Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “filter”, was emailed with a note saying, “Today’s comic is here for a reason.” As usual, the boys are getting into an infinite regress of reasons.
Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ reason
November 24, 2021 • 8:45 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.
Speaking of the ‘reason´, I wanted to post one of my favorite December t-shirts: Axial Tilt Is The Reason For The Season. I’m still not clear on how to post images here:
https://skepticsplay.blogspot.com/2007/12/axial-tilt-reason-for-season.html
Whoops, I just remembered that linking to a blog might violate Da Roolz, and I was having trouble editing my post above. Sorry! Here is a link to an image search gallery instead. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=axial+tilt+is+the+reason+for+the+season&iax=images&ia=images
But the important question is, does God tailor events in cats’ lives for their edification? Given how wise they are, it might be so. 😉
Or maybe cats tailor events in God’s life for their edification.
The barmaid has hit on one of my greatest pet peeves with this. The “everything happens for a reason” is at best a cop-out for comfort in a hard, unpredictable world (which is almost a tolerable version), has an implicit laughable narcissism as mentioned above, and–worst of all, for my money–gives people an excuse not to take action to prevent tragedy or improve the world. It’s like the concept of karma (both the original and the ubiquitous modern bastardized version). It really gets me angry when people take this stuff seriously.
I totally agree about the pet peeve; I’ll raise you the linguistic ambiguity of reason (physical/mechanical means HOW something happens) and reason (psychological motivation WHY someone does something). The fact that everything happens for a reproducible physical reason does not necessitate everything happening for a psychological reason. That makes about as much sense as anthropomorphizing Fate or Destiny. One more t-shirt for the day: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=everything+happens+for+a+reason+physics&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images
I have a similar peeve about people dismissing an issue with “Life’s not fair”: I sometimes think it makes them an agent of the unfairness.
‘Everything happens for a reason’ sneaks teleology in through the back door. What if you make the saying reflect the normal world… “Every event has a cause”. Not quite so impressive.
I recently saw a poster saying “Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is that you’re an idiot and screwed up.”
Yes … this is a dual meaning of the word “reason”. Purpose and cause.
Any sense of purpose is the result of a cause.
oops … I just noticed … cause might have the same dual meaning of reason.
Eric Bachmann (of Crooked Fingers, Archers of Loaf) has written tons of great songs. But this one, ripping into the “everything happens for a reason” and other BS, is my favorite:
https://youtu.be/jelkqBZAb3c