Biblical era Jewish apocalypticism had a lot of focus on God coming to establish an earthly kingdom. Sometimes including the resurrection of the dead. That’s reflected in a lot of early Christian writing.
Modern ideas of heaven and hell are pretty sketchy even in the New Testament. They come from Hellenistic influence on Judaism and later on Christianity as it spread to the Gentiles.
Let us not forget the tremendous influence Zoroastrianism had on their ideas since the Babylonian Captivity. Zoroastrian ideas may have even played a role in Judaism’s transition from monolatrism to true monotheism.
Technically a revenant. They are corporeal undead that came back with a specific purpose, while zombies are more animated corpses that are under the influence of the one who rose them (traditional), or mindless flesh and mind eaters (modern)
Interesting. So if an undead were to come back with free will but not for a specific purpose, I wonder if that’d be considered a revenant or a zombie. Like full awareness of itself and its surroundings but still undead.
I guess by that logic it would consider anyone brought back with the dragonballs a zombie. Which would be literally everyone on the earth EXCEPT Mr. Satan
Those things in modern zombie movies? Not zombies. Those are ghouls. Even Romero doesn’t use the z-word until popular culture forced him to. Fictionally, the main difference is that a zombi (from African mythology) is raised as a slave, and requires the constant will of its master to remain animated, while ghuls (which originated in Arabic mythology) are raised by a demon and must eat living flesh (NOT just brains) to remain animated.
Outside of mythology and fiction, the main difference of course is that zombis are real – but not dead, just drugged – while ghuls are not.
Jesus:
• asks his followers to drink his blood
• was defeated by a combination of silver, crosses, and pointed sticks
• starts every sentence with a number indicating how many important things he’s said
Pretty standard vampire if you ask me
My suspicion as well. She was pressing yesterday, especially that dig about honesty, and it definitely wasn’t Joyce’s most convincing cover via scripture. The more she presses the more it seems intentional.
While I admit there’s a strong likelihood, I’m kind of hoping she’s actually on the level here? It could break her from being too perfect, which Willis has a tendency to do with her. And honestly, if she hasn’t figured it out, and Joyce’s fears are justified, it seems like it would make a way more interesting story.
I don’t think Becky is being insincere here. While she’s clearly given up many aspects of her traditional upbringing, her fundamental belief in God is still strong. She’s just kinda using her truth to poke at her friend’s doubts, to get her to talk about it.
I think Becky figuring it out on some level is definitely in-character with what we’ve learned (I remember a post a while back describing her as a “social engineer” which I think is a good label) and that the read of Becky as someone who got really good at figuring people out (let alone that she’s talking to her lifelong friend she’s always been in love with) to navigate a controlling upbringing is accurate, but yeah I do want this to really blow up because I want something to blow up for her.
Becky just cancels drama out too much, either through her or someone else stepping in for her, and that she hasn’t done that yet with Dina, that she’s always finding new answers for her sexual hangups and they’re always wrong, that part’s fun but I want that to carry over into her other relationships. I know Becky loves Joyce but Joyce rejecting their faith while Becky still holds onto it seems like a really strong fount for drama, and the idea that Becky’s figured out but she’s making little asides here and there like she’s maybe doing now or maybe did that one time in the cafeteria, like she knows Joyce is afraid of this conversation so instead of just coming out with it she’s trying to make Joyce do it herself… that would make her come off as way more of an asshole than if she just had an immediate negative reaction, right?
That said, I’ve never known anyone in person who referred to their friends parents (or most adults really) by a title like Mr/Miss/Mrs. Mind you, I’m Ontarian and fairly young (25) so maybe that’s just where I’m from. I tried calling my dad’s friend Mr. (Insert Last Name) once because tv convinced me I should and he looked at me like a freak and said ‘What the hell? It’s (Nickname).’ Every adult I knew introduced themselves by their first name unless they were acting in a professional capacity like a teacher or a doctor. I kinda like that – calling people by titles outside of that always seemed distant to me, like we didn’t really know each other and didn’t care to get closer, or like the person was stuffy and overly formal or possibly even MEAN. Obviously that’s not the norm everywhere (almost all my American friends use titles) but it’s how I feel – maybe just because I never grew up with them, but if my best friend made me call her ‘Mrs. (whatever)’ I’d be like ‘Oh. Okay. She must not like me.’
So, curiosity – what country are you from, what generation, and how did you call adults you knew as a kid?
My mom is from Mexico and my dad is from the southern US. Gen X. I would never dream of calling my friends’ parents anything other than Mr/Mrs Lastname. Even now.
Same. Even after reaching adulthood they’re still “Mr. and Ms. Surname”.
(Except for the eccentric neighbor, even as kids we just knew him by his given name. That’s one thing Home Improvement got right, Wilson was always just “Wilson”.)
It’s the weirdest thing to get over once you’re in the workforce, assuming you don’t work for power-tripping, egotistical, petty tyrants.
Same here. Even as an adult, if I happen to meet a parent of someone I was friends with in school, and even if I haven’t talked with that friend in a long time, I still would call that parent “Mr. or Ms. Surname”.
And I would say that the norm is something like:. If you knew the older adult while you were growing up, you call them Mr./Mrs. X until you die, but if you met them as an adult yourself, you call them by their first name except in very formal situations.
Yeah, I definitely thinks it makes a difference when you meet them. I know some adults apparently get really put out about ‘respect for your elders’ if a kid calls them their name but not if an adult from a younger generation does it.
Personally, it sounds like that’s more of a problem with the adults having an ego and disrespect for kids to me but that might be because it’s not a thing I was raised with so it’s not normal for me.
An interesting thing I’ve noticed is that fellow adults that’s true, but like if the person in question is REALLY OLD, often times I’ll still see people call them Miss out of respect and so I instinctively started doing that too. (only ever miss actually. I don’t think I’ve seen the same pleasantry given to old men.)
that’s partly because it is seen as flirtatious to call really old ladies really young names like you are not noticing their age. That whole never ask a woman her age thing. You wouldn’t use Mrs. because that implies she is married and hense older. For guys everyone is just Mr. I guess it is sexist as well.
I tend not to use Miss when doing this, instead I use ‘young lady’ which causes a little titter.
I’m 27, and I still feel bad whenever I refer to an adult by their first name. Idk if it was a denomination thing, a Bible belt thing, or just how my parents specifically raised me, but even with friends’ parents who are super chill and want me to call them by their first names, I still feel weird doing it even after years of knowing them.
I was taught at a young age to always call adults by “Mr or Ms. so and so” because it’s polite. Which is why it makes me SUPER uncomfortable when a parent is like “oh just call me by my first name.”. Like I’m just like…That’s not how this is DONE!
It’s not even an older thing. Even back in high school my friend’s mom insisted I call her by her first name. Ironically one of my camp counselors I had I WILL call by her first name but I always feel compelled to add a “miss” to it. Even though we’re only like…10 years apart in age.
I’m from BC, and we also just use friends’ parents names. I think the only time anyone really uses non-title (ie Doctor) honorifics is for school teachers
Okay, I’ve only ever heard of one Canadian lady who got put out about titles and she lived in the West or Quebec most of her life so I wondered if it was a West Canada and/or generational thing. Interesting!
I’m a bit older than you, but I definitely grew up calling my parents’ friends Mr. and Mrs. However, I started using their first names at a younger age than my siblings, because I’m the youngest of several and it seemed really weird to be the only person at the table saying Mr. and Mrs. after my siblings had graduated to first names.
Interesting! Are you Canadian? I’m low-key wondering if it’s a regional/national and/or a generational thing because all my American friends use titles and I don’t know anyone who’s Canadian who does (mind you, I’ve lived here all my life so I wouldn’t know other regions).
I’d say it’s at least a generational thing, but it may also be a family thing. I’m in Saskatchewan, am old enough to remember the ’70s. I never called anyone anything but Mrs. So and So. In fact I never used my grandparents’ first names, although my dad called his father by his first name.
Fair, both people I know of, counting you, who used titles were older than me and grew up in the Prairies (although one was from Quebec originally). It could be more of a thing back then in the West? I dunno about my parents.
It was not uncommon here (US, east coast, just on the Mason-Dixon line) to do Mr/Ms Firstname for a friend’s parent. (So in this case, ‘Ms. Bonnie’) Though you’d still get Mr/Ms Lastname, depending on the parent. I don’t think it usually shifted once one was established.
(I did the Mr/Ms Firstname for parents’ coworkers, as well, especially when I was younger.)
Extra notes: 28, and I think you’d only ever use Mrs. with a last name, not a first name. (By now I default to Ms. unless otherwise specified, anyway.) Probably because Mrs. Firstname sounds weirder than Miss or Ms. due to the marriage aspect.
That was something I’ve only seen mentioned in the South! Cool. I learned something. I knew one Canadian lady who wanted it to catch on but I don’t think it ever got much traction (aforementioned lady from Quebec).
It wasn’t a thing for my originally-from-out-of-state mom growing up, and while she was okay with it by high school I do recall her mentioning it surprised her to be introduced that way.
(The other one I remember in high school was Ms. Regalli’s Mom/Mr. Regalli’s Dad, on at least one occasion.)
I’m close in age to you, and yeah, one of the many here who grew up with the “Mr./Ms./Dr. X” thing. When I was 15, I babysat some neighbors’ kids over the summer, and the parents introduced themselves with their first names, but I was internally like nooooopppe about it, and then I just avoided using their names altogether. For neighbors who were around when I was growing up, I still use title-last name. (Also, one of my neighbors, I grew up calling her “Mrs. R” for like my whole childhood, with “R” being the last name of the kids I knew from the family– turns out, it was “Dr. B” the whole time, and I didn’t learn this until I wasaybe 20.)
With my parents friends, there were some that were always first name and some that were title-last name that I’ve now shifted to using first names with.
I feel the “avoided using their names altogether” part. I think that was most common as a kid. Little need to use their names talking to them directly and when referring to them they were “so and so’s mom” or “so and so’s dad”.
For me, the part where it was awkward in that case was when I’d be talking to the other parent, but couldn’t bring myself to be like, “Laurie said…” And instead would go with “your wife.” As for when you’d use someone’s name to their face, in greeting would be my first thought. If I was at a friend’s house and saw their parents, I’d at least want to say, “Hi, Mr./Ms. X.”
Also, though, now I’m a nonbinary adult who often works with kids in an education setting, and I hate titles. I don’t like “Mx.,” “Ms.” or “Mr.” feel wrong, and I don’t have it in me to get a PhD. At my last job, I started wearing a they/them pronoun pin, and one very sweet kid noticed and asked how she should address me, and I was pretty much ***awkward shrug*** about it. I think ideally, I’d just go by my last name in such a setting, but I’m looking at a career transition anyway.
Uk, early thirties, and only ever used adults first names. Mr./Mrs./Ms. was only ever for teachers. I think if I didn’t know a friend’s parent’s first name I’d’ve defaulted to (friends name) mum/dad.
28, Southern Illinois. Maybe it’s a local thing, but I’m used to parents’ names more or less not coming up. Like, we’ll look ’em dead in the eye and just start talkin’ with 2nd-person pronouns, as if that brief glance is their name now. To the kids of those parents, we just say “your mom/dad” and they somehow know who we mean. It’s weirdly casual, in that way.
True, it’s not especially necessary to repeatedly address someone by name during a conversation. It gets really grating, and I’ve rarely had a discussion where it was somehow confusing that after someone gets done with their thought, the next person talking is probably responding to them. Although there are also apparently people who prefer their name over pronouns, so I can’t speak for them.
as you may know french has a formal 2nd person pronoun (“vous”) and an informal one (“tu”), and the guidelines on when to use which are infinitely sophisticated and blurry XD …At least, once you get to adulthood.
when you’re a kid things are very simple: other kids are “tu”, adults are “vous” except adults from your family.
memory check… mmmmno it was actually more complicated than that as a kid. i think i was always more of a “tu”-preferrer; even as a child i would often try my luck at calling adults “tu” when many of my peers would default to “vous”. (at worst i think i’d get a weird look and switch pronouns)
we were on first-name basis with my primary school teachers, which i understand is not universal but it was a small village school, so maybe that’s why.
as for titles, it’s expected for children and teenagers to call all non-familiar adults “monsieur” and “madame” — titles and “vous”-usage normally co-occur though not always, on a case-by-case basis an intermediate level may be carved out where first-names are used but “vous” remains: both my parents use(d) this medium-honorific when talking to their mother- and father-in-law.
but yeah, my childhood friends’ parents would mostly insist on being called by first name and i can’t remember there being any with whom i didn’t.
i think a demographic detail you didn’t ask for but feels relevant at least over here, is that i’m from a intellectual middle-class background, and politically my parents (and their friends) are liberal so i think that must’ve tempered the more ostensible forms of ageism. this was in contrast with the surrounding lower-middle class, rural families i would frequent where i get the feeling that elders-respect rules went more generally unquestioned.
hmph. bad phrasing. rules were different, not (to my knowledge) any less challenged. that’s just me being classist! ahahah
…and while i’m at it, though i feel like i’ve implied it, there was absolutely lots of ageism going around in my childhood environment. liberal educated people like to think of themselves above it but this just means it’s (slightly) more insidious. bleh
Thank you for weighing in! You’re the only French respondent so far.
And yeah, I can see how class and urban vs rural could affect things, but I’m mostly wondering if it was a Canadian vs American thing and/or a generational thing. So far it seems like it is. That said, I find it interesting hearing how other places do it! Different languages of course also have different ways of doing it.
I’m a millennial from USA. When I was young, parents were usually Mr or Mrs Lastname. I was taught that this was respectful. There were some alternative schools where students called teachers by their first name, and my parents sometimes grumbled about how it bred disrespect. My mom is from the same sort of area as Joyce and Becky, and it was a little more conservative.
Yeah, that makes sense. It seems a little old fashioned to my Canadian ears but again, I didn’t grow up with it. In places where it’s the norm it probably just sounds right. That school sounds interesting! And yeah, I can definitely see this as something more conservative areas would be stickers for.
I remember in school I’d call babysitters/teachers Mrs. LastName, but I don’t think I do that for like anyone now that I’m an adult. Even as someone who interacts with a lot of continuing education, mostly people just call people by their first name. There’s one doctor I see that I call Dr. LastnName, but he’s been my doctor since I was in elementary school, so I don’t think that counts.
There was one job where I worked with a bunch of elderly ladies who called each other Ms. FirstName so I picked that up while I was there, but only for those ladies. Everyone else was just FirstName, unless they had a nickname or there was multiple people with that FirstName (who would then be called by their LastName to keep convos easy when there’s three Joshes in the same dept).
As for family/friends I just call them whatever everyone else calls them. Except I still call my MIL by Husband’s-Mom. She would probably prefer I called her by her name or just Mom, but that’s embarrassing to me. I’ve managed for 8 years, I’ll do it for another 8 years!
XD I completely understand that last paragraph. Nothing on god’s green earth will get me to call a Professor by their first name without feeling wrong. My older classmates had no such issue.
Jamaican, older Gen Z, I call most of my friends parents as an adult Mr/Mrs/Ms Lastname, or if i knew them from when i was younger (highschool and below) Auntie/Uncle. Growing up, every trusted adult in your life who isn’t a teacher or some other job position is Auntie/Uncle
I’d feel mad uncomfortable calling any adult old enough and in enough proximal authority to be my friends parents by their first name. I probably won’t even call my boyfriend’s parents by their names until they tell me to, it’s feels disrespectful.
That makes sense. In places where it’s normal to use titles, it probably does feel too casual (the same way I’d see using titles as too formal). Thanks for the insight!
. . .Huh. So this is a thought since Joyce and Beckie are bringing Heaven up. . .
Where did the idea of “The Pearly Gates” and Heaven being made of Clouds, with everyone dead waiting for you come from?
Isn’t Heaven described as being well. . . being as one with God and in Communion with the Holy Spirit?
Doesn’t the, not actual Religious Text but highly influential, story of Dante’s involve going through Hell and then to the different planes of Reality until reaching Heaven on . . . what I think was Venus if I am remembering the story right, Where one becomes more and more blinded by God the closer one get’s to reaching them?
I could admittedly just be talking out my ass here but feel like most things the ideas were inspired by art. The 16th chapel and such. I’m sure an art history expert can ellaborate more but art has influenced religion basically since its inception. You hire a guy to paint god and suddenly their interpretation becomes canon.
The Book of Enoch describes the home of God as more or less like Richard Donner’s version of Krypton – walls made of crystal, doorways bright like fire, and so on. There’s something like giant bowls with the souls of the dead in them, just waiting.
You should read Paradise Lost which doesn’t just describe all the palaces and gates and cities but also how Heaven has mountain ranges and plains and oceans and mineral deposits, which is how Satan is able to mine for sulfur and invent gunpowder and build artillery batteries during his invasion.
PL has Jesus showing up in an Ezekiel-mobile and angels throwing mountains at each other and homosexual angelic orgies and random asides about the Prophet Elijah maybe living on the moon and also maybe aliens exist?? I love it so much.
I admit it also DOES have several thousand words arguing about cosmology so
I can’t say for sure but it’s probably conflation with old art depictions of other religious figures (such as thor and mount olympus) being commonly depicted as “in the clouds”. A lot of early Christian art tried to bring in other symbology from different religions as a way to sorta sell to people “oh no, this new thing is still kinda like your old thing! Just sliiiiide on into Christianity. It’s basically the same thing c’mon.”
Lupin and Zenigata are great because the character dynamic of a roguish thief who’s a dick but not such a dick he’s actually evil and the force of law who looks bumbling and incompetent but only because he’s chasing after the greatest criminal in history and mops the floor with anyone in a ten yard radius otherwise, and when all these world shaking schemes by criminal masterminds end up as little detours in the endless chase between the two, it’s just bellissimo.
I’ve read that the “everyone you love waiting for you to arrive” bit got big (in America at least) circa the Civil War. Apparently that one shifted a lot of American ideas about death, go figure!
I think this is sweet too.
It would be really comforting to feel literally, directly seen and heard by the ones you miss the most.
Not so into the whole 24/7 surveillance aspect, but sending messages would be nice.
Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth?
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
They say in Heaven, love comes first
We’ll make Heaven a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
It’s a moot point, but I have to wonder how annoyed Dina would be if, after she died, she woke up in heaven. On the one hand, it’d mean she was wrong about… a lot. But on the other hand, modifying your understanding of the universe when presented with legitimate evidence that your previous views were incorrect is generally a good thing in science…
See, I thought of that first scene too at first (MASSIVE SPOILERS for anyone unfamiliar with the old continuity) but I feel like the way Willis wrote her in that particular conversation was influenced by the fact that they hadn’t fully de-converted yet… in that she kinda comes off as a bit of a strawman there. I feel like this one would react differently.
As for the second scene you mentioned… yeah, that one’s definitely been on my mind lately. This conversation is pretty much a mirror universe version of that one, and I suspect it may end just as badly.
I dunno so much about it being a strawman, ”a false hope based on religious superstition” is pretty close to some comments I’ve seen in this very section before, so.
There’s a pretty great depiction of a Hindu legend along those lines in The Cartoon History of the Universe. As I recall, the way to heaven is to keep the divine in mind at all times. So there’s this rigorous atheist who spends his entire left repeating “There is no god” to himself, and then dies, and goes right to the highest rank of heaven because no one else on the earth had kept god in mind so much.
I’m an aetheist and if I woke up in heaven and was NOT immediately ejected into Hell my response would be “oh thank you fucking God.” Just because I believe in oblivion doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it!
I just assume that time doesn’t exist in the afterlife. It’s just always forever. What is time to a being that doesn’t age, has no physicality or form. I just assume it’s always all time.
Yeah like, I’m an atheist, and if I woke up in Heaven and God was there passive aggressively drumming his fingers on the desk, I think the least I could do is offer a sheepish “my bad.”
I like to think I’d have some questions about what he was thinking when he set all this up. More so if it really is like traditional Christian beliefs.
Of course in that case, I likely wouldn’t get the chance.
The point is that there’s literally no way to know what lays after death when you’re alive.
The existence of any alleged afterlife is therefore unfalsifiable, and therefore NOT scientific. There’s literally no experiment you can do or observation you can look for that can prove any such proposition wrong, and cannot allow us to develop any useful models whatsoever that we could use to plan for what happens after death.
That’s not exactly relevant to the scenario as presented though, is it. The scenario is more, about if there was indeed an afterlife, (and assuming our consciousness in heaven is similar to our consciousness in the mortal world) would a scientist be disappointed or excited about the outcome. Obviously we can’t research its existence but the hypothetical presupposes that it DOES exist and is being experienced in real time by that individual.
Well, I don’t pretend I know what lay beyond death, but I act as though there’s no afterlife because it’s a more rational bet to invest in what we can actually be certain about (or at least as certain as possible) as opposed to that which can NEVER be known in life. That’s what makes for an agnostic atheist.
If after I die, I encounter something that looks anything like a Christian version of heaven, I would be fascinated indeed, and would still take copious mental notation every second I was there, if not for the living people I would never meet again but for my own maximum chances of navigating this uncharted territory. Because assuming it’s EXACTLY like any previously conceived human idea of an afterlife is assuming knowledge about the final UNKNOWN.
If existence after death is a complete unknown then isn’t the thought that there is nothing afterwards exactly as speculative as an assumption of the exact kind of afterlife waiting for us?
It is also completely unknown (and can never be falsified) whether or not a tiny, invisible, undetectable happy meal is orbiting our planet.
Assuming there’s no such happy meal is not out of speculation. Assuming it’s existence has no epistemological justification, for said existence would have no impact on our lives, and generate no new venues of investigation in which we can learn more about our universe.
Look, man, this is my fault for engaging you on this and the way I did. I don’t think you’re a bad guy or anything, but you’re just kinda here to argue about this all day and it’s something that doesn’t affect me (you know, until it did affect me, two entire days ago) but for the life of me I don’t understand why.
Like, are you actually here to change anyone’s mind or to share a thought they’ve never had? ‘Cause like, you’re not really engaging in any kind of critical analysis on the impact of religion, you are sure as fuck not doing that when talking about grief and finding comfort in the face of mortality, you just write these long diatribes that come off way more aggressive than you probably intend.
I’m speaking out of line here, this isn’t my website and I don’t get to decide what is or isn’t appropriate levels of any conversation, but you’re not really fostering a healthy environment for pleasant and even handed discussion on the concept of faith or the existence of religions by going this hard this frequently.
Like, this is something you wrote two days ago
“I can’t force people to listen to me. But with any hope, someone will come across what I write, and take it upon themselves to improve their thinking, to enjoy more justified confidence in their beliefs, to generate their own light instead of just passively basking in the light of others, and to mitigate the damage caused by fallacious ideas, even when there exist a significant many that won’t change them out of pure stubbornness and solidarity.
As a member of this generation, it is my duty to clean up the mess our ancestors left behind, to ensure the freedom and prosperity of generations to come.”
And this isn’t something you write because you want to engage with anyone here.
I’m sorry if I’m being “aggressive”, at least by this community’s standards. Such standards vary A LOT from place to place, and I am VERY grateful that I can share as much as I am able to here, without fear of being exiled for having ideas that aren’t quite aligned with the correct opinions.
When I write a lot of things like this, it’s only because I don’t want people to fill in the blanks with predictable fears and misgivings. And I am very much open to feedback and criticism of what I write, to have people address that I state and what reasons I provided to justify it. This kind of Peer Review, this kind of collaborative intellectual discussion, where we can freely discuss and question things without fear, is exactly what we need to ensure the prosperity of future generations, and is an effort that ANYONE, not just me, can help in.
People jumping to conclusions about ill intention in people’s writing that could be interpreted in multiple ways is very much concerning to me, and not so conducive to the free intellectual discussion that our society needs more than ever.
“ In our identitarian age, the bar for offense has been lowered considerably, which makes democratic debate more difficult—citizens are more likely to withhold their true opinions if they fear being labeled as bigoted or insensitive. ”
— Shadi Hamid, scholar at The Brookings Institution
A true scientist would be surprised, but not disapointed in being proven wrong but merely interested in how this new reality they’re presented works. It’s something with science I feel like a lot of people misunderstand. It’s the STUDY of the world around us. Taking evidence we have and coming to conclusions. If the data changes or is shown to be inconsistent with prior knowledge, the science will, in turn, just include the existence of that new established idea and explore the ins and outs of it.
All very true. But the thing is, scientists don’t make ANY propositions about the afterlife. It literally can NEVER be known what happens after death, through any experiment or any observation.
Why are you saying that? I’m not arguing about whether or not there’s a way to prove there’s an afterlife. I’m strictly speaking on the idea that, as scientists are presented with new information the study of that information is the basis of science. It just so happens that the scenario presented is “A scientist finds themselves in heaven” but I could just as easily be talking about a scenario where a scientist finds a vampire or sees a wizard.
I thought you implied that the scientist in your scenario was “proven wrong” about the afterlife. One cannot be proven wrong about the afterlife if one makes no claim about the afterlife. No scientific claims can ever be made about the afterlife, because there’s no way to put them to the test of the scientific method.
By the way, as for the wizard, presumably some kind of human that shows it can do “magic”, what is observable “magic” if not the science we don’t understand yet?
Accounts of “wizards” from ages past performing bizarre transformations and other such acts were most likely from ancient soldiers who were attacked by alchemists with hallucinogenic substances.
True but that presupposes the scientist themselves is devoid of opinions. Which many scientists have their own beliefs even if they can’t fully prove or disprove them. Dina, for example, doesn’t believe in god or the afterlife. However her grounds for that belief are based more in a LACK of evidence than the evidence of absence. Even if your disbelief isn’t scientifically supported your theory or beliefs can absolutely be proven wrong.
Correct. Not accepting anything without evidence, or which can never have any evidence, is a due part of empirical thought.
From a philosophical naturalist standpoint, saying “I don’t believe in God” is really no different from saying “I don’t believe there’s an invisible and undetectable pizza orbiting Jupiter”. That definitely doesn’t imply a stance that it isn’t “true”; it’s coming from the fact that there’s no discernable impact it could have on our living existence even if it were true, so it may as well not exist.
Neither god nor the undetectable pizza can generate any opportunity for further investigation, can create no paths to experiments or observations that can give us more knowledge about the universe, and therefore have no justification for the presumption of existence in scientific endeavor.
Welp. I was not onboard the “Dina and Becky are probably gonna break up” train until now. Before, I only saw it as Dina irked at Becky’s religious upbringing. But now. Becky thinks she’s smarter than Dina. This…. will not end well.
That’s a completely ridiculous inference. Becky doesn’t think she’s smarter than Dina, she just thinks she’s right about something. This is an extremely normal thing for interfaith couples, and entirely fine as long as both people respect each other’s beliefs, which both of these two have shown they do whenever it’s come up
And Dina really hasn’t been shown to have an issue with Becky being religious. Just her specific fundie upbringing, which Becky herself has rejected large amounts of. If that was gonna be an issue it would’ve broken them up months ago
Yeah both Becky and Dina just kinda go ‘you’re wrong about theology” and then move on with their day.
There miiiiight be a level where Dina thinks she’ll fully convert Becky over? Like eventually Becky will let it go if Dina tries hard enough, that’s something I think could happen with how Dina got super mad at Sarah for making her “engage in wizardry”, but otherwise Dina’s never once pushed the issue and just answers things at Becky’s leisure. If it were a problem it’d come up by now.
Its a bit more than that though, the level of jealousy Becky displays towards Dorothy is probably not going to go unnoticed by Dina (she is quite perceptive after all)
I mean to be fair, if you disagree on religious beliefs, you do operate on the idea that ONE of you is wrong. The irony being if Becky is right, she’s the only one who gets to say “I told you so”.
Becky doesn’t think she’s smarter than Dina, she thinks Dina’s come to the wrong conclusion about the existence of God and the origin of the universe, and that her own answer is correct.
I feel like all the comments about this strip are about everybody being messed up (and yes, everybody IS kinda messed up), but to me this seems like a fairly wholesome and sweet way of dealing with death, even is there’s an amount of knowing that you’re lying to yourself about it.
It’s not the only way. I visit those I’ve loved and lost in my dreams.
Even if we can’t bring back the dead or travel through time to visit them, knowing that I could spend a lucid dream with those I’ve loved and lost is good enough for me.
A nice bonus is that in a dream, you could do things with them that you couldn’t even do in Heaven.
I think if Becky can accept that her beloved girlfriend is an atheist, she can accept that her best friend is an atheist too. But I understand Joyce’s fear of telling her that.
It might take a bit, though. Dina has always been an atheist, as far as Becky’s concerned. Joyce hasn’t, they spent their lives together up to this point immersed in the same fundamentalist Christian environment.
I was never really religious to begin with, but I can imagine it would be easier for a religious person to accept someone as an atheist who they’ve never known as anything but an atheist, over accepting that her best friend who grew up in the same fundie Christian upbringing as her no longer believes in it.
If the Christian Bible says anything about it, it’s the work of these heavenly beings that look like giant wheels with eyes all over them called the Ophanim (Ezekiel 1:15–21).
I still can’t tell if Becky knows Joyce is an atheist and is trying to get her to tell her, or if Becky is just trying to lighten the mood right now or something.
At this point I really think she actually doesn’t. If that were the case, at this point, there would likely have been a scene by now of Becky on her own indicating some degree of knowledge or suspicion on her part.
I always want to care for believers equally to other people. Then they inevitably do something shitty like celebrate how somebody else will be angry or upset if they’re right.
But hey so like a believer to not care how they’re making other people suffer.
Yeah, for me, the steadfast search for truth isn’t about saying “I told you so”, so much as it is about helping all humanity with the knowledge we discover.
I understand how you feel completely. But I do still feel compelled to feel compassion for the believers engaged in such pyrric celebration, and even to forgive most of them, for they evidently so not know that they’re doing when they do things like this.
If they don’t see that this kind of behavior is distorted and one-sided, it’s often because everything else in their lives was long distorted around it to make it look reasonable.
These mistakes are not in vein, so long as we all have the will and capacity to learn from them moving forward.
“If they don’t see that this kind of behavior is distorted and one-sided, it’s often because everything else in their lives was long distorted around it to make it look reasonable”
When you write something like this you need to stop pretending you’re not an aggro troll.
If you’re having an off day or something, I can understand. But labeling like that rarely solves anything.
How would you write this? Tell me, what should I change or take out to make it more palatable for this community? Would such an alternative phrasing be different from a version that was made more palatable for you in particular?
I need to be as clear as possible that whatever intent you have towards thoughtful insight on the topic of religious study has never once come across in anything you’ve written here.
Nothing you have said has, at any point, been anything but long winded, unprompted, pseudointellectual fluff pieces that don’t engage with even the slightest nuance of why someone can have faith or how faith even exists, let alone your groundbreaking conclusions like “well we don’t know what’s after death, so saying there’s an afterlife is dumb” as if these are topics that can be summed up in a few paragraphs in a webcomic comment section and are something you’re providing any degree of insight that anyone here hasn’t seen scrawled on a facebook post or repeated verbatim in fucking high school.
Repeatedly, you only engage with these topics on a level where nothing is being discussed beyond your own interpretations and beliefs, and everyone else is expected to argue out of them. That ain’t critical thought, that ain’t peer review, that is you, and you alone, deciding the rules of the game. If you were at all interested in a fairly fucking meaningful thought process like “I find comfort in faith when facing my mortality”, you wouldn’t try to obsessively dissect that thought with bullshit like “well if Heaven’s real why doesn’t everyone just kill themselves and be done with it”, you’d process it yourself, you’d think about it, you’d accept it as something you don’t feel but someone else does. If you were at all interested in a flow of ideas in a discussion on theology, a discussion where you’d think the theists would have some kind of input, you’d be more willing to listen to why those thoughts have carried forward.
I can’t do peer review by myself. That’s why I value responses.
I know what I can write can come across rather strong, and I’ve made my fair share of mistakes as with anyone else, but are you sure you’re really being the most generous right now?
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I mean, Jeremy Bearimy
“This broke me! The dot, over the I. That broke me. I’m, I’m done.”
Chidi Anagonye
“You put the peeps in the chili pot, it makes it taste… bad.”
-Chidi Anagonye
Take it sleazy.
– Michael
Big BrotherHeaven is always watching you.… like Ceiling Cat?
Wait, the second-coming has zombies?
At least some of the dead returning is a fairly common fixture of apocalypses, as I understand it
Biblical era Jewish apocalypticism had a lot of focus on God coming to establish an earthly kingdom. Sometimes including the resurrection of the dead. That’s reflected in a lot of early Christian writing.
Modern ideas of heaven and hell are pretty sketchy even in the New Testament. They come from Hellenistic influence on Judaism and later on Christianity as it spread to the Gentiles.
Let us not forget the tremendous influence Zoroastrianism had on their ideas since the Babylonian Captivity. Zoroastrian ideas may have even played a role in Judaism’s transition from monolatrism to true monotheism.
Yeah pretty much always
Supposedly the saints rose from their graves during the First Coming. See Mathew 27:51-53. Sounds like zombies to me.
Jesus is, more or less, already a zombie. It’s just something we’re gonna have to accept.
Technically a revenant. They are corporeal undead that came back with a specific purpose, while zombies are more animated corpses that are under the influence of the one who rose them (traditional), or mindless flesh and mind eaters (modern)
Interesting. So if an undead were to come back with free will but not for a specific purpose, I wonder if that’d be considered a revenant or a zombie. Like full awareness of itself and its surroundings but still undead.
I guess by that logic it would consider anyone brought back with the dragonballs a zombie. Which would be literally everyone on the earth EXCEPT Mr. Satan
Those things in modern zombie movies? Not zombies. Those are ghouls. Even Romero doesn’t use the z-word until popular culture forced him to. Fictionally, the main difference is that a zombi (from African mythology) is raised as a slave, and requires the constant will of its master to remain animated, while ghuls (which originated in Arabic mythology) are raised by a demon and must eat living flesh (NOT just brains) to remain animated.
Outside of mythology and fiction, the main difference of course is that zombis are real – but not dead, just drugged – while ghuls are not.
Jesus:
• asks his followers to drink his blood
• was defeated by a combination of silver, crosses, and pointed sticks
• starts every sentence with a number indicating how many important things he’s said
Pretty standard vampire if you ask me
Heck, if you believe Matthew, the first coming had zombies too
oh, no, i don’t like this at all, rerolling
damn Becky is laying it on kinda thick.
Now I’m thinking that she’s intentionally pulling the thread.
Probably. Becky’s pretty observant and we’ve seen her pull that kind of manipulation before
My suspicion as well. She was pressing yesterday, especially that dig about honesty, and it definitely wasn’t Joyce’s most convincing cover via scripture. The more she presses the more it seems intentional.
And yet, the last time the DVR came up, she seemed pretty genuine about it.
Agreed, Becky knows Joyce too well to not have been seeing this coming for months
She also told Joyce it was just a phase.
At this point I’m like 90% sure Becky’s figured it out and is intentionally trying to bait Joyce into admitting it
I was already pretty sure Becky was on to her last time, and this comic has done nothing to dissuade me.
While I admit there’s a strong likelihood, I’m kind of hoping she’s actually on the level here? It could break her from being too perfect, which Willis has a tendency to do with her. And honestly, if she hasn’t figured it out, and Joyce’s fears are justified, it seems like it would make a way more interesting story.
I don’t think Becky is being insincere here. While she’s clearly given up many aspects of her traditional upbringing, her fundamental belief in God is still strong. She’s just kinda using her truth to poke at her friend’s doubts, to get her to talk about it.
I think Becky figuring it out on some level is definitely in-character with what we’ve learned (I remember a post a while back describing her as a “social engineer” which I think is a good label) and that the read of Becky as someone who got really good at figuring people out (let alone that she’s talking to her lifelong friend she’s always been in love with) to navigate a controlling upbringing is accurate, but yeah I do want this to really blow up because I want something to blow up for her.
Becky just cancels drama out too much, either through her or someone else stepping in for her, and that she hasn’t done that yet with Dina, that she’s always finding new answers for her sexual hangups and they’re always wrong, that part’s fun but I want that to carry over into her other relationships. I know Becky loves Joyce but Joyce rejecting their faith while Becky still holds onto it seems like a really strong fount for drama, and the idea that Becky’s figured out but she’s making little asides here and there like she’s maybe doing now or maybe did that one time in the cafeteria, like she knows Joyce is afraid of this conversation so instead of just coming out with it she’s trying to make Joyce do it herself… that would make her come off as way more of an asshole than if she just had an immediate negative reaction, right?
I wouldn’t describe Becky as being too perfect but the stars certainly do align in her favour a lot of the time
This is sweet!
That said, I’ve never known anyone in person who referred to their friends parents (or most adults really) by a title like Mr/Miss/Mrs. Mind you, I’m Ontarian and fairly young (25) so maybe that’s just where I’m from. I tried calling my dad’s friend Mr. (Insert Last Name) once because tv convinced me I should and he looked at me like a freak and said ‘What the hell? It’s (Nickname).’ Every adult I knew introduced themselves by their first name unless they were acting in a professional capacity like a teacher or a doctor. I kinda like that – calling people by titles outside of that always seemed distant to me, like we didn’t really know each other and didn’t care to get closer, or like the person was stuffy and overly formal or possibly even MEAN. Obviously that’s not the norm everywhere (almost all my American friends use titles) but it’s how I feel – maybe just because I never grew up with them, but if my best friend made me call her ‘Mrs. (whatever)’ I’d be like ‘Oh. Okay. She must not like me.’
So, curiosity – what country are you from, what generation, and how did you call adults you knew as a kid?
My mom is from Mexico and my dad is from the southern US. Gen X. I would never dream of calling my friends’ parents anything other than Mr/Mrs Lastname. Even now.
Yeah, that tracks with my American friends, and with the posters from Patreon last night.
USA, Millennial, wouldn’t dare to call a friend’s parent anything but (Title) (Surname) until told otherwise.
I definitely heard a lot of that in patreon, not so much with my friends – they were more ‘eh, it’s what I was raised with’.
Same. Even after reaching adulthood they’re still “Mr. and Ms. Surname”.
(Except for the eccentric neighbor, even as kids we just knew him by his given name. That’s one thing Home Improvement got right, Wilson was always just “Wilson”.)
It’s the weirdest thing to get over once you’re in the workforce, assuming you don’t work for power-tripping, egotistical, petty tyrants.
Same here. Even as an adult, if I happen to meet a parent of someone I was friends with in school, and even if I haven’t talked with that friend in a long time, I still would call that parent “Mr. or Ms. Surname”.
Hi, late 20s, from the East Coast USA here,
And I would say that the norm is something like:. If you knew the older adult while you were growing up, you call them Mr./Mrs. X until you die, but if you met them as an adult yourself, you call them by their first name except in very formal situations.
Yeah, I definitely thinks it makes a difference when you meet them. I know some adults apparently get really put out about ‘respect for your elders’ if a kid calls them their name but not if an adult from a younger generation does it.
Personally, it sounds like that’s more of a problem with the adults having an ego and disrespect for kids to me but that might be because it’s not a thing I was raised with so it’s not normal for me.
I want to clarify I’m referring to adults who get super annoyed by it and make it a Thing, not just generally people who consider title use polite.
An interesting thing I’ve noticed is that fellow adults that’s true, but like if the person in question is REALLY OLD, often times I’ll still see people call them Miss out of respect and so I instinctively started doing that too. (only ever miss actually. I don’t think I’ve seen the same pleasantry given to old men.)
that’s partly because it is seen as flirtatious to call really old ladies really young names like you are not noticing their age. That whole never ask a woman her age thing. You wouldn’t use Mrs. because that implies she is married and hense older. For guys everyone is just Mr. I guess it is sexist as well.
I tend not to use Miss when doing this, instead I use ‘young lady’ which causes a little titter.
I’m 27, and I still feel bad whenever I refer to an adult by their first name. Idk if it was a denomination thing, a Bible belt thing, or just how my parents specifically raised me, but even with friends’ parents who are super chill and want me to call them by their first names, I still feel weird doing it even after years of knowing them.
^ these are adults I met when I was (technically) already an adult, too. Maybe I’m just weird, lol
Yeah, I get that. If it’s what you grew up with as the polite thing it makes sense.
I was taught at a young age to always call adults by “Mr or Ms. so and so” because it’s polite. Which is why it makes me SUPER uncomfortable when a parent is like “oh just call me by my first name.”. Like I’m just like…That’s not how this is DONE!
That makes sense! The idea of the rules switching as you get older is super weird.
It’s not even an older thing. Even back in high school my friend’s mom insisted I call her by her first name. Ironically one of my camp counselors I had I WILL call by her first name but I always feel compelled to add a “miss” to it. Even though we’re only like…10 years apart in age.
Fair enough. Rules changing is always weird.
Yeah it just feels weird. I think it’ll be even weirder when I start getting called Mr. But I am kinda looking forward to it.
Mr. Yotomoe it is.
(As long as I can remember)
I’m from BC, and we also just use friends’ parents names. I think the only time anyone really uses non-title (ie Doctor) honorifics is for school teachers
Okay, I’ve only ever heard of one Canadian lady who got put out about titles and she lived in the West or Quebec most of her life so I wondered if it was a West Canada and/or generational thing. Interesting!
I’m a bit older than you, but I definitely grew up calling my parents’ friends Mr. and Mrs. However, I started using their first names at a younger age than my siblings, because I’m the youngest of several and it seemed really weird to be the only person at the table saying Mr. and Mrs. after my siblings had graduated to first names.
Interesting! Are you Canadian? I’m low-key wondering if it’s a regional/national and/or a generational thing because all my American friends use titles and I don’t know anyone who’s Canadian who does (mind you, I’ve lived here all my life so I wouldn’t know other regions).
I’d say it’s at least a generational thing, but it may also be a family thing. I’m in Saskatchewan, am old enough to remember the ’70s. I never called anyone anything but Mrs. So and So. In fact I never used my grandparents’ first names, although my dad called his father by his first name.
Fair, both people I know of, counting you, who used titles were older than me and grew up in the Prairies (although one was from Quebec originally). It could be more of a thing back then in the West? I dunno about my parents.
It was not uncommon here (US, east coast, just on the Mason-Dixon line) to do Mr/Ms Firstname for a friend’s parent. (So in this case, ‘Ms. Bonnie’) Though you’d still get Mr/Ms Lastname, depending on the parent. I don’t think it usually shifted once one was established.
(I did the Mr/Ms Firstname for parents’ coworkers, as well, especially when I was younger.)
Extra notes: 28, and I think you’d only ever use Mrs. with a last name, not a first name. (By now I default to Ms. unless otherwise specified, anyway.) Probably because Mrs. Firstname sounds weirder than Miss or Ms. due to the marriage aspect.
That was something I’ve only seen mentioned in the South! Cool. I learned something. I knew one Canadian lady who wanted it to catch on but I don’t think it ever got much traction (aforementioned lady from Quebec).
Yeah, we’re BARELY the South, but just south enough that it is to some extent a thing.
Valid. Southerners gonna Southern.
I think my friend calls my mom “Ms. firstname” and I don’t think she’s a fan. But not like…enough to tell him to stop.
It wasn’t a thing for my originally-from-out-of-state mom growing up, and while she was okay with it by high school I do recall her mentioning it surprised her to be introduced that way.
(The other one I remember in high school was Ms. Regalli’s Mom/Mr. Regalli’s Dad, on at least one occasion.)
I’m close in age to you, and yeah, one of the many here who grew up with the “Mr./Ms./Dr. X” thing. When I was 15, I babysat some neighbors’ kids over the summer, and the parents introduced themselves with their first names, but I was internally like nooooopppe about it, and then I just avoided using their names altogether. For neighbors who were around when I was growing up, I still use title-last name. (Also, one of my neighbors, I grew up calling her “Mrs. R” for like my whole childhood, with “R” being the last name of the kids I knew from the family– turns out, it was “Dr. B” the whole time, and I didn’t learn this until I wasaybe 20.)
With my parents friends, there were some that were always first name and some that were title-last name that I’ve now shifted to using first names with.
That tracks with my American respondents so far, regardless of age. I THINK you’ve said you’re American on here before? If not, my mistake.
I feel the “avoided using their names altogether” part. I think that was most common as a kid. Little need to use their names talking to them directly and when referring to them they were “so and so’s mom” or “so and so’s dad”.
For me, the part where it was awkward in that case was when I’d be talking to the other parent, but couldn’t bring myself to be like, “Laurie said…” And instead would go with “your wife.” As for when you’d use someone’s name to their face, in greeting would be my first thought. If I was at a friend’s house and saw their parents, I’d at least want to say, “Hi, Mr./Ms. X.”
Also, though, now I’m a nonbinary adult who often works with kids in an education setting, and I hate titles. I don’t like “Mx.,” “Ms.” or “Mr.” feel wrong, and I don’t have it in me to get a PhD. At my last job, I started wearing a they/them pronoun pin, and one very sweet kid noticed and asked how she should address me, and I was pretty much ***awkward shrug*** about it. I think ideally, I’d just go by my last name in such a setting, but I’m looking at a career transition anyway.
Uk, early thirties, and only ever used adults first names. Mr./Mrs./Ms. was only ever for teachers. I think if I didn’t know a friend’s parent’s first name I’d’ve defaulted to (friends name) mum/dad.
Interesting! For the record, you’re the first UK respondent I’ve had to this question (to my knowledge).
I think I called them ‘Mr/Miss/etc.’ when I didn’t know their first name but I was always promptly told their name and moved to that.
28, Southern Illinois. Maybe it’s a local thing, but I’m used to parents’ names more or less not coming up. Like, we’ll look ’em dead in the eye and just start talkin’ with 2nd-person pronouns, as if that brief glance is their name now. To the kids of those parents, we just say “your mom/dad” and they somehow know who we mean. It’s weirdly casual, in that way.
Basically that. How often do you really need to use someone’s name when talking to them directly? Maybe to get their attention, but rarely otherwise.
As a kid, you talk much more to the kids and they refer to their parents as some version of mom/dad, so it’s natural to grab onto that.
True, it’s not especially necessary to repeatedly address someone by name during a conversation. It gets really grating, and I’ve rarely had a discussion where it was somehow confusing that after someone gets done with their thought, the next person talking is probably responding to them. Although there are also apparently people who prefer their name over pronouns, so I can’t speak for them.
Makes sense. Squares with a friend from Illinois.
millenial from france here =)
as you may know french has a formal 2nd person pronoun (“vous”) and an informal one (“tu”), and the guidelines on when to use which are infinitely sophisticated and blurry XD …At least, once you get to adulthood.
when you’re a kid things are very simple: other kids are “tu”, adults are “vous” except adults from your family.
memory check… mmmmno it was actually more complicated than that as a kid. i think i was always more of a “tu”-preferrer; even as a child i would often try my luck at calling adults “tu” when many of my peers would default to “vous”. (at worst i think i’d get a weird look and switch pronouns)
we were on first-name basis with my primary school teachers, which i understand is not universal but it was a small village school, so maybe that’s why.
as for titles, it’s expected for children and teenagers to call all non-familiar adults “monsieur” and “madame” — titles and “vous”-usage normally co-occur though not always, on a case-by-case basis an intermediate level may be carved out where first-names are used but “vous” remains: both my parents use(d) this medium-honorific when talking to their mother- and father-in-law.
but yeah, my childhood friends’ parents would mostly insist on being called by first name and i can’t remember there being any with whom i didn’t.
i think a demographic detail you didn’t ask for but feels relevant at least over here, is that i’m from a intellectual middle-class background, and politically my parents (and their friends) are liberal so i think that must’ve tempered the more ostensible forms of ageism. this was in contrast with the surrounding lower-middle class, rural families i would frequent where i get the feeling that elders-respect rules went more generally unquestioned.
hmph. bad phrasing. rules were different, not (to my knowledge) any less challenged. that’s just me being classist! ahahah
…and while i’m at it, though i feel like i’ve implied it, there was absolutely lots of ageism going around in my childhood environment. liberal educated people like to think of themselves above it but this just means it’s (slightly) more insidious. bleh
Thank you for weighing in! You’re the only French respondent so far.
And yeah, I can see how class and urban vs rural could affect things, but I’m mostly wondering if it was a Canadian vs American thing and/or a generational thing. So far it seems like it is. That said, I find it interesting hearing how other places do it! Different languages of course also have different ways of doing it.
I’m a millennial from USA. When I was young, parents were usually Mr or Mrs Lastname. I was taught that this was respectful. There were some alternative schools where students called teachers by their first name, and my parents sometimes grumbled about how it bred disrespect. My mom is from the same sort of area as Joyce and Becky, and it was a little more conservative.
Yeah, that makes sense. It seems a little old fashioned to my Canadian ears but again, I didn’t grow up with it. In places where it’s the norm it probably just sounds right. That school sounds interesting! And yeah, I can definitely see this as something more conservative areas would be stickers for.
USA, Millennial, 28
I remember in school I’d call babysitters/teachers Mrs. LastName, but I don’t think I do that for like anyone now that I’m an adult. Even as someone who interacts with a lot of continuing education, mostly people just call people by their first name. There’s one doctor I see that I call Dr. LastnName, but he’s been my doctor since I was in elementary school, so I don’t think that counts.
There was one job where I worked with a bunch of elderly ladies who called each other Ms. FirstName so I picked that up while I was there, but only for those ladies. Everyone else was just FirstName, unless they had a nickname or there was multiple people with that FirstName (who would then be called by their LastName to keep convos easy when there’s three Joshes in the same dept).
As for family/friends I just call them whatever everyone else calls them. Except I still call my MIL by Husband’s-Mom. She would probably prefer I called her by her name or just Mom, but that’s embarrassing to me. I’ve managed for 8 years, I’ll do it for another 8 years!
XD I completely understand that last paragraph. Nothing on god’s green earth will get me to call a Professor by their first name without feeling wrong. My older classmates had no such issue.
Thanks for weighing in!
Same here!
Jamaican, older Gen Z, I call most of my friends parents as an adult Mr/Mrs/Ms Lastname, or if i knew them from when i was younger (highschool and below) Auntie/Uncle. Growing up, every trusted adult in your life who isn’t a teacher or some other job position is Auntie/Uncle
I’d feel mad uncomfortable calling any adult old enough and in enough proximal authority to be my friends parents by their first name. I probably won’t even call my boyfriend’s parents by their names until they tell me to, it’s feels disrespectful.
That makes sense. In places where it’s normal to use titles, it probably does feel too casual (the same way I’d see using titles as too formal). Thanks for the insight!
It’s literally a place.
A place where nothing, nothing ever happens.
Except on Fridays, when it’s rented out as a bingo hall.
Poor Joyce. Having to pretend you still believe when you don’t is… hard. It’s draining. I do it whenever I’m around my family, and it’s exhausting.
I feel like Bonnie and Dina deserve to be tagged in this. They are watching afterall.
Then we should all be tagged!
. . .Huh. So this is a thought since Joyce and Beckie are bringing Heaven up. . .
Where did the idea of “The Pearly Gates” and Heaven being made of Clouds, with everyone dead waiting for you come from?
Isn’t Heaven described as being well. . . being as one with God and in Communion with the Holy Spirit?
Doesn’t the, not actual Religious Text but highly influential, story of Dante’s involve going through Hell and then to the different planes of Reality until reaching Heaven on . . . what I think was Venus if I am remembering the story right, Where one becomes more and more blinded by God the closer one get’s to reaching them?
I could admittedly just be talking out my ass here but feel like most things the ideas were inspired by art. The 16th chapel and such. I’m sure an art history expert can ellaborate more but art has influenced religion basically since its inception. You hire a guy to paint god and suddenly their interpretation becomes canon.
The Book of Enoch describes the home of God as more or less like Richard Donner’s version of Krypton – walls made of crystal, doorways bright like fire, and so on. There’s something like giant bowls with the souls of the dead in them, just waiting.
So the souls of the dead are His after-dinner mints?
Nah nah, they’re like goldfish. And when god forgets to feed his souls they are reborn.
You should read Paradise Lost which doesn’t just describe all the palaces and gates and cities but also how Heaven has mountain ranges and plains and oceans and mineral deposits, which is how Satan is able to mine for sulfur and invent gunpowder and build artillery batteries during his invasion.
Paradise Lost is WILD.
I’ve tried to read PL a couple of times, but the Judeo-Christian mythology is unbearably boring.
PL has Jesus showing up in an Ezekiel-mobile and angels throwing mountains at each other and homosexual angelic orgies and random asides about the Prophet Elijah maybe living on the moon and also maybe aliens exist?? I love it so much.
I admit it also DOES have several thousand words arguing about cosmology so
I can’t say for sure but it’s probably conflation with old art depictions of other religious figures (such as thor and mount olympus) being commonly depicted as “in the clouds”. A lot of early Christian art tried to bring in other symbology from different religions as a way to sorta sell to people “oh no, this new thing is still kinda like your old thing! Just sliiiiide on into Christianity. It’s basically the same thing c’mon.”
It’s fascinating to look at how influential what amounted to fanfiction by Dante and Milton was in terms of shaping Christian belief.
One of the most popular fanfictions, even more than Lupiin the 3rd.
I finally got into that with the CG movie.
It was pretty swanky.
I watched part 3 on adult swim as a kid cuz I was cool like that. Lately I’ve been realizing more and more how much I love the Lupiin gang.
Lupin and Zenigata are great because the character dynamic of a roguish thief who’s a dick but not such a dick he’s actually evil and the force of law who looks bumbling and incompetent but only because he’s chasing after the greatest criminal in history and mops the floor with anyone in a ten yard radius otherwise, and when all these world shaking schemes by criminal masterminds end up as little detours in the endless chase between the two, it’s just bellissimo.
Revelations 21:21 describes New Jerusalem as having 12 gates, each one made of a single pearl. That imagery became conflated with Heaven.
I think the clouds are because heaven is thought of as being above the clouds. (I could be wrong about this.)
What about that part with the giant golden cube?
It’s just a novelty d6, dude.
I’ve read that the “everyone you love waiting for you to arrive” bit got big (in America at least) circa the Civil War. Apparently that one shifted a lot of American ideas about death, go figure!
I think this is sweet too.
It would be really comforting to feel literally, directly seen and heard by the ones you miss the most.
Not so into the whole 24/7 surveillance aspect, but sending messages would be nice.
On the hacked muzak:
Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth?
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
They say in Heaven, love comes first
We’ll make Heaven a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
Heaven is actually over to the left a bit.
It’s a moot point, but I have to wonder how annoyed Dina would be if, after she died, she woke up in heaven. On the one hand, it’d mean she was wrong about… a lot. But on the other hand, modifying your understanding of the universe when presented with legitimate evidence that your previous views were incorrect is generally a good thing in science…
Oddly enough there was a Walkyverse strip with… not the EXACT same conceit, but pretty dang close.
Though the one that’s been on my mind with this is Joyce and Walky’s talk about atheism in the aftermath of the whole ‘Best I could do’ debacle.
See, I thought of that first scene too at first (MASSIVE SPOILERS for anyone unfamiliar with the old continuity) but I feel like the way Willis wrote her in that particular conversation was influenced by the fact that they hadn’t fully de-converted yet… in that she kinda comes off as a bit of a strawman there. I feel like this one would react differently.
As for the second scene you mentioned… yeah, that one’s definitely been on my mind lately. This conversation is pretty much a mirror universe version of that one, and I suspect it may end just as badly.
I dunno so much about it being a strawman, ”a false hope based on religious superstition” is pretty close to some comments I’ve seen in this very section before, so.
There’s a pretty great depiction of a Hindu legend along those lines in The Cartoon History of the Universe. As I recall, the way to heaven is to keep the divine in mind at all times. So there’s this rigorous atheist who spends his entire left repeating “There is no god” to himself, and then dies, and goes right to the highest rank of heaven because no one else on the earth had kept god in mind so much.
*life
I’m an aetheist and if I woke up in heaven and was NOT immediately ejected into Hell my response would be “oh thank you fucking God.” Just because I believe in oblivion doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it!
and then a quadrillion years later how d’you expect you’d feel about it?
I just assume that time doesn’t exist in the afterlife. It’s just always forever. What is time to a being that doesn’t age, has no physicality or form. I just assume it’s always all time.
I’ll be very happy that I’m still around to feel ennui or whatever!
Yeah like, I’m an atheist, and if I woke up in Heaven and God was there passive aggressively drumming his fingers on the desk, I think the least I could do is offer a sheepish “my bad.”
I like to think I’d have some questions about what he was thinking when he set all this up. More so if it really is like traditional Christian beliefs.
Of course in that case, I likely wouldn’t get the chance.
The point is that there’s literally no way to know what lays after death when you’re alive.
The existence of any alleged afterlife is therefore unfalsifiable, and therefore NOT scientific. There’s literally no experiment you can do or observation you can look for that can prove any such proposition wrong, and cannot allow us to develop any useful models whatsoever that we could use to plan for what happens after death.
That’s not exactly relevant to the scenario as presented though, is it. The scenario is more, about if there was indeed an afterlife, (and assuming our consciousness in heaven is similar to our consciousness in the mortal world) would a scientist be disappointed or excited about the outcome. Obviously we can’t research its existence but the hypothetical presupposes that it DOES exist and is being experienced in real time by that individual.
Well, I don’t pretend I know what lay beyond death, but I act as though there’s no afterlife because it’s a more rational bet to invest in what we can actually be certain about (or at least as certain as possible) as opposed to that which can NEVER be known in life. That’s what makes for an agnostic atheist.
If after I die, I encounter something that looks anything like a Christian version of heaven, I would be fascinated indeed, and would still take copious mental notation every second I was there, if not for the living people I would never meet again but for my own maximum chances of navigating this uncharted territory. Because assuming it’s EXACTLY like any previously conceived human idea of an afterlife is assuming knowledge about the final UNKNOWN.
If existence after death is a complete unknown then isn’t the thought that there is nothing afterwards exactly as speculative as an assumption of the exact kind of afterlife waiting for us?
It is also completely unknown (and can never be falsified) whether or not a tiny, invisible, undetectable happy meal is orbiting our planet.
Assuming there’s no such happy meal is not out of speculation. Assuming it’s existence has no epistemological justification, for said existence would have no impact on our lives, and generate no new venues of investigation in which we can learn more about our universe.
That was just the Flying Spaghetti Monster with more words.
I don’t get faith either, I just understand and respect that people who aren’t me have it.
Don’t you mean less words? Did you know that pastafarianism is a real religion? And that it has its own holy book?
Look, man, this is my fault for engaging you on this and the way I did. I don’t think you’re a bad guy or anything, but you’re just kinda here to argue about this all day and it’s something that doesn’t affect me (you know, until it did affect me, two entire days ago) but for the life of me I don’t understand why.
Like, are you actually here to change anyone’s mind or to share a thought they’ve never had? ‘Cause like, you’re not really engaging in any kind of critical analysis on the impact of religion, you are sure as fuck not doing that when talking about grief and finding comfort in the face of mortality, you just write these long diatribes that come off way more aggressive than you probably intend.
I’m speaking out of line here, this isn’t my website and I don’t get to decide what is or isn’t appropriate levels of any conversation, but you’re not really fostering a healthy environment for pleasant and even handed discussion on the concept of faith or the existence of religions by going this hard this frequently.
Like, this is something you wrote two days ago
“I can’t force people to listen to me. But with any hope, someone will come across what I write, and take it upon themselves to improve their thinking, to enjoy more justified confidence in their beliefs, to generate their own light instead of just passively basking in the light of others, and to mitigate the damage caused by fallacious ideas, even when there exist a significant many that won’t change them out of pure stubbornness and solidarity.
As a member of this generation, it is my duty to clean up the mess our ancestors left behind, to ensure the freedom and prosperity of generations to come.”
And this isn’t something you write because you want to engage with anyone here.
I’m sorry if I’m being “aggressive”, at least by this community’s standards. Such standards vary A LOT from place to place, and I am VERY grateful that I can share as much as I am able to here, without fear of being exiled for having ideas that aren’t quite aligned with the correct opinions.
When I write a lot of things like this, it’s only because I don’t want people to fill in the blanks with predictable fears and misgivings. And I am very much open to feedback and criticism of what I write, to have people address that I state and what reasons I provided to justify it. This kind of Peer Review, this kind of collaborative intellectual discussion, where we can freely discuss and question things without fear, is exactly what we need to ensure the prosperity of future generations, and is an effort that ANYONE, not just me, can help in.
People jumping to conclusions about ill intention in people’s writing that could be interpreted in multiple ways is very much concerning to me, and not so conducive to the free intellectual discussion that our society needs more than ever.
“ In our identitarian age, the bar for offense has been lowered considerably, which makes democratic debate more difficult—citizens are more likely to withhold their true opinions if they fear being labeled as bigoted or insensitive. ”
— Shadi Hamid, scholar at The Brookings Institution
A true scientist would be surprised, but not disapointed in being proven wrong but merely interested in how this new reality they’re presented works. It’s something with science I feel like a lot of people misunderstand. It’s the STUDY of the world around us. Taking evidence we have and coming to conclusions. If the data changes or is shown to be inconsistent with prior knowledge, the science will, in turn, just include the existence of that new established idea and explore the ins and outs of it.
All very true. But the thing is, scientists don’t make ANY propositions about the afterlife. It literally can NEVER be known what happens after death, through any experiment or any observation.
Why are you saying that? I’m not arguing about whether or not there’s a way to prove there’s an afterlife. I’m strictly speaking on the idea that, as scientists are presented with new information the study of that information is the basis of science. It just so happens that the scenario presented is “A scientist finds themselves in heaven” but I could just as easily be talking about a scenario where a scientist finds a vampire or sees a wizard.
I thought you implied that the scientist in your scenario was “proven wrong” about the afterlife. One cannot be proven wrong about the afterlife if one makes no claim about the afterlife. No scientific claims can ever be made about the afterlife, because there’s no way to put them to the test of the scientific method.
By the way, as for the wizard, presumably some kind of human that shows it can do “magic”, what is observable “magic” if not the science we don’t understand yet?
Accounts of “wizards” from ages past performing bizarre transformations and other such acts were most likely from ancient soldiers who were attacked by alchemists with hallucinogenic substances.
True but that presupposes the scientist themselves is devoid of opinions. Which many scientists have their own beliefs even if they can’t fully prove or disprove them. Dina, for example, doesn’t believe in god or the afterlife. However her grounds for that belief are based more in a LACK of evidence than the evidence of absence. Even if your disbelief isn’t scientifically supported your theory or beliefs can absolutely be proven wrong.
Correct. Not accepting anything without evidence, or which can never have any evidence, is a due part of empirical thought.
From a philosophical naturalist standpoint, saying “I don’t believe in God” is really no different from saying “I don’t believe there’s an invisible and undetectable pizza orbiting Jupiter”. That definitely doesn’t imply a stance that it isn’t “true”; it’s coming from the fact that there’s no discernable impact it could have on our living existence even if it were true, so it may as well not exist.
Neither god nor the undetectable pizza can generate any opportunity for further investigation, can create no paths to experiments or observations that can give us more knowledge about the universe, and therefore have no justification for the presumption of existence in scientific endeavor.
For some reason, this one is really tickling me.
Welp. I was not onboard the “Dina and Becky are probably gonna break up” train until now. Before, I only saw it as Dina irked at Becky’s religious upbringing. But now. Becky thinks she’s smarter than Dina. This…. will not end well.
That’s a completely ridiculous inference. Becky doesn’t think she’s smarter than Dina, she just thinks she’s right about something. This is an extremely normal thing for interfaith couples, and entirely fine as long as both people respect each other’s beliefs, which both of these two have shown they do whenever it’s come up
And Dina really hasn’t been shown to have an issue with Becky being religious. Just her specific fundie upbringing, which Becky herself has rejected large amounts of. If that was gonna be an issue it would’ve broken them up months ago
Yeah both Becky and Dina just kinda go ‘you’re wrong about theology” and then move on with their day.
There miiiiight be a level where Dina thinks she’ll fully convert Becky over? Like eventually Becky will let it go if Dina tries hard enough, that’s something I think could happen with how Dina got super mad at Sarah for making her “engage in wizardry”, but otherwise Dina’s never once pushed the issue and just answers things at Becky’s leisure. If it were a problem it’d come up by now.
I always assumed they were going to break up because Becky can’t let go of Joyce (threes company in a relationship)
Lingering feelings and still being close friends is not the same as being unable to get over someone >:P
Its a bit more than that though, the level of jealousy Becky displays towards Dorothy is probably not going to go unnoticed by Dina (she is quite perceptive after all)
🙄
I mean to be fair, if you disagree on religious beliefs, you do operate on the idea that ONE of you is wrong. The irony being if Becky is right, she’s the only one who gets to say “I told you so”.
Yeah.
Becky doesn’t think she’s smarter than Dina, she thinks Dina’s come to the wrong conclusion about the existence of God and the origin of the universe, and that her own answer is correct.
Reading this made me think of the Kendalls. and their 1976 hit “Heaven’s Just a Sin Away.” They were a father-daughter duo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgYyUfTd_8o
I feel like all the comments about this strip are about everybody being messed up (and yes, everybody IS kinda messed up), but to me this seems like a fairly wholesome and sweet way of dealing with death, even is there’s an amount of knowing that you’re lying to yourself about it.
It’s not the only way. I visit those I’ve loved and lost in my dreams.
Even if we can’t bring back the dead or travel through time to visit them, knowing that I could spend a lucid dream with those I’ve loved and lost is good enough for me.
A nice bonus is that in a dream, you could do things with them that you couldn’t even do in Heaven.
This is starting to sound like that moment in Joyce’s dream: “I feel God when *I* pray.” Wonder if Becky’s ready for Joyce’s life changes?
found the link
I think if Becky can accept that her beloved girlfriend is an atheist, she can accept that her best friend is an atheist too. But I understand Joyce’s fear of telling her that.
It might take a bit, though. Dina has always been an atheist, as far as Becky’s concerned. Joyce hasn’t, they spent their lives together up to this point immersed in the same fundamentalist Christian environment.
I was never really religious to begin with, but I can imagine it would be easier for a religious person to accept someone as an atheist who they’ve never known as anything but an atheist, over accepting that her best friend who grew up in the same fundie Christian upbringing as her no longer believes in it.
So how does that work, anyway? Angels with cameras flying around on clouds, like Lakitu? Is that what happens to news camera guys?
If the Christian Bible says anything about it, it’s the work of these heavenly beings that look like giant wheels with eyes all over them called the Ophanim (Ezekiel 1:15–21).
I still can’t tell if Becky knows Joyce is an atheist and is trying to get her to tell her, or if Becky is just trying to lighten the mood right now or something.
At this point I really think she actually doesn’t. If that were the case, at this point, there would likely have been a scene by now of Becky on her own indicating some degree of knowledge or suspicion on her part.
It’s good to see Joyce smile again.
Dina will be so miffed
She will be absolutely tilted.
I always want to care for believers equally to other people. Then they inevitably do something shitty like celebrate how somebody else will be angry or upset if they’re right.
But hey so like a believer to not care how they’re making other people suffer.
Yikes.
Yeah, for me, the steadfast search for truth isn’t about saying “I told you so”, so much as it is about helping all humanity with the knowledge we discover.
I understand how you feel completely. But I do still feel compelled to feel compassion for the believers engaged in such pyrric celebration, and even to forgive most of them, for they evidently so not know that they’re doing when they do things like this.
If they don’t see that this kind of behavior is distorted and one-sided, it’s often because everything else in their lives was long distorted around it to make it look reasonable.
These mistakes are not in vein, so long as we all have the will and capacity to learn from them moving forward.
“If they don’t see that this kind of behavior is distorted and one-sided, it’s often because everything else in their lives was long distorted around it to make it look reasonable”
When you write something like this you need to stop pretending you’re not an aggro troll.
If you’re having an off day or something, I can understand. But labeling like that rarely solves anything.
How would you write this? Tell me, what should I change or take out to make it more palatable for this community? Would such an alternative phrasing be different from a version that was made more palatable for you in particular?
I need to be as clear as possible that whatever intent you have towards thoughtful insight on the topic of religious study has never once come across in anything you’ve written here.
Nothing you have said has, at any point, been anything but long winded, unprompted, pseudointellectual fluff pieces that don’t engage with even the slightest nuance of why someone can have faith or how faith even exists, let alone your groundbreaking conclusions like “well we don’t know what’s after death, so saying there’s an afterlife is dumb” as if these are topics that can be summed up in a few paragraphs in a webcomic comment section and are something you’re providing any degree of insight that anyone here hasn’t seen scrawled on a facebook post or repeated verbatim in fucking high school.
Repeatedly, you only engage with these topics on a level where nothing is being discussed beyond your own interpretations and beliefs, and everyone else is expected to argue out of them. That ain’t critical thought, that ain’t peer review, that is you, and you alone, deciding the rules of the game. If you were at all interested in a fairly fucking meaningful thought process like “I find comfort in faith when facing my mortality”, you wouldn’t try to obsessively dissect that thought with bullshit like “well if Heaven’s real why doesn’t everyone just kill themselves and be done with it”, you’d process it yourself, you’d think about it, you’d accept it as something you don’t feel but someone else does. If you were at all interested in a flow of ideas in a discussion on theology, a discussion where you’d think the theists would have some kind of input, you’d be more willing to listen to why those thoughts have carried forward.
And not once have you even tried.
I can’t do peer review by myself. That’s why I value responses.
I know what I can write can come across rather strong, and I’ve made my fair share of mistakes as with anyone else, but are you sure you’re really being the most generous right now?
*do not know what they are doing
When I tell you that I’m actually an atheist can you promise to make a Joyce face like she did when she found out Dorothy was one too?
And Dina’s a cartoon, ya fucking weirdo. If she’s upset about something then an artist has to draw her frowning.
I’m an atheist, and I’ve definitely heard other atheists rejoice in an “I told you so.” Christians hardly have a monopoly on vicious schadenfreude.
I said “believers engaged in such pyrric celebration”, as in NOT ALL BELIEVERS.
I don’t even know why I bother writing if people are just gonna melt my words into utter garbage with their selective hearing.
But this IS the internet, I guess.
Dude. That wasn’t even a reply to you.
Sorry, that was kind of meant for Spencer.