Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for December 25, 2010

After all, God is the reason for most wars.

I’d get concerned if he started yelling back…

Sounds like my kind of Chaplain!

As for God being the reason for most wars, He/She/It’s getting a bum rap.

Greed, hate and ignorance is the reason for wars, God’s name is just used for window dressing.

Hear hear, Chrisnp!

God has a problem. He granted free will. He can’t force people to be good, only encourage.

But who created these greedy, hateful, and ignorant people? If I were to build a computer or robot or android, I’d be sure it would not contain such egregious flaws. So why would an omnipotent, omniscient being do so? It must be a hateful being that gets off on suffering himself, and is, therefore, not worthy of anyone’s worship.

God, only creates. Coyoty has it right. It is the free will of man that causes hate and war. Oh, and Merry Christmas to all.

If there is a God…. Merry Christmas!

Perhaps hu-mans should incorporate the Asimovian Three Laws in our makeup, or at least some facsimile of same…

Peas on Earth, Good Will to All – that’s ALL!

As with most holidays in America, this one has transcended its origins and become a social celebration. As such, I wish you all a very

Merry Christmas !

I agree with Chrisnp. Just because someone screams “In God’s name I smite thee,” (whatever name for God we use, or don’t use) doesn’t mean God is at fault. It means we haven’t progressed beyond the childish stage of blaming another for our actions. I also agree with Thirdguy. We’re responsible for how we use free will. Finally, whether there is a God or Not, I recommend all of you grasp, and spread, peace and good will toward all mankind – that we might grow up to Life.

Merry Christmas or what ever Holiday you celebrate or not to all my Brothers and Sisters.

not picking on you, Clark- just agreeing…….after all, with powers far beyond those of mortal man, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, not to mention having the power of the press at your fingertips, your opinions command respect.

incidentally, you’re going to hell for not capitalizing ‘he’

GrinsToYa: “If there is a God…. Merry Christmas!”

If there’s not, Merry Christmas anyway!

If all today is to you is a Saturday, Happy Saturday!

Here in the good ol’ USA, we have religious freedom, which means that atheists and Christians alike (along with Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews and Scientologists) are free to annoy the public with obnoxious evangelism.

As for the content of the strip, note that the Hebrew Bible’s book of Job is something over twenty chapters of yelling at God. At the end of the story, God pronounces the man who did the yelling to be the only righteous one of the bunch.

God is alive and well and living in the tail of the normal curve.

puddleglum Wow, I have gone to church my whole life, and that is a sermon, that I have never heard!! Very observant of you!!

Hey, get off of this religious stuff. It’s too divisive. Let’s talk politics.

Hey jimpow! Religion IS politics! And vicy-versy!

Puddlegum’s biblical comparison is apt, but he misreads the Jewish Bible (a.k.a. the Old Testament). The thirty-six chapters of dialogue between Job and his friends are introduced with the clear statement, “In all this Job did not sin in what he said.” Yahweh (“the LORD”) confirms Job’s integrity at the end, telling the friends, “I am angry with you because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”

In criticizing God, Mel’s senior officer falls well short of Job’s integrity. It never occurs to her that God may be doing the best s/he can; moreover she arrogantly (or clownishly, for Doonesbury) assumes that she knows better than God. Contrast Job when he’s confronted by YHWH: “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.”

Even those who curse at God create him or her in their own images by applying their own personal belief systems and morals to him, even as they find him wanting to their higher-than-God standards. To chastise He Who Cannot Be Named is to kiss his ass.

I don’t think we’re equipped to decide whether God exists or not, any more than a bug caught in a Roach Motel can comprehend the existence of Dupont Chemical, Inc. Accordingly, declarative statements against his/her existence are based on emotion and feelings, not rational thought, as there is no data to support the conclusion. Atheism is merely a leap of faith.

Dæmons & hεlls come in do it yourself kits. There are plenty of people willing to help you put one together. What’s really annoying is when someone digs their pits in hεll, then gets mad at you for not wanting to move in.

Comments aside on this one (sometimes they’re great!), this strip is great, and the last panel is classic!

The Comments usually add to the strip. But there’s nothing that can be added to that last panel. Thanks!

Wow - a lot of heavy insight here today. Chrisnp, puddleglum, prfesser - very interesting reading. Thank you. GT, you keep everyone thinking. Thank you too. I never miss your strip.

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas.

Nemesys: “Accordingly, declarative statements against his/her existence are based on emotion and feelings, not rational thought, as there is no data to support the conclusion. Atheism is merely a leap of faith.”

I think you’re overstating your case. “Active” Atheism may go so far as to declaratively state “There is no God”, but “Passive” Atheism may simply be “Seeing no evidence for the existence of God, I will make no allowances for such in my behavior.” This is not, strictly speaking, the same as Agnosticism, because Agnosticism is an acknowledgement that the existence (or non-) cannot be (or at least has not been) proven; some Agnostics nonetheless act on the presumption that God exists, while others act on the presumption that he/she does not. I call myself an Agnostic to the extent that I do not claim to know whether God exists, but I call myself an Atheist in that I believe that there is no God, and behave accordingly.

Your roach/DuPont Chemical analogy is faulty because it presumes the existence of a DuPont for the roach not to comprehend, and I cannot likewise presume the existence of a God, comprehensible or no. A roach stuck in amber would not (we shall assume) know any difference between that and a Roach Motel, although the latter requires an outside “agency” while the former does not. If an amber-trapped roach WERE to posit the existence of a DuPont Chemical responsible for its predicament, it would be mistaken.

” He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3: 11

“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in Him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like Him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because He first loved us.” John 4: 16-19

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covert, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” James 4: 1-3

Stop being angry at a perfect God because of your own perceptions about Him, and the works of a sinful world. Seek Him with all of your heart and you will find Him. He truly loves you, and desires for you to be a member of His family. Just ask, and you shall receive.

Merry Christmas.

Happy Festivus to All!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8g4Ztf7hIM

Friz and Nems: Simple point. We assume or presume God because we are genetically hardwired to do so. There is a “god gene” and you can look up the book and spend some time reading it if you wish. Seems our old pal “nature’ wants us to believe in god or god himself wired us as such ( take your choice.)

As to Job, Puddle, he was the quietest and most reluctant to attack God but finally did ask him why and God responded “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the universe?” God prodded Job with all those problems to rip away the deep veneer of piety and get to the last shred of doubt he had and destroy it. Same thing he does with all of us, believers of not. And said that Job was right in his doubts because God was INDEED testing him. Read Dr. Larry Crabb’s Inside Out for some actually studied insights beyond your surface scratching.

Odor, you need to read Frankenstein for a little insight into humanity’s capacity to create a perfect thing. And you need to realize God didn’t want robots, he wanted love returned and love, real love, is a choice, not a program.

God had faith in Job & allowed Satan to test him to prove His point. How comforted were Job’s boil ridden dead relatives by his faith? I choose to believe that He had to come here to learn compassion.

We are trained - almost from birth - to think in finite terms. To mentally break the universe around us into countless discrete components in the hope of being able to manage them.

This hinders our understanding of infinity. There can be only one infinity - comprised of all things, all places, in every time. A half dozen is the same as a thousand trillion from the perspective of infinity.

But we are almost incapable of truly comprehending this concept. We relentlessly try to break it into finite and discrete descriptions, and the second we do that, - we lose it.

this is why the comic sucks. not funny and pointlessly confrontational