A surprisingly common ‘argument’ from believers. I like to counter it with “millions of Western kids believe in Father Christmas, and you probably did yourself. That makes him as real as God, doesn’t it? And be careful what you say next, because he knows if you’ve been naughty!”
Mo forgot to use the other great internet one-liner “Islam is the fastest growing religion in the USA! 30.000 people converted in the last 5 years”
… actually atheists are the fastest growing minority, and spreading Islam by converting prison convicts and procreating like rabbits shouldn’t be something to be proud of, but hey… they take what they can I guess.
I’m particularly fond of the fact that the barmaid didn’t even use the fallacious argument! She didn’t say “if four billion people think it, then they must be right, and you must be wrong.” She simply pointed out to Mo, “With your use of a 1 billion figure to support your claims, you imply that quantity of claimants dictates accuracy; yet don’t you think 4 billion, a much larger quantity, are in fact incorrect? And therefore, aren’t you contradicting yourself?”
No, my mother loathed banalities; she wouldn’t have said anything so stupid and shopworn.
Didn’t your mother tell you not to ask total strangers impertinent intrusive questions about their mothers? For all you know my mother died a painful death this morning.
Sorry Ophelia, I was jesting. I didn’t expect to get your back up like that. I’m not reading any humour in your response so I must assume you actually are as angry as your words.
“A surprisingly common ‘argument'” indeed, ID. My wife’s mom tried it – “But millions of people believe in Jesus; why can’t you?” “Mom, there are millions of Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists, too!” “What do you care what THEY think, dear?”
Might I venture that one of us is sporting a teensy chip on her no doubt petite feminine shoulder. Truth is we ALL want to … ahem… BEFRIEND the barmaid. An intelligent non-insecure woman is just so attractive. And of course we just know she would prefer us freethinkers to those philistines who frequent the C&B.
My mother told me that she said to her mother “but EVERYBODY else does” (it doesn’t matter what); reply “If everybody jumps in the river, does that mean you have to as well?”
This strip was (like the other J&M strips) spot on! It reminded of an argument I had with a Christian once. During the argument, he used Einstein and Hawking believing in god as an argument for Christianity being true. He was actively lying to me, and he didn’t know that I, like him, had read The God Delusion. I corrected him, telling him that if he had read TGD he knew that Einstein was in fact a non-believer, and Hawking as avoided the subject except for using god as a metaphor once. He then said that you can’t base an argument on appeal to authority! (He walked away from the discussion before I could reply…)
spoing – sure, go right ahead, suggest, and while you’re at it, go in for some classic sexist condescension. “We” don’t “ALL” want to fuck the barmaid. If you do – I should tell you, you’re out of luck; the barmaid can’t stand men like you.
It’s bizarre – so many fans of J&M profess to love the barmaid but they do it by completely missing the point of her.
“An intelligent non-insecure woman is just so attractive. And of course we just know she would prefer us freethinkers to those philistines who frequent the C&B.”
Here’s how this works. Say you strike up a conversation with an intelligent non-insecure woman, a conversation about theism – and she gets a few words out, enough for you to realize that she’s an intelligent non-insecure woman; you interrupt her to say ‘You are so attractive! Let’s fuck!’ Not only would she not want to fuck you, she wouldn’t want to go on talking to you, either.
Now: connect the dots: this is what the barmaid thinks of you. She would never want to fuck you, and she doesn’t want to talk to you either. She doesn’t prefer you to the other philistines – she thinks you ARE philistines.
Couldn’t be 4.5bn, since a large percentage of them are followers of that crucifixion cult with distinctly homoerotic overtones you might have heard about. Together with a large number of hindus and buddhists. Subtract out the other more exotic affiliations e.g. scientologists/witlesses/mormons/moonies and I suspect there’s probably only a couple dozen of we FSM devotees on the entire planet, plus our author, who art in old blighty, hallowed be his name.
I love when Im talking with a christian about religion and I point out they’re resorting to logical fallacies…they look like they’ve been hit in the head or something…
Being a follower of a cult shouldn’t prevent anyone to enjoy J&M. It doesn’t prevent me, anyway.
@Tie, about Islam being a socalled fast spreading minority in the USA, having loads of converts and muslims procreating like rabbits (some people say rats).
1. People don’t count their own kids as converts.
2. The French Statistics Institute (INSEE) observed that pregnancy rates of immigrant populations do fall in line with the local one within at most 2 generations, regardless of cultural and religious differences. I don’t see why it would be any different in the states, unless you put something in your burgers.
@Mateo-Argentino “I love when Im talking with a christian about religion and I point out they’re resorting to logical fallacies…they look like they’ve been hit in the head or something…”
Their whole religion is based on logical fallacies – they can no sooner accept reason than deny their god, since to do one is to do the other.
@Aykavil “People don’t count their own kids as converts.”
Children born to Moslem parents are automatically considered Moslem. Mohammed apparently said, “No babe is born but as a Muslim. It is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a Polytheist.”
Ophelia, apologies for rousing your righteous ire.
Lets agree that any allegations of sexism on either my part or yours will require a slightly higher standard of evidence than a few posts on J&M can deliver.
So I will choose to believe from here on that you’re as level-headed and witty as the barmaid. Not to mention as hot as she is too 🙂
@LLH – interesting that your Xtian protagonist had read “The God Delusion” and apparently still persisted in declaring that Einstein was a believer.
Apparently the great man DID believe in an IMpersonal God – “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”
I wonder how that compares with Dawkins’s personal philosophy? “The Selfish Gene” and “The Blind Watchmaker” suggest a hard-nosed materialism which leaves no room even for Spinoza’s God. I only skim-read TGD, finding it to be poorly written and rather snide in tone.
@Spoing
That would make Einstein a deist, at most – sort of like an atheist who still wishes to attach the term “god” to something, even if it is just a metaphor for natural processes.
@Mr Gronk: indeed. Though I think that Einstein intuited that the symmetry and orderliness of the cosmos , together with its inscrutability (e.g. inability to reconcile quantum and classical definitions of the cosmos, inability to determine ultimate origins etc) signifies a level of complexity ultimately beyond the reach of the scientific method. There are limits to how far physicists can probe the universe at the micro and macro levels in both time and space. So perhaps there is room for “god” if that translates to “the infinite (though surprisingly orderly and beautiful) landscape of things we don’t understand about the universe and most likely never will”. When we appreciate and value the beauty and wonder of the universe we find ourselves in, perhaps as atheists we are coming as close as anyone ever will to apprehending “god”. So perhaps true atheists are not atheists at all hehe.
@ Ophelia and spoing, your conversation has been deleted from “jerk” downwards. If you want to exchange personal insults, please use email.
@ William – I have no problem with your Danish pings. In fact, I think they are rather cool.
@ BJ – not many by webcomic standards. This year’s average is about 4,000 unique visitors per day, plus about 3,700 RSS feed subscribers. They are high-quality readers, though 🙂
oh please … i go to jesus and mo church web every now and then. don’t use any harsh word like frack or i will not be able to visit this web due to firewall.
@chris – careful inspection will reveal that I already did. That REALLY got things started. Hell hath no fury I suppose.
Anyway, I’m sure Ophelia & I are both happy to pass the limelight back to who it belongs – J&M.
@Author, not so. I sincerely meant what I said about being sorry to have caused offence. Though some of my protagonist’s comments offended me, which is what I was trying to get across to her.
For the record – @Ophelia: I’m sorry – shall we bury the hatchet … anywhere but preferably not in my sexist head 🙂
@Author-Maybe we need a written code of ethics for this site. I am thinking of a neat list of, oh I don’t know, say ten things we should NOT do while we are being entertained by the great J&M??
I think John Moore is on to something there… I’ve honestly found some of the comments over the last few months to be truly, unashamedly racist. Making fun of foolish beliefs is one thing (which I support). But the amount of Arab-bashing (for example) that goes on in the comments section is (a) a huge turn off for me, and (b) absolutely detrimental, I’m sure, to how many casual visitors would view this site.
I am also a bit sick of the pondering about Barmaid’s level of attractiveness, and do worry that this also could lend the site a rather juvenile (at best) and sexist (at worst) quality, especially to the uninitiated.
Both of which are a terrible shame, because the strip itself is always fantastic, and I used to enjoy the quite high-brow discussions that went on (not that I understood all the big words, but at least it was educational). I also liked the fact that all views were tolerated, and that one could be sure that there wouldn’t be a rant-y backlash to anything that wasn’t pulled straight out of the God Delusion (the Atheist’s Bible, perhaps..? Slightly ironic, really…)
It’s sad that some of the old hands who used to comment all the time appear to have moved on, or decided to keep quiet. Not heard from Poor Richard for a while, sigh…
“Both of which are a terrible shame, because the strip itself is always fantastic”
Exactly. Hence my tendency to bore for Britain on the subject of “huh huh huh the barmaid is hawt huh huh huh huh” – I think that stuff detracts from the strip itself, and could repel people who would otherwise like it. I was on the point of abandoning it myself. The strip deserves much better than to be sabotaged by its own fans.
The Christian who argued to me that Einstein believed in God backed down immediately after I mentioned what TGD said about him. (Before he criticised me for using the Argument from Authority, of course…)
It made me realize Christians can easily be dishonest if defending their religion. There’s a reason there something called Lying for Jesus, isn’t there? 🙂
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
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J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
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Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
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Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
May 4, 2010
And yet they keep coming back for it. Mo and Jesus are clearly suckers for punishment.
Which explains my philosophy “If one is wrong they are all wrong!”
I thing J and Mo are always sporting wood for barmaid.
Ha! Best one yet, I think!
A surprisingly common ‘argument’ from believers. I like to counter it with “millions of Western kids believe in Father Christmas, and you probably did yourself. That makes him as real as God, doesn’t it? And be careful what you say next, because he knows if you’ve been naughty!”
Wait til we get to the formal logical fallacies, Mo, and see how you like us then!
@ Matt it always seemed to me that they are “servicing” one another under the bar. Not that there’s anything wrong with that….
lol, best answer ever.
Mo forgot to use the other great internet one-liner “Islam is the fastest growing religion in the USA! 30.000 people converted in the last 5 years”
… actually atheists are the fastest growing minority, and spreading Islam by converting prison convicts and procreating like rabbits shouldn’t be something to be proud of, but hey… they take what they can I guess.
I’m particularly fond of the fact that the barmaid didn’t even use the fallacious argument! She didn’t say “if four billion people think it, then they must be right, and you must be wrong.” She simply pointed out to Mo, “With your use of a 1 billion figure to support your claims, you imply that quantity of claimants dictates accuracy; yet don’t you think 4 billion, a much larger quantity, are in fact incorrect? And therefore, aren’t you contradicting yourself?”
Beautiful.
J and Mo don’t want to fuck the barmaid – they’re attempting to wrestle minds, not genitals.
“I’d like to wrestle with your mind” is not a line I would ever have considered, but whatever works, I say.
Really, Ophelia, didn’t your mother tell you what mine told my sister? “Men only have one thing on their minds.”
No, my mother loathed banalities; she wouldn’t have said anything so stupid and shopworn.
Didn’t your mother tell you not to ask total strangers impertinent intrusive questions about their mothers? For all you know my mother died a painful death this morning.
Sorry Ophelia, I was jesting. I didn’t expect to get your back up like that. I’m not reading any humour in your response so I must assume you actually are as angry as your words.
My mother wasn’t stupid at all, thank you. It likely was something the nuns told her at the boarding school. It’s a cliché to be sure, hyperbole as well, but not entirely untrue. AFAICT.
“A surprisingly common ‘argument'” indeed, ID. My wife’s mom tried it – “But millions of people believe in Jesus; why can’t you?” “Mom, there are millions of Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists, too!” “What do you care what THEY think, dear?”
lordy i think someone’s monocle just shattered on the ground.
Might I venture that one of us is sporting a teensy chip on her no doubt petite feminine shoulder. Truth is we ALL want to … ahem… BEFRIEND the barmaid. An intelligent non-insecure woman is just so attractive. And of course we just know she would prefer us freethinkers to those philistines who frequent the C&B.
My mother told me that she said to her mother “but EVERYBODY else does” (it doesn’t matter what); reply “If everybody jumps in the river, does that mean you have to as well?”
Jesus and Mo never flirt with the barmaid. Why is that?
This strip was (like the other J&M strips) spot on! It reminded of an argument I had with a Christian once. During the argument, he used Einstein and Hawking believing in god as an argument for Christianity being true. He was actively lying to me, and he didn’t know that I, like him, had read The God Delusion. I corrected him, telling him that if he had read TGD he knew that Einstein was in fact a non-believer, and Hawking as avoided the subject except for using god as a metaphor once. He then said that you can’t base an argument on appeal to authority! (He walked away from the discussion before I could reply…)
spoing – sure, go right ahead, suggest, and while you’re at it, go in for some classic sexist condescension. “We” don’t “ALL” want to fuck the barmaid. If you do – I should tell you, you’re out of luck; the barmaid can’t stand men like you.
It’s bizarre – so many fans of J&M profess to love the barmaid but they do it by completely missing the point of her.
Comic geeks are so funny – they’re so clueless.
“An intelligent non-insecure woman is just so attractive. And of course we just know she would prefer us freethinkers to those philistines who frequent the C&B.”
Here’s how this works. Say you strike up a conversation with an intelligent non-insecure woman, a conversation about theism – and she gets a few words out, enough for you to realize that she’s an intelligent non-insecure woman; you interrupt her to say ‘You are so attractive! Let’s fuck!’ Not only would she not want to fuck you, she wouldn’t want to go on talking to you, either.
Now: connect the dots: this is what the barmaid thinks of you. She would never want to fuck you, and she doesn’t want to talk to you either. She doesn’t prefer you to the other philistines – she thinks you ARE philistines.
Duh.
Ophelia, you are one intelligent and non-insecure woman.
Wanna fuck?
🙂
🙂
Wow, we all seem to know a lot about what these cartoon characters are thinking. Isn’t there a bit of projection going on here?
…and now to top it all a follower of Zarathushtra joins the fun.
I know what the barmaid thinks!
Ophelia: as you know, you’ve been accused of being the barmaid in the C&B, and have always carefully neither confirmed nor denied it. Until now.
I’ll have a pint of Shires, please. And whatever you’re having yourself.
…about Zarathushtra?
Stephen, I still carefully haven’t confirmed or denied it…exactly.
But I’ll have a glass of red. Cheers.
Pedants’ corner: there are now nearly 7 billion people in the world. Astonishing, really.
Super cartoon, once again, though 🙂
Hey, Spoing: you really know how to win friends round here 🙂 Ever thought of a career in the Foreign Service of whichever country you’re from…?! 😉
[…] Argumentum ad Populum […]
Hey everybody!
I am really sorry for ping’ing you with Danish language-posts. It is not something I do or Jesus%Mo does. It happens throught the power of WordPress.
Hey Author!
Love your site, but wouldn’t be the least bit insulted if you removed any non-English pings.
…and may you all be happy!
Just bear in mind, Spoing, that prickly people usually have a point
(ba-dum)
As matter of interest anyone know how many of us read J&M?
4.5 billion?
Yep, definitely a chip on that shoulder.
Couldn’t be 4.5bn, since a large percentage of them are followers of that crucifixion cult with distinctly homoerotic overtones you might have heard about. Together with a large number of hindus and buddhists. Subtract out the other more exotic affiliations e.g. scientologists/witlesses/mormons/moonies and I suspect there’s probably only a couple dozen of we FSM devotees on the entire planet, plus our author, who art in old blighty, hallowed be his name.
FSM = flying spaghetti monster (rich pasta sauce be upon him, extra garlic please).
I love when Im talking with a christian about religion and I point out they’re resorting to logical fallacies…they look like they’ve been hit in the head or something…
Being a follower of a cult shouldn’t prevent anyone to enjoy J&M. It doesn’t prevent me, anyway.
@Tie, about Islam being a socalled fast spreading minority in the USA, having loads of converts and muslims procreating like rabbits (some people say rats).
1. People don’t count their own kids as converts.
2. The French Statistics Institute (INSEE) observed that pregnancy rates of immigrant populations do fall in line with the local one within at most 2 generations, regardless of cultural and religious differences. I don’t see why it would be any different in the states, unless you put something in your burgers.
I hope you are right… but if they are truly religious they can’t use contraception, that usually is a problem when trying to keep baby’s in check.
@Mateo-Argentino “I love when Im talking with a christian about religion and I point out they’re resorting to logical fallacies…they look like they’ve been hit in the head or something…”
Their whole religion is based on logical fallacies – they can no sooner accept reason than deny their god, since to do one is to do the other.
@Aykavil “People don’t count their own kids as converts.”
Children born to Moslem parents are automatically considered Moslem. Mohammed apparently said, “No babe is born but as a Muslim. It is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a Polytheist.”
spoing –
“Yep, definitely a chip on that shoulder.”
About sexist condescension? You bet – a chip the size of a house. But guess what – the barmaid has exactly the same chip.
Here’s a hint for you – if a woman is skeptical of the claims of gods, she is probably not the type to welcome sexist bullshit.
Ophelia, apologies for rousing your righteous ire.
Lets agree that any allegations of sexism on either my part or yours will require a slightly higher standard of evidence than a few posts on J&M can deliver.
So I will choose to believe from here on that you’re as level-headed and witty as the barmaid. Not to mention as hot as she is too 🙂
@LLH – interesting that your Xtian protagonist had read “The God Delusion” and apparently still persisted in declaring that Einstein was a believer.
Apparently the great man DID believe in an IMpersonal God – “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”
I wonder how that compares with Dawkins’s personal philosophy? “The Selfish Gene” and “The Blind Watchmaker” suggest a hard-nosed materialism which leaves no room even for Spinoza’s God. I only skim-read TGD, finding it to be poorly written and rather snide in tone.
@Spoing
That would make Einstein a deist, at most – sort of like an atheist who still wishes to attach the term “god” to something, even if it is just a metaphor for natural processes.
@Mr Gronk: indeed. Though I think that Einstein intuited that the symmetry and orderliness of the cosmos , together with its inscrutability (e.g. inability to reconcile quantum and classical definitions of the cosmos, inability to determine ultimate origins etc) signifies a level of complexity ultimately beyond the reach of the scientific method. There are limits to how far physicists can probe the universe at the micro and macro levels in both time and space. So perhaps there is room for “god” if that translates to “the infinite (though surprisingly orderly and beautiful) landscape of things we don’t understand about the universe and most likely never will”. When we appreciate and value the beauty and wonder of the universe we find ourselves in, perhaps as atheists we are coming as close as anyone ever will to apprehending “god”. So perhaps true atheists are not atheists at all hehe.
@ Ophelia and spoing, your conversation has been deleted from “jerk” downwards. If you want to exchange personal insults, please use email.
@ William – I have no problem with your Danish pings. In fact, I think they are rather cool.
@ BJ – not many by webcomic standards. This year’s average is about 4,000 unique visitors per day, plus about 3,700 RSS feed subscribers. They are high-quality readers, though 🙂
Thanks author for breaking that one up. It WAS getting rather tedious.
Yes,
Thank you, Author.
Thank you
thank you thank you
oh please … i go to jesus and mo church web every now and then. don’t use any harsh word like frack or i will not be able to visit this web due to firewall.
Spoing should apologise.
@chris – careful inspection will reveal that I already did. That REALLY got things started. Hell hath no fury I suppose.
Anyway, I’m sure Ophelia & I are both happy to pass the limelight back to who it belongs – J&M.
@spoing – it was a bullshit apology, and you know it.
@Author, not so. I sincerely meant what I said about being sorry to have caused offence. Though some of my protagonist’s comments offended me, which is what I was trying to get across to her.
For the record – @Ophelia: I’m sorry – shall we bury the hatchet … anywhere but preferably not in my sexist head 🙂
@Author-Maybe we need a written code of ethics for this site. I am thinking of a neat list of, oh I don’t know, say ten things we should NOT do while we are being entertained by the great J&M??
I think John Moore is on to something there… I’ve honestly found some of the comments over the last few months to be truly, unashamedly racist. Making fun of foolish beliefs is one thing (which I support). But the amount of Arab-bashing (for example) that goes on in the comments section is (a) a huge turn off for me, and (b) absolutely detrimental, I’m sure, to how many casual visitors would view this site.
I am also a bit sick of the pondering about Barmaid’s level of attractiveness, and do worry that this also could lend the site a rather juvenile (at best) and sexist (at worst) quality, especially to the uninitiated.
Both of which are a terrible shame, because the strip itself is always fantastic, and I used to enjoy the quite high-brow discussions that went on (not that I understood all the big words, but at least it was educational). I also liked the fact that all views were tolerated, and that one could be sure that there wouldn’t be a rant-y backlash to anything that wasn’t pulled straight out of the God Delusion (the Atheist’s Bible, perhaps..? Slightly ironic, really…)
It’s sad that some of the old hands who used to comment all the time appear to have moved on, or decided to keep quiet. Not heard from Poor Richard for a while, sigh…
Just my deux centimes.
St. Author
onegaishimasu
you know
if you just do a new J&M all the kids will get distracted by the shiny new thing and then we can all move on
Perhaps Author could find Ten Things We Should Not Do carved on tablets of stone up some local mountain.
Obviously the list should include Exodus 23:19:
“Thou shalt not boil a kid in the milk of his dam.”
Thanks author.
“Both of which are a terrible shame, because the strip itself is always fantastic”
Exactly. Hence my tendency to bore for Britain on the subject of “huh huh huh the barmaid is hawt huh huh huh huh” – I think that stuff detracts from the strip itself, and could repel people who would otherwise like it. I was on the point of abandoning it myself. The strip deserves much better than to be sabotaged by its own fans.
@spoing
The Christian who argued to me that Einstein believed in God backed down immediately after I mentioned what TGD said about him. (Before he criticised me for using the Argument from Authority, of course…)
It made me realize Christians can easily be dishonest if defending their religion. There’s a reason there something called Lying for Jesus, isn’t there? 🙂
As the old saying goes: Eat shit. 40 dung beetles can’t be wrong.
That should have read ’40 trillion…’.
Bollocks!