• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

'BC' Comic disses Darwin

The Don,

The Don said:
I always thought that "John" was American slang and that the Australians refer to it as a "Dunny" (sp)
Click to expand...
You are correct. "Dunny" it is. I must be watching too many American movies.

BJ
 
Regnad Kcin said:
... Why do you feel the need to get personal?..
Click to expand...
It was completely uncalled-for. Please accept my apology.

You haven't seen the last of me!
No, but the first of you turns my stomach! ;)
 
Do you mean you don't want the government censoring his comic strips or the publisher censoring his comic strips?

Neither. I'm not completely against ALL 'censorship' though. There is a type of benign censorship all of us practice every day that lets the small fish be heard in a pond with big hungry and noisy fish.

I don't agree with Hart, and I remember him saying in an interview at least once that he considers his strip a form of ministry. If Hart insists his strip is a kind of ministry that's fine, I recommend he be moved to the editorial page where Doonesbury sometimes gets sent. Of course, his syndication would probably drop. If he published his views every day I doubt he'd have any readership at all. So he uses the funny pages to editorialize.

Hart upsets people and is controversial. He helps creates a needed dialog, even with bad and unfunny cartoon art.

Without the shadow, would we perceive the light? :)
 
So how many "possibly suggestive of a religiously-bigoted message, yet most likely just a strip with absolutely no punchline and no other real point at all for that matter" strips does Hart get to draw before it becomes reasonable to assume that Hart actually intends all the religious bigotry that seems to have a habit of accidentally finding its way into his work?
 
Joshua Korosi said:
So how many "possibly suggestive of a religiously-bigoted message, yet most likely just a strip with absolutely no punchline and no other real point at all for that matter" strips does Hart get to draw before it becomes reasonable to assume that Hart actually intends all the religious bigotry that seems to have a habit of accidentally finding its way into his work?
Click to expand...

As many as it takes people to realize that The Wizard of Id just isn't funny.
 
I haven't been following this thread, so forgive me if someone has already asked this question, but would a comic (regardless of how good it was, unless it was way over the head of most of the readers), be able to poke fun at Christianity in the same way, and still get international syndication?
 
I never understood the aversion harbored by so many to the facts surrounding interspecific relations. Those who are carriers of this absurd fear, the creationists, will admit as much as that every member of the human race must be tied to one another through common ancestry as this belief is a part of the Christian dogma as guided by Genesis. In this, I see that they seem to have absolutely no problem being biologically bound to the bloodiest of legacies left in the wakes of fellow members of their species such as Hitler, Stalin, Nicholas II, Henry VIII, and others. I should think it much less emotionally taxing to know yourself to be a blood brother to a cute, little, harmless monkey than to realize that the DNA of mass murderers courses through your veins.
 
Batman Jr. said:
I never understood the aversion harbored by so many to the facts surrounding interspecific relations. Those who are carriers of this absurd fear, the creationists, will admit as much as that every member of the human race must be tied to one another through common ancestry as this belief is a part of the Christian dogma as guided by Genesis. In this, I see that they seem to have absolutely no problem being biologically bound to the bloodiest of legacies left in the wakes of fellow members of their species such as Hitler, Stalin, Nicholas II, Henry VIII, Osama bin Laden, and others. I should think it much less emotionally taxing to know yourself to be a blood brother to a cute, little, harmless monkey than to realize that the DNA of mass murderers courses through your veins.
Click to expand...

I'd guess it was some kind of psychological fear of our own "animal nature". Civilization and religion inhibit our behavior. To adjust, we have to channel some urges and instincts in other directions, or suppress them. Perhaps the people who find relation to animals distasteful are afraid of the implication that we're not that different.

Or maybe it's just snobbery, insisting that we're special and magical and divine.
 
Interesting.

As to Mr. Hart's denial, I'd be interested to hear his explanation for what then the strip was supposed to mean.
Click to expand...

I got called home suddenly this week, so I wasn't able to finish making my point, sorry... The italics is a quote taken directly from the article I first linked too, and you may follow from there a link to the original Washington Post article itself. As I said, this is all nothing new; it was all over the place when the cartoon first ran. His explanation is included there, which is simply "There was no bigotry, it's just a joke!".

Oddly enough, the only cartoonist who defended Hart's innocence was Gary Trudeau...
 
Batman Jr. said:
I should think it much less emotionally taxing to know yourself to be a blood brother to a cute, little, harmless monkey than to realize that the DNA of mass murderers courses through your veins.
Click to expand...
My mom's take on this, based on her years teaching High School Biology in the bible belt, was that there is no logic to it at all, just parroting of what authorities have told them. Her students had no problem at all admitting that we must be somehow related to cows (mammals, we can drink their milk, etc.--these being the similarities her students listed), but drew the line when it came to monkeys! They had been told time and again that we are not related to (or "descended from") monkeys...but since they had not been specifically told that about cows, that was not a problem.

Makes one's head spin...
 
Batman Jr. said:
I should think it much less emotionally taxing to know yourself to be a blood brother to a cute, little, harmless monkey than to realize that the DNA of mass murderers courses through your veins.
Click to expand...

It could be precisely because people see themselves in other primates, and this makes them scared. I've heard people saying that they don't like apes because they are too human like.
 
Mercutio said:
Her students had no problem at all admitting that we must be somehow related to cows (mammals, we can drink their milk, etc.--these being the similarities her students listed), but drew the line when it came to monkeys! They had been told time and again that we are not related to (or "descended from") monkeys...but since they had not been specifically told that about cows, that was not a problem.
Click to expand...

Such anti-monkey prejudice should be stamped out, having no place in a civilized society! I realize that people get brainwashed and indoctrinated as children, but this goes too far! It is an incomparable honor to be able to claim kinship to the noblest of animals, the monkey, and we should celebrate that glory daily! Gaze upon the monkey's noble visage! Touch his clever little hand! Listen to his shrill screeching! Smell the aroma of this simian aristocrat, this precious jewel, this monkey set in a silver sea! And rejoice that such a godlike being can call us cousin!
 
Hutch said:
[

Comments? [/B]
Click to expand...


I find one of the most interesting things about this discussion is that its participants with only a few exceptions state their positions with implications of unattainable, absolute certainty.

While it's usually true that "A" is either real or not real, or that "B" exists or doesn't exist, absolutely, it's not true that we can KNOW these things wi th absolute certainty.

We can know some things with "virtual certainty" (i.e., we can treat it as if it were absolutely certain for all "practical purposes") but the evolution-creation controversy does not seem to lend itself to certainty at that high level.

Why is there so much reluctance, even among the cognoscenti, to state our knowledge reflecting the varying levels of certainty of the evidence for that knowledge???

If we do this, we might say, arguably, that evolution is only "very probably" a true explantion for current life forms.
And, in my view, we would be likely to say that creation is possible, but that the weak evidence for it makes it only fancifully, not reasonably, possible. Like Bigfoot, maybe.

And we would then clearly see that the religionists put on their skeptic hat when analyzing evolution, but their totally gullible hat when they "analyze" their religious beliefs.

Just a modest cough from a minor poet. (I find that even here, I've mixed up the reality-knowledge distinction a bit.)

Edited by Darat: 
Edited to remove the HTML formatting altering the appearance of the forum.
 
Hi Bill Burke,
I think that to some degree most people feel something like that about the situation.

Most people (probably all the people that post regularly in this forum) would understand that underlying all scientific thinking and discovery is the idea the universe can be understood based on reason and evidence and it is that unstated hypothesis that underlies the ideas of science. To restate that hypothesis with each post or in every scientific article would be cumbersome and unnecessary I think.

It is interesting to me that it may be impossible for that hypothesis to be proven by humans. It is also interesting to me that some humans are so prone to trying to understand the universe without the need for reason or evidence. It seems almost by definition this approach would lead to random, contradictory fantasies that are highly unlikely to be a true representation of reality. In fact, that appears to be exactly what does happen.
 
Like Mercutio, I used to enjoy "BC." My only problem is that Hart (or whomever) now spends so much time preaching, he's no longer entertaining.
 
Roadtoad, I feel that way about your avatar. :cool: BJ
(used to enjoy it but no longer find it interesting. :( )
 
My take on this is
1. The moon in the night sky represents reality as the true Christian God. The moon on the outhouse suggests that Islam is a rip-off and lesser religion.
2. The next word in the strip after SLAM is "is". That's about as close to Islam as you can get.
Maybe I'm also giving Hart too much credit for his clever use of symbolism, but I think the cartoon is obviously anti Islam and pro Christian. Needless to say its a disgusting display of intolerance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom