Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for February 26, 2022

Jaegermeister is straight from hell.

Oh beer!

The worm feels the same way about tequila.

Vodka is from Vladysatan.

I suppose that depends on who you ask.

Wine is for the mere mortals to whine about how life is unfair.

All alcohol is poison, it just takes us several decades to figure that out.

God gave us free will, then let us stew in our own juice…

Rat is wrong. Jaegermeister is from Satan.

To be perfectly honest, God doesn’t let anything on Earth happen. We do.

Beer (or chocolate, sex, music, a clear sky at night, the smell of a mint field, a rainbow,…) is goddess’s way of saying she loves us and wants us to be happy!

Interesting version of compensation theodicy.

Bite your tongue, Rat!

We all face problems. We all get sick and hurt. We all die. We all suffer. It’s a test of how we cope.

Figured I’d answer Pig’s question before the highly-predictable atheists dive in: ; )

First, it’s a very good question. God created us with free will— the ability to choose between good and bad. He warned us that if we chose to do bad, there would be consequences. Humankind rebelled against God.

There are many who deny the existence of God because He doesn’t cater to their personal whims. Even those who claim to follow God, don’t. We’ve had two World Wars and Russia is currently at war with the Ukraine, and all the other nations are upset… and they wonder why He doesn’t force them to do His will? If God stepped in and forced people to “be good”… we’d see a world-wide tantrum.

In the scriptures God states this is how it would be. War after war, nation against nation, global pestilence, famine, ungodly people. That’s not His doing; it’s ours. We demand free will… the right to rule ourselves. God gave it to us. Then we complain because he doesn’t clean up our messes.

Jesus basically gave us two laws: Love God and love our fellow man. He told us to forgive one another, to be kind, and to be humble. Humanity is about as arrogant as it can be, with just about everyone thinking they know more than they really do, and thinking they’re the authority on everything. Some claim we basically “created ourselves” out of nothing, in effect making our species “God”. That’s the opposite of humility.

Why does God let these things happen? Because humankind basically told him to take a hike. These are the consequences of such attitude.

He did leave us with an interesting thought or two: He will return and demand accountability.

“If those days were not cut short no flesh would be saved. But on account of the chosen those days will be cut short…. and to destroy those destroying the Earth.”

(I wonder how John knew 2000 years ago that we’d even be able to destroy the Earth? Yet here we are, doing just that.)

That’s the answer Pig: this is the price of arrogance.

Only Jose Cuervo is from Satan, Chinaco Anejo is a special gift from God!

I’m glad I drink Root Beer!

Okay, so Rat has one scruple?

I don’t believe in any gods, but I do believe in spirits.

As I understand it, God gives us bad things so we’ll appreciate the good things; if only good things ever happen, what’s a couple more?

I do admit I got a good laugh out of this one. And God does want us to be happy and celebrate Him. Like it says in Deuteronomy 14: 24-27, if the place of celebration is too far for you to carry your tithe, convert it into money, go there, buy whatever you want for the feast, including wine or strong drink and rejoice before the Lord!

Quoting from the book A Press Conference with God as I’ve done in the past:

“The things you consider evil are of no interest to God. God did not make them evil, and has no ability to predict when evil will occur or to make something stop being evil. God does not intervene at all, and cannot begin to explain why one person becomes evil and another does not.

Neither evil nor its solution comes from God. As we’ve said before, the bad news is, you’re on your own. The GOOD news is, you’re on your own.”

The comic is funny. All of you ‘serious’ commenters; Read some Robert Heinlein, for God’s sake!

Ahh, beer…

The cause of and answer to, all of life’s problems. – Homer…………..Simpson

Actually, Vodka is from Satan.

“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” – Benjamin Franklin

Beer and wine are directly from God; distilled spirits resulted from human scheming.

Beer makes you smart. It made Bud wiser.

The bad things happen in the workld due to two things: 1. Man’s choice to do evil, 2. Satan and his agents working to tempt man.

God gives us Free Will. We get to choose which path we take. God is not a dictator imposing peace and happiness. He wants us to choose and gives is the free will to choose between right and wrong.

God makes it so that good things can come out of bad situations. Rat was just put on Earth to complain and insult everyone.

One of my favorite quotes, from (I think) James Thurber. Substitute your addiction of choice:One Martini is fine.Two Martinis is too many.Three Martinis are not enough.

Preaching people sure can take the joy out of a funny comic strip.

I asked the same question….

That’s absurd. God’s make-up gift was cannabis-infused peanut butter cups.

GOD certainly does have a sense of humour..

That’s a gift?

But, but, but….it makes her clothes fall off.

Farina should return during covid

Man, I agree with all of that.

Man is the only creature on earth that prays … or needs to!

Any booze that you shoot down your throat in an attempt to get stinking drunk will leave you feeling very poorly in the morning. Don’t blame tequila, the good stuff tastes great if you sip it. Blaming the drink instead of the drinker is like blaming the gun instead of the shooter.

No, RUM is from Satan.

Southern Comfort is from Satan!

In the Beginning, Man created god, and in in his image created he him.

God, in his wisdom, made the fly, and then forgot to tell us why. – Ogden Nash

“Malt does more than Milton can / To justify God’s ways to Man.” — A.E. Housman

Sounds like rat has been reading Ben Franklin…

Because God gave us free will, whether we follow Him or not is up to the individual.

“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” – Benjamin Franklin

Beer does help ease the pain though until we work things out. However, turning to God is our ultimate solution…..

Sometimes I feel like God put too much faith in humanity’s ability to fix its own problems…

Ben Franklin purportedly said that “beer is God’s proof that He loves us”

All good things happening would be heaven. This is not heaven, obviously.

And ouzo. It’s from Sauron or Morgoth

For something so irreverent, it’s still very funny!

Well, in my opinion, Jesus of Nazareth is over a millenia late.

Hung over when you drew this strip, Pastis?

Never fails to amaze me that people who don’t know how their phone works know the mind of god.

Rat is absolutely correct about Tequila!

THANK you! Tequila literally makes me feel like I’m dying! I get a raging headache, get RIDICULOUSLY dizzy, and become nauteous! BAD TEQUILA!!! That said, beer sucks too. WHISKEY rules.

Back in the day, my best friend would order a beer and a shot of tequila. If you sat next to him long enough, you’d hear a sound like a pencil snapping in two. That sound was his brain going away.

He also gave us detox, a make-up gift for his make-up gift.

Yeah, not buying the beer argument. Millions of Americans and their families suffer abuse because of alcohol.

Truer words about tequila have never been uttered…

What happens when you chases tequila with Beer?!?

The universe is 13.7 billion years old. There are more stars in it than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of this tiny insignificant speck we call Earth, which has only existed for 4.5 billion years. Modern Humans have been here for about 200,000 years. Given these facts, belief in a personal god is completely irrational.

“In Heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here”

It’s obvious! Look at the name!

Tequila = Ta Kill Ya.

What a way to go!

Never could get an answer from my Mormon relatives why alcohol is banned for religious reasons when the making of water into wine was Jesus’s first miracle.

Amen.

Rat is confused – tequila is not from Satan, it’s from Mexico! And which for all of its problems (I know about them, I live there), is not where Satan dwells.

I guess Rat didn’t get the worm.

make sense to me…

I’d rather have lemonade.

I love Pearls Before Swine, but I wish Pastis and all other comics writers would leave God out of their comic strips. I find it offensive, but that’s just my opinion.

Because God doesn’t have free will. All of God’s creations are essentially the embodiment of every quality He lacks. We get sick, we grow old, we die, etc. Free will is one quality given to us by God because He lacks it.

How can God lack free will? Well, what is free will? As far as I can tell, free will is the ability to make choices using limited information, or a limited perspective. Since God’s perspective is unlimited, God will always make the “best choice” in any given situation. Only ever having one choice is the same as having no choice at all. Ergo God has no free will.

But it is through the act of creating the universe that God’s omnipotence is completed. If God can’t make mistakes, get sick, die, etc. then God truly isn’t omnipotent if He’s cut off from all those experiences. So God creates us as an extension of Himself, in order to give Him the experience of a limited existence.

But enough rambling from me, for the moment.

Has Rat been reading A.E. Houseman?“And malt does more than Milton canTo justify God’s ways to man.” A. E. Housman

God gets a cut from Satan for the tequila.

That Tequila remark means l’m going to hell….

God is a mass delusion.

We’re on our own in the world folks. Deal with it.

Me and tequila were good drinking buddies at one time. I sobered up and left him behind.

Meh. Borderline blasphemy, edgy humor. And bad theology.

But aside from that, Cartoon-Boy does a pretty good beer commercial….

Ah Root Beer

Drunkenly bad theology

Because we mistreat the great gift given, its domicile and nearly all of its denizens.

What’s from Satan is “Schnapps”.No matter what flavor it is,just a sip can turn you inside out.

“To alcohol! … the cause of — and solution to — all life’s problems.” — Homer J. Simpson