Here on MY campus, we have to pay $30 and go across the street to CVS to get ours. And no one does.
(Too many people in my family have gotten violently ill from the shots, so I don’t get them out of fear. I’m surprisingly resistant to a lot of the colds and stuff that go around, and it helps that I spend a lot of time in my room and have no roommate.)
It is possible for bacteria to exhibit a sort of Lamarkian inheritance, especially wrt antibiotic resistance, where a bacteria gains a plasmid through transformation and passes it on to daughter cells.
I’m not sure if bacterial transformation can be counted as Lamarkian evolution…
Although there are some scientists who are starting to link things like epigenetics to Larmarkism
Not missing, per se. Simple day-to-day observation would disprove that handily, given that one-armed parents don’t have exclusively one-armed children.
Lamarkian inheritance would be something like “If the father lost his right arm, his children would be left-handed” and stuff like that. Changes to the parents influence the children, but aren’t necessarily recreated in their entirely.
Also, please forgive replying two years later, I just felt this comment should have an answer for my fellow travelers of the Archive Binge.
Exactly, Jesus died for our sins cos only like in vaccines, only the surface proteins from a dead God can fight the Sin infection… see, NOW THAT’S SCIENCE!
So what about infection vaccines? A lesser evil prevents a greater one? (I’m referring to say, small pox and cowpox. Contracting cowpox makes you more resilient to smallpox.)
According to the Hygiene Hypothesis, the fact that we are over-cleaning/sanitising ourselves and our homes means that we are not immunising ourselves with smaller weaker infections like we used to.
While at the same time over-exposing germs to anti-bacterial agents that kill “99.999% of household germs”, leaving .0001% of them immune. Not to mention the issues with anti-bacterial solutions (which kill the good germs too) entering the environment downstream of our drains.
Seriously, why isn’t that shit illegal yet? At least to common consumers. No one who isn’t about to do open-heart surgery should be messing around with it.
Worth reading on this very subject is the poem “Reading Myth to Kindergarteners.” I cannot offhand remember the author, but I first read it in one of the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series, quite worth tracking down, and I would, if I didn’t have a terribly early morning. The text is:
Today I read them the story of Persephone and Hades,
the telling of it brief, a child’s version of the tale.
I am beginning to think of each story the way
a doctor thinks of vaccination; part of my task
to see they’ve had their shots,
these small doses of stunning loss,
seeds of grief planted early so that later,
when their own lives bear down on them,
they will remember these tales,
recall how, on first hearing this one,
they held their breath and sat,
unmoving and absolutely silent in their chairs,
stricken by what the flowers and birds
say to Demeter in her sorrow:
Gone, gone. Persephone
is gone.
No, Vaccine types have the advantage against Virus types and Virus types have the advantage against Data types and Data types have the advantage against Vaccine types.
My parents were totes into me being into science when I was a kid, despite rejecting evolution. I don’t understand it, either, in retrospect. Science went into different boxes depending on what it was specifically about.
Science is good, unless people perform tests to collect evidence that allows them to draw conclusions that disprove my hypothesis, in which case Science is bad.
My mother loves watching nature/sciene programs but whenever they talk about evolution or the words “millions of years ago” she loses her shit and yells at the TV.
nd if the show keeps on mentioning those words, she will rant either about how ‘those deluded scientists’ always denying that God exists or how the Devil has bamboozled so many people into damnation with his ‘EVILution’, I try to make it seem that I’m listening while tuning her out.
It’s not even the fact she thinks that the millions of years thing is wrong that baffles me. That’s common enough that, even though I know it’s stupid, it doesn’t faze me anymore. It’s the fact that she keeps watching those shows even though she knows they’ll include it. It’s like if you hate chocolate (and if you do, you’re a monster), but you keep eating chocolate chip cookies every time you see them, then complain about how horrible they taste! IT’S YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT FOR EATING THE COOKIES IN THE FIRST PLACE!
She likes all the other aspects of nature/sceince shows, she just wishes that they don’t mention that pesky evolution/millions of years stuff anymore if not credit God for it.
I prefer the cookie simile. Science is delicious and sugary, not painful and burning… actually, I think it’s usually closer to the latter case, since some of its greatest accomplishments come during wartime. Never mind.
What I really don’t get it with a lot of people (on both sides of this argument) is just how they came to the ridiculous conclusion that believing in God and believing in evolution are mutually exclusive.
Darwin was a theologist with strong faith for crying out loud! Just to name an example.
A letter which was written less than three years before his death in a time where he was known to doubt, true. But as he says in that very letter himself: Even in his most severe crises of faith, he still would fully and without doubt believe in the existence of God. If you follow his state of mind over time, as seen in personal correspondence and notes, you will see that he neither doubted God nor Christ. Just what the church said about certain things, quite understandable since it contradicted his observations, and how much actual direct influence the former took in nature.
My grandfather bought me a model dinosaur kit, and my grandmother leaned over and whispered that “of course you know dinosaur bones were left by god to test our faith”.
Flu shots….I’m not a big believer. The last time I had the flu was when I was very, very young (I’m 38 now). I never get the shot. I’m pretty sure it will take me getting the flu to actually consider it the following flu season.
Perhaps when I become one of those really old “at risk” people, I’ll take another look at it. Of course, by then I assume the flu virus will have mutated into some invincible super-virus, decimating 99% of the world’s population…
Decimating does not mean reducing by a tenth, despite how it sounds. It means: “Kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of”.
I imagine the root word is closer to “leave only a tenth”.
It’s a case of semantic drift–
in ancient Rome, it referred to losing 10% or more of your troops in battle, which was considered an unacceptably high butcher’s bill. (A legion could also be decimated as a punishment for insubordination or cowardice – every tenth man executed at random.) Eventually it just came to mean any loss or destruction which could not be easily recovered from, then it started getting mixed up with “devastated” and it lost its original meaning entirely for most folks.
Actually, it… literally does. Etymology! Used to be used in reference to tithes and the Roman practice of punishment by killing one in every ten.
Language drift’s made it synonymous with the nonspecific version, but if you’re talking numbers, it’s by one tenth, not to one tenth, that’s the common term.
Not you, it’ll just replace your sperm so that your children will have otherwise biologically-impossible black hair and one of them will grow up to be Teen Batman.
Also having no true life aside from carrying an abject incompetent justice system every single day, being the subject of some psychopath’s obsession that borders on the homoerotic, having to not only put yourself through crap that makes being stationed in Iraq look good but thrive on it, at least two of your nemesises being people you once thought were your friends, and don’t forget all that effort in making your admiring helpers feel unappreciated.
It also means you eventually want to have a son that dies when being your sidekick in crime-fighting, causing you a great deal of psychological guilt for bringing about your own son’s death, albeit indirectly.
If you are getting the flu. I have no idea about your case, but it is remarkable how may people think they have the flu, but have either a worse than usual cold (rinovirus), or “stomach flu” (gastroenteritis, most often caused by the norovirus family).
Well it generally feels like a cold except with more fatigue, more of a fever, and less nasal congestion (primarily a dry cough), with the addition of a day or two of vomiting. And generally the fatigue and fever will last for a little while after the rest has gone. The cough has also lasted up to a month a few times, as well.
I will sweep in here with my “not a real doctor but married to one” and say that no, “like a bad cold” is not the flu. That’s just a bad cold. Which is fine. Bad colds are bad. But the flu is something else. The flu knocks you out. The flu leaves you with a massive temperature, bed-ridden (and not in a “I get to stay in bed and play video-games” sort of way, it leaves you bed-ridden in a “I have no idea what time or day of the week it is oh god what is going on”), and completely destroyed. Influenza kills. Influenza is a really, really serious issue. It is not something you “suck up” and carry on your day with.
You are getting a cold every year. A serious cold, maybe, but a cold.
(My wife’s rant, and indeed the rant of a lot of doctor’s, would be about the escalation of illnesses seriousness in everyday talk. So “I have the sniffles” becomes “I have a cold”, “I have a cold” becomes “I have the flu” and “I have the flu” becomes “I’m infected with super-cancer”. A cold by itself can be pretty bad. It can knock you out. But the flu is a disease that pretty much everyone claims to have had and yet more won’t. When you’ve had the flu, you know.)
1) You can be a carrier without “having” the flu. This person being a carrier is much more the topic of conversation.
2) You CAN come down with a MILD case of the flu. I don’t know why your wife would claim you can’t.
I mean I understand being annoyed that people exaggerate their health problems and I’m sure your wife has to deal with loads of people that have WebMD’d their cold into African Sleeping Sickness, but it’s not relevant to this particular conversation.
Li is correct. An epidemiologist or virologist rant would be to explain that subclinical infections are common with influenza (meaning the infected person shows no symptoms) and that the severity of the visible infections varies from mild to severe to developing life-threatening complications. The severity and mix of symptoms really depends on the person.
Sounds like someone I knew once. Our entire household came down with something really nasty about a week after a wedding we all (and her) attended, and when we mentioned it in passing, she exclaimed, “Oh, maybe you got it from me. I came down with the Norwalk virus two weeks ago, but I just medicated up real good so I could come along.”
Of course, we were horrified. “What the hell were you doing coming to a wedding with the bloody Norwalk virus?!?!” we politely inquired.
“Oh, is it a bad thing? I thought it just meant like a really bad cold, so that’s what I called it,” she explained.
Sorry, I don’t think I explained myself correctly there, so I apologise for that. I didn’t mean to say tha the flu ALWAYS knocks you out. Or that you can’t carry it without showing symptoms. I meant to say that in a lot of cases, people say that they have the flu when they have a cold, and taking all the flu vaccinations in the world won’t prevent you getting a cold. This can also lead to people assuming that flu vaccinations don’t do anything even though the disease they’ve ended up getting is completely different than the one they’ve been vacinated against.
So it was more a rant about people filing all these diseases under the term “flu” when they’re actually a massive variety of different diseases, and that leading to further errosion in people’s belief of the effectiveness of vacinations.
LiamKav – ah, gotcha. Yeah people often use “flu” way too often. There are hundreds of viruses that cause the same/related set of upper respiratory symptoms.
Yeah sure…try and make me feel like the bad guy. You don’t work for any of the flu vaccine companies do you? =P
Well, if I’m getting the flu and not being affected by it, then I must be damn near invincible because it’s been YEARS since I’ve had anything even close to flu-like symptoms.
I’m sure barely anyone is reading these comments anymore, but I’ll post one more after reading more of the responses to my original comment.
1. Now I’m wondering if I’ve EVER had the flu. When I said I haven’t since I was very young, I said that because I remember being sick and throwing up when I was young. However, I don’t remember ever being knocked out for more than a day or two from it, so it probably wasn’t the flu.
2. People getting the flu from “people like me.” Ok, so I can be a carrier and not have flu symptoms. That’s all well and good and something I didn’t really think about originally. However, does getting a flu vaccine put a magic forcefield around me so that even if I touch a surface or shake hands with someone who has the flu, those germs will just bounce off of me and I won’t “carry” them with me? I somehow doubt it.
3. I’m sorry, but I do my best to keep this type of stuff out of my body. Everything from flu vaccines down to aspirin. I see enough pill-popping in people of all ages, and while it seems to be inevitable as you get older, I will continue to try and prolong it beginning for as long as I can.
So, steer clear of me if you see me walking down the street lest I be an awful carrier of the plague…
2) Yes, it really does help. Seriously. Even on the simplest level, you will obviously sneeze on and around people less if you do not come down with the flu, but yes. Just yes.
3) I agree with this sentiment for everything except flu shots, because flu shots strengthen your immune system through exposure to bugs. There is no downside. You are not medicating yourself in any way or contributing to a “super flu”, promise. This is not like antibiotics.
I would extend point 3 from “flu shots” to “all vaccinations”. Antibiotics and the like kill diseases. Vaccinations teach your body how to kill the disease by itself, therefore making your immune system stronger. If you get an infection that you then treat with antibiotics, you can get it again pretty quickly. If you get a vaccination, your are extremely unlikely to get that disease for YEARS, because your body knows how to deal with it.
(yeah, I know that viruses and bacteria are different. I was just trying to simplify.)
I was trying to think of a metaphor along the lines of “vaccinations are like learning to swim in a pool before you go in the ocean. They don’t weaken your ability to swim. They make is stronger is a safe way”, but I can’t stop it from sounding clunky.
My father is obsessed with getting flu shots, but then I gave him the flu this winter, so I think it’s a matter of luck as to their effectiveness.
If a strain starts going around that wasn’t prepared for…people are still going to get sick.
On one hand, I’ve now had the flu two Christmases in a row. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure getting a flu shot this past winter wouldn’t have kept me from getting the flu, so…meh.
Also, a lot of people think they’ve had the flu when they’ve had something else. As I will properly end up ranting at a lot of comments this week, there’s a hell of a difference between a serious cold and influenza.
Generally, to head off incorrect mis-self-diagnosis, I call a stomach bug ‘the flu’ (due to growing up calling it that) and the actual flu influenza, keeping in mind that they are completely different
I don’t want to single you out here because a lot of people in this thread have been doing this, but having the tiniest, barest idea of how evolution sort of works and then making proclamations about it makes you sound like the senator who says the internet is a series of tubes to anyone with a biology background.
I’m just going to leave this link here, because Dr Crislip says it so much better than I can. I will grant that this article is aimed at health care workers, but it holds true for anyone, really. Especially if you come in contact with people who are very young, very old, pregnant, or obese, as these are all people for whom the vaccine has reduced efficacy, if they can get it at all. You getting vaccinated helps protect them; it’s as simple as that.
I saw the “zzz’s” and I thought you were making a “this is making me sleepy” sort of comment, and I was like “How could be sleeping at such a Zinger- oooooh…”
That’s implying some sort of Lamarckian change in self which will affect the next generation. Dina is learning, not evolving – there’s a difference (notably, individual organisms can’t “evolve”.)
It’s more a piece of Hayek cultural evolution. Her ideas that were suitable for the current environment have thrived. Those ideas are more likely to provide inspiration for further thoughts that are useful in this environment Dina finds herself in.
No, she’s just demonstrating the evolution of memes, specifically the fact that memes coding for snarky responses demonstrate a significant fitness advantage in college environments.
Halfway through I thought Dina wasn’t aware she was in line for a flu shot, and just got swept along somewhere again. Then I finished reading. I hope her powers will only be used for good.
Funny works as well, or maybe if bored. Perhaps if a snack is needed? Snacks are good, right?
I think she’s actually inquiring if it’s, in their opinion, a good morning, not just making a polite noise. Because why would you say something like that if you weren’t interested in the answer?
Dina’s fatality is turning into a stegosaurus and then pointing out that they’re not carnivores when the person thinks they’re about to get eaten. Then she tramples them.
Flu shots seem to make a lot of people sick, while people who skip them remain perfectly healthy and never get the flu. It’s a stranmge pattern, but quite funny to observe.
If nobody got flu shots, everyone would get it. By the majority getting the shots it represses the spread of it and makes it less likely for those without shots to get infected.
I never said nobody should get them just why some people don’t bother.
I only get sick like once every three years, people around me are sick all the time, and I interact with hundreds of people a day. It’s just funny to beat the odds like that, especially when everyone around me is all ‘I was fine until I got my shot now I’m siiiick.:
Yes, in Denmark you have to pay for your flu vaccination yourself – only a couple of workplaces as hospitals and the like offer them without payment, and otherwise you have to be in a risk group (pregnant, obese, with a chronic disease etc.) or at least 65 years old to get one for free.
Many people who get vaccinated get ill (from it) anyway, and a lot of people without a vaccination never get ill. Generally the idea is that you and your immune defence get stronger if you let your body work it out on its own and as long as your fever doesn’t get too high and it takes more than a week, the doctors recommend that you stay in bed, drink a lot of water and try to eat as much as you can and wait it out so to speak… So to me it does seem a little strange that otherwise healthy young people would get a flu vaccination as you never would do it in my country..!
One place I worked at would bring a nurse in to get everyone shots for free. You were allowed to refuse, but if you did you weren’t then allowed to turn around and call in sick with the flu.
It did help with our exposure to infected people, at least–meaning that at work we pretty much weren’t, at least. But yeah, most people will get at least mildly sick after getting the shot, because that’s how it works, by tricking your body into thinking it’s dealing with live viruses instead of dead ones. So your body goes through the motions of fighting it off, which include things that make you feel crappy, but it’s usually pretty mild because of course the virus isn’t fighting back. And then you don’t get it for real, which is potentially life-threatening to you and anyone you’re in contact with who has a lowered immune system, because your body has developed antibodies to it. You might feel kind of crappy for a day or two, but you aren’t contagious and it’s nowhere near as bad as it would be for real, even if you didn’t have anyone else around to worry about. 🙂
I think the general idea is that schools are sickness breeding grounds. A person can have good immunity, but lots of people means more and more chances of something attacking your system. Throw in stress and some students not being the best about taking care of themselves (junk food, no sleep, etc.) and colleges tend to decide giving out free flu shots are a good idea.
Not saying it’s really necessary, just saying the reasoning behind it isn’t terrible.
And I remember hearing somewhere that the efficiency of flu shots drops if enough people around you didn’t get them, so if only the young and old got them all the people in between would cancel it out.
I believe you’re thinking of herd immunity, but no it doesn’t get “canceled out”.
Basically, you need a high enough proportion of the community to be immune or resistant to the disease before it will help protect those who are not immune (often including the elderly, people with compromised immune systems, and babies). The exact percentage depends on how contagious the disease is. The more contagious the disease is, the higher percentage of the population needs to be immunized.
This is why immunization, especially childhood vaccinations, should be a matter of public safety, and not personal choice. This is also why anti-vaccination campaigns need to be fought with proper education, so that more people don’t die, like Dana McCaffery, who died of pertussis, better known as “whooping cough”, at the age of 4 weeks old. The area she was born in had seen a drop in vaccinations due to an anti-vaccination campaign, and thus there wasn’t enough herd immunity in her area, and she was too young to be vaccinated.
If it weren’t for the efforts of dedicated anti-vaccination campaigns, Dana McCaffery might still be alive today.
Yeah, canceled out was a dumb way of putting it. My excuse is that it was one in the morning and I was studying, but it’d be more accurate to say that I didn’t think my wording through.
Everyone should get the flu shot. Herd immunity is key, meaning that if over 90%(IIRC) of the population is immune, those whose systems can’t handle vaccines, such as babies, the extreme elderly, and immuno-compromised people won’t get infected because no one around them is vulnerable.
Like so many other people have said elsewhere, healthy teens need flu shots to prevent them from becoming flu carriers, spreading the flu THEY easily survived or didn’t even notice becoming a carrier for to the small children and elderly people who will die from it.
Because they live in confined areas, and attend school, and both involve mixing in close quarters, thus lots of exposure to other people. Student housing are basically germ factories. Any chance to break the contagion cycle is good. Haven’t you ever seen a contagious disease go through a school?
Techinically that is true because a virus is not alive. Only living things can evolve and in order to be alive something has to have cells.
I always thought a virus was alive because it can “adapt to its environment”, reproduce, move around and can “stop functioning”. But every science professor I have ever had said that a virus is not alive because……….. and I have never gotten a good answer.
Because they don’t have their own metabolic functions, but borrow it from the host organism. I always found the distinction to be arbitrary and meaningless.
At this point mitochondria are so irrevocably integrated into the eukaryotic cell that there’s really no reason to think of them as anything other than an organelle with some unique DNA floating around in it.
Generally speaking it is understood from context what is being discussed. Sure we can talk about the evolution of our solar system, but we all understand that we are discussing inanimate objects rearranging themselves according to newton’s laws of motion while increasing in entropy. As opposed to the theory of evolution, in which reproducing organisms generally decrease in entropy over time at the expense of increased entropy in their surroundings. But everybody understands that, right? Right?
To evolve, you only need 4 things: reproduction, heredity, mutation, and selection pressure. Many non-living systems exhibit these properties.
Memes are one example, viruses are another. There are entire fields of study in computer science devoted to evolutionary algorithms, and there have been art projects where new images evolve based on the preferences of the viewer. I myself study evolutionary game theory, and often create simulations of organisms in virtual environments, which reproduce, mutate, and evolve over iterations.
I resently heard a really cool argumant about virus the question wether virus are alive. Basicly the argumant offers to look at the infected cell as the virus. after all by the time the virus have infected the cell, it suplemented it’s D.N.A and hiject it’s life functions thouse the ifected cell is now a distinct organism.
I love that while otherwise socially awkward, Dina can be totally snarky when it comes to science, but you know she’s delivering that line with a deadpan voice and doesn’t realize she’s being snarky. <3 <3 <3
Oh, she knows she’s being snarky, but to her Joyce’s ignorance/idiocy is the enemy and must be destroyed via snark bombs. Whether Joyce gains intelligent acceptance of reality or self-destructs via mental aneurism is immaterial as long as the idiocy is destroyed.
To head off everyone about to talk about “why do we need the flu shot I never get the flu”, even though I’m probably too late, look up “herd immunity”.
In short, vaccinating a significant portion of the population reduces the chance of major outbreaks, even though some people will still get sick. It’s not so much about you (sorry! it’s never really about you) or the individual but the population as a whole. The vaccinated people + naturally immune people act as a barrier to spreading disease farther.
The only counter-arguments I can find on the Internet are sites devoted to claiming any vaccine or preventative medical treatment at all is pointless and about how contracting measles is great; however, I’d love to hear a LESS-extreme counterpoint if you have one. 😛
Because you’re not necessarily naturally immune in the sense that you kill and block the transmission of viruses. You might merely have a healthy enough system to suppress the systems, while happily transporting the disease to every poor sucker who has the misfortune to be in your diseased presence. There’s no real way to tell, unless you happen to notice that you’re leaving a trail of corpses behind you typhoid Mary style. That would be a good clue.
How do you know you are immune? Tests have shown there are a large number of asymptomatic infections – 30% to 50% in fact (high uncertainty, as it is pretty hard to measure…)
I think Alyssa already knows this, but for anyone else…
The information in that report was designed to support the hypothesis and is, to the best of our knowledge, incorrect. Some people just believe it because they want an outside source to be the problem, as it’s easier to control and doesn’t require them to do anything differently in their own lives.
There’s actually a good chance that autism is caused by genetic and/or environmental factors. (Environmental, in psychology, means social life. My dad thought it meant pollution in the air and stuff.)
And then there’s the question of whether autism is actually a -bad- thing. Classic autism is accompanied by mental retardation and can be an honest disability, but Asperger’s is a high-functioning form of autism that can be viewed as not bad, but different.
I’ve got a brother (classic) and a sister (Asperger’s) on the spectrum, so please excuse my rant. 😛 I see Dina as being Aspergic, and I’m sure others do, too.
It’s incorrect “to the best of our knowledge” in the same sense that the moon is not, to the best of our knowledge, made of cheese; there’s nothing to support the idea and a shitload of evidence against it.
Aspie here, and I freaking hate it. I definitely view it as a disability, for the reasons mentioned by Regalli below, along with how difficult it is to maintain a social life with anyone but family. I mean, I think I’m getting better social skills-wise, but in any event, it sucks, it’s uncomfortable, and I hate it.
I’ve heard it said that the only real problem with being an Aspergic person is that most people are not Aspergic. Like, if the world were made of people with Asperger’s, it would be a lot less difficult to be a person with Asperger’s. As it is, the majority is neurotypical, and that’s where a lot of the problems come in. NTs have decided all the of the social rules, and those rules are difficult for people with Asperger’s to learn.
I think it could also be a lot easier for Aspergic people if NT people would just bother to learn a little bit about them. You’re really not -that- different from us, you just operate a little differently. We’re Macs and you’re PCs. 😛 But we run a lot of the same programs and want to achieve a lot of the same goals.
Please don’t think I’m trying to speak over you, though. You have Asperger’s, so you know better than I do what it’s like. Just take care of yourself and try your best to be happy.
Augh… THAT. I’m pretty sure that at least that pseudoscientific load of bullshit is reserved for the series of vaccines you get in early childhood, not flu ones.
But that said? It is still a load of bullshit, and I hate it. I hate it A LOT. I hate it more than words can say and I hate it most of all because it’s actually caused the endangerment and death of young children because parents bought into it and didn’t vaccinate them.
That aside, as someone with high-functioning autism… yeah, it can definitely be a disability, especially when you take into account the sensory problems that come with the package and the motor skill problems that often come with it.
As someone with high-functioning autism, even though it can definitely be a disability, it makes me sick that parents would rather see their kids dead than autistic.
It should go without saying, but on the off-chance that it doesn’t: Plus that stuff that you said, of course.
Oh yeah. Definitely. They are also on the list of people I kinda want to slap with a book. I understand being stressed about it, I understand not knowing what to do, I understand depression, but that’s your CHILD you’re talking about. IN THE ROOM WITH YOU WHILE YOU ARE SAYING THIS. Parenting: YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.
Gaaah. I have no idea how I got as lucky as I did with my parents and their ability to understand and handle things, but I am so very thankful I did.
Oh by far. Parents should vaccinate their kids, it does not cause autism, and the asshat who first made that study was dead wrong, as were his methods for the thing, and I want to punch him for causing such problems.
I was just disputing the statement above that autism’s not necessarily a bad thing or the like. I consider it a part of who I am and I think the people who want to “cure” it are misguided at best and utter jackasses at worst, but I do acknowledge that it negatively affects people’s lives in such a way that it can be considered a disability, even in the case of higher-functioning folks who might not immediately show it.
What makes this especially great is that, from everything we’ve seen of Dina, she was genuinely bemused by this apparent deviation from Joyce’s standard behavioral pattern.
I’m pretty certain that Dina is deliberately being snarky, because Joyce-level idiocy probably pisses her off and fills her with scorn. Military-grade willful ignorance will do that to an person.
For some reason, I can’t imagine Dina being snarky. I just think she knows Joyce is wrong and she’s picked out some day-to-day examples on why, and because she knows Joyce didn’t respond well to anger, she’s adapted her tactics to pure calm. This comes off as snarkiness.
…But if it turns out Dina’s actually totally socially competent and knows exactly what to say to set someone up as a dope, I wouldn’t complain.
I don’t know that she’s totally socially competent, but she got into college somehow. So it appears she’s competent at factual scientific knowledge. And if you’re competent at factual scientific knowledge, then antiknowledge can grate on your soul – which it demonstrably did when Joyce first denied evolution. Dina suddenly became much more animated, because this was in her sphere. And without the distraction of social awareness to slow her down, she probably thinks that Joyce’s idiocy is to be annihilated at every opportunity. And snark is her weapon.
Now, she might not be delivering this in some grating over-the-top snarky tone of voice – but even if stated matter-of-factly, these snark bombs are targeted and fired with malice aforethought.
True! What you said about ‘this was in her sphere’ is a good point, too–Dina’s got this very specific area of interest, and when she tries to talk to people, she usually does by discussing that area. When the thing with Joyce happened, she was in a friendly context with people, and she was opening up and beginning to talk about what she likes when suddenly one of the participants flat out says that what she enjoys, what she studies, what she admires has no basis in reality. That’s both a) indirectly insulting a very personal interest and b) removing the base from which Dina does her social interaction.
If they can’t agree on this, they can’t agree on anything else — it’s that personal, at least to Dina. (Obviously it’s personal to Joyce too, but she seems willing to skim over this particular point.)
I’ve never had the flu, and I’ve never had a flu shot. It seems like starting to get them now, as a healthy young adult, would be an unnecessary inconvenience at best.
HERD IMMUNITY. Unless you have a reason not to, its kind of jerk move to not get vaccinated because it fucks over everyone else, particularly the elderly and sick people who might not be able to have the vaccine.
You realize that vaccinations are not the same thing as antibiotics, right? Giving someone a vaccine is not “medicating” them in any sense, and as the comic itself points out, the flu DOES evolve, requiring new vaccines every year.
But that’s not because we are creating a super flu. We aren’t. Vaccinating a populous does literally nothing but gently expose them to the most recent strain of the virus, upping their immune systems.
I know that its not the same as antibiotics, but I thought vaccinations also act as selective evolutionary pressure?
(so, our white blood cells adapt to kill them more, and they adapt more to avoid it?)
For later readers: Note that we ELIMINATED Smallpox. Eliminated it. If vaccinations caused the kind of Red Queen’s Race in this situation that you are describing, we would instead have created a super-Smallpox that wiped out most of the population.
Just because viruses sometimes do not evolve fast enough to evade some vaccination does not mean that viruses cannot ever evolve at all.
Viruses can and do evolve, as seen in the evolution of the flu virus, which is why we need new and different flu vaccines every year. Flu viruses come in many varieties, and they can evolve by recombining existing traits and/or by mutations. Remember, evolution just means a change in the frequency of traits within a population.
Furthermore, evolution is limited by what things are molecularly possible. It’s quite possible for a species to reach what’s called a “local maximum”, where any change to the genome makes the species less able to survive. So it’s wrong to assume that it’s even possible or beneficial for a “super-smallpox” to evolve.
To put it simply in regards to what you wrote: NOPE.
On average, I’ll infect less than 1 person each flu season with flu, even accounting for the spread of the disease from that person to other people, and from them to others, etc. Most of the time, anyone who is ultimately affected by the flu could have prevented it by getting vaccinated. Consequently, getting vaccinated myself would prevent less than the 1 case of flu that whoever I might infect could have prevented themself with equal ease. There is no reason that I should ‘suffer’ for their benefit when they have chosen not to do so to the same degree, with more certainty of success, with the same information. These people I completely disregard from consideration.
Of course, that only applies if they’re able to have the vaccine.
I will leave it there for you to challenge my current assertions before going on to my claims regarding the people unable to receive a vaccine, although I should mention at this point that I don’t have a justification in that case; just some odds that explain why for me, it’s not worth it.
1) The people you will infect who matter are the young and the elderly. These are people who will not just be inconvenienced, but who will DIE because of you.
2) Being vaccinated strengthens your immune system, even in the very rare situation where it gives you the flu to a degree where you will be inconvenienced by it.
3) Your “less than one person, even counting the people infected by the person I infect” assertion is nonsensical on its face, literally just terrible math on your part because that is not how anything works, and your rate of infecltion could only conceivably be as low as “less than one person” if you are a hermit who never leaves his home or has company over.
But hey, those people aren’t you, and they should be looking out for themselves! Never mind that you making yourself a breeding ground for flu viruses could expose an at-risk person to a strain of flu their shot doesn’t protect them from, or that IMMUNO-COMPROMISED PEOPLE LITERALLY CANNOT GET FLU SHOTS, it’s clearly everyone else’s fault but yours.
I appreciate the length of your response, which indicates that you are passionate about what you believe in. However, you are also being distinctly rude, and you have largely ignored or dismissed what I said.
Point 2) is both incorrect and irrelevant. I don’t see what difference it makes what effect being vaccinated has on the immune system, and a flu shot can’t give anyone the flu, under any circumstances, unless someone’s sneezed on the equipment being used or something like that, in which case you have more serious problems.
Point 3) is simply an assertion with no evidence to back it up. Let me explain my maths.
Every flu season, at most about 20% of the population is infected. Assuming that all flu was asymptomatic (which is extremely generous), that puts my chance of ever actually being infected at 20%. Every person with flu, meanwhile, will generally infect about 1.5 others. That means that the rate I’ll infect others is 0.2*1.5 + 0.8*0 = 0.3.
That group of 0.3 people will then infect another 0.3 people, and so on.
So I have the initial 0.3 people on the first level, then 0.3^2 people (the number of people affecting by the number of people 1 would affect) for the second level, etc. This results in the infinite geometric sequence 0.3 + 0.3^2 + 0.3^3 + … which has a sum given by the formula s = a/(1 – r), where a is the first term and r is the ration of terms.
This is 0.3/(1 – 0.3) = 0.3/0.7 = 3/7 which is less than 1. Less than 1/2, as well. That’s how many people I can expect to infect.
Also, I’m a hermit who never leaves my home or has company over.
I agree with you on point 1) (except for elderly people who can get vaccinated but don’t; see my arguments previously). I was going to use statistics with that one, but since it doesn’t convince me and I assume it won’t convince you, I see no point. I’m selfish even to the point that I will put the lives of others at risk. Very little risk, I should point out, but some risk.
However, just to play devil’s advocate here, it seems that your first point is answered by your last paragraph. You were sarcastic, but it is clearly a socially-accepted moral principle that a person’s health is the responsibility of that person and (sometimes) the government, not the responsibility of the general public. People are allowed to smoke and drink alcohol to excess, and there are no legal penalties for unintentionally transmitting illnesses, even when they’re life-threatening. Actually, speaking of smoking, some governments and jurisdictions allow it even in public places, which means knowingly having a negative impact on the health of those who surround the smoker. Some people argue that moral values are not personal, but rather they are social standards personally enforced, in which case the message seems to be that when it comes to an individual’s health, it’s always the individual’s responsibility (or in the case of children, their parents, because children are almost never presumed to be responsible).
Math is a bit off. If the flu spread that way it would die off quickly. Your infection rate may be 0.3 because you only have a 20% chance of getting the flu, but each of those 0.3 people that you infect *has* the flu, so they have a 1.5 infection rate, not 0.3 like you.
Your overall formula shouldn’t be (20% * 1.5) + (20% * 1.5)^2 + (20% * 1.5)^3 + …
It should be 20% * (1.5 + 1.5^2 + 1.5^3 + …). Which is infinite. Which shows that the formula is rather simplistic and clearly ignoring many factors about how infection works, but it does show *why* the flu spreads.
All your numbers look pulled from your ass to me, plus even if you’re right that only 20% of people get the flu each year (which seems ludicrously low), you’re still making a massive fallacy of projecting a statistical average back onto myself. You can’t do that. You can’t say “On average, I’ll infect less than 1 person each flu season with flu” with a straight face. On average, you’ll either be infected and infect pretty much everyone you come in contact with (I assume you buy food), or you’ll have gotten lucky this year and dodged a bullet. You can’t just look at the overarching stats and project them back to you personally. That would be like looking at the national crime stats and concluding that based on them, you personally have committed 3/4ths of a murder this year.
My tone could have been more polite, it’s true. I just find this belief very aggravating. You won’t care, since you have already owned the “Yes, I am so selfish that I will let other people to save myself inconvenience” line, but ugh. Almost as frustrating as people who refuse to vote in elections.
1) Nope and nope? I don’t understand, do you think no one dies from the flu? Or do you just think no one infected by you will die?
2) See, this is where your math goes wrong: it’s a common mistake, actually, to say, “Well, the odds of my first coin flip are 50/50, so if I flip a coin 10 times I will have 5 tails and 5 heads.” This is a mathematical fallacy, though I can’t remember the name right now. Where you attempt to in any way multiply the odds of one event as if they affect the odds of another.
You have a 20% of getting the flu, BUT IF YOU GET THE FLU, that 20% stops being relevant. Now you have the flu, so you are probably going to infect 1.5 people, not .03. And each of those people, once they have the flu from you, is going to have the same odds you had of infecting someone else. Your 1 to 2 people will most likely infect 1 to 2 more people, and so on.
3) That every-man-for-himself is “clearly socially-accepted” doesn’t actually make it any less morally wrong or, frankly, dumb. People who embrace it do so under the silent, possibly even unconscious presumption that they will never need anyone else’s help, either because they are just that lucky or because they are just that tough and awesome, but the FACT is that the entire point of society is that we are NOT in this alone and we CAN expect other people around us to help us.
If you don’t want to bother getting flu shots or paying taxes that might go to help the poor, or whatever, then… personally, I don’t think you should get to reap any of society’s benefits, either. You want to opt out? Fine, go live in a cave.
(The rest of your argument relies heavily on a relativistic view of morality, which I do not subscribe to, by the way.)
Alright, I’m not responding entirely to you, but to the series of replies.
Firstly, you’re all right. I was just arguing for the sake of argument. Here’s my new argument for not getting my flu shot this year, though: I genuinely do not leave my house except in extraordinary circumstances, so frankly, going to get a flu shot would probably increase my chances of spreading the virus more than it would decrease it.
Secondly, on the topic of the 20%, my source was here [although that link’s not working for me for some reason, so feel free to try this one if it doesn’t work for you. My source for the 1.5 reproduction number of the influenza virus was here.
Thirdly, (directed at you now, Li), there’s a difference between social obligations and social service; this hypothetical person you describe would, of course, have no right to society’s benefits if he/she refused to contribute to society. However, society sets a minimum standard of social contribution through the society’s government, in exchange for an individual’s place in the society. Paying taxes is a part of that (as is generally following the law); getting flu shots isn’t. And generally less than half of people get the seasonal flu vaccinations, so if flu shots were a social obligation, then the cave-dwelling society would be more populous than the one outside the cave (except that of course the fact that it became a social obligation would lead a lot more people to get the shot; I’m in favour of making it a law. Why is it not a law? Cost to the government, I assume. It’s always cost. More taxes. More campaigning for flu shots.)
It’s probably not a law because a) flu shots are not available for free (sigh), b) not all people can get flu shots, and c) relatedly, it would come perilously close to making it law that everyone have health insurance! Horror of horrors! Etc etc.
As you may have detected, I am a liberal, practically a communist. I also looked up the stats, and 64 kids died from the flu just since February this year. My roommate is a librarian in an intercity school, and they lost two kids in the same period, unsurprisingly deeply impoverished.
If you seriously never leave the house OR interact with delivery men, fine. It’s not like anyone online can actually force you to change your behavior anyway. But it sure seems like a silly stance to take when it has so little negative consequence for you.
It always amuses me what different definitions of “liberal” people from different countries have. 🙂
Around here, a liberal is basically someone arguing for only minimal interference of the government into the economy and (to a lesser extend) the personal life of the citizens. Usually somewhere in middle or a bit to the right of the political spectrum. It’s pretty much as far from a communist as you can possibly get.
“when they have chosen not to do so to the same degree”
Your assumption is false. Vaccines aren’t 100% effective, due to immune system complexity, so someone can get vaccinated without getting the induced immunity. This is probably more likely in the vulnerable, too.
Also, if you’re allergic to eggs, you can’t get the vaccine. *checks* Okay, looks like you *can*, but it’s a more involved process than just being processed through a clinic; they have do a skin test, wait, give a small amount, wait some more…
Oh Sarah, your puckish delight in Joyce’s confliction between good sense and her religious upbringing brings a song to my heart, and a bounce to my step. Both of which I shall use to achieve the downfall of my enemies
OHHHH SOMEBODY BETTER CHECK ON THE OVEN BECAUSE SOMETHING SMELLS BUUUUUURNT
I saw the first panel when it previewed, so when this came around I was sort of dissappointed — “I’ve seen this before, guess I know what’s coming up now” — but this is really, really a wonderful comic. Everything in it, from Dina asking if it’s a good morning to Sarah’s cynic response to Joyce’s smug face (at outwitting an evolutionist at something, probably!) to Dina’s totally nonchalant delivery of the smackdown to Sarah’s glee at this. (‘Good morning’ ‘We’ll see’ or similar is a pretty common joke, but for some reason the question mark makes it a lot funnier to me.)
If every day was Joyce-gets-burned-day, I’d probably be happy. I know she tries to cope with her friends’ different beliefs, and I know she’s really sheltered, and I know that even the fact that she’s still talking to them shows she’s trying…but still.
Also, I totally expected the comments field to explode into arguments about evolution…and instead it exploded into arguments about the efficiency of flu shots.
Quick question about the American health system… Does the flu shot cost? In the UK it’s free to the elderly, anyone deemed “at risk” and those who work in hospitals etc, but others have to pay for it.
(Also, did the US get the insane anti-MMR vaccine bulkshit we’ve had to deal with for the past decade?)
The answer is it depends. We do have some free clinics that give out the shots to at risk patients for free. And medical workers and researches (like myself) who work at hospitals get it free through work. Colleges will often also have free vaccine days, or subsidized vaccine days to encourage students to get vaccinated and not spread the flu everywhere. However most people have to go to a drug store or their doctor and pay. Its usually fairly inexpensive though.
And yes, we did get that bullshit about the autism-vaccine connection and it still exists in some low levels. Gotta love spurious correlations….
In short you have to pay for it. Basically in the US you have to pay for every medical out of pocket or threw insurance. There is a reason why we have the highest medical cost in the world and its not because of quality.
Yes. We’ve got the anti MMR bull, but it actually spread to all vaccines. And they can’t decide if its about the number of antigens, the thimoserol that isn’t even in anything except multi-dose flu anymore, the nonspecific chemicals, the combination of them, or what. Oh, and some anti vaccine group actually suggested chelation as a thing to be done after all vaccines. It came to the USA and we’ve got it bad.
While generally you do have to pay, there’s a lot of venues where it is free to the public. I went to a cultural fair last year and was able to receive a free flu shot.
It has tended to cost. Obamacare made preventive care free from insurers, so I would think flu shots would be becoming free as people get insurance or their plans get upgraded. Here in Massachusetts (which did reform on its own) I’m on state insurance and my shots are free, but the pharmacist indicated it wasn’t true of everyone yet, I’m guessing people on old employer plans still under old rules.
And yeah, we got a full dose of anti-vaxx from you guys.
Love it. It’s like having an argument with a vegetarian who is convinced eating animals is bad and everything should live off plants as nature intended, then a botanist walks in with a venus fly trap.
I could never be a vegetarian myself because meat is awesome, but that’s not a great analogy, because “as nature intended” is never a reason I’ve ever heard for being vegetarian. It sounds like something someone who hates vegetarians made up.
I have actually heard it argued that humans are naturally vegetarian. This based on the fact that our digestive systems aren’t built like carnivore digestive systems. This also ignoring that they aren’t built like herbivore digestive systems either, but oh hey! They’re just about right for omnivore digestive systems.
But, y’know, there’s no such thing as bisexuals. If you think you’re attracted to both meat and veggies, you’re obviously just confused.
Interestingly, the Seventh-day Adventist church advocates vegetarianism not only for health purposes, but because allegedly that’s what God intended. They reason that there was no mention of human carnivorousness in the Garden of Eden before sin came into the world, and that explicit permission to eat meat came much later.
Like captainswift pointed out, there are some that say human bodies aren’t built to be carnivores (though as he pointed out, it’s because most signs point to an omnivore digestive system). I’ve never really liked that reasoning, either, because then you get into a lot of dangerous waters on what humans do that ‘nature didn’t intend’ and even defining how to decide what nature’s intentions are.
I’m vegetarian, but I mainly do it more for practical (I was raised vegetarian, and haven’t had any health issues related to it) and economic/environmental (i.e. studies that suggest growing produce would be more efficient than beef) reasons. To a lesser extent, I also feel that, as humans have the capability to survive without meat, there’s no reason to use it, but that’s more a personal philosophy than an objective reason. I also believe that it’s up to each person to make their own decision on it, and realize that there can be health issues that may not allow to be vegetarian.
Now those vegans, they be crazy (totally kidding there!)
Kudos to you! You’re the kind of vegetarian I really get along. Which is to say, most of the vegetarians I met are that way. While they had different reasons for vegetarianism, they had in common that “it’s up to each person to make their own decision”-attitude.
There are “militant” vegetarians as well, sure. But I’ve never met one in person, just had to deal with them writing articles or letters in newspapers.
I think I’ve met one or two ‘militant’ vegetarians (being in the Midwest and the Beef Capital of the US is the main reason, I think). I met one in high school; she was generally nice enough, but got a bit hostile when meat was brought up, and seemed to think I should too. But I think militant members is something that just happens to most ‘groups’, and it just tends to create stigmas rather than do anything productive.
Absolutely. There is one rather loud and militant (so to speak) group here in Switzerland called the “Verein gegen Tierfabriken” (“association against animal factories”, the latter being a term for places where a huge number of animals are kept under very compact and miserable conditions. Not that the latter would even be legal in Switzerland.). It’s also quite small, despite it’s audibility, and widely considered as a league of nutjobs. Hence it doesn’t come as a surprise that their track record is rather… mediocre.
I’ve actually heard it several times. Well usually read it, truth be told, in articles by or about and in letters to the editor by some (in)famous vegetarians and vegans. Usually the latter though, really. I don’t think I’ve seen it used by vegetarians more than twice.
It is quite a common argument made by the “vocal” ones. Most vegetarians that choose to be so for intelligent reasons don’t tend to argue their points.
I don’t have a big phobia, but I don’t look, either. I look away, there’s a minor sting, and they’re done, whether keeping me from getting sick or filling up vials.
I can tolerate vaccines, but for some reason the idea of using a needle to suck blood out of me is just too squicky.
I have a friend who always donates blood, even though she usually faints afterward.
Evolution IS adaptation. It is the changes that occur in a population’s genetic structure as a result of natural selection which leads to the population becoming better adapted to it’s environment. They’re THE SAME THING.
Oh, Dina, your WACKY belief that a lack of belief in one idea of the source of life you rigidly hold to is a disbelief in the entirety of science is hilarious. And rather pot-kettle-esque. Some of the greatest minds of our times have had deist views. It’s as much worth considering, because as we have it, we still haven’t found any ‘base cause’ for everything- even as far back as we can reasonably figure. Or am I the only one who finds Dina as closed-minded as Joyce on this?
Except Dina makes no claim about whatever started the universe, she just knows the process of evolution and has likely studied the concept with a somewhat open mind. Compared to Joyce’s (likely) response up until now, which may or may not consist of plugging her ears or fleeing the conversation when uncomfortable questions are raised.
In a way, not accepting Evolution also requires you ignore a lot of other branches of science, Biology becomes much more nonsensical without it for a start. Most modern medical practices would not exist without an understanding of evolution, or at least they be no where near as effective
I don’t see Dina attacking faith be it deist or theist. I see her trying to point out to Joyce in albeit a snarky way, that evolution affects her weather she wants to believe in it or not.
I assume by “in our times” you mean “the revolutionary war”.
Dina has said nothing about the “base cause” for everything, but she probably believes that the initial basic arrangement of proteins and chemicals that resulted in what we know as ‘life’ occurred in some natural way, as opposed to the idea that some uncaring god created bacterial life in our primordial ooze pools and then forgot to clean his petri dishes when he fled the building. (Or were deist gods supposed to leave at the time of the big bang? Well, whichever.)
But all that’s beside the point. As is inferred by the comic, Dina has argued specifically for evolution, which Joyce specifically rejected. Flu vaccinations are required as a direct result of evolution. Not science in general, evolution specifically. Joyce might as well have said she doesn’t believe in the existence of cars and then stated that it would be silly and dangerous to play in the road.
Oh, and as long as I’m being all picky, it’s not closed-minded to accept all available facts and draw an unbiased conclusion based on them. That’s just being sensible and honest with yourself. Unless you’re referring to her failure to coddle and enable Joyce’s ignorance and idiocy because it’s religiously based, in which case that’s still not being closed minded; that’s just being sensible and honest with yourself.
“Science is just the religion scientists believe in! You guys ALSO have faith in things! Why if Jesus descended from on high you would all still refuse to believe in the supernatural!”
This is a very strange conception of science, and not at all accurate. The scientific method actually demands that, if Jesus descended from on high, we would all have to believe in at least him.
And as strange as this might be to you, we would also welcome that! Just because science doesn’t accept the existence of the Bible as proof that God exists does not mean science is devoted to blindly ignoring all evidence forever.
Stop trying to disprove arguments your opponents aren’t making and listen to the ones they ARE.
Actually, if Jesus descended on high, what he have to believe depends on how it happened. If it happened to just one guy in a spiritual vision, or even to a little congregation out in the boonies with no pictures or video, then, um, no. If it happens on national TV and a number of unbiased-seeming people comment on it and especially if he hangs around afterward showing his stigmata and doing miracles and all that, that would definitely merit further examination.
And even if it did turn out that it really was a genuine Jesus come from heaven, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s to be welcomed. I mean, that Biblical god is an asshole. And a murderous one at that. So if Jesus were to show up, I’ll wait a bit and see how the aftermath plays out. Who he slaughters, which regions get laid waste to, that sort of thing. If I don’t like the results, I’ll sit back and resign myself to the doom that is upon us. Not much else to do at that point.
Yeah, sure, but you take my point. The volume at which people of faith insist that scientists blindly ignore “proof” of miracles is deafening. Nothing pulls me out of an otherwise-enjoyable horror movie like The Exorcism of Emily Rose like a “scientist” who just keeps desperately shouting, “I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for this!!!” at the top of his lungs while a girl speaks in literal tongues, snarls his darkest secrets in multiple voices, and glues herself to a corner of her bedroom ceiling.
(When I said “believe in at least him”, I meant “believe in” the same way you’d believe in the existence, of, say, Texas. You’d have to believe there was a dude calling himself Jesus who bore a striking resemblance to actually nothing in modern Christian art, since we seem to have reinvented him as a white dude with blue eyes. But you wouldn’t necessarily have to convert. Frankly, if the Westboro Baptist Church is right, I’m on Satan’s team, because God is a dick who doesn’t deserve my loyalty.)
I like those scientists. Because they’re right. If it’s having an effect on the observable world, there is a scientific explanation. WE may just not have the ability – or at least the vocabulary to explain it yet.
Sure, but that isn’t what those “scientists” mean. They are being strawman’d, forced to pretend science has some sort of “There is no God and even when in Heaven and being told that God totally did inspire the Bible, I will cross my arms and stamp my feet and chilidishly refuse to believe any of it is really happening!”
Make no mistake, the characters saying “There must be a scientific explanation!” are really saying, “I refuse to take in this new information! Some religious person is TRYING TO TRICK ME and I won’t have it!” Their skepticism is absolutely MEANT to represent blind faith in the “religion” of science.
Evilution is that thing where atheists turn monkeys into humans via the use of Magic The Gathering cards and Harry Potter vibrating wands. Everyone knows that.
“‘You’re so sure of your position, but you’re just closed-minded.
I think you’ll find that your faith in science and tests
Is just as blind as the faith of any fundamentalist.’
Hmm, that’s a good point.
Let me think for a bit.
Oh wait, my mistake!
That’s absolute bullshit.
Science adjusts its views based on what’s observed;
Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.”
Although this guy’s patently wrong, I’ve never found Dina’s argument here entirely fair. When you point out the existence of evolution per se to someone who “doesn’t believe in evolution,” you’re basically just playing word games, because creationists don’t deny the existence of evolution, but its sufficiency to explain the modern diversity of life. It’s like if someone still believed in expanding/contracting Earth claiming they shouldn’t prepare for earthquakes. It’s better to show A: where the burden of proof lies and why, B: the arbitrariness of all proposed limits to evolution, C: the evidence of common descent.
But that’s not really true. Plenty of Christians deny evolution in every aspect, not just as an inadequate explanation. “Intelligent design” and its variants — “sure, evolution happened, but so did God” — is only an acceptable compromise for some Christians. Wonkette has been doing a series on Christian textbooks, and their most recent science textbook explicitly called out this compromise as inviting the Devil into your soul.
So. Yeah. Dina’s argument is fair, depending on the beliefs of the person she’s talking to. And Joyce has explicitly rejected evolution in every facet. She’s a young earth Creationist, and is not a proponent of ID or anything like it — that we’ve seen. (Remember, Joyce believes in the literal Six Days thing. She considered the presence of an old earth in Transformers to be unnecessarily controversial.)
Also, the argument that Dina should be presenting a thesis rather than making a snide remark is — you know — not really fair. She could prepare a huge presentation for Joyce’s benefit, but Joyce would probably just tune it out.
Joyce is a young-earth creationist, but she still (apparently) accepts evolution as a phenomenon, as most young-earth creationists do. The simple phenomenon of evolution doesn’t require, necessarily, anything resembling the evolutionary history we actually have behind us.
Of course Dina’s just being cute, but I’ve heard this argument presented seriously.
There is nothing wrong with Dina’s argument, because she is responding to Joyce’s actual beliefs, rather than what you feel “most” young earth creationists believe.
You are welcome to explain to me how teaching kids that animals have sharp teeth for NO REASON because as we all know every species started out in the Garden of Eden, eating only plants, is “believing in the concept of evolution”.
As tomorrow’s strip shows, Joyce thinks she has been taught about evolution and is choosing to reject it, but she actually has no idea what evolution IS, which seems to always be the case.
She rejects what she calls evolution completely, and she rejects the idea that dinosaurs might have evolved into birds (“macroevolution,” she might learn to call it someday if she doesn’t come to her senses first). The definition of evolution I was given in my college bio fill (and I’m still pissed such a course was being taught at the college level – I was expecting to be taught hard science, and instead I get a roomful of grown adults being taught to argue with creationists) was something like:
1. Organisms within a population differ from one another.
2. Many of the traits in which they differ are passed on from parent to offspring.
3. The rate at which different traits are passed on, and therefore the portion born with those traits, varies by suitability to the environment.
A creationist website (I can’t remember which) has a list of “arguments evolutionists should not use,” and among them is “natural selection is evolution,” basically putting their fingers in their ears at the above definition, much as Joyce is doing in the most recent strip. But I haven’t seen her contradict any of it, and indeed she does in the above strip seem to be endorsing it, objecting only to the word.
Did you miss the part about the sharp teeth? This is rejection not just of “what they call evolution”, but all parts of it. They argue that some animals have flat teeth and some have sharp teeth for no reason, because otherwise they might have to admit that not all animals originally ate plants.
Unless I’m much mistaken, we have no evidence that Joyce believes in even “micro”-evolution. (Her first response in tomorrow’s comic, about viruses, was to protest that they “aren’t even alive”, therefore whatever behaviors they exhibit are irrelevant. Only after that does she claim that viruses can adapt their behavior without evolving.)
Anyway. I’m all for the argument that a lot of people who claim to be against evolution don’t actually understand it enough to realize that they already accept some of its facets as true. But there ARE plenty of people out there who do NOT accept any of its facets as true, under the name “evolution” or any other, just as there are also Christians who fully believe in and embrace science without caveats, content to believe in a less literal interpretation of the Bible where God instigated the Big Bang or something like it.
If I were Willis, I’d be pretty dang exasperated too by all the people who come into my comic sections constantly to tell me that no one really holds the beliefs I grew up with and am still exposed to every day.
But you have just seen that she believes a flu virus can adapt. She only objects to calling this adaptation “evolution,” since in her mind “evolution” means “goo to you through the zoo,” or whatever. It’s not evolution to her until it’s either patently impossible (virus spontaneously producing a pig) or over a timescale she doesn’t believe in (Ediacaran proto-deuterostome’s line eventually producing a pig), basically.
Even that quiz doesn’t seem to totally reject evolution (I didn’t mention it because it’s not really relevant to Joyce) – not only is the statement that not all animals with sharp teeth eat meat technically true (fortunately, real scientists have other ways to verify such things), but the implication is that formerly herbivorous animals over time changed to a meat-based diet. Granted, there’s some sort of supernatural hocus pocus involved in this change, but if they didn’t believe that, they wouldn’t be theists, let alone creationists.
I don’t know what Willis’s sect did or didn’t believe, but Joyce has just made it clear she does believe viruses can evolve, although she doesn’t consider this “evolution,” and I don’t know of a single current creationist who tries to argue that life doesn’t evolve – indeed, for most of them, extremely rapid evolution (although they don’t realize how rapid it is because they measure by intuition) is used to explain how Noah’s ark fit every “kind.”
You are really, really grasping at straws here. You are literally saying, “Just because they say they reject evolution doesn’t mean they REALLY reject evolution! It isn’t fair to pretend they do!”
Do some young earth creationists draw imaginary lines through evolution, pretending that “micro” evolution and “macro” evolution are somehow different? Yes. We haven’t yet heard Joyce actually make that distinction. Not all young earth creationists do. Some just reject all of it, which is perfectly possible to do, just as it is perfectly possible to be a member of the Flat Earth Society.
I will reiterate: Just because these beliefs seem unreasonable does not mean people don’t hold them. It certainly doesn’t mean they SECRETLY believe the opposite of what they say they do.
“…but the implication is that formerly herbivorous animals over time changed to a meat-based diet. Granted, there’s some sort of supernatural hocus pocus involved in this change, but if they didn’t believe that, they wouldn’t be theists, let alone creationists.”
If we’re going to pretend God snapping his fingers and making some animals instantly carnivorous is a form of evolution, why even have this conversation? Why have any conversation about religion ever again? We all believe exactly the same thing, some of us are just too hung up on the details. Why, by that definition, everything in the Bible is evolution! It was evolution when Jesus came back from the dead, because that too is a “change” that occurred!
The immediate alternate explanation I found on Google is that carnivorous animals are a punishment for Adam, so that every time he sees one animal killing another he knows it’s all Eve’s his fault, but also “we don’t really know! life is a wonderful, mysterious mystery! perhaps someday we will be able to ask God :|a “, which I would be willing to bet is the more popular explanation given to children.
I won’t pretend to see how evolution, rapid or otherwise, can possibly account for Noah’s Ark fitting “every kind”, though I suppose I can take a guess (it didn’t really, but after the flood the life present on the boat rapidly evolved to our current level of complexity?). But seriously, that is an extremely nonliteral interpretation of the Bible, and again, there are plenty of people who adhere to a very literal one.
But they can’t! Because it contradicts itself! Well, yes. It contradicts itself a lot. There are multiple versions of each story and the supposedly-inerrant Book is full of translation errors and deliberate obfuscation. (The King James Bible and its attempt to make divorce acceptable being the most famous example, but by no means the only one.)
So what? Part of faith is inherently irrational. If it were perfectly rational, to paraphrase you, it wouldn’t be faith.
You seem too focused on the words used, and not the meaning they were intended to convey, and associations of concepts rather than the concepts themselves.
That they say they reject evolution only means they reject that for which they use the word evolution, which in most cases is a subset of what most of us use the word for. We haven’t heard Joyce draw a line in a sand between two forms of evolution only because she won’t acknowledge that anything she believes in should be called evolution. For instance, Kent Hovind says that he doesn’t like the term “microevolution” because it’s “misleading” (opposite to how it is) – Joyce simply hasn’t made that semantic concession. What she calls it doesn’t change what she believes, that viruses can evolve.
In short, I don’t think she secretly holds any beliefs. I think she holds exactly the beliefs she professes, and you’re confused as to what those beliefs are because she’s confused as to their expression. Now you and Dina are attacking beliefs she doesn’t hold because she speaks as though she does.
I don’t know how the authors of that test think the change from a plant-based diet to a meat-based diet manifested temporally. I’ve heard it said that it must have been well after the Flood (or too many species would have gone extinct), which would seem to imply it was gradual, but I can’t say what they believe. What I do know is that it’s certainly not a rejection of the concept of evolution, and to present it as such shows a dogmatic, all-or-nothing approach to science that lends credence to the idea of “evolutionism.”
I don’t know what you’re talking about with “contradiction.” I think Joyce may well (in fact, certainly does) hold self-contradictory beliefs, and I’m not arguing that there’s any belief she must hold based on non-contradiction, or any belief at all but the one she expresses: that viruses evolve. She’d never use that word, but that is the essence of what she believes. Pointing out, though, that she believes in something most people would correctly call evolution is a pointless semantic trick, since that which she calls evolution is a particular subset of evolution (and some other things, too), and those two different concepts are what’s important, not the meaningless flapping of meat meant to invoke them.
You mean that some creationists don’t deny the existence of evolution. Because most of them that you actually hear of do so. Every single one that I ever heard of or talked with, as a matter of fact.
And to come back to the comic: Joyce actually did say that she did not believe in evolution because the bible says all creatures were created by God the way they are. Not all in one sentence, true, but the combination of them amounts to that very statement.
Gotta correct my previous statement a little: There were actually two believers in intelligent design I’ve heard of that said that after creation, life evolved further. And there is in fact evolutionistic creationism (a subgroup of progressive creationism so to speak) that believes in evolution, but with God alone pulling the strings. Though there seems to be much discussion about how much of actual influence He takes.
These however are still quite a minority among creationists, at least when it comes to making their views public.
Did you not believe, for instance, that dogs were descended from wolves, or broccoli from wild cabbage? Just because you refused to call it “evolution” doesn’t mean you didn’t believe in it. That which we call a rose…
And the point is, although not consistent with reality, it’s internally consistent to accept some evolution but not common descent, and even to reserve the word specifically for what you reject (using some other word for the rest), so “if you don’t believe in evolution, whence nylonase?” isn’t really much of an argument.
No, really. There have been and are creationists who don’t believe the variety of life has ever changed, or that dinosaurs ever existed. They believe evidence to the contrary is all fake, like moon landing conspiracy theorists.
Again, just because you find it hard to believe such people exist doesn’t mean they don’t.
Quite a lot actually don’t believe that, no. And those are the kind that I’ve got most problems to understand. I mean, there is a good amount of clear and obvious evidence against that belief that happened in our very lifetime. Way closer as your two examples here.
I have to admit to getting to pull this one out on a fundamentalist friend of mine. The set-up was “You can’t prove that evolution [as a process] exists.” and I pulled out the old flu shot. Also was able to use it against someone who declared that mutation was ALWAYS harmful in nature, so random mutation would be selected against in a true natural selection environment.
I actually did not know this. I guess I just didn’t think about it much, and assumed that the immunity wore off. Which doesn’t make sense now that I am thinking about it, because there are plenty of vaccines that are effective more than a year.
But hey, now I know. And knowing is half the battle.
It’s a bit surprising to see the that the vast majority of commenters don’t see Dina as a jerkasaurus rex for her close-minded rudeness as well as so many hateful jabs at Joyce’s faith.
I’m also disappointed to see Dina’s character evolve (See what I did there?) from an awkward dinosaur fact spouting wallflower to someone who goes out of her way to slam people who don’t instantly agree with her own faith/worldviews.
That said, I love the “Rarrr!” poster featured in the shop- Fossilized dinosaur skeletons have always fascinated me. Every time that I visit the Disney’s Animal Kingdom park, I can’t help but to linger around the recreation of Sue much longer than most people would.
Hey Dina, dinosaurs rock, but that’s no reason to be a bigoted and intolerant jerk towards people with different beliefs than yours.
Classifying Dina’s remarks here as bigotry is so amazingly insulting to those who suffer real bigotry (Christians included). I approved this post only in the hopes that you don’t mean to be so awful, but are merely sheltered or uneducated in some way. Please don’t do this, whatever this thing you’re doing is.
Thanks for approving my thoughts on the comic, David. I certainly don’t appreciate being labeled as “uneducated” or “sheltered,” but I’m more than happy to share more about how revolting Dina’s attitude is.
Science claimed that global cooling was a problem before it was global warming.
Panda bears were once related to raccoons.
The human appendix was once considered useless.
Remember the statement: “according to the laws of physics, bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly?”
While I cheer on people who devote themselves to discovering incredible things about our universe, humanity doesn’t know squat in the big picture. We don’t know exactly why cats purr, but it’s a concrete fact that the last dinosaurs died out exactly 65 million years ago. National Geographic will revise its findings year after year in regards to new discoveries in biology, chemistry and physics, and people who ignorantly claimed how “Scientists say that bees shouldn’t be able to fly, so bees are freaks of nature!” should’ve noted that humanity’s grasp regarding the physics of flight were obviously wrong to begin with. (You know, since bumble bees have always been able to fly?)
Imagine if you will, that every species of shark on the planet went extinct before recorded history. The only fossil remains of sharks are jawbones and individual teeth. How would scientists explain these large carnivorous jaws? Would there be colorful images of massive ocean-dwelling, worm-like invertebrates depicted dragging plesiosaurs to the ocean’s depths in text books? Or would they simply admit that these disjointed jaws are the greatest mystery of the fossil records?
I believe that “science” is mankind’s futile attempts to explain and classify God’s creation. We’ve made huge strides, but we’ve barely begun to start to kinda-sorta scratch the surface of understanding creation and the world around us. But hey- That’s just my open mind way of thought for you!
If I choose to put my faith in God’s word (The Bible) over this month’s edition of Popular Science, that’s up to me. I just wouldn’t appreciate the verbal middle finger to my faith from someone I just greeted first thing in the morning.
I see you’ve ignored the whole insulting misuse of the word “bigotry” thing. You’ve seem to redefined it as “no one can tell me I’m wrong about anything,” which is the only crime being done here to you.
As for everything else, I recommend reading more. You’ve certainly got a few Talking Points here, but nothing that will make science quake in its boots. Folks may roll their eyes at you, I warn. Mostly, you don’t seem to understand what science is or how it works, or why certain things matter and what their relevance is. Again, education.
The biggest fallacy you make is one of False Choice. If someone badly recreates an animal from fossils, that doesn’t prove anything about religion. All it means is that someone badly recreated an animal from fossils. It no more proves Christianity than it does Buddhism or Islam. And no amount of Drawing Animals Wrong makes the Bible right. The Bible is full of fake stuff no matter many times a shark is redrawn. If evolution were somehow disproven, that doesn’t mean the Bible is right, it means some unknown third thing is right.
There is also the fallacy of False Equivalence. You suggest that getting a shark wrong is exactly the same as getting everything in science wrong, as if there were an equal amount of evidence for What A Prehistoric Animal Looked Like and the whole of, say, Gravity or Atomic Theory. It’s a convenient dismissal based on surface information rather than understanding why changes happen. You already made your decision whether science is dependable or not, and you’ve found a scapegoat. It’s intellectually dishonest.
My entire point is about how ignorant, rude and bigoted Dina is towards Joyce. I find Dina to be a repulsive character because of her one-track mentality and inability to tolerate alternate faiths who forces hers on others until they “give in” and exclaim “OK! Velociraptors had feathers! Whatever! Who cares!”
Other than Dina’s recent character development, I enjoy reading the strip and I’ve been nothing but respectful towards you David, so what’s up with the aggression? Just because I’m not cheering from the atheist section of the audience for a character who I find hypocritical and obnoxious, doesn’t mean that I don’t like your writing and artwork. Take it easy, man!
Absolutely none of those things listed in that link are bigotry. You don’t get to co-opt the terms of horrible oppression for being fired for not doing your job.
Nothing Dina has done is remotely as rude as your claim of bigotry for merely being told someone disagrees about a book. Bigotry hurts. You’re just pissy you’re being disagreed with, and are grabbing bigger words to describe this to hide yourself from scrutiny.
I’m pretty convinced you’re just an asshole now, so bye.
It’s because you’re taking a word with a very serious meaning and adapting it to fit your persecution complex. It’s not bigotry to get fired from a science teaching job if you fail to teach science.
But this one time, there was a hospital that fired me because I was treating patients with statistically nonexistent concentrations of wormwood instead of medicine! Are you telling me that wasn’t anti-homeopathic bigotry?
No, it still wouldn’t be bigotry. It would just be super-mysterious. “Homeopathy is one of our approved treatments, but if you use it we will fire you! Because of… reasons!”>
I’m just going to point out that a lot of your points are worded how someone unfamiliar with the respective field of science would state it, and really shows a misunderstanding of how science works. Specifically, I would be shocked to hear a physicist say ‘It should be impossible for bees to fly according to Physics.’ Is it completely understood? No. Does it happen? Yes. I find it much more likely that a physicist would say ‘The current ideas on flight are unable to explain how bees can fly, though according to this theory blah blah blah…’
Science is all about building on knowledge. The final goal may be to learn how the universe works, but only those with huge egos (which is unfortunately more common than it should be) ever think we have everything figured out. There’s always something else to be looked at, and always the possibility of new information coming to light.
Dina may be slightly rude, but Joyce hasn’t exactly been on her best behavior during her conversations with Dina; that doesn’t necessarily excuse them, but it’s important to point out faults to both sides, not just the one you favor. The difference is that Joyce’s arguments haven’t held up well against Dina’s; if I remember right, Joyce basically chose to change the subject last time, and this time her only defense (admittedly, so far) is yelling “That’s totally different!” So it’s not really that Dina is being ‘closed-minded’ as much as Joyce hasn’t provided any compelling evidence to challenge Dina’s worldview in the same way.
Anyhow, there’s a huge amount of other things that could be said, but I’ve spent way more time than I meant writing here.
The flight of the bumblebee is fully understood and explained by science, and has been for a very long time.
The thing about hoe bumblebees being unable to fly is based on something one entomologist said. Once. At a dinner party. In nineteen-goddamn-thirty-fucking-four. (Which is, in case you want to do the math, was seventy-nine fucking years ago.)
It was immediately pounced on by people espousing this bullshit “nobody really knows anything about anything” worldview and has been repeated, ad nausium, for seventy-nine motherfucking years.
God, it sounds like the ONE article that was disproven, apologized for, and shown to have been faked that led to the still-existent belief that vaccines cause autism.
I’ll have to do some investigating on that; it’s not really something I’ve given much thought to before, honestly, but it’s cool to know a bit more history about it.
I still stand by what I said, though; even if it were unexplained, I would be surprised to hear it put that way by a (good) physicist because it completely misses the concepts of (good) science. (I wish I didn’t have to put ‘good’ there and it was implicit, but there’s a lot of ‘not good’ science and scientists out there giving the rest a bad name).
Since you’ve been banned, obviously this won’t be of much interest to you BUT FOR EVERYONE ELSE
the “bees can’t fly” thing is nonsense.
Literally nonsense. It is based on a misunderstanding of a statement from 1934, and when people first started repeating it to their friends, it was a hilarious joke, not something to be taken seriously.
The book is by Antoine Magnan, who discussed a mathematical equation by Andre Sainte-Lague, an engineer. The equation proved that the maximum lift for an aircraft’s wings could not be achieved at equivalent speeds of a bee. In other words, an airplane the size of a bee, moving as slowly as a bee, could not fly. Although this did not mean a bee can’t fly (which after all does not have stationary wings like the posited teency aircraft), nevertheless the idea that Magnan’s book said bees oughtn’t be able to fly began to spread.
“See, a lot of tiny changes have been made with little controversy and backed up by evidence. Therefore, we should be free to ignore the entire foundation of modern biology based on no evidence at all.”
” Science claimed that global cooling was a problem before it was global warming.”
No it didn’t. There was never a scientific consensus about global cooling like the one about global warming. There was some science fiction writers and journalists in the 1970s, and maybe a few worried scientists. Global warming due to CO2 was predicted by in the 1800s by Arrhenius.
“Panda bears were once related to raccoons.”
a) So? Your arguments seem to be “scientists were wrong about anything ever, therefore it’s perfectly reasonable to be a Creationist who denies massive scientific consensus”. This is invalid.
b) From what I see, there was long debate about whether giant pandas were closer to bears or raccoons, because they’re like both; genetic evidence seems to have tipped it to bears. Ironically, red pandas are closer to raccoons, and not particularly related to giant pandas.
Science does change with new evidence, yes. This is why it’s far more accurate than people who cling to some translation of a millennia old anthology that’s more about history and behavior than anything like science. Joyce, and her biology textbooks, are simply wrong.
“Science claimed that global cooling was a problem before it was global warming.”
Myth.
That was a very,very small (2 I think) papers in the early 70s, verses thousands backing global warming with essentially every weather authority in the world now agreeing with it.
Theres always disagreement in science – thats what makes it science. But you cant pick the minority that supports a view and say its equal to the vaste majority that dont.
There is a general belief we are due for another ice age – based purely on historic data. That was probably what the early papers was based on.
But no evidence today supports that as happening now.
It SHOULD be getting colder, but it isnt.
Also, fyi, global warming means overall increase and has nothing to do with localized effects. So its better to call it “climate change” to save confusion.
One problem. Evolution is not a belief, it is established, documented fact. The theory of evolution is our current, best understanding of how it works.
Yeah, it’s actually really difficult to have faith in evolution, because it’s like having faith that you’re not a wombat. Definitions of “faith” vary, but I typically understand it to be unjustified belief. Believing in evolution as justified as believing that the moon is not a tampograph on the dome of the sky. (Hint: that’s a pretty sure thing.)
When people speak of science as a “faith” or “worldview”. I have a hard time taking them seriously.
Frankly, if your faith demands that you close your eyes to established facts, you don’t belong at an institute of higher learning anyway. If she had been taking jabs at her views on economics, her views on politics, her views on existentialism, or her views on GI Joe, I doubt you would care. Why do her views on biology and religion warrant special treatment? It’s an idea, like any other and is therefore subject to criticism.
I notice how you completely fail to point out why Dina is close-minded or rude for simply and in a calm way pointing out a flaw in Joyce’s previous statements. And really, the only insult that could arise here is a self made one by Joyce.
Aight, i don’t presume to be the guy whos gonna come into a conversation and change everyone’s point of view all at once, but i would like to say something.
While i feel that the original poster, whom i can only assume is being prevented from replying by our wonderful host, Willis, is wrong in his evaluation of both Dina, and the situation presented in this strip, i DO feel that he is entitled, not only to have an opinion, but to state it as well.
I do NOT feel like he has a complete grasp on either the implications of his words, or the full meaning of “certain terminology” that he used, but this situation was not handled correctly by any of the parties.
Willis, instead of calling him out for being rude and insulting to a creation of yours, you should have instead explained to him what the true meaning, as you see it, of what he said was, and proven how it does not apply. he has a right to his opinion just as you have a right to defend your own, and i dont presume to tell you how to run your comic, or its comments section, but the way you instead handled this situation lost you some of the respect i had for you, not that i assume that it means much to you. you are a wonderful cartoonist and a very bright man, and i thoroughly enjoy much of the strips you did/are doing, but this was not handled correctly.
to the original poster, as i said before i do feel that you are entitled to an opinion, and i do see your point of view, however i disagree about Dina, while she is just as set in her beliefs as Joyce, she is not meaning to be insulting or bigoted as you have said. instead she was making what in her mind is a simple, obvious truth, not a shot, nor a jab. she did not go out of her way to make it. Dina merely pointed out a conflict in statements and beliefs that Joyce is ALL TO HAPPY to share with EVERYONE around her, willing or not. i have never once seen Dina work with such fervor to convince someone that dinosaurs existed, or how they lived/looked, as Joyce goes about on a near-daily basis. by the same token, i do not feel that Joyce is all that bigoted or … zealous (not quite the word im looking for) as some people might make her seem, and certainly not as much as you made Dina sound with your comment.
We are all human here, ladies and gents, and as such we will all make mistakes. the proper way to deal with the mistakes that each other makes is not to yell at them, or insult them, for making the mistake, but rather to civilly attempt to explain their wrong doings. now i am certain that some of you will comb through my statement for mistakes, be they grammatical or in my reasoning, and i am equally certain that some of you will find, and call me out for these mistakes, i do not claim to be perfect, i am simply stating my opinion.
Just for fun (not that im trolling) my personal belief is that it is not for man to know fully the ways of god. i believe (loosely) in the bible, but “more like guidelines than actual rules.” i believe that someone (thing) created everything from the smallest atomic structure (quarks, sub quarks whatever the current “building block of the universe” is) to the entire universe itself. i also believe that Living Beings have a “soul,” essence, pick your favorite term. that carries on after death, be it to re-enter the pool of available souls or to a “heaven.” the bible states that it took 7 days for God to create the universe. okay? cool. what if 1 day to god is 400 million years to man? the Bible states that god created all living things, and Man in his image. who is to say what god looks like? call me weak in faith or dumb to science, i cannot look out at the world, or back and the coincidences that led me to where i am today without thinking that there is someone, somewhere, who has a plan and is looking out for us, but nor can i look at the poor, helpless children in third world countries and find a reason for them to be suffering as they do. the ways of god are not for man to know, however i do feel that we have a right as his creations to be curious. after all he created us as equals.
this is just my personal beliefs, and i know every one of you has some differing viewpoint to mine. but ive spent many a long hour sunday morning in the Catholic church i was brought up in wondering about the mysteries of the world, and ive spent many long long hours researching and reading and studying other peoples works, and beliefs, and this is what ive decided makes the most sense to me. feel free to reply with your own differing or similar beliefs, but i wont argue any of these points with you all. my faith is not up for debate be you Creationist or Evolutionist, for i am both.
You have the right to your opinion, but not to your own facts. If you don’t want your opinion to ever be challenged, a good first step is not to insist other people join you in your opinion, or to imply that THEIR opinion is unfair / stupid / “bigotry”.
Once you do either of those to things, your opinion ceases to be just “your opinion”, and other people have the right — and may in fact feel obligated — to respond to it with their own opinions.
So yes, a Creationist can come in here and call Dina a closed-minded bigot and claim that scientists are arrogant fools who can’t even explain why bees fly! But other people can also respond to that, and since the dialogue was NOT, despite the poster’s claims, begun in a civil tone — and may be triggering for those of us who are personally affected by these exact same beliefs in real life (people who think the Bible is inerrant won’t let ME get married, for example!) — not all of those responses will be super polite.
It is not up to me to make sure that guy’s beliefs can stand up to scrutiny. It’s up to him to either not foist them on me or deal with the fact that his beliefs are not well-supported by objectively-observed reality. They are his personal beliefs, and he can either keep them that way — personal — or make them a matter of public debate by loudly announcing them in a condescending fashion on a public forum.
And no, for the record, Joyce was no better with Dina: just as she does in the above comic, she laughingly rolled her eyes at dinosaur-related scientific fact, and Dina responded with increasing frustration at Joyce’s illogical arguments.
And also, Willis actually didn’t shut the guy down for being a religious person or expressing his distaste for Dina, if you’ll recall. He shut the guy down for repeatedly and belligerently insisting that Christians experience persecution and bigotry. Which is gross and offensive, as well as tremendously delusional.
For example: I am being snippy with you. That is not, not, NOT the same thing as oppressing you, and when someone compares having their feelings hurt to the fact that I can’t get married because too many of the people in power think I’m disgusting and that my rights should be subject to popular vote — well, I’m afraid I tend to get snippy.
(Btw, what you are doing is called “tone policing” under these circumstances, feel free to look it up.)
Also, Willis hasn’t banned Zenek–he’s free to come back and continue to regale us all with his opinions to his heart’s content. He hasn’t chosen to, but that’s on him.
Forgive me, i did not intend to come off as tone policing, i am not saying that either of of these parties is correct in their judgement, or incorrect in their belief, i am not refuting any argument at all in fact. nor am i asking that their position/argument be discarded because they didn’t say it nicely. i was intending to come into the argument as an impartial third party and attempt to help each side see a little bit of the others point of view. this is not the first time i have taken this stance. my best friend in the world is Atheistic, my parents are VERY christian, for example.
as far as your rights for marriage go, i personally have no stance on the subject other than this: marriage is a promise, be it official or not, anyone can go out, purchase a ring, and say i do. true love will always triumph. this is something ive believed for many many years, and it takes true love to stay together in the face of not only sickness, hard times, and financial trouble, but adversity and ridicule from the public as well.
Oh, a lot of what I said was about the original commentator, not you, and I meant the general you when I was talking about oppression, etc. I also think tone policing is something people can do by accident — that an emotional delivery can somehow detract from your rightness in an argument is drilled into us all in school when we are first taught to debate, but in the real world we have to unlearn that or else risk derailing important conversations or requiring that victims who are in pain bend over backwards to respect not only the feelings of the people they are talking to but also of anyone who might conceivably overhear them. And in that situation it’s important to take a step back and remember what’s really important. Miss Manners has no place in a discussion between the oppressed and the oppressor, and she certainly shouldn’t be invoked to protect the latter from the former.
I’m going off on a big ole tangent here, but basically someone with privilege — a Christian in this case — is always going to have a huge advantage in the “staying cool” event. Because for them, religious oppression is something they’ve read about and literally equate to being wished Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas — so it is easy for them to take a breath and put aside their grumpy feelings on the matter, assuming a very pseudo-polite tone (pseudo because they are usually super condescending about it) and remaining calm and rational while saying things like, “I understand your feelings, but I believe in traditional marriage :|a”, either not realizing or not caring that what they are really saying is, “I think my personal religious beliefs are much more important than your civil rights. *I* should get to decide whether *you* have them.”
Then, because what they’ve said is enormously offensive but didn’t “resort to name calling”, they get to pretend they’ve been nothing but nice and that anyone who so much as raises their voice in response is not only being irrational and rude and ~closed-minded~ — they’re my beliefs! why are you acting like they affect you??? — BUT ALSO SOMEHOW A DISCREDIT TO THEIR POSITION. “I might agree with you if only you hadn’t called me ignorant! Calm down, you’re just making yourself and everyone who agrees with you look bad!” And…
Okay, I think I’m done. Whoof. It’s a really frustrating pattern, but I hope all of this was at least interesting for someone to read.
I thought the need for annual flu shots wasn’t because of evolution but because different strains of influenza tend to come and go in cycles and a different strain will be most prevalent in different years?
This is not to pretend evolution doesn’t happen, of course.
I always assumed it was because we needed annual injections to keep the levels of the antibiotic in our system appropriate, a “boost” to the original shot we get, not a completely different shot every year. Hence, “booster” shots. But your example is probably correct too.
Aaaagh.
1) antibiotics are chemicals that kill bacteria. Like penicillin and vancomycin. Bacteria are good at evolving resistance to them. But this is irrelevant to viruses.
2) vaccines prime our immune systems with information about a target — usually viruses, though sometimes bacteria or toxins — ideally giving use the same immunity we get from being sick. The immune system has encountered something, knows it is a danger, and can kill it again much more rapidly. ‘how’ is complicated, and happens via something like internal evolution, but basically after the disease or vaccination you have a lot more white blood cells that are ‘looking’ for such threats. No antibiotic is involved. If the immune system ‘forgets’ then we give booster shots to prime it again. Tetanus shots are every 10 years.
We do not get flu shots as boosters. We get flu shots because flu viruses keep changing rapidly, swapping major components of their genes every year in pigs and chickens in China, so new strains break out every year. Might your vaccine from five years ago protect against this year’s strain? Maybe, but who’s tracking that? Just get a shot.
There are a couple of other anti- words: antigen, a protein feature that our immune system latches onto, and which is sometimes used in a vaccine, and antibodies, chemicals that some white blood cells make to neutralize virus particles or toxins. (Other white blood cells kill our own infected cells, based on their presenting antigen on their surface; others kill our cells for not presenting anything. Very totalitarian.)
Believing in god isnt a problem, the problem is when you stop believing in people.
If you believe the world is just a few thousand years old; that isnt faith, thats lack of faith. Lack of faith in the hundreds of thousands of geologists,physists,astrolists etc that have studied their whole lives telling you otherwise.
If you dont believe in evolution its the same; you are saying the people LOOKING at the whole world are lying. You are saying these people putting effort and huge amount of time into understanding the world are all useless.
By all means believe in a god. Just dont stop believing in the people. Its grossly insulting.
THE DEFINITION of faith is believing in something without proof. Those hundreds of thousands of geologists, physicists, astrologists and scientists that have studied their wholes lives don’t want your faith. They want you to look at their work with scrutiny and logic. They don’t want you to give them the same benefit of the doubt you give your priest, pastor or whatever.
To be fair, faith can be used as in (religious) belief or as in trust(ing a person). And even the phrase “believing in the people” goes more towards the second.
Uhh, science gets more intricate and complex every year as new discoveries are made. Like it or not, me being the guy who looks at someone’s findings without having devoted my life to the subject IS acting on faith. I’d have no way to know how to evaluate anyone’s results because I have a layman’s understanding of the concepts.
I’ll right away seize your rss feed as I can not in finding your e-mail subscription link or e-newsletter service. Do you’ve any?
Please let me recognize so that I could subscribe. Thanks.
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Her head’s gonna ‘splode soon. Aaaany minute now…
As soon as the syringe is stuck, the reaction begins.
Like filling an egg with milk.
Like replacing sperm with sesame seeds.
Oooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Agreed. Sweet Bejesus.
Bee Jeesus would be more stingy than sweet. Appropriately enough.
But… but…
Honey is sweet!
Sesame seeds….. and imagine if they sprouted.
The shot will add to her volume, causing her to burst. Like the butterfly that topples the stack of precariously placed objects.
MY question is, HOW DO THEY GET THEM FREE???!!!
Here on MY campus, we have to pay $30 and go across the street to CVS to get ours. And no one does.
(Too many people in my family have gotten violently ill from the shots, so I don’t get them out of fear. I’m surprisingly resistant to a lot of the colds and stuff that go around, and it helps that I spend a lot of time in my room and have no roommate.)
Oh Dina.
Oh Dina, I love you.
Dat sass.
It’s not sass, it’s a genuine question. From Mike, it’d be sass. From Dina, I think she’s just confused, and not trying to call Joyce a hypocrite.
And Dina gets off a good one. Work hard now Joyce.
Nice avatar for that comment too
I think Joyce has an arch-enemy now
FIGHT TO THE DEATH
Not really, it just the way the characters are written here.
Joyce would have likely quoted Matt 5:44-46 to Dina’s copmment in the real world.
And Dina would have blinked a few times and asked what that had to do with anything.
Well PEOPLE don’t evolve, only strains of simple organisms DURR
Literally have had med students tell me “I only believe in MICROevolution, not MACROevolution”
yeah well I only believe in gravity for rocky planets, not gas giants
It is far easier for single cell creatures to evolve as they live short lives and they can survive mutations more often.
Ironically, because of the speed that bacteria evolve, microbiologists thought that they may evolve through lemarkian evolution until like the 60s.
It is possible for bacteria to exhibit a sort of Lamarkian inheritance, especially wrt antibiotic resistance, where a bacteria gains a plasmid through transformation and passes it on to daughter cells.
We’re doomed if they get the one that lets you shoot bees.
Or control Big Daddies.
I’m not sure if bacterial transformation can be counted as Lamarkian evolution…
Although there are some scientists who are starting to link things like epigenetics to Larmarkism
This is relevant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
Lamarkian inheritance is the one saying that the kids of amputees should be born with missing limbs too, isn’t it? I mean, if you extrapolate.
Not missing, per se. Simple day-to-day observation would disprove that handily, given that one-armed parents don’t have exclusively one-armed children.
Lamarkian inheritance would be something like “If the father lost his right arm, his children would be left-handed” and stuff like that. Changes to the parents influence the children, but aren’t necessarily recreated in their entirely.
Also, please forgive replying two years later, I just felt this comment should have an answer for my fellow travelers of the Archive Binge.
Appreciated.
Indeed.
Silly Dina, everybody knows that viruses are an invention of Satan, like evolution, therefore viruses must evolve cos Satan is a dick. 😛
There’s nothing quite as satisfying as a stumped Joyce.
I dunno, seeing Ryan getting beat by the bat was pretty satisfying.
She once stumped me when I entertained a thought experiment in my head
That was an interesting evening. Losing a religious argument to a figment of my imagination made to act like DoA!Joyce
Does that mean vaccines can defeat Satan?
God is the vaccine of Satan, obviously.
Exactly, Jesus died for our sins cos only like in vaccines, only the surface proteins from a dead God can fight the Sin infection… see, NOW THAT’S SCIENCE!
So what about infection vaccines? A lesser evil prevents a greater one? (I’m referring to say, small pox and cowpox. Contracting cowpox makes you more resilient to smallpox.)
According to the Hygiene Hypothesis, the fact that we are over-cleaning/sanitising ourselves and our homes means that we are not immunising ourselves with smaller weaker infections like we used to.
While at the same time over-exposing germs to anti-bacterial agents that kill “99.999% of household germs”, leaving .0001% of them immune. Not to mention the issues with anti-bacterial solutions (which kill the good germs too) entering the environment downstream of our drains.
Seriously, why isn’t that shit illegal yet? At least to common consumers. No one who isn’t about to do open-heart surgery should be messing around with it.
/rant.
Relevant to this: Constant rising number of cases of allergies.
Worth reading on this very subject is the poem “Reading Myth to Kindergarteners.” I cannot offhand remember the author, but I first read it in one of the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series, quite worth tracking down, and I would, if I didn’t have a terribly early morning. The text is:
Today I read them the story of Persephone and Hades,
the telling of it brief, a child’s version of the tale.
I am beginning to think of each story the way
a doctor thinks of vaccination; part of my task
to see they’ve had their shots,
these small doses of stunning loss,
seeds of grief planted early so that later,
when their own lives bear down on them,
they will remember these tales,
recall how, on first hearing this one,
they held their breath and sat,
unmoving and absolutely silent in their chairs,
stricken by what the flowers and birds
say to Demeter in her sorrow:
Gone, gone. Persephone
is gone.
No, Vaccine types have the advantage against Virus types and Virus types have the advantage against Data types and Data types have the advantage against Vaccine types.
Good thing I packed my Battle Chips!
Viruses don’t evolve, they digivolve.
Devimon was a Virus-type, though.
I love you.
Why, thank you. I never really had people saying that to me.:)
That’s why we have the internet 😉
Sarah is basically me right now.
Same here!
Huh. Here I thought Joyce would reject anything relating to science.
Stupid me. Back to the foot in my mouth from Friday’s SP!…
My parents were totes into me being into science when I was a kid, despite rejecting evolution. I don’t understand it, either, in retrospect. Science went into different boxes depending on what it was specifically about.
Science is good, unless people perform tests to collect evidence that allows them to draw conclusions that disprove my hypothesis, in which case Science is bad.
To me, Science is good as long that it helps humanity and the world in general and if it help us to get one step closer to Super Robots.
And Dinosaur DNA merged with Technology.
Because SCIENCE.
Super DINOSAUR Robots.
We all happy with that, or are we going to have to get into an argument over whether or not they have robotic feathers?
Super Dinosaur Robots? You mean the Dinosaur Empire’sMechasaurus?
No. Dinobots!
Are we talking the bad English type of Dinobots or the honor-bound type of Dinobots?
But Mechasarus are cool. It’s dinosaurs with mechanical parts.
only because Scientists want to be GOD!!!!
They aren’t already?
There is only one God. And his name is Lemmy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsggg1vQELc
no, not because SCIENCE, because LAZERRAPTORS!!!!!
My mother loves watching nature/sciene programs but whenever they talk about evolution or the words “millions of years ago” she loses her shit and yells at the TV.
That just…
Wow…
nd if the show keeps on mentioning those words, she will rant either about how ‘those deluded scientists’ always denying that God exists or how the Devil has bamboozled so many people into damnation with his ‘EVILution’, I try to make it seem that I’m listening while tuning her out.
It’s not even the fact she thinks that the millions of years thing is wrong that baffles me. That’s common enough that, even though I know it’s stupid, it doesn’t faze me anymore. It’s the fact that she keeps watching those shows even though she knows they’ll include it. It’s like if you hate chocolate (and if you do, you’re a monster), but you keep eating chocolate chip cookies every time you see them, then complain about how horrible they taste! IT’S YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT FOR EATING THE COOKIES IN THE FIRST PLACE!
It’s like she keeps putting her hand on the stove and yelling at it for burning her.
She likes all the other aspects of nature/sceince shows, she just wishes that they don’t mention that pesky evolution/millions of years stuff anymore if not credit God for it.
I prefer the cookie simile. Science is delicious and sugary, not painful and burning… actually, I think it’s usually closer to the latter case, since some of its greatest accomplishments come during wartime. Never mind.
O_O *blink blink*
What I really don’t get it with a lot of people (on both sides of this argument) is just how they came to the ridiculous conclusion that believing in God and believing in evolution are mutually exclusive.
Darwin was a theologist with strong faith for crying out loud! Just to name an example.
While I agree with the sentiment, Darwin was not a man with ‘strong faith’. See one of his letters at the link.
A letter which was written less than three years before his death in a time where he was known to doubt, true. But as he says in that very letter himself: Even in his most severe crises of faith, he still would fully and without doubt believe in the existence of God. If you follow his state of mind over time, as seen in personal correspondence and notes, you will see that he neither doubted God nor Christ. Just what the church said about certain things, quite understandable since it contradicted his observations, and how much actual direct influence the former took in nature.
Sorry if I’m somewhat trying to ‘cover my tracks’ here, so to speak.
Wow…My mom probably would have too, but she has the “good sense” to avoid science shows.
My grandfather bought me a model dinosaur kit, and my grandmother leaned over and whispered that “of course you know dinosaur bones were left by god to test our faith”.
So your grandmother worshiped Loki? 😉
David, its about “compartmentalization”. You wrote a comic about it a week and a half ago!
Oh, Dina. You are so perfect. I’d hug you, but I worry about confusing you.
It would be a good confusion.
It looks like Joyce’s tits are having trouble keeping calm.
Well, that takes the term “calm your tits” to a whole new level.
She didn’t heed Joe’s warning.
Quick, hold on to them. That will keep them from running wild.
Trust me, I’m a doctor.
Your avatar makes this so awesome.
The answer is obvious, her sweater-puppies need a chance to come out for air. 😀
I didn’t even really notice the t-shirt until your comment.
Well, at least you can now claim that you did look in the eyes. (Of her shirt.)
Oh Dina, I didn’t think it was possible to love you more
Flu shots….I’m not a big believer. The last time I had the flu was when I was very, very young (I’m 38 now). I never get the shot. I’m pretty sure it will take me getting the flu to actually consider it the following flu season.
Perhaps when I become one of those really old “at risk” people, I’ll take another look at it. Of course, by then I assume the flu virus will have mutated into some invincible super-virus, decimating 99% of the world’s population…
It will reduce 99% of the world’s population by on tenth?
Decimating does not mean reducing by a tenth, despite how it sounds. It means: “Kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of”.
I imagine the root word is closer to “leave only a tenth”.
It’s a case of semantic drift–
in ancient Rome, it referred to losing 10% or more of your troops in battle, which was considered an unacceptably high butcher’s bill. (A legion could also be decimated as a punishment for insubordination or cowardice – every tenth man executed at random.) Eventually it just came to mean any loss or destruction which could not be easily recovered from, then it started getting mixed up with “devastated” and it lost its original meaning entirely for most folks.
Actually, it… literally does. Etymology! Used to be used in reference to tithes and the Roman practice of punishment by killing one in every ten.
Language drift’s made it synonymous with the nonspecific version, but if you’re talking numbers, it’s by one tenth, not to one tenth, that’s the common term.
Heh, oh you guys are so predictable sometimes. Even as I wrote that post I thought, “They’re going to scrutinize my use of the word ‘decimate.'” =P
So rare I run into another Wondermark! reader. I salute you.
You are not alone. 😉 I think there’s a fair amount of us here, actually…
Besides, the flu shots might be their way of injecting someone else’s DNA into you so they could make another Batman or something like that.
Or worse, an army of Uwe Bolls! *Horror*
I…wu..wha…
*just covers in a corner, weeping*
I’d totally get my flu shot if it turned me into Batman.
Not you, it’ll just replace your sperm so that your children will have otherwise biologically-impossible black hair and one of them will grow up to be Teen Batman.
And then you get shot…
heh, wanting to be batman is akin to wanting your parents to die.
Also having no true life aside from carrying an abject incompetent justice system every single day, being the subject of some psychopath’s obsession that borders on the homoerotic, having to not only put yourself through crap that makes being stationed in Iraq look good but thrive on it, at least two of your nemesises being people you once thought were your friends, and don’t forget all that effort in making your admiring helpers feel unappreciated.
It also means you eventually want to have a son that dies when being your sidekick in crime-fighting, causing you a great deal of psychological guilt for bringing about your own son’s death, albeit indirectly.
It’s grat that you don’t get effected by the flu, but getting the shot is more about helping those around you not get the flu from you.
Damn, I feel like a bad person now. I get the flu every year and just suck it up for a week rather than bothering with a shot.
Sorry people around me. Maybe I should stop treating it like a slightly crappier version of a cold.
If you are getting the flu. I have no idea about your case, but it is remarkable how may people think they have the flu, but have either a worse than usual cold (rinovirus), or “stomach flu” (gastroenteritis, most often caused by the norovirus family).
Well it generally feels like a cold except with more fatigue, more of a fever, and less nasal congestion (primarily a dry cough), with the addition of a day or two of vomiting. And generally the fatigue and fever will last for a little while after the rest has gone. The cough has also lasted up to a month a few times, as well.
Yeah, that sounds like the real to me (not a doctor!). With some secondary infection in the lungs those times.
I will sweep in here with my “not a real doctor but married to one” and say that no, “like a bad cold” is not the flu. That’s just a bad cold. Which is fine. Bad colds are bad. But the flu is something else. The flu knocks you out. The flu leaves you with a massive temperature, bed-ridden (and not in a “I get to stay in bed and play video-games” sort of way, it leaves you bed-ridden in a “I have no idea what time or day of the week it is oh god what is going on”), and completely destroyed. Influenza kills. Influenza is a really, really serious issue. It is not something you “suck up” and carry on your day with.
You are getting a cold every year. A serious cold, maybe, but a cold.
(My wife’s rant, and indeed the rant of a lot of doctor’s, would be about the escalation of illnesses seriousness in everyday talk. So “I have the sniffles” becomes “I have a cold”, “I have a cold” becomes “I have the flu” and “I have the flu” becomes “I’m infected with super-cancer”. A cold by itself can be pretty bad. It can knock you out. But the flu is a disease that pretty much everyone claims to have had and yet more won’t. When you’ve had the flu, you know.)
Okay, but also no.
1) You can be a carrier without “having” the flu. This person being a carrier is much more the topic of conversation.
2) You CAN come down with a MILD case of the flu. I don’t know why your wife would claim you can’t.
I mean I understand being annoyed that people exaggerate their health problems and I’m sure your wife has to deal with loads of people that have WebMD’d their cold into African Sleeping Sickness, but it’s not relevant to this particular conversation.
Li is correct. An epidemiologist or virologist rant would be to explain that subclinical infections are common with influenza (meaning the infected person shows no symptoms) and that the severity of the visible infections varies from mild to severe to developing life-threatening complications. The severity and mix of symptoms really depends on the person.
Sounds like someone I knew once. Our entire household came down with something really nasty about a week after a wedding we all (and her) attended, and when we mentioned it in passing, she exclaimed, “Oh, maybe you got it from me. I came down with the Norwalk virus two weeks ago, but I just medicated up real good so I could come along.”
Of course, we were horrified. “What the hell were you doing coming to a wedding with the bloody Norwalk virus?!?!” we politely inquired.
“Oh, is it a bad thing? I thought it just meant like a really bad cold, so that’s what I called it,” she explained.
*Facepalm*
Sorry, I don’t think I explained myself correctly there, so I apologise for that. I didn’t mean to say tha the flu ALWAYS knocks you out. Or that you can’t carry it without showing symptoms. I meant to say that in a lot of cases, people say that they have the flu when they have a cold, and taking all the flu vaccinations in the world won’t prevent you getting a cold. This can also lead to people assuming that flu vaccinations don’t do anything even though the disease they’ve ended up getting is completely different than the one they’ve been vacinated against.
So it was more a rant about people filing all these diseases under the term “flu” when they’re actually a massive variety of different diseases, and that leading to further errosion in people’s belief of the effectiveness of vacinations.
LiamKav – ah, gotcha. Yeah people often use “flu” way too often. There are hundreds of viruses that cause the same/related set of upper respiratory symptoms.
Yeah sure…try and make me feel like the bad guy. You don’t work for any of the flu vaccine companies do you? =P
Well, if I’m getting the flu and not being affected by it, then I must be damn near invincible because it’s been YEARS since I’ve had anything even close to flu-like symptoms.
I’m sure barely anyone is reading these comments anymore, but I’ll post one more after reading more of the responses to my original comment.
1. Now I’m wondering if I’ve EVER had the flu. When I said I haven’t since I was very young, I said that because I remember being sick and throwing up when I was young. However, I don’t remember ever being knocked out for more than a day or two from it, so it probably wasn’t the flu.
2. People getting the flu from “people like me.” Ok, so I can be a carrier and not have flu symptoms. That’s all well and good and something I didn’t really think about originally. However, does getting a flu vaccine put a magic forcefield around me so that even if I touch a surface or shake hands with someone who has the flu, those germs will just bounce off of me and I won’t “carry” them with me? I somehow doubt it.
3. I’m sorry, but I do my best to keep this type of stuff out of my body. Everything from flu vaccines down to aspirin. I see enough pill-popping in people of all ages, and while it seems to be inevitable as you get older, I will continue to try and prolong it beginning for as long as I can.
So, steer clear of me if you see me walking down the street lest I be an awful carrier of the plague…
1) Hoping this is a jole and treating it as one.
2) Yes, it really does help. Seriously. Even on the simplest level, you will obviously sneeze on and around people less if you do not come down with the flu, but yes. Just yes.
3) I agree with this sentiment for everything except flu shots, because flu shots strengthen your immune system through exposure to bugs. There is no downside. You are not medicating yourself in any way or contributing to a “super flu”, promise. This is not like antibiotics.
I would extend point 3 from “flu shots” to “all vaccinations”. Antibiotics and the like kill diseases. Vaccinations teach your body how to kill the disease by itself, therefore making your immune system stronger. If you get an infection that you then treat with antibiotics, you can get it again pretty quickly. If you get a vaccination, your are extremely unlikely to get that disease for YEARS, because your body knows how to deal with it.
(yeah, I know that viruses and bacteria are different. I was just trying to simplify.)
Hey, I appreciate the backup. 🙂
I was trying to think of a metaphor along the lines of “vaccinations are like learning to swim in a pool before you go in the ocean. They don’t weaken your ability to swim. They make is stronger is a safe way”, but I can’t stop it from sounding clunky.
My father is obsessed with getting flu shots, but then I gave him the flu this winter, so I think it’s a matter of luck as to their effectiveness.
If a strain starts going around that wasn’t prepared for…people are still going to get sick.
On one hand, I’ve now had the flu two Christmases in a row. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure getting a flu shot this past winter wouldn’t have kept me from getting the flu, so…meh.
Even with the correct strains, the effectiveness fairly limited in healthy adults, though certainly better than nothing.
Also, a lot of people think they’ve had the flu when they’ve had something else. As I will properly end up ranting at a lot of comments this week, there’s a hell of a difference between a serious cold and influenza.
Generally, to head off incorrect mis-self-diagnosis, I call a stomach bug ‘the flu’ (due to growing up calling it that) and the actual flu influenza, keeping in mind that they are completely different
That’s not how virii change.
(Evolution gets a bit iffy when you realize that virii aren’t actually, you know, alive, according to the common definition of life)
I don’t want to single you out here because a lot of people in this thread have been doing this, but having the tiniest, barest idea of how evolution sort of works and then making proclamations about it makes you sound like the senator who says the internet is a series of tubes to anyone with a biology background.
I’m just going to leave this link here, because Dr Crislip says it so much better than I can. I will grant that this article is aimed at health care workers, but it holds true for anyone, really. Especially if you come in contact with people who are very young, very old, pregnant, or obese, as these are all people for whom the vaccine has reduced efficacy, if they can get it at all. You getting vaccinated helps protect them; it’s as simple as that.
And the link didn’t post; I must have gotten the HTML links incorrectly. http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/protect-yourself/
Snark! From Dina! Life complete!
Yoyce ->Scince ->Mind trash bin 🙂
Joyce, I think you better have a Burn Heal.
Run burn under lukewarm water for ten minutes.
Oh yeah, high five.
She fought Blaine already?! Dammit, Walky hasn’t even beaten Erika yet!
ICE BURN
I HOPE YOU HAVE BURN HEAL
High five.
Zzzzzzzzzzing.
I saw the “zzz’s” and I thought you were making a “this is making me sleepy” sort of comment, and I was like “How could be sleeping at such a Zinger- oooooh…”
See, I was sleeping at the beginning but then the zinger woke me up
Dina shows how evolution works: In order to survive college you need to snark. She adapted to that.
That’s implying some sort of Lamarckian change in self which will affect the next generation. Dina is learning, not evolving – there’s a difference (notably, individual organisms can’t “evolve”.)
It’s more a piece of Hayek cultural evolution. Her ideas that were suitable for the current environment have thrived. Those ideas are more likely to provide inspiration for further thoughts that are useful in this environment Dina finds herself in.
Although epigenetics remains a riveting field of study.
Indubitably!
No, she’s just demonstrating the evolution of memes, specifically the fact that memes coding for snarky responses demonstrate a significant fitness advantage in college environments.
Username is somewhat relevant.
No, no–this is Pokemonian evolution!
Dina has learned Snark!
Dina uses Snark. It’s Super-Effective!
Sara uses Schadenfreude! It’s Super-Effective!
But…
What move did she forget, so that she could learn Snark?
Hopefully not her stealth ability, but that may be inherent.
Maybe it’s “Standing behind door” since she’s obviously in front of one here.
ZING!
Halfway through I thought Dina wasn’t aware she was in line for a flu shot, and just got swept along somewhere again. Then I finished reading. I hope her powers will only be used for good.
Funny works as well, or maybe if bored. Perhaps if a snack is needed? Snacks are good, right?
I love that there’s a question mark after “good morning”. Dina knows that she’s supposed to say it, but has no clue why.
No, it’s to indicate a confused tone to her voice, as if she is surprised by Joyce’s presence.
See, I read it as ‘Is it a Good Morning?’, like she knows it’s used as a greeting, but isn’t sure if she should only use it when it is a good morning.
I think she’s actually inquiring if it’s, in their opinion, a good morning, not just making a polite noise. Because why would you say something like that if you weren’t interested in the answer?
And Sarah answered the question.
I’m snapping my fingers like the audience at a vogue ball right now. THAT WAS FIERCE DINA YOU ATE THAT
OK, Dina. FINISH HER.
Dina’s fatality is turning into a stegosaurus and then pointing out that they’re not carnivores when the person thinks they’re about to get eaten. Then she tramples them.
That’s an Animality.
I can already tell I’m going to love this storyline… ^___^
Okay why do healthy teenagers take a flu shot? Seriously? They are not little children or old people. And I also doubt they have a medical condition.
Because having the flu blows?
Why would you not take a flu shot?
Flu shots seem to make a lot of people sick, while people who skip them remain perfectly healthy and never get the flu. It’s a stranmge pattern, but quite funny to observe.
Confirmation bias, combined with actual chances of getting the flu.
Also this.
If nobody got flu shots, everyone would get it. By the majority getting the shots it represses the spread of it and makes it less likely for those without shots to get infected.
I never said nobody should get them just why some people don’t bother.
I only get sick like once every three years, people around me are sick all the time, and I interact with hundreds of people a day. It’s just funny to beat the odds like that, especially when everyone around me is all ‘I was fine until I got my shot now I’m siiiick.:
Yes, in Denmark you have to pay for your flu vaccination yourself – only a couple of workplaces as hospitals and the like offer them without payment, and otherwise you have to be in a risk group (pregnant, obese, with a chronic disease etc.) or at least 65 years old to get one for free.
Many people who get vaccinated get ill (from it) anyway, and a lot of people without a vaccination never get ill. Generally the idea is that you and your immune defence get stronger if you let your body work it out on its own and as long as your fever doesn’t get too high and it takes more than a week, the doctors recommend that you stay in bed, drink a lot of water and try to eat as much as you can and wait it out so to speak… So to me it does seem a little strange that otherwise healthy young people would get a flu vaccination as you never would do it in my country..!
One place I worked at would bring a nurse in to get everyone shots for free. You were allowed to refuse, but if you did you weren’t then allowed to turn around and call in sick with the flu.
It did help with our exposure to infected people, at least–meaning that at work we pretty much weren’t, at least. But yeah, most people will get at least mildly sick after getting the shot, because that’s how it works, by tricking your body into thinking it’s dealing with live viruses instead of dead ones. So your body goes through the motions of fighting it off, which include things that make you feel crappy, but it’s usually pretty mild because of course the virus isn’t fighting back. And then you don’t get it for real, which is potentially life-threatening to you and anyone you’re in contact with who has a lowered immune system, because your body has developed antibodies to it. You might feel kind of crappy for a day or two, but you aren’t contagious and it’s nowhere near as bad as it would be for real, even if you didn’t have anyone else around to worry about. 🙂
Ezacktickly!!! 😌
Sarah (in panels 2 & 5) FTW!! 😏
I kind of love how Joyce is rolling her eyes condescendingly in the third panel, unaware she is walking straight into Dina’s trap.
She’s infinitely condescending when she believes she’s right, look at her face when she’s arguing about evolution with Dina.
I think the general idea is that schools are sickness breeding grounds. A person can have good immunity, but lots of people means more and more chances of something attacking your system. Throw in stress and some students not being the best about taking care of themselves (junk food, no sleep, etc.) and colleges tend to decide giving out free flu shots are a good idea.
Not saying it’s really necessary, just saying the reasoning behind it isn’t terrible.
And I remember hearing somewhere that the efficiency of flu shots drops if enough people around you didn’t get them, so if only the young and old got them all the people in between would cancel it out.
I believe you’re thinking of herd immunity, but no it doesn’t get “canceled out”.
Basically, you need a high enough proportion of the community to be immune or resistant to the disease before it will help protect those who are not immune (often including the elderly, people with compromised immune systems, and babies). The exact percentage depends on how contagious the disease is. The more contagious the disease is, the higher percentage of the population needs to be immunized.
This is why immunization, especially childhood vaccinations, should be a matter of public safety, and not personal choice. This is also why anti-vaccination campaigns need to be fought with proper education, so that more people don’t die, like Dana McCaffery, who died of pertussis, better known as “whooping cough”, at the age of 4 weeks old. The area she was born in had seen a drop in vaccinations due to an anti-vaccination campaign, and thus there wasn’t enough herd immunity in her area, and she was too young to be vaccinated.
If it weren’t for the efforts of dedicated anti-vaccination campaigns, Dana McCaffery might still be alive today.
Yeah, canceled out was a dumb way of putting it. My excuse is that it was one in the morning and I was studying, but it’d be more accurate to say that I didn’t think my wording through.
Everyone should get the flu shot. Herd immunity is key, meaning that if over 90%(IIRC) of the population is immune, those whose systems can’t handle vaccines, such as babies, the extreme elderly, and immuno-compromised people won’t get infected because no one around them is vulnerable.
Herd immunity. Not feeling sick doesn’t mean you’re not spreading the virus.
Like so many other people have said elsewhere, healthy teens need flu shots to prevent them from becoming flu carriers, spreading the flu THEY easily survived or didn’t even notice becoming a carrier for to the small children and elderly people who will die from it.
Because they live in confined areas, and attend school, and both involve mixing in close quarters, thus lots of exposure to other people. Student housing are basically germ factories. Any chance to break the contagion cycle is good. Haven’t you ever seen a contagious disease go through a school?
Man, fire’s gonna need a flu shot, cuz that was a SICK BURN.
Things that are also sick: how contrived my setup was for that joke.
Or you could go the easier route “Better get yourself some water because you just got BURNED!”
Yeah, but I liked the wedding of content and subject matter with “sick burn”.
I personally thought it was a wonderful ceremony. And Self-awareness was the perfect best man.
Oh, hey, it’s that one panel that was previewed a month ago or so.
WILLIIIIISSS!!! Nice one.
That was my very first thought on seeing this
Keep telling yourself, Joyce.
Techinically that is true because a virus is not alive. Only living things can evolve and in order to be alive something has to have cells.
I always thought a virus was alive because it can “adapt to its environment”, reproduce, move around and can “stop functioning”. But every science professor I have ever had said that a virus is not alive because……….. and I have never gotten a good answer.
Because they don’t have their own metabolic functions, but borrow it from the host organism. I always found the distinction to be arbitrary and meaningless.
Now then, where does that put human cells, which borrow necessary metabolic functions from (non-human, not even eukaryotic) mitochondria..?
At this point mitochondria are so irrevocably integrated into the eukaryotic cell that there’s really no reason to think of them as anything other than an organelle with some unique DNA floating around in it.
Viruses (viri?) don’t move under their own power.
Evolution means change over time. Living aren’t the only thing that can change over time.
No. Gradual oxidation of iron is change over time, but cannot be called evolution.
(Incidentally, I count transposons as alive.)
Actually, I think it can. Take a look at definition 2b.
Generally speaking it is understood from context what is being discussed. Sure we can talk about the evolution of our solar system, but we all understand that we are discussing inanimate objects rearranging themselves according to newton’s laws of motion while increasing in entropy. As opposed to the theory of evolution, in which reproducing organisms generally decrease in entropy over time at the expense of increased entropy in their surroundings. But everybody understands that, right? Right?
I remember being told that a virus is like a computer punchcard with nasty instructions that programs you for ill.
Of course viruses evolve.
See Saru’s post
To evolve, you only need 4 things: reproduction, heredity, mutation, and selection pressure. Many non-living systems exhibit these properties.
Memes are one example, viruses are another. There are entire fields of study in computer science devoted to evolutionary algorithms, and there have been art projects where new images evolve based on the preferences of the viewer. I myself study evolutionary game theory, and often create simulations of organisms in virtual environments, which reproduce, mutate, and evolve over iterations.
Because the traditional definition of life is 7 or so stupid unelegant points.
I think they should just say “replication with potential for change”
I resently heard a really cool argumant about virus the question wether virus are alive. Basicly the argumant offers to look at the infected cell as the virus. after all by the time the virus have infected the cell, it suplemented it’s D.N.A and hiject it’s life functions thouse the ifected cell is now a distinct organism.
I’ve never had a flu shot and I’m 22, never really been sick either 😀
Oh and daaaaamn Dina with the Burn.
Herd immunity, you guys! Come on, flu shot is the moral thing to do.
Gehehheheheh!
Dina used Snark!
Foe Joyce became confused!
Foe Joyce used Rebuttal!
She hurts herself in confusion!
Team Creationist blasting off again! *Doppling off*
This is proof that Dina did indeed date Mike in an alternate reality.
Mike’s Assholiness: So powerful it ripples between universes to affect anyone he’s met.
OH SNAP.
I love that while otherwise socially awkward, Dina can be totally snarky when it comes to science, but you know she’s delivering that line with a deadpan voice and doesn’t realize she’s being snarky. <3 <3 <3
Oh, she knows she’s being snarky, but to her Joyce’s ignorance/idiocy is the enemy and must be destroyed via snark bombs. Whether Joyce gains intelligent acceptance of reality or self-destructs via mental aneurism is immaterial as long as the idiocy is destroyed.
Hah…WTG Dina. You just broke Joyce’s brain and the shirt she’s wearing.
To head off everyone about to talk about “why do we need the flu shot I never get the flu”, even though I’m probably too late, look up “herd immunity”.
In short, vaccinating a significant portion of the population reduces the chance of major outbreaks, even though some people will still get sick. It’s not so much about you (sorry! it’s never really about you) or the individual but the population as a whole. The vaccinated people + naturally immune people act as a barrier to spreading disease farther.
The only counter-arguments I can find on the Internet are sites devoted to claiming any vaccine or preventative medical treatment at all is pointless and about how contracting measles is great; however, I’d love to hear a LESS-extreme counterpoint if you have one. 😛
Alright, but if we’re already a barrier, why should those of us who are naturally immune bother with a vaccination?
Because you’re not necessarily naturally immune in the sense that you kill and block the transmission of viruses. You might merely have a healthy enough system to suppress the systems, while happily transporting the disease to every poor sucker who has the misfortune to be in your diseased presence. There’s no real way to tell, unless you happen to notice that you’re leaving a trail of corpses behind you typhoid Mary style. That would be a good clue.
How do you know you are immune? Tests have shown there are a large number of asymptomatic infections – 30% to 50% in fact (high uncertainty, as it is pretty hard to measure…)
You mean you haven’t heard the “but you’ll get autism from vaccines!” one yet? It’s just as stupid as it sounds…
I think Alyssa already knows this, but for anyone else…
The information in that report was designed to support the hypothesis and is, to the best of our knowledge, incorrect. Some people just believe it because they want an outside source to be the problem, as it’s easier to control and doesn’t require them to do anything differently in their own lives.
There’s actually a good chance that autism is caused by genetic and/or environmental factors. (Environmental, in psychology, means social life. My dad thought it meant pollution in the air and stuff.)
And then there’s the question of whether autism is actually a -bad- thing. Classic autism is accompanied by mental retardation and can be an honest disability, but Asperger’s is a high-functioning form of autism that can be viewed as not bad, but different.
I’ve got a brother (classic) and a sister (Asperger’s) on the spectrum, so please excuse my rant. 😛 I see Dina as being Aspergic, and I’m sure others do, too.
It’s incorrect “to the best of our knowledge” in the same sense that the moon is not, to the best of our knowledge, made of cheese; there’s nothing to support the idea and a shitload of evidence against it.
Aspie here, and I freaking hate it. I definitely view it as a disability, for the reasons mentioned by Regalli below, along with how difficult it is to maintain a social life with anyone but family. I mean, I think I’m getting better social skills-wise, but in any event, it sucks, it’s uncomfortable, and I hate it.
I’ve heard it said that the only real problem with being an Aspergic person is that most people are not Aspergic. Like, if the world were made of people with Asperger’s, it would be a lot less difficult to be a person with Asperger’s. As it is, the majority is neurotypical, and that’s where a lot of the problems come in. NTs have decided all the of the social rules, and those rules are difficult for people with Asperger’s to learn.
I think it could also be a lot easier for Aspergic people if NT people would just bother to learn a little bit about them. You’re really not -that- different from us, you just operate a little differently. We’re Macs and you’re PCs. 😛 But we run a lot of the same programs and want to achieve a lot of the same goals.
Please don’t think I’m trying to speak over you, though. You have Asperger’s, so you know better than I do what it’s like. Just take care of yourself and try your best to be happy.
Augh… THAT. I’m pretty sure that at least that pseudoscientific load of bullshit is reserved for the series of vaccines you get in early childhood, not flu ones.
But that said? It is still a load of bullshit, and I hate it. I hate it A LOT. I hate it more than words can say and I hate it most of all because it’s actually caused the endangerment and death of young children because parents bought into it and didn’t vaccinate them.
That aside, as someone with high-functioning autism… yeah, it can definitely be a disability, especially when you take into account the sensory problems that come with the package and the motor skill problems that often come with it.
As someone with high-functioning autism, even though it can definitely be a disability, it makes me sick that parents would rather see their kids dead than autistic.
It should go without saying, but on the off-chance that it doesn’t: Plus that stuff that you said, of course.
Oh yeah. Definitely. They are also on the list of people I kinda want to slap with a book. I understand being stressed about it, I understand not knowing what to do, I understand depression, but that’s your CHILD you’re talking about. IN THE ROOM WITH YOU WHILE YOU ARE SAYING THIS. Parenting: YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.
Gaaah. I have no idea how I got as lucky as I did with my parents and their ability to understand and handle things, but I am so very thankful I did.
Still compared with freakin polio?
Oh by far. Parents should vaccinate their kids, it does not cause autism, and the asshat who first made that study was dead wrong, as were his methods for the thing, and I want to punch him for causing such problems.
I was just disputing the statement above that autism’s not necessarily a bad thing or the like. I consider it a part of who I am and I think the people who want to “cure” it are misguided at best and utter jackasses at worst, but I do acknowledge that it negatively affects people’s lives in such a way that it can be considered a disability, even in the case of higher-functioning folks who might not immediately show it.
Didn’t make that clear enough, sorry.
My hands are literally shaking just from being reminded of that.
BURRRRRRRRRRR *breathes* RRRRRRN!
DINA WINS! FLAWLESS VICTORY!
((psst, dina, you’re supposed to pull her spine out now))
BURNALITY!
Or turn into a T-Rex and bite her in half.
the faces in that last pannel made my day. XD
What makes this especially great is that, from everything we’ve seen of Dina, she was genuinely bemused by this apparent deviation from Joyce’s standard behavioral pattern.
Oooh, science burn!
Everyone is in love with Dina’s snark, and yes it was awesome, but how about some love for Sarah?
“Oooh, mornin’s lookin’ good.” That is gold. 🙂
Let’s just all bow down to the lovely ladies of this comic, shall we?
That wasn’t a burn, that was a conflagration!
Toasty!
I’m confused, is she being snarky, or is she honestly confused about Joyce’s logic? It’s hard to tell with Dina. XD
I’m pretty certain that Dina is deliberately being snarky, because Joyce-level idiocy probably pisses her off and fills her with scorn. Military-grade willful ignorance will do that to an person.
For some reason, I can’t imagine Dina being snarky. I just think she knows Joyce is wrong and she’s picked out some day-to-day examples on why, and because she knows Joyce didn’t respond well to anger, she’s adapted her tactics to pure calm. This comes off as snarkiness.
…But if it turns out Dina’s actually totally socially competent and knows exactly what to say to set someone up as a dope, I wouldn’t complain.
I don’t know that she’s totally socially competent, but she got into college somehow. So it appears she’s competent at factual scientific knowledge. And if you’re competent at factual scientific knowledge, then antiknowledge can grate on your soul – which it demonstrably did when Joyce first denied evolution. Dina suddenly became much more animated, because this was in her sphere. And without the distraction of social awareness to slow her down, she probably thinks that Joyce’s idiocy is to be annihilated at every opportunity. And snark is her weapon.
Now, she might not be delivering this in some grating over-the-top snarky tone of voice – but even if stated matter-of-factly, these snark bombs are targeted and fired with malice aforethought.
True! What you said about ‘this was in her sphere’ is a good point, too–Dina’s got this very specific area of interest, and when she tries to talk to people, she usually does by discussing that area. When the thing with Joyce happened, she was in a friendly context with people, and she was opening up and beginning to talk about what she likes when suddenly one of the participants flat out says that what she enjoys, what she studies, what she admires has no basis in reality. That’s both a) indirectly insulting a very personal interest and b) removing the base from which Dina does her social interaction.
If they can’t agree on this, they can’t agree on anything else — it’s that personal, at least to Dina. (Obviously it’s personal to Joyce too, but she seems willing to skim over this particular point.)
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/432/658/16b.png
Diana? is that you?
Dina stop. You’re already my favorite character. You don’t need to be more awesome than you already are.
BURN!
I can’t tell if the best part is Dina’s burn or Sarah’s reaction.
Dana your just made because some idiot went back in time thanks to a toaster he fixed and sneezed on a T-Rex and caused the mass extinction.
I’m so glad Joyce isn’t a vaccine conspiracy theorist. That would be the Rubicon beyond which I could no longer like her.
Joyce has the best expressions in the comic imo.
I love that she goes from “bongo, please” to getting put on the spot
I’ve never had the flu, and I’ve never had a flu shot. It seems like starting to get them now, as a healthy young adult, would be an unnecessary inconvenience at best.
HERD IMMUNITY. Unless you have a reason not to, its kind of jerk move to not get vaccinated because it fucks over everyone else, particularly the elderly and sick people who might not be able to have the vaccine.
Thank you.
assuming the flu doesn’t evolve around it.
Over medication on mass is also bad.
You realize that vaccinations are not the same thing as antibiotics, right? Giving someone a vaccine is not “medicating” them in any sense, and as the comic itself points out, the flu DOES evolve, requiring new vaccines every year.
But that’s not because we are creating a super flu. We aren’t. Vaccinating a populous does literally nothing but gently expose them to the most recent strain of the virus, upping their immune systems.
I know that its not the same as antibiotics, but I thought vaccinations also act as selective evolutionary pressure?
(so, our white blood cells adapt to kill them more, and they adapt more to avoid it?)
NOPE.
For later readers: Note that we ELIMINATED Smallpox. Eliminated it. If vaccinations caused the kind of Red Queen’s Race in this situation that you are describing, we would instead have created a super-Smallpox that wiped out most of the population.
Just because viruses sometimes do not evolve fast enough to evade some vaccination does not mean that viruses cannot ever evolve at all.
Viruses can and do evolve, as seen in the evolution of the flu virus, which is why we need new and different flu vaccines every year. Flu viruses come in many varieties, and they can evolve by recombining existing traits and/or by mutations. Remember, evolution just means a change in the frequency of traits within a population.
Furthermore, evolution is limited by what things are molecularly possible. It’s quite possible for a species to reach what’s called a “local maximum”, where any change to the genome makes the species less able to survive. So it’s wrong to assume that it’s even possible or beneficial for a “super-smallpox” to evolve.
To put it simply in regards to what you wrote: NOPE.
On average, I’ll infect less than 1 person each flu season with flu, even accounting for the spread of the disease from that person to other people, and from them to others, etc. Most of the time, anyone who is ultimately affected by the flu could have prevented it by getting vaccinated. Consequently, getting vaccinated myself would prevent less than the 1 case of flu that whoever I might infect could have prevented themself with equal ease. There is no reason that I should ‘suffer’ for their benefit when they have chosen not to do so to the same degree, with more certainty of success, with the same information. These people I completely disregard from consideration.
Of course, that only applies if they’re able to have the vaccine.
I will leave it there for you to challenge my current assertions before going on to my claims regarding the people unable to receive a vaccine, although I should mention at this point that I don’t have a justification in that case; just some odds that explain why for me, it’s not worth it.
You must see the holes in your logic. I mean, you must, because it is basically Swiss cheese.
1) The people you will infect who matter are the young and the elderly. These are people who will not just be inconvenienced, but who will DIE because of you.
2) Being vaccinated strengthens your immune system, even in the very rare situation where it gives you the flu to a degree where you will be inconvenienced by it.
3) Your “less than one person, even counting the people infected by the person I infect” assertion is nonsensical on its face, literally just terrible math on your part because that is not how anything works, and your rate of infecltion could only conceivably be as low as “less than one person” if you are a hermit who never leaves his home or has company over.
But hey, those people aren’t you, and they should be looking out for themselves! Never mind that you making yourself a breeding ground for flu viruses could expose an at-risk person to a strain of flu their shot doesn’t protect them from, or that IMMUNO-COMPROMISED PEOPLE LITERALLY CANNOT GET FLU SHOTS, it’s clearly everyone else’s fault but yours.
I appreciate the length of your response, which indicates that you are passionate about what you believe in. However, you are also being distinctly rude, and you have largely ignored or dismissed what I said.
Point 2) is both incorrect and irrelevant. I don’t see what difference it makes what effect being vaccinated has on the immune system, and a flu shot can’t give anyone the flu, under any circumstances, unless someone’s sneezed on the equipment being used or something like that, in which case you have more serious problems.
Point 3) is simply an assertion with no evidence to back it up. Let me explain my maths.
Every flu season, at most about 20% of the population is infected. Assuming that all flu was asymptomatic (which is extremely generous), that puts my chance of ever actually being infected at 20%. Every person with flu, meanwhile, will generally infect about 1.5 others. That means that the rate I’ll infect others is 0.2*1.5 + 0.8*0 = 0.3.
That group of 0.3 people will then infect another 0.3 people, and so on.
So I have the initial 0.3 people on the first level, then 0.3^2 people (the number of people affecting by the number of people 1 would affect) for the second level, etc. This results in the infinite geometric sequence 0.3 + 0.3^2 + 0.3^3 + … which has a sum given by the formula s = a/(1 – r), where a is the first term and r is the ration of terms.
This is 0.3/(1 – 0.3) = 0.3/0.7 = 3/7 which is less than 1. Less than 1/2, as well. That’s how many people I can expect to infect.
Also, I’m a hermit who never leaves my home or has company over.
I agree with you on point 1) (except for elderly people who can get vaccinated but don’t; see my arguments previously). I was going to use statistics with that one, but since it doesn’t convince me and I assume it won’t convince you, I see no point. I’m selfish even to the point that I will put the lives of others at risk. Very little risk, I should point out, but some risk.
However, just to play devil’s advocate here, it seems that your first point is answered by your last paragraph. You were sarcastic, but it is clearly a socially-accepted moral principle that a person’s health is the responsibility of that person and (sometimes) the government, not the responsibility of the general public. People are allowed to smoke and drink alcohol to excess, and there are no legal penalties for unintentionally transmitting illnesses, even when they’re life-threatening. Actually, speaking of smoking, some governments and jurisdictions allow it even in public places, which means knowingly having a negative impact on the health of those who surround the smoker. Some people argue that moral values are not personal, but rather they are social standards personally enforced, in which case the message seems to be that when it comes to an individual’s health, it’s always the individual’s responsibility (or in the case of children, their parents, because children are almost never presumed to be responsible).
Math is a bit off. If the flu spread that way it would die off quickly. Your infection rate may be 0.3 because you only have a 20% chance of getting the flu, but each of those 0.3 people that you infect *has* the flu, so they have a 1.5 infection rate, not 0.3 like you.
Your overall formula shouldn’t be (20% * 1.5) + (20% * 1.5)^2 + (20% * 1.5)^3 + …
It should be 20% * (1.5 + 1.5^2 + 1.5^3 + …). Which is infinite. Which shows that the formula is rather simplistic and clearly ignoring many factors about how infection works, but it does show *why* the flu spreads.
Thanks for that. I suspected that there was something off about my maths.
All your numbers look pulled from your ass to me, plus even if you’re right that only 20% of people get the flu each year (which seems ludicrously low), you’re still making a massive fallacy of projecting a statistical average back onto myself. You can’t do that. You can’t say “On average, I’ll infect less than 1 person each flu season with flu” with a straight face. On average, you’ll either be infected and infect pretty much everyone you come in contact with (I assume you buy food), or you’ll have gotten lucky this year and dodged a bullet. You can’t just look at the overarching stats and project them back to you personally. That would be like looking at the national crime stats and concluding that based on them, you personally have committed 3/4ths of a murder this year.
This is the best refutation of the error and I really just enjoy reading it over and over.
My tone could have been more polite, it’s true. I just find this belief very aggravating. You won’t care, since you have already owned the “Yes, I am so selfish that I will let other people to save myself inconvenience” line, but ugh. Almost as frustrating as people who refuse to vote in elections.
1) Nope and nope? I don’t understand, do you think no one dies from the flu? Or do you just think no one infected by you will die?
2) See, this is where your math goes wrong: it’s a common mistake, actually, to say, “Well, the odds of my first coin flip are 50/50, so if I flip a coin 10 times I will have 5 tails and 5 heads.” This is a mathematical fallacy, though I can’t remember the name right now. Where you attempt to in any way multiply the odds of one event as if they affect the odds of another.
You have a 20% of getting the flu, BUT IF YOU GET THE FLU, that 20% stops being relevant. Now you have the flu, so you are probably going to infect 1.5 people, not .03. And each of those people, once they have the flu from you, is going to have the same odds you had of infecting someone else. Your 1 to 2 people will most likely infect 1 to 2 more people, and so on.
3) That every-man-for-himself is “clearly socially-accepted” doesn’t actually make it any less morally wrong or, frankly, dumb. People who embrace it do so under the silent, possibly even unconscious presumption that they will never need anyone else’s help, either because they are just that lucky or because they are just that tough and awesome, but the FACT is that the entire point of society is that we are NOT in this alone and we CAN expect other people around us to help us.
If you don’t want to bother getting flu shots or paying taxes that might go to help the poor, or whatever, then… personally, I don’t think you should get to reap any of society’s benefits, either. You want to opt out? Fine, go live in a cave.
(The rest of your argument relies heavily on a relativistic view of morality, which I do not subscribe to, by the way.)
Alright, I’m not responding entirely to you, but to the series of replies.
Firstly, you’re all right. I was just arguing for the sake of argument. Here’s my new argument for not getting my flu shot this year, though: I genuinely do not leave my house except in extraordinary circumstances, so frankly, going to get a flu shot would probably increase my chances of spreading the virus more than it would decrease it.
Secondly, on the topic of the 20%, my source was here [although that link’s not working for me for some reason, so feel free to try this one if it doesn’t work for you. My source for the 1.5 reproduction number of the influenza virus was here.
Thirdly, (directed at you now, Li), there’s a difference between social obligations and social service; this hypothetical person you describe would, of course, have no right to society’s benefits if he/she refused to contribute to society. However, society sets a minimum standard of social contribution through the society’s government, in exchange for an individual’s place in the society. Paying taxes is a part of that (as is generally following the law); getting flu shots isn’t. And generally less than half of people get the seasonal flu vaccinations, so if flu shots were a social obligation, then the cave-dwelling society would be more populous than the one outside the cave (except that of course the fact that it became a social obligation would lead a lot more people to get the shot; I’m in favour of making it a law. Why is it not a law? Cost to the government, I assume. It’s always cost. More taxes. More campaigning for flu shots.)
It’s probably not a law because a) flu shots are not available for free (sigh), b) not all people can get flu shots, and c) relatedly, it would come perilously close to making it law that everyone have health insurance! Horror of horrors! Etc etc.
As you may have detected, I am a liberal, practically a communist. I also looked up the stats, and 64 kids died from the flu just since February this year. My roommate is a librarian in an intercity school, and they lost two kids in the same period, unsurprisingly deeply impoverished.
If you seriously never leave the house OR interact with delivery men, fine. It’s not like anyone online can actually force you to change your behavior anyway. But it sure seems like a silly stance to take when it has so little negative consequence for you.
It always amuses me what different definitions of “liberal” people from different countries have. 🙂
Around here, a liberal is basically someone arguing for only minimal interference of the government into the economy and (to a lesser extend) the personal life of the citizens. Usually somewhere in middle or a bit to the right of the political spectrum. It’s pretty much as far from a communist as you can possibly get.
Yep, and it changes in a country over the years, too. It’s pretty left-y in the USA.
“when they have chosen not to do so to the same degree”
Your assumption is false. Vaccines aren’t 100% effective, due to immune system complexity, so someone can get vaccinated without getting the induced immunity. This is probably more likely in the vulnerable, too.
Also, if you’re allergic to eggs, you can’t get the vaccine. *checks* Okay, looks like you *can*, but it’s a more involved process than just being processed through a clinic; they have do a skin test, wait, give a small amount, wait some more…
hmm, starting this arc off with some controversy eh Willis?
walp at least it wasn’t a poop joke…
Makes me wonder what a controversial poop joke would be.
Difficult.
Strained.
Painful.
Oh Sarah, your puckish delight in Joyce’s confliction between good sense and her religious upbringing brings a song to my heart, and a bounce to my step. Both of which I shall use to achieve the downfall of my enemies
Assuming that the multiverse theory is actually correct, I believe this to be universe containing the Sickest Burn.
Which is pretty impressive considering what’s happening over in Shortpacked.
I think I speak for everyone when I say OOOOOOHHHHHH!!!
Joyce’s smug expression in the penultimate panel makes Dina’s burn all the more sweeter.
OHHHH SOMEBODY BETTER CHECK ON THE OVEN BECAUSE SOMETHING SMELLS BUUUUUURNT
I saw the first panel when it previewed, so when this came around I was sort of dissappointed — “I’ve seen this before, guess I know what’s coming up now” — but this is really, really a wonderful comic. Everything in it, from Dina asking if it’s a good morning to Sarah’s cynic response to Joyce’s smug face (at outwitting an evolutionist at something, probably!) to Dina’s totally nonchalant delivery of the smackdown to Sarah’s glee at this. (‘Good morning’ ‘We’ll see’ or similar is a pretty common joke, but for some reason the question mark makes it a lot funnier to me.)
If every day was Joyce-gets-burned-day, I’d probably be happy. I know she tries to cope with her friends’ different beliefs, and I know she’s really sheltered, and I know that even the fact that she’s still talking to them shows she’s trying…but still.
(Is it called evolutionism? Hm.)
Also, I totally expected the comments field to explode into arguments about evolution…and instead it exploded into arguments about the efficiency of flu shots.
don’t look down
Bah, and Zinga.
But I forgive Joyce for wearing what looks like a pink retreating Pac-man ghost.
Can I get a chorus of Oh Snaps up in here?
OH SNAP, someone get this woman to a burns ward immediatel- oh wait, never mind, she’s been completely immolated.
Quick question about the American health system… Does the flu shot cost? In the UK it’s free to the elderly, anyone deemed “at risk” and those who work in hospitals etc, but others have to pay for it.
(Also, did the US get the insane anti-MMR vaccine bulkshit we’ve had to deal with for the past decade?)
The answer is it depends. We do have some free clinics that give out the shots to at risk patients for free. And medical workers and researches (like myself) who work at hospitals get it free through work. Colleges will often also have free vaccine days, or subsidized vaccine days to encourage students to get vaccinated and not spread the flu everywhere. However most people have to go to a drug store or their doctor and pay. Its usually fairly inexpensive though.
And yes, we did get that bullshit about the autism-vaccine connection and it still exists in some low levels. Gotta love spurious correlations….
Depends on your insurance or if some special ‘program’ donated them to specific sets of people or areas.
In short you have to pay for it. Basically in the US you have to pay for every medical out of pocket or threw insurance. There is a reason why we have the highest medical cost in the world and its not because of quality.
Is it something to do with how rich your doctors and pharmaceutical company CEOs tend to be?
It actually has more to do with how rich our insurance providers are.
Yes. We’ve got the anti MMR bull, but it actually spread to all vaccines. And they can’t decide if its about the number of antigens, the thimoserol that isn’t even in anything except multi-dose flu anymore, the nonspecific chemicals, the combination of them, or what. Oh, and some anti vaccine group actually suggested chelation as a thing to be done after all vaccines. It came to the USA and we’ve got it bad.
While generally you do have to pay, there’s a lot of venues where it is free to the public. I went to a cultural fair last year and was able to receive a free flu shot.
It has tended to cost. Obamacare made preventive care free from insurers, so I would think flu shots would be becoming free as people get insurance or their plans get upgraded. Here in Massachusetts (which did reform on its own) I’m on state insurance and my shots are free, but the pharmacist indicated it wasn’t true of everyone yet, I’m guessing people on old employer plans still under old rules.
And yeah, we got a full dose of anti-vaxx from you guys.
If it helps, parts of Wales are currently reporting record high levels of measles infections. Andrew Wakefield it a shit.
wow how did I not think of using this argument
wouldn’t work, they just think evolution has a size limit.
Looks like it worked to me!
Oh SNAP. DOA Dina is Best Dina.
Love it. It’s like having an argument with a vegetarian who is convinced eating animals is bad and everything should live off plants as nature intended, then a botanist walks in with a venus fly trap.
I could never be a vegetarian myself because meat is awesome, but that’s not a great analogy, because “as nature intended” is never a reason I’ve ever heard for being vegetarian. It sounds like something someone who hates vegetarians made up.
I have actually heard it argued that humans are naturally vegetarian. This based on the fact that our digestive systems aren’t built like carnivore digestive systems. This also ignoring that they aren’t built like herbivore digestive systems either, but oh hey! They’re just about right for omnivore digestive systems.
But, y’know, there’s no such thing as bisexuals. If you think you’re attracted to both meat and veggies, you’re obviously just confused.
Interestingly, the Seventh-day Adventist church advocates vegetarianism not only for health purposes, but because allegedly that’s what God intended. They reason that there was no mention of human carnivorousness in the Garden of Eden before sin came into the world, and that explicit permission to eat meat came much later.
Like captainswift pointed out, there are some that say human bodies aren’t built to be carnivores (though as he pointed out, it’s because most signs point to an omnivore digestive system). I’ve never really liked that reasoning, either, because then you get into a lot of dangerous waters on what humans do that ‘nature didn’t intend’ and even defining how to decide what nature’s intentions are.
I’m vegetarian, but I mainly do it more for practical (I was raised vegetarian, and haven’t had any health issues related to it) and economic/environmental (i.e. studies that suggest growing produce would be more efficient than beef) reasons. To a lesser extent, I also feel that, as humans have the capability to survive without meat, there’s no reason to use it, but that’s more a personal philosophy than an objective reason. I also believe that it’s up to each person to make their own decision on it, and realize that there can be health issues that may not allow to be vegetarian.
Now those vegans, they be crazy (totally kidding there!)
Kudos to you! You’re the kind of vegetarian I really get along. Which is to say, most of the vegetarians I met are that way. While they had different reasons for vegetarianism, they had in common that “it’s up to each person to make their own decision”-attitude.
There are “militant” vegetarians as well, sure. But I’ve never met one in person, just had to deal with them writing articles or letters in newspapers.
I think I’ve met one or two ‘militant’ vegetarians (being in the Midwest and the Beef Capital of the US is the main reason, I think). I met one in high school; she was generally nice enough, but got a bit hostile when meat was brought up, and seemed to think I should too. But I think militant members is something that just happens to most ‘groups’, and it just tends to create stigmas rather than do anything productive.
Absolutely. There is one rather loud and militant (so to speak) group here in Switzerland called the “Verein gegen Tierfabriken” (“association against animal factories”, the latter being a term for places where a huge number of animals are kept under very compact and miserable conditions. Not that the latter would even be legal in Switzerland.). It’s also quite small, despite it’s audibility, and widely considered as a league of nutjobs. Hence it doesn’t come as a surprise that their track record is rather… mediocre.
I’ve actually heard it several times. Well usually read it, truth be told, in articles by or about and in letters to the editor by some (in)famous vegetarians and vegans. Usually the latter though, really. I don’t think I’ve seen it used by vegetarians more than twice.
It is quite a common argument made by the “vocal” ones. Most vegetarians that choose to be so for intelligent reasons don’t tend to argue their points.
way too big of a phobia of needles to get a flu shot. sorry.
can give blood either. would literally faint all over the place.
god. i believe i am also due for the 10 year tetnis shot and I havent even dragged myself in for that yet…
i have problems. 🙁
I don’t have a big phobia, but I don’t look, either. I look away, there’s a minor sting, and they’re done, whether keeping me from getting sick or filling up vials.
Just so you know, there is a nasal-spray flu vaccine (no needles!) though it is more restricted to healthy adults ages 2-49.
I can tolerate vaccines, but for some reason the idea of using a needle to suck blood out of me is just too squicky.
I have a friend who always donates blood, even though she usually faints afterward.
PFFFT 😀
Oh man why did I take a mouthful of tea just before reading that
Oh poor Joyce…
Epic burn Dina, epic burn. Bio majors ftw!
That hat is no dinosaur.
It’s a troll.
Lol adaptation lol not evolution, not saying evolution doesn’t exist but that was wrong lol
Evolution IS adaptation. It is the changes that occur in a population’s genetic structure as a result of natural selection which leads to the population becoming better adapted to it’s environment. They’re THE SAME THING.
Oh, Dina, your WACKY belief that a lack of belief in one idea of the source of life you rigidly hold to is a disbelief in the entirety of science is hilarious. And rather pot-kettle-esque. Some of the greatest minds of our times have had deist views. It’s as much worth considering, because as we have it, we still haven’t found any ‘base cause’ for everything- even as far back as we can reasonably figure. Or am I the only one who finds Dina as closed-minded as Joyce on this?
Except Dina makes no claim about whatever started the universe, she just knows the process of evolution and has likely studied the concept with a somewhat open mind. Compared to Joyce’s (likely) response up until now, which may or may not consist of plugging her ears or fleeing the conversation when uncomfortable questions are raised.
And who are these “Greatest minds of our times?”
In a way, not accepting Evolution also requires you ignore a lot of other branches of science, Biology becomes much more nonsensical without it for a start. Most modern medical practices would not exist without an understanding of evolution, or at least they be no where near as effective
I don’t see Dina attacking faith be it deist or theist. I see her trying to point out to Joyce in albeit a snarky way, that evolution affects her weather she wants to believe in it or not.
I assume by “in our times” you mean “the revolutionary war”.
Dina has said nothing about the “base cause” for everything, but she probably believes that the initial basic arrangement of proteins and chemicals that resulted in what we know as ‘life’ occurred in some natural way, as opposed to the idea that some uncaring god created bacterial life in our primordial ooze pools and then forgot to clean his petri dishes when he fled the building. (Or were deist gods supposed to leave at the time of the big bang? Well, whichever.)
But all that’s beside the point. As is inferred by the comic, Dina has argued specifically for evolution, which Joyce specifically rejected. Flu vaccinations are required as a direct result of evolution. Not science in general, evolution specifically. Joyce might as well have said she doesn’t believe in the existence of cars and then stated that it would be silly and dangerous to play in the road.
Oh, and as long as I’m being all picky, it’s not closed-minded to accept all available facts and draw an unbiased conclusion based on them. That’s just being sensible and honest with yourself. Unless you’re referring to her failure to coddle and enable Joyce’s ignorance and idiocy because it’s religiously based, in which case that’s still not being closed minded; that’s just being sensible and honest with yourself.
“Science is just the religion scientists believe in! You guys ALSO have faith in things! Why if Jesus descended from on high you would all still refuse to believe in the supernatural!”
This is a very strange conception of science, and not at all accurate. The scientific method actually demands that, if Jesus descended from on high, we would all have to believe in at least him.
And as strange as this might be to you, we would also welcome that! Just because science doesn’t accept the existence of the Bible as proof that God exists does not mean science is devoted to blindly ignoring all evidence forever.
Stop trying to disprove arguments your opponents aren’t making and listen to the ones they ARE.
Actually, if Jesus descended on high, what he have to believe depends on how it happened. If it happened to just one guy in a spiritual vision, or even to a little congregation out in the boonies with no pictures or video, then, um, no. If it happens on national TV and a number of unbiased-seeming people comment on it and especially if he hangs around afterward showing his stigmata and doing miracles and all that, that would definitely merit further examination.
And even if it did turn out that it really was a genuine Jesus come from heaven, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s to be welcomed. I mean, that Biblical god is an asshole. And a murderous one at that. So if Jesus were to show up, I’ll wait a bit and see how the aftermath plays out. Who he slaughters, which regions get laid waste to, that sort of thing. If I don’t like the results, I’ll sit back and resign myself to the doom that is upon us. Not much else to do at that point.
Yeah, sure, but you take my point. The volume at which people of faith insist that scientists blindly ignore “proof” of miracles is deafening. Nothing pulls me out of an otherwise-enjoyable horror movie like The Exorcism of Emily Rose like a “scientist” who just keeps desperately shouting, “I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for this!!!” at the top of his lungs while a girl speaks in literal tongues, snarls his darkest secrets in multiple voices, and glues herself to a corner of her bedroom ceiling.
(When I said “believe in at least him”, I meant “believe in” the same way you’d believe in the existence, of, say, Texas. You’d have to believe there was a dude calling himself Jesus who bore a striking resemblance to actually nothing in modern Christian art, since we seem to have reinvented him as a white dude with blue eyes. But you wouldn’t necessarily have to convert. Frankly, if the Westboro Baptist Church is right, I’m on Satan’s team, because God is a dick who doesn’t deserve my loyalty.)
I like those scientists. Because they’re right. If it’s having an effect on the observable world, there is a scientific explanation. WE may just not have the ability – or at least the vocabulary to explain it yet.
Sure, but that isn’t what those “scientists” mean. They are being strawman’d, forced to pretend science has some sort of “There is no God and even when in Heaven and being told that God totally did inspire the Bible, I will cross my arms and stamp my feet and chilidishly refuse to believe any of it is really happening!”
Make no mistake, the characters saying “There must be a scientific explanation!” are really saying, “I refuse to take in this new information! Some religious person is TRYING TO TRICK ME and I won’t have it!” Their skepticism is absolutely MEANT to represent blind faith in the “religion” of science.
Uh… I guess I can’t answer to that unless you answer first: are you for real, or just plain ol’ trolling? o_O
What the hell does “a base cause for everything” have to do with evolution?
do you know what evolution is
Evilution is that thing where atheists turn monkeys into humans via the use of Magic The Gathering cards and Harry Potter vibrating wands. Everyone knows that.
“‘You’re so sure of your position, but you’re just closed-minded.
I think you’ll find that your faith in science and tests
Is just as blind as the faith of any fundamentalist.’
Hmm, that’s a good point.
Let me think for a bit.
Oh wait, my mistake!
That’s absolute bullshit.
Science adjusts its views based on what’s observed;
Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.”
Dude, I love that video. <3
Although this guy’s patently wrong, I’ve never found Dina’s argument here entirely fair. When you point out the existence of evolution per se to someone who “doesn’t believe in evolution,” you’re basically just playing word games, because creationists don’t deny the existence of evolution, but its sufficiency to explain the modern diversity of life. It’s like if someone still believed in expanding/contracting Earth claiming they shouldn’t prepare for earthquakes. It’s better to show A: where the burden of proof lies and why, B: the arbitrariness of all proposed limits to evolution, C: the evidence of common descent.
But that’s not really true. Plenty of Christians deny evolution in every aspect, not just as an inadequate explanation. “Intelligent design” and its variants — “sure, evolution happened, but so did God” — is only an acceptable compromise for some Christians. Wonkette has been doing a series on Christian textbooks, and their most recent science textbook explicitly called out this compromise as inviting the Devil into your soul.
So. Yeah. Dina’s argument is fair, depending on the beliefs of the person she’s talking to. And Joyce has explicitly rejected evolution in every facet. She’s a young earth Creationist, and is not a proponent of ID or anything like it — that we’ve seen. (Remember, Joyce believes in the literal Six Days thing. She considered the presence of an old earth in Transformers to be unnecessarily controversial.)
Also, the argument that Dina should be presenting a thesis rather than making a snide remark is — you know — not really fair. She could prepare a huge presentation for Joyce’s benefit, but Joyce would probably just tune it out.
Joyce is a young-earth creationist, but she still (apparently) accepts evolution as a phenomenon, as most young-earth creationists do. The simple phenomenon of evolution doesn’t require, necessarily, anything resembling the evolutionary history we actually have behind us.
Of course Dina’s just being cute, but I’ve heard this argument presented seriously.
There is nothing wrong with Dina’s argument, because she is responding to Joyce’s actual beliefs, rather than what you feel “most” young earth creationists believe.
Here is Joyce, rejecting evolution completely:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/feathers/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/inerrant/
And here is a real life “science” quiz from this year:
http://24.media.tumblr.com/f2bd1660e469b6de1ab85a323e95a56f/tumblr_mllfjrgUor1r1q3ryo1_500.jpg
http://25.media.tumblr.com/84a341b1ff97e99c26d2cf6a6223dfef/tumblr_mllfjrgUor1r1q3ryo2_500.jpg
You are welcome to explain to me how teaching kids that animals have sharp teeth for NO REASON because as we all know every species started out in the Garden of Eden, eating only plants, is “believing in the concept of evolution”.
As tomorrow’s strip shows, Joyce thinks she has been taught about evolution and is choosing to reject it, but she actually has no idea what evolution IS, which seems to always be the case.
She rejects what she calls evolution completely, and she rejects the idea that dinosaurs might have evolved into birds (“macroevolution,” she might learn to call it someday if she doesn’t come to her senses first). The definition of evolution I was given in my college bio fill (and I’m still pissed such a course was being taught at the college level – I was expecting to be taught hard science, and instead I get a roomful of grown adults being taught to argue with creationists) was something like:
1. Organisms within a population differ from one another.
2. Many of the traits in which they differ are passed on from parent to offspring.
3. The rate at which different traits are passed on, and therefore the portion born with those traits, varies by suitability to the environment.
A creationist website (I can’t remember which) has a list of “arguments evolutionists should not use,” and among them is “natural selection is evolution,” basically putting their fingers in their ears at the above definition, much as Joyce is doing in the most recent strip. But I haven’t seen her contradict any of it, and indeed she does in the above strip seem to be endorsing it, objecting only to the word.
“Evolutionist” ahahaha
Did you miss the part about the sharp teeth? This is rejection not just of “what they call evolution”, but all parts of it. They argue that some animals have flat teeth and some have sharp teeth for no reason, because otherwise they might have to admit that not all animals originally ate plants.
Unless I’m much mistaken, we have no evidence that Joyce believes in even “micro”-evolution. (Her first response in tomorrow’s comic, about viruses, was to protest that they “aren’t even alive”, therefore whatever behaviors they exhibit are irrelevant. Only after that does she claim that viruses can adapt their behavior without evolving.)
Anyway. I’m all for the argument that a lot of people who claim to be against evolution don’t actually understand it enough to realize that they already accept some of its facets as true. But there ARE plenty of people out there who do NOT accept any of its facets as true, under the name “evolution” or any other, just as there are also Christians who fully believe in and embrace science without caveats, content to believe in a less literal interpretation of the Bible where God instigated the Big Bang or something like it.
If I were Willis, I’d be pretty dang exasperated too by all the people who come into my comic sections constantly to tell me that no one really holds the beliefs I grew up with and am still exposed to every day.
But you have just seen that she believes a flu virus can adapt. She only objects to calling this adaptation “evolution,” since in her mind “evolution” means “goo to you through the zoo,” or whatever. It’s not evolution to her until it’s either patently impossible (virus spontaneously producing a pig) or over a timescale she doesn’t believe in (Ediacaran proto-deuterostome’s line eventually producing a pig), basically.
Even that quiz doesn’t seem to totally reject evolution (I didn’t mention it because it’s not really relevant to Joyce) – not only is the statement that not all animals with sharp teeth eat meat technically true (fortunately, real scientists have other ways to verify such things), but the implication is that formerly herbivorous animals over time changed to a meat-based diet. Granted, there’s some sort of supernatural hocus pocus involved in this change, but if they didn’t believe that, they wouldn’t be theists, let alone creationists.
I don’t know what Willis’s sect did or didn’t believe, but Joyce has just made it clear she does believe viruses can evolve, although she doesn’t consider this “evolution,” and I don’t know of a single current creationist who tries to argue that life doesn’t evolve – indeed, for most of them, extremely rapid evolution (although they don’t realize how rapid it is because they measure by intuition) is used to explain how Noah’s ark fit every “kind.”
You are really, really grasping at straws here. You are literally saying, “Just because they say they reject evolution doesn’t mean they REALLY reject evolution! It isn’t fair to pretend they do!”
Do some young earth creationists draw imaginary lines through evolution, pretending that “micro” evolution and “macro” evolution are somehow different? Yes. We haven’t yet heard Joyce actually make that distinction. Not all young earth creationists do. Some just reject all of it, which is perfectly possible to do, just as it is perfectly possible to be a member of the Flat Earth Society.
I will reiterate: Just because these beliefs seem unreasonable does not mean people don’t hold them. It certainly doesn’t mean they SECRETLY believe the opposite of what they say they do.
“…but the implication is that formerly herbivorous animals over time changed to a meat-based diet. Granted, there’s some sort of supernatural hocus pocus involved in this change, but if they didn’t believe that, they wouldn’t be theists, let alone creationists.”
If we’re going to pretend God snapping his fingers and making some animals instantly carnivorous is a form of evolution, why even have this conversation? Why have any conversation about religion ever again? We all believe exactly the same thing, some of us are just too hung up on the details. Why, by that definition, everything in the Bible is evolution! It was evolution when Jesus came back from the dead, because that too is a “change” that occurred!
The immediate alternate explanation I found on Google is that carnivorous animals are a punishment for Adam, so that every time he sees one animal killing another he knows it’s all Eve’s his fault, but also “we don’t really know! life is a wonderful, mysterious mystery! perhaps someday we will be able to ask God :|a “, which I would be willing to bet is the more popular explanation given to children.
I won’t pretend to see how evolution, rapid or otherwise, can possibly account for Noah’s Ark fitting “every kind”, though I suppose I can take a guess (it didn’t really, but after the flood the life present on the boat rapidly evolved to our current level of complexity?). But seriously, that is an extremely nonliteral interpretation of the Bible, and again, there are plenty of people who adhere to a very literal one.
But they can’t! Because it contradicts itself! Well, yes. It contradicts itself a lot. There are multiple versions of each story and the supposedly-inerrant Book is full of translation errors and deliberate obfuscation. (The King James Bible and its attempt to make divorce acceptable being the most famous example, but by no means the only one.)
So what? Part of faith is inherently irrational. If it were perfectly rational, to paraphrase you, it wouldn’t be faith.
You seem too focused on the words used, and not the meaning they were intended to convey, and associations of concepts rather than the concepts themselves.
That they say they reject evolution only means they reject that for which they use the word evolution, which in most cases is a subset of what most of us use the word for. We haven’t heard Joyce draw a line in a sand between two forms of evolution only because she won’t acknowledge that anything she believes in should be called evolution. For instance, Kent Hovind says that he doesn’t like the term “microevolution” because it’s “misleading” (opposite to how it is) – Joyce simply hasn’t made that semantic concession. What she calls it doesn’t change what she believes, that viruses can evolve.
In short, I don’t think she secretly holds any beliefs. I think she holds exactly the beliefs she professes, and you’re confused as to what those beliefs are because she’s confused as to their expression. Now you and Dina are attacking beliefs she doesn’t hold because she speaks as though she does.
I don’t know how the authors of that test think the change from a plant-based diet to a meat-based diet manifested temporally. I’ve heard it said that it must have been well after the Flood (or too many species would have gone extinct), which would seem to imply it was gradual, but I can’t say what they believe. What I do know is that it’s certainly not a rejection of the concept of evolution, and to present it as such shows a dogmatic, all-or-nothing approach to science that lends credence to the idea of “evolutionism.”
I don’t know what you’re talking about with “contradiction.” I think Joyce may well (in fact, certainly does) hold self-contradictory beliefs, and I’m not arguing that there’s any belief she must hold based on non-contradiction, or any belief at all but the one she expresses: that viruses evolve. She’d never use that word, but that is the essence of what she believes. Pointing out, though, that she believes in something most people would correctly call evolution is a pointless semantic trick, since that which she calls evolution is a particular subset of evolution (and some other things, too), and those two different concepts are what’s important, not the meaningless flapping of meat meant to invoke them.
You mean that some creationists don’t deny the existence of evolution. Because most of them that you actually hear of do so. Every single one that I ever heard of or talked with, as a matter of fact.
And to come back to the comic: Joyce actually did say that she did not believe in evolution because the bible says all creatures were created by God the way they are. Not all in one sentence, true, but the combination of them amounts to that very statement.
Gotta correct my previous statement a little: There were actually two believers in intelligent design I’ve heard of that said that after creation, life evolved further. And there is in fact evolutionistic creationism (a subgroup of progressive creationism so to speak) that believes in evolution, but with God alone pulling the strings. Though there seems to be much discussion about how much of actual influence He takes.
These however are still quite a minority among creationists, at least when it comes to making their views public.
I was a creationist for 22 years, and I’m pretty sure that, yes, we didn’t believe in any kind of evolution.
Did you not believe, for instance, that dogs were descended from wolves, or broccoli from wild cabbage? Just because you refused to call it “evolution” doesn’t mean you didn’t believe in it. That which we call a rose…
And the point is, although not consistent with reality, it’s internally consistent to accept some evolution but not common descent, and even to reserve the word specifically for what you reject (using some other word for the rest), so “if you don’t believe in evolution, whence nylonase?” isn’t really much of an argument.
No, really. There have been and are creationists who don’t believe the variety of life has ever changed, or that dinosaurs ever existed. They believe evidence to the contrary is all fake, like moon landing conspiracy theorists.
Again, just because you find it hard to believe such people exist doesn’t mean they don’t.
Quite a lot actually don’t believe that, no. And those are the kind that I’ve got most problems to understand. I mean, there is a good amount of clear and obvious evidence against that belief that happened in our very lifetime. Way closer as your two examples here.
I have to admit to getting to pull this one out on a fundamentalist friend of mine. The set-up was “You can’t prove that evolution [as a process] exists.” and I pulled out the old flu shot. Also was able to use it against someone who declared that mutation was ALWAYS harmful in nature, so random mutation would be selected against in a true natural selection environment.
Good one David!
Dina holds a grudge…
Boom – flushot!
I actually did not know this. I guess I just didn’t think about it much, and assumed that the immunity wore off. Which doesn’t make sense now that I am thinking about it, because there are plenty of vaccines that are effective more than a year.
But hey, now I know. And knowing is half the battle.
The other half is killing people!
I thought it was profit?
It’s red and blue lasers. Certainly not killing people. Nobody *ever* died in that show.
Yeah, even a snake through the heart isn’t lethal.
XD I LOVE DINA
It’s a bit surprising to see the that the vast majority of commenters don’t see Dina as a jerkasaurus rex for her close-minded rudeness as well as so many hateful jabs at Joyce’s faith.
I’m also disappointed to see Dina’s character evolve (See what I did there?) from an awkward dinosaur fact spouting wallflower to someone who goes out of her way to slam people who don’t instantly agree with her own faith/worldviews.
That said, I love the “Rarrr!” poster featured in the shop- Fossilized dinosaur skeletons have always fascinated me. Every time that I visit the Disney’s Animal Kingdom park, I can’t help but to linger around the recreation of Sue much longer than most people would.
Hey Dina, dinosaurs rock, but that’s no reason to be a bigoted and intolerant jerk towards people with different beliefs than yours.
Keep on rockin’ David!
Classifying Dina’s remarks here as bigotry is so amazingly insulting to those who suffer real bigotry (Christians included). I approved this post only in the hopes that you don’t mean to be so awful, but are merely sheltered or uneducated in some way. Please don’t do this, whatever this thing you’re doing is.
Thanks for approving my thoughts on the comic, David. I certainly don’t appreciate being labeled as “uneducated” or “sheltered,” but I’m more than happy to share more about how revolting Dina’s attitude is.
Science claimed that global cooling was a problem before it was global warming.
Panda bears were once related to raccoons.
The human appendix was once considered useless.
Remember the statement: “according to the laws of physics, bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly?”
While I cheer on people who devote themselves to discovering incredible things about our universe, humanity doesn’t know squat in the big picture. We don’t know exactly why cats purr, but it’s a concrete fact that the last dinosaurs died out exactly 65 million years ago. National Geographic will revise its findings year after year in regards to new discoveries in biology, chemistry and physics, and people who ignorantly claimed how “Scientists say that bees shouldn’t be able to fly, so bees are freaks of nature!” should’ve noted that humanity’s grasp regarding the physics of flight were obviously wrong to begin with. (You know, since bumble bees have always been able to fly?)
Imagine if you will, that every species of shark on the planet went extinct before recorded history. The only fossil remains of sharks are jawbones and individual teeth. How would scientists explain these large carnivorous jaws? Would there be colorful images of massive ocean-dwelling, worm-like invertebrates depicted dragging plesiosaurs to the ocean’s depths in text books? Or would they simply admit that these disjointed jaws are the greatest mystery of the fossil records?
I believe that “science” is mankind’s futile attempts to explain and classify God’s creation. We’ve made huge strides, but we’ve barely begun to start to kinda-sorta scratch the surface of understanding creation and the world around us. But hey- That’s just my open mind way of thought for you!
If I choose to put my faith in God’s word (The Bible) over this month’s edition of Popular Science, that’s up to me. I just wouldn’t appreciate the verbal middle finger to my faith from someone I just greeted first thing in the morning.
Cheers! 🙂
I see you’ve ignored the whole insulting misuse of the word “bigotry” thing. You’ve seem to redefined it as “no one can tell me I’m wrong about anything,” which is the only crime being done here to you.
As for everything else, I recommend reading more. You’ve certainly got a few Talking Points here, but nothing that will make science quake in its boots. Folks may roll their eyes at you, I warn. Mostly, you don’t seem to understand what science is or how it works, or why certain things matter and what their relevance is. Again, education.
The biggest fallacy you make is one of False Choice. If someone badly recreates an animal from fossils, that doesn’t prove anything about religion. All it means is that someone badly recreated an animal from fossils. It no more proves Christianity than it does Buddhism or Islam. And no amount of Drawing Animals Wrong makes the Bible right. The Bible is full of fake stuff no matter many times a shark is redrawn. If evolution were somehow disproven, that doesn’t mean the Bible is right, it means some unknown third thing is right.
There is also the fallacy of False Equivalence. You suggest that getting a shark wrong is exactly the same as getting everything in science wrong, as if there were an equal amount of evidence for What A Prehistoric Animal Looked Like and the whole of, say, Gravity or Atomic Theory. It’s a convenient dismissal based on surface information rather than understanding why changes happen. You already made your decision whether science is dependable or not, and you’ve found a scapegoat. It’s intellectually dishonest.
Again. The bigotry thing. Asshole thing to do.
Don’t do it.
“Again. The bigotry thing. Asshole thing to do.
Don’t do it.”
I couldn’t agree with you more, man:
http://www.creationists.org/bigotry-in-the-public-schools-and-science-careers.html
My entire point is about how ignorant, rude and bigoted Dina is towards Joyce. I find Dina to be a repulsive character because of her one-track mentality and inability to tolerate alternate faiths who forces hers on others until they “give in” and exclaim “OK! Velociraptors had feathers! Whatever! Who cares!”
Other than Dina’s recent character development, I enjoy reading the strip and I’ve been nothing but respectful towards you David, so what’s up with the aggression? Just because I’m not cheering from the atheist section of the audience for a character who I find hypocritical and obnoxious, doesn’t mean that I don’t like your writing and artwork. Take it easy, man!
Absolutely none of those things listed in that link are bigotry. You don’t get to co-opt the terms of horrible oppression for being fired for not doing your job.
Nothing Dina has done is remotely as rude as your claim of bigotry for merely being told someone disagrees about a book. Bigotry hurts. You’re just pissy you’re being disagreed with, and are grabbing bigger words to describe this to hide yourself from scrutiny.
I’m pretty convinced you’re just an asshole now, so bye.
It’s because you’re taking a word with a very serious meaning and adapting it to fit your persecution complex. It’s not bigotry to get fired from a science teaching job if you fail to teach science.
But this one time, there was a hospital that fired me because I was treating patients with statistically nonexistent concentrations of wormwood instead of medicine! Are you telling me that wasn’t anti-homeopathic bigotry?
No, now that you mention it I was denied a job at a nuclear power plant because I said I was a five-element alchemist. Bigotry!
That would in fact bigotry IF the hospital in question would proclaim homeopathy as one of the treatments they endorse. 😉
No, it still wouldn’t be bigotry. It would just be super-mysterious. “Homeopathy is one of our approved treatments, but if you use it we will fire you! Because of… reasons!”>
“Those reasons being… important! And well established!” 😀
<3
I’m just going to point out that a lot of your points are worded how someone unfamiliar with the respective field of science would state it, and really shows a misunderstanding of how science works. Specifically, I would be shocked to hear a physicist say ‘It should be impossible for bees to fly according to Physics.’ Is it completely understood? No. Does it happen? Yes. I find it much more likely that a physicist would say ‘The current ideas on flight are unable to explain how bees can fly, though according to this theory blah blah blah…’
Science is all about building on knowledge. The final goal may be to learn how the universe works, but only those with huge egos (which is unfortunately more common than it should be) ever think we have everything figured out. There’s always something else to be looked at, and always the possibility of new information coming to light.
Dina may be slightly rude, but Joyce hasn’t exactly been on her best behavior during her conversations with Dina; that doesn’t necessarily excuse them, but it’s important to point out faults to both sides, not just the one you favor. The difference is that Joyce’s arguments haven’t held up well against Dina’s; if I remember right, Joyce basically chose to change the subject last time, and this time her only defense (admittedly, so far) is yelling “That’s totally different!” So it’s not really that Dina is being ‘closed-minded’ as much as Joyce hasn’t provided any compelling evidence to challenge Dina’s worldview in the same way.
Anyhow, there’s a huge amount of other things that could be said, but I’ve spent way more time than I meant writing here.
The flight of the bumblebee is fully understood and explained by science, and has been for a very long time.
The thing about hoe bumblebees being unable to fly is based on something one entomologist said. Once. At a dinner party. In nineteen-goddamn-thirty-fucking-four. (Which is, in case you want to do the math, was seventy-nine fucking years ago.)
It was immediately pounced on by people espousing this bullshit “nobody really knows anything about anything” worldview and has been repeated, ad nausium, for seventy-nine motherfucking years.
God, it sounds like the ONE article that was disproven, apologized for, and shown to have been faked that led to the still-existent belief that vaccines cause autism.
I’ll have to do some investigating on that; it’s not really something I’ve given much thought to before, honestly, but it’s cool to know a bit more history about it.
I still stand by what I said, though; even if it were unexplained, I would be surprised to hear it put that way by a (good) physicist because it completely misses the concepts of (good) science. (I wish I didn’t have to put ‘good’ there and it was implicit, but there’s a lot of ‘not good’ science and scientists out there giving the rest a bad name).
I know, and I agree, and I really didn’t mean to vent any venom in your direction. It’s just a topic that hits a nerve.
(If you want to watch someone get seriously internet angry, mention Kent Hovind around me and watch the sparks.)
I’ve read a lot of Mr. Hovind’s crap. He didn’t believe in paying taxes either.
No worries, I got what you were getting at =)
It’s basically an urban myth based on a party joke.
Since you’ve been banned, obviously this won’t be of much interest to you BUT FOR EVERYONE ELSE
the “bees can’t fly” thing is nonsense.
Literally nonsense. It is based on a misunderstanding of a statement from 1934, and when people first started repeating it to their friends, it was a hilarious joke, not something to be taken seriously.
The book is by Antoine Magnan, who discussed a mathematical equation by Andre Sainte-Lague, an engineer. The equation proved that the maximum lift for an aircraft’s wings could not be achieved at equivalent speeds of a bee. In other words, an airplane the size of a bee, moving as slowly as a bee, could not fly. Although this did not mean a bee can’t fly (which after all does not have stationary wings like the posited teency aircraft), nevertheless the idea that Magnan’s book said bees oughtn’t be able to fly began to spread.
Full, snarky commentary here. (That sentence is a link.)
Before you assume that science can’t answer a question, try using Google plus the word “debunked”.
He’s not banned, mostly because I want him to see our responses, which is stupid of me because he obviously doesn’t read them.
Ah, okay. 🙂 Even better, for my fantasy world where he reads the responses and even one of them causes him to reconsider even a little bit.
“See, a lot of tiny changes have been made with little controversy and backed up by evidence. Therefore, we should be free to ignore the entire foundation of modern biology based on no evidence at all.”
” Science claimed that global cooling was a problem before it was global warming.”
No it didn’t. There was never a scientific consensus about global cooling like the one about global warming. There was some science fiction writers and journalists in the 1970s, and maybe a few worried scientists. Global warming due to CO2 was predicted by in the 1800s by Arrhenius.
“Panda bears were once related to raccoons.”
a) So? Your arguments seem to be “scientists were wrong about anything ever, therefore it’s perfectly reasonable to be a Creationist who denies massive scientific consensus”. This is invalid.
b) From what I see, there was long debate about whether giant pandas were closer to bears or raccoons, because they’re like both; genetic evidence seems to have tipped it to bears. Ironically, red pandas are closer to raccoons, and not particularly related to giant pandas.
Science does change with new evidence, yes. This is why it’s far more accurate than people who cling to some translation of a millennia old anthology that’s more about history and behavior than anything like science. Joyce, and her biology textbooks, are simply wrong.
whoops…why didnt I read your comment first and save me the bother 😛
“Science claimed that global cooling was a problem before it was global warming.”
Myth.
That was a very,very small (2 I think) papers in the early 70s, verses thousands backing global warming with essentially every weather authority in the world now agreeing with it.
Theres always disagreement in science – thats what makes it science. But you cant pick the minority that supports a view and say its equal to the vaste majority that dont.
There is a general belief we are due for another ice age – based purely on historic data. That was probably what the early papers was based on.
But no evidence today supports that as happening now.
It SHOULD be getting colder, but it isnt.
Also, fyi, global warming means overall increase and has nothing to do with localized effects. So its better to call it “climate change” to save confusion.
One problem. Evolution is not a belief, it is established, documented fact. The theory of evolution is our current, best understanding of how it works.
Yeah, it’s actually really difficult to have faith in evolution, because it’s like having faith that you’re not a wombat. Definitions of “faith” vary, but I typically understand it to be unjustified belief. Believing in evolution as justified as believing that the moon is not a tampograph on the dome of the sky. (Hint: that’s a pretty sure thing.)
When people speak of science as a “faith” or “worldview”. I have a hard time taking them seriously.
Frankly, if your faith demands that you close your eyes to established facts, you don’t belong at an institute of higher learning anyway. If she had been taking jabs at her views on economics, her views on politics, her views on existentialism, or her views on GI Joe, I doubt you would care. Why do her views on biology and religion warrant special treatment? It’s an idea, like any other and is therefore subject to criticism.
I notice how you completely fail to point out why Dina is close-minded or rude for simply and in a calm way pointing out a flaw in Joyce’s previous statements. And really, the only insult that could arise here is a self made one by Joyce.
Aight, i don’t presume to be the guy whos gonna come into a conversation and change everyone’s point of view all at once, but i would like to say something.
While i feel that the original poster, whom i can only assume is being prevented from replying by our wonderful host, Willis, is wrong in his evaluation of both Dina, and the situation presented in this strip, i DO feel that he is entitled, not only to have an opinion, but to state it as well.
I do NOT feel like he has a complete grasp on either the implications of his words, or the full meaning of “certain terminology” that he used, but this situation was not handled correctly by any of the parties.
Willis, instead of calling him out for being rude and insulting to a creation of yours, you should have instead explained to him what the true meaning, as you see it, of what he said was, and proven how it does not apply. he has a right to his opinion just as you have a right to defend your own, and i dont presume to tell you how to run your comic, or its comments section, but the way you instead handled this situation lost you some of the respect i had for you, not that i assume that it means much to you. you are a wonderful cartoonist and a very bright man, and i thoroughly enjoy much of the strips you did/are doing, but this was not handled correctly.
to the original poster, as i said before i do feel that you are entitled to an opinion, and i do see your point of view, however i disagree about Dina, while she is just as set in her beliefs as Joyce, she is not meaning to be insulting or bigoted as you have said. instead she was making what in her mind is a simple, obvious truth, not a shot, nor a jab. she did not go out of her way to make it. Dina merely pointed out a conflict in statements and beliefs that Joyce is ALL TO HAPPY to share with EVERYONE around her, willing or not. i have never once seen Dina work with such fervor to convince someone that dinosaurs existed, or how they lived/looked, as Joyce goes about on a near-daily basis. by the same token, i do not feel that Joyce is all that bigoted or … zealous (not quite the word im looking for) as some people might make her seem, and certainly not as much as you made Dina sound with your comment.
We are all human here, ladies and gents, and as such we will all make mistakes. the proper way to deal with the mistakes that each other makes is not to yell at them, or insult them, for making the mistake, but rather to civilly attempt to explain their wrong doings. now i am certain that some of you will comb through my statement for mistakes, be they grammatical or in my reasoning, and i am equally certain that some of you will find, and call me out for these mistakes, i do not claim to be perfect, i am simply stating my opinion.
Just for fun (not that im trolling) my personal belief is that it is not for man to know fully the ways of god. i believe (loosely) in the bible, but “more like guidelines than actual rules.” i believe that someone (thing) created everything from the smallest atomic structure (quarks, sub quarks whatever the current “building block of the universe” is) to the entire universe itself. i also believe that Living Beings have a “soul,” essence, pick your favorite term. that carries on after death, be it to re-enter the pool of available souls or to a “heaven.” the bible states that it took 7 days for God to create the universe. okay? cool. what if 1 day to god is 400 million years to man? the Bible states that god created all living things, and Man in his image. who is to say what god looks like? call me weak in faith or dumb to science, i cannot look out at the world, or back and the coincidences that led me to where i am today without thinking that there is someone, somewhere, who has a plan and is looking out for us, but nor can i look at the poor, helpless children in third world countries and find a reason for them to be suffering as they do. the ways of god are not for man to know, however i do feel that we have a right as his creations to be curious. after all he created us as equals.
this is just my personal beliefs, and i know every one of you has some differing viewpoint to mine. but ive spent many a long hour sunday morning in the Catholic church i was brought up in wondering about the mysteries of the world, and ive spent many long long hours researching and reading and studying other peoples works, and beliefs, and this is what ive decided makes the most sense to me. feel free to reply with your own differing or similar beliefs, but i wont argue any of these points with you all. my faith is not up for debate be you Creationist or Evolutionist, for i am both.
Seems to me your point of view on this is not too far from my own.
You have the right to your opinion, but not to your own facts. If you don’t want your opinion to ever be challenged, a good first step is not to insist other people join you in your opinion, or to imply that THEIR opinion is unfair / stupid / “bigotry”.
Once you do either of those to things, your opinion ceases to be just “your opinion”, and other people have the right — and may in fact feel obligated — to respond to it with their own opinions.
So yes, a Creationist can come in here and call Dina a closed-minded bigot and claim that scientists are arrogant fools who can’t even explain why bees fly! But other people can also respond to that, and since the dialogue was NOT, despite the poster’s claims, begun in a civil tone — and may be triggering for those of us who are personally affected by these exact same beliefs in real life (people who think the Bible is inerrant won’t let ME get married, for example!) — not all of those responses will be super polite.
It is not up to me to make sure that guy’s beliefs can stand up to scrutiny. It’s up to him to either not foist them on me or deal with the fact that his beliefs are not well-supported by objectively-observed reality. They are his personal beliefs, and he can either keep them that way — personal — or make them a matter of public debate by loudly announcing them in a condescending fashion on a public forum.
And no, for the record, Joyce was no better with Dina: just as she does in the above comic, she laughingly rolled her eyes at dinosaur-related scientific fact, and Dina responded with increasing frustration at Joyce’s illogical arguments.
And also, Willis actually didn’t shut the guy down for being a religious person or expressing his distaste for Dina, if you’ll recall. He shut the guy down for repeatedly and belligerently insisting that Christians experience persecution and bigotry. Which is gross and offensive, as well as tremendously delusional.
For example: I am being snippy with you. That is not, not, NOT the same thing as oppressing you, and when someone compares having their feelings hurt to the fact that I can’t get married because too many of the people in power think I’m disgusting and that my rights should be subject to popular vote — well, I’m afraid I tend to get snippy.
(Btw, what you are doing is called “tone policing” under these circumstances, feel free to look it up.)
Also, Willis hasn’t banned Zenek–he’s free to come back and continue to regale us all with his opinions to his heart’s content. He hasn’t chosen to, but that’s on him.
part of the dangers of coming in late to an argument is not knowing whether someone left willingly or by force.
Forgive me, i did not intend to come off as tone policing, i am not saying that either of of these parties is correct in their judgement, or incorrect in their belief, i am not refuting any argument at all in fact. nor am i asking that their position/argument be discarded because they didn’t say it nicely. i was intending to come into the argument as an impartial third party and attempt to help each side see a little bit of the others point of view. this is not the first time i have taken this stance. my best friend in the world is Atheistic, my parents are VERY christian, for example.
as far as your rights for marriage go, i personally have no stance on the subject other than this: marriage is a promise, be it official or not, anyone can go out, purchase a ring, and say i do. true love will always triumph. this is something ive believed for many many years, and it takes true love to stay together in the face of not only sickness, hard times, and financial trouble, but adversity and ridicule from the public as well.
Oh, a lot of what I said was about the original commentator, not you, and I meant the general you when I was talking about oppression, etc. I also think tone policing is something people can do by accident — that an emotional delivery can somehow detract from your rightness in an argument is drilled into us all in school when we are first taught to debate, but in the real world we have to unlearn that or else risk derailing important conversations or requiring that victims who are in pain bend over backwards to respect not only the feelings of the people they are talking to but also of anyone who might conceivably overhear them. And in that situation it’s important to take a step back and remember what’s really important. Miss Manners has no place in a discussion between the oppressed and the oppressor, and she certainly shouldn’t be invoked to protect the latter from the former.
I’m going off on a big ole tangent here, but basically someone with privilege — a Christian in this case — is always going to have a huge advantage in the “staying cool” event. Because for them, religious oppression is something they’ve read about and literally equate to being wished Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas — so it is easy for them to take a breath and put aside their grumpy feelings on the matter, assuming a very pseudo-polite tone (pseudo because they are usually super condescending about it) and remaining calm and rational while saying things like, “I understand your feelings, but I believe in traditional marriage :|a”, either not realizing or not caring that what they are really saying is, “I think my personal religious beliefs are much more important than your civil rights. *I* should get to decide whether *you* have them.”
Then, because what they’ve said is enormously offensive but didn’t “resort to name calling”, they get to pretend they’ve been nothing but nice and that anyone who so much as raises their voice in response is not only being irrational and rude and ~closed-minded~ — they’re my beliefs! why are you acting like they affect you??? — BUT ALSO SOMEHOW A DISCREDIT TO THEIR POSITION. “I might agree with you if only you hadn’t called me ignorant! Calm down, you’re just making yourself and everyone who agrees with you look bad!” And…
Okay, I think I’m done. Whoof. It’s a really frustrating pattern, but I hope all of this was at least interesting for someone to read.
Dina shoots, she scores!
he he. Dina rocks. I love that Joyce has her own personality, but I also love that she gets to grow as a person…. and so does dina!
IN OTHER NEWS: HA. I want to see Mike’s reaction to the poll. And Joe’s.
Is anybody else completely distracted by the position of the mouth on Joyce’s breasts?
¬_¬
DINA NEEDS TO BE A REAL PERSON SO I CAN MARRY HER.
I thought the need for annual flu shots wasn’t because of evolution but because different strains of influenza tend to come and go in cycles and a different strain will be most prevalent in different years?
This is not to pretend evolution doesn’t happen, of course.
I… I’ve actually never heard that one, but it makes enougnh sense to be plausible.
I always assumed it was because we needed annual injections to keep the levels of the antibiotic in our system appropriate, a “boost” to the original shot we get, not a completely different shot every year. Hence, “booster” shots. But your example is probably correct too.
Aaaagh.
1) antibiotics are chemicals that kill bacteria. Like penicillin and vancomycin. Bacteria are good at evolving resistance to them. But this is irrelevant to viruses.
2) vaccines prime our immune systems with information about a target — usually viruses, though sometimes bacteria or toxins — ideally giving use the same immunity we get from being sick. The immune system has encountered something, knows it is a danger, and can kill it again much more rapidly. ‘how’ is complicated, and happens via something like internal evolution, but basically after the disease or vaccination you have a lot more white blood cells that are ‘looking’ for such threats. No antibiotic is involved. If the immune system ‘forgets’ then we give booster shots to prime it again. Tetanus shots are every 10 years.
We do not get flu shots as boosters. We get flu shots because flu viruses keep changing rapidly, swapping major components of their genes every year in pigs and chickens in China, so new strains break out every year. Might your vaccine from five years ago protect against this year’s strain? Maybe, but who’s tracking that? Just get a shot.
There are a couple of other anti- words: antigen, a protein feature that our immune system latches onto, and which is sometimes used in a vaccine, and antibodies, chemicals that some white blood cells make to neutralize virus particles or toxins. (Other white blood cells kill our own infected cells, based on their presenting antigen on their surface; others kill our cells for not presenting anything. Very totalitarian.)
I just realized, this is only the next day after the previous incident between those two …
This… Will be good.
Lol! I love you, Dina.
CONGRATULATIONS FOR making it to the bottom of the page!
Thank you! Whew! Where’s my medal???
they got lost somewhere around the argument about the morals of getting/not getting an influenza vaccine.
Dina with the mental right cross!
(and the bottom of the page :P)
My rant;
Believing in god isnt a problem, the problem is when you stop believing in people.
If you believe the world is just a few thousand years old; that isnt faith, thats lack of faith. Lack of faith in the hundreds of thousands of geologists,physists,astrolists etc that have studied their whole lives telling you otherwise.
If you dont believe in evolution its the same; you are saying the people LOOKING at the whole world are lying. You are saying these people putting effort and huge amount of time into understanding the world are all useless.
By all means believe in a god. Just dont stop believing in the people. Its grossly insulting.
THE DEFINITION of faith is believing in something without proof. Those hundreds of thousands of geologists, physicists, astrologists and scientists that have studied their wholes lives don’t want your faith. They want you to look at their work with scrutiny and logic. They don’t want you to give them the same benefit of the doubt you give your priest, pastor or whatever.
To be fair, faith can be used as in (religious) belief or as in trust(ing a person). And even the phrase “believing in the people” goes more towards the second.
Uhh, science gets more intricate and complex every year as new discoveries are made. Like it or not, me being the guy who looks at someone’s findings without having devoted my life to the subject IS acting on faith. I’d have no way to know how to evaluate anyone’s results because I have a layman’s understanding of the concepts.
I’ll right away seize your rss feed as I can not in finding your e-mail subscription link or e-newsletter service. Do you’ve any?
Please let me recognize so that I could subscribe. Thanks.
What is even happening in this comment, and why is it the best on the page.
This is still one of my favorite strips.
Or, like, set of them.