much as it does seem like their bugging him, you gotta se it on their side. They spent a hefty amount of money to send their son to a collage he only went to because his girlfriend was going, only to find out that the girl in question dumped him a week into it. Can you see why they might be a little ticked off? (P.s. I wholeheartedly agree that asking if his new girlfriend was as good as the old one is unacceptable)
Well, given that Danny’s father legitimately thought that Danny following Dorothy to college was a good idea, I think it would be safe to say they had a part in it.
That is an interesting theory, the idea that the Wilcoxs hoped that by allowing him to be led by his love of Dotty to go to college and get a college education, but with the break-up, they now fear he might drop out or something.
I know, right? I mean, he clearly doesn’t want to be anywhere near this argument and yet he’s been expressly forbidden to leave. T.T Speaking as one who also hates being around when people are yelling at each other, I feel more for him than I do for Joyce. Heck, I’m more focused on that than the idiotic logic their parents are using! And since the idiotic logic was clearly supposed to be the point (as well as being a bit of a pet peeve for me anyways), this is saying a lot.
Part of me agrees, but another part of me is like “Dude, your the big brother here. You clearly don’t agree with the stupid crap your parents are saying (at least, I assume that ‘pick your battles’ line to Joyce means your on her side). Your little sister could some backup here.”
If he enters this “debate” knowing nothing more than his parents do about Sarah, does that actually help? And the truly stupid stuff happened after he tried to skip town, and he may yet have a response to that stuff. I say give him the benefit of the doubt until the next strip.
Yeah, I can’t say that I hate them either. Probably because I can’t think of them as people. They’re just something that needs to be escaped.
I thought that earlier, based on what we learned about them from Joyce, without remembering their appearance in the first few strips, but I was advised to withhold judgment until we got a clearer picture. Only now I think I was right.
And if you want to play the whole “but his parents-” card, then allow me to introduce you to the next Jesus in the queue, Black Jesus. Logic and genetics quail in the face of wishful thinking!
Modern European Ashkenazim? Sure.
The people living in the Judean sector of Roman-ruled Palestine/Syria in Year Dot? Not so much. Caucasian, sure, like all other Arabs, but not white as we think of the concept today.
I was responding to someone who said that “Blue sash Jesus” is white, therefore can’t be Jewish. I am aware of the fact that at the time of actual Jesus, there would not have been any white Jews.
Black Jesus isn’t particularly impossible. People back then mixed pretty freely, especially in the cosmopolitan areas like Egypt.
Case in point: Socrates was almost CERTAINLY a very brown dude. There’s one historical record which mentions it that I can’t remember right now, sorry, but just look at the original marble head busts. He has almost stereotypically African features.
But like every person of even remote European significance, we pretend he’s totes white when we start writing history books after the fact, including paintings of him, etc. ALL THE GREEKS AND ALL THE ROMANS WERE WHITE, TOTALLY WHITE, WE GAVE YOU PEOPLE CIVILIZATION AND DEMOCRACY WITH THE FORCE OF OUR WHITENESS RRRR
Yeah, that’s actually what’s being referred to when someone (at least on a Willis page) says “Blue sash Jesus”; it’s almost a derogatory term to mean the gentile-ization that white people have put Jesus through.
Well, actually Joyce’s argument highlights the insensitivity of her mom’s one but doesn’t invalidate it.
What invalidates her mom’s argument is its obfsucating, insulting and undeniable stupidity.
What does Jesus have to do with Christianity? Jesus was preaching to the jews. Christianity is Judaism Light (“Go with the flavor, not the laws!”) invented by Paul as a remix popular with heathens.
I think what David is saying is that Jesus was not a christian. Jesus was a Jew. He couldn’t be a christian because his existance is why Christianity exists, so he couldn’t be one until he made it.
Unlucky for you I play theme decks and today was the day for the all artifact deck. Lucky I didn’t pull out my goblin or Thallid deck else it would really be a bad day.
i’m all for religion and stuff, but people who say that they have no moral authority without god terrify me. like, are you telling me that without an all-mighty sky wizard, you’d go around killing people left and right?
scary, man.
When the knife enters my body again and again as my life flashes before my eyes, the knowledge that my murderer believes in the supernatural will make my stabbing pains hurt a little less… 😛
“i’m all for religion and stuff, but people who say that they have no moral authority without god terrify me. like, are you telling me that without an all-mighty sky wizard, you’d go around killing people left and right?”
Oh, now your just being silly! The Crusades, Catholic Inquisition, Salem Witch Trials…we’re totally down with killing! Its just that we do it in the name of the all-mighty sky wizard! I trust you see how that makes it so much better.
He cretainly likes people dying in his name even though it’s established that Earth is kinda like a science project to him and that also we shouldn’t kill.
If this was a science project, he’d say don’t kill, because he knows that people think its okay if they aren’t caught, and he wants to know lots of ways to kill people. But that’s only if we’re a science project.
Well, to be less tongue in cheek, I think the obvious answer is that people like to use the “commit evil for a greater good” excuse to do terrible things. Awful to say, but that just seems like human nature. God, or whatever religion you want to pick, makes for a “good” excuse in this regard.
If humanity was a science project, God would get an F. First, we aren’t even done yet; when the hell is this project due? Second, we’re pretty much destroying everything he’s created, and I’m sure that won’t be looked upon well by his teachers. Third, he probably had his parents help him out on it, too!
I really have to wonder exactly what sect they are. I consider my religion to have a lot of safety guards, and everything I have been taught and asked about has told me that good people are good people, whether or not they find Christ, and WILL in fact go to Heaven. So, I really wonder where these 2 are coming from :/
really? Because everything I have been taught and asked about has told me that to get into heaven, you have to have been a good person AND accepted Jesus as your lord and saviour
And that’s what I’ve been taught my whole life too. Apparently it’s not a common view. It’s weird cause even as a kid the fridge logic came in on the ‘wait, would people like the pre Columbius Indians, who had no way to know who Jesus was, have to go to hell” had been asked at some point at CCD. I’m pretty sure that the answer was ‘doing good was accepting Jesus into your heart’ or something like that. I’m not even some weird off shoot or anything, I’m frickin Roman Catholic.
Likewise here. I had a Religion Teacher waaaay back in the day who used the tale of the Good Samaritan as an example. Guy was a Gentile (Non Jew) but since it was Jesus of Nazareth who was telling the story about how to get into his kingdom, I’d imagine the hypothetical guy qualifies.
You can say that you follow in his footsteps, but he doesn’t want lip service. He wants your actions to reflect that. Love your fellow man and seek to make the world a better place, and it doesn’t matter what religion you follow in my eyes.
I fear for this world every time I see people who think good people go to hell just because they didn’t call the higher power by the right name. Or even if they believed he was up there. One might give more credit to the atheists. Many super religious people I’ve met do the right thing because their religion tells them to, what about atheists? They do it on their own will, and nothing else. Somehow, that seems more worthy then the religious type.
Uh no, Jesus did not tell how to get into his “hypothetical kingdom” with the tale of the Good Samaritan. He was answering the question who in “Love the next one like yourself” was supposed to be the “next one”. The point of the story was not to claim non-jews could get into heaven. The point was shaming the jews into considering non-jews as being eligible to decent treatment as humans in need.
Jesus was quite explicit regarding “nobody gets to my father except through me”. He actually healed quite a few heathens who believed in him personally rather than the whole lot of Judaism. But that’s not what the story of the Good Samaritan is about.
The whole idea that many otherwise decent people will end up being cast into Hell to burn alive forever and ever is one of the less comfortable aspects of mainstream Christianity.
And now I’m wondering what religion you were brought up in, because the viewpoint that good people get into heaven regardless of their faith is not exactly a common one.
Also, doesn’t that mean your own religion is telling you there’s no need to believe it?
The majority of Catholics who actually know what it means to be Catholic (an unfortunately low number, the church is fairly lax teaching what it’s all about and prefers people to come to it instead. Guess how many people do that, actively.) tend to be okay with the idea that good people are not necessarily always Christian people, or even religious people. As for your second point, no, that’s like saying we shouldn’t study chemistry because the reactions will happen in the physical universe whether we observe and actively take part in them or not.
I have faith, but I consider my faith more of a gateway to understanding the sublime than a guideline for my behavior…I think anyone can be a good person, or a bad one, regardless of what they do or do not believe in. And in a similar vein, I certainly don’t think that mine is the only pathway to understanding the sublime in the universe, it’s just the one that appeals most to me.
If just being a decent person is all you needed to get into Heaven, then there would be no special need to be a Christain at all, it’s the fear of going to Hell that puts bums on pews.
doubt you’ll get around to reading this, but Mormon. To make a long story short, basically we believe that everyone gets a chance… There’s a lot that goes into going into Heaven, and yes we believe that Jesus Christ has EVERYTHING to do with it; we as humans are imperfect, and without his atonement, we can’t have hope of justice tempered with mercy.
The part about belief in Christ taking you to God’s Kingdom comes from trying to live as He did: loving everyone, doing right, and generally behaving as though The Son and The Father was in the room with you; trying to do what is right in all times, in all things, in all places. That means NOT being judgemental, or saying you don’t want to be around someone just because of faith. A good person is a good person, and if you want to be like Him, you want to be there for people, to show them happiness, and if they want to change it’s up to them but either way you are an example of what should be good.
That’s what the gospel is about. And if I may be so bold, it is NOT about trying to say who will or who will not go into Heaven… I believe that is God’s call, and ONLY God’s. All we can do is the best we can, and have Him judge our actions at the end. Listen to his words, and live them.
I’m writing this now, because it is my firm belief that sharing a message of peace is right, and also a message of hope, and acceptance, no matter what may have been written, said, or done by any reading in their lives.
And on a lesser not, I am writing this because it is my opinion as a person trying to be good in this century that an atheist has no business being compared to as Hitler simply because they have chosen not to believe in God.
My beef with these nondenominational churches is that they have no overall structure, creed or dogma, so depending on the inclinations and biases of the individual preachers and congregations, they can go down some very strange paths with no mechanism for self correction.
Bias alert: I was raised Presbeteryian (sic) and later gravitated to high church Episcopal.
Yep, that’s the right answer. “Sounds like your belief gives you strength to make good choices. Glad that works for you” style of thing.
Even a staunch atheist should realize that it’s much more important to be healthy and functional than it is to be technically correct about something that, let’s face it, doesn’t exactly matter anyway. Good on your friend.
Pshaw. Without my Lord and Savior the Flying Spaghetti Monster to guide me, I would fall off the path of righteousness and fail to seek bloody vengeance on my enemies, and THEN where would I be morally? In the sauce pits, that’s where!
I’m a Christian and I don’t even believe we need to believe in God to know not to kill. Mostly because of a combination of the fact we as a society usually have no need for killing our fellow man and, well, the whole compassion thing. All of that gives good reason why we’d put ‘no killing’ on our judicial rule book as soon as we started a system of law.
The main appeal of religion wheneber you believe it or not is the idea that when you die, the next life will be so much better than before and all those evil scumbags will get what was coming to them.
I think that Joyce’s parents have a legitimate point. I know this is anecdotal, but I’m an agnostic and I’ve killed about a dozen people, just in the last couple hours here. Seriously, I got them stacking up like cordwood here, and it’s getting hard to type with all the blood on my hands congealing between the keys of my keyboard. Imagine the carnage I would wreak if I was a full atheist or a Hindu or something! The streets would run red.
Yeah, that’s really terrifying to think about, honestly.
Also, completely undermines their own argument because that makes every Atheist _MORE_ moral because we don’t _NEED_ a God to know that doing rape, murder, etc. are utterly abhorrent!
are you telling me that without an all-mighty sky wizard, you’d go around killing people left and right?
Without his magic sky beard, Joyce’s dad would be wearing a human skull as a hat right now.
PR is Proportional Representation while SMP stands for Single Member Plurality its a play on Duverger’s law because SMP electoral systems according to Duverger’s law generally lead towards two party systems well PR leads to multi-party systems. Political Science joke.
Maybe because he didn’t start a freakin’ world war, try to conquer the world or exterminate whole ethic groups. Stalin also stayed in business a lot longer than Hitler did; if H. had succeeded in his ambitions, his final body count would likely have been much higher.
Stalin has killed more people than Hitler, true.
But I’d still call Hitler more evil, due to motive.
Stalin killed people for (potentially) threatening his control. Hitler killed people for existing.
Eddie Izzard once said that Stalin and Mao were not as reviled internationally because they were killing their own people instead of killing people next door. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndhnGPAgecM
I tend to agree with him.
The only thing Stalin really has going for him is that even HE hated Hitler. He was pretty much an even worse person than Hitler in every way shape and form.
Honestly, when you get to that level of evil, it’s almost impossible to quantify who’s technically worse. Hitler, Stalin, Pol. Pot, etc. (and all their top men, of course), they’re all utterly indefensible and evil beyond all measure.
Although the specifics still haven’t made their way into many textbooks yet, historians have learned a lot since the end of the Cold War. Ethnicity was absolutely a reason for mass murder at times in the Soviet Union, far more often than was believed during the twentieth century. The Nazis certainly killed more noncombatants under Hitler than the Soviets under Stalin, though. That’s no longer a matter of debate among those who’ve put in the research. The Soviet famine claimed more lives than any other event under Stalin, including deliberately starving millions of “kulaks” in Soviet Ukraine (thousands upon thousands more were simply executed) and over a million people in Soviet Kazakhstan. Although possibly as many as a million people were shot to death during the Great Terror, the numbers had always been presumed much higher before the collapse of the Soviet Union provided access to Easter European archives.
And contrary to popular, uninformed belief, Stalin actually launched killing campaigns motivated by ethnicity before Hitler. While their larger motivations were different (Stalin saw ethnic killings as a path to modernization; Hitler just wanted to exterminate all European Jews), they were very similar in their policies and actions.
Stalin was horrid, but you could cut a deal with him. Hitler, you couldn’t — not and be sure he’d still honor it once the ink was dry, anyway. It was kill or be killed when dealing with Hitler.
“Hitler: Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys. This is between y’all. Don’t drag me into this! I just want to get my cafeteria tray and find a nice, quiet place to eat before the game.”
Similar-but-different, in this one cold-war comic, Colossus was brainwashed by the KGB, and became PROLETARIAN MAN, Hero of the Soviet Union!! (his first mission: to DESTROY the X-MEN).
Einstien: now hitler, let’s get back to that whole making my people look like assholes thing.
Hitler: Why don’t WE talk about that whole A-bomb thing?
Einstien: I don’t want to be credited with that!!!
Jesus: fellas, fellas.
It isn’t so much that she has control but that he doesn’t want to antagonize her too much, because she’s family.
I’m still nice to/humor my grandma even when she’s being a racist, spiteful bongo.
I do believe in an invisible sky wizard, but I still REALLY hate these people. I like to think that if God didn’t exist, people wouldn’t go and kill everyone left and right.
I honestly think it doesn’t matter. People are gonna use any excuse they can to do what they want. Religion normally acts as a border for people to see as a moral compass. The thing is, some people can still twist it, just like any other construct.
She’ll push back so hard that by the next time they see her she’s going to be smoking, drinking booze, doing drugs, and having wild, unprotected sex with girls.
Or maybe Joyce is just going to be slightly depressed for the foreseeable future. That could happen too.
I know they make condoms for women, but I also know STDs are spread through fluid exchange. So for some reason, my mind is making lesbian balloons. They are pretty colors.
That’s not strictly true. Hitler was whatever served his needs at the time. He was Christian on, like, Tuesdays, on Wednesdays he was Atheist, and all the other days he was just a murderous jerkwad.
Heck I was surprised when an ex-girlfriend and I went to a museum and saw the swastika on some ancient robes from Japan. I think they had a different word for them and they were in another direction, but still, dude, did I learn something.
Similar experience in India: turns out an orange swastika with dots between the arms is a VERY common religious symbol there. People paint it on trucks to avoid bad luck on the road.
I know it’s complicated, but he seemed to affiliate with Christianity a lot. No one knew what was in his head for sure, but he made it clear they weren’t like the godless Communists/Socialists.
“Kitchen, Children, and Church” were Hitler’s roles for German women, although I don’t know if he specified any particular sect. So there was supposed to be a faith involved in Nazi Germany in addition to the cult of personality he fostered around himself.
being from Austria his flavor was Catholic… People tend to ignore the Vaticans questionable role in WWII. Though the Vatican tends to play up the story about the Jewish woman they saved… I guess they could find any evidence of more than one woman saved….
He turned Christianity into something different. Hitler’s “Christianity” was focused on worshipping the German state and revering the Fuhrer. Faithful Christians who stuck to the Bible were treated as political dissidents. Plenty were killed. One pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, even tried to assassinate Hitler over it.
When it comes down to it, Nazism is its own cult. You can argue for hours over what Hitler _might_ have actually believed, but it’s undeniable that he was, in fact, a cult leader when it comes down to it.
People love to say, “Hitler was a Christian/atheist/vegetarian,” when they’re trying to convince others of why one of them is a bad thing to be, despite the fact that none of those claims is historically accurate.
…because even Hitler wasn’t crazy enough to turn on his closest ally to fight his way through to a tiny city-state with some nice statues? Nor was he the only person who got to dictate Nazi policy – “Gott mit uns” is a slogan much older than he was.
Well if I have to worship anything, i find it helps me if i can prove it exists. with the three, its quite doable to prove its existence… and as far as the worshipping goes… I noticed that all deities yield similar results as the three…
I dunno; I’d feel a bit unoriginal. If I was stuck on my own with no deities to worship, I’d find something that no one else was using. Like pants. All hail the glorious pants!
You know who else blames the Jews for everything? Nazis. You know who weren’t atheists? Lots of Nazis. You know who aren’t mostly Nazis? Germans. You know who’re apparently asshats? Joyce’s parents.
Oh boy. The “Hitler Argument” flavor of asshole. This rare flavor is only rarely seen outside of internet forums. But today we have the ‘luck’ of seeing one in person.
I didn’t see it in person, per se, but a former close friend of mine compared me to Hitler for deleting personal insults he made about me on Facebook after I pointed out the scumbag truth about Ron Paul.
He chose to end the friendship by making the insults, then that comparison made me lose all respect I had for him.
It’s not that he called me “Hitler”. I know how stupid that comparison is. It’s that he effectively insulted every single person who suffered as a result of the Holocaust and Nazi ideals.
Fuck you, Joyce’s parents. Atheists didn’t give us Nazi Germany, horrible people who hated Jews gave us Nazi Germany. Atheists don’t live without a moral code, they take their code from their conscience, society, the law, and whatever else they might want to take it from.
Dorothy’s parents were polite to you. You’ve been nothing but jackasses to everyone so far. So please go fuck off and may your overly legalistic interpretation of Christianity find you ironically burning in hell.
As A Fellow Christian I Heartily agree, Joyce’s Parents Need To Be Put In Their Place, Or Maybe Have Some Scripture Quoted At Them, Such As “Love Your Neighbor As Yourself” And “Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged”
Fuck you, Joyce’s parents. Atheists didn’t give us Nazi Germany, horrible people who hated Jews gave us Nazi Germany.
Actually, those “who gave us Nazi Germany” did not as much “hate Jews” rather than integrating the persecution of Jews into their fascist fantasies of modeling a populace according to their whims.
Last year I spent a few nights in Zürich (Switzerland). The hotel was kept by a family, tidy and friendly, the information in the rooms contained pointers to kosher food outlets and services, the reception lady had a prominent nose, the hotel had been founded by her father who made his money with early music boxes, a smart trader.
This has been an integral part of German history, and it still felt like being an integral part. Nazi Germany won that part of the war: in Germany, this history is dead. The stereotypical role of the “shrewd Jewish businessman” has been taken over by corporations which are unmitigatedly soulless.
I’ve been born 20 years after the war ended, so it did not really affect me personally. But it was then that I realized that the Nazis were successful in bereaving me of an important part of our national and cultural identity and diversity in Germany.
Did you seriously just say this as a way to imply that the place was Jewish?
Also, I’d wager that the explosion of global economy has more to do with the trend towards soulless corporations over small business owners. Additionally, it depends entirely on the area and what you’re more likely to witness. You saw this because you were at the hotel. How many privately owned hotels do you normally see?
Did you seriously just say this as a way to imply that the place was Jewish?
No, I said it to state that the setting including the family running the business met a set of stereotypes that we were taught to avoid at all costs. Things were fitting together harmoniously in a way that political correctness would not consider it nice to see.
I’ve been in quite a number of family-run hotels. That’s not really the point. It was the combination of little details establishing an unobtrusive “we’re Jewish and you are welcome” atmosphere. Other hotels have “we’re Catholic and you are welcome”. But the point is that you don’t really see the former in Germany. People then rather go for “we’re international and you are welcome”. After all, most of their customers will not be Jewish.
Joyce needs to become an orphan. Soon. That way A) we don’t have to see them and B) Amazi-Girl has a new sidekick replete with tragic backstory. Sal’s been looking tired recently anyways.
Actually, Revelations sounds like the name of some dark, gritty, comic book hero from a series that doesn’t actually understand religion, but likes having a vaguely spiritual feeling to it.
I can see two possible outcomes (and I’m sure there’s more): One — faced with this comparison, Joyce backs down and returns to the fold, so to speak.
Two, the seeds of dissent are sown and she starts the process of distancing herself from dogma.
Even if she “comes back to the fold” the seeds are planted. The moment her dogma gets her to act out of accordance with what she feels is right, resentment will begin to grow and fester.
If anything if she just buts heads with her parents over this and they end the weekend on bad terms then that would be better for her continued faith. That’s a clean wound. All that means once she’s done mulling it over in her head is that she’s right and her parents are wrong. She can look through the scriptures and find all the reasons why her interpretation of God’s will is more legitimate than theirs and that will just be that.
Is the next strip about Joyce researching to find the worst nursing home she can send her parents to? I’m thinking one that makes the residents fight for an off-shore gambling website.
No moral foundation without god? Now that’s a load of BS. I practically don’t believe in religion and I follow moral philosophies that always make me think twice about things.
Also, that Hitler comic is probably gonna come back and bite him in the ass.
See? If you were religious you would not need to think twice. Heck, you would not even need to think once as other people already did the thinking for you.
So basically, screw the consequences if it’s for God? Now I may not recall right seeing as I suck at history, but wasn’t kinda what happened with the Crusades? Y’know, the whole any Christian participating gets to indulge without consequences. Correct me if I’m wrong.
So basically, screw the consequences if it’s for God?
I really have a hard time teaching Fundamentalism 101 to you heathens. You embrace the consequences if it’s for God. There is no such thing as a “necessary evil” when doing God’s work. It’s all good. Accept it. Understand it. Cherish it. Only the weak falter.
Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son. Jepthah did sacrifice his daughter. What are the Browns going to do?
Problem is, Joyce is an adult now, she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to. They can withdraw financial support but Sal can always rob a few more stores to cover the costs.
A lot of you are hating on Joyce’s parents as if you didn’t think this was going to happen. I saw this shit coming a mile away as soon as this chapter began. Have none of you come into contact with strong-willed devout Christian parents before?
We don’t really know that for sure. Maybe god is just an office worker in some building in a bigger Arc-Universe, and we’re his pets, and he goes to church every 23rd day to celebrate Mecha-God Mass. Cuz that could happen.
God isn’t an atheist. He’s a tinkerer with a love for detail. And with all those physicists on the hunt for the fabric of the universe, he’s pretty busy nowadays keeping all those experiments turning out consistent. Ok, he bungles a lot of them but always comes up with plausible explanations.
Actually God does worship god if you believe in the holy trinity. Jesus is God so there you go. Truthfully when your the beginning and the end, the whole personification of needing a deity gets thrown out the window.
I saw on Willis’ twitter, “Today nobody will ever like Joyce’s parents ever again.” I then asked myself, “How far could they possibly go?”
The answer turns out to be…to Godwin.
Now that I think of it, riling Joyce up after she hit a guy in the face with a piece of glass might not be the best plan of action. She wasn’t even entirely lucid when she did that…
Hitler was pretty much every religion. He grabbed bits and pieces of everything from Roman Catholicism to Hinduism for the sake of giving his philosophy some perceived credit. He converted the German Protestant church into a state-run patriotism factory that replaced the cross with the swastika, and he took special care to get rid of any Christians who resisted him, which led to people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer 9the pastor!) trying to assassinate him. Attempting to blame any ONE religion for Hitler is stupid. Blame Hitler for Hitler.
Hitler was Christian? Tell that to the Christians he slaughtered.
Hitler was Atheist? Tell that to the Atheists he slaughtered.
Hitler was an Occultist? Yeah, you get where I’m going here.
The Inquisition clearly targetted people with religious beliefs which they perceived as different (heretic) from their own. If Hitler was religious, he didn’t use persecute anyone because of his religious beliefs.
Wow, Joyce’s parents actually represent the parts of religion that I dislike. Then again, I would guess many people would disapprove of such views as well.
Now I glad I voted to see them in the poll.
(Yes, I know technically we already saw them in the first couple of strips, but we didn’t get to know them.)
I’m a very Catholic person and for everyone who thinks all Catholics are like this, they’re so not. This is the opposite of what it means to be a Catholic. Like I’d like to jump into this comic and punch them right in their stupid faces. I’m so angry right now, this is past the “I HAVE FEELS” stage.
Yeah, not at all Catholic. They strike me as non-denominational christians. At least they are like the ones in my area (one of whom tried to hold an intervention for me because I played D&D)
What really strikes me is that Joyce’s parents are apparently BETTER than most of the other people in their community. Remember when Mary went off at Sierra and Dorothy, and Joyce said, “this must be why we switched churches all the time?”
For what it’s worth, as terrible as they are, Joyce’s parents did manage to raise her as a good person. Joyce has earned +200 Good Person points in the past three days of strips alone, just by standing up to them. Her parents might be hateful, but Joyce actually sticks to the principles they supposedly raised her with.
As I said lower, notice how they waited to have this little chat after they were in Joyce’s room. They at least may feel ashamed of trying to spout this stuff in public, but behind closed doors is ok.
Woah. Where’s the cool Joyce’s dad from comic 2? ;o;
But no for serious, as much as I hate these guys, this is a huge huge step for Joyce. Honestly 3years ago(I can’t remember the in universe time) she was just like them. Monkey Master outfit aside, she’s really changed and this is a stark, and much needed, juxtaposition of pre-college Joyce.
Unfortunately, people can appear very nice and pleasant and still believe things like this. Notice how they didn’t have this discussion until they got to Joyce’s room.
Actually, Hitler was a pretty cool guy to hang around. I mean, he was definitely open about his desires to kill everyone who wasn’t Aryan, but the dude was still really nice.
Wow! I mean. WOW!!! That is a whole new level of asshole!
Joyce can be a bit pig-headed at times and take on a holier-than-thou behavior, but at least she’s got her likeable moments. These two have absolutely no positive traits.
They lost the argument, you know. Pulling out the Hitler card means you’ve got absolutely nothing else to back up your position. And yeah, as Joyce pointed out, you can look like a motherfucking asshole when using it.
Let’s see, although the chance is slim, these idiots can redeem themselves.
I got a list of fictional characters that I want to punch:
1) Lacus Clyne
2) Kira Yamato
3) D.W
4) Lucy from Peanuts
5) That dog from Duck Hunt
6) Seth
7) Kazuya Mishima
8) Kefka
9) Seymour Guado
10) Mist Rex
Of those I know:
Lacus Clyne
Kira Yamato
Lucy from Peanuts
The dog from Duck Hunt
Kefka (you know your a dick when AutoCorrect wants to change your name to Jerks)
And Seymour Guado
This hit close to home. I have never had strong beliefs religiously (I am an agnostic Quaker) and when I confess this to my more religious friends I am always scared of this reaction. But DoA Joyce seems more strong willed than Old Joyce so I think this will just open her eyes to how close-mindedly she was raised.
How much do you trust your textbooks? I knew a Romance language teacher who went to Arcachon (Southern France). That was probably 10 years ago, and she was mid-twenty. The pupils there (she came from Germany as a teaching assistant) asked her whether she had been in WWII. Seriously.
She sent us photocopies from text books there. For example, there was the headline “Being a youth in Germany. Discuss.” followed by two photographs. One was a Hitlerjugend pimpf of about 6 years, in uniform, doing the “Heil Hitler” salutation. Another was a rather famous photograph where a number of people including children leave the Warsaw Ghetto with raised hands.
WTF? This was 50 years after the end of WWII. Who considers that fit for teaching German culture?
When she went partying there and people asked her where she was from, she answered “Belgium” (which was not entirely untrue since she lived there, just beyond the border). Because if she answered “Germany”, the conversation was over.
In the end, she made the best from what she was given there. The children there were a bunch of undisciplined brats, and she “pulled a German” on them finally, yelling at them from the top of a desk and going completely overboard. Which worked due to the absurd conditionalization those people got. She’s actually rather nice, but since that did not buy her anything, she made the best use of the absurd reputation she had been handed.
I still can’t believe those textbook copies she sent. That was out of this world.
? What grade was she teaching? Kids often have very unclear notions of time — cf. countless comic strips with kids asking their parents if they’ve seen dinosaurs. As for the textbooks — and the prejudice agains Germans you describe —, that looks nothing like what I’ve seen. In the region I was every summer there were lots of German tourists, and I think the worst cliché I heard about them was that they wore socks with sandals…
Well, she taught German. I think they were around 16 or so. And you won’t find anything like that in Paris or so. This was the extreme South of France, so it’s actually quite unlikely they had much enemy contact.
At any rate, given that this was teaching material, it would likely be at least on county level that this indoctrination existed, and the personal reactions of the people there to her being German were also of a quite absolute manner.
I don’t think that particular area is touristy (and frankly, German but even more Dutch and Danish beach tourists are not necessarily a recommendation for their country): I think they maintain their imagery without much “enemy contact”. But at least in this backwater town, she might as well have been a member of the occupational forces based on their reactions. She was glad when she was back after a year or so.
Arcachon is a small town, but very touristy in the summer, but I agree that kids proably don’t get that much contact with tourists. The place where I grew up is also very rural, and not that much bigger than Arcachon — the place I went to high school, that is, the place I was actually living was much smaller — and also less touristy, except during an extremely popular summer festival. And no-one I knew held any grudge against German people, or think they are all Nazi. There were cultural exchanges between our town and a twin city in Germany and everyone seemed happy with it. I just checked and there’s a similar program between Arcachon and Goslar, so the kids who study German there probably have at some point the opportunity to actually visit Germany as well, and vice-versa for the kids who learn French in Goslar.
As for the curriculum, in France it is defined at national level, but the exact content of the textbook may vary to some extent. The pages you describe look like they were taken from a history textbook, and WWI is covered pretty exensively, including Germany through the 1930s-1940s, especially during the last year of junior high school. But of course these pages are not meant to teach German culture, more like “German-culture-in-pre-WWII-Germany-and-how-it-can-help-us-understand-the-rise-of-nazism”.
Anyway, I’m not saying no-one in france has any prejudice against Germans and all textbooks are perfect and fair and balanced, just that, although your friend had a bad experience, it’s certainly not the general case.
Also, the Siegals and Wilcoxes are close to being as bad as the Browns, but just slightly behind them in my opinion (and I _have_ a dad as abusive as Danny’s parents are!)
Be afraid, be very afraid. Perhaps now is the time to stop reading DoA for a week or so if you cherish your sanity. Would be silly to get a stroke over a fictional comic character, wouldn’t it?
“So anyway like we were saying before that negro came in the elevator, fuck you daughter. We dislike you and your way of life and dinosaurs were huge pussies that probably never existed. Also I invested your college money in a bomb so we can blow up this elevator. IT’S THE BEST WE COULD DO”
WOW. Just wow. And it shows just how much Joyce’s upbringing fucked up her worldview (I mean the crazy fundie thing, not the homeschooling thing). Apparently her parents have never heard of Kinder Kirche Küche, AND they maybe are anti-Semitic (maybe). Let me guess, they also think Jesus wasn’t Jewish, right?
Fuck I hate them right now.
In other news, good for you, Joyce! And I’m sorry you have to be here, Joshua!
I just noticed that Joyce is from where I live currently: La Porte, IN. It actually quite fits. There’s way too many churches (around 40), and a christian homeschooling association.
I live in La Porte, too, and was homeschooled and raised as a Christian in that very same homeschooling association. Let me tell you that there are way too many zealots like Joyce’s parents that are part of it (sadly) 😛
Oh, god, this one strikes to close to home… I had this same interaction with my parents… but they were trying to protect me from “that weird tomboy”, one of the three only friends I had on highschool, because for them she was obviously gay (of course the queer one was me). I ended up on tears, so I really hope Sarah arrives ASAP :'(
How in the Hell can they believe what they are saying? I mean really believe that self righteous bullshit?
I’m a Pagan who occasionally attends UU, and I personally feel we have a moral approach to life, and a part of that is total respect for other religions and life styles.
This is just beyond…..
Run Joyce. You can do it.
How in the Hell can they believe what they are saying? I mean really believe that self righteous bullshit?
No experience with zealots? They can make themselves believe it for the sake of making their children believe it, for the sake of their immortal souls.
If you can’t convince yourself of something, convince someone else and you’ll be forgiven for your doubts. And the one you convinced will never be plagued by doubt like you were.
If you find people preaching lifestyle choices like vegetarianism, it’s a reasonably safe bet that you can meet them next year in McDonalds if nobody can be interested in their persuasions. Those who don’t doubt their own course don’t feel the need to proselytize.
A zealot is one who considers himself an inedequate believer, so he tries making up for that in numbers.
If that’s the case, I’m a little bit pissed at him, too. I can understand not wanting to get into these arguments with family as I’ve been there, but he should be standing up for his sister.
But Joyce is doing a pretty good job of standing up for herself. She might be better suited to a confrontation than her (very conflict-averse) brother is.
Really I’d love to see Joshua have a heart-to-heart with Joyce out of their parents’ earshot.
If that’s the case, I’m a little bit pissed at him, too.
If that’s the case, he can’t really help Joyce, because Joyce is not a secret atheist. His own convictions would be quite irrelevant for Joyce’s position.
I’m not necessarily saying he needs to chime in about the religious issues, but at least trying to help support her as being able to make reasonable decisions, or even just a ‘This is supposed to be a fun weekend visit, can we do this later and not ruin it?’
The whole problem is that “reasonable decisions” are an atheist concept. Joyce’s parents expect her not to succumb to reason. Supporting her as being able to make reasonable decisions would be about as helpful as supporting her as being able to have premarital sex.
The ability was never drawn into question. But her parents don’t want her to use it. That’s what atheists do.
Joshua can’t really score here. They’ll just pay for two exorcisms if he tries.
I’m going to have to disagree with ‘reasonable decisions’ being an atheist concept. Saying that just because they’re fundamentalists they lack any reason is about as bad as saying that just because Dorothy’s an atheist she lacks a moral compass. I’m not arguing that they aren’t ignorant to certain things, they just have a different set of ‘facts’ to reason from.
I’m saying that Joshua could go the route of ‘you raised her and taught her blah blah blah, she’s a good Christian, trust her to know when someone is being a good or bad influence on her and that she’ll continue to have faith’ or some sort of appeal to that effect.
You can only trust in God, humans are fallible. If they put reason above faith, they think they are less fallible than God.
Really, that stuff is finger exercises for Jehova’s Witnesses or fundamentalists. You don’t get through with reason. They’ve seen it. They know their battleground. Reason can’t touch them.
Their fortresses are invincible, but it’s a narrow and barren place where you don’t want to go anyway.
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”
-Martin Luther
Certain evangelical or nondenominational Christians really do take this to heart, and actually do consider “reason” a dirty word.
Naw, he’s gay – or at the very least, having an active sexual relationship that he doesn’t want his parents knowing about (maybe he’s even dating a nice Jewish girl). Willis made him use the words “hook up” in the first panel, and that had to be a conscious decision.
“Hook up” does not mean to everyone what it means to you. I’ve encountered this before. In some areas, “Hook up” means “get laid”. In other areas, “Hook up” means “go and meet with”. Sometimes it has a romantic implication, often it doesn’t.
So yeah, I wouldn’t make any assumptions based on that.
I know. I’m saying it has a double-meaning: He’s saying it to his parents as “I’m going to meet up with some friends” when he actually MEANS that “I’m going to have a romantic rendezvous.”
I’m not implying that he is just flat-out saying “HEY MAW, I’MA GO SEX SOMEBODY!” I’m implying that there was a reason that Willis chose that specific phrase.
I’m betting on less straight out atheist and more agnostic. He thinks college and expanded horizons are good for Joyce, because he’s been there himself.
I sooooo want to hate on Joyce’s folks right now… but knowing how Willis has said that Joyce is a somewhat autobiographical character, I don’t want to speak out on it without knowing how much of THIS particular storyline might be drawn from his own past, and if it is at all based on truth, how it ended… (Which, if it is based at all on truth, might be a spoiler for the comic… so it might be best not to know before this storyline concludes.)
So, although it is difficult, I’ll try to not hate Joyce’s parents. But that doesn’t mean I don’t hate what they are saying, or that they aren’t acing like assholes at the moment! Let us just hope that the prospect of alienating their daughter makes them reassess their actions on this matter.
What the hell is with all the anger and hatred in here? How the hell did you expect them to react? Frankly, I’m surprised Joyce’s parents have such restraint. Considering their views, they’re handling the whole thing pretty calmly.
They literally think their daughter’s friend might get her sent to hell. Think about that.
They think their daughter’s friend is going to hell. WWJD in this situation?
A) Encourage their daughter to befriend and be kind to the Atheist girl so that she can hopefully eventually be brought to see the virtue inherent in the Christian faith, saving her from an eternity of torment? Perhaps trust that their daughter’s faith is strong enough to survive exposure to alternative viewpoints?
B) Shun the non-believer! Shun! Shun!
Reaction B is less the instinct of a Christian hoping to save people and more the instinct of a cultist who fears another member is about to be exposed to thought which doesn’t conform with the cult’s brainwashing.
So yeah. They’re not good people. Not even by Christian standards.
And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
Which is so utterly, inexpressibly STUPID that it can’t help but inspire hate because seriously, WHO on Earth is so profoundly idiotic, so caught up in their own self-made delusions, that they play the Hitler card? It’s easily the worst logical fallacy I know of, possibly the worst in existence, and the presence of such stupidity is just infuriating.
It was the punchline of the strip. That’s something I don’t always take seriously, character-wise. I feel like most people usually know this, or at least I thought I did, but everyone here seems to be taking the punchline pretty seriously.
Mostly I’m just puzzled that, in a cast full of flawed characters, people are taking this one character flaw and using it to decide that Joyce’s parents are, like, the worst people ever.
Ah, I see your confusion. This is a Willis strip. One of his trademarks is subverting reader expectations regarding gag punchlines and status quo is god comics. Once, he made a main character a congresswoman as a punchline. Not only did the story go on for the next several strips, but she kept her seat through re-election and was a plot point several times. This in a strip about dudes who work in a toy store with a talking car in the sock room.
Just because something’s a punchline in a Willis strip doesn’t mean it’s not an important character moment.
The six state constitutions that effectively bar atheists from running for public office, the studies that show that the only group less trusted than atheists in the US is RAPISTS, and the fact that this hostile attitude is something that people have dealt with before in real life means this hits REALLY close to home.
I’m Jewish and their ignorant Hitler comments made me feel sick to my stomach.
Horrible.
Yo David, I know you said Joyce is often autobiographical — are her parents based on your parents? I really hope your parents are not these awful people.
My parents have never said anything like in the last panel, but everything here is pulled from things I’d picked up from my preachers and peers at church and also some school teachers and basically everyone, because this was Indiana.
More specifically, to be fair, it’s small-town rural Indiana. While these people do still exist in the larger cities (Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Bloomington), they aren’t in the majority like, well, pretty much anywhere else in the state.
Don’t forget that these people have been brainwashed (maybe by themselves). They truly do fear that being friends with an atheist will have dire consequences for their daughter – even if they’re being narrow-minded and trotting out all the tired, debunked arguments against atheism.
You know, I really can’t help but emphasize with Joshua here. He seems like a guy who doesn’t like conflict and these events make him uncomfortable, like I usually am. Plus he has been nothing but reasonable.
Okay, I hate her parents now. I cannot believe those words exited his mouth. Moral foundation? Makes me upset. But COMPARING HER AND ALSO ALL JEWISH PEOPLE TO HITLER? Blood. Boiling.
But unless we can read minds, we can’t be certain what they believed. Hitler claimed to be a Christian, and I don’t see any reason to believe otherwise.
Being a shitty Christian isn’t the same thing as not being a Christian. There are loads of really shitty Christians, because the Bible can be used to prop up some really shirty things, and committing genocide is certainly one of them. God himself “cleansed” the world with the flood and murdered all the first borns in Egypt; and he ALLOWED the extermination of the Jews, didn’t he?
You can definitely be Christian and rationalize this bullshit, just like people can rationalize stepping on the necks of the poor and being greedy and casting stones. Even what Jesus is explicitly against, in other words.
I think it’s much too comforting to cast out possible Christians like Hitler and ignoring the Crusades. Instead, true Christians should be learning from these examples the inherent danger in believing in your own righteousness and thinking you have the right to pass judgment on those who hurt no one.
I’d think that a source of morality that can be used to both condone genocide and the morals of the sermon on the mount would by necessity be a shitty source of morality.
Mother Teresa claimed to be Christian while doing some shitty things. Can we conclude that she was lying about it? Lots of people who believe the Bible do awful things. Maybe their interpretation is different from yours, but at that point you’re saying that everyone who reads the Bible differently from you isn’t a REAL Christian.
See, it’s people like this that made me question my faith in Christianity. Don’t get me wrong, I feel great about leaving it behind. In fact, I’m almost as far from it as possible. I now consider myself to be Pagan, though I really don’t know much about it… All I do know is I don’t like most Christians because of their tendency to blindly follow a book as old as the Bible without any thought to what their own brains/hearts tell them.
Or commandments like “lock your wife into a bath house in the time of her uncleanliness”. Or “if somebody uncovers a woman’s source of blood, stone both them to death”. Tough times for gynecologists.
I actually had a christian conservative argue with me once that the bible was pro-capitalism. The mental gymnastics required to circumvent that one line of scripture could’ve won a gold medal at the Olympics.
First of all, yes she does. There are scientific explanations for how concepts of morality came about. One reason we don’t all go around killing is because it’s detrimental to the species. We had to learn to have empathy for others, or we wouldn’t be here. If you do things ONLY because someone tells you to, you’re merely obedient…that doesn’t automatically make you good.
Hitler ate sugar, had a pet dog, was a Catholic Christian (this is were apologists pull “no true Scotsman”) and a creationist…still want to play guilt by association game? Even if Hitler were atheist, it wouldn’t mean atheism caused anything. That “part Jewish” line also suggests that Jews are partially responsible for…persecuting Jews and other groups. (Okay, I know he’s just grasping)
Anyone who believes Atlantis is real failed to do three seconds of research into the very sentence which introduces the idea and states that it’s a purely hypothetical concept.
One reason we don’t all go around killing is because it’s detrimental to the species. We had to learn to have empathy for others, or we wouldn’t be here. If you do things ONLY because someone tells you to, you’re merely obedient…that doesn’t automatically make you good.
Correction: it does not make you good, period. But the person who you don’t anguish and kill won’t mind whether you do that out of inherent goodness or out of fear of God.
If an imaginary God keeps at least some murderers and rapists from the street, he is doing a good job. If he keeps someone from bashing someone’s head in (we are, after all, animals), he’s doing a good job.
Now it looks like Joyce’s parents are putting the cart before the horse here. Maybe they need to reread the story about the Good Samaritan.
Hitler wasn’t a creationist. A number of people bring out a certain passage from Mein Kampf where he rails against the evils of hybridization (“whoever brings about such a development sins against the eternal creator” refers unambiguously to hybridization, not speciation or a belief in speciation – read the passage for yourself – anyone who tells you otherwise is being dishonest), but their argument tends to focus on the rhetoric used, and ignore the actual message. He even says that to do this is to erase “higher breeding… over hundreds of thousands of years,” quite clearly connecting the existence of the natural barriers he hold sacrosanct to genetic isolation over time, not to a single creation event.
Incidentally, I always wonder how the ‘Atheists have no moral compass!’ people would have reacted had they been around for that order from God to exterminate every man, woman and child of the Amalekites back in the OT days.
The Abrahamic religions have a moral compass. It’s just that occasionally it points towards genocide.
I wonder how much of that is due to their region of origin have a very limited carrying capacity, especially at Bronze Age tech? Competition for resources is gonna be fierce.
(Not that we, as a species, have ever really needed much of a reason, but…)
Uh, you’re apparently infested with modern views. “God commands, we follow” is quite the definition of the moral compass. The whole point is that God is right by definition, and if you balk at something, your faith is defective.
Killing the Amalekites is peanuts compared with the Great Flood. There are psalms where David prays for God to smash the enemy’s childrens’ heads against a rock. Jephthah killed tens of thousands based on a linguistic quirk.
The main element of the religious moral compass is deferment of moral authority to an ultimate entity that can’t be wrong.
Yeah, that’s what they call the ‘Divine Command’ theory of morality. Rape? Murder? Genocide? Slavery? Every bit of it is a-ok so long as you get the go-ahead from on high.
My experience arguing with the people who talk about religion offering a ‘moral foundation’, however, often gives the impression that this isn’t how they’re thinking at all. Rather, they seem to have selectively removed the more horrific passages of the Bible from their memory, or perhaps simply have avoided reading them. If they’re reminded of those passages, they enter into all kinds of mental contortions in order to justify them according to more conventional moral ideas when, if they believed their own rhetoric, all they would really need to say to justify it is, ‘God said this genocide was good, so it was good.’
Basically, modern Christians themselves are infested with a lot of modern views and don’t like to be reminded that their holy book looks really, really bad under the light of those views.
I think I’ve also seen that the Old Testament is a veiled precursor of the New Testament, so whenever it gets bad, it’s really an allegory for the truth. I don’t remember quite how this was supposed to work, but I think it was actually rather close to Catholic mainstream.
Joyce’s parents remind me of my dad. He once gave me a bible for my birthday in hopes that it would make me go back to church. *shakes head* Yeah that aint happenin. 😛
Best part about the argument in religions. God can’t be beaten because… he’s God. If you find scientific proof it was God who put it there to test your faith. <(Someone's legit argument with me)
I will say a higher power that it holds some value. The US $ says "In God We Trust" because he can't fail. If he exists he is all powerful. If he doesn't your money is still held to the value of something that can't fail.. cause if it isn't there… how can it fail.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t “In God We Trust” only added to U.S. currency in the 1950s during the whole McCarthy period of Communist Witch-Hunts?
I know that’s when “Under God” was forced into the Pledge of Allegiance…
Actually, “E pluribus unum” is still -on- our currency in the same place it was prior to the 50’s. The place where your bills say “in god we trust” was just blank space on the old money.
It was added to US paper currency imn the 50’s. It was added to coinage during the civil war, when both sides were trying to argue that God was on their side.
If you find scientific proof it was God who put it there to test your faith.
But, being God, the proof would be perfect. And that means that if we study the proof in depth, everything will be perfectly consistent, and predictions based on it will be valid.
The only excuse not to study it and thus cut oneself of from the fruits of God’s perfection is laziness. Science is not to be confused with a mere religion for explaining the world. It is also a tool for making predictions.
God created the world, men created the Bible. It makes more sense to study the primary source, and there is a lot more to study.
There are people with the opinion “but the Bible tells us all we should need to know” but one has to call BS when they pull out their phone.
I can respect that if they come through with a full life based on that belief like presumably the Amish people do.
But the vast majority of Creationists belies their “beliefs” with the lives they lead, just needing a cheap excuse for intellectual laziness.
When I was a kid, whenever I was asked, I’d say I was Jewish because I didn’t really understand what religion was, but I knew that you had to say you were something because otherwise people would give you funny looks.
. . . . . I cannot stand the loathing I feel for her parents
They are the most detestable fictional characters I have come across since Umbridge or Joffrey.
And I mean that.
Those characters are fun to hate. I LOVE hating them. These, her parents . . . I have to deal with this stupidity everyday (I live in Kansas and used to work as a computer tech in the State Capitol building). The fact that these people actually exist is what makes my hatred for them burn so real and so deep . . .
She’s not saying they’re as bad, she’s just saying she hates them that much. And I hate Joffrey way more than I hated Umbridge. She was just too stupid to hate, Joffrey was like all the entitled children of the world condensed into a small package of pure whine.
Uhm holy shit no people like you “Joyce’s parents” gave us Nazi Germany you know people convinced that “their people” were the good and pure and everyone else were monsters to condemn.
Well, the jews killed our Lord! To be fair, that was more the street argument and/or the medieval argument. The Nazis themselves used different logic, based on a weird mixture of “Jewish World Conspiration” and semi-racial fiend propaganda.
Sometime in the next years “Mein Kampf” runs out of copyright (which had been confiscated from Hitler’s sister in return for a state pension or something), so there will be annotated versions getting published in order to give some counterbalance to uncritical reprints.
It’s actually pretty creepy stuff, of the “I see how this could work” variety. Which is not all that surprising in the light of history.
On Woodward, in Royal Oak, there’s a church I’ve been past many times where its preacher at the time actually had a radio show where he spewed pro-Nazi propaganda during the war.
Can I just say “The Jews killed our lord” is a dumb thing to say? I mean…yeah…Judaism was the religion of that area. HELL, Jesus is credited with spreading it cuz he is in fact, a Jew. Noone was Christian until he died/resurected so unless it was athiests or muslims, it kinda had to be Jews.
Christianity predates Islam – Muhammed wasn’t even born until the 6th century. And there were religions other than Judaism in the area. The Roman religion, for one, would have been practiced by several of the people involved.
Not to mention Zoroastrianism, the Ancient Egyptian Religion, various Celtic and Germanic cults, there were a lot of religions going around in Jesus’ time.
Well, I was talking about the ones with a major presence in the area of Judea – the ones that could have been practiced by people who were involved in Jesus’ execution – so Zoroastrianism and the Egyptian religion are certainly possible, as Persia and Egypt weren’t particularly far, the Roman religion is definite, because they held the area…the Celtic and Germanic lands weren’t terribly close, so didn’t likely have significant presence in the area. Samaritanism (granted, similar to Judaism, but not the same thing), the pre-Islamic Arab religion, and so forth, are more what I meant.
Can I just say “The Jews killed our lord” is a dumb thing to say?
It was a dumb thing to say in medieval times already. The point is that it’s catchy.
It was not “Our Lord”, it was their messiah. And he is quite defnite about it, even though he can be swayed on occasion:
And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.
And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.
Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
Er, don’t want to be *that feminist* here, but it sounds like you’re saying a woman merely mentioning being a victim of sexual assault is almost as bad as someone comparing people to Hitler. I think you probably didn’t mean it that way, but you can understand how this interpretation could offend.
Also, Joyce’s argument would actually be relevant to the situation, unlike her parents’.
…and Joyce really ought to tell SOMEONE. Maybe in time for Sarah to make it out of the elevator and into the room and argue with the Browns in support of Joyce staying at IU to symbolically make up for what happened to her previous roommate.
I think what he’s trying to say is that characterizing Christians as rapists based on one Christians actions is as bad as characterizing atheists based on hitler’s. that doesn’t reflect what jaredstar was saying, though.
Ah. Yeah, I see what you’re saying. My thought is that her argument would be “this one Christian is bad, so all Christian values are invalidated”. Which is a terrible argument.
no, her argument would be “you say that Christians have a moral foundation others don’t, but Dorothy is awesome and kind, and this one Christian guy was an attempted rapist, so obviously there’s no special moral foundation.”
No need to generalise it to anything bad about all Christians (which still includes Joyce).
Ok, Joyce’s Parents need to hurry up and meet Ethan’s Parents. The combined hatred of the fans should be enough to create a black hole that destroys the Earth.
Say what you will about Nazi Germany, the army had a GREAT fashion sense. Seriously look up the officer leather trench coats or the Luftwaffe uniforms. Those blokes were STYLING.
Also I just watched “Into the White” a film based on true events in 1940. Gives a great impression of the people, on both sides, early in the war, look it up.
I’ve actually seen this dilemma manifest in fandom. “Yes, they were pretty definitely the Bad Guys, but damn, they had all the coolest clothes and gear! I’M SO CONFLICTED!”
Nazi-ism was a class act of clever marketing, graphic design, and propaganda that we’ve not seen the like of sense. The core concept may have been one of the worst things we remember in history, but they dressed it up /really/ nicely at the time.
> Yeah, because the Eastern Orthodox Church has such a history of timidity.
Tell me about them… I live them :S
If I had to choose another religion to be around me, I’d go for Anglicanism or Sweden’s State Church (Lutheran, I think?). They really don’t seem that keen on telling non-believers what to do.
Come to Scotland in July and tell everyone your Catholic; just wearing green ought to do it. I guarantee you’ll find out exactly how ‘timid’ the Protestants are.
The flip side of that is the Catholics here are totally different (now, anyways) to the way they seem to be portrayed in the States.
Hang on, the Browns just Godwined their own daughter? I had assumed that, given they’d probably been dreading Joyce coming into contact with atheists, they would’ve prepared a better argument than Reductio ad Hitlerum.
Nazi Germany was created by a megalomaniac with a grudge, who saw a chance for power and easily coaxed an impoverished and still-angry-about-getting-screwed-over-after-world-war-one populace into comfortably looking the other way. So really, Nazi Germany was made possible by ignorance, fear mongering and an extremely stubborn national Psyche. Religion was a major tool in accomplishing Hitlers thousand year Reich, though it is as always an excuse rather than a true motivator. Regardless, by making atheists the villains without any real knowledge or perspective on the subject, distancing themselves from diversity out of fear and comfort, they have become exactly what Nazi Germany thrived on. Funny, in a sickening sort of way.
Damn this is bugging me more than it probably should. Guess that means the comic is doing its job. I haven’t gotten this frustrated with fictional characters since I read marvels civil war crossover.
Hey JoyceDad, hate to break it to you, but Hitler was a Christian. Yes, he was Catholic, and yes, I get that a lot of evangelists don’t think Catholics are real Christians, but Hitler said many times that he was doing God’s will on Earth. Hell, military belt buckles were stamped with ‘Gott mit uns’, so the idea that the Nazis were atheists is pretty much bunk.
That’s pretty much it, yeay. Well, the “Gott mit uns” motto was there before the Nazis came to power, and there’s ample reason to think that H himself was a hypocrite who didn’t really “believe” in anything; but still, the point is that he always declared himself a Catholic and millions of German Christians had no trouble following him.
Well, looking at pictures he is tallish/pasty-faced though definitely not blond. Goebbels, responsible for most of the Nazi propaganda and doctrine, on the other hand…
I don’t think I’m replying to the comment you think I am.
Totz the Plaid said, “But Hitler wasn’t REALLY Catholic, and neither are the Browns if you really think about it.”
So I responded to point out that if he means to disown Hitler for being a terrible Catholic, he should probably make his comparison to characters who are Catholic, instead of literally being an irrelevant form of Christianity.
He was raised Catholic, He never renounced it, and his writings are littered with references to “God”. He justified most of his most horrible atrocities in the name of “God”, and invoked divine authority all the time. So maybe he was or maybe he wasn’t a “Catholic”, but he was at the very least a theist who was raised Catholic. You could argue that he was a bad Catholic, but that’s hardly the point.
And even -if- Hitler was some kind of secret atheist who ate catholic babies in a little closet in some back room somewhere, the majority of the German people at the time, who elected and supported the Nazi regime, and ultimately formed the bulk of its numbers, were without question practicing Roman Catholics.
So when the claim inciting rage is that “Hitler was an Atheist” or “Atheists gave us Nazi Germany”, arguing over the details of Hitler’s belief structure is a little pedantic.
Indeed, an entirely Germanic motif with an Eagle where a cross should be is about as insulting to Catholicism as one can get and still use the German word for God.
Not that this makes the Nazis atheist.
I cannot stress this as a historian enough: Hitler and the Nazis weren’t devout ANYTHING. Except racists.
Doubtful, and actually, that probably started as a rumor spread to court the same anti-Semitic elements that Hitler used to… *cough*… so it’s probably not all that great to keep it alive. “Sunny” has some links further down.
These pages are gonna be quite a ride for those of us who voted to see the Desantos or Sierra’s parent. I think I’m gonna need some popcorn for the next strip.
I wish people would realize how equally hateful they sound when they say things like “This is why I hate Christians” and “Hate to break it to you, but Hitler was Christian.”
Newsflash guys:
– Making sweeping generalizations that are hateful about any group is bigotry. It doesn’t only count when it is against people groups you want to defend.
– Hitler was a psychopath with paranoid tendencies that created genocide… let’s not throw around his association with anyone innorder to prove our own point. It is wrong.
And thus is why I take the following stance: what people say and do in the name of some organization usually indicates more about them than it does about the organization in question.
If it helps, the reason I point out that Hitler was a Christian isn’t to put down Christianity, it’s to refute the specific argument that Hitler was an atheist, and typically the intended implication that Hitler did what he did BECAUSE he was an atheist. If your response to “Sorry, but Hitler was a Christian” is “Well, that doesn’t say anything about Christianity”, then congratulations, you have just MADE MY POINT. ;p
I also support the notion that you shouldn’t hate Christians because of people like the Browns. Hate -individual- Christians no the basis of their similarity to the Browns, sure, fine, but yeah, generalizations are usually bad.
And I say that as an atheist and anti-theist who believes that Christian -claims- should be confronted wherever they are rationally indefensible.
In the real world, Christians are an oppressive majority, holding almost all the power. How many senators are Christian? How many presidents have been or at least felt they needed to pretend to be devout Christians?
How many laws on the books make Christianity difficult to practice? How often is the building of a new church blocked because of concerns about those evil Christians? How many times per year does an individual Christian experience prejudice because of their religion?
Now, let’s try to guess what these numbers look like for Muslims. Jews, even today. Atheists, pagans?
And let’s think about other groups that Christianity helps marginalize, like oh say gay people.
Not too long ago, Christian people in power were also helpfully discriminating against non-white people. It’s been pointed out that the arguments against same-sex marriage are identical to the arguments against interracial marriage, right down to the Church being front and center in the fight to keep it illegal.
Now, understand that all that has happened today is that people have said mean things on the Internet. Understand the vast chasm of difference between a Christian getting their feelings briefly hurt and the real, systematic oppression that exists for everyone else because of their insistence that we live in a “Christian nation”.
Also understand that even people who say “Christians suck” have not said “all Christians suck”, and that there is zero appreciable difference between “I hate Christians” and “I hate lawyers” or “I hate bankers”. It’s not even the sweeping statement you’re making it out to be.
So, yeah. Tell me again how “two wrongs don’t make a right!” and how complaining about Christians online is just as bad as having my funeral someday picketed after a lifetime of not being legally allowed to marry the woman I love.
Man, after years of classes where I was taught debate technique and studying philosophers and psychology and communication in college, not to mention additional experience in debates about bigotry from the oppressors vs from the oppressed, I sure do say that when it’s appropriate, regardless of that one comic Willis did on the subject that one time.
Everyone here expresses their hatered to joyces parents, but im more worried how this will pan out for joyce. I don’t think that this storyline is heading in a good direction…
They’re not going to take her out of college, at least. Not saying they wouldn’t, but Willis won’t write one of the mainest main characters out of the story this early.
She’s practically the closest thing this comic have for a main character so i don’t expect her to leave the comic, but things are going to have some sort of consequence. This arc seems to be meant to reinforce the main conflict in her story.
Problem is, the alternative is to split from her parents. While that is probably the healthiest thing for her right now, it is by no means easy or without consequence. Specially if they are helping to pay for university.
Words can’t describe my hate for this parents. My Mother was like that.
But also words can’t describe, how awesome this comic is. Willis, you are an great Artist.
And after all, words can’t describe, how positively surprised I am, that there are acutally still so many people on the Internet, that are using their brains. Impressive.
(I hope it’s intelligible, I’m not a native speaker. Greetings from Germany.)
Me, I find really hard to dislike her. Yes, she does annoying things sometimes, but only because she’s so horribly clueless -and that’s her parents’ fault, not hers. But hey, have it your way -there are probably as many different ways to read the strip as there are people reading it.
I’ve seen some implications about homeschooling in the comments…
I don’t think homeschooling should be demonized. While it’s true that homeschooling leaves room for more indoctrination, I don’t think eliminating that risk is worth foregoing the liberty of allowing parents to educate their children outside of the school system if they do so desire.
Yes, I was homeschooled by christian parents and somewhat indoctrinated.
No, it didn’t stick and I still enjoyed the experience.
Totally agree. I was homeschooled as well, and it helped me to develop my own views and work ethic. Kinda shot my social skills in the foot, but I am working on that.
I was homeschooled through high school and probably ended up getting LESS indoctrinated, strangely, than I would have if I’d been in public school. Probably because my parents were so content with the Christian curriculum they’d picked out, and never bothered to notice that I was also browsing the internet, making friends on message boards, and being exposed to non-christians who were decent, wonderful people.
In the first chapter of Mein Kampf and continually throughout, Hitler says he is doing God’s work and executing God’s will in destroying the Jewish people.
The oath taken by all party officers began “I swear in the name of Almighty God my loyalty to the Fuhrer.”
The belt buckle of every Nazi soldier read “Gott mit uns”, God with us.
Most of the Nazi high command were practising Catholics, and only one was excommunicated at any point. Joseph Goebbels was finally denied God’s grace… for marrying a Protestant. In neighbouring leadership, the fascist leader of Belgium, Leon Degrelle, was excommunicated for wearing his SS uniform to mass and punching a priest.
Hitler’s birthday was celebrated throughout Germany on orders of the Vatican right up until his death.
Hitler never wanted Religion in his “precious” third reich.
But Goebbels understood that to that time, germany was a very religious country and that they needed the religious people.
Also, they wanted to change the beliefs of the people, so they would follow the old nordiv mythology, but that didnt work either.
May I suggest “State Religion”, an idea that was stolen wholesale from Jean-Jacques Rousseau (who would have been a bit scandalised at the concept of a state run on irrationality anyway).
The Third Reich was obsessed with ‘making all things Nazi’ and that included beliefs. So the term ‘God’ was comandeered and had all the original meanings fucked out of it.
“Ever since his [Rousseau’s] time, those who considered themselves reformers have been divided into two groups, those who followed him and those who followed Locke. Sometimes they cooperated, and many individuals saw no incompatibility. But gradually the incompatibility has become increasingly evident. At the present time, Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill, of Locke.
…
What future triumphs the world might dedicate to his ghost, I do not venture to predict.”
The relationship between the Nazi party and Christianity can best be described as clusterfuck. For every case of cooporation between the Nazi party and the church you can find a case of SA or SS bullies persecuting Christians.
All in all The Nazis were theists believing in one god or another. But in the end saying that the Nazis were Christians is as false as saying the opposite. Better say that there were Christians who were Nazis and Christians who weren’t.
I took some long minutes to write this only to understand seconds after i posted that my final statement makes no sense when considering what i was trying to say.
let me revise it to: while the many people were both Nazis and Christians the two organizations held more then a few high ranking members who actively fought the other side.
Religion happened once more in this comic. Usually I am a silent reader but between 500 comments mine will be hopefully lost. I am pretty sure religion does not noticable change the chance that people go to war. And if you want to have some proof look into the history of Ireland. Or the Thirty Year’s War from 1618. Or the crusades, the slaughter between african tribes, the Chinese goverment and the people of Tibet. World history is a dark place. And soon our time will be history as well.
“God wants you to kill thousands of people!” “That sounds as though it would hurt a lot of people and be bad for everyone involved, including me. Maybe we should rebel against this God person.”
“God wants you to kill thousands of people!” “God is the foundation of all morality, so–sure!”
Been where Joyce is, almost half a lifetime ago. Good on her for standing up to her folks, even if she isn’t good at it yet.
I pray (hah!) that Joyce doesn’t go where I went and enter an abusive, manipulative relationship that forces her into the real world while simultaneously robbing her of almost all the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that college affords.
He’s stuck and he knows it. Can’t help his sister because he knows that will just draw him into his parents ire as well. Sympathizes too much with his sister to join his parents side. Just tried to leave and that failed. Can’t placate anyone because he knows his parents and sees that his sister has grown a backbone.
I teach middle school in a rural town in Southern California where w literally have churches with 10 members. Once while discussing the consequences of the reformation, we counted the churches within two miles of our rural (dirt roads are within 100 meters) school. It was 8 churches with only the Mormon and Catholic Chiurches being mainstream. As you can guess with this type of population, I spend a lot of time fighting ignorance.
I once had a student tell me you could identify an atheist because, “Their eyes were dead since they have no soul.” I calmly explained that many of the atheists I knew were more moral because they believed that their lives were defined by how well they lived it and treated others for humanity, not for some site of rules set down by a religion,
Wait, Joyce is lying to her parents? Dorothy isn’t jewish, even partly! Good for your Joyce! Now just learn how to placate them when they see you, then do what you want behind their backs.
I for one found this insulting. Not that Willis put them in there, but that suck people do actually exist and I find that insulting that they claim to follow the same God I do.
nope, that’s a corollary. The original law is that the longer an argument goes on, the more likely it is that people will bring up Hitler. Some forums use that as a sign that the argument has gone on too long, and so anyone who brings up Hitler is held to have lost the argument, but that is very much a “local” tradition (quotes because most localities that use this rule are only localities in the internet sense, where space is meaningless).
Careful with that. Hitler played at being a great many things. He didn’t really go much for actual Christianity. It played well politically to emphasise his Christian upbringing in Austria and his religious credentials.
His was a State Religion worshipping the German God, which is… kinda not Christianity. He didn’t really like the idea of turning the other cheek or working for higher authority, given the proclivity for power of the Will etc etc.
Not to say that Christianity is untainted by Nazism, Hitler flummoxed most German Protestants and Free Churchers to support Nazism grudgingly and got the Concordat with Rome. However, he was very supportive of the efforts of his underlings to undermine and destroy churches and church organisation. Bear in mind that most of the Nazis didn’t really believe in a God as such, much less a Messiah. They just hated Jews.
Nazism isn’t what many people seem to assume it is, in that it is actually barely coherent and not terribly codified (the efforts of Rosenberg notwithstanding). In essence it was all about Will and irrationality. Hitler mainly burped at lunches and people tried to interpret that as support for what THEY wanted to do. Which is how you ended up with the radicalisation of the Nazi State over time and the completely disorganised ride toward the Final Solution (and the lack of documentation on it, less a cover up and more a product of the political chaos of the Third Reich).
In that sense, Hitler was whatever he needed to be to gain support in his rise to power and subsequent consolidation and then pretty much nothing from about 1938 onwards – nothing is easier to mould into whatever people wanted to see. Hence his credentials as Christian, or vegetarian, or animal-lover are… vague at best.
1. Nazi ideology, insofar as there was such a thing, certainly emphasized the unrestrained exercise of the will – vaguely assuming that all pure, clear thinking Germans must of course will the same thing – and irrationalism. But to leave it there overlooks the central importance of race to the Nazis.
2. That the upper echelons of the Nazis didn’t believe in much of what’s generally considered to be essential to Christianity – that Jesus is the son of God; loving one another; forgiving one’s enemies – is certainly true. That they didn’t believe in God “as such” (as opposed to the other kind of God?) is more questionable. The Nazis’ experiments with neo-paganism might not resemble most other people’s ideas about God, but then, the Nazis’ ideas about secular society didn’t resemble most other people’s either. Hitler himself doesn’t seem to have put much stock in neo-paganism, but then, he doesn’t seem to have consciously committed himself to any religious stance; Christian, outright atheist, or otherwise.
Of course, debating Hitler’s religion is somewhat beside the point anyway. The Nazi leaders couldn’t have done anything if the German people hadn’t followed them, and the overwhelming majority of Germans at the time were, of course, Christians, as were many of the Nazis sympathizers and supporters outside of Germany, up through Pope Pius XII and the America Firsters (sometimes simply because they saw the Nazis as a bulwark against communism)
Thank you Graham and thank you for pointing out what I missed too!
Nazism worked because people were able to pretty much read whatever they wanted into it. Christians, Muslims, Atheists, Statists, Middle-Class, Working-Class, Upper-Class, students, educated people, uneducated people, fellow-travellers, believers, non-believers, petty people… Pretty much just people. Ordinary people. THAT is what allowed Nazism to function in Germany. Just as it would have allowed similar movements to function pretty much anywhere else and still does and still might. (It is this that keeps me awake some nights – would I even TRY to oppose such a movement in my country or just shrug and carry on like most other people did in 1930s and 1940s Germany? *shudder*)
But yes, you’re right, the Racialism of Nazism is what set it apart from, say, Fascism generally.
And yes, I’ll let a greater historian than I sum up what you said too: “Whilst calling Hitler [and the Nazi leadership and Party] evil is morally satisfying, it explains nothing.”
Sorry, I forgot to add: the website is fine, but makes a mistake about self-identification. Otherwise I could self-identify as anything I like and the wider community with which I identified would be tarred with my stupidity. That just doesn’t seem fair for the wider community.
In other words, Hitler’s self-identification as Christian is about as convincing as his self-identification as a Socialist or a Nationalist.
Also, I hope I don’t come across as anything less than respectful of you KiTA, as I don’t know you, and therefore assume you are a rational and generally good human being!
It’s kind of an interesting part of the human condition. Meet us individually and we’re for the most part exactly that: rational and generally good people. Meet us in a group and as often as not all intelligence goes out the window.
Absolutely. As far as individuals go there are always exceptions to the rule. That’s what we have a justice system for. As for groups it can easily go either way, however it doesn’t take much for a group to go from good to bad. You wouldn’t have to look far for examples.
I would say it’s rare for a group to ever be purely good or bad – just as it’s rare for individual people.
As for the justice system, if your point is that it’s easier to to make an individual person pay for wrongdoing than it is to make an entire country pay, that’s certainly true. But presumably you’ll agree that many individuals do horrible things that are perfectly legal.
All of us, stupid Hitler being human and all.
If this guy was real all I can say to his response would be… “It’s Clobberin’ Time” that would be after spending 10 hours finding out there is no face palm meme on the internet that represents what I felt reading that last panel.
That sounds like a great idea, I think all countries should have a law for this.
Speaking of Holocaust deniers, if I ever meet one, I’m going to say I’m an American Revolution denier. I’ll say that we’re secretly still a colony of Great Britain.
In America, we don’t deny the Holocaust or support Nazism openly, we accuse our political opponents of slippery sloping us to Nazism, no matter how nonsensical it is.
Congratulations Joyce. You have encountered a fundamental problem in having an argument: it is impossible to argue with someone when they are already convinced that they are right.
At this rate, Joyce is going to have to make a decision: either fall in line with her parents beliefs and forfeight her newly made friends, or add some steel to her spine and split from them. Normally I’d say take a third option, but it doesn’t look like the Brown’s are going to let her have one.
Either way, this is going to get a heck of a lot uglier before it gets better.
Interesting, because I came out as an atheist to my father last weekend and we had the “no moral foundation” argument. He started with “Without God, people would murder and rape each other” and less than five minutes later he found himself having to conclude that “It’s okay to kill people when God tells you to.”
Yep, that’s in the Bible. It’s basically the point of the parable where Abraham is told to sacrifice his child. “If God tells you to kill, you do it, no matter how much you object. God will make sure it all works out.”
Ah, yes. When I was an evangelical, I had a man at church tell me the reason we can’t have more than two major political parties was because having more than two was how Hitler came to power.
Scott Lively, an American evangelical who is one of the masterminds behind the virulent anti-gay legislation in both Uganda and Russia (amongst other countries), wrote “The Pink Swastika”. He argues that because gay men are inherently vicious, violent, and amoral, the Nazis actively recruited them, and they rose to the top ranks of the Nazi party. Ah, but didn’t the Nazis kill gays? Mr. Lively claims that was to cover up the fact they were gay.
This man, Scott Lively, an American “evangelical” (if he can even be dignified with that name) has been masterminding the debacles in Uganda and Russia. And most experts say Ukraine will be the next to fall, he’s been active there for years, as well as a number of countries.
I really feel sorry for Joyce and Joshua. Joyce because she had to grow up hearing stuff like this, and she’s realizing that she cannot possibly win this argument. Joshua because he had to grow up hearing this stuff, has probably already had some version of this conversation himself, and is stuck in a catch 22 (and he knows it).
OW OW OW OW OW!
My brain hurts, partially from the pseudo-moralistic crap they are spewing, and partially from how hard I just facepalmed from his last comment.
I always like seeing things that make comment sections explode! ^_^ Question is, could tomorrow top this one, or is this the one where we get it all out of our systems?
This whole sequence is painful to me on a personal level. My own parents never pulled the Hitler card, but they ultimately DID show that their religion and morals were more important to them than keeping a good relationship with me, their only daughter.
Careful, Joyce; they very well might decide you’re living an immoral lifestyle at college and drag you home. Or cut you off financially unless you go back home under their thumb.
I have a Character Defining Moment delivery, for a “Joyce Brown”! Anyone gonna sign for this!?
Yeah, this whole situation was bad from the start, an it’s only gonna get worse from here on out. And I have a feeling that someone is going to walk in on this conversation very soon.
It’s also kind of sick when they try to tell you that the friends who have emotionally supported you and stuck by you and helped you through some really rough patches are “not real friends” because they’re not Christian and are apparently incapable of really feeling empathy, while saying your Christian “friends” from church basically drop you like a hot potato at the first sign of emotional distress are the only ones who will ever truly “be there for you” when the cards are down.
So, according to wiki’s, this comic strip averages one year of irl time, for one week of DoA time.
Comic running for about three years…
So Joyce is willing to fight against the doctrines she was raised, for her new friend she met three weeks ago– and is experimenting with cartoons that promote eastern religions — Good job girl you’re a character development track star!
This is how parents get disowned. I have a few friends who have fundie parents and they no longer speak with them. A group of siblings I know al disowned their parents and refuse to let their kids see them. They are now miserable and alone with no kids or grandkids to see them.
I’m more concerned by the fact that seem people NEED to answer to a higher authority in order to be moral. I mean… the people who don’t have to and are still good anyway strike me as the “more moral” bunch.
The most infuriatingly stupid thing I’ve heard from Christians isn’t that cavemen hunted dinosaurs or that doing it up the butt will destroy civilization, but that atheists 1) can’t possibly be moral and 2) can’t possibly be truly happy.
UUUUUGH I know. My parents will sometimes pull that “you just don’t seem HAPPY” card on me, and I’m like “well no shit, I’m stuck with you fundie assholes for a weekend and my wife is across the country, why in the world is it SURPRISING that I’m not the chipperest.” Not to mention the appalling state of minimum wage etc.
Also they seem to take the fact that when I was 20 I once got drunk and joked to my girlfriend that we should find a pretty girl and take her home for a threesome, loudly, on the subway, and then blogged about it going “omg so embarrassing, REASONS WHY NOT TO BE DRUNK IN PUBLIC”, and use that to say that I”m somehow “immoral” because I “wanted to do such disgusting things” and I’m like “…Uh, no, immoral would be if I’d just grabbed some girl and coerced or forced her to come home with my wife to have a lesbian threesome. Also that was like 8 years ago. WTF.”
my family is a moral compass, my friends are a moral compass, my desire to live in an ordered society is a moral compass, and yes, fictional characters from entertainment media that I looked up to as a child and today are a moral compass (though I don’t have to believe they actually EXIST for them to serve that purpose.) You know who is NOT a good moral compass? The characters from the bible, who consisted of war mongers, slavers, murderers, highwaymen, and racists. Also, it was a then perfectly acceptable universal hatred of Jews that led to the policies of Nazi Germany, a cultural habit strongly encouraged by the Christian Church.
Actually, in a weird way we owe our tolerance of jews and other people to World War 2, because it was seeing the terrible effects of casual antisemitism that helped society realize that it was a BAD thing.
Hitler was raised Lutheran, had the approval of the Catholic church, and openly pushed God in most of his speeches. I don’t know where the ‘Hitler was an atheist’ myths come from. Now the Communists were most definitely atheists, but not the Nazis.
…um, Hitler was raised Catholic, not Lutheran. Most Austrians were Catholic – Austria was and is more or less the ruin of the HRE, after all. And I’m not totally sure what you mean by “had the approval of the Catholic Church.” There are a lot of ways to take that, all those I can think of ranging from sort of overstated to just plain wrong.
Indeed. The guy who was pope during WWII has received a lot of (deserved) flack for not taking enough action against the Nazis, but he didn’t exactly endorse them either. Especially not when they killed millions of people and bombed Rome.
Nah, that’ll be the one that has Joyce discussing theology, ethics, and philosophy with Dorothy while Jesus battles Hitler on a dinosaur and Billie and Ruth have lesbian sex in the background.
friggin’ wiggin’ grah, you try to go “Silly folks not reading the comic closely enough” and then it turns out you aren’t reading the comic closely enough
I feel a fool now. Anyway, in that case it seems likely that we’re just not seeing the comic from the right angle.
Actually, coming at it from that angle (Hah! Wordplay!), it seems the most likely option. In the last panel, the wardrobe is tilted in a way that seems to make Joyce’s dad stand in front of Joshua.
…But Joyce’s dad is in profile in the last panel, when we actually ought to be seeing him from behind, so I guess he moved. I cannot figure out the actions in this strip.
I’m fairly sure it is! Shortpacked! never had as many readers as DoA, and I think that the most comments a DoA strip ever had was when Ruth and Billie kissed, which only just broke six hundred.
That’s nothing to scoff at, of course, but this has steamrolled over that and seems to be still going…
Out of the three kids my semi-religious/agnostic parents raised one is semi-religious, one is hyper-religious, and I’m theist agnostic. When people ask me how that works, I reply “I believe in God, I don’t believe in religion.”
People like my hyper-religious sister and Joyce’s parents turned me off of religion. Interestingly enough, my three home-schooled, hyper-religious raised nephews are holiday-religious, religious, and borderline agnostic.
The reason for that last one is that he works at his Mom’s place of worship, and during Easter Sunday spent SIX HOURS getting flipped off while working as a church parking attendant, all because he told the churchgoers that the front parking lot was full and that they had to use the side lot. He is now anti-Easter, which gives his Mom the vapors.
I can’t help but feel that you lose every time you feel like you have to pull the ‘Hitler’ card to win an argument. His use of the ‘Hitler’ card isn’t even historically accurate!
For all his supposed religiousness, Adolf was a superstitious man. He wasn’t ‘partially Jewish’ and he wasn’t Catholic, really, either. He was a fan of the Aryan theory, and probably the idea that he can blame someone else for his own mistakes. (But at the time, most people blamed the Jews for these things. Like ‘I didn’t get into art school because they let in too many Jews and not enough, uh…me.’) Y’know what else he was? A Disney fan. He loved Pinocchio and wrote tons of fanmail to Walt Disney. Does that make Disney evil as well, Mr. Brown?
Sorry. I don’t like his use of the Hitler card. And I kinda have this thing for the history of World War 2 and the Holocaust. Historically, it’s fascinating to me.
It doesn’t win an argument on equal terms, but it seems that here, if Joyce’s dad decides he’s right, he’s treated as being right.
It doesn’t win the argument, but the argument in this case won’t make a difference.
It seems that Joyce is going to genuinely chew out her parents and/or storm out in a huff.
From the Dexter and Head Alien craze we’ve seen, Joyce has a tendency to overdo things–what I’m wondering is if her irritation with what she’s discovered about her parents will cause her to boycot her own religion entirely, at least for a while, which eventually leads to a stress-driven freakout since her faith is a really important coping mechanism for her. This leads to the troublesome but doable effort of reconciling “some people who participate in my religion are jackasses” with “I mostly agree with my religion and it is important to me”, the doing of which will solve some (but not nearly all) of her problems.
It’s pretty obvious and also far-fetched, but if I didn’t spout potential DoA storylines at the drop of a Dexter the Head Alien hat, what sort of malformed inhuman patient monstrosity would I be?
Actually, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if that’s how things went – I know when I finally realized how awful many of the things I believed were, I went to the most opposite extreme I could think of at the time – Wicca. XD I won’t ever go back to Christianity, but my reaction was born of a similar “everything to extremes” personality like Joyce has. I have grown up and out of that (mostly) since then, but a little part of me that still believed for a year or two after my break with Christianity almost saw practicing Wicca as serving what must be the ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE of the Christian G-d, even though that’s pretty silly when you take common Wiccan practices and beliefs into consideration.
She could also just have a crisis of faith and come out a proper Christian, since what drives some people away from the church is the hypocrisy, double standards, and downright un-Christ-like behaviors and attitudes the Church tends to have, rather than ceasing to believe altogether.
The really awful thing is that PEOPLE ACTUALLY THINK THAT WAY. I know – I grew up in a family that was honestly nearly identical to Joyce’s. I myself was pretty much Joyce, and it wasn’t until I was older and started actually spending time with GSM people and non-Christian people that I realized how bigoted and awful the things I’d been brought up believing were.
Needless to say, given the fact that I’m queer and haven’t considered myself a Christian in almost 10 years, my parents and I aren’t on very good terms anymore.
But terrible person that I am, I’m half-expecting Joshua to turn out to be an even bigger bigot than his parents; we’ve been interpreting his behavior in the wrong direction.
To be honest, I’ve been shipping JoshXEthan for a bit now, solely because I can, so it’d be kinda amusing if that happens, although my doubts lie in the fact that Willis prolly won’t be developing a new character from scratch. Maybe.
Aren’t people like Mary why they change churches so much? Course if you are intolerant enough that you hate blindly, then you might get kicked out of churches.
But yeah, they would get along with Mary (unless she says something they don’t agree with. At which point they will blindly hate her.)
I knew one guy who would tell people like that, that he was the anti-Christ.
Backed people off right quick. Of course they were trying to hassle people waiting to get into a nightclub.
Narmenduke,
Basically you are saying, Despite Hitler being baptized,
raised in the Catholic Church, going exclusively to Catholic Schools, Taught to viciously hate Jews in those same schools with far-right Catholic dogma Publicly explaining all his major policies as part of his christianity, having the official backing of Christian Religious parties,
and much of Organized Christianity in Germany, never renouncing Christianity, Never being sanctioned by the Pope,
Never—even to this day—being ex-communicated by the Catholic Church, and passing a law, still in effect to this day, that Funds All Christian Churches directly with taxes; He wasn’t a “Real” Christian because of a small minority of statements skeptical of organized religion that could check his ubridled power….
O dear God, what have you done, Willis? You see these readers? They are a stack of TNT, and you just lit the fuse. Sigh…some people just want to watch the world flame.
“Earlier this week, the French Jewish intellectual, Bernard-Henri Lévy, denounced what he said were media caricatures of Benedict XVI and Pius XII in their dealings with Jews, saying their words and deeds belied their media portrayals. “
You sound like a concern troll. Nobody was even “hateful” or making “unfair attacks” in the first place. They never said “all x are bad”, so I don’t know where all this came.
Check out the first threading of comments at the top of this page. This person has already called all of us liars by denying that behavior as seen in this day’s comic even exists. They are literally entering into a place full of abused people and telling them their problems are fake. Read the many, many responses of folks on this page who have lived through a family exactly like Joyce’s and tell me any different.
Meanwhile, this person is primarily concerned with the reputation of an inanimate organization, something that possesses no feelings. That is where their passion lies — not in the testimonies of real flesh and blood people which fill the 1000+ comments on this page. Safeguarding the institution while disregarding people.
I don’t mean to come across as judgmental myself, but… if you are ridiculously ignorant, can’t be arsed to become informed despite ample opportunity to do so, and are harshly judgmental and hateful toward others based on that limited perspective… you might be a bad person.
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Holy Hell that just happened.
Stupid.
Sorry, I’m in shock.
No, Stupid is what’s happening
Mom! Dad! If I wanted to have this conversation I would just go to the Youtube comments!
Good one. 🙂
It’s extra funny because Hitler was a devoted christian. Just as Mussolini and also as the Spanish and many Latin-American facists. They all made it very clear in their letters, propaganda and public speachs.
Read Hitler’s Table Talk, he expresses more pagan beliefs than Christian. He makes statements to the effect that the RCC should be a powerless church with a weak leader. He claimed Jesus was an Aryan and other lies. He had an Anti-Christian Martin Bormann in his inner-circle & was an admirer of “God is dead” Nietzsche, thus Hitler’s wish for “Übermensch.”
Mussolini came to power on an Anti-Cotholic ticket, and had to deal w/ the RCC after he was in power. See the book “condemned to repeat it” by Allison, Adams & Hambly.
How do you tell when a politician is lying? There lips move.
It would be convenient, but I doubt it.
@Far The “anti-christianity” of the Nazis was because they rightly saw the christian churches as potential nexuses of dictatorial powers in opposition to their own. Aside from Bormann and Rosenberg (who was heavily marginalised for being too nutty), the Nazi hierarchy didn’t want to destroy christianity but to subvert it to their own use (i.e. do to the cult what Constantine did back in the 4th century, and many rulers since), thus the invention of “German christianity” during the Nazi regime, and the attempt to corral all the protestant sects into it.
And you also have to remember, Hitler did believe in the christian god, he thought he had sent him (Hitler) down to earth to lead his (god) favoured Aryan people to dominance over the world. The table talk snippets denouncing christianity all happened either soon after prominent christians questioned the wisdom of Hitlers varied genocide programmes (we all know how well Adolf reacted to criticism) or when the war was obviously lost (and Downfall showed us how babyish he was when things weren’t going his way). He wanted Germany to be christian, just not the kind of christian it then was.
I’m tickled by the presented incredible savvy of distrusting politicians while defending a 2000-year-old story of guys saying they saw a dead guy once after he died, written forty years after it happened.
I think pointing out his pagan beliefs or what not is in danger of being a “True scottsman” fallacy. as in “he doesnt adhere to what i’d call and X so he isnt an X” which is exactly what millions of christians say bout millions of christians. And conveniently ignore their differences when it comes to “Christians vs Y”.
Cus if we are going to talk about people who aren’t “real” christians i’d point out all the ones who for some weird reason celebrate a pagan holiday in winter dedicated to celebrating the rise of the winter court of Faeries and the astrological continuation cycle in which people hang poisonous plants and decorate evergreen trees to be homes for Faeries.
Yes but unfortunately both Hitler and Mussolini were Catholic which to folks like Joyce’s parents doesn’t count.
At least Youtube doesn’t have the ‘in your face’ aspect that real life does.
Why go to YuoTube, when Willis will do it here?
Remember, these are Willis’ characters saying what Willis wants them to say. Very much “strawmen”.
Um, no. They’re based on people he’s actually met. He was apparently told similar things by his own parents.
When you’re on a webpage with like 1000 comments, and a good portion of those comments are from people saying “yes, this was my life, this was my life exactly,” and it’s from content created by a guy who lived this for twenty years, clearly the course of action you’ve chosen here is the best one.
C’mon. Keep on calling all of us liars. Remind us why we left.
@Cronomatt Well, I grew up in a situation similar to Joyce’s and I remember hearing the rumor that Hitler was partly Jewish. This rumor was connected to a theory that because the Jews were God’s favored people, they either did awesome things or were mini-antichrist’s.
Idiocy and bigotry happened.
Don’t forget inflamed argumentative assumption.
More like control issues and inability to cope with not being able to make their children’s decisions for them forever using Christianity as a shield happened.
I have seen this happen quite often with controlling religious families.
Brolaf was the shit, dude
The fuck happened to all that stuff I learned in Catholic school? Love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, don’t be stupid judgmental dicks (yes, that was an actual lesson I got in sixth grade, exact words), casting stones? Did they stop teaching it?
They Aren’t Catholic, Though That Is A Lesson I Learned Growing Up (Raised Presbyterian If That Makes A Difference) Seems Fundamentalists Thrive On Hypocrisy.
Catholic != Fundimentalist Protestant, and in both cases Actual Doctrine != People’s Interpretation Thereof*, and Interpreted Doctrine != Actual Behavior.
* One of the more infuriating examples I’ve encountered within Catholicism – it’s been said by multiple Popes (notably Pius XII who said it first, and JPII who expanded on it) that evolution is not incompatible with God (basically ‘God gave us souls’ is the important part, and ‘evolution gave us the form we have’ doesn’t contradict that), but I’ve encountered a whole whackload of Catholic creationists, who bust out the idiotic ‘Humans and Dinosaurs coexisted’ and ‘if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?’ crap.
You know who WAS Catholic?
Not Hitler. Hitler used vaguely Christian ideas to help his build to power, but ultimately, the Aryan outlook became a cult of its own with him as its leader, based on a mix of Catholic and Teutonic ideals.
Well, it was catholic enough to keep the pope appeased.
He was officially a Catholic, though: he was raised as one and always claimed to be one; whether he was sincere is a different matter.
So he wasn’t much different from all those corrupted “devout Christian” one-percenters we have today….
Probably. Of course, most of those “Christian one-percenters” are happy to wait for their God to do the bombing and ethnic cleasing for them (I think it’s called ‘the rapture’) That’s an improvement.
Oh, I know a few idiots (including former friends, sadly) who think that Nazism was socialist…
@Totz the Plaid
That’s probably because the Nazi party’s official name was “National Socialist German Workers’ Party”. But since they weren’t socialist (by the definition of socialist at any point in time since its creation), a lot of them were not German (Hitler was Austrian)(I mean okay technically Austrians are German it’s just that at the creation of Germany as a country, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Prussia were NOT friends), etc.
If they did appeal to anyone with socialist ideals, it was only because the mark was worth less than the shit they wiped off their asses at the time. And they only got power because Hitler was really charismatic and the party in power thought “oh he’s just a figurehead, if we get him on our council he’ll just be a charismatic puppet” and then it turned out he was a domineering asshole who also happened to be charismatic.
(… Sorry my History Professor last term has his doctorate in Modern European history so he went way in depth on WWII and how it all happened. You do not want to see how many pages of notes I have from those lectures.)
Makes it a lot easier to sleep at night if you pretend no one evil has ever been Christian, huh?
Chill out, Li. Hitler wasn’t Christian, not really. He paid lip service to Christianity because he knew that was what would get him elected, and no, he never officially left the Catholic church (again, probably because it was a better political move to stay there), but he personally disliked religion and did not consider himself religious.
I’m pretty chill, really.
We like to pretend that no one has ever done anything terrible in “our” camp (whatever camp that may be); we tell ourselves that Nazi Germany was atheist and Communist, even though neither of those things are true. (The Nazi party was capitalist, and in America we thought they’d drive out the awful Communist influence from that country, which had been rising of its own accord). In America, “eugenics” had also taken hold, and when Germany first started segregating its population, some in America complained that they were “beating us at our own game”.
We can’t afford to forget shit like this just because it’s ugly. And in our current climate, we can afford it even less.
I reiterate: it’s comforting to pretend that no one can look like us while being vile, because then we ourselves are protected from being vile. But it’s especially egregious to protect ourselves from the idea of a Christian Hitler while foisting the blame for him off onto other persecuted minorities to help give us more reason to hate them.
I’ve never met anyone who thinks that Nazi Germany was communist; it’s pretty universally known that they were fascists, and anyone who knows the first thing about WWII history knows that they were explicitly out to destroy communism. And it’s also universally acknowledged that the people of Hitler’s Germany were mostly Christians (I can’t speak for Totz the Plaid, but I’m certainly not arguing against that point). So I have no idea where you’re getting “we tell ourselves that Nazi Germany was atheist and communist” from
And nobody’s burying their heads in the sand when it comes to Hitler’s personal anti-religion, that’s just the truth. Again, he may have officially been Catholic, but he was by no means a practicing Christian.
Hitler was as much a Christian as many Americans, who consider themselves to be Christians, despite not being devout. It is stupid to try to disown him simply because you dislike what he did – that just opens the door for some other charismatic madman to pull the same trick.. And regardless of Hitler, many Germans were devout Christians who were perfectly okay with having the Jews shipped off “for the good of the state”. Maybe they wouldn’t have wanted to see all of them massacred, but that doesn’t help the victims of Hitler’s giant organized pogrom that we now call the Holocaust.
For that matter, it doesn’t help the thousands upon thousands of Jews who were killed by Christians in Europe due to other pogroms. Or the millions of Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike, who were killed by other Christians.
What jaimehlers said, with a healthy heaping of “lucky you, you’ve escaped our propaganda machine”. But don’t for a second think that “atheist Communist Nazi Germany” is something I made up. No. It’s a quite popular little lie.
Additionally: fascism is totally unrelated to economic systems. Nazi Germany was both fascist AND capitalist.
I’m not trying to “disown” anyone. I am an atheist. I have no reason to try and sweep Christians who do horrible things under the rug. They disgust me.
But Hiter actually was not a Christian. He may have professed to be so in public, but he made numerous private statements to his associates stating his distrust and his dislike of religion. Yes, he was nominally Catholic, but as someone mentioned below, you have to actually believe in the stuff to be part of it, and it doesn’t appear that Hitler did. That’s what separates him from a “Christmas and Easter Christian.” He actually just didn’t believe it.
And Li, I never said Nazi Germany wasn’t capitalist. I said they weren’t communist. Fascism is opposed to communism. So when I said they were fascist, I meant that that meant the weren’t communist.
Regardless of whether Hitler was Christian or not, he still used Christianity to control others and convince them to perform atrocities. Regardless of whether he actually believed in God, he still used belief in God to rally other believers under the flag of Nazi Germany. It doesn’t matter if he was sincere or not. Religion is culpable either way, for being a tool that has such power over a person that it can convince them that killing hordes of innocent people is for the best.
Yep, no true Scotsman. I knew that would show up eventually.
There’s no way to really prove what someone believed either.
…the following comment was meant to be part of this thread. Oops:
Oh, I know a few idiots (including former friends, sadly) who think that Nazism was socialist…
So he was bad Catholic. The RCC doesn’t exactly let you leave once you’re baptised into the Church. Nulla salus and all that.
What do you mean? Plenty of people have been ex-communicated.
And you can always use the apostasy proceeding (though it’s complicated to do).
John Paul II?
Do Popes shit in the woods?
I was raised Cath & spent a few years in school, and the Chicago region never taught any such Fundie Jesus riding dinosaurs bullshiit. And I paid attention, because I got kicked out for kickng ass by 5th grade.
My entire family back to the early 1930s all went to cath School in Pittsburgh. Never EVER were they taught such shit. They glossed evolution with “we came from the sea” and taught dinos like a science should be, sticking to “periods” without getting into years, but never once teaching the 6 day creation as a 24 hour human day.
I don’t know where you met the Catholics YOU know, but I’ll bet there is moonshine involved.
They skipped that part when they didn’t read the catholic rulebook.
Not only are Joyce’s parents not Catholic, they almost certainly don’t consider Catholics to be Christian. In fact, if they’re anything like most Fundamentalist Christians I’ve known and read, they consider Catholicism to be a Satanic counterfeit of Christianity, designed to fool people into damning their souls while thinking they’re saving them. Sometimes there are implied connections to ancient Babylon.
It’s a scary way to look at the world.
I’ve always wondered what those people think of Orthodoxy. Reading those anti-Catholic screeds, I usually get the distinct impression the author doesn’t realize that they exist… the closest is typically mention of “Catholics slaughtering true Christians” in the fourth crusade, but in light of the typical claim that things started downhill with Constantine, that just ends up raising further questions.
Some Christians don’t like the Christ bits.
These things always go hand in hand.
It’s really unfair to the readers when the cartoonist invokes Godwin’s Law before we can. Damn you Willis!
You know WHO else had something to do with the Godwin’s Law before us?
Yeah. I cant believe joyce’s family are such dicks.
Ok. Fuck Joyce’s parents. You heard me. I am past jokey mad and legitimately hate these fictional people.
Amen
Do you need a barb-wired baseball bat?
Agreed, also because they’re completely wrong. Nazi Germany was (technically) religious, they’re thinking of Soviet Russia, as it was anti-religion due to the communists. I know I sound like a bible-thumping redneck when I say that, but I’m not, and it’s the truth; the USSR grouped capitalists and religious organizations together due to the tendency towards corruption and taking money.
Stalin was an atheist who forged an ego cult for himself, and cut out other religions to keep them from competing with Stalinism… technically Communism isn’t anti-religious.
Like in all things concerning communisem the state is just preserving it’s monopoly.
Depends on what you choose to call “communism”. Lenin was using rather scorching terms for religion in general. But of course, “practiced” communism had only comparatively loose ties to the views and theories of its nominal founders.
Communism is based on an atheistic worldview: Karl Marx stated that a society of non-exploited, non-alienated human beings would have no use for religion. It was his followers who went from “no use” to “must be destroyed”, but that may also have to do with the fact that religious institutions of the era -starting with the Catholic church- were often ultra-conservative and basically preached against social reform and workers’ rights.
There’s really no such thing as “an atheistic worldview”.
“No such thing as an atheistic worldview?” In which sense?
In the sense that it’s just disbelief. It doesn’t require any specific views.
This is what I meant. Marx’s creation was close to one of the church’s most heavily abusive eras, and his doctrine was that people would reject all forms of capitalist corruption and greed, let the people control everything, and once people got used to it and relinquished the idea of a person having more stuff than another, government, along with other forms of control over people, would be unneeded and cast aside.
Nazi Germany, on the other hand, was Facist, which is a bad mix of capitalism and totalitarianism. Hitler, in fact, used religion to get people on his side and influence them to come under his regime’s command (the US, also in fact, used this and continues to use this method).
Communism like so many utopic ideas tended to fail in practice due to not fully tking in account human nature.
No, not really, communist systems don’t like religion because it threatens their authority and hold on power over the people.
It is not that so much as that religion tends to actively placate people being exploited by systems not built to protect them from exploitation. The idea is that people will keep their heads down and not make waves even if they are being abused by a feudal or a capitalist or a whatever system if they believe they will be reward in the afterlife, while people who do not believe that will fight harder to make things fair in this life. Communism as Marx imagined it was a socially just system where people would be treated fairy and cared for generously by their fellow man, the idea is that when you have that you no longer need God to fill that role.
I do not really think that religion and social revolution are incompatible, personally, but that is the general idea.
Meanwhile the Nazis preached that all Russians were actually Jews. Which is why more than 70% of Russian POWs were executed.
Damn right. I take back what I said a couple nights ago: this is why I can’t stand Christians. As if all atheists are automatically heartless, amoral, murdering rapists, and all Christians are good, innocent people who would never, ever do anything bad. Y’know, fear of god isn’t the only reason to be a good person, and I am very disturbed by Christians who think it is.
Actually the bible can be used to justify almost anything. God gives his blessing on incest, murder, genocide and slavery… But of course it’s the atheist moral compass that it’s off. At least atheist don’t try to defend themselves with God told me to do it….
Actually, God was not fine with incest once he made up his mind and dictated Mosaic law. People like Adam’s or Noah’s immediate descendants or Abraham (marrying his half-sister) preceded that.
Problem is, people who use scripture to defend their actions, tend to be selective in their quotes. My point that you can find a quote in the bible to justify almost anything still stands. If you go by the spirit of the teachings of Jesus, he would be mortified by lots of things done in his name, both in the pat and the present.
Anyone who uses scripture has a tendency to be selective in their quotes, whether defending their actions or not. Taking things out of context is an underlying problem with using a book as big as the Bible to create an argument.
Don’t forget Lot’s daughters.
Why’d you do that, Heavensrun… Now I have that image stuck in my head. Gross.
Well, their offspring was not unilaterally successful.
I like how he needed some time to make his mind up.
Incest was kinda hard to avoid back when Adam and Eve were alive since everyone was more or less related.
If Joyce, Dorothy or Roz were my sisters, I’d have used the bible to convince them incest was just fine! Or hit them over the heads with it! Same if my Sis was Sandra Bullock, Salma, and a host of other chicks!
Unless they were Kardashians… then I’d have used it to encourage human sacrifice of virgins – and with THEM, probably have to start (and finish) before the end of 2nd grade AND live near a volcano.
Your gravatar looks like a textbook example of why generations of inbreeding is bad.
You better not mean “hit” in the literal sense, because I’d make you eat the book.
And that’s not cool…even if they are over-rated and supposedly annoying.
The scary part is the implication that these people would absolutely rape and murder and steal all the time if they weren’t afraid of God.
I have seen a couple of Christians confirm that, yes, the only thing keeping them from going on a rapey murder-pillage spree is a fear of hell.
I’m willing to bet that’s more them being intractable in their position than any reflection of their actual desires.
Yes, I have made this very point to some of the more annoying fundies who have attempted to convert me.
The scary part is the implication that these people would absolutely rape and murder and steal all the time if they weren’t afraid of God.
Thank goodness for “Murder Simulators” as Jack Thompson calls them, otherwise I might actually have to go out in the real world to get my murder fix. 😛
You know, your use of the word ‘all’ in “all atheists” kind of makes it sound like if most, or at least a good portion of atheists are heartless, amoral, murdering rapists.
We’re not.
I’m Jewish, and I don’t think anyone needs to hate these people. A simple befuddled head shake and a long drawn out sigh should do.
Obviously, I don’t speak for everyone in my particular minority group, and everyone is of course welcome to react how they want, but if I let all the uninformed, preposterous things people say make me hate them, I’d lose myself. I mostly just pity neo-nazis when I come across the insane conspiracy theories I read online, and Joyce’s parents certainly don’t seem actively hateful on that level…just immersed in a framework of ignorance that allows them to perpetuate some recognizably harmful beliefs. I can’t hate them. I can really only feel sorry for them.
In their minds they’re trying to protect a loved one. It just sucks that the bubble they’ve chosen to immerse themselves in causes that behavior to manifest in a really ignorant way.
On a side note, being bi as well, I await Ethan meeting Joyce’s parents with a strange mix of dread and excitement.
They still need to be punched in the face…with logical arguments.
Unfortunately logic all-too-often doesn’t work in these case. They just tell themselves that logic and critical thinking are tools of Satan to try to make them doubt their faith and dismiss them out of hand.
I don’t want to change their minds, I just want them humiliated.
We’ve seen how Joyce handles logical arguments:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/proven/
There’s no expectation that her parents are any different. In fact, given that they’re older and likely are quite aware that they are wrong (at least on a subconscious level), they probably are downright vicious to anyone that disagrees with them or who can argue against them.
Bonus points: Joyce sees nothing wrong with physically assaulting someone who does something she doesn’t like (Joe), wonder what’s gonna happen when the climax of this storyarc arrives. Will we be seeing some violence from the good parents there?
That was just for comedy and she felt bad afterward. If they do strike her, I think it will end badly for everyone.
You’re both of my demographics, except that you’re also level-headed. Nice to meet you, I appreciate your calming perspective.
Nice to meet you as well, and thank you kindly!
you did notice the main aim were atheists… The main statement being without God there can be no morality… not that i want to interfere with your right to be offended so you can show off how you rise above it, and feel better…
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but the final panel happens to contain Joyce expressing concern that someone with my heritage is being compared to Nazis, and her own father trying to JUSTIFY said comparison by claiming a genocidal dictator that killed many people with that heritage potentially shared it, correct? That is a thing I am allowed to offer personal perspective in response to, no?
Not trying to disregard that Joyce’s parents have seriously unfortunate attitudes towards Dorothy’s atheism expressed in the comic, and of course people are allowed to respond to that, but I fail to see where I was out of line.
“not that i want to interfere with your right to be offended so you can show off how you rise above it, and feel better”
Also not trying to be impolite, and I truly apologize if I’m misinterpreting, but I get the sense you’re being really condescending here. Again I was just offering my personal perspective. I explicitly said I didn’t speak for anyone, and didn’t put down anyone for feeling differently than myself. That was uncalled for.
you do realize it’s a comic? Nobody is doing anything, it’s all just a drawing on a screen… There are no parents to defend here. If you feel the need the need to either defend to condemn, it should be the author.
Having said that, the true party to be offended would be devout christians, since the author is actually making a joke at their expense. the hitler was a jokes are pretty much done to death, and hardly ever have any true merit. So it is already silly being offended by them.
coming from a country where jewish organizations (well mostly one) have taking offense to a level that most Jews say, give it a rest already, and we are talking a country were a picture of a pig was deemed offensive, i find your offense mildly amusing. It’s a joke, no offense was intended. So lighten up.
Even within the context of the comics there was no offense. Even you argue there was no malice against Judaism within the context of the strip, so there would be no reason to be offended.
But then again if yo feel the need to be offended be my guest. As long as you remember that there is a right to free speech, but there is no right not to be offended.
Basically every comment on every comic on this site is responding to the ideas presented in the comics. That doesn’t mean anybody is actually unaware that the characters aren’t real, but some of the ideas they present ARE real. But there is no reason for anybody to condemn the author for portraying those ideas, as they are not his own ideas. Anyways, and correct me if I’m wrong, but Sgore is not actually offended. The only person who seems offended here is you.
Sgore is (again, correct me if I’m wrong) talking about a real reaction to the real ideas that are presented by these fictional characters, as someone who is hurt by those ideas. Many real people do believe such things about atheists and Jews. I’ve met people who really do believe Hitler was Jewish, and use that as some sort of criticism of Jews. Who are you to say whether she can or cannot be offended by them? She didn’t express any offense at the comic, anyways, but merely expressed her opinion on the ideas contained therein.
And the comic DOES refer to Jews. Joyce’s mom’s comment is about atheists, but her dad’s comment is saying Hitler was possibly Jewish, which is the comment to which you seem to think Sgore is taking offense. But as someone who identifies as both atheist and Jewish, I can tell you both of those ideas are offensive, but that doesn’t mean anybody should blame Willis for representing them here. I don’t think anybody here is offended at the comic’s existence, and an open discussion of the offensive ideas that are represented in it does not indicate oversensitivity to the comic itself. Discussing hateful and hurtful beliefs and why they are hateful and hurtful doesn’t mean anybody feels they have a “right not to be offended.” I, and probably most other people, really wish harmful beliefs about Jews didn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean anyone feels like they have some special right to not see them; discussing these ideas and how they make us feel isn’t demanding special treatment.
Maybe you should lighten up. Again, you’re the one who seems to be offended by Sgore offering her opinion, here.
“but some of the ideas they present ARE real”
I can personally confirm this, i have had the conversation in the first three panels verbatim with my extended family. something that is worrying when you are the atheist mentioned.
This isa response to several at once, so not all comments relate directly to the parent post.
First off, I believe very much in free speech, and everybody’s right to express their opinion. Just like others I like to express mine. I don’t mind a discussion, as long as it’s done on the basis of arguments. I try never to take things personal, nor make things personal. Since I don’t know anyone here in person, me responses are always based on (my perception of) their comments, and never intended as personal attacks.
As a former Catholic turned Atheist (yes, actually had my name removed from the baptismal register), i’ve first hand experienced some of the believes expressed in this comic. However I never came across anyone that actually believed Hitler was (part) Jewish. The statement would be considered ridiculous. But then again, I never considered there might be countries (in the western world) were people might actually give any credit to that notion. On that basis I saw little offense in that remark. In fact I see it as a comment on the intelligence of the dad, and the (to put it polite) overly devout in general.
There is a large group that believe Atheism to be the root of all evil. Every day all religions demand their share of respect while offering none in return. Being both gay and Atheist i’m used to being insulted by religion on a regular basis.I have more than once heard the comment about Nazis being Atheist, because God fearing men would not do that. And colored as my judgement might be, i think this comic was more about Joyce’s parents views on Atheists than on Jews.
Of course it’s about atheism more than Judaism, because they’re talking about Dorothy, who’s an atheist more than a Jew. (Is it even true that she’s part Jewish? I don’t remember that being mentioned anywhere else, but that’s really irrelevant anyways.) But their apparent views on Judaism are questionable, too. And comparing someone who is part Jewish to Nazis is kind of not okay, even if the main issue is their atheism. So yeah, I think these views are offensive to both Jews AND atheists AND, in particular, atheistic Jews. And just because the atheism is the focus doesn’t mean you should just dismiss any offense expressed by Jews. I get that you identify with the hatred of atheism shown here, but why must that result in you dismissing anybody identifying with the antisemitism and telling them to “lighten up” just because you think it affects you more? This isn’t a “who-do-the-Browns-offend-more” contest.
And there definitely are people out there who believe Hitler was Jewish. A small minority, to be sure, and of course it’s ridiculous, but the belief does exist.
You’re kidding me right Luggs? “It’s just a comic” and “Lighten up, it’s just a joke.”
It is a very distasteful joke. It seems these past few strips haven’t been about “Haha, look at the funny”, they’re showing how Joyce has grown. In doing so, Willis showed a lesson that she’s learned, and it’s a lesson that most of us have gone through at one point or another.
I feel for Joyce. I grew up in a religious household, and I had my own beliefs shaken by my own research. When I tried to leave that belief system behind, it offended my family. But I digress.
Everyone has a right to their opinion. They also have a right to have opinions on someone else’s opinion. I’m not going to infringe on your right by saying “get off the internet troll.” I don’t have that right, and I wouldn’t want it. I am, however, going to use my right to leave an opinion about your opinion, and question your character as a person for questioning someone else’s character for being offended by you insulting them.
End rant.
@TheLuggs: If you want mindless entertainment, go somewhere else.
Missed the Your heritage part… Hate to break it to you, but Dorothy is depicted as Atheist, not as Jewish. The comment from the mom within the context was aimed at Atheists and not Jews. The she is part Jewish remark would be a statement she’s not a “full” Atheist. So even the simple premise that Joyce feels the need to defend Dorothy by making a claim she’s not a real Atheist could be considered offensive. It’s again referring to a widespread misconception that morality stems from religion. While scripture is filled with things that would now be considered immoral. For example God seems to approve of slavery.
Just to make a point, i’ll use a quote from Leviticus, since bible thumpers like to use Leviticus to point out why Gay people are immoral:
However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
Can you explain the morality in this ?
Actually despite the lie Joyce told her parents about going to church with Dorothy, I’m pretty sure “she’s part Jewish” is a response to the Hitler comment.
As in, “How dare you compare my friend to Hitler, her family is more closely related to his victims than WE are.”
She didn’t lie, she took Dorothy to church that one time and brought Sierra along. It’s heavily implied that Joyce and Sierra have been going together every week, which is probably the girl she told her parents about. Her parents were the ones that assumed “oh this is Joyce best friend? She must be the religious one that goes to church with her.”
This hadn’t occurred to me. I feel even ponder towards Joyce with that in mind. (Not that I was super resentful about the “lie” before, but I could see why it would be hurtful to Dorothy?)
Actually the Hitler comment follows Joyce’s comment that Dorothy is part Jewish.
The but she’s Jewish comments follow after mom compared her to Nazis for being Atheist, which implies it’s ok to compare Atheists to Nazis..
It implies no such thing. What it implies is that it’s not okay to compare a Jew to Nazis. Saying she’s part Jewish doesn’t take away from her atheism, but it does make the comparison to Nazis particularly distasteful. You can be a Jewish atheist, depending on how you define Jewish. I’m one. Joyce isn’t saying, “Well, she’s Jewish, so she’s not REALLY an atheist, so you can’t compare her to Nazis.” Being Jewish makes the comment particularly terrible, but there’s no implication there that the comparison of atheists to Nazis is any more apt if they aren’t Jewish.
You seem to think that Joyce saying she’s Jewish is taking away from her atheism, but it isn’t. It’s like if Joyce’s mom had said, “Left-handed people like her are what cause the Holocaust,” and Joyce had replied, “Mom, she’s Jewish!” That isn’t saying that under other circumstances, the comparison between left-handed people and Nazis is just fine; it’s just saying that in this case, the comparison is particularly awful because she is Jewish.
Calling it “the Hitler comment” was just glossing. I meant the NAZI comment, which does indeed come before Joyce’s protest.
You seem to have the misconceived notion that all Jews practice Judaism. Being Jewish is as much a heritage as a religion.
Someone obviously doesn’t quite grasp the distinction between practicing and ethnically Jewish. Same goes for the distinction between “devout christians” and fundamentalist flat-earthers.
You don’t even need a god to deny science.
Quit trolling. Sgore didn’t say she was offended.
She’s not “part” anything, but it is apparently a culture as well.
Yes, Joyce’s parents are fictional. However, you do know that there are millions of Christians just in America who have exactly the same opinion as them, right? The authors are making a point about the attitudes that many Christians hold, not because they’re reasoned out or well-considered, but because of nebulous feelings and things they were taught as children.
Yes, that means that a lot of Christians believe that atheists are morally deficient, capable of doing any evil, simply because they don’t believe in gods. They don’t believe it because atheists actually do evil things, they believe it because they can’t imagine someone being able to be moral without a god telling them how to be moral.
The problem is, when you’re depending on something or someone else to provide you with your moral center, it’s easy to justify doing horrific things if you can convince yourself – or be convinced – that they’re actually moral to the external source of your morality.
Now, I live in Texas, and I’ve been in a lot of different churches from different Protestant traditions, and that’s not how I’ve ever heard this argument presented*. It’s not “atheists can’t be trusted because they have no fear of God and therefore no morality,” it’s “the atheist position is untenable because even they believe some things are inherently morally correct or morally wrong, which implies some kind of authority for morality, which implies God.”
Anyone who makes that first argument is either ignorant and unaware of the Scripture itself, or malicious. For example, in Romans 2:14-16, Paul implied there is that the law (summed up in “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Love God with all you have”) is written on our hearts by nature. There are other references to unbelievers having consciences elsewhere, as well as our natural consciences being corrupted and therefore unreliable, but if we had no moral center without Christ, we could never see that Christ fulfills the moral center we have and come to know and love Him.
I am aware that posting these sorts of things will most likely make me seem like a raving lunatic, so you don’t have to tell me that I sound like one. 🙂
*I could just be lucky, and I will accept the testimony of witnesses that they have seen such a thing preached in churches.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that, sure, some people who claim Christianity say this, but I’ve never seen it officially taught, and those who say these sorts of things are ignorant of what Christianity actually teaches.
I will agree that anyone who says something like “the fear of Hell is all that keeps me from committing evil” is either a dangerous madman or clinging to an ignorant position through sheer bullheadedness.
Like most things that get this kind of response, I’m guessing this is something that Willis was told verbatim when he was growing up.
It doesn’t automatically imply anything.
I’m a Jewish Atheist, and I immediately saw red after reading the last panel. I’m not sure I would be able to keep myself from screaming at anyone who actually said that to me.
That loud screeching was the sound of me co-signing this comment so hard…
And that loud squealing was me telling you your Gravitar is pretty.
That yelling was me yelling that I don’t know what we’re screeching, squealing, and yelling about.
…
(i love lamp)
Man, Elan’s latest album really stopped bringing the bardsong, just went for the straight Sonic Damage…
Sonic Damage sounds like the name of a metal band.
I would have said Techno industrial, but I see your point.
Yeeeeah…I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, hoping it’d turn out they were more like Joyce…more set in their ways, but still ultimately well-meaning, just rather ignorant and sheltered from different points of view. Then they just snapped right to Godwin’s Law. Fuck those peeps, fo shizzle. [/Robin]
As for Joshua…I won’t think less of him if he doesn’t help Joyce out here, just because he hasn’t been around long enough for me to think anything of him at all. I’ll definitely think *more* of him if he does help his sister out, though.
I don’t think Godwin’s law means what you think it does.
Actually it doesn’t mean what I was thinking it meant when I wrote that. Darnit….
(Was thinking of Poe’s Law).
Carry on…
Fear not, for I too know the sting of *shudder* being mistaken about a minor point on the Internet! Alas, you’re quite correct about Poe’s Law not applying, however; the Browns are all too accurate to real life.
Poe’s Law applies to most everything Willis writes on this subject, though, since a lot of people seem to take it as particularly hamhanded parody.
Wouldn’t that be like Inverted Poe’s Law? I thought Poe’s Law was that no matter how over the top you made a parody of extremism, someone would mistake it as a depiction of the real thing. Or is it? Damn, now I’m not sure!
Poe’s law: If an authors intent on the subject is not clear, then it could easily be seen as both a parody and a real depiction. At least that what I was told it was told.
Poe’s Law: Any ‘fundamentalist’ piece given as satire will be mistaken for the real thing; there is no position so radical that it has not been taken by a fundamentalist of one side or the other at some time.
Corollary: real fundamentalist positions will be derided as satire by defenders/attackers of the position.
Poe’s Law works both ways – basically it can be stated that real fundamentalism (religious or political) is indistinguishable from parody, so you can never know which is which.
Well then, I’d say up till now Poe’s Law actually held…though I’m not currently seeing anyone treat Joyce’s parents as anything other than the genuine article.
Regarding Joshua, I think what’s important is that he is being supportive of Joyce, even if he’s not explicitly defending her. He knows his parents are a lost cause and not worth the struggle, but he still seems sympathetic to what Joyce is going through.
A good point, and despite what I said before, I think that if Joshua doesn’t do *anything* to show Joyce his support, even if it’s literally behind their parents back, I will think a bit less of him. Downgrade in perception from ‘suspiciously neutral’ to ‘suspicious’ anyway.
Yeah. Fuck them. Mr. & Mrs. Brown are hateful scum. They have leapfrogged the Wilcoxes and Siegals in my mind. All three sets of parents are utterly vile, though.
I can understand hating the Siegal’s (mainly Ethan’s mother)
And the Brown’s (mainly Joyce’s Parents)
…But what have the Wilcoxes done at all that deserves such hatred?
Some people are interpreting Mrs. Wilcox’s attitude towards Danny’s breakup and “new girlfriend” as her being judgy and emotionally abusive. I still think we’ve seen way to little to justify that position, and that her attitude is kinda understandable given the circumstances.
Their comments (both Danny’s mom AND dad’s) are definitely indicative of an at least somewhat emotionally abusive attitude.
I grew up with an emotionally abusive father. I know what I’m talking about.
While I’m not thrilled with the Wilcoxes’ attitude in that conversation, the place where Mrs. Wilcox really steps over the line is demanding if Danny’s new girlfriend is as good as Dorothy. Leaving aside the unfair ridiculousness of the question (“Well, on a rating scale of one to ten…”), what, exactly, is she expecting him to say? “No, mom, she’s not. I guess I’ll go break up with her right now and stalk Dorothy until she changes her mind about breaking up with me, or, failing that, remain ever romantically alone because no woman can ever compare to the one who dumped me.”
As much as it does seem like their bugging him, you gotta se it on their side. They spent a hefty amount of money to send their son to a collage he only went to because his girlfriend was going, only to find out that the girl in question dumped him a week into it. Can you see why they might be a little ticked off? (P.s. I wholeheartedly agree that asking if his new girlfriend was as good as the old one is unacceptable)
I wonder how much of his pursuing Dorothy to college was driven by them though.
Well, given that Danny’s father legitimately thought that Danny following Dorothy to college was a good idea, I think it would be safe to say they had a part in it.
That is an interesting theory, the idea that the Wilcoxs hoped that by allowing him to be led by his love of Dotty to go to college and get a college education, but with the break-up, they now fear he might drop out or something.
Yep. Legit hate here.
Let us shake our heads and pat Joshua sympathetically on the shoulder.
I just want to put him in my backpAck and hide him in a safe place in the woods.
You either have a HUGE backpack or do you intend on dismembering him first? 😛
I know, right? I mean, he clearly doesn’t want to be anywhere near this argument and yet he’s been expressly forbidden to leave. T.T Speaking as one who also hates being around when people are yelling at each other, I feel more for him than I do for Joyce. Heck, I’m more focused on that than the idiotic logic their parents are using! And since the idiotic logic was clearly supposed to be the point (as well as being a bit of a pet peeve for me anyways), this is saying a lot.
Part of me agrees, but another part of me is like “Dude, your the big brother here. You clearly don’t agree with the stupid crap your parents are saying (at least, I assume that ‘pick your battles’ line to Joyce means your on her side). Your little sister could some backup here.”
If he enters this “debate” knowing nothing more than his parents do about Sarah, does that actually help? And the truly stupid stuff happened after he tried to skip town, and he may yet have a response to that stuff. I say give him the benefit of the doubt until the next strip.
Holy shit I already hate her parents just bring back the ones from It’s Walky please ;-;
I know, they were so nice there, so… not this.
At least the worse thing they did back then was try to get Joyce to give them some grandbabies.
So that “Really good book” doesn’t count as bad or naughty?
Hm..It’s odd, but I just can’t summon any hate for them. I mean, yeah they’re totally wrong and pretty terrible, but there’s no emotion there.
I guess I’m just confident that Joyce will shake off their venom and keep hanging around with Dorothy.
Me too, honestly. They’re not earning any kind of sympathy here, but I can’t muster up any sort of hatred towards them like other characters I know.
Yeah, I can’t say that I hate them either. Probably because I can’t think of them as people. They’re just something that needs to be escaped.
I thought that earlier, based on what we learned about them from Joyce, without remembering their appearance in the first few strips, but I was advised to withhold judgment until we got a clearer picture. Only now I think I was right.
Wow, just… wow
Oh. Oh, no. No no no.
Do you know who else was Jewish?
JESUS.
Historical Jesus?
No, Blue Sash Jesus.
Wait, how many Jesuses are there again?
Six.
Wait — it’s not Tuesday anymore. There are only six Jesuses (Jesi? Jesodes? Jeshuim?) on Tuesday. Not sure how many there are on Wednesday.
And they were all Jewish.
Don’t be ridiculous; Blue Sash Jesus was white.
And if you want to play the whole “but his parents-” card, then allow me to introduce you to the next Jesus in the queue, Black Jesus. Logic and genetics quail in the face of wishful thinking!
…Jews can be white. In fact, white people prefer to think of Jews primarily AS white.
Modern European Ashkenazim? Sure.
The people living in the Judean sector of Roman-ruled Palestine/Syria in Year Dot? Not so much. Caucasian, sure, like all other Arabs, but not white as we think of the concept today.
I was responding to someone who said that “Blue sash Jesus” is white, therefore can’t be Jewish. I am aware of the fact that at the time of actual Jesus, there would not have been any white Jews.
How can they be caucasian? Then again, the classical definition of race is horribly flawed.
Black Jesus isn’t particularly impossible. People back then mixed pretty freely, especially in the cosmopolitan areas like Egypt.
Case in point: Socrates was almost CERTAINLY a very brown dude. There’s one historical record which mentions it that I can’t remember right now, sorry, but just look at the original marble head busts. He has almost stereotypically African features.
But like every person of even remote European significance, we pretend he’s totes white when we start writing history books after the fact, including paintings of him, etc. ALL THE GREEKS AND ALL THE ROMANS WERE WHITE, TOTALLY WHITE, WE GAVE YOU PEOPLE CIVILIZATION AND DEMOCRACY WITH THE FORCE OF OUR WHITENESS RRRR
Yeah, that’s actually what’s being referred to when someone (at least on a Willis page) says “Blue sash Jesus”; it’s almost a derogatory term to mean the gentile-ization that white people have put Jesus through.
Jeshuae.
87… I think.
I think you mean “how many Jesusi”
are you sure it isn’t Jesi?
HOW MANY JESUSES HAVE YOU SEEN TODAY?
Four. But that’s because I live in San Antonio, one of them’s my cousin, and the other three I work with. And they pronounce it Hey-sue-ss. 😐
Well, actually Joyce’s argument highlights the insensitivity of her mom’s one but doesn’t invalidate it.
What invalidates her mom’s argument is its obfsucating, insulting and undeniable stupidity.
GLORIOUSLY phrased, Leonou.
What does Jesus have to do with Christianity? Jesus was preaching to the jews. Christianity is Judaism Light (“Go with the flavor, not the laws!”) invented by Paul as a remix popular with heathens.
. . . “What does Jesus have to do with Christianity?”
Really? Did somebody really put that sentence together? Tell me you’re being ironic, or something, please.
I think what David is saying is that Jesus was not a christian. Jesus was a Jew. He couldn’t be a christian because his existance is why Christianity exists, so he couldn’t be one until he made it.
Jesus didn’t make Christianity. Other people made Christianity fifty years after his death.
The bug-eyed Aslan grav really made your statement ring true.
ASLAN DISAPPROVES.
+1 for you, sir/ma’am.
Introducing the worst characters to exist
agreed. You can’t pull out the Hitler card like that!
You gotta activate your trap card first.
ACTIVATE JINZO!
F@#K YOUR JINZO, I GOT RAIGEKI!
*Counteracts with my BS GOD card*
Metal Reflect Slime + Revival Jam + Jam Defender = God Blocker!
Black hole!
Magic Jammer.
Magician of Faith flip effect, bring black hole back to my hand! Black hole! Card destruction!
Infinite Sheldon!
I Play Wrath Of God, Destroy All Creatures, They Can’t Be Regenerated. Oh My Bad, I Only Ever Played Magic The Gathering
Unlucky for you I play theme decks and today was the day for the all artifact deck. Lucky I didn’t pull out my goblin or Thallid deck else it would really be a bad day.
Counterspell!
…wait. That’s the wrong game, isn’t it.
they Had Split Second, Can’t Be Countered, So I Cast Boomerang And Send Them Back To Their Hand.
Moisture Creature flip effect!
Damn, am I the only Duel Masters player?
i’m all for religion and stuff, but people who say that they have no moral authority without god terrify me. like, are you telling me that without an all-mighty sky wizard, you’d go around killing people left and right?
scary, man.
I mean hell, if I had an all-mighty sky wizard I’d go around killing people left and right.
There are very few things that can stop a sky wizard.
I dunno. What about an outer-space wizard?
So it’s all in the altitude?
I know that my moral centre comes from the fact that if I misbehave, the space teapot will pour boiling water on me. 😛
Fuzzy kitty Jesus might be able to do it.
Excellent point.
Those people are on the “Do not convert” list in the athiest handbook.
Yep. I don’t mind if your reasons not to kill me are different from mine. When I have to choose, I prefer it if you have bad reasons rather than none.
When the knife enters my body again and again as my life flashes before my eyes, the knowledge that my murderer believes in the supernatural will make my stabbing pains hurt a little less… 😛
“i’m all for religion and stuff, but people who say that they have no moral authority without god terrify me. like, are you telling me that without an all-mighty sky wizard, you’d go around killing people left and right?”
Oh, now your just being silly! The Crusades, Catholic Inquisition, Salem Witch Trials…we’re totally down with killing! Its just that we do it in the name of the all-mighty sky wizard! I trust you see how that makes it so much better.
He cretainly likes people dying in his name even though it’s established that Earth is kinda like a science project to him and that also we shouldn’t kill.
If this was a science project, he’d say don’t kill, because he knows that people think its okay if they aren’t caught, and he wants to know lots of ways to kill people. But that’s only if we’re a science project.
Well, to be less tongue in cheek, I think the obvious answer is that people like to use the “commit evil for a greater good” excuse to do terrible things. Awful to say, but that just seems like human nature. God, or whatever religion you want to pick, makes for a “good” excuse in this regard.
If humanity was a science project, God would get an F. First, we aren’t even done yet; when the hell is this project due? Second, we’re pretty much destroying everything he’s created, and I’m sure that won’t be looked upon well by his teachers. Third, he probably had his parents help him out on it, too!
I laughed out loud, oh my gosh.
This is glorious, have an Internet it’s on me.
Uh, if you do an ant farm as a science project, would you honestly claim that you can’t get credit before you made sure you killed all the ants?
It rather looks like the project got finished just fine and the ants were set free.
The reason why the miracles stopped is because a while ago the universe was transferred to the mulch pile.
There is a school of thought that basically claims that The Earth is God’s science experiment to show the rest of the universe why sin is bad mmm’kay.
I really have to wonder exactly what sect they are. I consider my religion to have a lot of safety guards, and everything I have been taught and asked about has told me that good people are good people, whether or not they find Christ, and WILL in fact go to Heaven. So, I really wonder where these 2 are coming from :/
And yet, unfortunately, this isn’t an uncommon view on things.
really? Because everything I have been taught and asked about has told me that to get into heaven, you have to have been a good person AND accepted Jesus as your lord and saviour
And that’s what I’ve been taught my whole life too. Apparently it’s not a common view. It’s weird cause even as a kid the fridge logic came in on the ‘wait, would people like the pre Columbius Indians, who had no way to know who Jesus was, have to go to hell” had been asked at some point at CCD. I’m pretty sure that the answer was ‘doing good was accepting Jesus into your heart’ or something like that. I’m not even some weird off shoot or anything, I’m frickin Roman Catholic.
Likewise here. I had a Religion Teacher waaaay back in the day who used the tale of the Good Samaritan as an example. Guy was a Gentile (Non Jew) but since it was Jesus of Nazareth who was telling the story about how to get into his kingdom, I’d imagine the hypothetical guy qualifies.
You can say that you follow in his footsteps, but he doesn’t want lip service. He wants your actions to reflect that. Love your fellow man and seek to make the world a better place, and it doesn’t matter what religion you follow in my eyes.
I fear for this world every time I see people who think good people go to hell just because they didn’t call the higher power by the right name. Or even if they believed he was up there. One might give more credit to the atheists. Many super religious people I’ve met do the right thing because their religion tells them to, what about atheists? They do it on their own will, and nothing else. Somehow, that seems more worthy then the religious type.
Uh no, Jesus did not tell how to get into his “hypothetical kingdom” with the tale of the Good Samaritan. He was answering the question who in “Love the next one like yourself” was supposed to be the “next one”. The point of the story was not to claim non-jews could get into heaven. The point was shaming the jews into considering non-jews as being eligible to decent treatment as humans in need.
Jesus was quite explicit regarding “nobody gets to my father except through me”. He actually healed quite a few heathens who believed in him personally rather than the whole lot of Judaism. But that’s not what the story of the Good Samaritan is about.
The whole idea that many otherwise decent people will end up being cast into Hell to burn alive forever and ever is one of the less comfortable aspects of mainstream Christianity.
Batshit Crazy?
And now I’m wondering what religion you were brought up in, because the viewpoint that good people get into heaven regardless of their faith is not exactly a common one.
Also, doesn’t that mean your own religion is telling you there’s no need to believe it?
The majority of Catholics who actually know what it means to be Catholic (an unfortunately low number, the church is fairly lax teaching what it’s all about and prefers people to come to it instead. Guess how many people do that, actively.) tend to be okay with the idea that good people are not necessarily always Christian people, or even religious people. As for your second point, no, that’s like saying we shouldn’t study chemistry because the reactions will happen in the physical universe whether we observe and actively take part in them or not.
I have faith, but I consider my faith more of a gateway to understanding the sublime than a guideline for my behavior…I think anyone can be a good person, or a bad one, regardless of what they do or do not believe in. And in a similar vein, I certainly don’t think that mine is the only pathway to understanding the sublime in the universe, it’s just the one that appeals most to me.
If just being a decent person is all you needed to get into Heaven, then there would be no special need to be a Christain at all, it’s the fear of going to Hell that puts bums on pews.
doubt you’ll get around to reading this, but Mormon. To make a long story short, basically we believe that everyone gets a chance… There’s a lot that goes into going into Heaven, and yes we believe that Jesus Christ has EVERYTHING to do with it; we as humans are imperfect, and without his atonement, we can’t have hope of justice tempered with mercy.
The part about belief in Christ taking you to God’s Kingdom comes from trying to live as He did: loving everyone, doing right, and generally behaving as though The Son and The Father was in the room with you; trying to do what is right in all times, in all things, in all places. That means NOT being judgemental, or saying you don’t want to be around someone just because of faith. A good person is a good person, and if you want to be like Him, you want to be there for people, to show them happiness, and if they want to change it’s up to them but either way you are an example of what should be good.
That’s what the gospel is about. And if I may be so bold, it is NOT about trying to say who will or who will not go into Heaven… I believe that is God’s call, and ONLY God’s. All we can do is the best we can, and have Him judge our actions at the end. Listen to his words, and live them.
I’m writing this now, because it is my firm belief that sharing a message of peace is right, and also a message of hope, and acceptance, no matter what may have been written, said, or done by any reading in their lives.
And on a lesser not, I am writing this because it is my opinion as a person trying to be good in this century that an atheist has no business being compared to as Hitler simply because they have chosen not to believe in God.
My beef with these nondenominational churches is that they have no overall structure, creed or dogma, so depending on the inclinations and biases of the individual preachers and congregations, they can go down some very strange paths with no mechanism for self correction.
Bias alert: I was raised Presbeteryian (sic) and later gravitated to high church Episcopal.
I’ve got a friend who says the idea that God’s keeping tabs on him is the only thing keeping him in school, seeking employment, and away from alcohol.
I’m never quite sure how to react when he brings that up. “Um…I’m glad you believe in God, then?”
Yep, that’s the right answer. “Sounds like your belief gives you strength to make good choices. Glad that works for you” style of thing.
Even a staunch atheist should realize that it’s much more important to be healthy and functional than it is to be technically correct about something that, let’s face it, doesn’t exactly matter anyway. Good on your friend.
Good point. The problem only really comes when he presumes everyone operates that way–or, bizarrely, everyone he hasn’t met yet.
Huh. Yeah, I can see that being awkward!
Pshaw. Without my Lord and Savior the Flying Spaghetti Monster to guide me, I would fall off the path of righteousness and fail to seek bloody vengeance on my enemies, and THEN where would I be morally? In the sauce pits, that’s where!
The delicious, delicious sauce pits.
of the lust-wolves ^^
I’m a Christian and I don’t even believe we need to believe in God to know not to kill. Mostly because of a combination of the fact we as a society usually have no need for killing our fellow man and, well, the whole compassion thing. All of that gives good reason why we’d put ‘no killing’ on our judicial rule book as soon as we started a system of law.
@Alex Stritar: And we’d probably all be dead.
Yeah, true. As long as there’s two people on this Earth, someone’s going to want someone else dead.
Nah, takes at least three or four. Gotta have someone around to appreciate your action.
“The second God crapped out a third caveman, a conspiracy was hatched against one of them!”
-Hunter Gathers
The main appeal of religion wheneber you believe it or not is the idea that when you die, the next life will be so much better than before and all those evil scumbags will get what was coming to them.
I think that Joyce’s parents have a legitimate point. I know this is anecdotal, but I’m an agnostic and I’ve killed about a dozen people, just in the last couple hours here. Seriously, I got them stacking up like cordwood here, and it’s getting hard to type with all the blood on my hands congealing between the keys of my keyboard. Imagine the carnage I would wreak if I was a full atheist or a Hindu or something! The streets would run red.
Now I’m hungry for spaghetti.
I know, right?
Eric Hovind said he would.
Yeah, that’s really terrifying to think about, honestly.
Also, completely undermines their own argument because that makes every Atheist _MORE_ moral because we don’t _NEED_ a God to know that doing rape, murder, etc. are utterly abhorrent!
I don’t even know what “moral authority” means. Does anyone but me have any possibility to decide for me what I think is moral? I don’t think so.
are you telling me that without an all-mighty sky wizard, you’d go around killing people left and right?
Without his magic sky beard, Joyce’s dad would be wearing a human skull as a hat right now.
Punch fists loaded in my arms,
Locked, loaded, ready, armed!
Activate Rocket Elbow in 3 . . .
Using Rocket Elbow is giving mercy to our enemies. Activate Rocket Punch!
OK, I’m a religious guy. But I am REALLY starting yo hate these people.
It does seem that most extremists are much more similar to each other regardless of affiliation than to the moderates in their own camps.
A shame they wind up speaking for their groups so often.
A lot of comments yesterday mentioned ideas that Mr Brown is now sprouting.
Yeah only we were joking and he’s a dick.
It’s like escalation. We joked about it and Willis cranked up the dickery.
Prophetically, since he wrote this well before the comments from the past few days.
The Willis Is All Knowing And All Seeing, Never Question The Greatness That Is The Willis.
Yes, it’s quite scary how predictable we are.
Maybe WE are Willis’s science project?!
Market research/crowd sourcing certainly proves that to be true.
Well this Conversation went Godwin pretty fast.
Murphy would approve.
Also Duverger would note that Joyce’s parent are totally an SMP system, well Joyce leans towards PR.
SMP? PR? What do they stand for?
Super Mega Prime, Public Relations.
PR is Proportional Representation while SMP stands for Single Member Plurality its a play on Duverger’s law because SMP electoral systems according to Duverger’s law generally lead towards two party systems well PR leads to multi-party systems. Political Science joke.
By the rules of the internet, Mr. Brown just lost the internet.
Off course, the rules of the internet also state that somewhere there’s a drawing of him in bed with Sailor Moon, so he’s got that going for him.
Lost the argument. Damn.
And now i just lost the game.
HATE.
Now you need to join a PUA(Pick-Up Artist) group to regain your game. 😀
I don’t think he ever FOUND the internet to begin with, as it’s a vehicle for sin and debauchery.
He did get the elevator and go down into the lobby, but probably he didn’t quite get down to inventing the internet in the end.
I, on the other hand, beat the internet. (The last boss was hard.)
You BEAT that thing? Kudos! I was ten hours in, got to the s***ing d***-nipple form and the screen flashed ‘37% COMPLETE.’ I gave up.
Well, if people can win internets, they can lose them too.
He also lost by the rules of HUMANITY !
Wait…no. No, not gonna do it. Not gonna do it. I’m stronger than that, and will not-
*TEN SECONDS LATER*
OH MY GOD WHY IS MY SAFE SEARCH NOT ON?!
I mean, all told, some porny weirdness of mr brown plus sailor moon wouldn’t be that…
oh. “mr brown.” oh my. RIGHT. comment (nearly) redacted!
On the bright side, he’s won at least one game of Cards Against Humanity.
Mechahitler!
So are you saying that rule 34 causes art to be spontaneously generated? I always believed it was created in a slow process over many drafts.
Also, I would like to see examples of said art for… Reasons.
Like he cares if he loses the internet
He’ll just go to the lobby and invent his own Internet…..
With Hookers and black jack
Thats very messed up. (messed isnt the word i want to use)
Dammit Joyce’s dad, Godwin’s Law never gets us anywhere.
I know, in many ways, Stalin was a lot worse.
But people never seem to paint him as evilly as Hitler. Despite the fact the Uncle Joe’s death count was actually higher than Hitler’s.
Maybe because he didn’t start a freakin’ world war, try to conquer the world or exterminate whole ethic groups. Stalin also stayed in business a lot longer than Hitler did; if H. had succeeded in his ambitions, his final body count would likely have been much higher.
So we can give this advice to bloodthirsty dictators:
“If you want to stay in business, only kill people no-one outside the country cares about.”
Heh. Sad but true: it worked for Mao, Francisco Franco, Daddy al-Assad and plenty others.
You could also add “Don’t invade Russia”.
I think that can be generalized to “don’t start a land war in Asia”.
Both are quotes from Marshal Montgomery.
Stalin has killed more people than Hitler, true.
But I’d still call Hitler more evil, due to motive.
Stalin killed people for (potentially) threatening his control. Hitler killed people for existing.
Eddie Izzard once said that Stalin and Mao were not as reviled internationally because they were killing their own people instead of killing people next door.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndhnGPAgecM
I tend to agree with him.
The only thing Stalin really has going for him is that even HE hated Hitler. He was pretty much an even worse person than Hitler in every way shape and form.
I dunno, Stalin was kinda an equal-opportunity mass murderer. Gotta give him credit there.
Sometimes the comments to these strips are even funnier than the strip itself.
Sometimes it was like they were competing to see who could kill more Russians.
Honestly, when you get to that level of evil, it’s almost impossible to quantify who’s technically worse. Hitler, Stalin, Pol. Pot, etc. (and all their top men, of course), they’re all utterly indefensible and evil beyond all measure.
Although the specifics still haven’t made their way into many textbooks yet, historians have learned a lot since the end of the Cold War. Ethnicity was absolutely a reason for mass murder at times in the Soviet Union, far more often than was believed during the twentieth century. The Nazis certainly killed more noncombatants under Hitler than the Soviets under Stalin, though. That’s no longer a matter of debate among those who’ve put in the research. The Soviet famine claimed more lives than any other event under Stalin, including deliberately starving millions of “kulaks” in Soviet Ukraine (thousands upon thousands more were simply executed) and over a million people in Soviet Kazakhstan. Although possibly as many as a million people were shot to death during the Great Terror, the numbers had always been presumed much higher before the collapse of the Soviet Union provided access to Easter European archives.
And contrary to popular, uninformed belief, Stalin actually launched killing campaigns motivated by ethnicity before Hitler. While their larger motivations were different (Stalin saw ethnic killings as a path to modernization; Hitler just wanted to exterminate all European Jews), they were very similar in their policies and actions.
Stalin was horrid, but you could cut a deal with him. Hitler, you couldn’t — not and be sure he’d still honor it once the ink was dry, anyway. It was kill or be killed when dealing with Hitler.
Heh, moral equivalence. Also, most of the Russians didn’t actually die.
Really? Who is worstest, Stalin or Hitler?
It isn’t really comparable. They were bad either way.
“Hitler: Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys. This is between y’all. Don’t drag me into this! I just want to get my cafeteria tray and find a nice, quiet place to eat before the game.”
Why do people always use me in unecessary arguments?
Einstien: I have no idea
Jesus: Yeah, don’t bring us into this.
Historical Hitler, or Biblical Hitler?
Marvel Universe Hitler.
There was this One time, when Captain America punched hitler in the face.
Similar-but-different, in this one cold-war comic, Colossus was brainwashed by the KGB, and became PROLETARIAN MAN, Hero of the Soviet Union!! (his first mission: to DESTROY the X-MEN).
Wait, wasn’t it actually, like a robot Lenin built by Arcade when the X-Men went to Murderworld?
Yes! Oh man somebody else read that thing
I loved that run.
A lot more times than that if you count his clone “Hate-Monger”…
So, Hate-Monger?
Cap also punched the original Hitler in the face (not sure if it’s canon, but it DID happen on the cover of Cap’s debut issue during WWII).
I like to believe it’s canon. Because really, who doesn’t want a universe where superheroes punched Hitler in the face?
Don’t forget about Stupid Jetpack Hitler.
Twin clones of Hitler for the win
Oh, jeez, why did you remind me of that horrible Elseworlds Superman story?
Because that is where the book gets awesome!
We Talking Ultimate Hitler Or 616 Hitler?
Good Hitler.
http://amultiverse.com/2013/07/31/skyball-part-3/
MLK Jr: You guys said it!
… why are they all having lunch together? That would be some awkward meal conversation…
Now, hang on, you can disagree with people and still be friends with them.
Einstien: now hitler, let’s get back to that whole making my people look like assholes thing.
Hitler: Why don’t WE talk about that whole A-bomb thing?
Einstien: I don’t want to be credited with that!!!
Jesus: fellas, fellas.
Both: Not now, traitor!
Saw this coming from a mile off.
Still doesn’t make it any easier to see unfold, though.
Joshua is Joyce’s elder brother, yeah? That’s a creepy amount of control to exert over your post-college, adult son.
True. He should be like, “uh no. Screw you guys, I’m goin’ home!”
“You and what car?”
The one growing out of my pelvis. I call them my legs.
“Gonna have trouble walking, what with my foot up your ass if you talk back to me again.”
“Well, enjoy your 180 mile, 60-hour walk.”
Is it just me or is walking 180 miles in 60 hours really wishful?
It’s a fast walk for some people with short legs (3 mi/hr). Most can jog that in a half hour. It’s not a bad guess.
And totally not impossible, though you won’t see me walking beyond 5 miles without a reason.
Hey, don’t blame me, blame Google Maps.
Heck, I got friends here. I’ll just call them up and hitch a ride with them.
Homeschooling probably broke his spirit.
It’s more like what he told Joyce: she should pick her fights.
It isn’t so much that she has control but that he doesn’t want to antagonize her too much, because she’s family.
I’m still nice to/humor my grandma even when she’s being a racist, spiteful bongo.
Ugh. That seriously pissed me off. It’s amazing that I can hate fake people so much.
Ouch. Just…OW. I am thankful that I don’t THINK I’ve run into someone that bad.
I do believe in an invisible sky wizard, but I still REALLY hate these people. I like to think that if God didn’t exist, people wouldn’t go and kill everyone left and right.
I honestly think it doesn’t matter. People are gonna use any excuse they can to do what they want. Religion normally acts as a border for people to see as a moral compass. The thing is, some people can still twist it, just like any other construct.
Oh fuck, Hank did NOT just go there.
DEATH GLARE
That may be the most relevant gravatar in history.
DildoJoyce is unamused by this bullshit.
You glare him down.
He would have a stroke if Joyce actually wore that Hat.
Then he’d be the first to blink.
Must… not… hate!
The hate is swelling in you now. Give in to your anger. The dark side is more fun anyway.
Come to the Dark Side. We have cake.
No, the cake is a lie. We have cookies, remember?
I thought it was pie.
Also. FEED US. FEED US YOUR HATRED!
Guess they mellowed with age.
These parents are pretty painful to watch. So how far will Joyce go to defend Dorothy?
I think she’ll go beyond defending Dorothy and take a hard look at the moral system she grew up on, I honestly don’t think it will be fun to watch.
She’ll push back so hard that by the next time they see her she’s going to be smoking, drinking booze, doing drugs, and having wild, unprotected sex with girls.
Or maybe Joyce is just going to be slightly depressed for the foreseeable future. That could happen too.
…how on Earth do you have unprotected sex with girls?
…or was that part of the joke?
Lesbians can get STDs. You don’t need a dick involved to spread that stuff.
Oh. I feel silly now. I was thinking pregnancy only. T.T
I know they make condoms for women, but I also know STDs are spread through fluid exchange. So for some reason, my mind is making lesbian balloons. They are pretty colors.
It’s late here…
But, are there 99 lez-balloons?
If there aren’t, someone should damn well go and make them NOW XD
99 lez balloons floating in the summer sky.
AW, and I was all ready to link you to the ‘Hazel learns about safe lesbian sex’ story from Girls With Slingshots.
Also some lesbians do have dicks!
You know who else is an asshole? Hitler.
Man, that guy sucks.
And completely off his rocker and somehow protected from assassination attempts from time travelers.
But he is the guy who killed hitler, so he’s got that going for him at least.
Yeah, but he’s also the guy who killed the guy who killed Hitler. What a knob.
Yeah, but he’s also the guy who killed the guy who killed the guy who killed Hitler, so it comes back around.
…wait.
It gets even more confusing when you realize they all ganged up and killed him, too.
…serves me right for failing to take two seconds to look at the other comments before making the same damn joke they already did…
Warning – Tasteless joke:
Well, he’s not ALL bad… I mean, he DID kill Hitler, after all…
Aaaaand I’ve lost any remaining respect for this couple.
aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND IT’S GONE.
There is actually no proof of that.
So Hitler was like Voldemort and the whole “part muggle” thing? The more you know.
Shhh. Death eaters were based on Nazis. Shhh.
Little-known fact: Hitler was actually part snake.
Hitler was Christian… (if that hasn’t been said already)
That’s not strictly true. Hitler was whatever served his needs at the time. He was Christian on, like, Tuesdays, on Wednesdays he was Atheist, and all the other days he was just a murderous jerkwad.
You forgot Hindu! He stole random things from India, too!
The dude treated religion like a buffet. Trying to blame a particular religion for him is stupid.
Heck I was surprised when an ex-girlfriend and I went to a museum and saw the swastika on some ancient robes from Japan. I think they had a different word for them and they were in another direction, but still, dude, did I learn something.
Stupid Nazi vandals
Similar experience in India: turns out an orange swastika with dots between the arms is a VERY common religious symbol there. People paint it on trucks to avoid bad luck on the road.
Yeah, I saw a map in Japan that was littered with Swastika symbols. Turns out, they’re the icon of Buddhist temples.
There was definitely a degree of Teutonic ideals in there as well, what with the whole “Aryan” thing.
I will admit to initially parsing this as “tectonic.”
Hitler causes earthquakes I guess.
I know it’s complicated, but he seemed to affiliate with Christianity a lot. No one knew what was in his head for sure, but he made it clear they weren’t like the godless Communists/Socialists.
“Kitchen, Children, and Church” were Hitler’s roles for German women, although I don’t know if he specified any particular sect. So there was supposed to be a faith involved in Nazi Germany in addition to the cult of personality he fostered around himself.
being from Austria his flavor was Catholic… People tend to ignore the Vaticans questionable role in WWII. Though the Vatican tends to play up the story about the Jewish woman they saved… I guess they could find any evidence of more than one woman saved….
Probably some statue of Mary.
He turned Christianity into something different. Hitler’s “Christianity” was focused on worshipping the German state and revering the Fuhrer. Faithful Christians who stuck to the Bible were treated as political dissidents. Plenty were killed. One pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, even tried to assassinate Hitler over it.
When it comes down to it, Nazism is its own cult. You can argue for hours over what Hitler _might_ have actually believed, but it’s undeniable that he was, in fact, a cult leader when it comes down to it.
People love to say, “Hitler was a Christian/atheist/vegetarian,” when they’re trying to convince others of why one of them is a bad thing to be, despite the fact that none of those claims is historically accurate.
Willis is right. Hitler himself said that he was Catholic a few times, but his close associates claimed he wasn’t at all interested in religion.
What about the iron crosses and “God with us” on Nazi belt buckles? Why did he leave the Vatican alone instead of harvesting its art and such?
…because even Hitler wasn’t crazy enough to turn on his closest ally to fight his way through to a tiny city-state with some nice statues? Nor was he the only person who got to dictate Nazi policy – “Gott mit uns” is a slogan much older than he was.
“GOD IS ON OUR SIDE” Flags, Banners and Pins – available in all colors and languages!
Also, the iron cross and “god on our side” predates the Nazis. Just saying.
They still used them is why I brought it up. It’s a little hard to call them atheist.
Agreed.
In the really old days, people didn’t have gods conveniently around for them to worship, they had toget out there and make their own damn gods.
If all else failed, you just worshiped that tree over there.
It worked out surprisingly well.
Tree worship is how druids and hippies got started.
Which helped propagate recreational drug use and thus gave the world some of the Beatles’ best songs. Definitely worked out.
Or heck, you ask for help from the spirits of your ancestors.
Well if I have to worship anything, i find it helps me if i can prove it exists. with the three, its quite doable to prove its existence… and as far as the worshipping goes… I noticed that all deities yield similar results as the three…
Also some trees give you fruit. Nothing wrong with a little food.
Always thought the prayer should say: Give us this day our daily fruit.
And if you can’t make your own gods, you can always just worship the sun. That’s always a safety net.
It’s the biggest, brightest thing around and it makes life possible. That’s good enough for me.
I dunno; I’d feel a bit unoriginal. If I was stuck on my own with no deities to worship, I’d find something that no one else was using. Like pants. All hail the glorious pants!
Or you could worship accidents. Whoops be praised!
You know who else blames the Jews for everything? Nazis. You know who weren’t atheists? Lots of Nazis. You know who aren’t mostly Nazis? Germans. You know who’re apparently asshats? Joyce’s parents.
Oh boy. The “Hitler Argument” flavor of asshole. This rare flavor is only rarely seen outside of internet forums. But today we have the ‘luck’ of seeing one in person.
Little do we know, Willis was inspired to write the dialogue of this panel based on internet forums.
Watch out. That means the .gifs are coming out. One paralyzing glare and she might be dead. Let’s watch.
Please re-read this comment in the voice of the crocodile hunter.
I didn’t see it in person, per se, but a former close friend of mine compared me to Hitler for deleting personal insults he made about me on Facebook after I pointed out the scumbag truth about Ron Paul.
He chose to end the friendship by making the insults, then that comparison made me lose all respect I had for him.
It’s not that he called me “Hitler”. I know how stupid that comparison is. It’s that he effectively insulted every single person who suffered as a result of the Holocaust and Nazi ideals.
I say this as a Christian:
Fuck you, Joyce’s parents. Atheists didn’t give us Nazi Germany, horrible people who hated Jews gave us Nazi Germany. Atheists don’t live without a moral code, they take their code from their conscience, society, the law, and whatever else they might want to take it from.
Dorothy’s parents were polite to you. You’ve been nothing but jackasses to everyone so far. So please go fuck off and may your overly legalistic interpretation of Christianity find you ironically burning in hell.
As A Fellow Christian I Heartily agree, Joyce’s Parents Need To Be Put In Their Place, Or Maybe Have Some Scripture Quoted At Them, Such As “Love Your Neighbor As Yourself” And “Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged”
Actually, those “who gave us Nazi Germany” did not as much “hate Jews” rather than integrating the persecution of Jews into their fascist fantasies of modeling a populace according to their whims.
Last year I spent a few nights in Zürich (Switzerland). The hotel was kept by a family, tidy and friendly, the information in the rooms contained pointers to kosher food outlets and services, the reception lady had a prominent nose, the hotel had been founded by her father who made his money with early music boxes, a smart trader.
This has been an integral part of German history, and it still felt like being an integral part. Nazi Germany won that part of the war: in Germany, this history is dead. The stereotypical role of the “shrewd Jewish businessman” has been taken over by corporations which are unmitigatedly soulless.
I’ve been born 20 years after the war ended, so it did not really affect me personally. But it was then that I realized that the Nazis were successful in bereaving me of an important part of our national and cultural identity and diversity in Germany.
“the reception lady had a prominent nose”
Did you seriously just say this as a way to imply that the place was Jewish?
Also, I’d wager that the explosion of global economy has more to do with the trend towards soulless corporations over small business owners. Additionally, it depends entirely on the area and what you’re more likely to witness. You saw this because you were at the hotel. How many privately owned hotels do you normally see?
Regardless, the rest of your post is tragic.
No, I said it to state that the setting including the family running the business met a set of stereotypes that we were taught to avoid at all costs. Things were fitting together harmoniously in a way that political correctness would not consider it nice to see.
I’ve been in quite a number of family-run hotels. That’s not really the point. It was the combination of little details establishing an unobtrusive “we’re Jewish and you are welcome” atmosphere. Other hotels have “we’re Catholic and you are welcome”. But the point is that you don’t really see the former in Germany. People then rather go for “we’re international and you are welcome”. After all, most of their customers will not be Jewish.
That’s a shame.
Also, I don’t know how one is supposed to avoid the stereotype of a large nose if one HAS a large nose.
Whatever happened to respecting other people’s beliefs? On that note, Eid is tomorrow!
Respecting other’s beliefs is for decent human being’s! These are Joyce’s parents we’re talking about.
You know after what they said their only slightly better than fuckin adolf hitler.
Well maybe not that bad.
Why did I read their as is? Why does it make me want to laugh so badly?
If you skip the last panel, you’ve got my parents.
Must’ve been hard for you :c
strangely no, they’re just pleasantly surprised (and a little confused) when a non-religious person does good stuff
Joshua made the right call to get the hell outta Dodge.
However, he did not make the right call at the right time.
MAKE A BREAK FOR THE WINDOW!
GO FOR THE COMA!
GO FOR THE COMA, THE COMMA, AND THE OXFORD COMMA!!
Joyce needs to become an orphan. Soon. That way A) we don’t have to see them and B) Amazi-Girl has a new sidekick replete with tragic backstory. Sal’s been looking tired recently anyways.
But the only problem with that is that joyces needs a cool side kick name.
Old-testagirl!
“Testagirl” is a little too much like “testegirl” or “testigirl”…
(And that’s Sarah’s role anyway!)
New-Testagirl!
Revelations?
I dunno her name, but she keeps her biblrangs in her Bible Belt.
Bible Basher? Monkey Maid?
Premarital Hanky-Panky? /yeahidunno
I thought we settled on Bible-Thumper a while back.
Actually, Revelations sounds like the name of some dark, gritty, comic book hero from a series that doesn’t actually understand religion, but likes having a vaguely spiritual feeling to it.
The name is still cool, though.
I can see two possible outcomes (and I’m sure there’s more): One — faced with this comparison, Joyce backs down and returns to the fold, so to speak.
Two, the seeds of dissent are sown and she starts the process of distancing herself from dogma.
Even if she “comes back to the fold” the seeds are planted. The moment her dogma gets her to act out of accordance with what she feels is right, resentment will begin to grow and fester.
If anything if she just buts heads with her parents over this and they end the weekend on bad terms then that would be better for her continued faith. That’s a clean wound. All that means once she’s done mulling it over in her head is that she’s right and her parents are wrong. She can look through the scriptures and find all the reasons why her interpretation of God’s will is more legitimate than theirs and that will just be that.
Yeah, it’s official: I know these people. And they suck in real life, too.
Is the next strip about Joyce researching to find the worst nursing home she can send her parents to? I’m thinking one that makes the residents fight for an off-shore gambling website.
No moral foundation without god? Now that’s a load of BS. I practically don’t believe in religion and I follow moral philosophies that always make me think twice about things.
Also, that Hitler comic is probably gonna come back and bite him in the ass.
See? If you were religious you would not need to think twice. Heck, you would not even need to think once as other people already did the thinking for you.
Now that’s standing on the shoulders of giants.
So basically, screw the consequences if it’s for God? Now I may not recall right seeing as I suck at history, but wasn’t kinda what happened with the Crusades? Y’know, the whole any Christian participating gets to indulge without consequences. Correct me if I’m wrong.
I really have a hard time teaching Fundamentalism 101 to you heathens. You embrace the consequences if it’s for God. There is no such thing as a “necessary evil” when doing God’s work. It’s all good. Accept it. Understand it. Cherish it. Only the weak falter.
Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son. Jepthah did sacrifice his daughter. What are the Browns going to do?
Calling it now. Her parents say that college is a bad influence and try to make her leave
I have been thinking along the same lines since I saw how they reacted to Dotty.
That and joyce says she wont go in an adorable saddened face.
I meant 2 reply to evergreen fir.(my bad)
Dammit i meant 2 reply 2 icalasari not evergreen fir 2 fuck ups in one time the internet wont forget.
Problem is, Joyce is an adult now, she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to. They can withdraw financial support but Sal can always rob a few more stores to cover the costs.
Kudos on making so many people hate two fictional characters. It’s not easy to do, especially in this medium.
Actually, Willis is not the first person who made me hate certain fictional characters. The first one is whoever it is made D.W a Karma Houdini.
Huh?
D.W? Doctor Who? Da Wolverine? Dinosaur Woman?
Dora Winnifred.
Never call her that.
Darkwing Duck?
A cartoon aardvark on public television.
David Willis?
A lot of you are hating on Joyce’s parents as if you didn’t think this was going to happen. I saw this shit coming a mile away as soon as this chapter began. Have none of you come into contact with strong-willed devout Christian parents before?
Not really, no.
Nope. And despite seeing it come a mile away, it still makes me angry.
I have. I’m mainly mad because this ISN’T EXAGGERATED AT ALL.
Do you know who else is an atheist? God! He also doesn’t believe that anybody created him.
We don’t really know that for sure. Maybe god is just an office worker in some building in a bigger Arc-Universe, and we’re his pets, and he goes to church every 23rd day to celebrate Mecha-God Mass. Cuz that could happen.
Nah, God is a Buddhist. But he only lets Mormons into Heaven, for some reason.
God isn’t an atheist. He’s a tinkerer with a love for detail. And with all those physicists on the hunt for the fabric of the universe, he’s pretty busy nowadays keeping all those experiments turning out consistent. Ok, he bungles a lot of them but always comes up with plausible explanations.
Actually God does worship god if you believe in the holy trinity. Jesus is God so there you go. Truthfully when your the beginning and the end, the whole personification of needing a deity gets thrown out the window.
There’s a part of my arm right now that wants to smash Mr. Brown’s skull in while repeating “NO!” multiple times.
…and in case someone jumps on me, I did a search to see if Hitler really was partly Jewish, but no, it stands at maybe.
My point is you don’t compare Hitler to the people he imprisoned.
I saw on Willis’ twitter, “Today nobody will ever like Joyce’s parents ever again.” I then asked myself, “How far could they possibly go?”
The answer turns out to be…to Godwin.
Now that I think of it, riling Joyce up after she hit a guy in the face with a piece of glass might not be the best plan of action. She wasn’t even entirely lucid when she did that…
I bet if they find out Joyce was assaulted some time ago, they might decide to pull her out of IU right then.
I wonder if Sarah’s bat is still in the room
Hitler was pretty much every religion. He grabbed bits and pieces of everything from Roman Catholicism to Hinduism for the sake of giving his philosophy some perceived credit. He converted the German Protestant church into a state-run patriotism factory that replaced the cross with the swastika, and he took special care to get rid of any Christians who resisted him, which led to people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer 9the pastor!) trying to assassinate him. Attempting to blame any ONE religion for Hitler is stupid. Blame Hitler for Hitler.
Hitler was Christian? Tell that to the Christians he slaughtered.
Hitler was Atheist? Tell that to the Atheists he slaughtered.
Hitler was an Occultist? Yeah, you get where I’m going here.
in short, Hitler’s religion was Power.
Hitler was a cult leader.
The Inquisition also targeted their own. Atheists can kill each other no problem.
The Inquisition clearly targetted people with religious beliefs which they perceived as different (heretic) from their own. If Hitler was religious, he didn’t use persecute anyone because of his religious beliefs.
Wow, Joyce’s parents actually represent the parts of religion that I dislike. Then again, I would guess many people would disapprove of such views as well.
Now I glad I voted to see them in the poll.
(Yes, I know technically we already saw them in the first couple of strips, but we didn’t get to know them.)
Still trying to decide if i hate Joyces dad more than Ethans mom
The Ultimate Dilemma. We might just have to fuse them into one hateful, androgynous, punchable fuckwad of a character.
Can we throw Danny’s parents into that mix there?
And the plot twist of Ethan “liking” the brother more than Joyce?
I’m a very Catholic person and for everyone who thinks all Catholics are like this, they’re so not. This is the opposite of what it means to be a Catholic. Like I’d like to jump into this comic and punch them right in their stupid faces. I’m so angry right now, this is past the “I HAVE FEELS” stage.
Joyce’s family isn’t Catholic, and so I don’t think they directly represent Catholicism at all!
They do not represent Catholicism. They represent bigotry. (Do not confuse bigotry with Bigamy)
Yeah, not at all Catholic. They strike me as non-denominational christians. At least they are like the ones in my area (one of whom tried to hold an intervention for me because I played D&D)
What really strikes me is that Joyce’s parents are apparently BETTER than most of the other people in their community. Remember when Mary went off at Sierra and Dorothy, and Joyce said, “this must be why we switched churches all the time?”
For what it’s worth, as terrible as they are, Joyce’s parents did manage to raise her as a good person. Joyce has earned +200 Good Person points in the past three days of strips alone, just by standing up to them. Her parents might be hateful, but Joyce actually sticks to the principles they supposedly raised her with.
Doesn’t mean I don’t want to punch them, though.
As I said lower, notice how they waited to have this little chat after they were in Joyce’s room. They at least may feel ashamed of trying to spout this stuff in public, but behind closed doors is ok.
They just don’t want to make a scene.
Joyce assumed that was the reason. It could be her family was the b-words that didn’t fit.
Woah. Where’s the cool Joyce’s dad from comic 2? ;o;
But no for serious, as much as I hate these guys, this is a huge huge step for Joyce. Honestly 3years ago(I can’t remember the in universe time) she was just like them. Monkey Master outfit aside, she’s really changed and this is a stark, and much needed, juxtaposition of pre-college Joyce.
Unfortunately, people can appear very nice and pleasant and still believe things like this. Notice how they didn’t have this discussion until they got to Joyce’s room.
You know who else was very nice and pleasant in public?
Wait, no… Hitler was a raving, genocidal nutbag in public, too.
Never mind…
Actually, Hitler was a pretty cool guy to hang around. I mean, he was definitely open about his desires to kill everyone who wasn’t Aryan, but the dude was still really nice.
Psychopaths are able to turn their empathy, or charm, on & off at will. It’s why they make such effective CEOs.
So, he was the inverse of Joyce’s parents? Polite and cordial in one-on-one situations, but shit-flinging bonkers in public.
Wow! I mean. WOW!!! That is a whole new level of asshole!
Joyce can be a bit pig-headed at times and take on a holier-than-thou behavior, but at least she’s got her likeable moments. These two have absolutely no positive traits.
They lost the argument, you know. Pulling out the Hitler card means you’ve got absolutely nothing else to back up your position. And yeah, as Joyce pointed out, you can look like a motherfucking asshole when using it.
Let’s see, although the chance is slim, these idiots can redeem themselves.
Wow I didn’t know I could want to punch a fictional character this badly.
I got a list of fictional characters that I want to punch:
1) Lacus Clyne
2) Kira Yamato
3) D.W
4) Lucy from Peanuts
5) That dog from Duck Hunt
6) Seth
7) Kazuya Mishima
8) Kefka
9) Seymour Guado
10) Mist Rex
Which Seth? ‘Cause I know three different Seths that are punchable.
…I’m just gonna back away slowly now.
Really? Kazuya? I mean he’s a dick, but why not Heihachi?
The dude killed Dan Hibiki.
Hibiki was just hiding in Pandora, ya silly.
I…know who three of those are.
I suddenly feel so very out of the loop.
Of those I know:
Lacus Clyne
Kira Yamato
Lucy from Peanuts
The dog from Duck Hunt
Kefka (you know your a dick when AutoCorrect wants to change your name to Jerks)
And Seymour Guado
Don’t forget Shou Tucker. Dude needs punching BAD.
Good excuse to trot out this old chestnut….
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-january-20-2011/word-warcraft
And the follow up.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-january-24-2011/24-hour-nazi-party-people
And the followup to the followup. Sorry, these work best if viewed together.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-january-27-2011/bill-o-reilly-defends-his-nazi-analogies
This hit close to home. I have never had strong beliefs religiously (I am an agnostic Quaker) and when I confess this to my more religious friends I am always scared of this reaction. But DoA Joyce seems more strong willed than Old Joyce so I think this will just open her eyes to how close-mindedly she was raised.
I’m disappointed that Joyce didn’t point out that Hitler was a Christian. WHY DIDN’T JOYCE SAY THIS, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EPIC.
Because she was never taught that. Homeschooled by these two, remember?
Yeah, unless she learned it in the past three weeks, anything about Hitler she knows comes from her parents and her textbooks.
(Also, as noted above in discussion, it’s not strictly true.)
How much do you trust your textbooks? I knew a Romance language teacher who went to Arcachon (Southern France). That was probably 10 years ago, and she was mid-twenty. The pupils there (she came from Germany as a teaching assistant) asked her whether she had been in WWII. Seriously.
She sent us photocopies from text books there. For example, there was the headline “Being a youth in Germany. Discuss.” followed by two photographs. One was a Hitlerjugend pimpf of about 6 years, in uniform, doing the “Heil Hitler” salutation. Another was a rather famous photograph where a number of people including children leave the Warsaw Ghetto with raised hands.
WTF? This was 50 years after the end of WWII. Who considers that fit for teaching German culture?
When she went partying there and people asked her where she was from, she answered “Belgium” (which was not entirely untrue since she lived there, just beyond the border). Because if she answered “Germany”, the conversation was over.
In the end, she made the best from what she was given there. The children there were a bunch of undisciplined brats, and she “pulled a German” on them finally, yelling at them from the top of a desk and going completely overboard. Which worked due to the absurd conditionalization those people got. She’s actually rather nice, but since that did not buy her anything, she made the best use of the absurd reputation she had been handed.
I still can’t believe those textbook copies she sent. That was out of this world.
? What grade was she teaching? Kids often have very unclear notions of time — cf. countless comic strips with kids asking their parents if they’ve seen dinosaurs. As for the textbooks — and the prejudice agains Germans you describe —, that looks nothing like what I’ve seen. In the region I was every summer there were lots of German tourists, and I think the worst cliché I heard about them was that they wore socks with sandals…
Well, she taught German. I think they were around 16 or so. And you won’t find anything like that in Paris or so. This was the extreme South of France, so it’s actually quite unlikely they had much enemy contact.
At any rate, given that this was teaching material, it would likely be at least on county level that this indoctrination existed, and the personal reactions of the people there to her being German were also of a quite absolute manner.
I don’t think that particular area is touristy (and frankly, German but even more Dutch and Danish beach tourists are not necessarily a recommendation for their country): I think they maintain their imagery without much “enemy contact”. But at least in this backwater town, she might as well have been a member of the occupational forces based on their reactions. She was glad when she was back after a year or so.
Arcachon is a small town, but very touristy in the summer, but I agree that kids proably don’t get that much contact with tourists. The place where I grew up is also very rural, and not that much bigger than Arcachon — the place I went to high school, that is, the place I was actually living was much smaller — and also less touristy, except during an extremely popular summer festival. And no-one I knew held any grudge against German people, or think they are all Nazi. There were cultural exchanges between our town and a twin city in Germany and everyone seemed happy with it. I just checked and there’s a similar program between Arcachon and Goslar, so the kids who study German there probably have at some point the opportunity to actually visit Germany as well, and vice-versa for the kids who learn French in Goslar.
As for the curriculum, in France it is defined at national level, but the exact content of the textbook may vary to some extent. The pages you describe look like they were taken from a history textbook, and WWI is covered pretty exensively, including Germany through the 1930s-1940s, especially during the last year of junior high school. But of course these pages are not meant to teach German culture, more like “German-culture-in-pre-WWII-Germany-and-how-it-can-help-us-understand-the-rise-of-nazism”.
Anyway, I’m not saying no-one in france has any prejudice against Germans and all textbooks are perfect and fair and balanced, just that, although your friend had a bad experience, it’s certainly not the general case.
Joyce: Hitler was a CHRISTIAN!
Joyce’s Parents: ERROR! ERROR! DOES NOT COMPUTE!*heads blow up*
You do realize that even if Joyce could prove that, her parents would insist it was all “atheist propaganda” meant to discredit “true Christians”.
Nah, they’d just say “He wasn’t Christian, he was a Catholic. Completely different thing.”
I wonder if we will meet any parents worse thaan the Browns.
And then Ethan’s parents walk in.
Willis says the Browns are a distant second.
Also, the Siegals and Wilcoxes are close to being as bad as the Browns, but just slightly behind them in my opinion (and I _have_ a dad as abusive as Danny’s parents are!)
Be afraid, be very afraid. Perhaps now is the time to stop reading DoA for a week or so if you cherish your sanity. Would be silly to get a stroke over a fictional comic character, wouldn’t it?
Watch it be Dina’s parents.
“So anyway like we were saying before that negro came in the elevator, fuck you daughter. We dislike you and your way of life and dinosaurs were huge pussies that probably never existed. Also I invested your college money in a bomb so we can blow up this elevator. IT’S THE BEST WE COULD DO”
That made me lol, so damn hard
I’m laughing and feeling like I’m about to cry at the same time.
Why can’t I stop laughing?
I think I recall some comment by Willis on twitter implying that this was a sad arc for Dina. This may be entirely true.
And it would be awful.
Personally, I’m hoping the worst parents are the restless ghosts of Ruth’s parents.
Actually, Willis said that Ethan’s parents were a distant second. Whether the Browns are the apex of douchebaggery here remains to be seen.
We still haven’t seen the Walkertons. Don’t forget that.
So, Joshua, is this a fight worth fighting now?
Too late; regardless of whether it’s worth it, it’s happening.
WOW. Just wow. And it shows just how much Joyce’s upbringing fucked up her worldview (I mean the crazy fundie thing, not the homeschooling thing). Apparently her parents have never heard of Kinder Kirche Küche, AND they maybe are anti-Semitic (maybe). Let me guess, they also think Jesus wasn’t Jewish, right?
Fuck I hate them right now.
In other news, good for you, Joyce! And I’m sorry you have to be here, Joshua!
All I can think of here is Harold Weir on Freaks and Geeks and his continuous name-dropping of famous people who died for vaguely relevant reasons.
I feel like Joyce’s dad is kinda like that except awful.
i once knew a guy who remembered harold weir.
HE DIED.
I once knew a guy who forgot to put “You know what happened to him?” in their Harold Weir references. You know what happened to him? He DIED.
Dammit. Another perfectly fine, properly trained kid ruined by actually meeting the people we’ve been vilifying.
Jesus might love you, Mr Brown, but he’s also very, very pissed with you.
He forgives you, ‘cuz he’s cool like that, but the penance he’s coming up with won’t be fun.
I just noticed that Joyce is from where I live currently: La Porte, IN. It actually quite fits. There’s way too many churches (around 40), and a christian homeschooling association.
Is Grace Baptist still standing? You know, across from the Little Caesars? Do they still hate dancing?
I live in La Porte, too, and was homeschooled and raised as a Christian in that very same homeschooling association. Let me tell you that there are way too many zealots like Joyce’s parents that are part of it (sadly) 😛
I went to high school with a guy like that (in California, though) and even when he wasn’t being all aggressive he was just… Weird.
…oh my god, did you grow up in the small town from Footloose?
Hey, you swam in Stone Lake, too?
*Googles up La Porte, Indiana*
FORTY churches for twenty-two thousand people???????????????
Hey, it’s the home of Belle Gunness. Lots of reason for praying here.
*Googles up Belle Gunness? Oh GOD.
Well, in terms of “bad parents from La Porte, IN” she has the Browns beat solidly. Rank amateurs.
Mannnn, the wikipedia page used to list me as a notable resident.
Remedied.
Don’t you live in Ohio?
Yeah, but I spent almost half my life in La Porte.
BOOM! GODWIN’S LAW!!!
Game Over Mr. Brown!
Oh, god, this one strikes to close to home… I had this same interaction with my parents… but they were trying to protect me from “that weird tomboy”, one of the three only friends I had on highschool, because for them she was obviously gay (of course the queer one was me). I ended up on tears, so I really hope Sarah arrives ASAP :'(
OMG, sorry, wrong place 🙁
Aw! That sounds awful and confusing. I hope things are going better for you now.
Things are much better, not with my parents but on my life, and that’s great for me. Thank you! 🙂
How in the Hell can they believe what they are saying? I mean really believe that self righteous bullshit?
I’m a Pagan who occasionally attends UU, and I personally feel we have a moral approach to life, and a part of that is total respect for other religions and life styles.
This is just beyond…..
Run Joyce. You can do it.
No experience with zealots? They can make themselves believe it for the sake of making their children believe it, for the sake of their immortal souls.
If you can’t convince yourself of something, convince someone else and you’ll be forgiven for your doubts. And the one you convinced will never be plagued by doubt like you were.
If you find people preaching lifestyle choices like vegetarianism, it’s a reasonably safe bet that you can meet them next year in McDonalds if nobody can be interested in their persuasions. Those who don’t doubt their own course don’t feel the need to proselytize.
A zealot is one who considers himself an inedequate believer, so he tries making up for that in numbers.
Ooohhhhhhhh no. You don’t know fear until you see people chanting in tongues. It is terrifying, it sounds like they want to murder you.
*coughcough* Love thy neighbor shall be the whole of the law *coughcough*
Now would be a great time for Walky to show up in that room, ready to let her see some more Dexter and Monkey Master episodes.
Speaking of which, isn’t Walky also an atheist? And didn’t Joyce know Walky prior to the events of this comic?
No, Joyce did not know Walky prior to the start of Dumbing of Age (that we know of…no aliens to bring them together).
I…I hate the oxygen that they breathe for being there.
Is that bad? Am I a bad person?
No, Vince, that means you are not like them.
Joshua’s a secret atheist. Calling it now. Unless someone called it in an earlier thread.
If that’s the case, I’m a little bit pissed at him, too. I can understand not wanting to get into these arguments with family as I’ve been there, but he should be standing up for his sister.
But Joyce is doing a pretty good job of standing up for herself. She might be better suited to a confrontation than her (very conflict-averse) brother is.
Really I’d love to see Joshua have a heart-to-heart with Joyce out of their parents’ earshot.
If that’s the case, he can’t really help Joyce, because Joyce is not a secret atheist. His own convictions would be quite irrelevant for Joyce’s position.
This is (yet) a fight between believers.
I’m not necessarily saying he needs to chime in about the religious issues, but at least trying to help support her as being able to make reasonable decisions, or even just a ‘This is supposed to be a fun weekend visit, can we do this later and not ruin it?’
The whole problem is that “reasonable decisions” are an atheist concept. Joyce’s parents expect her not to succumb to reason. Supporting her as being able to make reasonable decisions would be about as helpful as supporting her as being able to have premarital sex.
The ability was never drawn into question. But her parents don’t want her to use it. That’s what atheists do.
Joshua can’t really score here. They’ll just pay for two exorcisms if he tries.
I’m going to have to disagree with ‘reasonable decisions’ being an atheist concept. Saying that just because they’re fundamentalists they lack any reason is about as bad as saying that just because Dorothy’s an atheist she lacks a moral compass. I’m not arguing that they aren’t ignorant to certain things, they just have a different set of ‘facts’ to reason from.
I’m saying that Joshua could go the route of ‘you raised her and taught her blah blah blah, she’s a good Christian, trust her to know when someone is being a good or bad influence on her and that she’ll continue to have faith’ or some sort of appeal to that effect.
You can only trust in God, humans are fallible. If they put reason above faith, they think they are less fallible than God.
Really, that stuff is finger exercises for Jehova’s Witnesses or fundamentalists. You don’t get through with reason. They’ve seen it. They know their battleground. Reason can’t touch them.
Their fortresses are invincible, but it’s a narrow and barren place where you don’t want to go anyway.
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”
-Martin Luther
Certain evangelical or nondenominational Christians really do take this to heart, and actually do consider “reason” a dirty word.
If he still has to live at home, I think I can forgive him….
That’s true. I guess I wasn’t sure if he still lived at home.
Nah. Pagan. Or possibly LaVeyan Satanist.
Yes, let’s go with that. Until the actual answer comes out, I’m headcanoning him as a Satanist.
LaVeyan Satanists are just Atheists with attitude, to be honest.
I called that yesterday, if I was an atheist and I had parents like these, I might want to stay ‘in the closet’ too.
Naw, he’s gay – or at the very least, having an active sexual relationship that he doesn’t want his parents knowing about (maybe he’s even dating a nice Jewish girl). Willis made him use the words “hook up” in the first panel, and that had to be a conscious decision.
“Hook up” does not mean to everyone what it means to you. I’ve encountered this before. In some areas, “Hook up” means “get laid”. In other areas, “Hook up” means “go and meet with”. Sometimes it has a romantic implication, often it doesn’t.
So yeah, I wouldn’t make any assumptions based on that.
I know. I’m saying it has a double-meaning: He’s saying it to his parents as “I’m going to meet up with some friends” when he actually MEANS that “I’m going to have a romantic rendezvous.”
I’m not implying that he is just flat-out saying “HEY MAW, I’MA GO SEX SOMEBODY!” I’m implying that there was a reason that Willis chose that specific phrase.
There is such thing as reading too much into things.
I mean, I don’t think it’s far-fetched to think that Joshua might be gay, but your evidence is flimsy at best.
Don’t you destroy my dreams of him having sex with Ethan.
I’m betting on less straight out atheist and more agnostic. He thinks college and expanded horizons are good for Joyce, because he’s been there himself.
I sooooo want to hate on Joyce’s folks right now… but knowing how Willis has said that Joyce is a somewhat autobiographical character, I don’t want to speak out on it without knowing how much of THIS particular storyline might be drawn from his own past, and if it is at all based on truth, how it ended… (Which, if it is based at all on truth, might be a spoiler for the comic… so it might be best not to know before this storyline concludes.)
So, although it is difficult, I’ll try to not hate Joyce’s parents. But that doesn’t mean I don’t hate what they are saying, or that they aren’t acing like assholes at the moment! Let us just hope that the prospect of alienating their daughter makes them reassess their actions on this matter.
Wow, if people are reacting to them after this, just wait until they meet her boyfriend… and maybe his parents.
And his roommate.
(Mike is his roommate, right?)
No, Jacob is Ethan’s roommate (and tempting eye candy). Mike is rooming with Walky.
Oh. Well, I’m sure that will make things much better. 😉
Mike still hangs out with Ethan, right? I’ll settle for that.
this is what made me leave religion behind completely
There’s a *lot* more to religion than this kind of nonsense.
And yet this alone is pretty much all you need to know – about their flavor of belief/fervency that is.
AAAAAAAAAAARGH!
WTYETYNFWHNETSYMT<U35737KM#%&KM#%@&J@$@^Q$@YM@WYNJSFWNAFZBGESTHSM STMTSYN SA%NMTWM%@NQY#EUCDT<US
What the hell is with all the anger and hatred in here? How the hell did you expect them to react? Frankly, I’m surprised Joyce’s parents have such restraint. Considering their views, they’re handling the whole thing pretty calmly.
They literally think their daughter’s friend might get her sent to hell. Think about that.
They think their daughter’s friend is going to hell. WWJD in this situation?
A) Encourage their daughter to befriend and be kind to the Atheist girl so that she can hopefully eventually be brought to see the virtue inherent in the Christian faith, saving her from an eternity of torment? Perhaps trust that their daughter’s faith is strong enough to survive exposure to alternative viewpoints?
B) Shun the non-believer! Shun! Shun!
Reaction B is less the instinct of a Christian hoping to save people and more the instinct of a cultist who fears another member is about to be exposed to thought which doesn’t conform with the cult’s brainwashing.
So yeah. They’re not good people. Not even by Christian standards.
Not even by Christian standards?
And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
Ivan has good points, but also…
They played the Hitler card.
Which is so utterly, inexpressibly STUPID that it can’t help but inspire hate because seriously, WHO on Earth is so profoundly idiotic, so caught up in their own self-made delusions, that they play the Hitler card? It’s easily the worst logical fallacy I know of, possibly the worst in existence, and the presence of such stupidity is just infuriating.
It was the punchline of the strip. That’s something I don’t always take seriously, character-wise. I feel like most people usually know this, or at least I thought I did, but everyone here seems to be taking the punchline pretty seriously.
Mostly I’m just puzzled that, in a cast full of flawed characters, people are taking this one character flaw and using it to decide that Joyce’s parents are, like, the worst people ever.
Ah, I see your confusion. This is a Willis strip. One of his trademarks is subverting reader expectations regarding gag punchlines and status quo is god comics. Once, he made a main character a congresswoman as a punchline. Not only did the story go on for the next several strips, but she kept her seat through re-election and was a plot point several times. This in a strip about dudes who work in a toy store with a talking car in the sock room.
Just because something’s a punchline in a Willis strip doesn’t mean it’s not an important character moment.
The six state constitutions that effectively bar atheists from running for public office, the studies that show that the only group less trusted than atheists in the US is RAPISTS, and the fact that this hostile attitude is something that people have dealt with before in real life means this hits REALLY close to home.
Cmon guys, without a backwards thinking mindset forced upon oneself at a tender age, people become satanists!
Every new sentence in this storyline is another fucking aspirin I have to pop just to keep from having an aneurysm. I mean just Holy Freakin’ God…
That works? I’ve heard about them for heart attacks, but I think aneurisms are different.
Joyce has figured out she doesn’t like being dismissed like a child. Go girl.
this must be before joyce’s parents discovered the really good book
The Joy of Sex? 😀
kinda … The Kama Sutra
They have like…5 kids. I have to believe they discovered it a while ago.
You don’t need Kama Sutra in order to have sex in the missionary position for the express purpose of procreation.
Yeah but it helps.
I’m Jewish and their ignorant Hitler comments made me feel sick to my stomach.
Horrible.
Yo David, I know you said Joyce is often autobiographical — are her parents based on your parents? I really hope your parents are not these awful people.
My parents have never said anything like in the last panel, but everything here is pulled from things I’d picked up from my preachers and peers at church and also some school teachers and basically everyone, because this was Indiana.
I live on the Illinois-Indiana border; high school was a redneck, intolerant hell.
Indiana must be a weirdly insular place.
In the other panels, they’re just citing an incorrect-but-not-uncommon argument. I’m glad your parents aren’t jerks.
On the one hand, everyone I’ve ever met from Indiana was really nice, but on the other hand, they had all left Indiana by the time I met them.
Hmm…
More specifically, to be fair, it’s small-town rural Indiana. While these people do still exist in the larger cities (Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Bloomington), they aren’t in the majority like, well, pretty much anywhere else in the state.
I have known many people like this. They are all horrible.
Poor Joyce. I certainly have a lot more sympathy for her. I hope they don’t make her leave and go to Anderson.
Don’t forget that these people have been brainwashed (maybe by themselves). They truly do fear that being friends with an atheist will have dire consequences for their daughter – even if they’re being narrow-minded and trotting out all the tired, debunked arguments against atheism.
Okay yes, but they just compared her and also all Jewish people to Hitler.
Yeah. There has to be some point where good intentions don’t excuse really hurtful words and deeds.
You know, I really can’t help but emphasize with Joshua here. He seems like a guy who doesn’t like conflict and these events make him uncomfortable, like I usually am. Plus he has been nothing but reasonable.
Yeah. I’d love to see Joshua have a heart-to-heart with Joyce, out of the parents’ earshot.
You know, the shortpacked comic up today is apropos to this situation in the strangest ways possible.
Seconded.
Okay, I hate her parents now. I cannot believe those words exited his mouth. Moral foundation? Makes me upset. But COMPARING HER AND ALSO ALL JEWISH PEOPLE TO HITLER? Blood. Boiling.
Once again where I could have used a shoop of a Godwin’s Police Department cruiser.
Just a general note about religion (“Hitler was a ____”)
You can CLAIM to be part of any religion, but unless you actually follow its core tenets, you aren’t one.
You can call yourself a Muslim, but if you don’t believe in the Qur’an or the Five Pillars, you aren’t one.
You can call yourself a Christian, but if you don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah, you’re not one.
It’s like if somebody said “I’m an Atheist, but I believe in God.” Hitler’s Christianity was about as Christian as a doorknob.
But unless we can read minds, we can’t be certain what they believed. Hitler claimed to be a Christian, and I don’t see any reason to believe otherwise.
…pretty much everything he said and did doesn’t count?
If what hitler did makes him non christian every pope from about 1100 on wasn’t one either.
Joyce’s dad would happily agree with you on that one, I think.
Being a shitty Christian isn’t the same thing as not being a Christian. There are loads of really shitty Christians, because the Bible can be used to prop up some really shirty things, and committing genocide is certainly one of them. God himself “cleansed” the world with the flood and murdered all the first borns in Egypt; and he ALLOWED the extermination of the Jews, didn’t he?
You can definitely be Christian and rationalize this bullshit, just like people can rationalize stepping on the necks of the poor and being greedy and casting stones. Even what Jesus is explicitly against, in other words.
I think it’s much too comforting to cast out possible Christians like Hitler and ignoring the Crusades. Instead, true Christians should be learning from these examples the inherent danger in believing in your own righteousness and thinking you have the right to pass judgment on those who hurt no one.
I’d think that a source of morality that can be used to both condone genocide and the morals of the sermon on the mount would by necessity be a shitty source of morality.
Mother Teresa claimed to be Christian while doing some shitty things. Can we conclude that she was lying about it? Lots of people who believe the Bible do awful things. Maybe their interpretation is different from yours, but at that point you’re saying that everyone who reads the Bible differently from you isn’t a REAL Christian.
See, it’s people like this that made me question my faith in Christianity. Don’t get me wrong, I feel great about leaving it behind. In fact, I’m almost as far from it as possible. I now consider myself to be Pagan, though I really don’t know much about it… All I do know is I don’t like most Christians because of their tendency to blindly follow a book as old as the Bible without any thought to what their own brains/hearts tell them.
it’s not like they follow commandments like “Love your neighbor,” anyway.”
Or commandments like “lock your wife into a bath house in the time of her uncleanliness”. Or “if somebody uncovers a woman’s source of blood, stone both them to death”. Tough times for gynecologists.
Here’s one for the megachurches: “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom”
I actually had a christian conservative argue with me once that the bible was pro-capitalism. The mental gymnastics required to circumvent that one line of scripture could’ve won a gold medal at the Olympics.
I thought that referred to an actual city gate, which was really narrow, too narrow for a camel to get through?
Where did you hear that? He was using hyperbole.
The “actual city gate” explanation, as far as I’m aware, is a part of the mental gymnastics mentioned above.
It doesn’t. Like Willis said, mental gymnastics.
Original Hebrew doesn’t say CAMEL, but ROPE or CABLE: something which cannot fit through a literal eye of a literal needle.
First of all, yes she does. There are scientific explanations for how concepts of morality came about. One reason we don’t all go around killing is because it’s detrimental to the species. We had to learn to have empathy for others, or we wouldn’t be here. If you do things ONLY because someone tells you to, you’re merely obedient…that doesn’t automatically make you good.
Hitler ate sugar, had a pet dog, was a Catholic Christian (this is were apologists pull “no true Scotsman”) and a creationist…still want to play guilt by association game? Even if Hitler were atheist, it wouldn’t mean atheism caused anything. That “part Jewish” line also suggests that Jews are partially responsible for…persecuting Jews and other groups. (Okay, I know he’s just grasping)
Sorry, just wanted to practice.
Hitler also believed Atlantis was real and spent a good amount of time looking for it…
Anyone who believes Atlantis is real failed to do three seconds of research into the very sentence which introduces the idea and states that it’s a purely hypothetical concept.
Correction: it does not make you good, period. But the person who you don’t anguish and kill won’t mind whether you do that out of inherent goodness or out of fear of God.
If an imaginary God keeps at least some murderers and rapists from the street, he is doing a good job. If he keeps someone from bashing someone’s head in (we are, after all, animals), he’s doing a good job.
Now it looks like Joyce’s parents are putting the cart before the horse here. Maybe they need to reread the story about the Good Samaritan.
Bingo.
It straight-up implies that they’d be rapist mass-murderers if they didn’t believe they’d go to hell for it.
I would just like to mention that Hitler was speculated to have had Jewish ancestry and his name,Adolf, iirc, was a Jewish name so yeah
Hitler wasn’t a creationist. A number of people bring out a certain passage from Mein Kampf where he rails against the evils of hybridization (“whoever brings about such a development sins against the eternal creator” refers unambiguously to hybridization, not speciation or a belief in speciation – read the passage for yourself – anyone who tells you otherwise is being dishonest), but their argument tends to focus on the rhetoric used, and ignore the actual message. He even says that to do this is to erase “higher breeding… over hundreds of thousands of years,” quite clearly connecting the existence of the natural barriers he hold sacrosanct to genetic isolation over time, not to a single creation event.
Well he still didn’t support Darwin’s actual theory…that’s at least something. Stalin did, but he supported the (disproven) Lamarkian version.
So, Godwin’s Law on Joyce’s parents?
Incidentally, I always wonder how the ‘Atheists have no moral compass!’ people would have reacted had they been around for that order from God to exterminate every man, woman and child of the Amalekites back in the OT days.
The Abrahamic religions have a moral compass. It’s just that occasionally it points towards genocide.
Oh, god, that was my haftorah portion for my Bar mitzvah. I love the bit where God gets pissed at Saul for sparing the cattle.
I wonder how much of that is due to their region of origin have a very limited carrying capacity, especially at Bronze Age tech? Competition for resources is gonna be fierce.
(Not that we, as a species, have ever really needed much of a reason, but…)
Uh, you’re apparently infested with modern views. “God commands, we follow” is quite the definition of the moral compass. The whole point is that God is right by definition, and if you balk at something, your faith is defective.
Killing the Amalekites is peanuts compared with the Great Flood. There are psalms where David prays for God to smash the enemy’s childrens’ heads against a rock. Jephthah killed tens of thousands based on a linguistic quirk.
The main element of the religious moral compass is deferment of moral authority to an ultimate entity that can’t be wrong.
You can call it the Führer syndrome.
Assuming God is giving the command and not just your leader.
Yeah, that’s what they call the ‘Divine Command’ theory of morality. Rape? Murder? Genocide? Slavery? Every bit of it is a-ok so long as you get the go-ahead from on high.
My experience arguing with the people who talk about religion offering a ‘moral foundation’, however, often gives the impression that this isn’t how they’re thinking at all. Rather, they seem to have selectively removed the more horrific passages of the Bible from their memory, or perhaps simply have avoided reading them. If they’re reminded of those passages, they enter into all kinds of mental contortions in order to justify them according to more conventional moral ideas when, if they believed their own rhetoric, all they would really need to say to justify it is, ‘God said this genocide was good, so it was good.’
Basically, modern Christians themselves are infested with a lot of modern views and don’t like to be reminded that their holy book looks really, really bad under the light of those views.
I think I’ve also seen that the Old Testament is a veiled precursor of the New Testament, so whenever it gets bad, it’s really an allegory for the truth. I don’t remember quite how this was supposed to work, but I think it was actually rather close to Catholic mainstream.
Joyce’s parents remind me of my dad. He once gave me a bible for my birthday in hopes that it would make me go back to church. *shakes head* Yeah that aint happenin. 😛
Religious people frequently fail to realize that the Bible is exactly why many of us LEFT.
Best part about the argument in religions. God can’t be beaten because… he’s God. If you find scientific proof it was God who put it there to test your faith. <(Someone's legit argument with me)
I will say a higher power that it holds some value. The US $ says "In God We Trust" because he can't fail. If he exists he is all powerful. If he doesn't your money is still held to the value of something that can't fail.. cause if it isn't there… how can it fail.
YAY Brain Meltdowns!
Sweet and I get the Dorothy avatar to match! Double win!
If it isn’t there (which it isn’t) it’s failing to exist.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t “In God We Trust” only added to U.S. currency in the 1950s during the whole McCarthy period of Communist Witch-Hunts?
I know that’s when “Under God” was forced into the Pledge of Allegiance…
Yeah. That’s when it changed from “e plurubus unum” which really makes a fuckton more sense…
Actually, “E pluribus unum” is still -on- our currency in the same place it was prior to the 50’s. The place where your bills say “in god we trust” was just blank space on the old money.
The official U.S. motto is now in god we trust, though.
It was added to US paper currency imn the 50’s. It was added to coinage during the civil war, when both sides were trying to argue that God was on their side.
But, being God, the proof would be perfect. And that means that if we study the proof in depth, everything will be perfectly consistent, and predictions based on it will be valid.
The only excuse not to study it and thus cut oneself of from the fruits of God’s perfection is laziness. Science is not to be confused with a mere religion for explaining the world. It is also a tool for making predictions.
God created the world, men created the Bible. It makes more sense to study the primary source, and there is a lot more to study.
There are people with the opinion “but the Bible tells us all we should need to know” but one has to call BS when they pull out their phone.
I can respect that if they come through with a full life based on that belief like presumably the Amish people do.
But the vast majority of Creationists belies their “beliefs” with the lives they lead, just needing a cheap excuse for intellectual laziness.
To be fair, it’s hard to beat God when he doesn’t even have stats.
OH MY GOD THEIR EYES ARE HORRIFYING. GOD ONLY KNOWS WHAT A BROWN FAMILY PICTURE LOOKS LIKE AUGH AUGH OH GOD WHY
When I was a kid, whenever I was asked, I’d say I was Jewish because I didn’t really understand what religion was, but I knew that you had to say you were something because otherwise people would give you funny looks.
. . . . . I cannot stand the loathing I feel for her parents
They are the most detestable fictional characters I have come across since Umbridge or Joffrey.
And I mean that.
Those characters are fun to hate. I LOVE hating them. These, her parents . . . I have to deal with this stupidity everyday (I live in Kansas and used to work as a computer tech in the State Capitol building). The fact that these people actually exist is what makes my hatred for them burn so real and so deep . . .
Joffrey? Maybe.
Not Umbridge, though. She straight-up tortures children, for crying out loud!
She’s not saying they’re as bad, she’s just saying she hates them that much. And I hate Joffrey way more than I hated Umbridge. She was just too stupid to hate, Joffrey was like all the entitled children of the world condensed into a small package of pure whine.
Yeah, like Andiemus said, “most hated since x” means x was the last character they hated -more-.
On a lighter note, Joshua kinda sounds like an old man when he says “hook up” to mean finding and hanging out with his buddies.
Uhm holy shit no people like you “Joyce’s parents” gave us Nazi Germany you know people convinced that “their people” were the good and pure and everyone else were monsters to condemn.
Well, the jews killed our Lord! To be fair, that was more the street argument and/or the medieval argument. The Nazis themselves used different logic, based on a weird mixture of “Jewish World Conspiration” and semi-racial fiend propaganda.
Sometime in the next years “Mein Kampf” runs out of copyright (which had been confiscated from Hitler’s sister in return for a state pension or something), so there will be annotated versions getting published in order to give some counterbalance to uncritical reprints.
It’s actually pretty creepy stuff, of the “I see how this could work” variety. Which is not all that surprising in the light of history.
At any rate, the Catholic Church ran along.
On Woodward, in Royal Oak, there’s a church I’ve been past many times where its preacher at the time actually had a radio show where he spewed pro-Nazi propaganda during the war.
Yeah. It’s scapegoating 101.
Can I just say “The Jews killed our lord” is a dumb thing to say? I mean…yeah…Judaism was the religion of that area. HELL, Jesus is credited with spreading it cuz he is in fact, a Jew. Noone was Christian until he died/resurected so unless it was athiests or muslims, it kinda had to be Jews.
Interestingly enough, you would’ve been considered an atheist if you didn’t worship the Roman pagan gods.
Uranus is my copilot.
Christianity predates Islam – Muhammed wasn’t even born until the 6th century. And there were religions other than Judaism in the area. The Roman religion, for one, would have been practiced by several of the people involved.
Not to mention Zoroastrianism, the Ancient Egyptian Religion, various Celtic and Germanic cults, there were a lot of religions going around in Jesus’ time.
Well, I was talking about the ones with a major presence in the area of Judea – the ones that could have been practiced by people who were involved in Jesus’ execution – so Zoroastrianism and the Egyptian religion are certainly possible, as Persia and Egypt weren’t particularly far, the Roman religion is definite, because they held the area…the Celtic and Germanic lands weren’t terribly close, so didn’t likely have significant presence in the area. Samaritanism (granted, similar to Judaism, but not the same thing), the pre-Islamic Arab religion, and so forth, are more what I meant.
It was a dumb thing to say in medieval times already. The point is that it’s catchy.
It was not “Our Lord”, it was their messiah. And he is quite defnite about it, even though he can be swayed on occasion:
And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.
And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.
Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
10 bucks says joyce in her anger mentions that she was nearly raped by a guy with their moral foundation before the week is out
I sincerely hope not. That argument’s nearly as bad as the Hitler card.
Er, don’t want to be *that feminist* here, but it sounds like you’re saying a woman merely mentioning being a victim of sexual assault is almost as bad as someone comparing people to Hitler. I think you probably didn’t mean it that way, but you can understand how this interpretation could offend.
Also, Joyce’s argument would actually be relevant to the situation, unlike her parents’.
…and Joyce really ought to tell SOMEONE. Maybe in time for Sarah to make it out of the elevator and into the room and argue with the Browns in support of Joyce staying at IU to symbolically make up for what happened to her previous roommate.
I keep waiting for her to actually *look* at that card Roz gave her and try and find help on her own.
I think what he’s trying to say is that characterizing Christians as rapists based on one Christians actions is as bad as characterizing atheists based on hitler’s. that doesn’t reflect what jaredstar was saying, though.
Ah. Yeah, I see what you’re saying. My thought is that her argument would be “this one Christian is bad, so all Christian values are invalidated”. Which is a terrible argument.
no, her argument would be “you say that Christians have a moral foundation others don’t, but Dorothy is awesome and kind, and this one Christian guy was an attempted rapist, so obviously there’s no special moral foundation.”
No need to generalise it to anything bad about all Christians (which still includes Joyce).
Hmm, yes, that does make more sense than what I was reading out of the whole thing.
Nah. Joyce is certain that, if she talks about Ryan, her parents will take her home and she’ll never come back to school.
maybe but we all say crap we would rather not when we are pissed and the last few times we have seen her this angry somebody has gotten hit
I’m pretty sure that guy was faking being very pious as part of his predatory technique.
WOW, I was not expecting such extreme parents. I knew they would have a problem with Dorothy, but I was not expecting the Nazi remark.
How weren’t you?! Did you see her at the start of the year! 😛
Ok, Joyce’s Parents need to hurry up and meet Ethan’s Parents. The combined hatred of the fans should be enough to create a black hole that destroys the Earth.
Maybe they’ll devour each other
Toss in Danny’s family.
But I like the Earth! It’s where I keep my stuff!
Say what you will about Nazi Germany, the army had a GREAT fashion sense. Seriously look up the officer leather trench coats or the Luftwaffe uniforms. Those blokes were STYLING.
Also I just watched “Into the White” a film based on true events in 1940. Gives a great impression of the people, on both sides, early in the war, look it up.
Agreed. I had an ex-Luftwaffe overcoat for many years (sans badging, of course). Excellent quality garment even 50 years later.
Uh, quite a strange angle to focus on. At any rate, a step down from the Kaiserzeit.
I’ve actually seen this dilemma manifest in fandom. “Yes, they were pretty definitely the Bad Guys, but damn, they had all the coolest clothes and gear! I’M SO CONFLICTED!”
Their flags and symbology were actually really awesome aesthetically, too.
I’d NEVER own one because it would disgust me far too much, but I can appreciate the visual flair.
The symbols weren’t even their own.
That’s just Genre Savvy: the bad guys must look cool, and Nazis were aware of it.
Apparently many teenagers in Indonesia and Vietnam would agree. Hitler-chic is somewhat disturbing.
Well, when your uniforms are designed by Hugo Boss, you know you’ve at least got a classy air about you when you’re committing mass genocide.
Nazi-ism was a class act of clever marketing, graphic design, and propaganda that we’ve not seen the like of sense. The core concept may have been one of the worst things we remember in history, but they dressed it up /really/ nicely at the time.
Okay, I see we’ve covered a lot of things pretty well here.
But can we talk about the silliness of Joshua calling an Indiana-Minnesota tilt “the big game”? I mean, really?
Good for Joyce. ARRRRRRRRGH NO BAD WRONG at her parents.
Reductio ad Hitlerum.
Sounds like a Harry Potter spell.
Well that escalated quickly.
Interesting how Protestants are so creepy in the US, while they are more timid in Europe (where Catholics keep intervening in everyone’s business)
…except in both Irelands.
Yeah, because the Eastern Orthodox Church has such a history of timidity. And Martin Luther? Total wuss.
> Yeah, because the Eastern Orthodox Church has such a history of timidity.
Tell me about them… I live them :S
If I had to choose another religion to be around me, I’d go for Anglicanism or Sweden’s State Church (Lutheran, I think?). They really don’t seem that keen on telling non-believers what to do.
Come to Scotland in July and tell everyone your Catholic; just wearing green ought to do it. I guarantee you’ll find out exactly how ‘timid’ the Protestants are.
The flip side of that is the Catholics here are totally different (now, anyways) to the way they seem to be portrayed in the States.
some of the Protestants
Aaaaand…
Now is the perfect time for Joyce’s Jewish, self-loathing gay boyfriend to show up.
oy.
You’re right.
You are so right, it hurts.
I’m hoping more for Sarah (who we actually know is on her way up to their dorm room) to walk in just as Joyce tells them about the attempted rape.
It’d be a great chance for her to make up for sending her previous roommate home, by arguing in favor of Joyce staying.
Or she could hit them with a bat.
Then stomp on them a bit.
Why is this mutually exclusive?
Here’s hoping this ends in one glorious hate-orgy with the Siegals that leaves everyone disillusioned and dirty feeling.
Not sure yet if I’d like to see Joshua x Ethan; I’m still kinda hopeful for a Joyce x Ethan x Jacob threesome, because lulz.
Sincerely, thank you for writing today’s comic.
Hang on, the Browns just Godwined their own daughter? I had assumed that, given they’d probably been dreading Joyce coming into contact with atheists, they would’ve prepared a better argument than Reductio ad Hitlerum.
In their mind, that’s probably the best argument ever (next to “The Bible says so”)
GODDAMMIT BROWNS STOP DISAPPOINTING ME! >:(
Because yeah, apparently it wasn’t enough to be uptight assholes and complete idiots, you just had to act as fucking kindergarteners as well.
FUCK. YOU. PAINFULLY.
A splintered log would suffice.
Not painful enough. We’re talking CHAINSAW level stupidity.
Having invoked Godwin’s Law, Joyce’s parents have officially lost the argument.
Great strip, absolutely love it. I had to laugh, even if it’s not at all that funny, if you think about it …
I take back all the “well intentioned” comments about Mr. & Mrs. Brown. Fuck them.
Some of my family is like this. I don’t know how such intelligent people can act as though they have some sort of mental disability.
Nazi Germany was created by a megalomaniac with a grudge, who saw a chance for power and easily coaxed an impoverished and still-angry-about-getting-screwed-over-after-world-war-one populace into comfortably looking the other way. So really, Nazi Germany was made possible by ignorance, fear mongering and an extremely stubborn national Psyche. Religion was a major tool in accomplishing Hitlers thousand year Reich, though it is as always an excuse rather than a true motivator. Regardless, by making atheists the villains without any real knowledge or perspective on the subject, distancing themselves from diversity out of fear and comfort, they have become exactly what Nazi Germany thrived on. Funny, in a sickening sort of way.
Damn this is bugging me more than it probably should. Guess that means the comic is doing its job. I haven’t gotten this frustrated with fictional characters since I read marvels civil war crossover.
Well done.
+1 to you!
Hey JoyceDad, hate to break it to you, but Hitler was a Christian. Yes, he was Catholic, and yes, I get that a lot of evangelists don’t think Catholics are real Christians, but Hitler said many times that he was doing God’s will on Earth. Hell, military belt buckles were stamped with ‘Gott mit uns’, so the idea that the Nazis were atheists is pretty much bunk.
That’s pretty much it, yeay. Well, the “Gott mit uns” motto was there before the Nazis came to power, and there’s ample reason to think that H himself was a hypocrite who didn’t really “believe” in anything; but still, the point is that he always declared himself a Catholic and millions of German Christians had no trouble following him.
My reaction to Joyce’s parents…
Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!
That is why I keep religion and politics to myself…
Gnenrhgnherhgngngsdan.
I want to grab Joyce’s mom and shake her while screaming HITLER WAS A FUCKING CATHOLIC.
AND STALIN WAS ALMOST A PRIEST Jeez.
Hitler wasn’t really Catholic when you look at it.
Neither are the Browns, actually.
And as stupid as using it as an argument is, Hitler _may_ have been part-Jewish ethnically.
Well, looking at pictures he is tallish/pasty-faced though definitely not blond. Goebbels, responsible for most of the Nazi propaganda and doctrine, on the other hand…
Except the Browns literally aren’t Catholics — they’re Protesants.
That’s irrelevant. The claim in question here is “People like Dorothy gave us Nazi Germany”, not “People like the Browns gave us Nazi Germany”.
I don’t think I’m replying to the comment you think I am.
Totz the Plaid said, “But Hitler wasn’t REALLY Catholic, and neither are the Browns if you really think about it.”
So I responded to point out that if he means to disown Hitler for being a terrible Catholic, he should probably make his comparison to characters who are Catholic, instead of literally being an irrelevant form of Christianity.
That’s what we call a joke, son.
He was raised Catholic, He never renounced it, and his writings are littered with references to “God”. He justified most of his most horrible atrocities in the name of “God”, and invoked divine authority all the time. So maybe he was or maybe he wasn’t a “Catholic”, but he was at the very least a theist who was raised Catholic. You could argue that he was a bad Catholic, but that’s hardly the point.
And even -if- Hitler was some kind of secret atheist who ate catholic babies in a little closet in some back room somewhere, the majority of the German people at the time, who elected and supported the Nazi regime, and ultimately formed the bulk of its numbers, were without question practicing Roman Catholics.
So when the claim inciting rage is that “Hitler was an Atheist” or “Atheists gave us Nazi Germany”, arguing over the details of Hitler’s belief structure is a little pedantic.
I think Hitler’s relation to the Catholic belief system can be best summed up with this picture.
Indeed, an entirely Germanic motif with an Eagle where a cross should be is about as insulting to Catholicism as one can get and still use the German word for God.
Not that this makes the Nazis atheist.
I cannot stress this as a historian enough: Hitler and the Nazis weren’t devout ANYTHING. Except racists.
Doubtful, and actually, that probably started as a rumor spread to court the same anti-Semitic elements that Hitler used to… *cough*… so it’s probably not all that great to keep it alive. “Sunny” has some links further down.
These pages are gonna be quite a ride for those of us who voted to see the Desantos or Sierra’s parent. I think I’m gonna need some popcorn for the next strip.
I wish people would realize how equally hateful they sound when they say things like “This is why I hate Christians” and “Hate to break it to you, but Hitler was Christian.”
Newsflash guys:
– Making sweeping generalizations that are hateful about any group is bigotry. It doesn’t only count when it is against people groups you want to defend.
– Hitler was a psychopath with paranoid tendencies that created genocide… let’s not throw around his association with anyone innorder to prove our own point. It is wrong.
And thus is why I take the following stance: what people say and do in the name of some organization usually indicates more about them than it does about the organization in question.
If it helps, the reason I point out that Hitler was a Christian isn’t to put down Christianity, it’s to refute the specific argument that Hitler was an atheist, and typically the intended implication that Hitler did what he did BECAUSE he was an atheist. If your response to “Sorry, but Hitler was a Christian” is “Well, that doesn’t say anything about Christianity”, then congratulations, you have just MADE MY POINT. ;p
There needs to be a +1 option on here.
Anyway, +1 to you Heavensrun.
I also support the notion that you shouldn’t hate Christians because of people like the Browns. Hate -individual- Christians no the basis of their similarity to the Browns, sure, fine, but yeah, generalizations are usually bad.
And I say that as an atheist and anti-theist who believes that Christian -claims- should be confronted wherever they are rationally indefensible.
False equivalency.
In the real world, Christians are an oppressive majority, holding almost all the power. How many senators are Christian? How many presidents have been or at least felt they needed to pretend to be devout Christians?
How many laws on the books make Christianity difficult to practice? How often is the building of a new church blocked because of concerns about those evil Christians? How many times per year does an individual Christian experience prejudice because of their religion?
Now, let’s try to guess what these numbers look like for Muslims. Jews, even today. Atheists, pagans?
And let’s think about other groups that Christianity helps marginalize, like oh say gay people.
Not too long ago, Christian people in power were also helpfully discriminating against non-white people. It’s been pointed out that the arguments against same-sex marriage are identical to the arguments against interracial marriage, right down to the Church being front and center in the fight to keep it illegal.
Now, understand that all that has happened today is that people have said mean things on the Internet. Understand the vast chasm of difference between a Christian getting their feelings briefly hurt and the real, systematic oppression that exists for everyone else because of their insistence that we live in a “Christian nation”.
Also understand that even people who say “Christians suck” have not said “all Christians suck”, and that there is zero appreciable difference between “I hate Christians” and “I hate lawyers” or “I hate bankers”. It’s not even the sweeping statement you’re making it out to be.
So, yeah. Tell me again how “two wrongs don’t make a right!” and how complaining about Christians online is just as bad as having my funeral someday picketed after a lifetime of not being legally allowed to marry the woman I love.
And please note that I’m a Christian secularist with a fundamentalist upbringing.
>False equivalency.
Man, after that one Shortpacked, everyone says this now.
Man, after years of classes where I was taught debate technique and studying philosophers and psychology and communication in college, not to mention additional experience in debates about bigotry from the oppressors vs from the oppressed, I sure do say that when it’s appropriate, regardless of that one comic Willis did on the subject that one time.
Everyone here expresses their hatered to joyces parents, but im more worried how this will pan out for joyce. I don’t think that this storyline is heading in a good direction…
They’re not going to take her out of college, at least. Not saying they wouldn’t, but Willis won’t write one of the mainest main characters out of the story this early.
It was then the readers of Dumbing of Age realised David Willis was actually Joss Whedon in disguise.
She’s practically the closest thing this comic have for a main character so i don’t expect her to leave the comic, but things are going to have some sort of consequence. This arc seems to be meant to reinforce the main conflict in her story.
My only worry is that this prompts a relapse in Joyce, and she withdraws from her friends.
I’m sure if anything like that were to happen she would recover, but it would still be sad to see.
I think she’s been through enough with her friends that she wouldn’t go that path, and I’m sure that her friends wouldn’t let her either.
Problem is, the alternative is to split from her parents. While that is probably the healthiest thing for her right now, it is by no means easy or without consequence. Specially if they are helping to pay for university.
Which is why many people wait until their college/uni to break away from their oppressive parents.
Oh, you want them to follow the will of a central figure of authority who dictates morality to them then? Gee, I know I heard of this somewhere…
Words can’t describe my hate for this parents. My Mother was like that.
But also words can’t describe, how awesome this comic is. Willis, you are an great Artist.
And after all, words can’t describe, how positively surprised I am, that there are acutally still so many people on the Internet, that are using their brains. Impressive.
(I hope it’s intelligible, I’m not a native speaker. Greetings from Germany.)
To all the Joyce-haters out there, now you have something to compare ^^
Smelling horse poop doesn’t make dog poop smell good.
If you really think Joyce is a bad person (?) then I’m afraid you still have a lot to learn about human nature 🙁
I don’t think she’s bad per se, just annoying and hard to like
Me, I find really hard to dislike her. Yes, she does annoying things sometimes, but only because she’s so horribly clueless -and that’s her parents’ fault, not hers. But hey, have it your way -there are probably as many different ways to read the strip as there are people reading it.
The smell of horse poop can mask the pretty bird the horse shit all over.
Comparing Joyce’s parents to horse poop is insulting. At least horse poop can be easily washed off and can be useful for fertilizer.
This……I fail to see how this is useful.
Joyce’s parents better not run into me any time soon!
I love how your avatar matches your comment perfectly XD
I have to hand it to you Willis, I have never become so profoundly disappointed and flared with such hatred simultaneously.
Today’s comic has been brought to you by very intense moments with Jesus.
Who turned out to be much more hardcore than we ever imagined (take that, Hippie Jesus).
Hitler was not Jewish.
http://hnn.us/articles/was-hitler-jewish
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/hitlerjew.html
So… who else notices how the blue dots almost line up in panel two?
Now… who can’t stop noticing them, no matter how much they try?
I’ve seen some implications about homeschooling in the comments…
I don’t think homeschooling should be demonized. While it’s true that homeschooling leaves room for more indoctrination, I don’t think eliminating that risk is worth foregoing the liberty of allowing parents to educate their children outside of the school system if they do so desire.
Yes, I was homeschooled by christian parents and somewhat indoctrinated.
No, it didn’t stick and I still enjoyed the experience.
Was wondering when Godwin’s Law was going to show up in the conversation.
And, because I haven’t seen an ‘Anchorman’ quote on here in awhile…
“Well… that escalated quickly…”
Totally agree. I was homeschooled as well, and it helped me to develop my own views and work ethic. Kinda shot my social skills in the foot, but I am working on that.
I was homeschooled through high school and probably ended up getting LESS indoctrinated, strangely, than I would have if I’d been in public school. Probably because my parents were so content with the Christian curriculum they’d picked out, and never bothered to notice that I was also browsing the internet, making friends on message boards, and being exposed to non-christians who were decent, wonderful people.
In the first chapter of Mein Kampf and continually throughout, Hitler says he is doing God’s work and executing God’s will in destroying the Jewish people.
The oath taken by all party officers began “I swear in the name of Almighty God my loyalty to the Fuhrer.”
The belt buckle of every Nazi soldier read “Gott mit uns”, God with us.
Most of the Nazi high command were practising Catholics, and only one was excommunicated at any point. Joseph Goebbels was finally denied God’s grace… for marrying a Protestant. In neighbouring leadership, the fascist leader of Belgium, Leon Degrelle, was excommunicated for wearing his SS uniform to mass and punching a priest.
Hitler’s birthday was celebrated throughout Germany on orders of the Vatican right up until his death.
Whatever this is, it is not atheism.
Hitler never wanted Religion in his “precious” third reich.
But Goebbels understood that to that time, germany was a very religious country and that they needed the religious people.
Also, they wanted to change the beliefs of the people, so they would follow the old nordiv mythology, but that didnt work either.
It’s true, Hitler preferred a bastardized Wagnerian Norse mythology to Christianity.
That’s no atheism either.
I guess there are no words for the shit, that Hitler did and believed in.
But you are right.
That’s no atheism.
May I suggest “State Religion”, an idea that was stolen wholesale from Jean-Jacques Rousseau (who would have been a bit scandalised at the concept of a state run on irrationality anyway).
The Third Reich was obsessed with ‘making all things Nazi’ and that included beliefs. So the term ‘God’ was comandeered and had all the original meanings fucked out of it.
But, yeah, that ain’t atheism either.
“Ever since his [Rousseau’s] time, those who considered themselves reformers have been divided into two groups, those who followed him and those who followed Locke. Sometimes they cooperated, and many individuals saw no incompatibility. But gradually the incompatibility has become increasingly evident. At the present time, Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill, of Locke.
…
What future triumphs the world might dedicate to his ghost, I do not venture to predict.”
– Bertrand Russel
Pardon me, “no” rather than “not” is a Scottish idiom creeping into my text.
The relationship between the Nazi party and Christianity can best be described as clusterfuck. For every case of cooporation between the Nazi party and the church you can find a case of SA or SS bullies persecuting Christians.
All in all The Nazis were theists believing in one god or another. But in the end saying that the Nazis were Christians is as false as saying the opposite. Better say that there were Christians who were Nazis and Christians who weren’t.
I took some long minutes to write this only to understand seconds after i posted that my final statement makes no sense when considering what i was trying to say.
let me revise it to: while the many people were both Nazis and Christians the two organizations held more then a few high ranking members who actively fought the other side.
This comic prompted an outburst.
As I grabbed my monitor, shook it slightly, and exclaimed (to Joyce’s parents) “What. The FUCK. Is wrong. With you?!”
…the dogs did not care.
(Damn You Willis!)
I just slammed my head into my desk. Kinda hurt.
I just kind of stared in slack-jawed horror.
Kinda like a character from a Batiuk comic strip.
This reminds me of Chick-tract dialogue.
That’s probably because everybody in that room is at least partially informed by Chick-tracts. ;p
I know 4chan loves them Chick-Tracts.
Bravo, David! I think you broke a record for reader comments on this one!!!! 🙂
That’s because he went straight to the “let’s talk about Hitler” part of the internet in his strip!
Religion happened once more in this comic. Usually I am a silent reader but between 500 comments mine will be hopefully lost. I am pretty sure religion does not noticable change the chance that people go to war. And if you want to have some proof look into the history of Ireland. Or the Thirty Year’s War from 1618. Or the crusades, the slaughter between african tribes, the Chinese goverment and the people of Tibet. World history is a dark place. And soon our time will be history as well.
Ahh, this.
“God wants you to kill thousands of people!” “That sounds as though it would hurt a lot of people and be bad for everyone involved, including me. Maybe we should rebel against this God person.”
“God wants you to kill thousands of people!” “God is the foundation of all morality, so–sure!”
Or at least, we should rebel against the person claiming to speak for God here.
Most of the time, God is synonymous for “whoever is signing my paycheck”.
Been where Joyce is, almost half a lifetime ago. Good on her for standing up to her folks, even if she isn’t good at it yet.
I pray (hah!) that Joyce doesn’t go where I went and enter an abusive, manipulative relationship that forces her into the real world while simultaneously robbing her of almost all the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that college affords.
Poor Joshua wants to leave this incredibly awkward situation. Take us with you, Josh!
He’s stuck and he knows it. Can’t help his sister because he knows that will just draw him into his parents ire as well. Sympathizes too much with his sister to join his parents side. Just tried to leave and that failed. Can’t placate anyone because he knows his parents and sees that his sister has grown a backbone.
You know who else was a jew?….. Jesus…..
I teach middle school in a rural town in Southern California where w literally have churches with 10 members. Once while discussing the consequences of the reformation, we counted the churches within two miles of our rural (dirt roads are within 100 meters) school. It was 8 churches with only the Mormon and Catholic Chiurches being mainstream. As you can guess with this type of population, I spend a lot of time fighting ignorance.
I once had a student tell me you could identify an atheist because, “Their eyes were dead since they have no soul.” I calmly explained that many of the atheists I knew were more moral because they believed that their lives were defined by how well they lived it and treated others for humanity, not for some site of rules set down by a religion,
How did they react?
I am also interested in this question.
No soul? I thought they believed everybody had one.
Wait, Joyce is lying to her parents? Dorothy isn’t jewish, even partly! Good for your Joyce! Now just learn how to placate them when they see you, then do what you want behind their backs.
Actually, Dorothy told her, that her Granddad was part Jewish.
That doesn’t make Dorothy part jewish, but at least it’s not a coldblooded lie…
Iiiit kinda does, actually. Jewish isn’t just a religious affiliation, it’s also an ethnicity and a culture.
You can’t be half Catholic or a quarter Muslim, but you can be three quarters Jewish on your mother and your paternal grandfather’s side.
It does?
Didn’t know that, thanks for the adjustment.
After all, every Day is a School Day.
I for one found this insulting. Not that Willis put them in there, but that suck people do actually exist and I find that insulting that they claim to follow the same God I do.
Or such people, but they do suck. Joyce may actually BETTER off away from them.
The fun/tragic part is Joyce realizing this.
In a few hours this strip has acquired more comments than all previous ones.
See what Hitler can do for you?
Ask today what Hitler can do for you!
Hitler should only be taken as prescribed.
Isn’t there some kind of unspoken rule that any discussion if it goes on for long enough will lead to Hitler?
Godwins Law says that once someone brings up Hitler, the conversation is over
nope, that’s a corollary. The original law is that the longer an argument goes on, the more likely it is that people will bring up Hitler. Some forums use that as a sign that the argument has gone on too long, and so anyone who brings up Hitler is held to have lost the argument, but that is very much a “local” tradition (quotes because most localities that use this rule are only localities in the internet sense, where space is meaningless).
Not just bring him up – compare their opponent to him.
It’s times like these that it helps to remember that the root word of “fundamentalist” means “asshole”.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fundament?r=75
HAHAHA! Nice.
I gotta remeber that one. NIIIIICE!
Wow, not only are they horribly manipulative, they’re either completely ignorant or lying assholes. Probably both.
Hitler was a devout Christian.
http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm
Careful with that. Hitler played at being a great many things. He didn’t really go much for actual Christianity. It played well politically to emphasise his Christian upbringing in Austria and his religious credentials.
His was a State Religion worshipping the German God, which is… kinda not Christianity. He didn’t really like the idea of turning the other cheek or working for higher authority, given the proclivity for power of the Will etc etc.
Not to say that Christianity is untainted by Nazism, Hitler flummoxed most German Protestants and Free Churchers to support Nazism grudgingly and got the Concordat with Rome. However, he was very supportive of the efforts of his underlings to undermine and destroy churches and church organisation. Bear in mind that most of the Nazis didn’t really believe in a God as such, much less a Messiah. They just hated Jews.
Nazism isn’t what many people seem to assume it is, in that it is actually barely coherent and not terribly codified (the efforts of Rosenberg notwithstanding). In essence it was all about Will and irrationality. Hitler mainly burped at lunches and people tried to interpret that as support for what THEY wanted to do. Which is how you ended up with the radicalisation of the Nazi State over time and the completely disorganised ride toward the Final Solution (and the lack of documentation on it, less a cover up and more a product of the political chaos of the Third Reich).
In that sense, Hitler was whatever he needed to be to gain support in his rise to power and subsequent consolidation and then pretty much nothing from about 1938 onwards – nothing is easier to mould into whatever people wanted to see. Hence his credentials as Christian, or vegetarian, or animal-lover are… vague at best.
TL;DR: Hitler wasn’t a devout ANYTHING.
@Joanna
Fantastic comment.
I would only say a couple of things differently:
1. Nazi ideology, insofar as there was such a thing, certainly emphasized the unrestrained exercise of the will – vaguely assuming that all pure, clear thinking Germans must of course will the same thing – and irrationalism. But to leave it there overlooks the central importance of race to the Nazis.
2. That the upper echelons of the Nazis didn’t believe in much of what’s generally considered to be essential to Christianity – that Jesus is the son of God; loving one another; forgiving one’s enemies – is certainly true. That they didn’t believe in God “as such” (as opposed to the other kind of God?) is more questionable. The Nazis’ experiments with neo-paganism might not resemble most other people’s ideas about God, but then, the Nazis’ ideas about secular society didn’t resemble most other people’s either. Hitler himself doesn’t seem to have put much stock in neo-paganism, but then, he doesn’t seem to have consciously committed himself to any religious stance; Christian, outright atheist, or otherwise.
Of course, debating Hitler’s religion is somewhat beside the point anyway. The Nazi leaders couldn’t have done anything if the German people hadn’t followed them, and the overwhelming majority of Germans at the time were, of course, Christians, as were many of the Nazis sympathizers and supporters outside of Germany, up through Pope Pius XII and the America Firsters (sometimes simply because they saw the Nazis as a bulwark against communism)
Thank you Graham and thank you for pointing out what I missed too!
Nazism worked because people were able to pretty much read whatever they wanted into it. Christians, Muslims, Atheists, Statists, Middle-Class, Working-Class, Upper-Class, students, educated people, uneducated people, fellow-travellers, believers, non-believers, petty people… Pretty much just people. Ordinary people. THAT is what allowed Nazism to function in Germany. Just as it would have allowed similar movements to function pretty much anywhere else and still does and still might. (It is this that keeps me awake some nights – would I even TRY to oppose such a movement in my country or just shrug and carry on like most other people did in 1930s and 1940s Germany? *shudder*)
But yes, you’re right, the Racialism of Nazism is what set it apart from, say, Fascism generally.
And yes, I’ll let a greater historian than I sum up what you said too: “Whilst calling Hitler [and the Nazi leadership and Party] evil is morally satisfying, it explains nothing.”
“Nazism worked because people were able to pretty much read whatever they wanted into it.”
Good point.
Sorry, I forgot to add: the website is fine, but makes a mistake about self-identification. Otherwise I could self-identify as anything I like and the wider community with which I identified would be tarred with my stupidity. That just doesn’t seem fair for the wider community.
In other words, Hitler’s self-identification as Christian is about as convincing as his self-identification as a Socialist or a Nationalist.
Also, I hope I don’t come across as anything less than respectful of you KiTA, as I don’t know you, and therefore assume you are a rational and generally good human being!
It’s kind of an interesting part of the human condition. Meet us individually and we’re for the most part exactly that: rational and generally good people. Meet us in a group and as often as not all intelligence goes out the window.
I call it the Mob Mentality theorem: The likelihood of intelligence in a group is inversely proportional to the number of people in the group.
What do you mean, “That’s not a real theory”? I used the word “theorem”! That makes it scientific!
That actually is a real theorem. By the same name actually.
Congradulations, you’re a smart person!
Holy fuck, I just accidentally’d a science.
Looks like condoms also serve as thinking caps.
I don’t know; there are a lot of really disgusting individuals out there. And conversely, groups of people often do good and smart things.
Absolutely. As far as individuals go there are always exceptions to the rule. That’s what we have a justice system for. As for groups it can easily go either way, however it doesn’t take much for a group to go from good to bad. You wouldn’t have to look far for examples.
I would say it’s rare for a group to ever be purely good or bad – just as it’s rare for individual people.
As for the justice system, if your point is that it’s easier to to make an individual person pay for wrongdoing than it is to make an entire country pay, that’s certainly true. But presumably you’ll agree that many individuals do horrible things that are perfectly legal.
Plot twist: Joshua is secretly an atheist.
I hoping that’s the twist.
You know who else is partly Hitler?
All of us, stupid Hitler being human and all.
If this guy was real all I can say to his response would be… “It’s Clobberin’ Time” that would be after spending 10 hours finding out there is no face palm meme on the internet that represents what I felt reading that last panel.
I think your gravatar will suffice.
Whoa this comic is so fucking American
Pretty much.
Wait, you mean that there are countries that don’t make stupid comparisons to Hitler in their arguments?!?
I assume Germany doesn’t.
You can actually get arrested for supporting Nazism or Holocaust denial.
That sounds like a great idea, I think all countries should have a law for this.
Speaking of Holocaust deniers, if I ever meet one, I’m going to say I’m an American Revolution denier. I’ll say that we’re secretly still a colony of Great Britain.
Does that mean you’re working for Mad Mod?
they’re onto us, my duckies. quick, grab the tea and flee XD
God save our gracious Queen….
I like that one, I’ll try it.
In America, we don’t deny the Holocaust or support Nazism openly, we accuse our political opponents of slippery sloping us to Nazism, no matter how nonsensical it is.
Yes, but none of them are on the internet.
Congratulations Joyce. You have encountered a fundamental problem in having an argument: it is impossible to argue with someone when they are already convinced that they are right.
At this rate, Joyce is going to have to make a decision: either fall in line with her parents beliefs and forfeight her newly made friends, or add some steel to her spine and split from them. Normally I’d say take a third option, but it doesn’t look like the Brown’s are going to let her have one.
Either way, this is going to get a heck of a lot uglier before it gets better.
Interesting, because I came out as an atheist to my father last weekend and we had the “no moral foundation” argument. He started with “Without God, people would murder and rape each other” and less than five minutes later he found himself having to conclude that “It’s okay to kill people when God tells you to.”
Yep, that’s in the Bible. It’s basically the point of the parable where Abraham is told to sacrifice his child. “If God tells you to kill, you do it, no matter how much you object. God will make sure it all works out.”
Ah, yes. When I was an evangelical, I had a man at church tell me the reason we can’t have more than two major political parties was because having more than two was how Hitler came to power.
…
Here’s to hoping that that says more about him than it does about evangelicals.
Whaaaa?
So, basically what you’re saying is that American evangelicals use Hitler for anything?
Hitler(TM) has sooo many uses. 😛
Scott Lively, an American evangelical who is one of the masterminds behind the virulent anti-gay legislation in both Uganda and Russia (amongst other countries), wrote “The Pink Swastika”. He argues that because gay men are inherently vicious, violent, and amoral, the Nazis actively recruited them, and they rose to the top ranks of the Nazi party. Ah, but didn’t the Nazis kill gays? Mr. Lively claims that was to cover up the fact they were gay.
This man, Scott Lively, an American “evangelical” (if he can even be dignified with that name) has been masterminding the debacles in Uganda and Russia. And most experts say Ukraine will be the next to fall, he’s been active there for years, as well as a number of countries.
Every day I learn something that makes the world and the human race seem a bit more hopeless. Today, it was this :((((
Good lord that took a sharp turn to complete and utter bullshit. Also Willis you write this exchange really well man.
I really feel sorry for Joyce and Joshua. Joyce because she had to grow up hearing stuff like this, and she’s realizing that she cannot possibly win this argument. Joshua because he had to grow up hearing this stuff, has probably already had some version of this conversation himself, and is stuck in a catch 22 (and he knows it).
OW OW OW OW OW!
My brain hurts, partially from the pseudo-moralistic crap they are spewing, and partially from how hard I just facepalmed from his last comment.
Really, mine is hurting from realizing people have erupted into 700 posts of discussion inside 12 hours.
I always like seeing things that make comment sections explode! ^_^ Question is, could tomorrow top this one, or is this the one where we get it all out of our systems?
Welcome to the internet. Now duck and cover.
This has to be the DoA record for comments. Wow, Joyce’s Dad. You’re epic.
An hero for our time. 😛
Ow. Ow ow ow.
This whole sequence is painful to me on a personal level. My own parents never pulled the Hitler card, but they ultimately DID show that their religion and morals were more important to them than keeping a good relationship with me, their only daughter.
Careful, Joyce; they very well might decide you’re living an immoral lifestyle at college and drag you home. Or cut you off financially unless you go back home under their thumb.
I wish I was exaggerating. 🙁
I have a Character Defining Moment delivery, for a “Joyce Brown”! Anyone gonna sign for this!?
Yeah, this whole situation was bad from the start, an it’s only gonna get worse from here on out. And I have a feeling that someone is going to walk in on this conversation very soon.
Ethan: Did someone say Jewish?
It only works if you say it three times.
Sarah. I’m calling Sarah walking in on this.
I’m going to say that Mike is at least listening, just because I think this sort of situation would be a gold mine for him.
Mike is always listening, no matter what.
Mrs Brown will be one mother Mike won’t wanna give a nickel to.
You and me both. 🙁
It’s also kind of sick when they try to tell you that the friends who have emotionally supported you and stuck by you and helped you through some really rough patches are “not real friends” because they’re not Christian and are apparently incapable of really feeling empathy, while saying your Christian “friends” from church basically drop you like a hot potato at the first sign of emotional distress are the only ones who will ever truly “be there for you” when the cards are down.
Yeah, okay, mom and dad, if you say so.
And so it begins. Oh, freshman year of college…
Well, at least the Browns seem to have gotten over Joyce’s odd fixation on “Dexter and Monkey Master.”
Oh, I wouldn’t be surprised if that sneaks into a narrative about how their baby is ‘straying from the path.’
So, according to wiki’s, this comic strip averages one year of irl time, for one week of DoA time.
Comic running for about three years…
So Joyce is willing to fight against the doctrines she was raised, for her new friend she met three weeks ago– and is experimenting with cartoons that promote eastern religions — Good job girl you’re a character development track star!
Oh, atheists are secretly Nazis? That explains some of the looks I get!
The best part is that I know people who act exactly like this. It’s one of the reasons I believe (or, rather, don’t) what I do. Christ.
This is how parents get disowned. I have a few friends who have fundie parents and they no longer speak with them. A group of siblings I know al disowned their parents and refuse to let their kids see them. They are now miserable and alone with no kids or grandkids to see them.
I’m more concerned by the fact that seem people NEED to answer to a higher authority in order to be moral. I mean… the people who don’t have to and are still good anyway strike me as the “more moral” bunch.
This.
The most infuriatingly stupid thing I’ve heard from Christians isn’t that cavemen hunted dinosaurs or that doing it up the butt will destroy civilization, but that atheists 1) can’t possibly be moral and 2) can’t possibly be truly happy.
UUUUUGH I know. My parents will sometimes pull that “you just don’t seem HAPPY” card on me, and I’m like “well no shit, I’m stuck with you fundie assholes for a weekend and my wife is across the country, why in the world is it SURPRISING that I’m not the chipperest.” Not to mention the appalling state of minimum wage etc.
Also they seem to take the fact that when I was 20 I once got drunk and joked to my girlfriend that we should find a pretty girl and take her home for a threesome, loudly, on the subway, and then blogged about it going “omg so embarrassing, REASONS WHY NOT TO BE DRUNK IN PUBLIC”, and use that to say that I”m somehow “immoral” because I “wanted to do such disgusting things” and I’m like “…Uh, no, immoral would be if I’d just grabbed some girl and coerced or forced her to come home with my wife to have a lesbian threesome. Also that was like 8 years ago. WTF.”
Fundies are freaking TERRIFYING, okay?
I bet for an encore they deny the Holocaust in the next comic.
my family is a moral compass, my friends are a moral compass, my desire to live in an ordered society is a moral compass, and yes, fictional characters from entertainment media that I looked up to as a child and today are a moral compass (though I don’t have to believe they actually EXIST for them to serve that purpose.) You know who is NOT a good moral compass? The characters from the bible, who consisted of war mongers, slavers, murderers, highwaymen, and racists. Also, it was a then perfectly acceptable universal hatred of Jews that led to the policies of Nazi Germany, a cultural habit strongly encouraged by the Christian Church.
Actually, in a weird way we owe our tolerance of jews and other people to World War 2, because it was seeing the terrible effects of casual antisemitism that helped society realize that it was a BAD thing.
You know who else was Hitler? Hitler!
“No, I’m Hitler!”
“I’m Hitler, and so is my wife!”
“There’s a monster on the wing! You’ve got to believe me!”
“Why should I believe you? You’re Hitler!”
“Egh, saw it comin'”
Hitler was raised Lutheran, had the approval of the Catholic church, and openly pushed God in most of his speeches. I don’t know where the ‘Hitler was an atheist’ myths come from. Now the Communists were most definitely atheists, but not the Nazis.
…um, Hitler was raised Catholic, not Lutheran. Most Austrians were Catholic – Austria was and is more or less the ruin of the HRE, after all. And I’m not totally sure what you mean by “had the approval of the Catholic Church.” There are a lot of ways to take that, all those I can think of ranging from sort of overstated to just plain wrong.
Indeed. The guy who was pope during WWII has received a lot of (deserved) flack for not taking enough action against the Nazis, but he didn’t exactly endorse them either. Especially not when they killed millions of people and bombed Rome.
Quick, Joyce! Bring them to meet the bisexual hippie you actually have been going to church with!
Or, bring them to meet your gay jewish boyfriend who sometimes goes too!
And this was the exact moment that Joyce realized that her parents were wrong about everything.
Over 800 replies?? This has to be a record for a Willis comic.
This is amazing. There are 200 more comments here than on the Ruth/Billie kiss strip.
I say we create 200 more comments on how there are over 800!
Anyone taking bets for a 1000?
Nah, that’ll be the one that has Joyce discussing theology, ethics, and philosophy with Dorothy while Jesus battles Hitler on a dinosaur and Billie and Ruth have lesbian sex in the background.
Anyone else notice that Joshua appears to have just up and left?
Either that, or he’s being very careful to hide and stay out of the conversation. About the smartest thing he can do at this point.
He says so in the first panel, so I think he’s just up and left.
He tried to leave, but Joyce’s Mom ordered him to stay put.
friggin’ wiggin’ grah, you try to go “Silly folks not reading the comic closely enough” and then it turns out you aren’t reading the comic closely enough
I feel a fool now. Anyway, in that case it seems likely that we’re just not seeing the comic from the right angle.
Actually, coming at it from that angle (Hah! Wordplay!), it seems the most likely option. In the last panel, the wardrobe is tilted in a way that seems to make Joyce’s dad stand in front of Joshua.
…But Joyce’s dad is in profile in the last panel, when we actually ought to be seeing him from behind, so I guess he moved. I cannot figure out the actions in this strip.
Assume that he’s still there, but trying very hard to make it seem like he’s not.
Just because someone isn’t in panels doesn’t mean they aren’t in the room.
Well, you’ve certainly managed to provoke a reaction :p is this the most comments you’ve ever had?
I’m fairly sure it is! Shortpacked! never had as many readers as DoA, and I think that the most comments a DoA strip ever had was when Ruth and Billie kissed, which only just broke six hundred.
That’s nothing to scoff at, of course, but this has steamrolled over that and seems to be still going…
Hitler can always get people talking, no matter what. I think it’s an unwritten law, actually.
Of course he can. Zey have vays of making you talk.
Out of the three kids my semi-religious/agnostic parents raised one is semi-religious, one is hyper-religious, and I’m theist agnostic. When people ask me how that works, I reply “I believe in God, I don’t believe in religion.”
People like my hyper-religious sister and Joyce’s parents turned me off of religion. Interestingly enough, my three home-schooled, hyper-religious raised nephews are holiday-religious, religious, and borderline agnostic.
The reason for that last one is that he works at his Mom’s place of worship, and during Easter Sunday spent SIX HOURS getting flipped off while working as a church parking attendant, all because he told the churchgoers that the front parking lot was full and that they had to use the side lot. He is now anti-Easter, which gives his Mom the vapors.
i was going to read the comments… but there are just too many
The word count of all these comments would rival a Harry Potter novel.
I can’t help but feel that you lose every time you feel like you have to pull the ‘Hitler’ card to win an argument. His use of the ‘Hitler’ card isn’t even historically accurate!
For all his supposed religiousness, Adolf was a superstitious man. He wasn’t ‘partially Jewish’ and he wasn’t Catholic, really, either. He was a fan of the Aryan theory, and probably the idea that he can blame someone else for his own mistakes. (But at the time, most people blamed the Jews for these things. Like ‘I didn’t get into art school because they let in too many Jews and not enough, uh…me.’) Y’know what else he was? A Disney fan. He loved Pinocchio and wrote tons of fanmail to Walt Disney. Does that make Disney evil as well, Mr. Brown?
Sorry. I don’t like his use of the Hitler card. And I kinda have this thing for the history of World War 2 and the Holocaust. Historically, it’s fascinating to me.
1. Nobody likes the fact that he used it, that’s why this strip has the largest number of comments to it.
2. Resorting to the Hitler card is a clear indication of desperation and ignorance in the vast majority of cases.
3. Joyce is still going to lose this argument, because you can’t argue with someone who is already convinced they are right.
Um no…spouting nonsense doesn’t win an argument. Hitler comparisons should also lose by default.
It doesn’t win an argument on equal terms, but it seems that here, if Joyce’s dad decides he’s right, he’s treated as being right.
It doesn’t win the argument, but the argument in this case won’t make a difference.
Hitler Card: Don’t leave home with it.
It seems that Joyce is going to genuinely chew out her parents and/or storm out in a huff.
From the Dexter and Head Alien craze we’ve seen, Joyce has a tendency to overdo things–what I’m wondering is if her irritation with what she’s discovered about her parents will cause her to boycot her own religion entirely, at least for a while, which eventually leads to a stress-driven freakout since her faith is a really important coping mechanism for her. This leads to the troublesome but doable effort of reconciling “some people who participate in my religion are jackasses” with “I mostly agree with my religion and it is important to me”, the doing of which will solve some (but not nearly all) of her problems.
It’s pretty obvious and also far-fetched, but if I didn’t spout potential DoA storylines at the drop of a Dexter the Head Alien hat, what sort of malformed inhuman patient monstrosity would I be?
Also, it turns out that Religion+Hitler is prime commentbait. Just have to mention Doctor Who and you’ve hit the internet trifecta.
Doctor what?
Doctor I don’t know!
Third base!
That’s what I wanna know!
Actually, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if that’s how things went – I know when I finally realized how awful many of the things I believed were, I went to the most opposite extreme I could think of at the time – Wicca. XD I won’t ever go back to Christianity, but my reaction was born of a similar “everything to extremes” personality like Joyce has. I have grown up and out of that (mostly) since then, but a little part of me that still believed for a year or two after my break with Christianity almost saw practicing Wicca as serving what must be the ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE of the Christian G-d, even though that’s pretty silly when you take common Wiccan practices and beliefs into consideration.
She could also just have a crisis of faith and come out a proper Christian, since what drives some people away from the church is the hypocrisy, double standards, and downright un-Christ-like behaviors and attitudes the Church tends to have, rather than ceasing to believe altogether.
I see. Interesting!
C’mon, let us generate enough idle arguing to reach 1,000 comments!
Actually that might be a bad idea.
Why is that? Will reaching the 1,000 mark cause the internet to explode?
Yay! Godwin’s law!
Wow. They do realize the Church isn’t going to win any people for God if they shun others, right?
Also, the Hitler thing is horrific.
The really awful thing is that PEOPLE ACTUALLY THINK THAT WAY. I know – I grew up in a family that was honestly nearly identical to Joyce’s. I myself was pretty much Joyce, and it wasn’t until I was older and started actually spending time with GSM people and non-Christian people that I realized how bigoted and awful the things I’d been brought up believing were.
Needless to say, given the fact that I’m queer and haven’t considered myself a Christian in almost 10 years, my parents and I aren’t on very good terms anymore.
Anyone else hoping tomorrow’s first panel is Joyce’s brother coming out to his parents?
[Panel 1]
“Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you.”
[Panel 2]
“What is it, Joshua?”
“I’m gay.”
[Panel 3-6]
Timelapse nuclear detonation as seen from 120 miles away.
I hope this so much.
But terrible person that I am, I’m half-expecting Joshua to turn out to be an even bigger bigot than his parents; we’ve been interpreting his behavior in the wrong direction.
To be honest, I’ve been shipping JoshXEthan for a bit now, solely because I can, so it’d be kinda amusing if that happens, although my doubts lie in the fact that Willis prolly won’t be developing a new character from scratch. Maybe.
They should look for Mary. Her parents would probably get along with her.
Aren’t people like Mary why they change churches so much? Course if you are intolerant enough that you hate blindly, then you might get kicked out of churches.
But yeah, they would get along with Mary (unless she says something they don’t agree with. At which point they will blindly hate her.)
me love u long time
Ouch, right in the bad past experiences.
Seriously, people like this are why I lie and say I’m agnostic so often.
Or Jewish, if they’re really scary.
I knew one guy who would tell people like that, that he was the anti-Christ.
Backed people off right quick. Of course they were trying to hassle people waiting to get into a nightclub.
909 in the first 24 hours!
It has been a long time since a Willis comic has received more than 300 comments, hell in the past year or so most comics get less than 200 comments.
I believe us readers haven’t gone this bana since Ruth and Billie’s Kiss.
Narmenduke,
Basically you are saying, Despite Hitler being baptized,
raised in the Catholic Church, going exclusively to Catholic Schools, Taught to viciously hate Jews in those same schools with far-right Catholic dogma Publicly explaining all his major policies as part of his christianity, having the official backing of Christian Religious parties,
and much of Organized Christianity in Germany, never renouncing Christianity, Never being sanctioned by the Pope,
Never—even to this day—being ex-communicated by the Catholic Church, and passing a law, still in effect to this day, that Funds All Christian Churches directly with taxes; He wasn’t a “Real” Christian because of a small minority of statements skeptical of organized religion that could check his ubridled power….
Is that about summing up the argument?
Ive seen this argument somewhere before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
The sad part about this comic is that there are people who honestly think like this.
I will continue pretending that it’s only ever Poe’s law.
Man I hope so. Otherwise we may as well launch all the nukes now.
I hope they’re God-fearing nukes. 😛
O dear God, what have you done, Willis? You see these readers? They are a stack of TNT, and you just lit the fuse. Sigh…some people just want to watch the world flame.
I c wut u did thar! 😀
*clap clap clap*
Beautiful, lightsabermario. Just beautiful.
You do know that it is YOUR fault that Joyce is been led away from God Mr Brown, after all you did INVENT THE INTERNET after all.
lol I totally forgot that he made that comment about the Internet.
The “douche” points just keep adding up!
Dear god. There it is. Passed a thousand. Furious godspeed, ye comment section.
I’m Not Catholic, But the unfair attacks by hateful people on this forum requires this defense:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/p12holo.htm
oh, on global catholic network, i’m convinced
Always nice to meet a fanatic.
Ever hear of, “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover”?
Try reading the contents.
Or here:
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/exaggerations_for_dubious_ends
“Earlier this week, the French Jewish intellectual, Bernard-Henri Lévy, denounced what he said were media caricatures of Benedict XVI and Pius XII in their dealings with Jews, saying their words and deeds belied their media portrayals. “
You sound like a concern troll. Nobody was even “hateful” or making “unfair attacks” in the first place. They never said “all x are bad”, so I don’t know where all this came.
And your sources are questionable.
I wouldn’t bother with this person.
Check out the first threading of comments at the top of this page. This person has already called all of us liars by denying that behavior as seen in this day’s comic even exists. They are literally entering into a place full of abused people and telling them their problems are fake. Read the many, many responses of folks on this page who have lived through a family exactly like Joyce’s and tell me any different.
Meanwhile, this person is primarily concerned with the reputation of an inanimate organization, something that possesses no feelings. That is where their passion lies — not in the testimonies of real flesh and blood people which fill the 1000+ comments on this page. Safeguarding the institution while disregarding people.
This person is an asshole.
Jeez, Joyce turned out magnificent with these folks as parents… Not that they’re bad people… just really really ill informed… and judgmental… guh…
I don’t mean to come across as judgmental myself, but… if you are ridiculously ignorant, can’t be arsed to become informed despite ample opportunity to do so, and are harshly judgmental and hateful toward others based on that limited perspective… you might be a bad person.
Her parents know jack shit about history
Beaaaaaaatch. .. . I do answer to higher power. It’s called the SUPREME MOTHER-F**KIN’ COURT!
Well said! XD
…and people like you gave us the crusades! I.E. thousands of deaths! 😀
P.S.: I am christian, I don’t discriminate, I just think the argument is incredibly silly and it makes me angry
No moral foundation, thats why the majority of the wars are faught over religion, or have religious backing of some sort.
Yes, because Hitler was totally an atheist and also was partly the religion and ethnicity that he committed mass genocide on.