Ted Rall for October 26, 2012

I guess fixing a broken arm is against God’s will, too. Or, else why did he allow it to break in the first place?

Don’t blame God for a man’s stupidity.

so if you get cancer, maybe that is god’s will. no chemo for you!

“God” has a pretty good gig going. No matter how horrible the event, he gets praise and “credit”. Wars, famines, floods, rape, homicides, on and on; if this is “a benevolent god”, I sure wouldn’t want to honor a vindictive, petty, one.

Maybe “99% of Republicans” don’t believe this crap, but twelve of the Republicans running for senate do. A vote for Republicans anywhere has become a vote for crazy.

Monty makes more sense than most “religious” folks.

“The reason there are so many poor is precisely because there are so many rich who don’t give a rat’s ass about them.”-Aw, come on! I’ve heard it from an unimpeachable source that it’s NOT rich people’s job to worry about them.

Superstitious nonsense!

Stop confusing them with elementary philosophy.

Cool new icon, man. We are everywhere.

Does anybody know how many rapes actually produce children? I haven’t seen anybody get a number that would give us an idea how big (or small) this problem really is!

God didn’t build that theology. that’s strictly a Satan deal. ya know, the deal they make to win the election.

don’t blame Christ for the idiocy of his so-called followers.

Maybe Ted was just running low on “happy smoke” when he was drawing this cartoon?

Pretty Good

Sure — all “causation” works this way. If it looks like a cannonball strikes a wall and knocks it down, what’s really happening is that just as the cannonball reaches the wall, God makes the wall fall down. (I read about this idea in a book by the French philosopher Etienne Gilson, but many many years ago and I can’t give the source. He wasn’t advocating it, but he did say that it had been proposed at one time. I have a memory that this is called “epiphenomenalism”, but when I look that up it means something a little different, so maybe I have the wrong word. Any experts in Medieval Philosophy here?)

That makes sense. I bet there’s a modern and a medieval use, connected but not identical. I doubt a Medieval philosopher would have used the word in the modern way. Anyway, as I say, I read about this in one or another book by Etienne Gilson, many years ago. I don’t know if people still read Gilson, but he’s really very smart.

“If you do not believe in God, then we can assume that you believe that you are the ultimate supreme being in the universe.” No Ima,we know that’s you.

I was wondering when you were going to commit a No True Scotsman fallacy.By the way, I still haven’t seen any response to my request for you to provide some evidence for your claims, in an effort to distinguish them from religious babbling.

Ooh, big scary sadist in the sky gonna get me if I don’t kowtow hard enough, and let his representatives on earth rape my kids in the arse.Happy Halloween to you, too!

Any evidence for your claims? Are are you just another religious babbler?

This is awesome. Thanks!

“If you do not believe in God, then we can assume that you believe that you are the ultimate supreme being in the universe.”

I’m not Dredpiraterobt$, but I also do not believe in God, and no, you may not assume that I believe that I’m the ultimate supreme being in the universe. I don’t believe any such thing as an “ultimate supreme being in the universe” exists, and I don’t even know how you could define the term.

While we’re at it, I also don’t believe that human beings are the pinnacle of intelligence in the universe. We may be, insofar as we haven’t yet identified a greater, but the universe is large, and the range of our observations is small.

Furthermore, I don’t believe that the extstence of human beings on this planet is of any greater significance than, say, the existence of giraffes, except that I am one of them (as, presumably, are you), and that makes them of particular significance to me. But I admit I’m biased. We appear to be more intelligent than giraffes, but by golly they’re taller. (Do giraffes believe their God possesses supreme ultimate height in the universe? Hmmm…)

Lastly, I don’t believe that I, myself, am of any particular significance, either among human beings or life on this planet or in the universe at large. But I’m me; nobody else is me, and I’m nobody else, so that makes me of particular interest to me. But again, I admit I’m biased.

Why might not a rapist’s child cure cancer? Do you think morality is in the genes? Or perhaps that all rapists are stupid?

Wow. According to this, “straight white married wom[e]n” are assumed to a) not be rape victims and b) only be having sex with men whose sperm is “deserving.” Also that only straight, white, married women can be mothers to cancer-curing scientists. Just … wow. Rall has been drifting into crazyland for quite a while, now, but this is the furthest I’ve seen him go. I’m surprised there’s no backlash about this cartoon.