Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “Minor 2” came with a note that it’s “a resurrection today, from the more innocent time of 2007.”

This is a good strip because it makes the point that the claims of many “standard” religions, when laid out in black and shown to someone who hasn’t been religious, seem just as silly as the claims of Scientology, which do involve Xenu, space travel, volcanoes, and hydrogen bombs. (They don’t tell that to novice Scientologists.) For example, Wikpedia lays out the beliefs of Scientology in its “Xenu” article:

Xenu (/ˈziːnuː/ ZEE-noo), also called Xemu, is a figure in the Church of Scientology‘s secret “Advanced Technology”, an esoteric teaching held sacred by adherents.  According to the “Technology”, Xenu was the extraterrestrial ruler of a “Galactic Confederacy” who brought billions of his people to Earth (then known as “Teegeeack”) in a DC-8-like spacecraft 75 million years ago, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs. Official Scientology scriptures hold that the thetans (immortal spirits) of these aliens adhere to humans, causing spiritual harm.

These events are known within Scientology as “Incident II”, and the traumatic memories associated with them as “The Wall of Fire” or “R6 implant“. The narrative of Xenu is part of Scientologist teachings about extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in earthly events, collectively described as “space opera” by L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard detailed the story in Operating Thetan level III (OT III) in 1967, warning that the “R6 implant” (past trauma) was “calculated to kill (by pneumonia, etc.) anyone who attempts to solve it”.

The Church of Scientology normally only reveals the Xenu story to members who have completed a lengthy sequence of courses costing large amounts of money.  The church avoids mention of Xenu in public statements and has gone to considerable effort to maintain the story’s confidentiality, including legal action on the grounds of copyright and trade secrecy. Officials of the Church of Scientology widely deny or try to hide the Xenu story. Despite this, much material on Xenu has leaked to the public via court documents and copies of Hubbard’s notes that have been distributed through the Internet.

Scientology has done a lot to try to prevent its dictates from being known, but it’s too late. And those dictates are not that much sillier than the Christian myth of a scared Jesus who was God/Son of God, came to Earth, was killed, came back to life, and ascended to Heaven, with belief in this being helping you to have a pleasant eternal life rather than burning in hell.  Every faith I know of, down to those of Cargo Cults, is based on irrational beliefs or unproven claims about the supernatural (some forms of Buddhism may be exceptions so long as they don’t belief in karma or successive rebirths).

But I digress. Here’s the cartoon:

The Jesus and Mo artist has resurrected a strip called Fluid, called “a Friday Flashback from almost exactly 8 years ago.” It’s a classic, with Mo donning a niqab as an expression of his feminine side. Unfortunately, that side applies only to his garments, not to his temperament.

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “self-pity,” came with an emailed explanation (below).

Fouad Ajami is the chap.

I’m not sure that Ajami used the phrase “belligerent self-pity”, but he was a scholar at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a big fan of the Iraq War.

And once again, Mo instantiates what he decries:

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “alps2” is “A resurrection. . . from 2008”.

And Mo is basically right on the etymology, at least according to this NPR site:

Cretin is a word derived from an 18th century Swiss-French word meaning “Christian.” The connection is basically pious, asserting that a mentally innocent person so-labeled is possessed of a Christian soul by way of baptism and is worthy of our mercy and pity.

As for “rug-butter,” I couldn’t find it but assume it is a derogatory reference to Muslims worshiping on prayer rugs, touching their heads to the ground.  But no, Jessus is not literally a cretin as he’s neither deformed nor hails from the Swiss Alps.  But I guess Mo literally butts rugs, though I’ve never seen him kneeling in prayer.

This week’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “bells,” came with a comment: “Does she think they were born yesterday?”

Wikipedia tells us that another word for “conceptual conservatism” is “belief perseverance,” and characterizes it this way:

Belief perseverance (also known as conceptual conservatism) is maintenance of a belief despite new information that firmly contradicts it.^[2]

Since rationality involves conceptual flexibility, belief perseverance is consistent with the view that human beings act at times in an irrational manner. Philosopher F.C.S. Schiller holds that belief perseverance “deserves to rank among the fundamental ‘laws’ of nature”.

The data adduced by the barmaid are under the heading “evidence from experimental psychology,” and she’s right, though it doesn’t cite “hundreds of studies”.

The latest Jesus and Mo strip, called two, is an apparent update:

This one is updated and re-named, because the world population has increased by more than 2 billion since it was published.

Well, the barmaid is an atheist, so she’d surely lose the argumentum ad populum!  On the other hand, I have to laugh when I see people claim that a religion is “true” because it has so many adherents.