Here’s today’s Jesus and Mo cartoon, called “poetry,” and below that is the author’s email. Happy anniversary, J&M!!!
The strip shows the extreme danger of trying to inculcate someone into a religion by letting them read its scriptures without guidance. Of course, with proper guidance, such as you can get in a historically-oriented divinity school, you can become an atheist even faster!
From the artist:
Yes, well, it’s really not such a great book. Have I said that before?
Sunday was Jesus & Mo’s 14th birthday, so the boys are well and truly into their teenage years now.
If you’d like to show some love to these unruly teenagers and help them through these difficult years, you can become a patron by clicking the link below. Just a dollar a month is all it takes to make them happy!
There are muslim charities that give out free copies… that is how I got one (in English)…
I was just watching an old Hitch talk on belief and I’m thinking…the case he makes is so clear, it would take an idiot or someone totally brainwashed to deny it. Much of his evidence comes straight from the texts. Then I viewed a Richard Carrier talk where he discusses how the Gospels must be seen as myth since they don’t meet any of the criteria for historical accounts. I tried to imagine the inner workings of a mind that refuses to see that. I fell short of the task.
It is the same inner workings of a mind that can’t see what Trump et al did (and continues to do) is horribly wrong. It’s no wonder that Trump’s core believers are, well, believers. When a mind has turned to credulity for all its answers, folly ensues.
I believe you!
Here’s outgoing secretary of energy Goodhair’s recent explanation:
Is there anyone in American politics more pathetic than Perry? The OED should have a picture of him as their definition of fool. And just to add, the timing of his resignation is suspicious. He’s another sycophant drawn into the gravity well of Trump’s corruption.
Giuliani.
What? It’s not like you could possibly accuse Rick Perry of hypocrisy:
What are the criteria for historical accounts?
As I recall: real history of the time displayed skepticism when something unusual was described. Important events were corroborated. Unlike history, myth tends to have story like quality with a tidy plot line. That’s from memory, I didn’t review the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQmMFQzrEsc
I would certainly agree that the gospels are not attempts at writing history in the sense of Josephus or Tacitus wrote history, but I think the assertion “they are not what we would expect from a historian, therefore they are myth” is a false dichotomy.
They are stories that may be based on a historical figure. Clearly there are mythological elements to them: nobody actually rose from the dead or changed water into wine, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some elements of truth in them.
My personal opinion is that the gospels are heavily fictionalised accounts of a real person.
My impression is that Carrier would not claim that all of the gospels were pure fantasy. I think he’s just pointing out that attempts to portray them as historical in the way that historians define that term, is unreasonable. Carrier is a mythisist, but that’s a somewhat separate issue. I think his strongest points are that the Jesus story has many precedents in other cultures, and there are absolutely no corroborating testimonies outside the Gospels themselves which are largely echos of one another.
That’s pretty goddamn funny.