![[0381] Larisa Will Burn In Hell](/comics/2012-05-31-0381-larisa-will-burn-in-hell.png "[0381] Larisa Will Burn In Hell")
Of course Larisa isn’t becoming all soft suddenly.
I had a dozen different ideas for Larisa’s dialog in the last panel, but this one was the best in my opinion.
- Priest: … since the Lord will forgive those who honestly repent their sins. Yes?
- Larisa: Is there some sort of guideline on which sins are exceptions to this rule?
- Priest: Huh? You mean, like murder?
- Larisa: No, no, the less obvious ones. Because I really don’t want to end up like the poor fellow in Numbers, chapter 15, who was stoned to death as commanded by the Lord for gathering firewood during Sabbath.
- Larisa: I also don’t want to be mauled to death by a bear just for mocking a prophet like the little children in Kings, chapter 2. In any case, there’s no evidence that the Lord gave them time to repent before punishing them this way.
- Larisa: I’m appalled that the church refuses to give me religious guidance on avoiding sins for which I’ll be mauled to death by bears.
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Can we try to focus less on the pointless, go-absolutely-nowhere religious crap and realize this is a comic about a talking raccoon, a pyromaniac, a kid named after a video game character, his girlfriend, and a squirrel that eats meat?
Mm’kay, thanks, bye.
@ Soyeong:
Oh dear. Sounds like the start of a “no true Scotsman” argument. Who exactly is being misrepresented? I feel my description of Fundies in comment sections is right on the money. In the US at least such people tend to be poorly educated and have commensurate spelling skills. Only to be expected when one reads only one book. I may find their impotent rage, bigotry, ignorance and peasant superstition extremely amusing, but I don’t feel like I’m misrepresenting them.
@ Disco:
I was saying that it was rational for someone to be angry about being misrepresented by the comic strip, not by your comment. Your description of fundies is not bad, as long as you realize that there is no connection between having that mindset and being angry about the comic strip.
OMG, I’m appalled too! Now I’ll never know which sins to avoid in order to not get mauled to death by bears! NOOOO!!
Yes, Old Testament is particularly bloodthirsty and contradicts New Testament. That’s why I consider only New Testament Gospels a “real” Christianity. It makes a lot more sense that way.
@ DragoFlare101:
Real burn marks on your t-shirt are more telling.
@ JKelley:
Too true JKelley. The fastest way to get kicked out of a church is to point out the sins the people in the church are committing and those in power (Pastor, Deacon, Priest, ect) have condoned. To think that any man (who isn’t also God) is above sin is unreasonable. Unfortantely it can seem just as unreasonable to think that so and so or yourself can fall to sin.
The only truely unpardonable sin is attributing the works of God to the devil. However if you take everything in the Bible to be true you have these two facts, (forgive me for not having references as Larissa did.
#1. Attributing the works of God to the devil is unpardonable.
#2. Once you have salvation you cannot lose it no mattter what you do.
This leaves only 1 conclusion. Once you have #2, you no longer have the capicity to do #1.
This comic is all too funny because it is all too true. The easiest answer to a problem, is to get rid of the people who don’t agree with you. It happens far too many times.
@ Soyeong:
The restoration of Israel was enacted by thousands of years of believers who were quite aware of this interpretation. I will grant that the Bible fairly explicitly says that Israel will be restored, and stand forever (Ez. 39:28), and it was indeed restored, by Aristobulus I in 110 BCE. It’s the same book that claims that Tyre would be destroyed permanently (Ez. 27:36) by Nebuchadnezzar (Ez. 26:7), and one of those two is still standing, and the other has been underground 2550 years. Which is which, again?
Dawkins’ “attempt” shot down every argument soundly, and only philosophers, whose careers are dependent on venerating our broken human brain over our mechanisms to correct its flaws, will tell you otherwise, attempting to dazzle with wordgames and shame with trivial ignorance to snow the fact that their vocation is life support for a prescientific era of thought. However, the physical world is the one we all live in – all the discourse in the world won’t help you in an airlock.
The Argument of the Unmoved Mover is, essentially, a thirteenth-century framing of the argument from entropy. Our human minds are born with an intuitive notion that order only arises by human intervention, and while this generally serves us well, seeing order in the universe, it tells us there are gods. Studying, we can see that entropy does not decrease, but only moves in certain processes, perhaps most importantly photosynthesis, and through this humans act as conduits to the great entropy sink that monotheists to this day venerate as God, in imagery if no longer literally. This leaves the question of why there was so little entropy in the universe at the beginning, but absent the forces that caused the mind to exist, there is no reason to think that it is anything that resembles a mind, which is the fundamental characteristic that separates a god from a natural force. Moreover, the argument dismisses the idea of an infinite regress of “movers,” and the traditional argument against this infinite regress has long since been discarded – indeed, all modern mathematics assumes a more nuanced concept of infinity, in which an infinite chain of causes does not preclude a present.
The Argument of the First Cause, likewise, makes use of this primitive concept of infinity, and is for that reason not worth considering, leaving alone that it again gives no reason that the first cause should have the characteristics implied of any god, which arguments for the Christian God specifically all assume.
The Argument from Contingency again gives no reason why the being of its own necessity should be a god, and again rests on the thirteenth-century concept of infinity. It is essentially nothing more than the previous argument stripped of time.
The Argument from Degree is absurd on its face, since it either posits that ideal forms exist in the real world, or tacitly admits that God is imaginary, with no impact on the real world. It bears no consideration.
Finally, the Teleological Argument is self-refuting. If every mind we knew of were not a product of the laws of nature, every neurologist on Earth would be out of a job, and every psychoactive drug, prescribed or otherwise, a placebo, or satanic. Therefore, it is not only unnecessary that these rules are the product of a mind, a flight of fancy again taken from a child’s concept of entropy, but unlikely.
The “hundreds of pages” do not provide anything more substantial in terms of these arguments, but assume the existence of God based on them, and continue on from there. Indeed, why would he dwell on this more than a few pages, when he holds that the truth of scripture should not be subject to reason?
Could this be posted to reddit’s /r/atheism?
Soyeong wrote:
Congratulations! Now you know how atheists have felt for the past, well, ever since religion was invented.
Seriously, why is it that every religious person seems to forget that atheists, while having existed longer than religion*, have been mercilessly murdered all the damn time up until the past century or so. And that’s only in certain regions, we’re still a persecuted minority in places such as the middle east. What’s wrong with us using our freedom of speech to poke fun at the people who have practically ruled the world unquestioned for over a millenium?
*(atheism is the lack of religion, and since religion had to be invented, that means before religion there was a lack of religion)
Also, to all people complaining, it could be much worse considering it’s Larisa we’re talking about:
http://i.imgur.com/Usgl7.jpg
@ TheInvisibleMime:
Because gruesomely murdering kids is TOTALLY okay as long as they “mocked god”. People mocking god should obviously be put to death without a chance of redemption.
@ Soyeong:
Dunno – last time, it was for civilliy and reasonably asking why women were treated so badly in Biblical times.
I haven’t gone back to any church in a number of years, so don’t ask me to cite specifics (it’s been a good fifteen years or so…)
I also recall pointing up differences between “good conduct” as defined by the Church and the teachings of Jesus – and asking for a resolution between the two. Since I couldn’t get answers, I assume (to myself) that it could be chalked up to the corruption of Divine teachings by Man.
I wouldn’t consider it ignorance – simply a matter of comparing observations and conclusions I’d arrived at independently with what is practised.
It’s not faith I have trouble with, or the idea of God (or the Great Architect, Prime Mover, or whatever else you want to call Him.) It’s just the faiths as outlined BY MANKIND that don’t make an awful lot of sense to me…
Is that what you’d consider ignorant? Just wondering.
@ Neospector:
The author does whatever the hell he wants with the story.
And constantly pressing only the titular characters in the forefront is just going to exhaust the comic.
i think it all boils down to who has the best imaginary friend… let the flames begin.
Sometimes I really wonder what crowd you are trying to cater to with your comic.
@ Pablo:
Most Christians understand “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” means that we’re all sinners, including the church leaders, who are no less immune to the temptation of sin than we are. However, because they are supposed to lead by example, they are held more accountable for their sins than we are, but even then there are both proper and disruptive ways to get them to stop sinning. Unfortunately, while I have no doubt there that have been some churches that have kicked people out for poor reasons, I think the majority have been because they were bring disruptive.
@ Gurren Prime:
If atheism were merely the lack of religion, then it could be the case that both atheism and theism are true at the same time, in that you could have a lack of religion and God could still exist. However, because atheism is a negation of theism, then it is impossible for them both to be true at the same time, therefore you have a misunderstanding of what atheism means.
I have no objection if you want to use your freedom of speech to poke fun at religion, but there are both intelligent and unintelligent ways of doing so. Unintelligent ways merely display your ignorance for all to see because you clearly do not understand what it is that you are poking fun at, so I am just suggesting that you stick to the intelligent ways.
@ JKelley:
I consider it acting out of ignorance when people assume the wrong answers or assume that there are no answers when there are. The question that you had was not unreasonable, but it is unfortunate that the people you asked did not have the answer. If you look at how women were treated at the time, you will see that they were treated much better in Israel than in other societies. Another thing to keep in mind is that there is a difference in culture. For example, people in the US might see women wearing burkas and think that their freedoms are being mistreated, but if you asked most of them, they would deny it. This isn’t to say that there aren’t women who have been mistreated, but I wouldn’t blame the Bible for it because their actions are not in accordance with the Bible, but are in disagreement with it.
@ logic:
Thank you for showing us the fundie mindset at work. I hope you get better.
@ Raen:
Thank you for your response, but I am leaving shorty to head out of town for the weekend and don’t have time to respond at the moment. I will respond on Monday when I have the chance.
Once again the the church has no answers except believe and do not question. Poking the bear are we? HA!
@ Ajedi32:
You get your questioned answered, duh. Cm’on, not all preachers are stuck-ups, for God’s sake! I know a few who welcome or even invite people to ask questions. They’re not asking us to follow blindly people! Part of the point is to be enlightened, after all.
@ Neospector:
Hasn’t anyone ever read the ad? It’s “a comic about love, food and other important stuff” not just the main characters.
I am a Christian. And yes the CATHOLIC church will do this. A proper ACTUAL Christian church, would either answer the questions then and there, or would ask her to stay after the service so that the preaher could answer the questions and any other questions in detail, or would aks her to come back later on so that he could research the subject so as to properly answer her query.
This is the problem with the Catholic “church”, they don’t give a rat’s patoot about anyone but themselves.
Good strip :). Keep looking for answers Larisa :D.
(sigh) *headdesk*
1)The man executed for gathering sticks— of note, it does not specifically say that God commanded it, only that Moses did. And it was apparently a judgement call on Moses’ part, and made due to the circumstances at hand. Specifically, barely one day prior, God Himself had laid down the law that noone was to work on the Sabbath, as it was a holy day. Contemplate if you will what kind of a rebellious jerk it takes to do something so petty. It was a deliberate act of contempt and offense to God, and the Israelites were having none of it.
2)They weren’t children. They were “youths,” which meant they were in their teens and twenties….. and the original translation of the phrase “get thee up, thou bald head” had some rather more violent undertones in that day. Ladies and gentlemen, the prophet in question was an elderly man suddenly surrounded by a gang of mocking, arrogant hoodlums who were verbally threatening him. If this had occurred today, it would have ended in gunfire…. and few would have thought less of the man for drawing a gun to defend himself.
BrainBlow wrote:
I was talking about the continuing comments that will, if left to continue for a while, will directly lead to a religious argument.
The phrase I’m looking for with your comment is more along the lines of “Shut your trap about what you assume people are talking about”
Mace Direwolf wrote:
Peh, again. Comments mostly. I just don’t want to see what happened to one forum I used to scan.
@ RHJunior:
“…and few would have thought less of the man for drawing a gun to defend himself.”
Let’s pretend that the word, used elsewhere to mean “youths,” doesn’t here have a diminutive prefix and a modifying adjective meaning “little.” Let’s pretend “go up, baldhead,” a simple infinitive and subject in Hebrew, has some forgotten violent connotation, perhaps even pretending that they were telling him to “go up” to Heaven bodily as Elijah was said to have “gone up,” as if that were somehow an insult or threat, ignoring that he was at the time climbing the hills surrounding the West Bank. Let’s say this was a situation of a bunch of youths harassing and vaguely menacing an old man.
Remember when a group of youths actually did harass and menace an old man on a subway in New York? He drew a gun on them, and he wound up in prison, a media sensation, and a symbol of reckless vigilantism to this day. And they were threatening him very explicitly, with a screwdriver, trying to take his money. If an old man pulled a gun on some youths saying “go on up, go on up,” or even something vaguely threatening, he’d have a news van on his front lawn.
I am SOO tempted to say this in church this sunday.
@ Sir Chaos:
And then she would kidnap Sandra from heaven and show her how fun it is in hell.
@ fwer:
See, this is what I’ve always felt was the truth after reading the book: the Ten Commandments were the laws of God and that every thing else were the laws of Moses and Abraham, and that their words were not those of God, nor to be taken as God’s word.
@ Ruby:
Not all non-believer will go to Hell. Why doesn’t anyone understand that? God specifically says that he will judge each individual by their own standards. So if you’re a righteous person and you’ve exceeded your own standards, you just might. In the end it’s His choice, but chances are God would let you go to heaven anyway.
Excellent cartoon.
My dear wife, when she was a child, asked far less complicated questions during her Lutheran confirmation classes, just the kind of questions that a sincere, clear-thinking kid would ask, but for which the theology had no good answers. The other kids giggled at the preacher’s befuddlement and irritation, so he took her aside and essentially told her that if she didn’t shut up, he’d make trouble for her with her parents, and he implied that he’d make trouble for them with the rest of the community. She did shut up, went through the charade of Confirmation, but that was the end of her interest in organized religion.
Careful, Larisa. They don’t like people that think too deep in those places.
I may have missed it, but the correct citation is 2 Kings 2: 23-24. Lest the fundies bitch.
Now if you thought that was strange, take a look at Judges 19.
@ Mace Direwolf:
The saved will be judged according to their works, inasmuch as they reflect the true strength of their faith, “but whoever does not believe is condemned already.” (John 3:18)
He should have just answered this: “In the Old Testament days, God was still very unforgiving, Forgiving is more of a New Testament concept.”
Marscaleb wrote:
The ones who like this kind of strip? 🙂 (Like… Me!)
I had those same questions. My dad is a seminary student, so one day I read these and asked about them. The guy gathering firewood was doing so on the Sabbath, which is a holy day of rest, the children mocked a representative of God, among a few other things. I kinda remember some general was told by a prophet of God to completely destroy a certain enemy city, taking nothing as plunder. He decided to keep the cattle for sacrifices to God, of which the prophet told him that God would have preffered obedience over sacrifice. There’s quite a few instances of people deliberately disobeying God.
Still, the fact that Larissa was kicked out was messed up. That’s one of the reasons why people are leaving churches.
[…] I have to agree with Larisa on this. At what point will people stop taking the Bible so literally that they completely ignore their own religion’s basic tenets? Rather than obey blindly as in Orwell’s 1984***, is it not better that we keep our eyes and ears open? Is it not better that we learn to think for ourselves? […]
@ Pillamelai:
God would like you to think that. He arranged a little “carpentry accident” for his son, you see…
Sorry about the delay in responding.
I think an important part of being a “free thinker” is having the ability to evaluate arguments as poor, even though they support your position. For example, even though I think it can be logically concluded that God is both intelligent and a designer, I think William Paley’s ID argument is poor for a number of reasons. Unlike the Fifth Way, ID’s irreducible complexity is vulnerable to new research that may show that something is not as irreducible as we once thought. ID uses a quasi-scientific argument to show that a deity or super-human intelligence is probable and that they gave order to the universe, but are not necessary for its current operation. Whereas the Fifth Way uses a metaphysical argument to conclusively establish the God of classical theism, who is sustaining order in the universe here and now and any moment is exists. Biology, complexity, and Boeing 747’s are all irrelevant to the Fifth Way, and Dawkins would have his 747 objection answered if he had bothered to read the very next section on simplicity after Aquinas summarizes his Five Ways.
Speaking of Dawkins, it is also important for “free thinkers” to be able to distinguish whether or not someone is speaking as an expert. Dawkins is excellent when speaking as a biologist or a scientist, but he is no better than your average layman when it comes to religion and philosophy. This isn’t to say that everything he has said on religion and philosophy is wrong, but that you should first look at what the actual experts are saying on the issues that he brings up before unquestioningly gobbling up everything he is feeding you.
Moving on, I fail to see what the First Way has to do with entropy:
“The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is inact. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.”
Your objection about Aquinas’ understanding of infinity does not matter because he is not attempting to show that the universe had a beginning and that God must have caused it. What he had in mind was a series of movers that all exist together here and now and are all being moved simultaneously. The first mover is not first chronologically, but first ontologically. “As the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand” refers to an ordered series per se rather than per accidens. Aquinas admits that it is possible have an infinite series per accidens, but an infinite series of instrumental causes without an efficient cause is unintelligible.
For the Second Way, you still have not shown how his concept of infinity makes it unworthy of consideration. To give pause before such hasty dismissal was precisely why I said there were hundreds of pages that further explained his thinking. This understanding of God fits insofar as among other characteristics, God is understood to be the ultimate explanation for why things happen in the world. As to why we should regard this being as having the same classical characteristics of God is likewise explained latter in the Summa.
In Aquinas’ discussion concerning essence and existence, he says that a things existence is something that needs to be joined with its essence if it is to be made real. However, it is impossible for something to do with on it own because then it would be causing itself. It needs to be joined by something outside of itself. The same holds true for true for something having necessity of itself and the only way to stop the explanatory regress of necessary beings would be something whose essence and existence are identical, which would be God.
I’m sorry, I ran out of time, I’ll respond to the rest later.
@ Sir Chaos:
I really like how you think sir…
If the Church refuses to give you religious guidance, you can get it on Internet. In fact, shouldn’t there be a Wikipedia-like project for it? I mean, what could go wrong with a Cathecism anyone can edit?
Lisa as russian girl, must be orthodox follower, not catholic/protestant.
She dont have to go it THIS church at all.
More than that, most russians are not big fans of any religy, especially one as Lisa character.
I`m saying this, because I`am russian myself 🙂
I would just like to add that “little children” is a really bad and unfortunate translation of the Hebrew “ne’urim qetannim.” Should be translated “young men.” Instead of a group of little kids, picture one of our modern, violent gangs and you have got it right. Also, to the Israelites the sins cited here were not “less obvious,” and according to the New Testament there is a level of deliberate rebellion and lawlessness from which repentance is impossible.
The real take away from these passages is that you shouldn’t expect God to stand by and let you go on living comfortably in your rebellion when you pretty much know better. Uncomfortable for us Western moderns to hear, isn’t it? So the holes here are either: 1) in the comic writer’s understanding of the Bible, which happens to all of us who are interested in these matters; and/or 2) in the teaching approach of some churches. In any case, I sense there is a personal story behind the comic that I’d be interested in learning more about.
Admittedly, I think you can find a lot of people at church who aren’t there to think but rather to find complacency. Not my cup of tea. I will never stop asking good questions about pretty much everything, and this discipline hasn’t kept me from keeping my faith in the God of the Bible one bit.
@ Tom:
Heh! Should read the Bible yourself instead of having faith in what others tell you it says.
Read Judges 4:4
” Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading[a] Israel at that time.”
A woman Prophet and wife …leading Israel!
Don’t let those who hate Jews and Christians pass their bigotry to you.
@ Neospector:
I always think of the Sunday School teacher who, prodded by Bart’s constant questions, finally blurts out; “Isn’t blind faith good enough for anyone any more?”