Today’s strip is apparently based on a true story, which you can hear on the BBC’s “Beyond Belief” podcast (go to 10:25). Wikipedia has a concise article on the Mahdi.
Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ the Mahdi
March 18, 2015 • 8:20 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I had the misfortune to hear the original broadcast, ‘Beyond Belief”, the title of the programme, is apposite indeed for such arrant nonsense.
I sometimes listen to the BBC ‘Sunday’ programme, as it is important to know what the nutters are up to…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnbd
Often makes me angry though!
U MAHDI, BRO?
And that’s why I listen to Beyond Belief, Jerry! You couldn’t script that bo**o*ks. Rea’s reaction is priceless – no comment, he just moves firmly on to the role of Jesus. Top comedy. x
Ah – Germany… it was probably Thunor or Wotan!
Droll!
I support these blasphemy efforts.
The vox blasphemy has spoken!
“Then he said something wise …” What can one say to strangers through car window that would qualify as wise? “Don’t talk to strangers in the mountains!” Comes to mind.
I might question the wanderers’ judgment as to what is wise, believing as they do that they got directions from a 1,300-year-old man, but then I realized “wise” is just a thing people say, and really “trite” is interchangeable.
I’ve heard stories where people conclude “it must have been an angel!” The requirement for evidence here is very low. The person who tells the tale relies on having a receptive audience. You’re supposed to either agree enthusiastically that angels are real and wonderful or express the mildest of reservations and agree enthusiastically that the people who believe in angels are really wonderful. Alternative explanations are … not welcome.
It always pisses me off that ordinary human beings who took time out of their complicated lives to help are given no credit. Instead, they and their deeds are blithely subsumed into a cute little proof that the faithful is soooooo cosmically important in the scheme of things that Daddy sent down an angel to help them! And Daddy apparently doesn’t give a flying fuck about the people in far more dire straits! But we don’t think about THAT! Because we’re too childlike and grateful and special!
The requirement for evidence is not even usually relevant. People want to live in a fiction. Persuading just one person that they have connected with the divine is pure specialness to them. And for days the feeling of ‘I met an angel’ just sets their happiness at new heights, delusional but real to them.
I have a friend who is blind. He was at a restaurant with three other blind people. Instead of a check, the waitress told them that another patron had paid for them and instructed her to say that “God had picked up the tab.”
My blind friend is also an atheist and asked the waitress, “Well, is God a big tipper, or did He stiff you?”
The point is that some people are content to attribute even their own generosity to a Higher Power.
Does God ever pick up the tab for amputees?
Only if they fought for America and were wounded in battle.
Well, what other explanation is there for the fact that the person who picked up the tab decided to dine at that exact restaurant, out of dozens of possibilities? God simply must have sent him there. Checkmate, atheists!
“And Daddy apparently doesn’t give a flying fuck”
The angels could.
(I’m sorry, I must learn to stop taking figures of speech literally. I’ll get my coat…)
😉
Haven’t listened to the podcast, but from the Jesus n Mo conversation, this sounds similar to the “Indrid Cold” and (original, pre-Smith and Jones movie) “men in black” episodes reported ad infinitum by Farteans. I mean Forteans. If this happened in the U.S., the lost guys would conclude that an alien helped them, I bet.
When we hear powerful politicians (I’m thinking mostly Americans here) say stuff like this it’s kinda worrying. I mean the USA is the most powerful country in history with the greatest clout ever and some of the pols talk with certainty about The Flood, Creationism and Adam and Eve.
YOW!
Oh and GAWD tells them what to do!
One notices that GAWD *never* tells them to sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor!
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