October 18, 2006
if you are an atheist
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
[Update:] This cartoon has generated 75 comments so far, many from atheists. Heh.
Hugh MacLeod
I'm a cartoonist.
I sell limited-edition prints.
I wrote a book.
I'm CEO of Stormhoek USA, which markets South African wine in the States.
I also draw private commissions.
Prints |
Opening | Current |
|---|---|---|
Bluetrain |
$900 | |
We Need to Talk |
$650 | |
Portfolio #2 |
$300 | |
NY NY |
$275 |
I more of a deist that atheist. The world had to start somehow
SteveC — Errr I think the person who wrote about Jesus a couple hundred years AFTER he allegedly lived, was the arrogant one! The book is a collection of chinese whispers. My opinion.
Anyway kids, atheists rule OK?!
i think –ist suffixes are sooo 1.0
Mmmm… delicious controversy…
Excellent cartoon. Personally, I’m a non-practicing jew who believes in G-d and science and has no desire to reconcile the two, let alone anything else. (Or, in the immortal [non-quoted] words of one Douglas Adams: The meaning of life, the universe and everything is 42.
Like many other things, this is definitional. G-d is a fundamental aspect of religion. An atheist believes that G-d does not exist. But how does atheism then transcribe to religion? If religion is simply a doctrine of beliefs, then wouldn’t atheism qualify as a religion? But if one says that every religion has a G-d, and atheists believe there is no G-d, then what qualifies as an atheist’s G-d? See cartoon.
I have a soft spot for metaphysics. [grin]
Love the cartoons, love the blog, will have to try the wine some day. Hello from the U.S. & Cheers!
P.S. I also believe in upping the post count on this by one. I don’t think that helps establish or break down anything but that doesn’t stop it from existing. (Does it?)
G*d is made in “our ” image, not the other way around I’m afraid. See, if we write these books (torah, koran, bible) and say the planet was “given” to us, well then, we can do as we please…in G*d’s name of course. Religion is a nice way of justifying our incompleteness as a species.
As I watched the sunset yesterday I became aware of an ant on my forearm. I watched the little guy go back and forth. How ez it would be for me to just squish it and not think twice. I continued to watch the sunset and maybe five minutes passed and I noticed it was still trying to get somewhere. Anywhere but where it was I suppose. Finally, I picked it up and placed it down on the ground. Chalk one up for the little guy, I bow to the ant.
It is not religion, God or the lack thereof that is the problem, it is what people do with it that causes it all to go to pot! As can be seen by the irrational reaction to a cartoon! Goes to show that the reaction to the Danish cartoons was not isolated to Islam. I wonder what God (whoever she, he, it or nothing is) would think of this .…..
Am I seeing this picture different than many who’ve commented already? I see something that’s being said behind some guy’s back, and that seems to have jarred him. So, I’m guessing he’s an atheist who gets annoyed when people try rationalizing atheism in their world of Gods and religion. Is that what others see?
For myself, an atheist, and my atheist friends, we never talk about God or religion unless confronted about it by someone who believes in God or some religion. It’s really a mute point to us, and it gets annoying when people talk behind our backs about what atheism really is when they’re not atheists, but people trying to rationalize us in their world. Still, clever wordings from believers doesn’t change an atheist’s belief in no God(s), and from my point of view, I’m not sure that’s what the picture was trying to do.
Nice try, Hugh.
And for my time reading this entry, I will be sending over an invoice for $50,000, as we agreed.
The burden is on you to disprove that we ever made such an agreement, correct?
If you are a vegetarian, then vegetarianism is your meat.
If you doubt the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, then doubt is your monster.
If you scoff at the occult, then scoffing is your occult.
If you don’t subscribe to Reader’s Digest, then failure to subscribe is your Reader’s Digest.
One can speak of “the fucked-up world wrought by religious ignorance and conflicts,” and one can speak of the equallly fucked-up world wrought by zealotry in science and politics. I’m sure you can think of your own examples.
The passion with with some atheists defend atheism tends to bely the idea that atheism is pure rationality. Atheism is one way to interpret the dataset of all personal observations; theism is another and it can be just as rational an interpretation.
“God is dead.”
Nietzsche or Gillmor? I’ll leave you to decide.
Jane Greer — “Proof of God is everywhere.” Sure. In Juvenile Monocytic Myeloid Leukaemia. In HIV. In cholera. In retinal blastoma. In polyps. In schizophrenia. In liver flukes and tsunamis. In those parasites that eat the tongues out of fish and then feed on the food coming into the fish’s mouth. Malaria, bilharzia and rickets. Thanks for those God — they outweigh the sunsets for perhaps the majority of the world’s population but hey, I’d better not mention that or it is eternal damnation for me.
Good grief.
He used a small “g” in “god” here (as opposed to “God” in the previous cartoon). Atheism isn’t my God, but it’s certainly my god.
Why we die ? .
IF
God is great and God is good…
IF
all that is not i is greater then i
THEN…
I can actually imagine One or the Other and anything inbetween
I’d go with MyNameIsMatt on this one.
What the ‘toon says could be construed as either a platitude a religious person could say about atheism, or as something an atheist could say about said religious person. (I use the term religious person very carefully here). Most people, it would seem, interpreted it as the former, so it would be interesting to see the author’s intent.
Ciao
patrick,
Such pain you’re in! Kind thoughts are coming your way from me.
Isn’t this the whole point of atheism?
You don’t need something to fill the void that the theistic God fills.
You’re way off the mark, and the stupid image is just another example of the ignorance surrounding what atheism means and who atheists are.
God likes me best. No wonder everyone’s so peevish.
religious bullshit doesnt kill people. idiots kill people.
Thesis the first: hardline atheists are as easily offended when their atheism is questioned as religious fundamentalist are when their religiosity is questioned.
Thesis the second: religious controversy attracts attention; wether one has a professed religion or not, but even more so when one is closer to either polar end.
Thesis the third: attention is precious, yet it is easily wrenched when one knows the correct buttons to push.
Thesis the fourth: I need to get a life.
Point made, Hugh, but oversimplifying it like that sure makes it hard to discuss it. Is that the typical “angry atheist?” Be thankful you live where you do. America is entering a new dark age.
Jane, are you trying to help patrick in some way? Perhaps you are trying to convince yourself that you have some significance in this world.
Personally I believe in reality. Reality has so far not included any invisible, all powerful space aliens. It also does not include interpreting patrick’s comments as pain. I do admit however that you have caused me some pain. I will now do my best to forget I ever read it.
I think if the guys face had been red and he had a gun strapped to his back some of the commenters may have understood the joke better.
Jane It is a tribute to human steadfastness, optimism and ingenuity that those pains of existence I refer to don’t get us (including me) down all the time; for me happiness and survival have nothing to do with fairytale characters be they God, Allah, Jehovah or whoever. Thanks for the kind thoughts but I’m not in pain and reality isn’t so bad — you should try it: it is liberating (and would be more so were there not so many religious people still around exerting undue influence on our otherwise relatively free lives — check out the nearest theocracy for more information about how to make people miserable).
By the way, if it is a christian fairytale you follow you might want to check out your ancestry — according to the Old Testament, if one of your forebears of the last 10 generations was a bastard (born out of wedlock — not the more prosaic form) you won’t be going to heaven. You might cry “foul” when St Peter tells you your name’s not down and your not coming in but the big beardy guy behind him won’t be listening.
Okay, patrick, let’s deal with reality, as you suggest. You sent me a list of monstrosities intended to cancel out my list of marvels, and you seem to believe that much of the world considers you damned. I interpreted that as a sign that you were in pain – which was a realistic assumption, whether or not it was correct. For me to respond with more religious discussion was not at all what I wanted to do, so I just wrote what I was feeling: kindly towards you. That’s all. I felt that some sort of response on my part was necessary, but I didn’t want to offend you (or bring an attack on myself) by telling you in writing that you were in my prayers, so I just sent friendship your way. You responded with more angry writing about God and sarcasm about what you assume are my beliefs, and finished up with a long paragraph about how the “big beardy guy” won’t let me into Heaven because the odds are that there are bastards in my family.
I don’t think you live in the real world at all. I think you live in anger so thick you can’t see through it to recognize a simple tentative human gesture. So once again I am left with the very realistic assumption that you are in pain, and along the way you have strengthened the stereotype of the angry, defensive atheist or agnostic or whatever you believe you are, and presto! we’re back at Hugh’s cartoon.
It would be slightly better (but less pointed) if it read “If you are an atheist, then Logic is your god.”
Because that is the plain and simple truth — Athiests believe in logic. Based on three thousand years of scholarly investigation, experimentation and philosophical discussion. But a belief nonetheless, and one that has demands.
Logic demands that you dismiss things that cannot fit into its structure. It requires that you use its structure to invent and analyze. It compels you to accept unpleasant things if they are deduced through its rules
Your earthly rewards for believing in Logic are considerable. Many jobs require an iron belief in Logic to be done well. An entire industry (computer science) is devoted to the discovery of ever-more escoteric manipulations of Logic.
And I should know — I’m a high-level disciple in the church of Logic.
But at the end of the day, Logic is just a belief. It is a filter, a “box” that you live inside, blinding you from the possible things that exist outside the box.
Recall the story of the fish who lived in an aquarium. His owner took him out of the water, and held him in the air for a moment, before dropping him back in. Immediately, he swam to his friends and said “Hey guys! Guess what! We live in _water_. There’s _water_ all around us.”
The other fish thought he was insane, of course.
I don’t beleive in God, Yahweh, Allah, Buddha or Shiva. I don’t think any of them have it right. And I use Logic constantly, all day long, every day. But I know that Logic is a belief, something that I accept as true, without any way to *know*.
Because Logic is my faith, and my religion. And, to some degree, my god.
Not to speak for Him, I read Hugh’s cartoon to mean that staunch atheists are often every bit as positioned and attached to their point of view about the “folly” of a belief in God as the most religious person can be positioned and attached to their point of view.
It’s all individual opinion/experience/belief in the end and that is another brilliant observation of Hugh’s I think.
I googled “contrived religious arguments submitted by hacks who spent so much time blogging that they never learned how to develop a concise philosophical approach”, and well, here I am.
Jane — the cartoon I have no problem with — it’s just a cartoon, let’s not get Islamic about it. And I wasn’t suggesting that your family must be full of bastards and nor was I wanting to be insulting — my apologies if that is the way it came across. What I was trying to point out was that a god who made (or allows to continue) the monstrosities I referred to was no god I wanted to know.
Re: the bastard thing — check out the old testament — it is there, honestly. What I meant to suggest by this was that a god who could damn you or I to an eternity of suffering in hell owing to the actions of our forbears was not the god for me in the same way as his (and it is always a him) allowing monstrosities and agonies to continue makes him persona non grata in my neck of the woods. Oh, and human sexuality being what it is (wahey!), I reckon the odds are most of us have bastards (in the religious sense) in our family tree. Me included.
Re: my conclusion that you are a christian — if I am wrong, my apologies, I based this on the sound of your name and the things you had written. If you follow another faith so be it — remove the bastard stuff, the rest still stands.
I suspect, despite all this writing, we aren’t going to see eye to eye but thanks for the kind thoughts.
Hugh — I really dig this new style of cartoon — I absolutely loved the coal mine one.
I don’t understand why anyone allows themselves to get so passionate and heated in the comments when the blogger himself is obviously a button-pusher who likes to incite controversy while remaining emotionally detached.
That said, I think Jane and Patrick should just marry each other and get it over with.
As defined in the bible, anything anyone builds their life around is their god. What they want most, think about most, care about most.
So anyone who uses the bible as the explanation of their god concept should be pointing to people’s lives much moreso than this ‘prove the negative thing.’ But most people claiming an abrahamic god have other things in their lives who truly fill that role, no?
Every smart has already been said.…though I would of said…then atheism is your religion…But hey its your joke
If you are a vegetarian, then vegetarianism is your meat.
I like that, and will use it in the future, in blatant disregard of the author’s intent.
I think that the guy in the cartoon is a believer trying to insult the atheist. He is angry because he can see all the great things science has made since reason departed from religious faith. Science is delivering results and explaining things, is very rigurous and above all it can change its mind if its proven wrong.
)
jb said:
“But I know that Logic is a belief, something that I accept as true, without any way to *know*.”
and I add, is a very reliable belief.
Great posts (especially the atheists ones
Perhaps better stated as “If you are an atheist then you rapidly get tired of idiots”.
There is one difference between faith in God and faith in no God, which any true Christian can tell you:
God is real and we experience His love and power every day of our lives when we give ourselves to Him.
My faith is in the character of God and what He is able to accomplish. But faith that God exists? Not necessary: He’s already proven to me that He exists. May He bless those of you who are searching for the truth with a new revelation of His existance and His love.
“Jared White” : are you real ?
Yes…atheism is not anti-god, it’s more of the fact that god is a non-issue in our lives. I mean, can’t the human race just move on?
I live in the states and every Sunday I see the droves of idiots lining up to go into these huge churches that cost so much to maintain.
If you took all of the manhours and money that goes into religion on just ONE SUNDAY…you would have enough cash and manpower to immunize all of the children in Africa from the easily preventable diseases that kill so many millions of them each year.
Imagine what we could do with the following Sunday’s money/time?
JDHitSkills : these events sure cost money, but they are useful at the end for some people who don’t care at all about Africa.… you end up with Bush mention “God” every other word and people feel all warm inside or something and connect with him… .Heck! I remember when I saw a documentary on TV in which a *lunatic* said he would vote Bush because “Bush is a messenger from God”. Whatever HE does/decides therefore must be good.
Sorry I am raving but this drives me mad.
People seem content with simplistic explanations.
You can leave your brain off that way, it’s comfortable, no room for doubt.
Love it! I know an atheist who won’t eat meat because it’s cruel to animals, but he pushed me in front of a bus and got me fired. Complex individual? Not really, just needs more protein in his diet.
An atheist is a person who believes there is no god. If atheism is a god, then I shall explode because there is no logic in this cartoon. THERE IS NO GOD!!! If there was a god, then he would have showed up by now! From time to time my great grandmother will tell us that she has heard on the religious news thing that she watches that god is coming. around the time that he is “schedueled to arive” the date will be moved ahead another six months! if Santa and The Easter Bunny are real, then god still DOESNT EXIST!!!!! Also, your clock for posts should include the timezone or a state in the timezone. I live in Maine and your clock is five hours ahead of mine.
So much animosity, anger, and frustration over a simple cartoon — wow.
It’s as if Hugh has hit a nerve at the core of some people’s BELIEFS …
I can only imagine the response had he actually made a joke about someone’s religion!!!! LOL!!!
you read anger?
God or none I just wanted to be comment #95 at 9:50. Numerology must mean something.
(my time not your time)
Under full awareness that some god may cut in line during moderation and alter my perfection.
see, there must be some kind of god in the void, though he lacks my ideal of creative sychronization. He could have been more creative to actually post this at something like 5:09 and hint at the profoundness of numbers.
instead 2:43. What kind of time is that?
This had all the makings to be something mysteerious
–WIN9OW5 95
–Martin Luther 95 theses
–9 – 5: time people pretend to work
–how fast i have to drive to get to Cincinnati in an hour
–the percentage of people who use that Other computer system
Now this god is just plain cryptic!
2 for 3 or 3 for 2 turned about.
Ah, my children gather round and listen to the tale of yore of the cartoon that was spoken greatly about in depth and quite pointlessly, but which meandered in such a way that, like this sentance, it had some amusement to it. Perhaps. In fact there was very little evidence that either were amusing. You see, no-one laughed at either. But is the absence of laughter evidence as to the absence of a joke? I don’t know, but inside I’m wetting myself. If it’s at all possible.
The cartoon was of a man with a frustrated and angsty expression his eyes darkened with…with…with a pencil most probably. The words next to him stated thusly: “If you are an atheist, then atheism is your God”. What did it mean? Did it have two meanings? Was it pretending to have two meanings? Is that ironic? What the hell is irony? is it something that’s too clever to make you laugh? Is it definitely NOT a fly in your chardonnay? Who’s to say? You? Me? God? G-d? (Don’t let on, but I heard they’re the same person).
All of these questions remain today, but the important part is that nobody really cared, it was (like so many things) a bloody good excuse to have a fight. The weapons: words, the casualties: the virtues of communication (in this post, see brevity) and the spoils of war: 1st prize; tits, 2nd; wine, 3rd; 2 free tickets to a place of worship of your choice (atheists will receive a cheque to the equivalent amount, if they can prove banks exist in no more than 7 words).
And so the battle raged, there were winners, there were losers, there were people making jokes (sickos), there were stand offs, compromises, mutual annihilations, axis (ed: plural of?), allies, casual acquantices, sworn enemies, well-spoken enemies and tiny little south american people who worshipped venetian dressers.
In the end only one stood tall. Laughing gleefully as he supped his wine, his foot on the neck of all who MADE HIS BLOG RELEVANT. He was known only as Mcleod. From the highlands, but not Highlander ™…rather…Bloglander. He had been trained well by a spanish blogger with a curious scots like accent. He cared not for the trivialities of life, but only for his beloved drawings, which he nurtured with wine and indifference. He is a mystical figure who lures us into his realm of animation where our heads spin as we attempt to interpret supposed insight until we vomit the contents of our half baked notions onto the doorstep of his palace and he does smugly turn to his paymasters and declare: “See? Blogging is SOOOO hot right now!”
Beware the Bloglander, for his tangled web is well presented and may make you think. Do not think. After all, they say it’s the only thing you can prove exists. What were they thinking?
Go now children. Run and play, and be good. Or the Bloglander will pay you a visit in the night and make you read ALL the responses to his cartoon. And thus you will waste your time.
Especially
with
this
post
.
You’re absolutely right. I used to be an atheist until I realised the self same thing. Now my position is that, most likely, everyone is wrong, including me. And there’s probably some massive octopus with the head of a horse, sitting on a giant ukulele in the sky, laughing at the attempts of the poor humans trying to make sense of it all.
I just found my new desktop wallpaper, fucking awesome.
Rich the atheist…!
95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven rather through many tribulations, than through the assurance of peace.