Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for January 13, 2015

You broke Pig!

And not only that, 74 percent of all statistics are wrong!

Here’s something you read on the internet for everyone:This statement is not true.

This comic is on the internet. So, it’s not true.You CAN believe everything on the internet!

The earth is 5,000,000,037 years old. I know this because when I was eighteen I asked my freshman geology teacher the age of the earth and he said five billion years.

Here we go again!

I find it funny that in an age of openness, acceptance and tolerance, Christianity just CANNOT be tolerated. For once I’d like to just hear “ya know, I don’t think the earth is 6000 years old but that’s fine.”Most Christians I know are that way toward atheists… can’t we get some reciprocity?

In English 10 to the 9th indeed is a Billion, other languages (e.g. German, Danish) have the word milliard(e) for that number, and, indeed in those languages 10 to the 12th is a “Billion”.

“Not everything you read on the internet is true.”I read that on the internet.Does not Compute!Norman, coordinate!

Just don’t go telling me that 50 million years is a “blink of the eye” in geologic time.

Round and round she goes,where she stops(or starts) nobody knows………………………Enjoy the ride and watch your step when you get off.

Time to put a limit on total words posted by one person I would say.

but… they had graphs and charts…

Ignorance is the only choice.There will always remain more unknown than is known. Our lives are too short and our minds too tiny to ever be able to definitively say one thing or another is ultimately so.But it’s so darn cute when we try.

Thank goodness for ’toons. Something to believe in.

I can’t understand…How we started with nothing…and got to this point, with so many life forms????? and ?

Sheesh – he was just asking for inclusion.

To paraphrase Lewis Black; these religious fundamentalists think that the Flintstones is a documentary.

As a life long student of all sciences, theology, and “science fiction” since the 40s,I “believe” the search for ‘why’ "where’ & ‘how’ is essential to keep an open mind. However I do believe the force of gravity is a fact no one can deny, especially when the body is 80, and the mind is still young!

Good essay by Nab. Sadly, agree with Exoticdoc2 also; while not all atheists are intolerant, the percentage of tolerant Muslims is significantly higher.

“You missed three zeros…”

No, it’s the American “billion” = 10 to the 9.

Nabu is making up his own facts to prop up his cherished beliefs.Radiometric measurements are taken on multiple samples from different locations. Several different minerals can be dated from the same sample. Geologists use uranium-lead dating, samarium-neodymium dating, potassium-argon dating method, among many others. Different dating methods are correlated between each other – often within the same sample. For example, to date the Amitsoq metamorphic gneisses from western Greenland, five different radiometric dating methods were used to date twelve samples and achieved agreement to within 30 million years on an age of 3.64 billion years.And all of this data is correlated with evidence from plate tectonics, paleomagnetism, paleontology, stratigraphic sequencing, genetics, astronomy, stellar and planetary sciences.The evidence overwhelmingly supports the age of earth at 4.5 billion years.

If a person takes sufficient time to study the Bible, they would find that it does not even begin to suggest that the earth, and by extension the universe, was created in 6 literal days. The use of the word “day” was in the context of a ‘period of time’, not a literal 24 hour day. For example, when you use an expression like… “back in my grandfather’s day”.

The Bible suggests that each creative “day” was most likely several thousand years long. But that doesn’t mean creation started with the first “day”. Look closely at Genesis chapter 1, vs. 1&2….“in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…..Now the earth was formless and desolate”. This was well before the activities that occurred during the 6 creative “days” began, so the universe and the planets existed long before then. In reality the Bible supports the notion that the earth is millions, if not billions of years old.

This is why there are so many problems with religious nuts, They skim over the Bible or just thump it every now and then. One needs to really take time to study it in depth to understand it. It is a book that was intended to be read continuously, not just once.

And then of course, the reader has the freedom to accept or reject it.

the main problem with hardcore bible believers(I am including both Jews and Christians ) is their belief in the 100% literal meaning of the bible……….. if we read Genesis literally and calculate everything by the age given as their birth and how old they were when they begat their child, it would seemingly indicate the 5K theory……………but, if we read it symbolically and not take the creation literally(a day could be thousands!!!!!!!! of years) taking aside Day four (day 3 can’t happen until day 4 happens) the order of creation actually fits with how evolution came, first earth, than water came, than plants were created(oceanic ones than evolved from there) and than fish AND BIRDS ( has been shown that birds and dinosaurs are closely related) than on 6th the other animals (besides fish(and probably aquatic ones like frogs) and the birds) with man being the last, there is a chance that Earth itself was born sometime between 5 billion and 5 thousand years ago, with 5 billion being by a long shot more likely than 5K

Not everything you read on the Internet is true… posted on the Internet.Wasn’t that one of the logic bombs Kirk used against an evil computer?

I follow the tweet of God over on Twitter. He quoted Genesis chapter 19 verses 1-9. The first & last time I read Genesis I was 12, so I had to pull out my bible (my great-grandmother gave it to my mother in 1941) to verify the ugliness of what was said. Sure enough Lot did tell the men that surrounded his house to leave the angels alone, but they could have his 2 virgin daughters!!! The rest of the chapter goes on to talk about Lot being told by the angels to take his daughters and sons-in-law to the mountains. Sodom was smote & for some reason only the 2 virgin daughters are left alive with Lot. The elder says we need to procreate, so let’s get daddy drunk & screw him so we may be with child!! I cannot believe that people have tried getting rid of twain & Faulkner, but use this book as an example of what is “proper”. As a kid I stopped reading when I got to Exodus & the sacrificial lamb. That made me cry.

The universe is 46 years old. And if I eat my veggies might last another 35 years.

Not trying to be pigmentist here, but…

A blonde was told that two Brazilians were killed in an accident. She exclaimed, “Oh, gee, that’s really awful. Uh…how many is a brazilian?”

laughing my head off (no not really pig) at the comments stated by all those who are more knowledgeable than everyone else. as i always say – show me the video and i will still not believe you because a video can be fixed or changed to be whatever you wish. just like the wording of a theory or thesis can be ‘adjusted’ to prove whatever someone wishes to believe or need a government grant for. this decade all will rally behind ‘_____’ . next decade all will rally behind the ‘opposite of _____’. it is human to constantly defend with emotional insecurity that which we are unsure of yet wish to believe and to quietly go about our day and our belief, when we know that we know that we know without becoming combative over others disagreement of said belief.and of course i could be wrong in this LOL

@felinefan55

On the surface it may seem ugly, but the example you gave about Lot serves my point about why we can get the wrong impression by just skimming over the Bible.Lot had a strong belief/faith in God. He knew the men [angels] visiting him were sent by God and he felt compelled to protect them no matter what, which is why he offered his daughters. Was it because he had complete disregard for his daughters? No, for two reasons. He had recently seen divine protection given to his aunt Sarah, and he had every reason to believe that God would protect his daughters. And he knew the wicked men would reject his daughters. And that is what happened. The wicked men were miraculously blinded and no one was harmed.As for the incest, the daughters conspired to do this in order to have offspring. Some time had gone by and apparently their husbands had died. In that time people lived far differently than we do today. The ultimate value a woman could have back then was in producing children or heirs to continue the family line. That was the way people’s thinking had become, whether they believed in God or not. Also, the daughters had been raised in the midst of a very immoral society, so their actions may not have seemed to be all that bad in their eyes. And the fact that they got their father drunk first indicates they knew he would not approve of the scheme. But it’s important to note that this was a situation that God ‘tolerated’ at the time. He did not direct it or cause it. The reason it was included in the Bible was to support the history of the Moabites and the Ammonites. No where in the bible does it say that God approved of their actions. Later God made clear his laws on drunkenness and incest.

All – My intent here for going into detail on this was not to be preachy, but to show how easily someone can get the wrong idea by simply skimming over the Bible instead of digging deep into it.

I’ll start by admitting that I’ve read no other comments; so this is a response directed only to today’s strip:

There are those of us, many of whom you might otherwise suspect of possessing above average intelligence if you were to meet us in casual circumstances, who believe it is entirely possible that the Earth is between 5000 and 6000 years old.

I would venture to guess that the majority of individuals who share this distinction (myself included) would enthusiastically agree that not everything one can read on the Internet is true.

What a marvelous world it is that contains such diversity of thought.

Keep it coming, Stephan. Your strip is one of the great joys of my day.

We all believe what we want to believe. But it’s all too easy to assume . . . that what’s true for us inside our own head . . . is therefore true for everyone.The purpose of science is to continuously work to discern what the world looks like outside our own heads. The purpose is to let reality speak for itself.

It’s depressing to read all these comments, it’s like being transported back to the 16th century. The earth is flat and the sun revolves around the earth. Anyone who believes otherwise should burn at the stake.It doesn’t matter if the earth is exactly five billion years old or not, the best we can do is try and come up with an estimate based on actual scientific findings.And religion is not an answer to ignorance. It’s not because there is something we do not know for certain that one should believe in outdated beliefs spouted by some ignorant uneducated people from many centuries years ago.

Should also not believe what you read about evolution, that we are made in some image of ape. We’re not primates. Always been human, made in God’s image. We know sin, we know our own sin, we are so vastly different than animals in what we do on earth and in Heaven.

Jesus answered and said unto them, ‘For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. ..’" -Mark 10:5-6

“That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation.” -Jesus, Luke 11:50-51

“Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” -Peter, Acts 3:21

On Heaven and Earth, purpose and duties:

Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! -1 Corinthians 6:3

Remember:Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. -1 Corinthians 6:9-10

Solution:And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.-1 Corinthians 6:11

Any Firehead worth his/her salt will tell you that Everything You Know Is Wrong.

Quick! Look on the internet for ways to revive Pig.Oh right… That was the problem.xxx

Fundamentalists of any kind are funny people.

I do know some of them personally – decent, merry, people – some of them even having a scientific education.

But I never got a logic answer – even by the PhDs among them – just to the simple logic question: “what – if?”.

“What – if there were no heaven?” “What – if we were just naked apes”.

I think, the best answer I ever got was something like a little more polite phrase than : “How would you feel, just being a heap of soulless flesh?”

An answer still yes – but logical?

Don’t really know how old the earth is a don’t care either but don’t try to tell me coal takes millions of years to form when we have found hammers, jewelry and other stuff in it and a hammer in solid rock. Scientist time spans are all off and that’s obvious unless we had advanced civilizations on this planet over a million years ago.

Is not.

Is so.

Is NOT.

Is SO.

Is NOT

Is SO

Is NOT

Is SO

(you can continue this; I’ve run out of ways to emphasize)

I love it ……

Stephan, well done…..

Not everything on the Internet is true? I don’t believe it!(Wait for it….)

Nice broad brush strokes. You do know that MOST Christian denomination, including the largest one, the Catholic Church, accept the Old Earth theory.

Fascinating post. I am actually going to save a copy for future use. Thanks for taking the time to write this.

Next thing you know, he’ll be shooting down National Enquirer and Dancing with the Stars!

“Atheists don’t give the benefit of the doubt to any religion, Agnostics do. For not good reason.”Just so. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

All praise the Google (or maybe not)!

“ In his haughtiness, the wicked man makes no investigation;All his thoughts are: “There is no God” Psalm 10:4

If a person is determined not to believe in God or the Bible, no amount of debate will change their point of view. It is each one’s prerogative to believe what they want. If some educated folks want to believe their ancestors were monkeys, I have no problem with that. I’m confident in what I choose to believe.

“You talk to God, you’re religious; God talks to you, you’re psychotic.”— Gregory House, M.D. The Right Stuff.

And in general: " It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."— Jonathan Swift

Percentage of church attendance in steep decline. Congregations shrinking. New churches a quarter of what’s necessary to keep up with population growth. Belief in literal Genesis down from 40% in 1980 to 28% today and falling. Young generations roll their eyes at the old liturgies and walk away.In this situation, why do so many fundamentalists – rather than working to remain relevant in the 21st century – insist on fighting hopeless battles against a flow of empirical evidence . . . against radiometric dating, or genetic sequencing, or fossil successions? It’s baffling . . .

So you know, then, based on your reason, when reason tells you that you cannot know.

Many Jews believe that the world is 5780 years old.

humans are all liars, that’s what we do best

Anyone think goat has a British accent (or, if you’re British, no accent at all)