They come close to doing so in Wisconsin – which, BTW, is often referred to as “God’s Country” – so OF COURSE they are going to do full loop-de-loops in Heaven.
Incidentally, the waterslides in Hell also do full loop-de-loops. It’s just that the splash-down pond there is always empty…..
Yeah, I’m quite sure there isn’t a God, but I can still agree when people who are mourning say god-y stuff. (Or at least say “yeah, that sounds really good”). The person is way more important than whatever I think happens to dead people.
Btw, pro-tip (from my rabbi dad, who has done hundreds of funerals for hundreds of families) — he doesn’t bring up heaven talk to the grieving people (such as “they’re in a better place”), but if the grieving person says it first, he says “that’s a comfort”.
I’m not an Atheist, but an Antitheist (I believe gods exist, but that they’re basically just the human mind equivalent of an evolved distributed bot net virus, and kind of like that zombie ant fungus that makes ants act in self-destructive ways for the benefit of the fungus – I’ve noticed once I started looking at gods that way, a lot of stuff about religion clicked that didn’t before).
As such, I’ve always struggled with how to respond to “they’re in a better place now”, too. To date, my response has always been a change of topic back to the person and away from religion without getting confrontational, such as, “Always remember to keep them in your heart.” However, Leorale”s “It’s a comfort” line is a good defuser, and I’ll keep that one in mind from now on, too.
Heh. I dunno if I agree with religion being one of those, but there are definitely symbiotic mind viruses we all deal with: languages. You might think language is a tool invented by humanity, and while there’s arguably been some success in shaping it, it’s definitely placed a higher priority on being irresistible to almost all baby human brains, there’s multiple competing strains, mutations spread in viral fashion, etc. Linguistics on a macro scale is basically epidemiology.
“Mind viruses”, or behaviors that mutate and get refined and naturally selected over time in an environment as though they were genes, actually have a name.
They’re called memes, the term for which was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
My brother actually got to meet him once at a tech conference. I am envious as fuck.
Huh, I always look at tales of old gods as them going, “They are basically humans but with immense power, so we worship them so we aren’t on their shit list. You know what WE do to other humans? Imagine that with god power!”
When my friend, who was Jewish, passed last December, the rabbi who conducted the online shiva service for her told me, “May your memories of her be a blessing to you.” That works, too.
“Nontheist” is a term that gets used to mean “doesn’t believe in god” without pushing a specific label. We don’t know* if Joyce is atheist, agnostic, misotheist, or what, and she might not know either. Therefore, nontheist is a reasonable term.
Also, no, atheism is not a religion.
*it’s possible we do and I don’t recall, but I’m NOT doing a reread at 11 PM.
No, nontheism is an overarching term for basically any “there probably aren’t any gods” philosophy, many of which are decidedly non-atheist. I was in a nontheist group in college with a couple Buddhists, as well as quite a few other philosophies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheism
If nothing else, it’s far more useful as an umbrella term than as a synonym for something we already have a word for.
Deists are not theists, while also not being atheists in the sense of believing in no god(s) of any nature. I think they have to be called nontheists. Another reason “atheist” is a very ambiguous term.
Thinking “there probably aren’t any gods” just sounds like being agnostic atheist to me. (Personally, I consider myself gnostic atheist, although the label isn’t particularly important to my identity.)
No, agnosticism is the belief that the existence or nonexistence of deities is unknowable; gnosticism is the belief that it is knowable. An agnostic atheist doesn’t believe in higher powers, but also believes they could be wrong; a gnostic atheist believes with certainty that there are no higher powers.
I just googled “atheism vs nontheism” and, predictably, the first two hits asserted two opposing things.
The first site said that nontheism was basically a rebranding idea in the 1800s or so, to get away from the Christian belief that atheists also don’t believe in morality, and the Everyone idea that sometimes atheists are kinda obnoxious and pushy about it. So, nontheism was meant to be like atheism, without the baggage of being considered immoral or annoying. Hey, it was worth a shot!
The second hit was Wikipedia, which had a complicated relationship in which nontheism included various types of atheism, and is surely a fun wiki-hole waiting for anyone who desires it.
Wikipedia literally has citations. I don’t understand why people who talk trash about Wikipedia don’t seem to understand that you can look at a Wikipedia page and see if whatever information contained there is cited or not, and it if it is, go to the source and evaluate it based on whatever criteria you choose. Many, many pages cite peer-reviewed studies.
Additionally, pages with minimal citations often make note of that fact, and claims made within a page that don’t have a citation will often have [citation needed] after the claim in brackets.
So, yes, Wikipedia is a great source where anyone who has a basic understanding of citations can find a treasure trove of indexed and referenced information, as well as a directory to other sources of information about the same topic.
If religion is an expression of faith, then Atheism is a religion. It is a belief that cannot be proved nor disproved. It is, in essence, faith that there is no god.
I stand by this very strongly because if Atheism is not a religion then, in the U.S., Atheist have no protection under the 1st Amendment or anti-discrimination laws.
Yeah, and as hard as religion is to define, here is one of the most general, loosest available definitions offered by Senior Anthropologist Clifford Geertz:
“A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, persuasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in people by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”
Still coming nowhere close to atheism.
And by the way, atheists actually ARE protected under the first ammendment, which protects FREE WORSHIP, including the option of not worshipping anything.
How is that nowhere near to atheism? Atheism produces (or rather is in a mutually reinforcing relationship with) moods and motivations in the people who believe in it.
For example, there is an atheist in my town who has campaigned to remove invocations by local pastors/ministers (and the occasional rabbi) from the beginning of our city council meetings. His motivation to do this is related to his atheism (although there could theoretically be theists who also support the campaign on the basis of the separation of church and state).
The motivations of atheists generally seem to be, from my personal experience and observations: wanting truth/a factual understanding of the world (a way to relate to reality based in evidence, or that makes sense to them), accuracy, not to be fooled or tricked into believing something that isn’t true…perhaps also a love of learning and knowledge. And when it overlaps with humanism there are other moods and motivations
And considering that for most of humanity and in most cultures there is some belief in a god/gods/spiritual beings or forces, atheism could certainly be viewed by those adhering to it as ‘uniquely realistic.’
The desire for more realistic / evidence-based confirmable methodologies generally comes from the fact that individuals often used to believe something strongly that they no longer believe and believe to be false now. Meaning they know their senses can be tracked they know they can be wrong and they know they can actively motivatedly try to change other people’s minds to false ideologies.
Once you realize you can make somebody else double Damned because you basically made mistakes for them, you work hard to make less mistakes.
The thing is, there is no set of symbols or motivations common to ALL atheists, in the same way that all Christians at the very least hold SOME kind of reverence to Jesus Christ, or the same way that all Muslims believe at the very least that there is nothing else in all existence that’s like God.
Trying to assert that atheism is a religion is like trying to assert that there’s some common food that’s always enjoyed by people who don’t like Mac and Cheese — just plain ridiculous.
“A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, persuasive and long-lasting moods and motivations …”
It’s not even necessarily that there aren’t symbols or motivations in common to all atheists, but that atheism or even most subgroups of atheism doesn’t have such a system of symbols. And by that definition, that’s what a religion is.
As I said earlier, there are some religions that are atheistic. Some varieties of Buddhism are the most common examples. They have such systems of symbols, they just don’t include belief in a god.
OBBWG is using the word atheism to refer specifically (and only) to strong atheism….. at least that’s how I’m reading it, not sure… which is one definition in common usage… but also saying that all it takes to be a religion is an unprovable article of faith, which… no. There are religions which require no articles of faith, and there are things that might be believed only on faith that don’t constitute religions. Furthermore, atheists DO have protections under the 1st amendment, regardless of whether atheism is a religion or not. The Supreme Court, for the past generation or two, has consistently held across lots of cases that 1st amendment protections apply not only to religious beliefs, but any belief about religion, including its rejection.
Carla’s #2 fan is … saying atheism is a theism? That’s… no. Just no.
Thag is saying that atheism and nontheism are the same thing, which… works for one or two definitions of atheism in common usage…. so, fair.
…. we’re heading towards another atheism-definition fight aren’t we? Nonexistent-God-Dammit.
Look, can we at least agree that there’s a lot of different definitions for the word in common usage, and that none of them is the only objectively correct definition because objectiveness doesn’t apply here?
Reltzik, you are correct in your interpretation of what i was saying. You have made a very cogent post, so I will drop my discussion at this point. Thank you.
Why should the non-religious give any emphasis to the religious’s biased and disingenuous usage of the word atheist?
They are actively rewarded for lying about what atheism is and often misrepresented as a bad faith of light as they possibly can so when a religious person tries to tell me what an atheist is, I don’t even listen.
I definitely agree with ANYONE who says there’s a lot of different definitions of almost any word for an intangible concept, and that there is no objectively correct definition. Not just for the word ‘atheism.’
Lack of faith is also implicitly protected by the freedom of faith.
Saying the lack of something is synonymous with having it he is disingenuous and muddying the waters.
To the law to express one space and no representation by the government of any particular faith not pushing non-faith or penalizing none faith.
Especially because faith is considered by most believers to be an action the epistemological act of using Faith as an epistemological tool for confirmation not a reference to their religion as a grouping such as this Faith versus this other religious faith.
Basically colloquially faith can be considered a synonym for religion. But within usage Faith inside of religions is used to describe an epistemological process of confirming the truth of something by believing it to be true very hard without checking by any verifiable means.
I have found the way Willis goes about addressing religious D conversion and change over time to be really honest and true to many people’s lived experiences.
My own included. Really well addressed and some interesting conversations it has spurned too.
gee, we used to just use the euphemism ‘questioning’ for people in Joyce’s position. Not everyone goes straight to “Santa isn’t real so god is bullshit”, sometimes questioning ‘faith’ is really questioning if the church you grew up in actually reflects the Faith accurately. (a LOT of fundies are as guilty of bowdlerizing the bible as your most aggressive progressives, sometimes even to the point of feeding the negative stereotypes. See: Fred Phelps or Jim and Tammy Bakker.)
It’s kind of important for non-theist types to realize that ‘fundamentalist’ is an advertising term rather than a true descriptor. A lot of fundies actually don’t preach the FUNDAMENTALS of their religion so much as reinterpret them to support secular political goals.
Methinks Joyce is discovering that, and for theists out there, y’all should hope she learns to parse it without truly losing faith (something Becky appears to have done already).
as an agnostic with deist leanings, I’m not sure that there are some brands of ‘atheist’ that AREN’T a religion every bit as pernicious as the worst of the ‘fundies’.
The problem is that god is an out-of-context problem, an hypothesis that by definition can’t be tested or falsified. That doesn’t preclude the existence of ‘a’ god, but it does suggest the one we all hear about might be incorrectly defined.
So, as an atheist who doesn’t really care about my atheism and just finds that any spiritual belief is kind of superfluous and irrelevant to my everyday life, do you want to help me understand what it is about my”religion” (I’m fine with the term although it feels a bit grand for what essentially amounts to indifference) thats so pernicious? I don’t especially care what i label myself, the descriptor “atheist” was just lying around when i realized the religion i’d been raised in (catholic) didnt interest me and neither did any other.
My mother thinks I’m an atheist because I don’t go to church despite the fact I consider myself intensely religious in the Christian faith. I just don’t see how a church benefits it. I also know people who don’t believe in God but are intensely religious. They just hold a philosophy and tradition that doesn’t have a theistic center.
The comments I’ve seen from you certainly don’t give me the impression that you’re an atheist. I’m sorry to know your mother doesn’t recognise you as a “real” believer.
There definitely are some toxic brands of atheist, but that doesn’t mean your brand is that way. See the fedora-tipping “rational skeptics” from a few years back who started out debunking Christianity then dove headfirst into anti-feminism and often merged into the alt-right.
My sister’s an atheist, and she is intensely frustrated with right-wingers basically using atheism as an excuse to hate muslims, women, their parents, and humanism in general. She seems to understand Damn You Willis better than me though.
It sort of upset me that when Willis lost faith in his parents, he lost faith in God, and my sister was like, “You get that when you have an authoritarian religion, your parents are totally enmeshed with the concept of God, right?
With me, my parents weren’t all that great, but I’ve always felt that there was something above them. I’ve come to wonder if that something isn’t necessarily kind.
I wonder about Becky, though, is her faith rock-solid or only sustained by Amazi-Girl assisted luck?
You’re reading that as “he isn’t sure there are any non-pernicious brands of atheist”? I can see that, but I read it as “he isn’t sure there aren’t some pernicious brands”.
I don’t think so. “Questioning” would have applied before the timeskip I think, but she seems to have gone well beyond that now, even if she’s still keeping it from most of her friends. Some people, like Becky, drop parts of the dogma of their faith while keeping the belief. That’s not what Joyce’s journey looks like.
Atheism bears no resemblance to religion. It’s just a lack of belief in the existence of gods. It has no doctrine, no ritual, no system of worship, no symbolism, no scripture, no mythology, no sacred objects or concepts, no faith.
Theism isn’t a religion either. It’s possible to believe in gods without being a member of any particular religion. If theism doesn’t qualify as a religion, how can atheism POSSIBLY qualify?
Also, it’s interesting to recognize that members of a religion are theists ONLY regarding the god(s) of their choosing. Towards all other gods, they’re atheists. So if atheism really were a religion, all members of a religion would actually be practicing TWO religions: the theism of belief in their god(s), and the atheism of non-belief in all other gods.
I feel like this argument is really about what the word “religion” means.
Everyone seems to pretty much agree on what atheism is. The issue is what the definition of religion is. Depending on the definition of religion, Atheism could or could not fit that definition.
To clarify, all of the arguments above on this point seem to be using different definitions of what religion means, and thus both sides are right (using their definition) and both sides are wrong (using the other side’s definition).
Of course, I have no horse in this race. As a pagan, I don’t give a crap what any of the rest of you believe so long as you don’t oppress me and my beliefs. Believe and let believe – or not believe.
But even in this context it doesn’t reeally physically exist. I guess you could also argue that nothing can exist in the form of an abstract concept. After all, it wouldn’t be wrong to say an idea exists.
Though I feel the whole “what defines religion” thing to be a bit pedantic, after all it has no effect on any belief itself. Though it’d be wrong to say that hardcore atheists don’t argue for their own beliefs as much as much as those who are strongly into a religion.
It is true that some atheists have built up a large body of refutations against flawed arguments and claims for the existence of gods. But refuting arguments and claims doesn’t amount to doctrine or faith. It’s just a response to other people’s attempts at persuasion.
Calling atheism a religion is a false equivalence designed to level a non-level playing field. It’s often done to try and saddle atheists who made no truth claims with a false burden of proof to match the burden of proof on religious claims.
Long story short, atheism isn’t a religion because there are no beliefs ANY of them hold in common, the same way people who don’t like baseball don’t hold any beliefs in common.
I like that point. Speaking as a theist, I agree that theism is not a religion. It’s a chararacteristic of some religions, and not a characteristic of other religions. If I, a Christian, say of a Jew or a Muslim, “We are both theists,” that doesn’t mean we belong to the same religion.
Let me explain a little further. To start, I’m atheist and Jewish. Atheism isn’t a religion, but it is a belief system. Theism is any belief system in which belief in a god is important. Atheism is about not believing in gods, even just 1. Without the concept of a god to reject, atheism could not exist. Ancestor worship would be a belief system that is both not believing in god(s) and not atheism. I was taken aback the first time I heard that atheism was still theism, but my cultural anthropology professor in college made it make sense.
I do admit that I was hasty with labeling Joyce as atheist, though. We don’t really know yet as she doesn’t really know yet.
I’m not sure how that follows. Ancestor worship would be a belief system in which belief in gods in not important – therefore not theism and therefore atheism. Some varieties of Buddhism are also often considered atheist.
Unless you’re saying that “not believing in gods” means beliefs about gods are important, thus theism? I don’t think that really matches definitions of theism.
I don’t think I have heard any person who was not religiously motivated ever call atheist or religion.
Doubt your source, because the people who use the terminology in the Way you are are almost always religious propagandists trying to denigrate atheism as just another form of the same type of thing that I am obviously you can’t have a position that is adverse to my position you just have to be acting exactly like me and cannot possibly be an opinion that is different than mine so I’m going to classify you exactly like me.
And if I tried to say that everything is sport because baseball is sport which also means that eating chips is sport which also means that any verb action is a sport you would probably see why sport all of a sudden wasn’t being defined in the best interest of sport but instead in the best interest of me the propaganda is trying to muddy the waters and make it hard to tell what sport is.
I’ve been in Joyce’s shoes there, a little- it’s part of it’s own flavor of grief, when your faith is swaying and you’re suddenly not sure about the afterlife at all. The hesitation isn’t because you’re thinking of saying something else- it’s because a part of you is suddenly faced with the reminder that you’re not sure that’s what you believe, but you desperately want it to be true because thinking it isn’t hurts.
Doesn’t Bethesda own Borderlands or am I misremembering? Interplanetary waterslide physics would be possible … if entirely accidental. A patch to “fix” that would come along eventually, and bork up something else in the process.
*disclaimer: Reltzik is not liable for any lost San points resulting from Googling Kat Kerr. We all know what the Internet’s like, so Google at your own risk.*
I don’t even? What do you mean by BOTH kinds? Did you mean about toppings? — Blueberry topping OR strawberry topping? Or did you mean both Types like NuYawk kind and Philly kind?
Maybe they mean chocolate cheesecake and default cheesecake? I personally am a fan of those cheesecake platters with all the different flavors of cheesecake.
If I’m eating the cheesecake on the waterslide and it gets stuck in my throat and I end up deposited face-down at the bottom of the pool, can I choke to double-death and also drown, or is that negated because it’s Heevin?
I hear that. It’s a hard one.
I do wish heaven was a real place. It’s nice to imagine, and people are comforted by it so I’m not gonna tell them No.
But, yeah, probably he’s just in your memories and in your DNA and in the earth and such.
I hope you have some really great memories of him.
There’s always the alternative solution of build a heaven like paradise, invent time travel go and fetch the information centric existence of people memories included moments before their death and transport fundamentally linked story/memory units to possibilistic entities in the future.
Atheist don’t believe in God’s, so why not build heaven? Doesn’t seem to be anybody else working towards actually making it happen instead of just hoping it already has.
“Of course it’s happening in your head. Harry. Why should that mean that it’s not real?”
Just because heaven doesn’t exist in a brick-and-mortar form on someplace like Planet Idyllia doesn’t mean it isn’t real either.
When my dad died, I missed him, but I knew he was in a better place and, since Mom still had me, he had gone on ahead to get things ready for when Mom came to join him. She managed to muddle along, with my help, for another twenty years or so, and when I finally did lose her five years ago, I knew she was just rejoining my dad to continue their interrupted journey to forever together.
That s my belief, and there’s nothing you or anybody else would be able to do to make me let go of it.
The last statement you made “That s my belief, and there’s nothing you or anybody else would be able to do to make me let go of it.” is probably one of the most tragic sentiment I have seen somebody say in a long time.
Can you imagine any context where that type of epistemological stance is ever true?
Couldn’t you make the exact same comment about why it’s okay to hate other races? Because it makes you more comfortable and ain’t nobody going to change your belief no how.
Stop and actually understand how tragic that statement is. You’ve literally committed a death to grow on an entire spectrum of thought. Because you know there’s no way to change your belief so why bother even thinking about it.
I can’t really put my finger on it but something about her facial expression reminds me of her face when her ‘wacky Becky’ mask is straining and she’s upset.
Yeah, there’s something. The problem is that the possible interpretations are legion. Anything from “Joyce would normally be much quicker to jump on that and agree” to “Wait, why did Joyce talk about missing my mother without automatically adding the bit about heaven herself?” to “I really want to believe that, because despite everything I still think people who commit suicide automatically go to hell.”
I’m not conviced Becky is a believer still. With a this homosexuality is evil nonesence and suiciders aren’t allowed in heaven stuff. But she keep a staight faith – pun intended – for the sake of Joyce.
And Becky was, is and will always have better acting skills than Joyce – by orders of magnitude.
I mean, but not all churches follow the ‘homosexuality is evil’ etc, stuff.
I grew up in the United Church of Christ, which has had member churches arguing *Since the 1970’s* that not only was homosexuality not a sin, it was also actually just a *perfectly natural* expression of human love.
That wasn’t really even a popular SECULAR opinion at the time.
(Hell, about a year before Obgerfell, the UCC managed to get same-sex marriage legalized in NC by suing the NC State government, claiming that the ban on same-sex marriage was an impingment on religious freedom. Given how UTTERLY TERRIBLE the law/ammendment was in NC, the courts sided with the UCC).
Granted, I also realize my experience with Christianity growing up, and the views of my church and pastors, are SUPER DIFFERENT from most other people’s (and from most other mainstream christianity. I feel like a goddamn space alien when I look at most mainstream christainity in the US)
Additionally, Faith can be intensely personal, and really you choose which bits make sense to you.
For example:
I’m Roman Catholic, but believe that God made us all the way we are, and will not punish us for how we are made. Therefore: Any sort of -sexual(Homo-A-,Bi-,Pan-,et cetera) is not damned for acting on that impulse. Violating OTHER rules while doing so, e.g. causing harm to a child, deliberately killing your partner pre-,mid-, or post-congress, et cetera. THAT gets you damned.
Similarly, those who commit suicide are not damned for being driven to a place where they simply cannot stand to suffer any further; They are accepted into the afterlife that brings them the most comfort, and that’s that.
One of my favorite moments of ‘sunday school’ was when my RC catechist sat down a six-year-old and in no uncertain terms told her that “Your aunt is wrong. members of the Hebrew faith are not “all going to Hell no matter what they did on Earth” for putting Jesus on the cross. It was part of Jesus’ plan, remember? Why would He punish those who are descended from those who helped him form the New Covenant?”
Mm-hmm. The Church on Earth encompasses billions of people in hundreds of countries over thousands of years. In the U.S. we get used to saying “Christianity is this, Christianity is that,” when what we mean is “The American-based Christian denominations and non-denominational churches that are effectively a congeries of tiny denominations, the ones who have political connections and money and think the rest of us Christians are going to Hell, loudly say this or that.”
Yes, there are some churches that aren’t fundamentalistic, but we have seen which church Joyce and Becky attended and we know Beckys father. And we have seen Joyces struggle to find a new church.
Key point is: Becky rarely shows, what’s really going through her head.
Her hangups around premarital sex make it very, VERY clear: She’s jettisoned the things she needs to, and she’s no longer part of their old congregation and ITS beliefs, but she still believes on the whole in a God and she hasn’t yet reconciled the idea that premarital hankypanky isn’t inherently sinful and wrong, which is part of why she’s having trouble with Dina – Dina’s entirely onboard with and enthusiastic for sex, but doesn’t experience sexual attraction very often and has a much healthier attitude towards the prospect than the shame and guilt Becky has. Dina’s not going to lose control in a lustful frenzy, and Becky was lowkey hoping for that scenario to absolve her of guilt.
Becky believes in evolution and a God who answers lesbian prayers, and doesn’t feel the same need for structure that Joyce did (which is why Joyce’s faith broke – once one aspect cracked, the whole structure collapsed,) but she definitely is still Christian, and she’s still in the process of assessing some of the aspects of her faith that aren’t actually working for her. It’s also ambiguous what she thinks about her mom’s death – she definitely thinks Ross is in the same place (‘tell Mom I’ll be a while,’) but that’s most likely a desire for Ross to go to heaven despite everything because she does still love him. Her discussion with Amber after Blaine’s death about how her initial feelings might change, but that doesn’t invalidate any of them also suggests her feelings about Bonnie’s death weren’t straightforward, though that may or may not have been theological about suicide but instead the messy emotions (especially since her mother DIDN’T die immediately after the attempt – she died ‘in the hospital later,’ which may have been weeks or even months after.)
I think if you believe that Becky doesn’t believe in God because of suicide is a sin (which isn’t even held by Catholics and is a misunderstanding of it being a mortal sin) and homosexuality then you miss the entirety of how Becky views religion.
Becky believes in the tenets of Christianity=Love and thinks anything that contradicts that is wrong.
Which is ironically pretty much how anarchist rabbi Jesus taught it.
I don’t need to be “right” about Jesus but I do note that the way the thing is written, Jesus says a lot about:
* Peace
* Love
* Religious Hypocrites piss him off
* Gentiles are not damned
* Hanging around prostitutes and Samaritans is okay
* Wealth is bad and the rich are likely damned
Versus
* Nothing about lesbians and obeying authority (which crucified him anyway)
” Christ [is] saying all of these wonderful things about people living together in peace and love, and then for the next two thousand years people are putting each other to death in His name because they can’t agree on how He said it, or in what order He said it. “
For the longest time, even after I stopped believing in God, I tried desperately to convince myself that even without that, there was still an afterlife. Still a Heaven. That was the hardest thing to lose, and it’s only going to get more painful with time. Sometimes I’ve heard people I love talking about seeing people they loved again on the other side, and I’ve had to… shut off, almost, to avoid letting on.
As good as everything else is, it’s the way it captures things like that that made me fall in love with this comic.
I really appreciate this acknowledgement on how hard it can be to lose someone you love.
There are times like this in life when circumstances run us into the ground. Here we might find comfort in many things (hugs, talking to friends, music, refuge in nature, etc.) The opportunity to escape for a day, an hour, or even a few minutes – to lay our burden down and let in some comfort – can be invaluable in refilling our depleted reserves, getting us through the days.
Many of us would do whatever we could to facilitate that comfort for others.
But what if a loved one risked his health, by diving into relentless unprotected sex with strangers to drown out the pain of divorce? What if a loved one started handing over her savings to a scam-artist to commune with a dead relative? Would we be so quick to facilitate these comforts?
What about the knock-on effect on others? Without promises of compensation in an afterlife, would people be so willing to deny “earthly” justice to themselves and others who were molested and abused? Or life-saving medical treatment to themselves or their children? What about suicide attackers and blood-thirsty fundamentalists, who anticipate a glorious martyr’s reward for their devastating deeds?
As painful as the death of someone can be, it is important to recognize that afterlife fantasies are not harmless or neutral. They are multivalent: subject to a wide range of applications.
As we have seen many times in this comic, the desire for comfort can lead to destructive and deadly behaviors, and states of perpetual denial which are frequently imposed on others. Comfort is not something to automatically be cherished or facilitated. Sometimes it’s more humanitarian to challenge comfort than to enable it.
Is it not then your humanitarian duty to visit funerals and such and perform such challenges immediately before such destructive and deadly behaviors can occur?
With any hope I wouldn’t need to. Through education, free productive intellectual discussion and social development, these supernatural beliefs may very well dissolve on their own. Rates of atheism have already gone up considerably since the industrial revolution. Care to guess why?
It would sure help if people realized en mass that religious indoctrination is really just as bad as political indoctrination…..
I’ll tell them what I tell everyone else — that Christmas’s traditions are totally ripped off from the Roman holiday Saturnalia, and that like the Olympics, they’ve lost pretty much ALL religious meaning. And that Christians centuries ago appropriated those traditions and moved their religious celebrations to winter in a desperate attempt to convert pagans.
And that Santa Claus was originally a folk figure, a character from a play written in the 1600s about the importance of letting ourselves enjoy the holidays, and still serves that purpose to this day.
One things for sure, Santa Claus is DEFINITELY better than a Canaanite war god who treats humans as playthings expected to dance to whatever sadistic tune he happens to hum.
Telling them that Santa’s retired and outsourced all his work to China and Amazon and who-not also works.
Also that Santa is like the modern day Emperor of Japan — a ceremonial figure that doesn’t really do anything but serve as a living memory of eras past.
I’d LIKE to believe in an afterlife. I just don’t. I feel like people act like belief is an active thing you can do but in my experience it’s pretty passive. Sure I can pose myself to entertain an idea more than I normally would out of a desire to challenge my expectations, but at a certain point if I don’t believe something I don’t believe it. I can’t believe in heaven, at least not with the current amount of information that I have. But I do WANT to believe in heaven and would be pleasantly surprised by the existence of it. And there’s no point in me taking that away from other people.
If we take it that there is no better place after we die, would that not be the perfect inspiration to make the world we know a better place? To focus not on some fantasy world beyond the grave, but the people on earth who matter more than anything?
As for the dead, worry not. For if we remember them and the great times they had, the great times we had with them in life, we have not truly lost them.
While I have a great deal of admiration for science and the scientific method, I have some reservations about the combined power of the intellects who have gotten us into our current situation. Helping everyone who needs it sounds good, but I kind of want to make sure that before you go helping me that we first agree on what help consists of. Alfred Nobel abhorred war and worked every day to make the world a better place, and yet here we are.
And yes, If we remember the dead and the great times they had, the great times we had with them in life, then we have still truly lost them on account of the fact that they aren’t here to continue to have great times or anything else. Shadows are not objects and memories are only memories. Not valueless, but a poor substitute. To do better, we would need to go in some extreme directions.
It’s thanks to science that we live as long as we do.
It’s thanks to science that the Coronavirus ISN’T gonna kill most of humanity.
It’s thanks to science that you don’t have to have five or six kids at a time under the premise that most of them are gonna die before they’re a year old.
It’s thanks to science that you can have sex with people without worrying about accidental pregnancy.
It’s thanks to science that you can cool and heat your home, can have warm food that you can get to come to you, and have clean water at any time of day.
It’s thanks to science that Porn Lord Willis can provide this wonderful comic to us.
It’s thanks to science that we’re even talking right now.
Sure science has led to problems. But it’s also improved our lives in so many marvelous ways that we often take it for granted.
Progress is never a game of “eliminating” problems. Rather, it is a game of TRADING your current problems for problems you’re better off dealing with.
And seeing how far we’ve come since two million years ago, when we had to gather food all day long and would die of dysentery or something before we were thirty, compared to how we not only survive, but THRIVE in our modern lives, I say, NOT A BAD TRADE!
Believe me, I’d much rather be a mad scientist than a depressed nothing. (no offense)
Also, sorry Einstein, but the loophole-free Bell Theorem Test proved you wrong about quantum events about five years ago. But thanks for your annus mirabilis papers of 1905 — those were awesome!!!
A burning desire to make the world a better place can be pretty fucking dangerous too, though. Very few people twirl their mustache evilly and go ‘NYAHAHA! I SHALL MAKE THINGS WORSE!’ while comiting atrocities.
And we can see by what’s going on with the Uighurs that one does not need religion to carry out atrocities to ‘make the world/country a better place’. (What with accepting atheism being a codified tenant of the Communist Party of China).
And believing in an afterlife also doesn’t necessitate giving up on this world, either. (Indeed–while I am not sure I am christian or anything anymore, the pastor at the church I grew up in had an ENTIRE EASTER SERMON about how the POINT of the resurrection is that *this world is also important*, because in the story, Jesus is resurrected not only in spirit, but in flesh–which means that THIS world is important too, and it is our *duty* to care for this world and the people in it.)
The world would certainly be a funnier place! Though i guess the world’s pretty funny already. But yes. Lacking in moustache-twirling trolls. That is uncontroversial
Well of course the burning desire to make the world a better place can be dangerous — particularly when you don’t pay attention to the FACTS about what you are doing. That’d where critical thinking and science come in.
I mean, the Christian Colonists wanted to make the world a better place too, and used their ideology as an excuse to convert and kill people under the premise that they were “saving souls”.
So, what does the current scholarship on, i guess, science communication and pedagogy suggest is the best approach towards changing someone’s mind about an issue? Is that an area you’ve explored?
Oh interesting, thanks!
I think my own tendency is to agree with whoever I think is the coolest person in the room, but I guess that’s anecdotal evidence
While an afterlife is very unlikely, there is an above zero chance that some form of consciousness exists after death. If it exists, it is almost certainly not “heaven” or a reward/punishment. Most likely it is just another form of existence that we are unable to detect. But something could be there. We don’t know.
If there is something, the chance that we’ve figured it out and it happens to be the most popular one in our country of the many different versions people have come up with over the millennia seems pretty damn low. It would almost be a miracle.
@Rassilon – I hear that. There’s no easy answer, really.
Some nice atheist ideas
– we live on through the memories of the living
– sure heaven probably doesn’t exist, but it might be a comforting idea for you, and it’s OK to let yourself imagine it when you’re sad.
– a life is like the wave in an ocean, living for a while as a distinct individual, and then receding, going back to just be part of the ocean again. Someday all the ocean waves join each other this way. Maybe somehow we do, too.
Einstein had the comforting thought that since the universe is block time, there’s always going to be our loved ones in the past because that continues to exist perpetually. On my end, I’m of the mind that since the universe is a simulation, they’ve just gone on to be wait for respawn in the Great Server.
I personally find it easier to believe in reincarnation. Even if i were christian, i don’t think I’d be able to grasp the concept of heaven because, like The Good Place pointed out, an eternity of anything would be hell. I find comfort in the idea that we’re on loops of life, and maybe we can even meet the same people close to us in this life again. It’s pure faith and i know that, but i find it the easiest answer to lean back on
The main reason I went for single rooms my last two years of college was because I got tired of having roommates who were slobs and just left clothes and empty pop bottles and other random stuff all over the floor in the rooms we shared. So yeah, seeing Becky just throw her clothes on the floor like this kinda bugs me.
That was sweet. It’s a relief seeing someone being nice without the other person immediately thinking it’s a play for power. Hope Sal can also get to this point someday.
That’s not gonna happen in the afterlife. That’s gonna happen on earth, with the help of passionate people who are working to preserve the shear irreplaceable awesomeness of arcades, even in the absence of SEGA’s Arcade division.
I suddenly realized that Becky’s mom was probably more kind and loving to Joyce than her biological mother ever was… This makes it all sadder, but I love how Becky seems to have processed her loss and how Joyce is able to say nothing that could hurt her beliefs ♡.
Can we have a fanon AU in which Ross and Carol died while Becky and Joyce were too young to remember, Hank and Bonnie remarried (to each other), and Joyce and Becky were raised as sisters?
I don’t think so.
Not that Bonnie likely wasn’t kind and loving to Joyce, but that Carol was as well. That’s part of why this is all so hard on Joyce. Carol was kind and loving because Joyce was the good girl who didn’t question. Joyce never developed ways to handle being in conflict with either of her parents over anything important, so when she did in college it all blew up.
Unlike Becky, who built her emotional armor to deal with Ross.
Good to just come right out and say it like this, even if obviously, Joyce has her own issues she’s dealing with. It’s good she understands there’s a time and place to debate that, though I do hope she can take a chance on Becky understanding that someday and let her in on this.
–Not like that Becky’s mom wouldn’t deserve to be in heaven, just that heaven isn’t a real place so nobody is in it. But unlike heaven, friendship and feelings n’stuff are real, so, waterslides it is.
Why would that…ever be debated though? I don’t really see a reason it needs to be debated at all. Maybe she can explain her stance if she feels like it’s necessary. But a debate of ideas? Not necessary. People can hold different beliefs without trying to sway others.
DailyBrad means Joyce isn’t going to argue this right now because it’d mean telling Becky that she doesn’t think Becky’s mom is in Heaven and there’s actually no Heaven at all.
Not a debate of ideas, a debate of saying the worst possible thing right now.
Again though, why argue this? Why do you keep using terms like “debate” or “argue”. If she’s just enlightening her about her personal beliefs, that’s fine. But you if someone says to you “oh this guy died, but I’m sure he’s in heaven” you don’t need to say “actually I don’t believe in heaven so I disagree.”. You can just…not say that at all. Now if someone says “Do you think they’re in heaven you can say “oh, actually I don’t really believe in the afterlife”. But it’s not something that like…needs to just come up in a situation like this…at all really?
Oh, well you see, some believe that the desire for comfort can lead to destructive and deadly behaviors. And so you must be challenged. To help you for your own good, you know.
I would tell them that there’s really no good way of saying goodbye. There never will be. What really matters is the time you spent with your loved one, not how you left it.
Even without any concept of a soul, the person does not truly die with the body. The person cannot be brought back through a sample of their DNA. The person is the collection of the experiences that shaped them, the impact they left on others, the memories they left us with.
I would tell then that as long as you remember the wonderful experiences you had with your loved one, the impact they had on your life, they haven’t truly left you. Only their body.
I think inanimate artifacts of someone who’s passed can embody memories. Even small mementos can spark conversation, and inheriting a vehicle or home from a deceased loved one can feel like they’re still there for you in a way. (Or they can still provide a little in a literal sense, if they were well off enough to leave an investment account behind in a trust and set up regular disbursements to its beneficiaries.)
Let’s say you could dump someone’s entire personality and life experiences into a Soong-type android body (like Data), leaving you with a perfect but artificial clone of the original person. (Let’s leave the moral and legal ramifications to one side for now.) In order to make this copy, you would have to scan the person’s brain while they’re alive. Between the brain scan and death of the original human, are there two of “them” in existence? How long does the clone ‘live’? If you’re not ‘moving’ the original consciousness to a new body, is it really the same person? Who decides if the person gets ‘reincarnated’ as an android, and for how long?
Personally, with today’s technology I think closure is more important for the survivors in the long term. Leaving a pile of notes, a library of interview-style videos, or a freezer full of home-cooked meals behind just delays the inevitable mourning in my opinion. Eventually the ‘fresh’ material runs out and you’ll be left with that “that’s it?” feeling you get at the end of parties and holidays, except there won’t be more next year. Artifacts don’t change, and memories are frozen in time.
@Clif: Isn’t is great when someone jumps in with an example of what you’re talking about?
@Wagstaff: And you’d tell them this without prompting while they’re dealing with their grief? You’d provoke that debate Yotomoe’s talking about?
I mean sure, if it comes up abstractly or they ask about how you as an atheist deal with loss that’s fine, but using their grief as a chance to evangelize your own beliefs isn’t a good look.
Like right here, if you were in Joyce’s place would you launch into “heaven isn’t real, but we still have our memories”?
Of course there are other reasons Joyce doesn’t want to bring that up. I’m sure she respects Becky’s need to believe that about her mom, but she also doesn’t want Becky to know that she’s stopped believing.
This is what I am referring to, yes. Joyce is (currently? permanently?) not a believer. She doesn’t want to get into that with Becky since Becky is a devout Christian, is mourning, and the last time they got into it about religion was the nasty fight at Becky’s birthday party, when Joyce angered her by being all “do whatever” about Becky’s concerns about premarital sex.
For one day, one night, it doesn’t matter what you, personally believe. If believing for even a moment is enough to make somebody you care about happy than maybe it’s worth it.
Got to admit there was a time when I left my clothes on the floor, right up until the time a large spider came scuttling out and I am not keen on spiders at all
We do have the Katipo (cousin to the Red Back and Black Widow) but you’d be doing very well to come across one and the Red Back has made its way from Australia but again they’re not all that common.
The Avondale spider gets quite large but thats also an introduced Huntsman spider from Australia…
I’ve seen one Red Back in the outdoors, never seen a Katipo and the Avondale spider is in the North Island (I live in the South Island) so never come across one of them either
Grab a big trash bag, fill it up with obvious garbage, and remove it from your space. Guarantee you’ll feel better after that.
If you need a little more motivation, put A&E’s Hoarders on. Pick out a particularly grimy episode where the house is a lasagna of filthy squalor, not just piles of junk they bought from QVC and never opened.
Doing the Devil’s advocate, I’m a functional adult, and still don’t have time to clean my room, for a minimal of 2 weeks.
Working hard mess with your life. Please, be rich, do not work 9/6.
Reminds me of my favorite American Dad Joke.
“My mom says my dad would be disappointed looking down at me from heaven but I like to think he’s disappointed looking up at me from hell.”
Yeah, I think she’ll mostly reminisce about happy memories of Bonnie’s life. Becky’s the one who brought up what she believes happens after. It’s ultimately harmless, so if that’s a comfort for her Joyce should just roll with it. She knows exactly what not to say right now.
If Becky was expressing signs suicidal ideation in order to be reunited with her, that would be cause for alarm and interjection. However, the last thing we saw her say to Toedead was “tell mom I’m going to be a while”, so unless she had a drastic change in mindset over the break I think she intends on sticking around.
There’s no reason for Joyce to burst her bubble except for plot drama. That would be a seriously awful move, and may possibly end their friendship (or at least damage it worse than Sal and Marcie’s after the DeSanto rally fight.)
Seeing the shear damage afterlife fantasies can do, I’m finding it harder and harder to do that with a clear conscience.
I mean, would people be so willing to deny themselves and their children life-saving medical treatment without the promise of Heaven? Without promises of compensation in an afterlife, would people be so willing to deny justice to victims of molestation and abuse?
Probably. I find that, generally speaking, people can manage to justify whatever they want to do in some manner or the other.
There is an absence of evidence about what, if anything, follows the experience of life. If Becky prefers to believe her mother is in a heavenly water park, who is to say that you are right and she is wrong? And that being the case, why should you take it upon yourself to try and convince her that she is wrong. Particularly when you have no evidence.
I have no evidence that her mother didn’t decide to do a three-way with Robin Williams and Stephen Hillenburg once she gor to this supposed afterlife.
I have no evidence that there aren’t invisible perverted telepathic gerbils that make us hallucinate so we don’t notice it when they **** off on our bodies when we sleep.
There are ways to gain comfort without distortions of reality.
To justify fallacious beliefs as a means of comforting people in tough times requires showing that blocking out huge amounts of reality that conflict with such beliefs is necessary to get the job done.
I’m just deeply concerned about those who attempt to bargain with reality in such ways. If there’s one thing that the pandemic has taught us, it is this — you can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
Look, if it’s any consolation, it is actually possible to visit your loved ones in your dreams. That’s where I visit mine.
But if you want to wait until death for such an impossible promise, I guess I can’t stop you…..
Are you trying to compare the belief in heaven/afterlife to believing that magical gerbils sexually assault you in your sleep? Because that is fucking stupid.
My brother passed away last year from covid. He was one of the best people I knew, and I choose to believe that he went somewhere good, and is probably arguing DnD rules with a friend of ours that passed away from cancer years back. Are you saying that I am wrong for taking some small amount of comfort in that belief?
I follow Weatherwax on where sin and evil starts.
And thinking of people as ‘things that need to be saved from themselves’, definitely falls into that category.
”And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’
‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’
‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
–Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.
Except of course it is more complicated, because sometimes people do need to be saved from themselves. Consider Ruth being taken to the hospital for her depression as an extreme example.
The question is where to draw the line. And even that isn’t binary, since interventions can range from those extremes to just talking to people and trying to convince them they’re in a bad place.
The trouble comes when people try to bring superstition into their attempts to “help” people.
Like the concept of “sin”. “Sin” has no accurate, secular moral equivalent. “Sin” is a nebulous category that can encompass virtually ANY behavior or thought under the grounds that it represents a transgression against some god(s) or supernatural force, without having to offer ANY evidence of harm.
Believing in something that can never be verified requires ignoring epistemology, the way human knowledge works and the uncertainty always present in it.
We can never have peace of mind regarding death, because it’s impossible to know what happens after we die.
What incentive would we have to make the world we KNOW and live in a better place through our actions if we pretend we are certain that a better place already exists in death, the ultimate UNKNOWN?
Humans live hoping to conquer their anxieties and fear, and attain peace of mind. Seeking fame, controlling others, and acquiring wealth are all done to achieve peace of mind [albeit unwisely]. Marriage and friendship are also pursued as means of attaining peace of mind. When humans wish to help others, or do something for love or justice… it’s all to attain peace of mind. To achieve peace of mind is the goal of all humanity.
So, what’s wrong with improving the world we know instead of merely HOPING for a better world in that which can never be known?
Seeing how much we have already improved our world with the combined power of human intelligence, I think this is the most effective means by which to attain peace of mind.
“We can never have peace of mind regarding death, because it’s impossible to know what happens after we die.”
I assume you’re speaking for yourself, in this bolded part. Speaking also for myself, I have to strongly disagree with you. I’ve got a very firm belief that one of these days, possibly (hopefully?) soon, I’m going to simply stop being alive, and then nothing is going to follow after that for my consciousness. It’s an eventually, at least in my own mind, and that perceived fact just doesn’t cause me any distress, at least not in the sense of “And then what?”, if you follow me. What does bother me is the idea that someone close to me might (hopefully?) be sad about it when it happens, and I won’t be able to make it better for them.
If we KNOW there’s a world that’s definitely better than this one in death, why do we not just kill ourselves now to get to it?
If we KNOW there’s some form of justice intrinsic to this universe that we KNOW will eventually punish and reward people in the most appropriate way possible, why do we bother setting up justice systems on earth that are redundant at best and unjust at the worse?
Like seriously no. Enough. You do not fucking talk like that to people. You do not say even in satire or jest in a conversation like this “well if Heaven’s real kill yourself and get there faster.” Fuck that.
I am definitely NOT suggesting people to kill themselves, precisely BECAUSE whatever lay beyond death could very well be WORSE than the terrors of this earth.
I can’t force people to listen to me, or stop making a straw man out of me while completely missing the point, or take a step back to examine ideas with a cold, rational eye.
But I guess I tried… perhaps you can help me get my point across in a manner more digestible? Because at least to you, apparently I suck at that.
No one is making a strawman out of you, I am telling you not to respond to a post by someone expressing a degree of ideation regarding their morality and finding some comfort in the afterlife with “if heaven is real then why doesn’t every just kill themselves.”
Like, dude, if you cannot express yourself without saying that shit, then don’t say anything until you’re better at conveying your actual intent.
I may have yet to brush up on the “backfire effect” cataloged on Skeptical Scientist, and in hindsight I am ashamed for posting something of this strength before said review, and for subsequently failing to predict just how it would be perceived.
But this mistake will not be in vein, if I can take it upon myself to learn from it moving forward.
After all, we gave up and quit every time we made a mistake, our species would never achieve anything. As Jhon once said, this is a good place to practice, at least to some extent.
” It’s called PRACTICE for a reason! “
— Elvis Presley
Anyway, thank you for giving me MUCH needed feedback. I cannot get better at what I do unless I see the places that need improvement.
I’m really close friends with an aspiring psychology major in graduate school, and I also talk a lot with his grandfather, who’s a licensed psychotherapist. In addition, I’ve dedicated A LOT of time to learning critical thinking (especially considering my traumatic background that I’m not going to elaborate on here because it’s actually kind of hard for me; you know about how diabetics have to learn lots about the body to take care of themselves? It’s kinda like that.), and at this point I’m a moderately-seasoned self-taught philosopher in and out of the classroom, even helping my professor design better critical-thinking tests at one point. Philosophy and psychology are best thought of as two sides of the same coin — one explores the many ways of thinking and their virtues, and the other explores how people actually tend to think on the day to day.
So yeah, I’ll just leave it at that, and you can decide for yourself whether or not you’d want to use the information I provide here. If you have any questions regarding what I write, I’d LOVE to answer them, and, as is only good practice with any scientist or scholar, I am ALWAYS open to critical feedback!
Oh yeah. One of the most alienating experiences of my life was being at my grandma’s funeral and hearing all her church friends say, comfortingly, “We’ll see her again in heaven eventually.” I tried to take vicarious comfort in knowing that the sentiment was meaningful and helpful to my grandpa, at least.
At my dad’s funeral, the minister was an old friend of his, who he’d had long arguments about religion with. He said that he was sure dad was in heaven, and was denying it. I’m still not sure how I feel about that.
Being an atheist, it was (and still is) hard to deal with my mom’s passing two years ago, but I try to remember the good things, and always tell myself if there’s even the slightest possibility of a heaven, she’s definitely there. It doesn’t always help, but it’s something.
It’s interesting because I’ve always been an atheist, so I don’t have any real connection to heaven as a comfort. My mom’s still alive, so maybe that’ll come into my thinking when she dies, but I do wonder if there’s a difference between atheists who were raised in a church and those raised atheist in terms of wanting to be able to use heaven as a comfort.
I’m probably overanalyzing this because mom is old and dealing with long term illness, so it’s likely it’ll be more directly relevant within a few years.
Thanks, it’s stressful, but part of growing old. She’s still doing well, so it’s definitely a future problem. Just not as far in the future as we might want.
I’m sorry to hear about your mom. I did grow up in the church but became Atheist later. It was scary and depressing to realize that fact, but I did get over it. My mom’s passing was the first death of someone close to me since I became an Atheist. It’s not easy, but I’ve slowly recovered over the past couple of years. You never truly get over it though.
This is a really interesting comic because while we know Joyce is wrestling with her faith/non-faith now, Becky still believes. I’ve always thought religion is what you need out of it and Becky appears to be the person who believes the same, given what is taught through Christianity (either by the book or by the people who believe in the book) regarding same sex relationships and suicide.
Which makes me suddenly think about them talking about Becky’s mum. Heaven is brought up because they obviously think that, or at least Becky does, but I wonder what this means for Joyce.
Especially since as stated before, suicide can be seen as a sin/murder and thus that person may end up somewhere else, depending on what you believe.
I personally do not, as my father committed suicide and I like to believe that whatever power out there that might have any say in anything would understand that mental illness is not something to punish, but others may believe differently.
I don’t think this is going to go this route with Bekcy and Joyce at the moment but it was something that struck me at the time of reading this. It’d be an interesting, albeit utterly sad, topic to hit with this comic that likes making you think about different points of view.
To be fair, the suicide and same sex relations things are not remotely compatible with the idea that Christianity is supposed to be a religion of love and acceptance. Becky believes in the latter. Joyce was raised that the heart of the faith is authority.
Yeah I think this is a really succinct and direct summary of the difference between Becky and Joyce.
Becky believes in God, she has faith, and because she has faith she was able to both overcome the failures of her upbringing and cut the detritus out. Oh sure the Earth is older than 6000 years and humans didn’t hunt dinosaurs, but God loves her and that’s what matters, and Toedad failed to be what God wanted of him.
Joyce believed that what she was told was right and therefore could not be questioned. The Firmament has to be exactly as factual as Dorothy going to Hell for being an atheist and dinosaurs breathing fire and everyone who told her that these facts were correct were also correct and anyone who contradicted this was a sinner who was trying to lead her astray.
Joyce couldn’t compromise her faith in the face of being let down by the authority figures in her life because she never had faith in God to begin with, she had faith in authority.
No authority is beyond criticism: no teacher, no preacher, no priest, no politician, no prophet, no parent.
But this is what authoritarianism and theism ultimately come down to: the simultaneous longing for, and fear of, the mystical, magical, unquestionable parent. In other words, it is the need to have someone or something to treat as the ultimate source of guidance, thereby eliminating the need to think for yourself.
In Becky’s case, if she changes her God in face of an altered moral landscape, and that God guides/restrains her, than she’s really just guiding herself. So what’s the point of a God? Why not just cut out the middle man and just acknowledge that you can be confident in your own judgment?
I think that’s a really patronizing way of viewing Becky, Wagstaff. Mind you, Christianity was started as a reactionary fight against authority and fundamentalism. Both against Roman fascism and fundamentalist collaborators with them.
Your view is essentially, “religion is only chains” when many people view them as breaking them.
By all means, this phenomena is by no means exclusive to religion. Marxist communism was seen as breaking tyrannical chains too, and look what came of that.
My stance is against the chains of ideological bias of ALL kinds, not just religious.
I use religious examples often around here just because this comic is full of examples. In the past, I have shown that I have the same reservations against pseudo-scientific ideologies that were not necessarily religious, as well as abusive institutional ideologies held by Linda and other characters.
Not that I think ill of you for this, but your last comment basically tried to draw a false equivalence between objecting to bias and being biased.
“ Morality is not distinctively Christian, any more than it is Mohammedan. Morality is human, it belongs to no ism, and does not depend for a foundation upon the supernatural, or upon any book, or upon any creed.
What most people think of as Christianity has more to do with the coalition of scripture by Constantine than anything else.
And he did it to combine several competing cults and competing scriptural rhetorics from Jewish itinerant preachers of the day, to then draw the priest class out of the pagan religions forming a priest class around a new centralized State religion.
Constantine practice paganism to his dying day and never converted.
He just made everybody else convert and took all the money and resources from the pagans into his own coffers. Well forming the largest priest class and the formalization of a combined New testament and Bible.
He literally formed the function of the scripture and it was for control and wealth.
Not really. There’s little evidence for Constantine having that great an effect on Christianity, whether he actually converted himself or not. I know there’s some speculation that he was still a secret pagan, but I’m not aware of any solid evidence.
Christianity was already widespread and growing by his time. He certainly helped, but there’s little evidence he shaped it that much.
The canon wasn’t formally established until well after his time. The Nicene Creed was created at a Council he hosted, but debates over which books were official continued for at least another 50 years.
There are however various theories floating around atheist communities about how Rome really created Christianity. None of them are taken serious by scholars.
Maybe next time I write down what I notice, I’ll say this, and I’ll say it now.
I don’t blame people for having irrational and paradoxical cognitions, at least when it doesn’t infringe upon the basic rights and freedoms of others.
The kind of feedback I get for criticizing fallacious thinking like this is more or less the feedback given to medical doctors who are accused of “fat shaming”.
But like those doctors, I’m in no way implying that their physical, mental or intellectual situation is entirely their fault or something to be ashamed of. As a scientist, it’s my duty to share knowledge with people so that they can use it to live longer, healthier, more fulfilling lives. Just as with medicine, what I do is not in the interest of playing the blame-game, but in helping people, healing society with the best evidence available.
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.
” Freedom can only come from a mind made free through self-discipline. It is from this that the liberal arts get their name. ”
Kind of like, except that you’re not a doctor and we didn’t come here to consult you. You’re more like some random stranger on the street telling people they’re fat and giving trite advice on how to eat less. Don’t do that.
It’s just as obnoxious as Christians trying to convert atheists and it works just about as well. Their motives are pure too. They’re just trying to save us.
We can talk about this. Argue, debate, but taking this “It’s my duty to try to save you all” approach is obnoxious as hell. Proselytizing sucks. I’m saying this as an atheist.
I didn’t say I was a doctor. And also, you don’t have to read it like you’re uncritically accepting it. In fact, I do welcome criticism, especially academic-grade criticism, of what I write, for it is only good practice that scientists and scholars alike double check each other’s work.
Besides my purpose as a scientist (which I am), I just don’t feel right keeping people from information that could help them. It’s not like I’m forcing them to take my help (unlike the fundamentalists who shun or even kill people for having the correct opinions).
I have firsthand experience with the damage religion can do, and although I’m not gonna open that can of worms right now due to lack of necessity, it’s not that enjoyable when people put me down when I try to share with them what could happen as a result of fallacious thinking, as a cautionary tale.
And also, comparing what I and other atheists do to evangelism is really just a false equivalence between atheism and religion, between attempts to indoctrinate and attempts to inform, between objection to rendering ideas untouchable and the very act itself. Not that I think any ill of you for doing so; it’s a very common mistake.
You didn’t say you were a doctor, but that was your role in the analogy. A doctor has the job of helping their patients get healthy, so discussing their weight in that context is reasonable. A doctor just randomly telling overweight people who aren’t their patients they need to eat less is fat shaming. They don’t have the relationship with those people that makes it appropriate.
Being a scientist gives you no special job of enlightening people who don’t ask for your help. It’s not your job.
And yeah, it’s basically the same thing as evangelism, sorry. I know you think you’re right and they’re wrong, (and I agree with you), but they think the same thing. The basic activity is the same. You’re badgering uninterested people, trying to sell them on your truth.
It’s not that you have to keep people from information, but you don’t have to push it on them. Not least because that rarely works. It just annoys people most of the time. It’s this kind of thing that gives a certain kind of atheist a bad name – even among non-religious and otherwise sympathetic people.
Writing something on a forum like this that people are free to skip over if they’re not interested is not on the same level as people who do it in a public place.
It’s like a poster on a public bulletin about climate change or vaccines. Doctors put posters like that for health websites all the time, that are available to anyone who WANTS to spend the time to read them, regardless of whether or not these people are their patients.
If people don’t want my help, they could easily refuse to read the rest of the paragraph they set their eyes on, the same way I could easily move to another strip if I ever find one that I find particularly cringe-worthy when I hit the Randomizer button.
I only ever used the doctor analogy because at the time I couldn’t think of any other analogy that demonstrated the difference between putting information out there that people are free to take or leave and playing the blame-game. At least I’m willing to admit that not coming up with a better one is my fault.
And also, religious evangelism and what people who put info out there about fallacious thinking and climate change is DIFFERENT. One puts info out there that people can take or leave as they choose and evaluate on their own, the other pressures you into accepting something UNCRITICALLY. Also, it’s not really fair that “officially recognized” religions get tax exemption.
That’s another thing. “Religious” and “faithful” are only ever derogatory when used to describe atheists and agnostics that want to provide information about critical thinking and otherwise.
Have you ever heard atheists try to belittle religious people by calling them “scientific” and “skeptical”? The one-sidedness here is QUITE revealing.
All these false equivalences are done to level a non-level playing field, adding a bogus burden of proof to atheists and agnostics who make no truth claims to match the ACTUAL burden of proof to religions who’s entire business is getting people to accept truth claims UNCRITICALLY.
Do you think it counts as fat shaming when doctors warn of the dangers of getting little exercise and improper diet, without at all implying that it’s patients’ fault for being forced into those habits by their environment or otherwise?
I know her jacket is still in the process of falling, but I’d like to think that it stopped there, arms standing up in defiance of gravitational physics.
Are you reading the same four panels as the rest of us because I’m having trouble finding any evidence in them of Joyce shoving any unasked beliefs into anyone. She’s literally just tells Becky she misses her mom, and then (reluctantly) AGREES with what Becky says next.
If the final strip of the series is Becky telling Joyce to take one last conclusive poop, David Willis will have cleared the longest build-up to a joke in webcomic history, a record previously held by Brian Clevinger’s 8-bit Theater.
I wonder how many non-believing posters are confused by Becky. I think a lot of them have the view that the issues of dogma are more important and central than the central philosophy. Probably because plenty of scumbags like Toedad hold them that way.
I think Becky is a good example of the kind of people that the Biblical Jesus would approve of. A lot of his ministry was about “ignore what the specific law is about and focus on what God means: Goodness.”
Amusingly, I knew a teacher who HATED this and felt Jesus was a perfect example of how religion cheated by disregarding elements.
I’m a non-believer but it makes sense to me that people are comforted by the idea of heaven where they will meet their loved ones again, and the idea of a benevolent God looking out for them. That seems to be most Christians I meet these days. Believing every last word of the Bible is an exception.
I think part of that is due to how fundamentally WEIRD Biblical literalism is if you ever actually pause to read it. Because a lot of Jesus’ ministry is about how Biblical literalism is wrong. Fundamentalism requires some serious Orwellian doublethink.
I’ll admit, like 95% of the religion-adjacent content in this comic tends to fly right over my head, due to an absolutely and complete lack of any spirituality or faith on my end. Like, in a narrative sense I understand Joyce and Becky’s whole Deal, and I’ve definitely learned a thing or two specifically because Willis writes it into this comic, but the mindset itself is entirely foreign to my lived experience. It’s like learning about Japanese culture through watching Dragon Ball, in a sense.
Believe it or not, Dragon Ball, or at least the earlier episodes, were more akin to Chinese culture because it was more or less a parody of the centuries-old Chinese novel Journey to the West.
But I see the point you’re trying to make regardless. On the other hand, to quote Thag Simmons, “I don’t think this comic fucks around with what fundamentalist actually believe”.
I remember watching the early dragon ball episodes with my son, and enjoyed them. Then watched some from later on, and could hardly believe it was the same cartoon.
Eh. I haven’t met any asshole theists personally, and while I don’t really believe in god, I think it’s nice to be able to. Good for them, y’know? A long as they don’t hurt anyone, etc.
As a non-believer I am neither confused nor offended by Becky’s beliefs. Becky is accepting of scientific evidence and has modified her beliefs accordingly. She does not believe in demonstrably false things (Flat Earth, etc.). She recognizes the difference between facts and faith. She attempts to live her life according to her beliefs. Her statements in this strip are faith based. (Joyce is being a great friend by agreeing.) Therefore, I have no issues with her (or Joyce). I agree she is a person the Biblical Jesus would approve of.
Regardless of the historical existence of Jesus, “biblical Jesus” is still rather contentious because the Bible itself has been changed A LOT over the centuries of translations.
This video by Trey the Explainer is a very helpful starting point to learning about the history of the Bible:
It’s funny because Jesus is mentioned in one of the most oldest of Roman historical views and the largest response to it is, “It surely must have been added by Christians after the fact” with the primary evidence being, “We don’t believe a historical Jesus existed so therefore no historical references can be real.”
Tacitus is the reference most often sited. He references Christians, but does not specifically mention Jesus. As far as I know there is no solid evidence that historical Jesus actually existed. Christianity, on the other hand, most certainly existed by 66 C.E. as per Tacitus. Josephus is another source. He actually mentions Jesus, but his work was probably tainted by Christianity and he wrote 70 years after the fact.
Note: I personally believe historical Jesus did exist, but that is only opinion. This is based on the fact that the Bible has a multitude of repeated names (Joseph, Mary, John, James the Lesser, etc.). Most works of fiction do not repeat names (Ref: Other Rachel). It is likely the Bible was loosely based on actual events. (Ref: Norse sagas)
There are fairly old references to Christians, but not to Jesus. I think the oldest reference is by Josephus. There are two, one of which mentions “James the brother of Jesus” which is generally considered historical. The other is generally considered to have at least been altered by later Christians, not because “we don’t believe a historical Jesus existed”, but because Josephus was Jewish and the reference describes him in very Christian terms – calling him the Christ and mentioning the resurrection.
Even Josephus was some 60 years after Jesus’s death, so that wouldn’t have been personal knowledge – likely whatever he’d learned from Christians of his time.
Most scholars do consider Jesus to be historical – though exactly what happened and how accurate the Gospel accounts is much more questionable.
Not really scientific evidence so much. I don’t think she’s really coming from a rationalist perspective.
She started by believing that, contrary to her teachings, God would accept her as a lesbian. “God answers lesbian prayers!” She did accept what Dina’s told her about science and evolution, but didn’t seem to require much proof beyond Dina’s assertions and enthusiasm.
OTOH, she hasn’t dropped her taught belief that pre-marital sex is a sin, despite dropping the equally unfounded belief that being a lesbian is a sin. Which would confuse me theologically, except that I can easily see how human psychology works that way.
I feel like saying, “Becky doesn’t believe in premarital sex is wrong” just because it’s not the choice other people want to make. She wants it to be with someone she loves and that choice should be respected even if it’s not for everyone.
Well, no, it’s definitely the same kind of “God said my loins must be protected from sinfulness!” kinda deal for Becky as it was Joyce, that’s just a part of her upbringing Becky still agrees with.
Becky wants hanky panky but thinks she should wait until marriage (a-okay), but what’s motivating a lot of drama for her right now is that she’s super horny on main for Dina but Dina isn’t for her, even though Dina’s not supposed to hanky panky her until they’re married, Becky’s upset that Dina isn’t constantly on the verge of ripping Becky’s shirt open with her teeth.
Except it’s very clearly in the narrative not “wants to be with someone she loves” but “outside of marriage” that’s the problem.
Like Joyce had long before she lost her faith she’s gotten far enough to not be randomly condemning people who do, but she’s still holding to premarital abstinence herself. For religious reasons.
Which is fine. I’m certainly willing to respect that choice. I don’t think it’s a rational decision to drop the rules about lesbians, but keep the ones about premarital sex, but then I don’t think most such decisions are made rationally.
No shit “most decisions are not made rationally”. Human brains are vast networks of ideas that have evolved not to strive towards truth, but towards internal consistency.
I know this is tantamount to just wishing, but I sure HOPE that Bekcy learns indifference to “ways of flesh” in a manner like that spoon scene from The Matrix:
“First accept the truth: that God does not exist. How could he? It is but an idea inside of your brain, that YOU change over time, which in turn guides and restrains you. Take a step back, and realize that it is just YOU who is bending YOU. In other words, recognize that you can be confident in your OWN judgment. Once that is given, all else follows.”
With any hope, nobody will be wearing those stupid sunglasses afterwards.
Eh, it’s kind of a circle of badness to want a character to do something they don’t want to do because they’re not comfortable with it. Pressuring a person to sex is every bit as wrong as condemning what two people are comfortable doing in their own home.
Becky should have sex when she’s ready and that’s after marriage to her right now.
Of course it’s wrong to pressure someone like that. But did Becky not really mean it when she begged Dina to teach her indifference to “ways of flesh”?
The way I see it, it’s like she’s possessed by a ghost (or at least thinks it’s like this), and she’s trying to sneak in a cry for help in a way that doesn’t register with her brain’s defense mechanisms and consequently makes it more dire.
1. Becky isn’t a real person so there’s nothing bad at all about me wanting her to do something. She can’t be pressured into doing anything she’s not comfortable with because she doesn’t exist.
2. It’s pretty clear that she DOESN’T actually want to wait until marriage to have sex. She is suffering from feelings of shame and distress about her ACTUAL DESIRES conflicting with what she thinks is ‘morally correct’. I would consider her ‘choice’ in this regard to be worthy of respect if it weren’t so clearly making her actively unhappy (AND causing her to be, in my opinion, a worse partner in her relationship).
She doesn’t need to have sex Right Now. That’s not going to be the solution to her issues by any means, and would probably make it worse. What she needs to do is let go of beliefs which are causing her to feel so horrible about herself. I.e. ACTUALLY allowing herself to have sex when she’s ready, rather than when she thinks it’s ‘morally correct’ to do so.
Well she’s a simulation of a person. The story arc being whatever Willis wants it to be but presumably he wishes it to be consistent with the characters as well as examining the pressures/dangers of college life.
Merely accepting Dina’s assertions shows she is open to scientific evidence. I think she is becoming a rationalist when it comes to commonly accepted science.
Moral choices, such as pre-marital hanky panky, are based on her beliefs and faith, not science.
The lesbian issue is not a generally accepted Christian dogma, though some argue there are passages in the Bible that suggest lesbianism is okay. It is a necessary choice Becky must make to maintain her other beliefs (human psychology at work). She has been given reason to justify this such as a real-life superhero saving her. God clearly loves her as she is.
Or, crazy enough, she doesn’t need an authority figure to believe in religion and believes as a matter of personal choice. Religion was Becky’s refuge from authority and abuse not it’s instigator.
I didn’t say anything about authority figures to believe in religion, but about science in response to claims that she’s becoming a “rationalist”.
However, I don’t see any reason to think religion was her refuge from authority, at least in her youth. It was a very authoritarian religion and pushed by her abusive father. Her religious faith now may be filling that role, but it certainly didn’t start that way.
Not a very good reason if that; she has real friends that cared about her, and Amazi-Girl only got that information and was able to act on it as fast and as well as she did thanks to inventions created with the power of science.
Also, between accepting science and accepting Dina as a surrogate authority figure, which explanation explains the most of her most recent behavior while making the least unproven assumptions?
Those last three panels really make me wonder if Becky knows Joyce’s change in views, and really all she wants for her birthday is for Joyce to be willing to play along instead of being angsty.
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Awwwwwww
*choosing not to see any contrarian hint of Joyce’s recent nontheism fighting to overpower basic empathy*
“THE WATERSLIDES DO NOT GO UPSIDE-DOWN”
“why not”
“…oh right HEAVEN YES THE WATERSLIDES GO UPSIDE-DOWN”
I half-expected a link to something Action Park related.
Action Park, you say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flkW-ceNvck
I believe the Cannonball Tubes, a short-lived water slide at Action Park.
had a loop the loop.
I wondered how far down in the comments I’d get before somebody mentioned Action Park.
They come close to doing so in Wisconsin – which, BTW, is often referred to as “God’s Country” – so OF COURSE they are going to do full loop-de-loops in Heaven.
Incidentally, the waterslides in Hell also do full loop-de-loops. It’s just that the splash-down pond there is always empty…..
Oh, the splash-down pool is full. Just not of water.
It is however filled with something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike water
Yeah, I’m quite sure there isn’t a God, but I can still agree when people who are mourning say god-y stuff. (Or at least say “yeah, that sounds really good”). The person is way more important than whatever I think happens to dead people.
Btw, pro-tip (from my rabbi dad, who has done hundreds of funerals for hundreds of families) — he doesn’t bring up heaven talk to the grieving people (such as “they’re in a better place”), but if the grieving person says it first, he says “that’s a comfort”.
that is a great tip because I really hated hearing that. Mostly because it feels really hollow to me, being and atheist and all.
I’m not an Atheist, but an Antitheist (I believe gods exist, but that they’re basically just the human mind equivalent of an evolved distributed bot net virus, and kind of like that zombie ant fungus that makes ants act in self-destructive ways for the benefit of the fungus – I’ve noticed once I started looking at gods that way, a lot of stuff about religion clicked that didn’t before).
As such, I’ve always struggled with how to respond to “they’re in a better place now”, too. To date, my response has always been a change of topic back to the person and away from religion without getting confrontational, such as, “Always remember to keep them in your heart.” However, Leorale”s “It’s a comfort” line is a good defuser, and I’ll keep that one in mind from now on, too.
Heh. I dunno if I agree with religion being one of those, but there are definitely symbiotic mind viruses we all deal with: languages. You might think language is a tool invented by humanity, and while there’s arguably been some success in shaping it, it’s definitely placed a higher priority on being irresistible to almost all baby human brains, there’s multiple competing strains, mutations spread in viral fashion, etc. Linguistics on a macro scale is basically epidemiology.
“Mind viruses”, or behaviors that mutate and get refined and naturally selected over time in an environment as though they were genes, actually have a name.
They’re called memes, the term for which was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
My brother actually got to meet him once at a tech conference. I am envious as fuck.
“How about ‘full of shit’? Is that a meme?”
-Raiden, Metal Gear Rising
/reference /notserious
Huh, I always look at tales of old gods as them going, “They are basically humans but with immense power, so we worship them so we aren’t on their shit list. You know what WE do to other humans? Imagine that with god power!”
When my friend, who was Jewish, passed last December, the rabbi who conducted the online shiva service for her told me, “May your memories of her be a blessing to you.” That works, too.
I shall have to remember ….that is a comfort. For any time people talk about heaven or hell.
Atheism is still a theism
Except it isn’t.
“Nontheist” is a term that gets used to mean “doesn’t believe in god” without pushing a specific label. We don’t know* if Joyce is atheist, agnostic, misotheist, or what, and she might not know either. Therefore, nontheist is a reasonable term.
Also, no, atheism is not a religion.
*it’s possible we do and I don’t recall, but I’m NOT doing a reread at 11 PM.
Nontheist is just a synonym of Atheist though.
No, nontheism is an overarching term for basically any “there probably aren’t any gods” philosophy, many of which are decidedly non-atheist. I was in a nontheist group in college with a couple Buddhists, as well as quite a few other philosophies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheism
If nothing else, it’s far more useful as an umbrella term than as a synonym for something we already have a word for.
Deists are not theists, while also not being atheists in the sense of believing in no god(s) of any nature. I think they have to be called nontheists. Another reason “atheist” is a very ambiguous term.
Thinking “there probably aren’t any gods” just sounds like being agnostic atheist to me. (Personally, I consider myself gnostic atheist, although the label isn’t particularly important to my identity.)
Gnostic? Dont you mean agnostic?
No, agnosticism is the belief that the existence or nonexistence of deities is unknowable; gnosticism is the belief that it is knowable. An agnostic atheist doesn’t believe in higher powers, but also believes they could be wrong; a gnostic atheist believes with certainty that there are no higher powers.
Since they highlighted it in contrast to the agnostic atheist they mentioned in the previous line, probably not.
I just googled “atheism vs nontheism” and, predictably, the first two hits asserted two opposing things.
The first site said that nontheism was basically a rebranding idea in the 1800s or so, to get away from the Christian belief that atheists also don’t believe in morality, and the Everyone idea that sometimes atheists are kinda obnoxious and pushy about it. So, nontheism was meant to be like atheism, without the baggage of being considered immoral or annoying. Hey, it was worth a shot!
The second hit was Wikipedia, which had a complicated relationship in which nontheism included various types of atheism, and is surely a fun wiki-hole waiting for anyone who desires it.
the euphemism treadmill never works that way.
Well, wikipedia is…wikipedia[citation needed]
Hey, some people [who?] expect reliable info from that site.
And honestly, it’s usually pretty good. The occasional edit war not withstanding.
Not authoritative, but hardly the garbage it’s sometimes treated as.
Yeah, while it shouldn’t be treated as the end-all-be-all source, “Wikipedia Is Garbage” is sooo…2011ish?
Wikipedia literally has citations. I don’t understand why people who talk trash about Wikipedia don’t seem to understand that you can look at a Wikipedia page and see if whatever information contained there is cited or not, and it if it is, go to the source and evaluate it based on whatever criteria you choose. Many, many pages cite peer-reviewed studies.
Additionally, pages with minimal citations often make note of that fact, and claims made within a page that don’t have a citation will often have [citation needed] after the claim in brackets.
So, yes, Wikipedia is a great source where anyone who has a basic understanding of citations can find a treasure trove of indexed and referenced information, as well as a directory to other sources of information about the same topic.
Wikipedia also been accademically evaluated by independents, and found to have a lower error rate than Britanica.[see google for the citation]
If religion is an expression of faith, then Atheism is a religion. It is a belief that cannot be proved nor disproved. It is, in essence, faith that there is no god.
I stand by this very strongly because if Atheism is not a religion then, in the U.S., Atheist have no protection under the 1st Amendment or anti-discrimination laws.
That’s not how a religion is defined.
Yeah, and as hard as religion is to define, here is one of the most general, loosest available definitions offered by Senior Anthropologist Clifford Geertz:
“A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, persuasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in people by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”
Still coming nowhere close to atheism.
And by the way, atheists actually ARE protected under the first ammendment, which protects FREE WORSHIP, including the option of not worshipping anything.
How is that nowhere near to atheism? Atheism produces (or rather is in a mutually reinforcing relationship with) moods and motivations in the people who believe in it.
For example, there is an atheist in my town who has campaigned to remove invocations by local pastors/ministers (and the occasional rabbi) from the beginning of our city council meetings. His motivation to do this is related to his atheism (although there could theoretically be theists who also support the campaign on the basis of the separation of church and state).
The motivations of atheists generally seem to be, from my personal experience and observations: wanting truth/a factual understanding of the world (a way to relate to reality based in evidence, or that makes sense to them), accuracy, not to be fooled or tricked into believing something that isn’t true…perhaps also a love of learning and knowledge. And when it overlaps with humanism there are other moods and motivations
And considering that for most of humanity and in most cultures there is some belief in a god/gods/spiritual beings or forces, atheism could certainly be viewed by those adhering to it as ‘uniquely realistic.’
Thing to point out.
The desire for more realistic / evidence-based confirmable methodologies generally comes from the fact that individuals often used to believe something strongly that they no longer believe and believe to be false now. Meaning they know their senses can be tracked they know they can be wrong and they know they can actively motivatedly try to change other people’s minds to false ideologies.
Once you realize you can make somebody else double Damned because you basically made mistakes for them, you work hard to make less mistakes.
The thing is, there is no set of symbols or motivations common to ALL atheists, in the same way that all Christians at the very least hold SOME kind of reverence to Jesus Christ, or the same way that all Muslims believe at the very least that there is nothing else in all existence that’s like God.
Trying to assert that atheism is a religion is like trying to assert that there’s some common food that’s always enjoyed by people who don’t like Mac and Cheese — just plain ridiculous.
“A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, persuasive and long-lasting moods and motivations …”
It’s not even necessarily that there aren’t symbols or motivations in common to all atheists, but that atheism or even most subgroups of atheism doesn’t have such a system of symbols. And by that definition, that’s what a religion is.
As I said earlier, there are some religions that are atheistic. Some varieties of Buddhism are the most common examples. They have such systems of symbols, they just don’t include belief in a god.
…
Citation needed.
Okay, so by my count:
OBBWG is using the word atheism to refer specifically (and only) to strong atheism….. at least that’s how I’m reading it, not sure… which is one definition in common usage… but also saying that all it takes to be a religion is an unprovable article of faith, which… no. There are religions which require no articles of faith, and there are things that might be believed only on faith that don’t constitute religions. Furthermore, atheists DO have protections under the 1st amendment, regardless of whether atheism is a religion or not. The Supreme Court, for the past generation or two, has consistently held across lots of cases that 1st amendment protections apply not only to religious beliefs, but any belief about religion, including its rejection.
Carla’s #2 fan is … saying atheism is a theism? That’s… no. Just no.
Thag is saying that atheism and nontheism are the same thing, which… works for one or two definitions of atheism in common usage…. so, fair.
…. we’re heading towards another atheism-definition fight aren’t we? Nonexistent-God-Dammit.
Look, can we at least agree that there’s a lot of different definitions for the word in common usage, and that none of them is the only objectively correct definition because objectiveness doesn’t apply here?
Reltzik, you are correct in your interpretation of what i was saying. You have made a very cogent post, so I will drop my discussion at this point. Thank you.
My definition is objectively correct, but I’m not going to tell you what it is.
Fuck, finally. Another person who agrees with my opinion.
Why should the non-religious give any emphasis to the religious’s biased and disingenuous usage of the word atheist?
They are actively rewarded for lying about what atheism is and often misrepresented as a bad faith of light as they possibly can so when a religious person tries to tell me what an atheist is, I don’t even listen.
Motivated liars trying to sell you their brand.
I definitely agree with ANYONE who says there’s a lot of different definitions of almost any word for an intangible concept, and that there is no objectively correct definition. Not just for the word ‘atheism.’
Lack of faith is also implicitly protected by the freedom of faith.
Saying the lack of something is synonymous with having it he is disingenuous and muddying the waters.
To the law to express one space and no representation by the government of any particular faith not pushing non-faith or penalizing none faith.
Especially because faith is considered by most believers to be an action the epistemological act of using Faith as an epistemological tool for confirmation not a reference to their religion as a grouping such as this Faith versus this other religious faith.
Basically colloquially faith can be considered a synonym for religion. But within usage Faith inside of religions is used to describe an epistemological process of confirming the truth of something by believing it to be true very hard without checking by any verifiable means.
So you’re really misrepresenting the issue.
“Pick a dinner”
“All these dinners are bad. I choose none of these.”
“Nothing is a food! QED”
…nah
Dawgs, I just wanted to say Joyce was trying to keep religion out of it, look at all this thread 🙆🏻♀️
I have found the way Willis goes about addressing religious D conversion and change over time to be really honest and true to many people’s lived experiences.
My own included. Really well addressed and some interesting conversations it has spurned too.
gee, we used to just use the euphemism ‘questioning’ for people in Joyce’s position. Not everyone goes straight to “Santa isn’t real so god is bullshit”, sometimes questioning ‘faith’ is really questioning if the church you grew up in actually reflects the Faith accurately. (a LOT of fundies are as guilty of bowdlerizing the bible as your most aggressive progressives, sometimes even to the point of feeding the negative stereotypes. See: Fred Phelps or Jim and Tammy Bakker.)
It’s kind of important for non-theist types to realize that ‘fundamentalist’ is an advertising term rather than a true descriptor. A lot of fundies actually don’t preach the FUNDAMENTALS of their religion so much as reinterpret them to support secular political goals.
Methinks Joyce is discovering that, and for theists out there, y’all should hope she learns to parse it without truly losing faith (something Becky appears to have done already).
as an agnostic with deist leanings, I’m not sure that there are some brands of ‘atheist’ that AREN’T a religion every bit as pernicious as the worst of the ‘fundies’.
The problem is that god is an out-of-context problem, an hypothesis that by definition can’t be tested or falsified. That doesn’t preclude the existence of ‘a’ god, but it does suggest the one we all hear about might be incorrectly defined.
So, as an atheist who doesn’t really care about my atheism and just finds that any spiritual belief is kind of superfluous and irrelevant to my everyday life, do you want to help me understand what it is about my”religion” (I’m fine with the term although it feels a bit grand for what essentially amounts to indifference) thats so pernicious? I don’t especially care what i label myself, the descriptor “atheist” was just lying around when i realized the religion i’d been raised in (catholic) didnt interest me and neither did any other.
My mother thinks I’m an atheist because I don’t go to church despite the fact I consider myself intensely religious in the Christian faith. I just don’t see how a church benefits it. I also know people who don’t believe in God but are intensely religious. They just hold a philosophy and tradition that doesn’t have a theistic center.
The comments I’ve seen from you certainly don’t give me the impression that you’re an atheist. I’m sorry to know your mother doesn’t recognise you as a “real” believer.
There definitely are some toxic brands of atheist, but that doesn’t mean your brand is that way. See the fedora-tipping “rational skeptics” from a few years back who started out debunking Christianity then dove headfirst into anti-feminism and often merged into the alt-right.
My sister’s an atheist, and she is intensely frustrated with right-wingers basically using atheism as an excuse to hate muslims, women, their parents, and humanism in general. She seems to understand Damn You Willis better than me though.
It sort of upset me that when Willis lost faith in his parents, he lost faith in God, and my sister was like, “You get that when you have an authoritarian religion, your parents are totally enmeshed with the concept of God, right?
With me, my parents weren’t all that great, but I’ve always felt that there was something above them. I’ve come to wonder if that something isn’t necessarily kind.
I wonder about Becky, though, is her faith rock-solid or only sustained by Amazi-Girl assisted luck?
@thejeff @Twitcher: oh, some atheist movements are terrible, no question.
But Daniel M Ball made a much taller claim, i quote:
“I’m not sure that there are some brands of ‘atheist’ that AREN’T a religion every bit as pernicious as the worst of the ‘fundies’.”
And I absolutely want to hear a defense of that position!
You’re reading that as “he isn’t sure there are any non-pernicious brands of atheist”? I can see that, but I read it as “he isn’t sure there aren’t some pernicious brands”.
The negatives don’t cancel out in my reading.
Oooooh
You’re probable right
I’m so disappointed
I don’t think so. “Questioning” would have applied before the timeskip I think, but she seems to have gone well beyond that now, even if she’s still keeping it from most of her friends. Some people, like Becky, drop parts of the dogma of their faith while keeping the belief. That’s not what Joyce’s journey looks like.
Only if you define ‘theism’ so broadly the term becomes nonsense.
Viktoria is right, atheism is not a religion.
Atheism bears no resemblance to religion. It’s just a lack of belief in the existence of gods. It has no doctrine, no ritual, no system of worship, no symbolism, no scripture, no mythology, no sacred objects or concepts, no faith.
Theism isn’t a religion either. It’s possible to believe in gods without being a member of any particular religion. If theism doesn’t qualify as a religion, how can atheism POSSIBLY qualify?
Also, it’s interesting to recognize that members of a religion are theists ONLY regarding the god(s) of their choosing. Towards all other gods, they’re atheists. So if atheism really were a religion, all members of a religion would actually be practicing TWO religions: the theism of belief in their god(s), and the atheism of non-belief in all other gods.
I feel like this argument is really about what the word “religion” means.
Everyone seems to pretty much agree on what atheism is. The issue is what the definition of religion is. Depending on the definition of religion, Atheism could or could not fit that definition.
To clarify, all of the arguments above on this point seem to be using different definitions of what religion means, and thus both sides are right (using their definition) and both sides are wrong (using the other side’s definition).
Of course, I have no horse in this race. As a pagan, I don’t give a crap what any of the rest of you believe so long as you don’t oppress me and my beliefs. Believe and let believe – or not believe.
The Cheese by any other name would smell as sweet.
It also, by any other name, stands just as alone.
I thought it ran away
In other words, atheists believe in nothing right?
Atheists, bow before me, for I am your god!
Well I hope you’re happy ruling from a black hole.
If physical nothing exists in this universe, that’s the only place it could POSSIBLY exist!
Hey, that’s a good one I hadn’t considered.
But even in this context it doesn’t reeally physically exist. I guess you could also argue that nothing can exist in the form of an abstract concept. After all, it wouldn’t be wrong to say an idea exists.
Though I feel the whole “what defines religion” thing to be a bit pedantic, after all it has no effect on any belief itself. Though it’d be wrong to say that hardcore atheists don’t argue for their own beliefs as much as much as those who are strongly into a religion.
My advice: Don’t sweat the small stuff!
It is true that some atheists have built up a large body of refutations against flawed arguments and claims for the existence of gods. But refuting arguments and claims doesn’t amount to doctrine or faith. It’s just a response to other people’s attempts at persuasion.
Calling atheism a religion is a false equivalence designed to level a non-level playing field. It’s often done to try and saddle atheists who made no truth claims with a false burden of proof to match the burden of proof on religious claims.
It’s really just semantics, it really doesn’t matter how you define what you believe in.
I think your stance on this issue is skewed by your belief in semantics.
So it’s TL:DR again huh?
Long story short, atheism isn’t a religion because there are no beliefs ANY of them hold in common, the same way people who don’t like baseball don’t hold any beliefs in common.
Hey, I just watched you in The Perks of Being a Wallflower!
(Sorry Patrick)
I like that point. Speaking as a theist, I agree that theism is not a religion. It’s a chararacteristic of some religions, and not a characteristic of other religions. If I, a Christian, say of a Jew or a Muslim, “We are both theists,” that doesn’t mean we belong to the same religion.
Is Ruth an Ehtheist?
Eh?
Apathist?
Booooo.
That’s like saying “bald” is a hair color. Lack of belief in gods is the opposite of belief in gods.
And “bald” is a hair color.
Let me explain a little further. To start, I’m atheist and Jewish. Atheism isn’t a religion, but it is a belief system. Theism is any belief system in which belief in a god is important. Atheism is about not believing in gods, even just 1. Without the concept of a god to reject, atheism could not exist. Ancestor worship would be a belief system that is both not believing in god(s) and not atheism. I was taken aback the first time I heard that atheism was still theism, but my cultural anthropology professor in college made it make sense.
I do admit that I was hasty with labeling Joyce as atheist, though. We don’t really know yet as she doesn’t really know yet.
I’m not sure how that follows. Ancestor worship would be a belief system in which belief in gods in not important – therefore not theism and therefore atheism. Some varieties of Buddhism are also often considered atheist.
Unless you’re saying that “not believing in gods” means beliefs about gods are important, thus theism? I don’t think that really matches definitions of theism.
The second paragraph is basically how it was explained to me.
I don’t think I have heard any person who was not religiously motivated ever call atheist or religion.
Doubt your source, because the people who use the terminology in the Way you are are almost always religious propagandists trying to denigrate atheism as just another form of the same type of thing that I am obviously you can’t have a position that is adverse to my position you just have to be acting exactly like me and cannot possibly be an opinion that is different than mine so I’m going to classify you exactly like me.
And if I tried to say that everything is sport because baseball is sport which also means that eating chips is sport which also means that any verb action is a sport you would probably see why sport all of a sudden wasn’t being defined in the best interest of sport but instead in the best interest of me the propaganda is trying to muddy the waters and make it hard to tell what sport is.
Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.”
― Penn Jillette
Only in the same capacity that trolling is an art.
I read it as Joyce wondering whether she should lie to her best friend, then realizing that under the circumstances lying is the right thing to do.
I’ve been in Joyce’s shoes there, a little- it’s part of it’s own flavor of grief, when your faith is swaying and you’re suddenly not sure about the afterlife at all. The hesitation isn’t because you’re thinking of saying something else- it’s because a part of you is suddenly faced with the reminder that you’re not sure that’s what you believe, but you desperately want it to be true because thinking it isn’t hurts.
For me this is a an aww moment as I’m watching a baby atheist learn to be supportive of people who are mourning in their way.
Huh… I didn’t know people thought deconverting was anything like being “born again”.
There’s a character in Borderlands 3 who betrayed his friends for, quote, “enough money to buy two planets and build a waterslide between them!”
I mean, I get it, that does sound nice.
… but… a waterslide between two planets… how would you even get the physics of that to work…
Doesn’t Bethesda own Borderlands or am I misremembering? Interplanetary waterslide physics would be possible … if entirely accidental. A patch to “fix” that would come along eventually, and bork up something else in the process.
Alas, no, it’s Gearbox, who I don’t think put their engines under quite so much… madness.
Yeah, they save the system abuse for their employees.
Dynamic planetary engineering utilizing extreme tidal forces.
That depends on what you count as a water “slide”…..
…Now I’m picturing two twin planets orbiting around each other. XD
Counting dwarf planets, we already have that in our own solar system: the Pluto-Charon binary.
Pumps.
I’m not sure what role stylish footwear might play in this scenario.
Grumpy Cat face: good.
*plays “Creeping Shadows” by Shiro Sagisu on Voxola PR-76*
that’s kind of you, joyce
Yeah!
Heaven would totally have waterslides!
And cheesecake!
Kat Kerr confirms the waterlsides. Only they’re lava, so lavaslides? And she says it’s jello, not cheesecake.
*disclaimer: Reltzik is not liable for any lost San points resulting from Googling Kat Kerr. We all know what the Internet’s like, so Google at your own risk.*
Telling you now, though, that if Heaven doesn’t have car-free roads or some awesome single-track, I’m not going.
It can have cheesecake if you want it to. Both kinds, even!
I don’t even? What do you mean by BOTH kinds? Did you mean about toppings? — Blueberry topping OR strawberry topping? Or did you mean both Types like NuYawk kind and Philly kind?
Maybe they mean chocolate cheesecake and default cheesecake? I personally am a fan of those cheesecake platters with all the different flavors of cheesecake.
I should buy some cheesecake.
The food kind and the not-food kind, of course.
Cheesecake served on waterslides! But only if you like that sort of thing, because Heaven.
If I’m eating the cheesecake on the waterslide and it gets stuck in my throat and I end up deposited face-down at the bottom of the pool, can I choke to double-death and also drown, or is that negated because it’s Heevin?
I wish I was that well adjusted after my bio dad died. Or that I believed he was in a better place as a comforting thought.
I hear that. It’s a hard one.
I do wish heaven was a real place. It’s nice to imagine, and people are comforted by it so I’m not gonna tell them No.
But, yeah, probably he’s just in your memories and in your DNA and in the earth and such.
I hope you have some really great memories of him.
There’s always the alternative solution of build a heaven like paradise, invent time travel go and fetch the information centric existence of people memories included moments before their death and transport fundamentally linked story/memory units to possibilistic entities in the future.
Atheist don’t believe in God’s, so why not build heaven? Doesn’t seem to be anybody else working towards actually making it happen instead of just hoping it already has.
“Atheist don’t believe in God’s,” God’s what, you forgot a word there, or stuck in a random apostrophe.
Honestly I’m severely dyslexic and proofreading is not my forte. So yes random apostrophe.
“Of course it’s happening in your head. Harry. Why should that mean that it’s not real?”
Just because heaven doesn’t exist in a brick-and-mortar form on someplace like Planet Idyllia doesn’t mean it isn’t real either.
When my dad died, I missed him, but I knew he was in a better place and, since Mom still had me, he had gone on ahead to get things ready for when Mom came to join him. She managed to muddle along, with my help, for another twenty years or so, and when I finally did lose her five years ago, I knew she was just rejoining my dad to continue their interrupted journey to forever together.
That s my belief, and there’s nothing you or anybody else would be able to do to make me let go of it.
The last statement you made “That s my belief, and there’s nothing you or anybody else would be able to do to make me let go of it.” is probably one of the most tragic sentiment I have seen somebody say in a long time.
Can you imagine any context where that type of epistemological stance is ever true?
Couldn’t you make the exact same comment about why it’s okay to hate other races? Because it makes you more comfortable and ain’t nobody going to change your belief no how.
Stop and actually understand how tragic that statement is. You’ve literally committed a death to grow on an entire spectrum of thought. Because you know there’s no way to change your belief so why bother even thinking about it.
I wouldn’t want you to let go of it. It sounds lovely. And til you join them, may their memories be a blessing to you. 🙂
This is sweet. That’s a great attitude, Becky. Although I get the vibe this chat isn’t over. Something’s…..off with Becky’s eyes in panel four.
What do you mean? Her eyes look the same to me, am I missing something?
I can’t really put my finger on it but something about her facial expression reminds me of her face when her ‘wacky Becky’ mask is straining and she’s upset.
Yeah, there’s something. The problem is that the possible interpretations are legion. Anything from “Joyce would normally be much quicker to jump on that and agree” to “Wait, why did Joyce talk about missing my mother without automatically adding the bit about heaven herself?” to “I really want to believe that, because despite everything I still think people who commit suicide automatically go to hell.”
Of course, that could be just thinking about her mother.
What you can’t tell from reading is that the beat panel goes on for 20 minutes and there are cricket sounds.
Becky definitely seems to suspect some things about Joyce and her faith.
She hasn’t said it directly yet, but I get the feeling that Becky suspects that Joyce is no longer religious.
I’m not conviced Becky is a believer still. With a this homosexuality is evil nonesence and suiciders aren’t allowed in heaven stuff. But she keep a staight faith – pun intended – for the sake of Joyce.
And Becky was, is and will always have better acting skills than Joyce – by orders of magnitude.
You sure? Cause around Dina, she says she believes.
I mean, but not all churches follow the ‘homosexuality is evil’ etc, stuff.
I grew up in the United Church of Christ, which has had member churches arguing *Since the 1970’s* that not only was homosexuality not a sin, it was also actually just a *perfectly natural* expression of human love.
That wasn’t really even a popular SECULAR opinion at the time.
(Hell, about a year before Obgerfell, the UCC managed to get same-sex marriage legalized in NC by suing the NC State government, claiming that the ban on same-sex marriage was an impingment on religious freedom. Given how UTTERLY TERRIBLE the law/ammendment was in NC, the courts sided with the UCC).
Granted, I also realize my experience with Christianity growing up, and the views of my church and pastors, are SUPER DIFFERENT from most other people’s (and from most other mainstream christianity. I feel like a goddamn space alien when I look at most mainstream christainity in the US)
Additionally, Faith can be intensely personal, and really you choose which bits make sense to you.
For example:
I’m Roman Catholic, but believe that God made us all the way we are, and will not punish us for how we are made. Therefore: Any sort of -sexual(Homo-A-,Bi-,Pan-,et cetera) is not damned for acting on that impulse. Violating OTHER rules while doing so, e.g. causing harm to a child, deliberately killing your partner pre-,mid-, or post-congress, et cetera. THAT gets you damned.
Similarly, those who commit suicide are not damned for being driven to a place where they simply cannot stand to suffer any further; They are accepted into the afterlife that brings them the most comfort, and that’s that.
One of my favorite moments of ‘sunday school’ was when my RC catechist sat down a six-year-old and in no uncertain terms told her that “Your aunt is wrong. members of the Hebrew faith are not “all going to Hell no matter what they did on Earth” for putting Jesus on the cross. It was part of Jesus’ plan, remember? Why would He punish those who are descended from those who helped him form the New Covenant?”
Mm-hmm. The Church on Earth encompasses billions of people in hundreds of countries over thousands of years. In the U.S. we get used to saying “Christianity is this, Christianity is that,” when what we mean is “The American-based Christian denominations and non-denominational churches that are effectively a congeries of tiny denominations, the ones who have political connections and money and think the rest of us Christians are going to Hell, loudly say this or that.”
Exactly.
Yes, there are some churches that aren’t fundamentalistic, but we have seen which church Joyce and Becky attended and we know Beckys father. And we have seen Joyces struggle to find a new church.
Key point is: Becky rarely shows, what’s really going through her head.
Her hangups around premarital sex make it very, VERY clear: She’s jettisoned the things she needs to, and she’s no longer part of their old congregation and ITS beliefs, but she still believes on the whole in a God and she hasn’t yet reconciled the idea that premarital hankypanky isn’t inherently sinful and wrong, which is part of why she’s having trouble with Dina – Dina’s entirely onboard with and enthusiastic for sex, but doesn’t experience sexual attraction very often and has a much healthier attitude towards the prospect than the shame and guilt Becky has. Dina’s not going to lose control in a lustful frenzy, and Becky was lowkey hoping for that scenario to absolve her of guilt.
Becky believes in evolution and a God who answers lesbian prayers, and doesn’t feel the same need for structure that Joyce did (which is why Joyce’s faith broke – once one aspect cracked, the whole structure collapsed,) but she definitely is still Christian, and she’s still in the process of assessing some of the aspects of her faith that aren’t actually working for her. It’s also ambiguous what she thinks about her mom’s death – she definitely thinks Ross is in the same place (‘tell Mom I’ll be a while,’) but that’s most likely a desire for Ross to go to heaven despite everything because she does still love him. Her discussion with Amber after Blaine’s death about how her initial feelings might change, but that doesn’t invalidate any of them also suggests her feelings about Bonnie’s death weren’t straightforward, though that may or may not have been theological about suicide but instead the messy emotions (especially since her mother DIDN’T die immediately after the attempt – she died ‘in the hospital later,’ which may have been weeks or even months after.)
I think if you believe that Becky doesn’t believe in God because of suicide is a sin (which isn’t even held by Catholics and is a misunderstanding of it being a mortal sin) and homosexuality then you miss the entirety of how Becky views religion.
Becky believes in the tenets of Christianity=Love and thinks anything that contradicts that is wrong.
Which is ironically pretty much how anarchist rabbi Jesus taught it.
I’m pretty sure every Christian believes their way is how Jesus taught it. I’m not convinced you’re right any more than the fundies are.
Though I like your approach better.
I don’t need to be “right” about Jesus but I do note that the way the thing is written, Jesus says a lot about:
* Peace
* Love
* Religious Hypocrites piss him off
* Gentiles are not damned
* Hanging around prostitutes and Samaritans is okay
* Wealth is bad and the rich are likely damned
Versus
* Nothing about lesbians and obeying authority (which crucified him anyway)
” Christ [is] saying all of these wonderful things about people living together in peace and love, and then for the next two thousand years people are putting each other to death in His name because they can’t agree on how He said it, or in what order He said it. “
— Monty Python
Yeah i feel you. I’m also starting to think the Pile of Lesbos might be more than just Becky being an annoying roommate…
You mean it’s like some kind of shrine? Like that crazy ass Arnold idol that Helga built in Hey Arnold?
Beat panel for Joyce.
For the longest time, even after I stopped believing in God, I tried desperately to convince myself that even without that, there was still an afterlife. Still a Heaven. That was the hardest thing to lose, and it’s only going to get more painful with time. Sometimes I’ve heard people I love talking about seeing people they loved again on the other side, and I’ve had to… shut off, almost, to avoid letting on.
As good as everything else is, it’s the way it captures things like that that made me fall in love with this comic.
I really appreciate this acknowledgement on how hard it can be to lose someone you love.
There are times like this in life when circumstances run us into the ground. Here we might find comfort in many things (hugs, talking to friends, music, refuge in nature, etc.) The opportunity to escape for a day, an hour, or even a few minutes – to lay our burden down and let in some comfort – can be invaluable in refilling our depleted reserves, getting us through the days.
Many of us would do whatever we could to facilitate that comfort for others.
But what if a loved one risked his health, by diving into relentless unprotected sex with strangers to drown out the pain of divorce? What if a loved one started handing over her savings to a scam-artist to commune with a dead relative? Would we be so quick to facilitate these comforts?
What about the knock-on effect on others? Without promises of compensation in an afterlife, would people be so willing to deny “earthly” justice to themselves and others who were molested and abused? Or life-saving medical treatment to themselves or their children? What about suicide attackers and blood-thirsty fundamentalists, who anticipate a glorious martyr’s reward for their devastating deeds?
As painful as the death of someone can be, it is important to recognize that afterlife fantasies are not harmless or neutral. They are multivalent: subject to a wide range of applications.
As we have seen many times in this comic, the desire for comfort can lead to destructive and deadly behaviors, and states of perpetual denial which are frequently imposed on others. Comfort is not something to automatically be cherished or facilitated. Sometimes it’s more humanitarian to challenge comfort than to enable it.
Is it not then your humanitarian duty to visit funerals and such and perform such challenges immediately before such destructive and deadly behaviors can occur?
With any hope I wouldn’t need to. Through education, free productive intellectual discussion and social development, these supernatural beliefs may very well dissolve on their own. Rates of atheism have already gone up considerably since the industrial revolution. Care to guess why?
It would sure help if people realized en mass that religious indoctrination is really just as bad as political indoctrination…..
I see. So what is you position on lying to kids about Santa Clause?
I’ll tell them what I tell everyone else — that Christmas’s traditions are totally ripped off from the Roman holiday Saturnalia, and that like the Olympics, they’ve lost pretty much ALL religious meaning. And that Christians centuries ago appropriated those traditions and moved their religious celebrations to winter in a desperate attempt to convert pagans.
And that Santa Claus was originally a folk figure, a character from a play written in the 1600s about the importance of letting ourselves enjoy the holidays, and still serves that purpose to this day.
One things for sure, Santa Claus is DEFINITELY better than a Canaanite war god who treats humans as playthings expected to dance to whatever sadistic tune he happens to hum.
So then, it’s okay for other people to lie to kids about Santa, but you’re not going to do it yourself?
Telling them that Santa’s retired and outsourced all his work to China and Amazon and who-not also works.
Also that Santa is like the modern day Emperor of Japan — a ceremonial figure that doesn’t really do anything but serve as a living memory of eras past.
I’d LIKE to believe in an afterlife. I just don’t. I feel like people act like belief is an active thing you can do but in my experience it’s pretty passive. Sure I can pose myself to entertain an idea more than I normally would out of a desire to challenge my expectations, but at a certain point if I don’t believe something I don’t believe it. I can’t believe in heaven, at least not with the current amount of information that I have. But I do WANT to believe in heaven and would be pleasantly surprised by the existence of it. And there’s no point in me taking that away from other people.
If we take it that there is no better place after we die, would that not be the perfect inspiration to make the world we know a better place? To focus not on some fantasy world beyond the grave, but the people on earth who matter more than anything?
As for the dead, worry not. For if we remember them and the great times they had, the great times we had with them in life, we have not truly lost them.
It only makes it worse cuz the real world will never be heaven regardless of the existence of heaven. Because hell is other people.
For all we know, what lay beyond death is even WORSE. Haven’t you ever read Hamlet?
The world may not be perfect, but there are people out there, including me, working every day to make it a better place.
With the combined power of our intellect, the power of science, we’re gonna help everyone who needs it!
While I have a great deal of admiration for science and the scientific method, I have some reservations about the combined power of the intellects who have gotten us into our current situation. Helping everyone who needs it sounds good, but I kind of want to make sure that before you go helping me that we first agree on what help consists of. Alfred Nobel abhorred war and worked every day to make the world a better place, and yet here we are.
And yes, If we remember the dead and the great times they had, the great times we had with them in life, then we have still truly lost them on account of the fact that they aren’t here to continue to have great times or anything else. Shadows are not objects and memories are only memories. Not valueless, but a poor substitute. To do better, we would need to go in some extreme directions.
It’s thanks to science that we live as long as we do.
It’s thanks to science that the Coronavirus ISN’T gonna kill most of humanity.
It’s thanks to science that you don’t have to have five or six kids at a time under the premise that most of them are gonna die before they’re a year old.
It’s thanks to science that you can have sex with people without worrying about accidental pregnancy.
It’s thanks to science that you can cool and heat your home, can have warm food that you can get to come to you, and have clean water at any time of day.
It’s thanks to science that Porn Lord Willis can provide this wonderful comic to us.
It’s thanks to science that we’re even talking right now.
Sure science has led to problems. But it’s also improved our lives in so many marvelous ways that we often take it for granted.
Progress is never a game of “eliminating” problems. Rather, it is a game of TRADING your current problems for problems you’re better off dealing with.
And seeing how far we’ve come since two million years ago, when we had to gather food all day long and would die of dysentery or something before we were thirty, compared to how we not only survive, but THRIVE in our modern lives, I say, NOT A BAD TRADE!
“God does not play dice with the universe”.
Wagstaff, if you keep going in this direction you’re only going to die mad.
Believe me, I’d much rather be a mad scientist than a depressed nothing. (no offense)
Also, sorry Einstein, but the loophole-free Bell Theorem Test proved you wrong about quantum events about five years ago. But thanks for your annus mirabilis papers of 1905 — those were awesome!!!
God doesn’t play dice with the universe because obviously he’s playing magic the gathering.
If that, provided he actually exists, he must be real fond of playing the “mysterious ways” card when he fucks up.
Oh, there is a better place we go to when we die:
The ground.
Singing with Paul Simon:
I’d rather be the antenna than the ground.
Yes I would, if I only could. I surely would.
_|_
=
|
A burning desire to make the world a better place can be pretty fucking dangerous too, though. Very few people twirl their mustache evilly and go ‘NYAHAHA! I SHALL MAKE THINGS WORSE!’ while comiting atrocities.
And we can see by what’s going on with the Uighurs that one does not need religion to carry out atrocities to ‘make the world/country a better place’. (What with accepting atheism being a codified tenant of the Communist Party of China).
And believing in an afterlife also doesn’t necessitate giving up on this world, either. (Indeed–while I am not sure I am christian or anything anymore, the pastor at the church I grew up in had an ENTIRE EASTER SERMON about how the POINT of the resurrection is that *this world is also important*, because in the story, Jesus is resurrected not only in spirit, but in flesh–which means that THIS world is important too, and it is our *duty* to care for this world and the people in it.)
The world would be a better place if all internet trolls had mustaches they could twirl before they decided to be menaces.
Just gotta wait for them to start twirling and then stop them from posting.
The world would certainly be a funnier place! Though i guess the world’s pretty funny already. But yes. Lacking in moustache-twirling trolls. That is uncontroversial
Well of course the burning desire to make the world a better place can be dangerous — particularly when you don’t pay attention to the FACTS about what you are doing. That’d where critical thinking and science come in.
I mean, the Christian Colonists wanted to make the world a better place too, and used their ideology as an excuse to convert and kill people under the premise that they were “saving souls”.
So, what does the current scholarship on, i guess, science communication and pedagogy suggest is the best approach towards changing someone’s mind about an issue? Is that an area you’ve explored?
I’ve been looking into that for years now.
But one things for sure, it’s less about telling people what to think and more about giving people the tools they need to think for themselves.
Also this article by Skeptical Scientist on the “backfire effect” is an excellent starting point. It’s made with the intent of fighting climate change denial, but it should work for other fallacious beliefs too.
Oh interesting, thanks!
I think my own tendency is to agree with whoever I think is the coolest person in the room, but I guess that’s anecdotal evidence
While an afterlife is very unlikely, there is an above zero chance that some form of consciousness exists after death. If it exists, it is almost certainly not “heaven” or a reward/punishment. Most likely it is just another form of existence that we are unable to detect. But something could be there. We don’t know.
If there is something, the chance that we’ve figured it out and it happens to be the most popular one in our country of the many different versions people have come up with over the millennia seems pretty damn low. It would almost be a miracle.
Yeah, that said, it’s better not to live for death, but to live for life.
Would like to borrow Wagstaff’s Victrola (with permission, of course) to play Grass Roots “Live for the Day”.
Gladly!!!
*activates the code-protected safety-switch before handing over recently upgraded Voxola PR-76*
@Rassilon – I hear that. There’s no easy answer, really.
Some nice atheist ideas
– we live on through the memories of the living
– sure heaven probably doesn’t exist, but it might be a comforting idea for you, and it’s OK to let yourself imagine it when you’re sad.
– a life is like the wave in an ocean, living for a while as a distinct individual, and then receding, going back to just be part of the ocean again. Someday all the ocean waves join each other this way. Maybe somehow we do, too.
If none of those help, sorry about that.
I mainly just want to say that I hear you.
Einstein had the comforting thought that since the universe is block time, there’s always going to be our loved ones in the past because that continues to exist perpetually. On my end, I’m of the mind that since the universe is a simulation, they’ve just gone on to be wait for respawn in the Great Server.
I personally find it easier to believe in reincarnation. Even if i were christian, i don’t think I’d be able to grasp the concept of heaven because, like The Good Place pointed out, an eternity of anything would be hell. I find comfort in the idea that we’re on loops of life, and maybe we can even meet the same people close to us in this life again. It’s pure faith and i know that, but i find it the easiest answer to lean back on
I always felt the Good Place was born of people who didn’t take satisfaction in their lives.
Sometimes I feel like I’m too harsh on Becky and then I am reminded she just throws her clothes on the floor in her shared communal space.
Should I toss you a leg of mutton so you can tear it open with your powerful teeth and claws, you animal?
Exactly, shared space. Shared.
So the Pile of Lesbos is working as intended?
Becky is the Oscar to Joyce’s Felix.
The main reason I went for single rooms my last two years of college was because I got tired of having roommates who were slobs and just left clothes and empty pop bottles and other random stuff all over the floor in the rooms we shared. So yeah, seeing Becky just throw her clothes on the floor like this kinda bugs me.
With the context of this strip I’m starting to think it might be a depression thing
Depression masquerading as wacky?
“Nobody likes a Debbie Downer.”
and there are no lines
and the water at the bottom isn’t too cold
and nobody has motion sickness or has to pee
and you’re not going so fast that water shoots up your nose
and there are none of those brain-eating amoebas
Also you can have designs that don’t work in reality due to pesky things like physics or the risk of death.
Are you telling me brain-eating amoebas don’t go to heaven?
Bowling averages are way up.
Mini-golf scores are way down.
And we have more excellent water slides than any other planet we communicate with.
They had such hope for us.
A chicken in every pot, a turkey in every frame, and a debate hall where you’re always right.
seeing this [pile of dirty clothes]…
It’s the Pile of Lesbos.
You see, it’s like “Isle of Lesbos”.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/land/
It’s like she’s begging cockroaches to move in.
I thought food attracted them, not clothing.
I doubt that Rebecca literally (used properly, pedants!) never gets crumbs on herself when she eats.
It’s like the female response to Tesla’s Tower of Power, only it really works cause it’s really a battery
Becky, you are a slob. I’m not the neatest person ever but the drawing of this room irritates something deep inside me.
Still cleaner than my room.
Good job, Joyce. Just the right touch.
That was sweet. It’s a relief seeing someone being nice without the other person immediately thinking it’s a play for power. Hope Sal can also get to this point someday.
Water slides? BAH! Call me when Heaven has a decent arcade.
Nah, that’s not the Christian Heaven, that’s the Greek pastoral paradise. Pastoral utopias have the best arcades, apparently.
…. wait, they DON’T? … THEN WHY THE HELL DID THEY NAME IT THAT?
As is well known, pastoral paradises have only pastures of pastors.
I’d assume Greek paradise would have plenty of arcades. Not the pastoral part, I guess
That’s not gonna happen in the afterlife. That’s gonna happen on earth, with the help of passionate people who are working to preserve the shear irreplaceable awesomeness of arcades, even in the absence of SEGA’s Arcade division.
I suddenly realized that Becky’s mom was probably more kind and loving to Joyce than her biological mother ever was… This makes it all sadder, but I love how Becky seems to have processed her loss and how Joyce is able to say nothing that could hurt her beliefs ♡.
Seems fair to me. After all, Hank was probably much nicer to Becky than her father ever was. Perfectly resasonable exchange.
Can we have a fanon AU in which Ross and Carol died while Becky and Joyce were too young to remember, Hank and Bonnie remarried (to each other), and Joyce and Becky were raised as sisters?
But… if that was a perfectly reasonable exchange why I’m feeling so sad for them?
Well right now because they lost one of the good parents
I don’t think so.
Not that Bonnie likely wasn’t kind and loving to Joyce, but that Carol was as well. That’s part of why this is all so hard on Joyce. Carol was kind and loving because Joyce was the good girl who didn’t question. Joyce never developed ways to handle being in conflict with either of her parents over anything important, so when she did in college it all blew up.
Unlike Becky, who built her emotional armor to deal with Ross.
Good to just come right out and say it like this, even if obviously, Joyce has her own issues she’s dealing with. It’s good she understands there’s a time and place to debate that, though I do hope she can take a chance on Becky understanding that someday and let her in on this.
Debate what exactly?
Joyce doesn’t think Becky’s mom is in Heaven.
–Not like that Becky’s mom wouldn’t deserve to be in heaven, just that heaven isn’t a real place so nobody is in it. But unlike heaven, friendship and feelings n’stuff are real, so, waterslides it is.
Why would that…ever be debated though? I don’t really see a reason it needs to be debated at all. Maybe she can explain her stance if she feels like it’s necessary. But a debate of ideas? Not necessary. People can hold different beliefs without trying to sway others.
DailyBrad means Joyce isn’t going to argue this right now because it’d mean telling Becky that she doesn’t think Becky’s mom is in Heaven and there’s actually no Heaven at all.
Not a debate of ideas, a debate of saying the worst possible thing right now.
Again though, why argue this? Why do you keep using terms like “debate” or “argue”. If she’s just enlightening her about her personal beliefs, that’s fine. But you if someone says to you “oh this guy died, but I’m sure he’s in heaven” you don’t need to say “actually I don’t believe in heaven so I disagree.”. You can just…not say that at all. Now if someone says “Do you think they’re in heaven you can say “oh, actually I don’t really believe in the afterlife”. But it’s not something that like…needs to just come up in a situation like this…at all really?
Oh, well you see, some believe that the desire for comfort can lead to destructive and deadly behaviors. And so you must be challenged. To help you for your own good, you know.
I would tell them that there’s really no good way of saying goodbye. There never will be. What really matters is the time you spent with your loved one, not how you left it.
Even without any concept of a soul, the person does not truly die with the body. The person cannot be brought back through a sample of their DNA. The person is the collection of the experiences that shaped them, the impact they left on others, the memories they left us with.
I would tell then that as long as you remember the wonderful experiences you had with your loved one, the impact they had on your life, they haven’t truly left you. Only their body.
So, what if there were a way of making those memories active rather than passive. Of embodying those memories. Would that be worth doing?
I think inanimate artifacts of someone who’s passed can embody memories. Even small mementos can spark conversation, and inheriting a vehicle or home from a deceased loved one can feel like they’re still there for you in a way. (Or they can still provide a little in a literal sense, if they were well off enough to leave an investment account behind in a trust and set up regular disbursements to its beneficiaries.)
Let’s say you could dump someone’s entire personality and life experiences into a Soong-type android body (like Data), leaving you with a perfect but artificial clone of the original person. (Let’s leave the moral and legal ramifications to one side for now.) In order to make this copy, you would have to scan the person’s brain while they’re alive. Between the brain scan and death of the original human, are there two of “them” in existence? How long does the clone ‘live’? If you’re not ‘moving’ the original consciousness to a new body, is it really the same person? Who decides if the person gets ‘reincarnated’ as an android, and for how long?
Personally, with today’s technology I think closure is more important for the survivors in the long term. Leaving a pile of notes, a library of interview-style videos, or a freezer full of home-cooked meals behind just delays the inevitable mourning in my opinion. Eventually the ‘fresh’ material runs out and you’ll be left with that “that’s it?” feeling you get at the end of parties and holidays, except there won’t be more next year. Artifacts don’t change, and memories are frozen in time.
@Clif: Isn’t is great when someone jumps in with an example of what you’re talking about?
@Wagstaff: And you’d tell them this without prompting while they’re dealing with their grief? You’d provoke that debate Yotomoe’s talking about?
I mean sure, if it comes up abstractly or they ask about how you as an atheist deal with loss that’s fine, but using their grief as a chance to evangelize your own beliefs isn’t a good look.
Like right here, if you were in Joyce’s place would you launch into “heaven isn’t real, but we still have our memories”?
Pretty sure Clif was deliberately side-eyeing Wagstaff.
I never said I’d tell them without prompt!
Why are people going out of their way to attack a straw man?
Because that was the context you responded to.
Of course there are other reasons Joyce doesn’t want to bring that up. I’m sure she respects Becky’s need to believe that about her mom, but she also doesn’t want Becky to know that she’s stopped believing.
Yep. She wants to avoid that conversation as long as possible (preferably, forever) and ESPECIALLY does not want to discuss this right now.
This is what I am referring to, yes. Joyce is (currently? permanently?) not a believer. She doesn’t want to get into that with Becky since Becky is a devout Christian, is mourning, and the last time they got into it about religion was the nasty fight at Becky’s birthday party, when Joyce angered her by being all “do whatever” about Becky’s concerns about premarital sex.
For one day, one night, it doesn’t matter what you, personally believe. If believing for even a moment is enough to make somebody you care about happy than maybe it’s worth it.
Also Joe’s advice is on point, again.
Sorry, this wasn’t meant to be posted here
No apologies needed because you’re right.
Amen.
Got to admit there was a time when I left my clothes on the floor, right up until the time a large spider came scuttling out and I am not keen on spiders at all
A spider large enough to wear my clothes would certainly give me pause.
I’m in NZ where we’re not known for large spiders but this one had been hitting the weights
Is New Zealand also known for insanely poisonous spiders, or is that just Australia’s thing?
Thats Australia.
We do have the Katipo (cousin to the Red Back and Black Widow) but you’d be doing very well to come across one and the Red Back has made its way from Australia but again they’re not all that common.
The Avondale spider gets quite large but thats also an introduced Huntsman spider from Australia…
How often do you see those around or in your home?
I’ve seen one Red Back in the outdoors, never seen a Katipo and the Avondale spider is in the North Island (I live in the South Island) so never come across one of them either
You want me ruin your day?
Becky’s room is still WAY better than mine cuz there’s not empty cans, cups and other trash around.
Clean your room, young man.
Pff. No wonder you draw such filth.
Luann, is that you?
Grab a big trash bag, fill it up with obvious garbage, and remove it from your space. Guarantee you’ll feel better after that.
If you need a little more motivation, put A&E’s Hoarders on. Pick out a particularly grimy episode where the house is a lasagna of filthy squalor, not just piles of junk they bought from QVC and never opened.
At least arrange those cans and such so they look neat.
Or better yet, turn them into art!
Hey, they’re your empty cans, cups and other trash. Ruins not my day and I wish you joy in them.
im gonna build a tower out of my coke cans
Doing the Devil’s advocate, I’m a functional adult, and still don’t have time to clean my room, for a minimal of 2 weeks.
Working hard mess with your life. Please, be rich, do not work 9/6.
Is that normal, are you doing alright? I only get stuff really messy when I’m depressed. Not judging, just checking.
“My room is only messy when I’m depressed”
“But your room is always messy”
<:)
Considering the logical conclusion if those two premises hold true, you have my greatest sympathy, and hope you feel better 🙂
Which brings up the quetion of:
How is Toedad doin’ down there with Blaine?
QUESTION
Reminds me of my favorite American Dad Joke.
“My mom says my dad would be disappointed looking down at me from heaven but I like to think he’s disappointed looking up at me from hell.”
Foes anyone else feel bad for Joyce? Sometimes it sucks to not believe anymore and to have to humor people.
That does suck. But at the moment, it looks like Joyce is mainly grateful for the opportunity to comfort her friend.
Yeah, I think she’ll mostly reminisce about happy memories of Bonnie’s life. Becky’s the one who brought up what she believes happens after. It’s ultimately harmless, so if that’s a comfort for her Joyce should just roll with it. She knows exactly what not to say right now.
If Becky was expressing signs suicidal ideation in order to be reunited with her, that would be cause for alarm and interjection. However, the last thing we saw her say to Toedead was “tell mom I’m going to be a while”, so unless she had a drastic change in mindset over the break I think she intends on sticking around.
There’s no reason for Joyce to burst her bubble except for plot drama. That would be a seriously awful move, and may possibly end their friendship (or at least damage it worse than Sal and Marcie’s after the DeSanto rally fight.)
Eh, that’s such a normal part of my life since highschool/middle school (yeah I stopped believing early) so it feels pretty normal to me.
Seeing the shear damage afterlife fantasies can do, I’m finding it harder and harder to do that with a clear conscience.
I mean, would people be so willing to deny themselves and their children life-saving medical treatment without the promise of Heaven? Without promises of compensation in an afterlife, would people be so willing to deny justice to victims of molestation and abuse?
Probably. I find that, generally speaking, people can manage to justify whatever they want to do in some manner or the other.
There is an absence of evidence about what, if anything, follows the experience of life. If Becky prefers to believe her mother is in a heavenly water park, who is to say that you are right and she is wrong? And that being the case, why should you take it upon yourself to try and convince her that she is wrong. Particularly when you have no evidence.
I have no evidence that her mother didn’t decide to do a three-way with Robin Williams and Stephen Hillenburg once she gor to this supposed afterlife.
I have no evidence that there aren’t invisible perverted telepathic gerbils that make us hallucinate so we don’t notice it when they **** off on our bodies when we sleep.
Our you gonna believe those claims too?
No, but I’m not going to tell people who gain comfort from those beliefs that they are wrong. Particularly when they might not be.
Though invisible perverted telepathic gerbils might explain a lot.
There are ways to gain comfort without distortions of reality.
To justify fallacious beliefs as a means of comforting people in tough times requires showing that blocking out huge amounts of reality that conflict with such beliefs is necessary to get the job done.
I’m just deeply concerned about those who attempt to bargain with reality in such ways. If there’s one thing that the pandemic has taught us, it is this — you can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
Look, if it’s any consolation, it is actually possible to visit your loved ones in your dreams. That’s where I visit mine.
But if you want to wait until death for such an impossible promise, I guess I can’t stop you…..
I definitely don’t mean that in a bad way towards you Clif!
I just want people to live better lives; to help society by empowering people with information.
Are you trying to compare the belief in heaven/afterlife to believing that magical gerbils sexually assault you in your sleep? Because that is fucking stupid.
My brother passed away last year from covid. He was one of the best people I knew, and I choose to believe that he went somewhere good, and is probably arguing DnD rules with a friend of ours that passed away from cancer years back. Are you saying that I am wrong for taking some small amount of comfort in that belief?
Boy, if you think that can do damage, wait until you see the damage that can be done by people convinced they’re making the world a better place…
I follow Weatherwax on where sin and evil starts.
And thinking of people as ‘things that need to be saved from themselves’, definitely falls into that category.
”And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’
‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’
‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
–Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.
Except of course it is more complicated, because sometimes people do need to be saved from themselves. Consider Ruth being taken to the hospital for her depression as an extreme example.
The question is where to draw the line. And even that isn’t binary, since interventions can range from those extremes to just talking to people and trying to convince them they’re in a bad place.
The trouble comes when people try to bring superstition into their attempts to “help” people.
Like the concept of “sin”. “Sin” has no accurate, secular moral equivalent. “Sin” is a nebulous category that can encompass virtually ANY behavior or thought under the grounds that it represents a transgression against some god(s) or supernatural force, without having to offer ANY evidence of harm.
How can you be sure that in some form or other, beliefs in the afterlife dont do more good (in the form of peace of mind maybe) than damage?
Believing in something that can never be verified requires ignoring epistemology, the way human knowledge works and the uncertainty always present in it.
We can never have peace of mind regarding death, because it’s impossible to know what happens after we die.
What incentive would we have to make the world we KNOW and live in a better place through our actions if we pretend we are certain that a better place already exists in death, the ultimate UNKNOWN?
Humans live hoping to conquer their anxieties and fear, and attain peace of mind. Seeking fame, controlling others, and acquiring wealth are all done to achieve peace of mind [albeit unwisely]. Marriage and friendship are also pursued as means of attaining peace of mind. When humans wish to help others, or do something for love or justice… it’s all to attain peace of mind. To achieve peace of mind is the goal of all humanity.
So, what’s wrong with improving the world we know instead of merely HOPING for a better world in that which can never be known?
Seeing how much we have already improved our world with the combined power of human intelligence, I think this is the most effective means by which to attain peace of mind.
“We can never have peace of mind regarding death, because it’s impossible to know what happens after we die.”
I assume you’re speaking for yourself, in this bolded part. Speaking also for myself, I have to strongly disagree with you. I’ve got a very firm belief that one of these days, possibly (hopefully?) soon, I’m going to simply stop being alive, and then nothing is going to follow after that for my consciousness. It’s an eventually, at least in my own mind, and that perceived fact just doesn’t cause me any distress, at least not in the sense of “And then what?”, if you follow me. What does bother me is the idea that someone close to me might (hopefully?) be sad about it when it happens, and I won’t be able to make it better for them.
If we KNOW there’s a world that’s definitely better than this one in death, why do we not just kill ourselves now to get to it?
If we KNOW there’s some form of justice intrinsic to this universe that we KNOW will eventually punish and reward people in the most appropriate way possible, why do we bother setting up justice systems on earth that are redundant at best and unjust at the worse?
Shut the fuck up, Wag.
Like seriously no. Enough. You do not fucking talk like that to people. You do not say even in satire or jest in a conversation like this “well if Heaven’s real kill yourself and get there faster.” Fuck that.
I am definitely NOT suggesting people to kill themselves, precisely BECAUSE whatever lay beyond death could very well be WORSE than the terrors of this earth.
I can’t force people to listen to me, or stop making a straw man out of me while completely missing the point, or take a step back to examine ideas with a cold, rational eye.
But I guess I tried… perhaps you can help me get my point across in a manner more digestible? Because at least to you, apparently I suck at that.
No one is making a strawman out of you, I am telling you not to respond to a post by someone expressing a degree of ideation regarding their morality and finding some comfort in the afterlife with “if heaven is real then why doesn’t every just kill themselves.”
Like, dude, if you cannot express yourself without saying that shit, then don’t say anything until you’re better at conveying your actual intent.
I may have yet to brush up on the “backfire effect” cataloged on Skeptical Scientist, and in hindsight I am ashamed for posting something of this strength before said review, and for subsequently failing to predict just how it would be perceived.
But this mistake will not be in vein, if I can take it upon myself to learn from it moving forward.
After all, we gave up and quit every time we made a mistake, our species would never achieve anything. As Jhon once said, this is a good place to practice, at least to some extent.
” It’s called PRACTICE for a reason! “
— Elvis Presley
Anyway, thank you for giving me MUCH needed feedback. I cannot get better at what I do unless I see the places that need improvement.
But just for the record, what do you think about ONLY the part I wrote about the justice system?
Hey quick question:
Are you actually a psychologist or licensed therapist
or do you just think you know the best way to help people.
I’m really close friends with an aspiring psychology major in graduate school, and I also talk a lot with his grandfather, who’s a licensed psychotherapist. In addition, I’ve dedicated A LOT of time to learning critical thinking (especially considering my traumatic background that I’m not going to elaborate on here because it’s actually kind of hard for me; you know about how diabetics have to learn lots about the body to take care of themselves? It’s kinda like that.), and at this point I’m a moderately-seasoned self-taught philosopher in and out of the classroom, even helping my professor design better critical-thinking tests at one point. Philosophy and psychology are best thought of as two sides of the same coin — one explores the many ways of thinking and their virtues, and the other explores how people actually tend to think on the day to day.
So yeah, I’ll just leave it at that, and you can decide for yourself whether or not you’d want to use the information I provide here. If you have any questions regarding what I write, I’d LOVE to answer them, and, as is only good practice with any scientist or scholar, I am ALWAYS open to critical feedback!
I missed your mom for a nickel
Keep practicing. Eventually you will improve.
He lies. it was a dime.
Oh yeah. One of the most alienating experiences of my life was being at my grandma’s funeral and hearing all her church friends say, comfortingly, “We’ll see her again in heaven eventually.” I tried to take vicarious comfort in knowing that the sentiment was meaningful and helpful to my grandpa, at least.
Same, though honestly I kinda hope they’re right and I’m wrong.
At my dad’s funeral, the minister was an old friend of his, who he’d had long arguments about religion with. He said that he was sure dad was in heaven, and was denying it. I’m still not sure how I feel about that.
“Do you think Grundy’s soul is waiting for him?”
“Grundy, I don’t believe. ….. Yes. It’s waiting for you.”
“Then Grundy gets his reward.”
As a member of the DMC (dead mom club) this one hits hard in just the right way
Is Becky normally so messy, or is she just that committed to the ‘slob roommate’ schtick?
At a guess, partly that committed, but also partly that she was never allowed to be messy at all.
and she’s like “good heavens Becky, CLEAN UP YOUR ROOM!”
Crisis averted… NEW CRISIS!
Crisis on Infinite Dorms
Being an atheist, it was (and still is) hard to deal with my mom’s passing two years ago, but I try to remember the good things, and always tell myself if there’s even the slightest possibility of a heaven, she’s definitely there. It doesn’t always help, but it’s something.
It’s interesting because I’ve always been an atheist, so I don’t have any real connection to heaven as a comfort. My mom’s still alive, so maybe that’ll come into my thinking when she dies, but I do wonder if there’s a difference between atheists who were raised in a church and those raised atheist in terms of wanting to be able to use heaven as a comfort.
I’m probably overanalyzing this because mom is old and dealing with long term illness, so it’s likely it’ll be more directly relevant within a few years.
Sorry to hear bout your mum. 8(
Thanks, it’s stressful, but part of growing old. She’s still doing well, so it’s definitely a future problem. Just not as far in the future as we might want.
I’m sorry to hear about your mom. I did grow up in the church but became Atheist later. It was scary and depressing to realize that fact, but I did get over it. My mom’s passing was the first death of someone close to me since I became an Atheist. It’s not easy, but I’ve slowly recovered over the past couple of years. You never truly get over it though.
This is a really interesting comic because while we know Joyce is wrestling with her faith/non-faith now, Becky still believes. I’ve always thought religion is what you need out of it and Becky appears to be the person who believes the same, given what is taught through Christianity (either by the book or by the people who believe in the book) regarding same sex relationships and suicide.
Which makes me suddenly think about them talking about Becky’s mum. Heaven is brought up because they obviously think that, or at least Becky does, but I wonder what this means for Joyce.
Especially since as stated before, suicide can be seen as a sin/murder and thus that person may end up somewhere else, depending on what you believe.
I personally do not, as my father committed suicide and I like to believe that whatever power out there that might have any say in anything would understand that mental illness is not something to punish, but others may believe differently.
I don’t think this is going to go this route with Bekcy and Joyce at the moment but it was something that struck me at the time of reading this. It’d be an interesting, albeit utterly sad, topic to hit with this comic that likes making you think about different points of view.
To be fair, the suicide and same sex relations things are not remotely compatible with the idea that Christianity is supposed to be a religion of love and acceptance. Becky believes in the latter. Joyce was raised that the heart of the faith is authority.
Yeah I think this is a really succinct and direct summary of the difference between Becky and Joyce.
Becky believes in God, she has faith, and because she has faith she was able to both overcome the failures of her upbringing and cut the detritus out. Oh sure the Earth is older than 6000 years and humans didn’t hunt dinosaurs, but God loves her and that’s what matters, and Toedad failed to be what God wanted of him.
Joyce believed that what she was told was right and therefore could not be questioned. The Firmament has to be exactly as factual as Dorothy going to Hell for being an atheist and dinosaurs breathing fire and everyone who told her that these facts were correct were also correct and anyone who contradicted this was a sinner who was trying to lead her astray.
Joyce couldn’t compromise her faith in the face of being let down by the authority figures in her life because she never had faith in God to begin with, she had faith in authority.
I think that’s actually confirmed as canon by Boomer saying that Joyce never believed but only now accepts she doesn’t have to.
No authority is beyond criticism: no teacher, no preacher, no priest, no politician, no prophet, no parent.
But this is what authoritarianism and theism ultimately come down to: the simultaneous longing for, and fear of, the mystical, magical, unquestionable parent. In other words, it is the need to have someone or something to treat as the ultimate source of guidance, thereby eliminating the need to think for yourself.
In Becky’s case, if she changes her God in face of an altered moral landscape, and that God guides/restrains her, than she’s really just guiding herself. So what’s the point of a God? Why not just cut out the middle man and just acknowledge that you can be confident in your own judgment?
Because people aren’t rational.
I think that’s a really patronizing way of viewing Becky, Wagstaff. Mind you, Christianity was started as a reactionary fight against authority and fundamentalism. Both against Roman fascism and fundamentalist collaborators with them.
Your view is essentially, “religion is only chains” when many people view them as breaking them.
And it comes from your own bias.
By all means, this phenomena is by no means exclusive to religion. Marxist communism was seen as breaking tyrannical chains too, and look what came of that.
My stance is against the chains of ideological bias of ALL kinds, not just religious.
I use religious examples often around here just because this comic is full of examples. In the past, I have shown that I have the same reservations against pseudo-scientific ideologies that were not necessarily religious, as well as abusive institutional ideologies held by Linda and other characters.
Not that I think ill of you for this, but your last comment basically tried to draw a false equivalence between objecting to bias and being biased.
“ Morality is not distinctively Christian, any more than it is Mohammedan. Morality is human, it belongs to no ism, and does not depend for a foundation upon the supernatural, or upon any book, or upon any creed.
Morality itself is a foundation. ”
– Robert G. Ingersol
What most people think of as Christianity has more to do with the coalition of scripture by Constantine than anything else.
And he did it to combine several competing cults and competing scriptural rhetorics from Jewish itinerant preachers of the day, to then draw the priest class out of the pagan religions forming a priest class around a new centralized State religion.
Constantine practice paganism to his dying day and never converted.
He just made everybody else convert and took all the money and resources from the pagans into his own coffers. Well forming the largest priest class and the formalization of a combined New testament and Bible.
He literally formed the function of the scripture and it was for control and wealth.
Not really. There’s little evidence for Constantine having that great an effect on Christianity, whether he actually converted himself or not. I know there’s some speculation that he was still a secret pagan, but I’m not aware of any solid evidence.
Christianity was already widespread and growing by his time. He certainly helped, but there’s little evidence he shaped it that much.
The canon wasn’t formally established until well after his time. The Nicene Creed was created at a Council he hosted, but debates over which books were official continued for at least another 50 years.
There are however various theories floating around atheist communities about how Rome really created Christianity. None of them are taken serious by scholars.
Provided that what you stated is true, my World History Textbook is even worse than I thought in some areas. You recommend any replacements?
I dunno, dude, I don’t have religious faith.
Ask somebody who does, and also tone it down a notch. You come off too strong.
Maybe next time I write down what I notice, I’ll say this, and I’ll say it now.
I don’t blame people for having irrational and paradoxical cognitions, at least when it doesn’t infringe upon the basic rights and freedoms of others.
The kind of feedback I get for criticizing fallacious thinking like this is more or less the feedback given to medical doctors who are accused of “fat shaming”.
But like those doctors, I’m in no way implying that their physical, mental or intellectual situation is entirely their fault or something to be ashamed of. As a scientist, it’s my duty to share knowledge with people so that they can use it to live longer, healthier, more fulfilling lives. Just as with medicine, what I do is not in the interest of playing the blame-game, but in helping people, healing society with the best evidence available.
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.
” Freedom can only come from a mind made free through self-discipline. It is from this that the liberal arts get their name. ”
— J.S. Mill
Kind of like, except that you’re not a doctor and we didn’t come here to consult you. You’re more like some random stranger on the street telling people they’re fat and giving trite advice on how to eat less. Don’t do that.
It’s just as obnoxious as Christians trying to convert atheists and it works just about as well. Their motives are pure too. They’re just trying to save us.
We can talk about this. Argue, debate, but taking this “It’s my duty to try to save you all” approach is obnoxious as hell. Proselytizing sucks. I’m saying this as an atheist.
I didn’t say I was a doctor. And also, you don’t have to read it like you’re uncritically accepting it. In fact, I do welcome criticism, especially academic-grade criticism, of what I write, for it is only good practice that scientists and scholars alike double check each other’s work.
Besides my purpose as a scientist (which I am), I just don’t feel right keeping people from information that could help them. It’s not like I’m forcing them to take my help (unlike the fundamentalists who shun or even kill people for having the correct opinions).
I have firsthand experience with the damage religion can do, and although I’m not gonna open that can of worms right now due to lack of necessity, it’s not that enjoyable when people put me down when I try to share with them what could happen as a result of fallacious thinking, as a cautionary tale.
And also, comparing what I and other atheists do to evangelism is really just a false equivalence between atheism and religion, between attempts to indoctrinate and attempts to inform, between objection to rendering ideas untouchable and the very act itself. Not that I think any ill of you for doing so; it’s a very common mistake.
You didn’t say you were a doctor, but that was your role in the analogy. A doctor has the job of helping their patients get healthy, so discussing their weight in that context is reasonable. A doctor just randomly telling overweight people who aren’t their patients they need to eat less is fat shaming. They don’t have the relationship with those people that makes it appropriate.
Being a scientist gives you no special job of enlightening people who don’t ask for your help. It’s not your job.
And yeah, it’s basically the same thing as evangelism, sorry. I know you think you’re right and they’re wrong, (and I agree with you), but they think the same thing. The basic activity is the same. You’re badgering uninterested people, trying to sell them on your truth.
It’s not that you have to keep people from information, but you don’t have to push it on them. Not least because that rarely works. It just annoys people most of the time. It’s this kind of thing that gives a certain kind of atheist a bad name – even among non-religious and otherwise sympathetic people.
Writing something on a forum like this that people are free to skip over if they’re not interested is not on the same level as people who do it in a public place.
It’s like a poster on a public bulletin about climate change or vaccines. Doctors put posters like that for health websites all the time, that are available to anyone who WANTS to spend the time to read them, regardless of whether or not these people are their patients.
If people don’t want my help, they could easily refuse to read the rest of the paragraph they set their eyes on, the same way I could easily move to another strip if I ever find one that I find particularly cringe-worthy when I hit the Randomizer button.
I only ever used the doctor analogy because at the time I couldn’t think of any other analogy that demonstrated the difference between putting information out there that people are free to take or leave and playing the blame-game. At least I’m willing to admit that not coming up with a better one is my fault.
And also, religious evangelism and what people who put info out there about fallacious thinking and climate change is DIFFERENT. One puts info out there that people can take or leave as they choose and evaluate on their own, the other pressures you into accepting something UNCRITICALLY. Also, it’s not really fair that “officially recognized” religions get tax exemption.
That’s another thing. “Religious” and “faithful” are only ever derogatory when used to describe atheists and agnostics that want to provide information about critical thinking and otherwise.
Have you ever heard atheists try to belittle religious people by calling them “scientific” and “skeptical”? The one-sidedness here is QUITE revealing.
All these false equivalences are done to level a non-level playing field, adding a bogus burden of proof to atheists and agnostics who make no truth claims to match the ACTUAL burden of proof to religions who’s entire business is getting people to accept truth claims UNCRITICALLY.
I’m also not sure you understand fat shaming.
Do you think it counts as fat shaming when doctors warn of the dangers of getting little exercise and improper diet, without at all implying that it’s patients’ fault for being forced into those habits by their environment or otherwise?
I know her jacket is still in the process of falling, but I’d like to think that it stopped there, arms standing up in defiance of gravitational physics.
Either she starched it way too much or hasn’t washed it in way too long.
Way better than my first read. I was wondering why two large dildos appeared in panel two.
Slowly as I looked closer I realized, jacket in motion, not a slipshine Panel out of nowhere.
I had a little trouble parsing that t-shirt because it’s dark and Becky is very pale.
It took me a couple of years to learn how to be just be there to people and not shove my unasked believes into suffering people.
Like Joyce did here.
Are you reading the same four panels as the rest of us because I’m having trouble finding any evidence in them of Joyce shoving any unasked beliefs into anyone. She’s literally just tells Becky she misses her mom, and then (reluctantly) AGREES with what Becky says next.
Use the “first” and “latest” buttons to compare this comic to the first Joyce and Becky comic for Added Poignancy(TM).
If the final strip of the series is Becky telling Joyce to take one last conclusive poop, David Willis will have cleared the longest build-up to a joke in webcomic history, a record previously held by Brian Clevinger’s 8-bit Theater.
I wonder how many non-believing posters are confused by Becky. I think a lot of them have the view that the issues of dogma are more important and central than the central philosophy. Probably because plenty of scumbags like Toedad hold them that way.
I think Becky is a good example of the kind of people that the Biblical Jesus would approve of. A lot of his ministry was about “ignore what the specific law is about and focus on what God means: Goodness.”
Amusingly, I knew a teacher who HATED this and felt Jesus was a perfect example of how religion cheated by disregarding elements.
I’m a non-believer but it makes sense to me that people are comforted by the idea of heaven where they will meet their loved ones again, and the idea of a benevolent God looking out for them. That seems to be most Christians I meet these days. Believing every last word of the Bible is an exception.
I think part of that is due to how fundamentally WEIRD Biblical literalism is if you ever actually pause to read it. Because a lot of Jesus’ ministry is about how Biblical literalism is wrong. Fundamentalism requires some serious Orwellian doublethink.
Wow, that’s great.
I’ll admit, like 95% of the religion-adjacent content in this comic tends to fly right over my head, due to an absolutely and complete lack of any spirituality or faith on my end. Like, in a narrative sense I understand Joyce and Becky’s whole Deal, and I’ve definitely learned a thing or two specifically because Willis writes it into this comic, but the mindset itself is entirely foreign to my lived experience. It’s like learning about Japanese culture through watching Dragon Ball, in a sense.
Believe it or not, Dragon Ball, or at least the earlier episodes, were more akin to Chinese culture because it was more or less a parody of the centuries-old Chinese novel Journey to the West.
But I see the point you’re trying to make regardless. On the other hand, to quote Thag Simmons, “I don’t think this comic fucks around with what fundamentalist actually believe”.
I remember watching the early dragon ball episodes with my son, and enjoyed them. Then watched some from later on, and could hardly believe it was the same cartoon.
Eh. I haven’t met any asshole theists personally, and while I don’t really believe in god, I think it’s nice to be able to. Good for them, y’know? A long as they don’t hurt anyone, etc.
YES! I HAVE ACHIEVED BLOWJOB CAT!
Looping waterslides aren’t in Heaven. They’re in New Jersey.
So Hell?
🙂
Which Hell, the one in Michigan, California, Norway or Grand Cayman?
As a non-believer I am neither confused nor offended by Becky’s beliefs. Becky is accepting of scientific evidence and has modified her beliefs accordingly. She does not believe in demonstrably false things (Flat Earth, etc.). She recognizes the difference between facts and faith. She attempts to live her life according to her beliefs. Her statements in this strip are faith based. (Joyce is being a great friend by agreeing.) Therefore, I have no issues with her (or Joyce). I agree she is a person the Biblical Jesus would approve of.
This was meant as a reply to C.T. Phillips above.
I mean Phipps. Sorry.
Thanks! Great response.
Regardless of the historical existence of Jesus, “biblical Jesus” is still rather contentious because the Bible itself has been changed A LOT over the centuries of translations.
This video by Trey the Explainer is a very helpful starting point to learning about the history of the Bible:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XKp4yWGTfXo
It’s funny because Jesus is mentioned in one of the most oldest of Roman historical views and the largest response to it is, “It surely must have been added by Christians after the fact” with the primary evidence being, “We don’t believe a historical Jesus existed so therefore no historical references can be real.”
Which is a tautology.
Tacitus is the reference most often sited. He references Christians, but does not specifically mention Jesus. As far as I know there is no solid evidence that historical Jesus actually existed. Christianity, on the other hand, most certainly existed by 66 C.E. as per Tacitus. Josephus is another source. He actually mentions Jesus, but his work was probably tainted by Christianity and he wrote 70 years after the fact.
Note: I personally believe historical Jesus did exist, but that is only opinion. This is based on the fact that the Bible has a multitude of repeated names (Joseph, Mary, John, James the Lesser, etc.). Most works of fiction do not repeat names (Ref: Other Rachel). It is likely the Bible was loosely based on actual events. (Ref: Norse sagas)
That’s not true.
There are fairly old references to Christians, but not to Jesus. I think the oldest reference is by Josephus. There are two, one of which mentions “James the brother of Jesus” which is generally considered historical. The other is generally considered to have at least been altered by later Christians, not because “we don’t believe a historical Jesus existed”, but because Josephus was Jewish and the reference describes him in very Christian terms – calling him the Christ and mentioning the resurrection.
Even Josephus was some 60 years after Jesus’s death, so that wouldn’t have been personal knowledge – likely whatever he’d learned from Christians of his time.
Most scholars do consider Jesus to be historical – though exactly what happened and how accurate the Gospel accounts is much more questionable.
Not really scientific evidence so much. I don’t think she’s really coming from a rationalist perspective.
She started by believing that, contrary to her teachings, God would accept her as a lesbian. “God answers lesbian prayers!” She did accept what Dina’s told her about science and evolution, but didn’t seem to require much proof beyond Dina’s assertions and enthusiasm.
OTOH, she hasn’t dropped her taught belief that pre-marital sex is a sin, despite dropping the equally unfounded belief that being a lesbian is a sin. Which would confuse me theologically, except that I can easily see how human psychology works that way.
I feel like saying, “Becky doesn’t believe in premarital sex is wrong” just because it’s not the choice other people want to make. She wants it to be with someone she loves and that choice should be respected even if it’s not for everyone.
Well, no, it’s definitely the same kind of “God said my loins must be protected from sinfulness!” kinda deal for Becky as it was Joyce, that’s just a part of her upbringing Becky still agrees with.
Becky wants hanky panky but thinks she should wait until marriage (a-okay), but what’s motivating a lot of drama for her right now is that she’s super horny on main for Dina but Dina isn’t for her, even though Dina’s not supposed to hanky panky her until they’re married, Becky’s upset that Dina isn’t constantly on the verge of ripping Becky’s shirt open with her teeth.
Except it’s very clearly in the narrative not “wants to be with someone she loves” but “outside of marriage” that’s the problem.
Like Joyce had long before she lost her faith she’s gotten far enough to not be randomly condemning people who do, but she’s still holding to premarital abstinence herself. For religious reasons.
Which is fine. I’m certainly willing to respect that choice. I don’t think it’s a rational decision to drop the rules about lesbians, but keep the ones about premarital sex, but then I don’t think most such decisions are made rationally.
No shit “most decisions are not made rationally”. Human brains are vast networks of ideas that have evolved not to strive towards truth, but towards internal consistency.
I know this is tantamount to just wishing, but I sure HOPE that Bekcy learns indifference to “ways of flesh” in a manner like that spoon scene from The Matrix:
“First accept the truth: that God does not exist. How could he? It is but an idea inside of your brain, that YOU change over time, which in turn guides and restrains you. Take a step back, and realize that it is just YOU who is bending YOU. In other words, recognize that you can be confident in your OWN judgment. Once that is given, all else follows.”
With any hope, nobody will be wearing those stupid sunglasses afterwards.
Eh, it’s kind of a circle of badness to want a character to do something they don’t want to do because they’re not comfortable with it. Pressuring a person to sex is every bit as wrong as condemning what two people are comfortable doing in their own home.
Becky should have sex when she’s ready and that’s after marriage to her right now.
Of course it’s wrong to pressure someone like that. But did Becky not really mean it when she begged Dina to teach her indifference to “ways of flesh”?
The way I see it, it’s like she’s possessed by a ghost (or at least thinks it’s like this), and she’s trying to sneak in a cry for help in a way that doesn’t register with her brain’s defense mechanisms and consequently makes it more dire.
1. Becky isn’t a real person so there’s nothing bad at all about me wanting her to do something. She can’t be pressured into doing anything she’s not comfortable with because she doesn’t exist.
2. It’s pretty clear that she DOESN’T actually want to wait until marriage to have sex. She is suffering from feelings of shame and distress about her ACTUAL DESIRES conflicting with what she thinks is ‘morally correct’. I would consider her ‘choice’ in this regard to be worthy of respect if it weren’t so clearly making her actively unhappy (AND causing her to be, in my opinion, a worse partner in her relationship).
She doesn’t need to have sex Right Now. That’s not going to be the solution to her issues by any means, and would probably make it worse. What she needs to do is let go of beliefs which are causing her to feel so horrible about herself. I.e. ACTUALLY allowing herself to have sex when she’s ready, rather than when she thinks it’s ‘morally correct’ to do so.
Well she’s a simulation of a person. The story arc being whatever Willis wants it to be but presumably he wishes it to be consistent with the characters as well as examining the pressures/dangers of college life.
” No ships are endgame because there I ALWAYS think of ships that are even more endgame-y. “
— David M. Willis
Merely accepting Dina’s assertions shows she is open to scientific evidence. I think she is becoming a rationalist when it comes to commonly accepted science.
Moral choices, such as pre-marital hanky panky, are based on her beliefs and faith, not science.
The lesbian issue is not a generally accepted Christian dogma, though some argue there are passages in the Bible that suggest lesbianism is okay. It is a necessary choice Becky must make to maintain her other beliefs (human psychology at work). She has been given reason to justify this such as a real-life superhero saving her. God clearly loves her as she is.
Or accepting Dina’s assertions shows she’s treating Dina as a replacement authority figure on these topics.
Or, crazy enough, she doesn’t need an authority figure to believe in religion and believes as a matter of personal choice. Religion was Becky’s refuge from authority and abuse not it’s instigator.
I didn’t say anything about authority figures to believe in religion, but about science in response to claims that she’s becoming a “rationalist”.
However, I don’t see any reason to think religion was her refuge from authority, at least in her youth. It was a very authoritarian religion and pushed by her abusive father. Her religious faith now may be filling that role, but it certainly didn’t start that way.
Not a very good reason if that; she has real friends that cared about her, and Amazi-Girl only got that information and was able to act on it as fast and as well as she did thanks to inventions created with the power of science.
Also, between accepting science and accepting Dina as a surrogate authority figure, which explanation explains the most of her most recent behavior while making the least unproven assumptions?
No, that last one isn’t a rhetorical question. I don’t think I’ve read enough of the comic to answer this one in any meaningful way. Got any ideas?
I don’t think Becky views Dinah as any kind of authority figure.
Care to share any strips that support that claim?
Does anyone care to share strips against that claim?
Does anyone have any other possible explanation?
True, though. I wish more people could be like Becky.
Well, maybe not exactly like her, but still.
Becky’s a good kid.
Joyce just had to crank the cute up to 11…
Those last three panels really make me wonder if Becky knows Joyce’s change in views, and really all she wants for her birthday is for Joyce to be willing to play along instead of being angsty.
suddenly I wonder if redheads havenight vision.
(sorry, not sorry)
man, loop-do-loop waterslides?
suddenly I’m interested!