34 thoughts on “The outsider test for faith”

  1. Which reminds me about the newly deceased’s tour of Heaven, being shown the enclaves for the Protestants, the Jews, the Baptists, the Mormons, the Hindus, the Moslems, &c., &c. “And what’s that 12ʹ-high wall for?” he asks. St. Peter replies, “Oh, the Catholics are on the other side. They like to think they’re the only ones up here.”

    /@ (ex-Catholic)

    1. I first heard that joke in the 1960s. It is still going strong apparently.

      The Catholic Church does not teach now and did not teach then, in the 1960s, that only Catholics can go to Heaven.

      So what is the point of the joke? Perhaps you should tell it about Moslems.

      1. I live in the US in the northwest, so when I heard the joke it was Mormons instead of Catholics. I don’t think it reflects actual doctrine but attitude. It is one of those generic jokes where you “insert the faith of choice here”.

      3. The Catholic Church does not teach now and did not teach then, in the 1960s, that only Catholics can go to Heaven.

        No, just mostly Catholics. From the section titled THE NECESSITY OF BAPTISM in the Catholic Catechism:

        1257 The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation.60 He also commands his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all nations and to baptize them.61 Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament.

        So if “the Gospel has been proclaimed” to you, but you are not persuaded by it and choose not to ask for the sacrament of Baptism, you’re going to Hell. Or, at least, you’re not “saved.”

  2. Heaven as a ‘gated community’… I am sure people who live in gated communities feel very smug just like religionists.

    1. Smug + paranoid. Whenever you leave the community, you are exposing yourself to the lawless outside where everyone is a potential robber, murderer, or rapist.

      Note that George Zimmerman lived in a gated community.

      1. Sorry, but that’s just nonsense.

        I used to own a house in a gated community. I bought it because I liked the house and the price was right. The gate wasn’t a factor in my decision, and was there primarily to control traffic. Every delivery truck driver in the county had a passcode to that gate.

        My dad lives in a gated community today. His neighbors aren’t especially smug or paranoid, but are largely ordinary middle-class families with kids. The community is built around an artificial lake with beaches, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and a golf course. Those facilities cost money to maintain and are paid for out of the homeowners’ pockets; the gate is there to control access to those communally-owned facilities.

        This is not different in principle from paying a bit more to live in an apartment building with a gated (gasp!) parking garage. Does that make all such apartment dwellers into paranoid Zimmerman clones in your book?

    2. I am sure people who live in gated communities feel very smug just like religionists.

      Utterly absurd claim.

  3. Please tell me that the “no religion” entrance is around back…

    Nooooooooooooo!!!! Oh well, at least I’ll be spending eternity with those that can and do get the joke.

  4. Been a fan for decades. My office has changed many times, but one constant has been that I always put up Wiley’s 7-7-1999 strip. [Caveman is drawing a horse and carriage on the wall of the cave, while cavewoman says to him: “When are you going to stop wasting your time with that science fiction nonsense and start dealing with reality?”]

  5. Funny. It reminds me of one of the New Yorker cartoons I have from a calendar that I put up on the wall at work – it has Jesus giving the sermon on the mount and proclaiming something to the effect of, “now break up into sects and try to kill each other”.

    2. I put up Dilberts (which, in the corporate context, are probably more blasphemous than Jesus’n’Mo would be).

  6. Heh. The signs could also say “Those Humbly Seeking God” and “Those Who Try to Make Over God in Their Own Image.”

    For some reason theists seem to think that using this division is very different than simply saying that ‘my religion is right and your religion is wrong’ — a ‘judgmental’ stance that they are now totally avoiding by making it about God instead of about them. As if every other believer wasn’t doing the same thing.

  7. Actually I don’t get the joke either. Who is going to go through the ‘wrong’ entrance? We all think we are right don’t we? Is it possible, either logically or psychologically, to think ‘I think A=B but I also think I am wrong to think that?’

      1. Exactly. 😀

        As an atheist, even I have to admit that the joke is enriched a little bit more if you think of atheists at the crowded ‘right religion’ entrance thinking, “I sure hope they don’t check their records…”

        1. No, the atheists are the ones standing behind the gate noticing that it is made out of plywood and whitewash and is propped up with 2x4s like a movie set.

          1. There was a Gahan Wilson cartoon like that, the halos held up on wires, the HEAVEN sign crumbling, the robes patched and one man saying to another (apparently no women) “Somehow I thought it would have more class.”

        2. Maybe the atheists should be walking through the wrong religion gate thinking ‘Well, since I don’t have a religion at all, this gate is just as correct as the other one and I get in faster this way.’

      2. Ok, so why do the two people with wings say that no one gets the joke. Are we supposed to assume that they are telepathic?

        If they are not how do they know that no one gets the joke? If someone did get the joke would he/she go through the wrong religion gate? Why?

        Sorry, maybe my post is just proof that if you don’t get a joke the last thing you should do is pull it to pieces. But I just don’t see that it is funny.

        1. They are saying that no one gets the joke because the people crowding into the right religion entrance think there is an actual right or wrong religion which there isn’t (because both entrances lead to heaven).

          2. Both entrances may lead to Heaven but that doesn’t mean all religions are true. If you thought you had the right religion would you walk through the wrong religion gate?

            But never mind, I guess my sense of humour does not work with this joke.

          3. What the joke is saying is that all religions are equal, and that what people profess to believe is irrelevant.

          4. I would, if it saved me queueing up. I must admit I didn’t quite get the joke when I saw it last night, probably because my loathing for queues overrode all other considerations and I thought “what idiots to stand in a queue when there’s a free lane right there”. (You might conclude I’d go to hell rather than stand in a queue. Well, for me, standing in a queue is hell, or at least purgatory – unproductive time in which I can’t do anything useful or interesting).

  8. I borrowed this from the Edinburgh fringe:
    There are two nuns driving down the road when the Devil lands on top of the car.

    The Mother Superior, who is driving, pulls over and says to the other nun, ‘wind your window down and show him your cross.’

    The second nun winds the window down and shouts, ‘Piss off you little bastard.’

    1. Now that is a joke I find funny. I saw it on ‘The Vicar of Dibley’.

      But it works better with a vampire (who would be hurt by a cross) rather than the Devil and it works better if you say it rather than writing it. Still a funny joke.

  9. There is joy in my heart that even the Wiley Miller gets comments like this 😉

  10. Reminds me of the young Hari Krishna guru I saw in a doco they had made, being interviewed as he was being driven around LA in a sports car.

    Interviewer: “What do you say of the saying that there are many ways to the top of the mountain?”

    Guru: “False teaching! False teaching!”

    That was the end of my interest in the Hari Krishnas.

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