I’m completely missing Halloween this year, but if I had gotten back in time, I’d have been tempted to print out copies of this little fake Chick tract to hand out to the Christian kiddies, instead of candy.
Nah, I’m lying. I’d never do that — I always despised those sanctimonious people who handed out tracts instead of candy. But since I can’t pump candy over a satellite link to all of your computers, I’ll have to settle for bits instead.
Warm enough to be naked without sweating? No Fox News? I’m guessing the first ninety trillion years FLY by.
It would be pretty harsh to give this to kiddies at the door, agreed. For the god-botherer who insists on shoving the RFID “Mark of the Beast” pamphlet in my face three times at the bus depot…this would be a nice pamphlet to offer in return.
maybe as a candybar wrapper?
For the god-botherer who insists on shoving the RFID “Mark of the Beast” pamphlet in my face three times at the bus depot…
It ought to be pretty easy to make up an “my RFID can BEAT UP YOUR JESUS” pamplet…
… !
Excuse me for a moment.
*paper rustling*
*scratching of pen on paper*
Dear space agencies, dear space sector, dear Mr Musk,
I write to you in the hope of securing funding, support and your technical expertise for a ground-breaking new application of orbital high technology which may well solve one of the greatest problems of our age. …
The War on Halloween was a failure this year.
It’s easy to see why.
Why worry about imaginary monsters like demons and witches when at least one real monster has been stalking the headlines for months.
Hold up. Why would someone sent to Hell immediately assume they “deserved” it?
My kid and I just got back from trick or treating(he’s 3). He got two pieces of christian propaganda. A pamphlet and an audio book by focus on the family.
We had ~10.
3 collecting for the Campus Food Bank (they got granola bars and KD).
They rest were tween and teens, no wee kids.
After trick or treating this year we got nary a Christian tract. When I was a kid and Catholic, my parents, siblings, and I all hated getting those.
When speaking of creeps who should burn in hell, here is a link to a post at Mano Singham’s blog:
“Why women keep silent about sexual assault – and how Trump may be changing that” http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2016/10/29/why-women-keep-silent-about-sexual-assault-and-how-trump-may-be-changing-that/
Don’t worry. I had to throw out some of last year’s candy to empty the collecting pumpkins for this year.
#7 Jake Harban. If you believe in a perfect god, then what other conclusion can there be?
#13 #7 Posted too fast, delete that.
That should have read: “If you believe in a perfect – as well as good (according to a human perspective), consistent and caring – god, then what other conclusion can there be?” The story of Job indicates that even in the case of an allegedly perfect god, it can also be evil (from a human perspective), capricious, and uncaring.
@13/14 Blattafrax:
Ah, that would explain it then.
Personally, I believe in an afterlife but no gods good or otherwise, so anyone in Hell was sent there by a (human) judge and wouldn’t leap to the conclusion that they deserve it.
Jake Harban:
What a stupid conceit.
What we call the cessation of life is ‘death’.
(Your putative afterlife is technically an afterdeath, since it can’t happen until death occurs)
Jake Harban, #15
But you believe in Hell (with a capital H)?
And I wonder what orangutans and lobsters do in their afterlife.
I have very important questions (or perhaps just a hangover):
Is there an afterafterdeath, which can’t happen until afterdeath occurs? Or maybe an afterparty after afterdeath? When might that occur, precisely, and what is occurring?
Is your experience of an afterdeath technically the same as beforelife? (That is, to be specific, nothing at all.) Or are they somehow different?
And what about beforebeforelife? If it’s the inverted case of an afterafterdeath, I should probably register a complaint that I didn’t have a very good time there, wherever that may be. It evidently wasn’t very memorable. But let’s not be hasty and jump to conclusions here — far be it from me to do that, while discussing such serious topics…. Maybe, if there were any, the host or hosts, through no fault of their own, just didn’t have a lot of experience with such things. It’s kind of surprising (or might be) that they had time to do it at all, if indeed they did have time to do it at all. I’ll rate it a D-, so they’ll have to redo it (if that were possible) in order to get a passing grade; but if it’s any consolation (although it shouldn’t be) I’d also be willing to give them an E for effort.
I have a question about the image.
Is he in the early OT Sheol? Because, in that case, it is not a punishment, just a general storage space for the dead, just like Hades and the Nordic Hel.
If it is a punishment place, does that mean he is in the hellenistic Tartaros?
birgerjohansson:
Not sure what you’re trying to ask…. There are apparently flames all over the place, and he’s crying on his knees with the idea (which of course isn’t necessarily true) that he may have done something to deserve it. However it is that he feels about that (presumably not so happy, but for all we know somebody could be entering stage right with cookies and a Nobel peace prize), he’s concerned to ask about what he may have done to deserve it, as if it were intentionally being done as a form of punishment/reward.
If that’s not enough to suggest actual punishment but is simply what “a general storage space for the dead” happens to be like, then… I’m kind of lost. It’s apparently a shitty place for dead people storage, so maybe someone ought to get on that or at least question whether they really need to be storing the dead in this way (or at all). Anyway, the caption underneath doesn’t agree: it’s explicitly claiming he does “deserve” it.
@16 John Morales:
Except that if you continue to exist then you aren’t dead so technically it’s just “not dying.”
@17 Saad:
Well, I don’t actually believe any of it, but according to the story that I sort of pretend to believe there is a Hell™ with a capital H and a trademark symbol, in which evil people are bathed in imitation lava (real lava is impractical and very expensive).
I don’t know about the afterdeath or beforelife, but I do believe in the afterbirth.
Also the foreplay.
I’m continuing to exist now. In the past five minutes, I was “not dying.” If you were in the same condition I’d say “you aren’t dead,” and so forth. Those are just statements of the fact that I’ve been “alive” for the past five minutes. An afterlife doesn’t just mean something mundane like that. But maybe you’re interested in trying to make it sound less absurd.
If there were an afterlife (there isn’t), those who believe in it suppose it occurs after what most would identify as “death” (and of course after life too, since death marks the end of what is normally called “life”). You’re apparently claiming death in the usual sense doesn’t actually occur, and an afterlife occurs in its place.
So when someone’s head is crushed by a rock, for instance, when people would normally say they’ve died, your claim is that the person continues to exist after their head has been crushed by that rock. This isn’t to be understood as a trivial observation that some of the matter making up their brain is still smeared on the rock and hasn’t been utterly annihilated in the process — it still exists, of course. Instead, the claim is that despite all appearances the person is still existing somehow and in some sense, that they’re able to experience stuff as a person, while dead brain goop smeared on a rock can’t do such things. That’s the kind of state you’re identifying as an afterlife. I think it’s false, and there is no reason whatsoever to believe it.
Here’s an idea, maybe try it out: say what you honestly think the truth is, coherently and without contradiction. You said you believed in it at #15 — has anything important changed for you since then?
But don’t worry about your beliefs for the moment (or what you sort of pretend, whatever that means). Let’s start with this. Is there a fact of the matter about whether anyone (or everyone) will have an afterlife? Yes or no. If there is a fact of the matter, what is that fact? Either there is an afterlife or not.
#15 Jake Harban
It doesn’t really matter what you believe. The character in the cartoon is a standard issue Christian. He does believe in a perfect god.
Well, if you read the tract. God, Jesus, Heaven and Hell, reward and punishment all exist as Jack Chick imagined them. They just have different judgement criteria than he thought they would have. (Jesus likes rap music; there’s halloween and Dungeons and Dragons in heaven; and god likes to punk the soon to be damned.) God and Jesus are actually kind of jerks, but …. it’s a comic strip.
The caption doesn’t make sense in that the caption says Hell doesn’t exist so … where is he? But in essence the caption is saying “this story is fiction” which…. shouldn’t surprise us.
Jake, #22
I’m sorry you have to pretend to believe religious stuff. I know how that can be.
What I believe:
1) I believe humans are born, live for some time and then die.
2) I believe that many people are so afraid of death that they will create imaginary realities so that they do not have to confront this final reality.
3) I believe that humans as social creatures have a belief in justice–even if that justice is only a belief that all those bad people they hate will get theirs in the end. For some, it can simply be too painful to accept that this concept exists only between their ears.
4) I believe that these beliefs are all that is needed to explain the collective human belief in the “supernatural”.
5) When you’re dead, you’re dead.
6) Despite the fact that you will one day cease to be, being can be a pretty good state to experience and share for a while.
Historically and anthropologically, I really don’t believe this is as common or as wide spread as all that and the Hell (trademark) is actually a creation of sadistic political medieval european churches. Yes, there’s a belief of justice, that all wrongs will be corrected and the deserving would be rewarded and maybe there’s a special place for the particularly deserving (e.g. Valhalha and Elesian fields). But I think Hell and Tartarus and *torment* of the wicked are the exceptions rather than the norm.
I could be wrong though.
Actually, what surprises me is how common the the idea that the default afterlife, even for the good, is simply *dreary*. I don’t really see the anthropological benefit in that belief. Then again, anthropology and social intuition is probably not my greatest strength.
@15
While I can understand a sort of pretend belief in retribution afterlife, I find it very strange to have a belief that the judgement will come from fallible people rather than some some cosmic outside objective, albeit immaterial and non-sentient, sense of justice. I … dont really see the point in a pretend belief in punishment if it isn’t deserved. An existential real world “shit happens”, sure, but a pretend afterlife? Why pretend if its just as capricious as the real world.
I also find it rather strange to consciously think about this, to conclude a belief in no gods, and consciously conclude an afterlife, particularly one with retribution.
But maybe that’s me. I’d certainly *like* a loophole to grasp onto about the nature of conscious that somehow it doesn’t have to be the meat that has it and only in the now. Retribution and reward seem so … petty… and in my mind when I feel “there *must* be continuous… it can’t just *end*…” it’s more a sense that I feel that somehow I must continue to experience and somehow I must have it all have cohesion. Which I guess because understanding and meaning are important to me and justice is not. I guess other people may feel justice is more important…. I guess… Seems weird to me.
But of course what I *consciously* believe with thought. Well, come on… let’s get real….
I received a revelation from God last Thursday.
God has decided that the system of Heaven and Hell was just not working. Torturing prisoners had grown boring, and hymns of praise even more boring. So he has abolished Heaven and Hell and set up a new system of sequential reincarnation. When you die, your soul will go to the back of a line. When you reach the front of the line, you go into the next available human body.
He has declared a general amnesty for the residents of Hell, and put them into the line. Those who were good enough to get into Heaven, all twenty-seven of them, volunteered to go into the line as well, so they could teach virtue and goodness by example.
He hopes that we will have enough sense to treat each other well and care for the Earth. If not, we will just have to live in the mess. He is turning his attention to other galaxies, where he has other children to raise. He said, “You’re on your own now. It’s time to grow up.”