Last week I posted one strip from Wiley Miller’s comic Non Sequitur, but realized only today, thanks to alert reader Doug, that Miller is going after religion and creationism.
This is apparently a continuing series, and I haven’t reproduced all of the strips, but you can see them (and should, so Miller gets the clicks) by going to the website above and simply hitting the small left arrow by the date at the top, which will take you back day by day.
I don’t get a daily paper, so if this stuff is appearing in regular print, I’d be surprised. Here are the last three days’ worth; I’ll leave it to you to follow the tale from now on.
I love the motto on The Church of Danae: “Follow along and no one gets hurt.” So true!
Intelligent design creationism got a whack yesterday:
And the day before, the multifarious evidence for evolution gets a mention:
It is a regular in the Washington Post, but we’re a bunch of flaming liberals here.
It’s been running in the Los Angeles Times for years.
I get it delivered by email every day but it’s also in the paper.
That second cartoon doesn’t look like it’s attacking ID — it looks more like it’s trying to play for a Middle Ground, where mainstream science is guilty of the same flaws as creationism.
My guess is he’s referring to mainstream news or culture – not mainstream science if there is such a thing.
When I first read it on the cartoon, I thought it said “The Church of Dance,” not “Danae.” And I thought that wasn’t a bad motto for a Church of Dance.
The strip is published daily in the Los Angeles Times too.
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Bookmark this link and read it every day!
I wonder…how many of these papers have Non Sequitur in the comics section, and how many in the editorial section?
You can get away will all kinds of things on the editorial pages that you can’t in the funnies.
b&
It’s probably aimed at the biggest readers of the funnies section, and therefore subversive.
LA Times has on the comics page.
“I don’t get a daily paper, so if this stuff is appearing in regular print, I’d be surprised.”
Surprised? Really? I’ve been reading this strip for years. I’m in California – where are you? Dodging dinosaurs on the moon? (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.) 🙂
My favorite imaginary Christian denomination comes from Firesign Theatre: ‘The Powerhouse Church of the Presumptuous Assumption of the Blinding Light.’ Its pastor? The very cherry charismatic Rod Flash. Firesign, than whom no greater, also did a thoroughly involving evocation of the primitive view of the creation of the universe, followed by its rectification through the good work of science (which takes its satiric lumps too). In a nutshell: while ‘some primitive peoples still believe this myth,’ the rest of us–’Man, Woman, Child, all are up against the Wall of Science.’ [I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus]
My favorite imaginary church is the “Faith Tabernacle Outreach Mission Crusade Deliverance Temple Healing Ministry Center in Jesus’ Name, Limited.”
It was the invention of some guy who used to call up Christian talk radio stations and pretend to agree with the host, giving his reasons and telling stories that very gradually became more and more ludicrous till he was spouting sheer lunacy. At some point, he usually explained that he was a pastor of a church, the “Faith Tabernacle Outreach Ministry etc. etc. etc.”
A prank caller, in other words. I ran across some clips somewhere, a long time ago. It was interesting to see what it took for a host to catch on to this guy either not being serious — or not working with a full deck. As I recall, one of his favorite schticks was a conspiracy theory involving the Illuminati, the Vatican, and the French Freemasons. Something about parachuting apes, I think.
Firesign Theatre — a big hit with you stoners … ok, ok, with us stoners. And you’re right; that was some funny shit, man.
All lies from the pit of hell.
Our daily paper carries it in the comics section, and we aren’t generally viewed as cosmopolitan freethinkers here. I always thought it was a (good) regular comic strip.
I used to get the Kalamazoo Gazette, and Non Sequitur was a staple of the comics page. Given some of his past material, I’d be amazed if they bothered to censor this.
This strip runs seven days a week in the San Francisco Chronicle. I’ve really been looking forward to it!
In Australia, the strip is run 6 days a week in the comics section of The Age newspaper. Non-Sequitur is great cartoon satire.
Hey, he’s a product of VCU (Richmond VA), too. I did not know that. Cool!
I thought for sure you were going to post the strip just before these showing a giant divine cat hacking up two hairballs that became the Earth and moon.
He did. Several days back. That’s how I discovered Non Sequitir, and a way cool strip it is too!
I’d just like to mention that I drew attention to that first cartoon in a comment on the ‘Boy Scouts ban Atheist’ thread, though obviously Jerry missed it. 🙂
More significantly, I’ve been looking through Non Seq back issues, and it’s amazing just how many of them are relevant to topics which have come up on this notablog from time to time. It could possibly rival XKCD in that respect.
I too am surprised that you’re surprised by the thought of it printed in a daily paper. We here in Norh Jersey have been enjoying this witty gem for ten years or so in The Bergen Record.
This appears daily in the Potland (Maine) Press Herald and weekends in the Sunday Telegram. But then, Wiley is a Mainer, which explains Cap’n Eddie’s accent and lobster boat.
Maybe Stinky Boy World is the source of the DNA particles that were transmitted to Earth causing life here to begin under the theory of panspermia?
This definition of ‘Doublethink’ from George Orwell’s 1984 has recently been called ‘MittSpeak’. However, I think the Creationists speak a fine version of it.
Jerry, it may be worth passing on to all.
“DOUBLETHINK: To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”