Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “perfect,” is a bit confusing. Mo can be imperfect, but he could also be right in asserting that Allah is the true God. He’s wrong, of course, but I don’t think Mo is being mendacious!
Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ perfection
June 19, 2024 • 8:45 am
All religions presume humanity is perfectible. This presumption is gnostic — a special consciousness or insight.
… there’s an Ayn Rand quote that the smallest minority is the individual.
I think the same thing goes for religion – that is, the smallest religion is that of the individual — but can be no smaller.
Go ahead
Be your own god of one
Practice your own religion of one
Good luck with that – change it if necessary — but practice will not make perfect.
Why not? But break no one’s leg, pick no one’s pocket.
Mo should try it.
“All religions presume humanity is perfectible.”
Actually… doesn’t Catholicism assume on a fundamental level that all humans are so flawed that they are condemned to hell by default, and need redemption through Jesus to reach God?
That assumption is a double-edged sword, but in the best case it can help raise empathy for the fallibility of other people and put a damper on the assumption that you just have to get circumstances right, and society will be perfect. (Of course, the reality-based alternative approach – namely, that we’re just a bunch of jazzed-up primates – leads to the same conclusion.)
Hastily:
Death reunites the body with the one spirit of god (I’d have to look this up to get it accurate).
Spirit is the perfect mind of god or whatever they call it.
Perfection is after death.
Gnostic cults seek to make perfect “man” and create Heaven on Earth.
Another thought:
Adam and Eve were perfect in the Garden of Eden until the serpent awakened their consciousness (of some kind). That got them thrown out.
The idea that human nature is inherently evil may not be doctrinal for the Roman Catholic body,
“On account of a superficial resemblance between the doctrine of original sin and the Manichaean theory of our nature being evil, the Pelagians accused the Catholics and St. Augustine of Manichaeism.”
https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/original-sin
On the other hand, if one interprets “redemption” in terms of the forgiveness of sin, then one is speaking of baptism and penance,
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/in-baptism-our-sins-are-forgiven
https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-forgiveness-of-sins
Sadly, when you teach people to read and write, they often have nothing better to do than argue about who knows truth and falsity in terms of right and wrong. That is the impression I take from these links.
And, it is precisely that form of stupidity belng played out by murderous racist Nazi sympathizers on the right and by murderous anti-Semite sympathizers on the left in our current state of affairs.
You’re best case scenario arises with respect to passages such as John:8,
https://catholicreadings.org/if-you-are-without-sin-be-the-first-to-throw-a-stone/
And, similarly, with the parable of the Pharisee and the publican from Luke:18,
https://catholicexchange.com/the-pharisee-the-publican-and-you/
This parable speaks more directly to the hypocrisy of the cartoon panel.
I happen to strongly agree with you concerning evolution. Using an appropriately agnostic “if-then-ism,” if the theory of evolution is, indeed, correct, then by what mechanism has the human species attained the capacity to discern the material truth of reality?
Have we named the gene yet? Have we identified the chemical pathway whereby voltage differentials correspond to the linguistic entities we call truth and falsity?
Science-as-truth is no less problematic than theism. Fortunately, a significant proportion of the science community respects fallibilism (non-monotonic defeasibility). This, however, is not emphasized sufficiently in science education.
Likewise, John:8 seems to be forgotten when Catholics involve themselves with the politics of abortion.
I see that you demand that unless we completely understand the neural pathways and genes responsible for rationality, it’s better just to say that “God makes us rational.”
Your statement that “science-as-truth is no less problematic than theism” is risible. Since when has theology ever been able to determine the truth. I’d bet all my savings that a water molecule has two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, but I wouldn’t put $5 down that Jesus was the son of God and was resurrected.
Please give me twenty truths about the universe that theology has determined. You can’t even say that “there is a God” is true, as there’s no evidence.
“I’m perfect” could be read as a play on words as “Imperfect”.
I’m not sure what to make of that besides as an amusement.
I was rather expecting that in the third panel Jesus, in “perfect” unison with Mo, would also proclaim “My God. According to me”. Which would then lead to a witty response from the barmaid. But the point was well made as is.