Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for October 22, 2018

But what if cruelty is predetermined?

100 pages seems extremely light considering all the religions that crop up every year now.

And loving.

to Pig, simplicity is key.

I hope “be kind” isn’t going to be written on each of the 100 pages.

Simple and to the point. Nicely done, Pig.

The Gospel According to Pig.

Unfortunately, some of the religions say Be kind, except for the <insert enemy’s name here> religion.

Pig must be thinking of Bizarro World cause it’s not that way here.

Would that it were that simple.

“That’ll do Pig.”

How the universe was created: “Be.”

Pig has the instruction for all sentient species.

Kill all the unbelievers.

Which ones are the unbelievers?

Don’t know. Kill them all, let (insert name of deity here) sort them out.

Actually, Pig is even further distilling a quote from the Dalai Lama…

“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”

“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius” (‘Kill them all. Let God sort them out’) – allegedly said by Papal legate and Cistercian abbot Arnaud Amalric prior to the massacre at Béziers, during the Crusade against the Cathars.

Also look up “Sack of Magdeburg”.

Respect, Accept, and COEXIST.

Wonder what Larry Croc would say ?

Summary of religions— God spelled backwards is…. Thus, Dogma I is……

Next thing for Pastis to do is a comic where all the words are backwards and telling the reader to use a mirror.

Thus, this is the New Mother Nature taking over….

Pig tells Goat “unword” backwards.

Suspend your critical thinking.

“Come! Gather around the Kumbaiya Solar panels & let us sing praises to Lord Kindness!”

Religion is about power and money, god is just a front.

This is roughly equivalent to summarizing all history as “the U.S.S. Maine”.

Be kind to your kind. Kill the rest.

In reality most use a philosophy that’s better suited to a dog food ad. Let us sing hymn #45, “our God’s better than your God…”

Ditto! To all. I do my praying on the back porch

Perfect.

Joseph Stalin; religion is seen as retarding human development. Karl Marx; called it “the soul of soulless conditions”, the “opium of the people” that had been useful to the ruling classes since it gave the working classes false hope for millennia.

Good luck preaching that. The last guy who tried got crucified.

ALL religions are too wordy.

Some form of the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) appears in all the major religions.

Most religions follow the “us against them” school of thought.

Most religions have very common threads about human decency and goodwill towards others, which are very much ignored by a very large number of “very religious” people. I’ll agree with Richard “Kinky” Friedman – “May the God of your choice bless you.”

“Be kind” is nice. But as CS Lewis wrote, what is required is not to be nice people, but new men. That takes a little more effort: just slightly more than anyone can do alone…

“Do your best. Don’t be a dick.”

-Russell Howard’s Dad

George Carlin: “If the little old man who lives in the sky that I worship is different from the little old man who lives in the sky that you worship, there’s going to be trouble!”

God is always there. You don’t need a fancy house, someone in a silly robe, or bells and smells to talk to her.

Hillel, a great Jewish scholar from ~100 BCE, was challenged by a non-Jew to explain the whole Torah to him while he stood on one foot. Hillel told him “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn”.So Pig, you’re in very good company!

Not gonna happen.

It’s hard to beat Alfred Loisy summation: “Christ heralded the coming of a Celestial Kingdom. What arrived was the Church”.

Choose To Be Kind, it’s hard , but worth it..

Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.

John Lennon

No one pays attention to that part.

Since it is true that kindness to others is central to almost all religions it’s stupid that so many people want to kill each other over relatively minor differences of opinion.

“Give us money”

Well said, Pig

I think now would be a good time to quote a certain agnostic, Steve Turner:

“Here is the creed for the modern thinker: We believe in Marx, Freud, and Darwin. We believe everything is ok, as long as you don’t hurt anyone, to the best of your definition of hurt, and to the best of your definition of knowledge. We believe in sex before during and after marriage. We believe in the therapy of sin. We believe that adultery is fun. We believe that Sodomy is ok. We believe that taboos are taboo. We believe that everything is getting better, despite evidence to the contrary. The evidence must be investigated, and you can prove anything with evidence. We believe there’s something in horoscopes, UFOs, and bent spoons. Jesus was a good man, just like Buda, Mohammed, and ourselves. He was a good moral teacher, although we think, basically, his good morals were really bad. [cut off]

[continued] We believe that all religions are basically the same; at least the ones that we read were! They all believe in love and goodness; they only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation. We believe that after death comes nothing, because when you ask the dead what happens, they say nothing. If death is not the end and if the dead have lied, then it’s compulsory heaven for all except perhaps Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan. We believe in Masters and Johnson. What’s selected is average, what’s average is normal, and what’s normal is good. We believe in total disarmament. We believe there are direct links between war and bloodshed. We believe that man is essentially good, it’s only his behavior that lets him down. This is the fault of society, society is the fault of conditions, and conditions are the fault of society. We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him, and reality will adapt accordingly: the universe will readjust, history will alter. We believe that there is no absolute truth, except the truth that there is no absolute truth. We believe in the rejection of creeds and the flowering of individual thought.

P.S. If Chance be the father of all flesh, Disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear: “State of emergency!” “Sniper kills ten!” “Troops on rampage!” “Youths go looting!” “Bomb blasts school!”, it is but the sound of man, worshiping his maker.

that must be why in all religions’ histories that they have always been dominated by kindness to their own and others. The period of love and hugs referred to as the Spanish Inquisition comes to mind.

Kind? Religions? Hahahahaha. They are violent, cruel institutions and their gods are nasty.

Something that is unfortunately absent from these and most other comment pages.

Sorry, Stephan, Pig got it wrong. The correct summary is: “There’s a sucker born every day.”

I would nuance that to “Be merciful.” But really, not bad at all. Truly too bad, though, that most people focus on the differences between the cultural details of their faith traditions, instead of their universal core values.

Did you hear the one about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac? He used to lay awake at night wondering if there was a dog.

Try Christianity, not Religion. The first is true. The second is all messed up.

Before followers pervert them most religions and their subsets DO begin this way. Perhaps the capacity to retain that goal over time in a given religion says a great deal more about the participants than the structure?

The 12th Doctor Who as he regenerates: “Never be cruel, never be cowardly. Hate is always foolish, love is always. Love is always wise. Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind. Laugh hard. Run fast. BE KIND!!” I think Pig is a Doctor Who fan!!

Kill those who are not you. What has the cartoonist. been smoking?

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies – God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

Introducing Pig, this generation’s foremost philosopher-theologian! For most fanatics, that is.

Cartoon-Boy preacher-man!

amen

Not all religions. From Christ who died for us and those who follow and trust in the salvation by grace: BE BORN AGAIN (John 3:3, 3:5, 3:7)

My summary of all the world’s religions: superstitious nonsense

The basic tenets of any religion always strive to find light and truth for the evolution and maturation of humankind. Then people form sects to try to turn simple truths into a myriad of rules to micromanage one another. Finally opportunists worm their way into power and in pursuit of their selfish interests they will convince followers to commit any number of crimes against members of the same species that the religion was supposed to improve. Ironically, many “non-believers” pick up on the original vision and live enlightened lives without the taint of dogmatism. Even as a committed member of a prominent branch of Christianity, I often find myself agreeing with “heretics” whose beliefs tend toward a purer version of my faith than most of my fellow congregants could ever fathom.

I thought it was “Demonize everyone who doesn’t agree with your viewpoint”.