Today’s Jesus and Mo strip is apparently a reprinted old one, as the authors says he/she has had “unforseen circumstances” (according to the subscriber’s email, it’s “bad family news”). Let’s wish the artist well.
This is about as good a four-panel description of theology as I’ve seen. I’d love to put this as the frontispieces of my book, but of course it would detract from the supposed gravitas and immediately alienate a bunch of readers! The truth must be meted out in small doses. . .
//
Given the gravitas associated with God, His message, and, given the sombre nature of ceremonies associated with both communicating with Him and conducting services which honour Him, why does he decide to go and communicate with us via toast (http://bzfd.it/1wFKLuC) or vegetation (http://bit.ly/1sR7uoK)?
Because She does not exist but can be, like the fairy character Oona in Ridley Scott’s film Legend who says to the character played by Tom Cruise, “whatever you want me to be”… (or words to that effect).
It is what I call the ‘Pick & Mix’ of religions – you have the sweet goodies on offer & you choose to believe the selection of them that you like, avoiding the ones that don’t suit your taste.
The folks who think God communicates through appearances on toast usually don’t think of God in terms of sombre ceremonies. God is more like a personal friend who is with you always, sharing in your hopes and concerns. The sort of God who will assist you in finding a parking spot might very well appear in a stain on a window. It’s like when your spouse leaves you a little love message.
Also, there’s not always a lot of gravitas associated with God.
He’s tuning his message to the level of sophisticaton of his audience?
During the summer of 2009 I was editing video for a local 11pm newscast. I noticed that we were running stories about stuff that looked like Jesus so often that I started a “Stuff That Looks Like Jesus Reel.” By the end of the summer Jesus had made an appearance in a rust stain on a wooden fence. Jesus had been spotted in the burn pattern of an electrical fire. And Jesus was all over the kitchen that summer showing up in cornflakes, in the heart of a tomato and even in a bucket of spumoni ice cream.
The food item images are hilarious because most of them are a huge stretch. The tater chip looks like a golden retriever. The cheeto is a walker from Season 3 of TWD. The fish stick is an amazing likeness of Jeff Daniels, while the breakfast taco is of a young hirsute DeNiro. I see nothing in the flapjack myself. What in THE hell is the banana? Picasso cubism? The orange actually looks like Jesus and Mary but that’s not what the discoverer sees. The Naan bread is a good likeness, but I doubt it’s Jesus. Not the right bloodlines. The expensive pierogi looks kinda like Einstein with pipe in mouth. The pizza? Meh. The banana chip? I see nothing at all. The pretzel is a bad ampersand, right? The pita bread . . . come on! The grilled cheese is Wayland Flowers’ puppet Madame. Cheeto 2 is a barbed wire barb. The marmite is sorta like Frank Zappa. The ice cream is a huge stretch but does resemble an iconic Jesus. The funyun . . . come on. The tater chip is quite indistinguishable and could be anything or nothing. The apple is marginal. The tater slices could be victorian women as much as anything. The Seitan . . . why that’s Venus de Milo having just given caesarian birth.
That was fun.
“humankind cannot bear too much reality” – I suppose that you are thinking along these lines? If we equate reality with truth…
Cognitive dissonance is indeed one of the main characteristics of humans, sadly, but I think that is cultural & can be educated out of us. No doubt others would disagree!
Maybe you could add a footnote with the url…?
I should point out for those unfamiliar that it is a quote from Eliot, from one of his rambling ‘mystical’ poems, Burnt Norton.
Interesting… 🙂
Yes, it’s a pretty good description of theology — but if it’s meant to be a general description I think the cartoon veers off too much into focusing on theological defenses of fundamentalism. The problems with “faith seeking understanding” go deep enough that you don’t need a “perfect and immutable scripture” to defend.
You can start out with a feeling or hope in a Higher Power. And then you go through the same damn dishonest intellectual processes — it’s just that you’re believing in more ‘enlightened’ forms of bullshit and can therefore convince yourself that you’re not a fundamentalist.
They begin by believing in belief in God. That’s the sine qua non because otherwise they’re not going to drag in faith, they’re only going to evaluate on common ground and we all know where that leads. This rapidly escalates to believing in God. After that, it’s hard to say that there are any requirements to theology and what it’s committed to defending – especially when it comes to that modern sophisticated theology which gnu atheists are always being charged with ignoring.
In these murky waters, the “loving Creator” bit is optional: sometimes God does not “create” the world in the usual sense of making it from nothing. Same with revealed texts, which may or may not be seen as flawed by the human interpretations of the writers. Maybe God doesn’t so much reveal as “inspire.” Or, perhaps, inspiration IS a revelation. Any inspiration — as long as it’s appealing.
I think Jesus n Mo nails it in the final panel: theology is the practice of thinking up excuses for knowing the truth. It’s just that sometimes the Truth they know is that it’s right and good to rest on a vague and incoherent hope. They don’t always defend literalism. They sometimes defend the serious significance of wishful thinking.
Since I’m going to assume that Jerry’s upcoming book is going to deal quite a bit with “sophisticated” theology (why else would he have read all the high minded crap he’s been reading?), I think it’s just as well that he’s not using this on the frontspiece. No matter how brilliantly he refutes folks like David Bentley Hart his critics will remember this memorable cartoon and still keep on whining that gnu atheists conflate ALL religion with Biblical literalism and have considered nothing else.
It’s just that the ‘perfect and immutable scripture’ is the only kind Mo can imagine. Jesus doesn’t necessarily agree with that bit, just passes on to the next…
Oh, I suspect Mo can imagine a scripture which is not perfect and immutable — but he gets in trouble when he mentions it.
The true scripture is that scripture than which none more perfect can be imagined; the greatest imaginable scripture. This scripture exists in the mind. A scripture that exists in print as well as in the mind is more perfect still. Thus, if we can imagine a perfect printed scripture, it must be even greater than our imagination of a perfect unprinted scripture. Therefore, that’ll be $139.95 for this here Bible, if you please.
b&
Ha ha won’t work.
A perfect scripture would take into account the fact that humans not only improve themselves through struggle, but place more value in what they have to work for. Therefore, a perfect scripture would be one with many apparent errors and competing interpretations, so that those who believe do not get smug, complacent, or arrogant, but are forced to realize with humility the great distinction between human fallibility and God’s perfection.
There’s liberal theology in a nutshell. That’ll be $139.95 from the metaphysical materialist, thank you very much.
Ah, but then an even more perfect scripture would be one that somebody had to invent for oneself from whole cloth — a nonexistent scripture, in other words!
That’ll be $117.87 for this ream of blank paper — and that’s my final offer!
b&
Nope, sorry. Rule #37 says that one cannot define a nonexistent scripture as “perfection” on Wednesdays — and this is a Wednesday.
In fact, you now owe ME $117.87, payable only in gold-pressed latinum with a cherry on top. I’ll need it by next week.
Isn’t this great? You don’t need to be a Calvinist to play Theological Calvin-ball. You only need to be a deep thinker — or a quick-witted one — with a commitment to faith as a way of knowing. In fact, one might even say that Theological Calvin-ball is the perfect game. Just don’t say it on Wednesdays.
Ah, but don’t you see? Today is Thursday, not Wednesday. Which means…carry the four…add the strawberry…and divide by the inchworm and conquer with the wet noodle, and it turns out that I’ve won not only this but all future arguments, and you now owe me lunch. How’s last Tuesday work for you?
b&
I tried to diagram some of those sentences.
You’re welcome!
(Feel free to check me and make sure I got it right, myself….)
b&
It is only my opinion of course, but WLC ain’t got nothin on your formulation. He should take some notes!
Or to summarize, theology is a multifaceted self-serving publicity campaign, designed and deployed for the sole purpose of defending oneself from the revelation that one is either a gullible fool or a liar. It’s strongest weapons are:
– taking all intellectual scruples, defying them, and calling that defiance a specialist advantage,
– convincing everybody to use belief as a yardstick for measuring social virtue,
– creating character stereotypes to degrade opponents with,
– and helping beliefs with appeals to the strongest moral emotions, the mysteries of reality, and our innate sociability.
A good chunk of religion’s prevalence is probably due to sheer cultural and historical momentum enabling a majority to stay in place, but in other respects it’s apologetics are almost exactly like the rationalizations of con artists and their dupes. Apart from its unusual success, it’s not much different from pseudoscience, either.
Great list, but I think you forgot a biggie: category mistakes. Theology is the art form of category error and the more “sophisticated” they are the more readily they seem to make them.
If we grant that God is in the same general class as emotions, values, or morals, suddenly a lot of theological statements and defenses make sense. You can’t use science to make yourself love someone. That’s why you can’t use science on God. You can’t show what joy feels like to someone who has never experienced it. That’s why atheists can’t believe. Is the evidence for God not very good? Well, there are a lot of people who would give up on a handicapped child, or lose hope in the face of adversity. Believing in God is just like doing those things! And so forth and so on. Their analogies give them away.
Notice too how these category errors just happen to build up your third weapon.
Thanks for that addition. I think it matches the first and second “weapons” more, though, and thus enables the third. Once you turn beliefs into some kind of social measurement, skeptics never measure up. And a great smoke-and-mirrors trick is to deliberately conflate and confuse the issues, hence the category errors you point out.
So not only are skeptics merely rebellious upstarts trying to deceive people (because anyone who doesn’t believe must not be nice people, proven by the fact that they don’t believe), but they’re also probably nasty, jealous, and incapable of the finer feelings which make us human. Hey presto! The stereotype just springs out of the mess.
What I find interesting is that it’s basically the same stereotype every idealistic group comes up with for its opponents: the demonized and dehumanized scum of society who you should probably worry over at night. Even in more tolerant times and places as modern Europe, there’s merely a more low-key, passive-aggressive approach towards atheism (“Oh, atheists are good people too, but a bit grouchy and aggressive at times, and they don’t really have/understand those refined spiritual feelings and understandings that we do…”).
The remaining mystery now is why so many apparently intelligent and moral people can fall and have fallen repeatedly and in great numbers for such codswallop.
Maybe in the paperback or Kindle editions…
Nice description of theology.
Best wishes to Author and family.
Ah, my rock-in-a-sock meets a challenger for lack of subtlety.
Neither can hold a candle to the Pope on a Rope hanging in the shower in the little boy’s room at the Catholic church….
b&
I see your Pope-on-a-rope and raise you a BJBP. I’m sure you know what I mean.
Had to DuckDuckGo the acronym, but, yes…I understand the priests keep those in desk drawers….
b&
… and in choristers.
I really could’ve lead a very fulfilling life without ever knowing that Pope Soap on a Rope is really a thing.
GI Joe was wrong, knowing is NOT always half the battle.
Sub