In His Image
People want to fight about any old topic pertaining to religion. Me? I’ll just sit here and play with my toy dinosaurs, thank you very much.
The problem with debating religious concepts and scientific ones is that there’s always room for God in the margins of science. Granted, when I see debates of this nature, I don’t really hear very good arguments for God (sorry, believers, your PR people aren’t very convincing) but that doesn’t mean better arguments for the man upstairs don’t exist. Now, I’m certainly not a believer, but I can’t say I’ve ever understood how evolution disproves God or vice versa. I know it’s not really the goal of the greater scientific community to disprove anything of a religious nature, but that doesn’t stop laypeople on both sides of the fence from arguing about it.
Let’s set the record straight here. The Bible, supposedly the infallible word of God himself, tells us directly that this is a deity who enjoys his time off, and who can blame him? Right off the bat, he creates a seven day week and takes one of those days off. In the days of Abraham, he’s all up in everyone’s business, then he seems to just forget about the Isrealites in Egypt for what appears to be a good number of years before coming back to dole out the harshness on Pharaoh. What I’m saying is that, as the story goes on Yahweh seems to be less and less interested in managing every little aspect of life on Earth.
Sooner or later you want to just enjoy having made something. You want to just kick back and relax on a beach of your own design somewhere, sip a rum and coke, and get a nice tan.
It’s obvious God just gave up around the time of New Testament. Things weren’t looking too hot for people and he can’t even be bothered to show up himself, so he just sends his son. Even Jesus, all gung-ho at first and ready to shake up the system seems to just get tired of all the nonsense. I mean, he tells people he’ll be back to set everything right and where has he been for the last two thousand years? Probably also on a beach somewhere hanging out with his old man.
Like Father like Son.
So the questions aren’t, “Why God if evolution exists?” or “Why evolution when God manages everything?”. The question is, “If you’re a deity of some sort or another, why not create a system to manage everything?” Sure, evolution isn’t a perfect system, we’re not gods and we could do this stuff better and more efficiently, but it gets the job done and it doesn’t require additional attention. As we move further into developing advanced robots and genetic engineering, we are mirroring some of the characteristics of evolution for designing our own creations because it’s a damn cool system when it comes down to it. It made us, after all!
The best part is that it doesn’t even have to be a religious debate. We know it happens and it doesn’t mean that your God or beliefs have to be threatened. It just is, however it came about, and it’s beautiful and amazing and we should take a moment to appreciate what it’s done on this planet.
If there is a God, I’m sure the whole thing is his pride and joy. He’s probably smiling to himself somewhere in the universe as he munches on a delicious pirogi created by his creations.
He probably didn’t even have to heat it himself.
Discussion (32) ¬
I think maybe we’re still on the 6th day, of the universe that is.
ZOMG!
That’s EXACTLY what I’ve been saying for years!
Though my whole view on the Powers That Be,
is more complicated….
(Pulled from a comment of mine on Facebook, cause I’m tired and lazy)
…
I personally think that the “definition” {of religion} }varies for each person.
My personal “blend” (so to speak) has elements from several different religions (mostly Native American, Celtic/Druid,Hindu, and some Unitarian Universalist, but it also is influenced by authors such as Terry Pratchett and Piers Anthony. All blended with my own personal beliefs.
….
I have to agree with Pratchett’s “theory” about gods/goddess existing based on how many humans believe in them.
I tend to extend this to be:
EVERYTHING humans believe in exists… somewhere
(in a different plane of reality/alt universe)
I also extend this to cover books…
(the idea/theory I’ve pulled from Jasper Fforde’s “Thursday Next” series of novels)…
For the TL;DR people:
….about gods/goddess existing based on how many humans believe in them.
I tend to extend this to be:
EVERYTHING humans believe in exists… somewhere
(in a different plane of reality/alt universe)
I also extend this to cover books…
I’ve been thinking it like this for years now. That God simply compiled and programmed some shit, then started up the Bigbang.exe, and let it handle everything for him.
So… Basically you think God is the Higgs Boson?
Personally, I don’t believe in gods of any sort, I’ve read too much mythology to think that people somehow finally got it right after thousands and thousands of years, but that’s not to say that I don’t find the idea interesting or entertaining. Cat God has always been my weird way of seeing other peoples’ notions of a supreme deity and Lil K has always been a reflection of my inner child. It’s just fun to think about these things, even if I know they’re not real. 🙂
Why would the Higgs Boson be God? It just is/would be very important. Explain your reasoning.
It was called the God Particle. I don’t know enough about physics to know how accurate this is, but it did drive a lot of Christians crazy.
Of course they really wanted to call it the ‘goddamn particle’, but they were bowdlerised.
I’m sure that’s how a lot of religions got started: jokes that got misunderstood.
I’m late, sorry, but… Just to mention it…
Explain the fact of those who wrote the bible being correct about life comming from dust (minerals, whatever) if they were a bunch of retard fanatics? Not sayin’ that I’m a religious, nobody is, but they (not the folk, those who wrote it) were right about something science would discover and comprove only two milleniuns after. C-C-Contrapoint. Sort of.
Richard, I think he’s saying something more like “God is a perl programmer.”
I can’t tell you how many theology, psychology, and science classes I got thrown out of between senior year of high school and my present career. I lost count a long time ago, but I do know that it was pretty much because I held this idea.
NO! The world is solely binary in it’s applications.
Damn! I’ve failed!!
I also thought that — when I was 14, that is.
I personally believe God did build a self-managing system. It’s called the laws of physics.
And tbh I would get tired of micro-managing if I were god too. I mean, here he is with a brain the size of all existence and the people he’s trying to help never really seem to learn.
This might be unrelated but when you get right down to it, everyone’s beliefs establish man a fallible creatures, but no one gives their beliefs any margins of error. A lot of solutions require people to change themselves and many don’t see the reason to. You can’t help someone that doesn’t accept it.
I’ve always thought that the line that says we were made in his image is the most terrifying thing in the Bible. If that’s true I understand why there is evil in the world.
When the bible says ‘in his image’ its using an old term meaning ‘to rule in his absence’. So basically god made us to rule earth while he is gone but he ultimately is king and we must follow his laws, or so abrahamic traditions say. It also says only men were given this right as women were made only as companions for men, though god did only feel that need after trying to breed us with everything else breaking a later law he made.
Hm. Haven’t heard that interpretation before. Most Christians I know, and the general interpretations I’ve heard have been along the lines of “made in his image” meaning that mankind was created with many of god’s spiritual qualities such as the desire to create and love. I’m not sure that this is also the scholarly interpretation, but it’s the way I was working with regards to the strip, as I tend to work more with popular notions than anything else.
So, that first part basically means we should run our own lives. Abrahamic tradition already gives us laws we just have to follow them.
I had not heard that before. Interesting. Thank you.
Ugh… “dude man,” even though I love a man, and that feels like an essential piece of my life that completes the puzzle, I feel willing to summon armies of Amazons to point their spears and you and GROWL for insinuating (ie. perpetuating by repetition of the idea) that women are somehow an after-after thought. If ANYONE is disposable…
Love ya K, not trying to bring strife, but UGH
He only said the Bible said so; did you see him mention anything about him believing this? Cause I sure didn’t.
ELE, you completely missunderstood what i said, i never said i felt women were an after thought and nothing more than companions for men once all other animals were found ‘unsuitale’, the bible says that I feel both sexes are equal and should be treated as such.
“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
This passage i think sums it all up, we’re here to rule in his place and were made like him so we may rule appropriately. I like to think this means i may wash my feet in the blood of people who don’t obey me like God would, then again blood isn’t good for cleaning.
the way I see it it’s simple! if there was one god who created the universe and life on our planet… wait… well let’s just stop right there and think about how many other galaxies there are in the universe… and how many other life-bearing planets there must be out there. even just on a base mathematical scale there is no way that we would be ‘god’s pride and joy, the ONLY planet with sentient life? I doubt it… he’s got to have been busy out there with all of the other life-bearing societies that he’s created right?
OR… the idea of GOD is a nice pillow that many a head have been resting on for many a year. believe it if it makes you feel better. but we’re not the sole purpose of the universe, there are many other planets supporting life out there, and I would just LOVE to hear some of their beautifully written stories about how they came to be… in other words. I would love to read THEIR bibles.
at the end of the day… it IS a very nicely written story, after all.
Not necessarily on topic with the last post, but I really love your comic. I feel like I’m pretty familiar with many different mythologies. I always get excited when I know the reference or when it’s something new. Just wanted to pass that along.
“The problem with debating religious concepts and scientific ones is that there’s always room for God in the margins of science” this is called the appeal to ignorance; it’s a well known logical fallacy. you don’t know for a fact that you aren’t just tied up in the corner of my basement hallucinating this entire experience you think of as your life. that doesn’t mean you should be reluctant to dismiss the conjecture as kind of stupid. the phrase you are looking for is “burden of proof”
to the very limited extent Revealed Truth has made testable claims about observable reality, those claims have been consistently and materially wrong. find me the mountain where you can see the entire surface of the earth, please.
“I don’t really hear very good arguments for God… but that doesn’t mean decent rationales for the man upstairs don’t exist” either you’ve double-dipped on the appeal to ignorance (and gone kind of ‘meta’ with the thing), or you are claiming to be in possession of such an argument, in which case by all means don’t be shy about sharing it.
sorry to get (anti) preachy. smart people saying dumb things is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. the enemy being ignorance, not religion, though the distinction is sort of a fine one, most times.
I think I’m sometimes not as clear as I can be. Writing 2+ pages of text and doing two comics every week does that to me. I’m not suggesting people use or accept these arguments, I’m just saying that, in my mind, there are -better- arguments than the monumentally stupid ones I tend to hear. That doesn’t mean they’re good, they’re just better than monumentally stupid, probably something like regular-stupid.
Part of the problem is that I don’t like conflict and I don’t think attacking people for their religion or beliefs is helpful, it tends to put people in a corner, making them cling to their ideas even more. Not that we shouldn’t talk about it, it’s just that attacking people is not useful and debating believers is often a very obvious waste of time.
I also would never make an appeal for ignorance of any kind, but I can’t say that I know for sure whether God exists or not. That doesn’t mean we should believe in christianity because we don’t know, it just means that I don’t know. Not everything has to be dogma. I simply don’t care enough to make declarative statements about what I consider to just be the latest in a long line of nonsense-mythology. It’s pretty obvious I don’t actually believe this stuff.
When I say there’s room for God in the margins of science, I don’t mean it for me, I’m speaking about how believers tend to see the situation. In my own life, I don’t find belief in a god particularly relevant or helpful. I don’t see it being relevant or helpful for other people either, but they have to come to that conclusion on their own. Using this website as a platform to call out religious belief is not helpful so I don’t do it.
I often question why I bother writing posts about modern religions. I don’t have enough room to explain my own position on these things in every post and I certainly don’t have the time to write pages and pages about how funny these things are to me without people trying to get on my case about it, one way or the other.
I see these kinds of comments on reddit’s atheism subreddit all the time. Debate is awesome and calling out logical fallacies is fun, but this isn’t a debate. My blog post here isn’t actually trying to convince you or anyone else of anything. I don’t care about religion beyond studying it and making jokes because it’s hilarious. I don’t care about being an atheist or winning imaginary debates against people I see as having inferior arguments or subpar intelligence because it simply doesn’t matter. If I were a serious believer or someone trying to appeal to those types of people, what you’re saying wouldn’t convince me. Obviously logic doesn’t matter when you believe in fantasy.
Unfortunately, like most comments on the internet trying to make a point, you’re trying to “debate” the wrong guy. None of what you’re calling out actually applies to me.
Either way, sorry my posts sometimes lack perfect clarity, I’m trying to improve my writing as I go along, but it’s difficult to read, research, write and draw a comic, and then also provide a full page blog post twice a week.
i know its a late comment, but i have a big question. why is god a cat in your comics? not that im complaining but im dying to read the possible explanation
There’s a few reasons, actually! First and foremost is the fact that he’s cute and easy to draw! Second, I wanted to take the idea of the Christian God and move it a little bit outside the norm and make it my own. I figured that if Lil K were talking to an old bearded man all the time (even though this version does make his appearances), it might get a little bit weird and might be more offensive than I intended it to be. Third, I wanted whatever image I chose to reflect the sort of personality that I see in my own head when I think of this creator God. I grew up in a Christian home and when I was little I always wondered why God let bad things happen to people. I thought that maybe he wasn’t malicious, maybe he was just lazy or tired of dealing with everything. When I started the strip, I thought it might be funny for him to choose to be a house cat, one of the laziest animals I know (generally speaking).
Cat God does a lot of things, he makes the comic more cute, he helps soften some of the blasphemy, and he acts as a silly and equally cute foil to Lil K!
Hope that helps clarify things a bit haha
I know this comment is hella late, but Pope John Paul II actually a-okayed evolution as a Catholic belief back in 2000. Only a certain subset of Creationists don’t believe in it.
John Paul II actually said ‘Tutti Boni’ to almost every lot. Fortunately Virginia Woolf has a lot more political oxygen than God, as it were.
The cat reminds me of Mokona from CLAMP’s work. So when is Abrahamic Kitteh in heat?
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The ‘margins of science’ thing is the God of the Gaps. The gaps being the little spaces of knowledge we haven’t filled in yet. The reason evolution gets bandied about is simply because it filled in the biggest, most important gap, namely, where did we come from.
The margins that are left aren’t enough for the kind of faith that a lot of people want, and so they try to make or imagine more gaps.