I figured that Tuesday's ChuckleADuck needed its partner.
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Chuckle-A-Duck
ChuckleADuck is a webcomic that examines atheism, religion, politics, and general silliness from its own unique perspective. Its audience includes atheists, evangelicals, the spiritual, the cynical, young, old, liberals, conservatives and the occasional space alien.
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“There are no atheists during Grant Season.”
I figured you’d approve
“There is no such thing as an atheist in a combat situation. I take no chances. I pray to Buddha, Mohammed, MISTER Jesus H. Christ, and any other religious honchos I can come up with!”
R. Lee Ermey, “Seige of Firebase Gloria”
I’d rather not find any religious texts when stalking the fantasy shelves…
Well…, or the Philosophy section, Self-Help, or even Biography…
My bookstore has a row labeled “religious media”. there are at least six bible translations there.
I am sure that if you compared the translations you would not find any difference other and idioms and phrases. The basic thought would be the same. King James english or Modern english – different but the same thoughts.
Oh yes, they all say the same thing of course. Just different translations. It’s actually interesting in some cases. Some word it in ways that are easier to understand the original thought than others. If you’re into understanding the bible(which I am obsessively so), it’s to one’s own benefit to read various translations.
I used to go to a Second-hand bookshop that kept the Book of Mormon and Scientology with the Fantasty and SF.
When I read anything pertaining to & about quantum physics anymore I feel as though I’m reading very mystical spiritual material. The difference between science & religion is smaller than those who would trash either understand.
I’m in agreement– there are an awful lot of questions that have only one answer, no matter who you ask: Don’t know. Thinking that either science or religion has all the answers is silly.
Hey, Mischugenah, are you nuts? Oh, wait, your name says it all.
I agree with you about saying ” I don’t know ” about many of the questions that come up about science and the Bible. Still, we continue living and learning and asking questions – trying to understand what we see happening around us. The Hebrew scriptures had answers to scientific questions even before the questions were asked.
To the truly religious, religion DOES have all the answers. That idea is wrapped up in its very structure. And to those who view life from a scientific viewpoint, it’s a central tenet that science does not, and never will, have all the answers. However, it’s also true that science is based on a continual process of working to find those answers. It’s dynamic. Whereas the bible, or quran, or any other book of faith, is static.
As a deeply, dare I say truly, religious person, I disagree, and to be honest I’m a little offended that you would simply lump together all religious beliefs like that. The religion I follow states that ‘the glory of God is intelligence’; we are told ‘seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning’, and ‘study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people’. Science is in no way excluded from that, and is in fact encouraged. Further, the entire *point* of the religion that I follow is that it isn’t static, that revelation continues even today, that God has LOTS more He wants to tell us, which is why we follow a living prophet. (If you haven’t guessed yet, I’m Mormon.)
Is there some reason you think people can’t look at the universe and see a wonderful, vast mystery waiting to be explored, and also see it as God’s creation? What about those two ideas do so many people seem to find incompatible?
I wasn’t trying to offend but I was trying to be objective. Each individual religion has “its book” and that book is pointed at by the faithful as being the whole and complete truth. I don’t think you can successfully reference a mainline religion which routinely admits to updating its book of faith based on new discoveries or insights. It simply does not happen. The Bible, for instance, is simply printed over and over. It is completely different in science. A biology text from 10 years ago is obsolete today. Someone who decided they would teach Particle Physics at a University from the leading text of 1932 would be laughed at.
Appreciating the diversity and wonder of the universe has no bearing on the fundamental differences in approach I’ve just delineated. And to consider my mentioning it to be offensive is, quite honestly, a curious reaction.
Not entirely true actually. The bible is not the whole and complete truth, especially when it comes to explaining our surroundings. It’s not supposed to be. It’s a moral base, a guideline with rules to follow for a good life, healthy soul and thus good afterlife. And has been treated as such by the big churches for centuries.
Problems arise wherever people stray from that and start to treat it as containing all the answers, even to (especially to) science. And wherever other people look at the former and mistake them for being true to the book.
(Same goes for the quran as well, by the way. Not just the bible.)
What I find offensive, primarily, is someone trying to take something as varied as religious belief (or culture, or lifestyle, or any aspect of life, chosen or unchosen, for that matter) and lump it under a single heading. It’s dismissive. Your statement was ‘To the truly religious, religion DOES have all the answers.’ I would call that stereotyping. You wouldn’t start a sentence with ‘To the truly gay’ or ‘To the truly black’, would you? Some truly religious people do indeed believe that their holy book holds all truth. Others believe it to be merely a moral guide, as the other guy responding to you apparently does. Some hold the stories to have literally happened, while others see them as metaphor or morality tales. Some believe deeply in more than one religion, others in no one religion in particular, and none of these choices makes them any less religious than your average bible thumper (many are decidedly more so, in fact). Simply saying ‘all religions do/think/follow/believe’, even in generalities, is to ignore the vast arena of human experience and belief, and reduce those who don’t agree with you to a single, faceless mass.
Finally, I find it somewhere between annoying and funny that you’re trying to tell religious people what it is they really believe. Do you also inform Native Americans on the true nature of their culture(s)?
Gotta agree with you here. It’s amazing how scientifically accurate the Bible is. Of course, considering it is the word of God, that shouldn’t be too surprising, right? (no offense meant to anyone of different beliefs)
… (facepalm) I REALLY hope that was sarcasm Drakmanka.
I have noticed, over the years, that “scientists ” tend to gloss over information that don’t agree with their theories. In the ’80′s there was great worry about the coming Ice Age and now I see the same kind of worry about Global Warming. This “science” is based on faulty computer modeling and overlooks the history of climate changes over the centuries. Java man and other evidence of evolution came to nought. There is no evidence of a species evolving into another, different kind. The large gaps in fossil records is simply waved off as being nothing to be concerned about – hopefully more bones will be found to fill in the gaps and Evolution will remain intact. T Rex bones having DNA still in the marrow doesn’t fit the model so it can be safely ignored as an anomoly. Oh, well, we all have to have something to believe in and taken on faith. The Panspermia theory has been put forth to get around the fact that life on earth can’t be proven to have occured under the conditions present at the time guessed at by the scientists. Those scientists, if they can’t prove something they just add a few years to their guess and that takes care of the problem. “Life started 70 million years ago – or maybe 233 million, not enough time? Make it 400 million and I raise you life planted on the earth from outer space.
” Fat religous guy and skinny know-it-all scientist are nice strawmen to set up as gags for joke though.
I agree completely. There is no scientific basis for belief in evolution, in fact the science shows that evolution is an incorrect hypothesis, but scientists refuse to accept that.
Not to say that religion is any better. Anyone who has read the bible knows that a large percentage of what religious leaders teach as doctrine has no biblical basis, but again they refuse to accept that and keep going the way they’ve been going.
I guess it’s human nature, and Crow has made a great series of comics to show exactly that, while keeping it amusing.
Seriously, that’s just plain false to say that there is no evidence of one species evolving into another. It doesn’t happen in one step but finding a fossil which has evidence of both scales and feathers is a reasonable piece of evidence that says at least one reptile was evolving in the direction of something that we now classify as a bird. Any attempt to dismiss evolution by saying that the claim was that this happened overnight and that there must then be evidence of it is misinterpreting the ‘Origin of Species’ in the first place. Further since the time of the original proposition. We have discovered DNA and we can trace similarities between creatures of different types. We have actually show the mechanism by which small mutations over time can produce something different.
To say there is no evidence is to ignore all the evidence that you either have not made yourself aware or that for whatever reason you have decided you don’t like. Fair enough if you wish to make the statement “there is no evidence that will ever convince me in the face of my predominant belief”. At least then you are making a statement about your preferences rather than facts uncovered by others.
First off, I admit my typing will be flawed, now for the rest of the story.
Charles Darwin was worried that the fossil record did not show what his theory predicted.
” Why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain: and this is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory” Origion of Species 6th ed. 1872 ( London: John Murry. 1902 ) p. 413
” The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology” S.J. Gould Evolution”s Erratic Pace Natural History 86(5):14 1977
Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the prestigious British Museum of Natural History, which housese the world’s largest fossil collection – sixty million specimens – confessed, ” If I knew of any [ evolutionary transitions ], fossil or living, I would certainly have included them { in my book Evolution ]”. His statement undersscores the fact that the fossil record is an embarrassment to evolutionists. No verifiable transitions from one species to another have as yet been found.
Archaeopteryx = ancient wing. Dr.Duane Gish explains that carefu examination has demonstrated that in every case the characteristics a genuinely birdlike rather than reptilian. Archie is a full-fledged bird, not a missing link. Archie and alleged ancestral dinosaurs existed during the same period of time. Late Jurassic. Evolutionists have also classified as bird fossils fossils found in sediments identified as Late Triassic ( prior to the Jurassic). Accordingly, these birds would have lived approximately 75 million years earlier than Archie and , in fact, at thesame time as the first dinosaurs.
The idea that scales would fray themselves into the delicate design of the feather over millions of years is beyond reason. There just isn’t enough time to have something so specialized to occur along with all the other characteristics that make a bird different than a reptile.
Your last paragraph might easily have a arrow pointing both ways.
It’s a wonder to me that you should mention Gould and yet have no idea of what the man’s actual work says. He was not a creationist who is known for espousing that there was no such thing as evolution. In fact he is the father of the theory of punctuated equilibrium which states that there are relatively long static periods followed by period or rapid change. This is not by any means an effort to say that evolution doesn’t exist but that it is that the rate of change varies. That doesn’t even fly in the face of the original Origin of Species, small changes in environment over a short period would be expected to not create huge advantages for one adaptation over another. The largest changes would be expected from very rapid environmental change over a short period in which a major percentage of species would die off in a short period of time.
Colin Patterson’s quote is taken out of context. His quote was specifically about a single book he had written in regard to a specific line of fossil fish. He was asked about why no transitional fossils of this particular species was included in his particular book. And his response that, “There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument.” Was never intended to be an answer to another question other than the one he was asked which was “In such a scholarly book as yours about this particular species why were there no transitional fossils included.” Patterson himself has been quoted many times that this was not a quote about the general case he was asked a specific question about a specific species.
BTW in regards to the T-Rex marrow at least one case was positively proven to be a laboratory contamination of fossil bone with the DNA of present day living thing. The problem comes when you mine quotes out of data out of context and attempt to use them to prove something else completely. The problem then becomes the data was never collected with that specific purpose in mind. If you’re not planning on testing a fossil for DNA then you don’t take steps during collection to prevent DNA contamination. And if you don’t take those steps and then you use those samples in a completely different way you may get bad results. This all comes out in the wash as careful checks are done after the fact to try and account for anomalies in data. A formal paper only gets written up when the input data is controlled and repeatable. That’s why you don’t see a journal like Science or Nature printing up some of these wild conclusions. It’s not that scientists are ignoring what they don’t like it’s that they are controlling variables to arrive at a supportable conclusion. No controls, then they don’t make the claims. You might see someone saying “we’re looking into this and if it is true then it would be very exciting”. When you don’t see anything else you don’t need to go any further than “guess it wasn’t true or at least unsupportable” no need to break out the tinfoil hats and disparage scientists for hiding evidence.
You can point the arrow either way you want. But look up what the people you are quoting say their remarks mean. What they are willing to stand behind. If they don’t come to the same point as you do based on their data then there’s a pretty good chance you shouldn’t be using them as part of your argument.
Perhaps a more appropriate section of the bookstore would be mythology, since that’s more or less what the Bible is – perhaps with a bit of history thrown in.
I am amazed with this comic. Because despite the fact that both this comic and the last one seem to have said the same thing, the last one comes off as showing religious people are idiots, while this comic comes over as people who “believe in science” have left behind childish notions of religion. Very interesting.
Glad to have caught your attention that way. It’s something I often try for. Don’t always succeed
Well, the guy in this one clearly is more likeable than the other one.
Other than that however, what you see in the two comics says more about the reader than it does about the comic.
Personally I call every guy simply waving off religion as nothing more than fantastical bull out as being just as wrong as the opposite. Heck, even if you don’t believe in a god, there’s still a lot to get and learn in the holy books. Let’s not forget, for example, that a lot of the old religions also contained a manual on how to lead a good life and form a good society.
For sure. Even if someone proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no deity, I would continue to live my life based on the instructions in the bible, because it has made my life a much happier one.
Actually, the point I feel is most designed to show the artist support for one side of this “argument” is the fact that in this comic, he starts off saying “I’m a scientist”, as if the fact of his profession somehow gives him the authority to talk about religion or religious texts. Whereas, the other man was a fat blowhard, who only had his opinion, and no outside force he could invoke for authority.
Meh. Saying that one is a scientist alone gives about as much authority and credibility as saying you occasionally use your brain to think. It says nothing about whether what you come up with is true or total bogus.
Not to forget that by now, both sides in this particular argument tend to describe themselves as scientists (and rather often their counterparts as quacks).
I wonder if this guy has realised that more archeological digs have been found using the bible than any other resource. And, I also wonder if he has heard of the T-Rex that was found to have semisolid blood in it’s leg, or what some Japanese fisherman found dead floating in the ocean that photographs show is a Pleiosaur(sp). It was not a fossile, but quite alive less than a month before. Religion does not reject science, it is always the other way around.
Blood vessels and proteins in the T-Rex, which is a super fascinating discovery that deepens our understanding of fossilization. It doesn’t negate the age of the fossils in any way that I’m aware of.
Whether you’re referring to a Plesiosaur or Pliosaur, I’m unaware of any such discovery. I’m pretty confident it would have made some major headlines, considering the coverage that individual swordfish eyes on the beach get.
Your last sentence is more true than most people will admit. I mentioned the T Rex marrow and also how it was dismissed as being outside of ” scientific parameters” and could safely be ignored. Ignored as in not showing up in the news, just is some articles in science magazines. I will try to find the references.
OK,…having done EXTENSIVE study on this topic, I can safely say the admin is correct… Out of the DOZENS of reports I read concerning this, not a single one indicated that this find negated the assumed age of the fossils in any way… It simply indicated that the processes governing how deeply the replacing mineralization event could penetrate into the actual bones of that size had been over-estimated… The result? Despite how long they had been in the earth, the fossilization was never able to reach the marrow in the thicker bones… Essentially, the marrow was too deep within the larger bones for the fossilization process to reach… Because of this, the marrow within simply became mummified; trapped in a veritable “time capsule” for millions of years…
Based on all the data I have absorbed, there have been numerous other finds like this, now that the scientific community have dared to begin breaking many of these larger bones to see if this holds true. It does… In the past, every POSSIBLE care was taken never to break these larger bones when they were found… They’re simply FAR too valuable whole and un-damaged (since most fossils are found pre-shattered)… This is why the breaking of the T-Rex bone was such a big deal in the first place (due to the fact they had incredible difficulty getting it out of the remote location it was discovered in)… It’s super-rare to have one of the larger dinosaur fossil skeletons discovered with most of it’s bones un-cracked,…and when they do find them completely whole and intact,…it’s even RARER to break them considering how careful they are excavating and transporting them… The T-Rex one got broken during a bad helicopter ride…
Such finds, by the way, are VERY rare… The events surrounding fossilization itself is rare enough that we have only discovered a very, very tiny fraction of all the types of life that have existed on Earth… Conditions have to be super perfect for fossilization to even be a possibility in the first place,….which means there is a HUGE probability that there are thousands of “missing links” that are yet to be found,…and millions more that never even became fossils…
Most folks who want to believe that the Earth is much younger, however, or want to believe that dinosaurs existed contemporaneously with man, seek to dismiss the information I have given above, merely because it would displease them…
One thing I’ve noticed that hasn’t been mentioned yet: As it concerns Geology, ~Time~ is the biggest enemy. It has a tendency to wipe out more evidence than the environmental conditions could preserve. Lack of evidence does not equate with evidence of lack. The only thing that really separates theory from fact is the accumulation of evidence. The whole concept of any scientific discipline is to seek & find evidence to support a theory…Advancing technologies are designed to help us find more evidence.
I ascribe to a difference between Religion & Organized Religion, in that any Organization created by Men operates more on the Politics of Power, whereas Religion itself is something like a study in Humanities Sciences (ie: The Nature of Man). In my readings of history, Organized Religion has harbored more out-right hatred of sciences than the other way around.
Argh, the comments…I need to go bang my head against a wall now.