On the contrary, the fact that the Catholic Church has survived two thousand years of being run by dimwits and crooks is the best possible evidence of its divine origin and sustenance. Any merely human organization would have collapsed long ago. (I forget who said this.)
I don’t think it has been 2000 years – the early centuries saw many sects of xtian beleivers
and from whenever it did settle down into just the Catholic Church – kind of like the last guppy in the tank – the international corporation that it is now would bear very little resemblance to their origin century
Probably why they took out the Knights Templar – they were better organized as the first multi-national corporation
True story about a mime who had a heart attack during a performance and tried to signal the audience about his problem but they all thought it was part of the show.
On Irish radio interview yesterday, re. his knowledge of child abuse by one of his priests when he was a bishop, Cardinal Seรยกn Brady said (drink up now),”You CAN’T judge acts of 35 years ago by today’s standards.”
This from an organisation that judges the acts of today by standards from 2000 years ago.
SSSPOIIIING!!!!!!!
@ nina & bus_henry
Does that mean that the other side of the sun is dark because there is nobody to receive and convert whatever comes from there into light?
I remember Tommy Cooper died on stage. But he was a comedian not a mime player. Was his dead comedy, where the public thought it was part of the show?
Where is that line in the bible that says the roman catholic church is gods representative on earth?
Since everything that happens MUST be God’s Will (TM) and the RCC is the One True Church (TM), everything that happens in the One True Church (TM) MUST be God’s Will (TM).
That’s one of them there logical silojisms. Right? Right?
Hello? Is this thing on?
@ Shaughn Light is electro-magnetic wave so on another side of sun there are electro magnetic-waves but no light because it is human name for electro-magnetic waves that we can perceive with eyes. If there are no eyes – there are no light.
@Cile1977 – but since there is nothing whatoever there to perceive whatever it is and convert it to electro-magnetic waves…
The whole idea ‘it is not there unless perceived by someone’ comes pretty close to solipsism, doesn’t it? With a little Kantian ‘Ding an sich’flavour added.
“Nothing occurs without the permission of God, and he allows even holy people, even saints, to be possessed by the devil,” Amorth, Chief Exorcist, said.
So how does that whole “freewill” thing work again?
Methinks light is a real and direct experience, Nina. Try looking in the sun.
And I doubt very much that the magnetism on a tape or in a chip or the pattern laser burned in a CD perceived although it is by a recording device, is sound.
Whatever it is there is before you experience it, you can only name it after your sensory experience of it. And Occams razor requires to take the least amount of propositions – so a tree falling makes noise, at the other side of the sun there is light, regardless anyone perceives it or not. Perception of the phenomenon is perception, not the phenomenon itself.
By the way, applying Occam’ Razor the inevitable conclusion must be that god (Al, Jay, whoever) is a superfluous hypothesis.
Those people who still feel able to defend the Catholic Church despite everything that has occured are truly fascinating. It is not even possible to claim that although the RCC has a really shitty history of corruption, torture, mass murder, genocide, forced conversion, grand theft, obscurantism and sexual depravity, while at the same time falsely claiming the moral highground and pompously lecturing everyone else on how they should live, that that evil stuff is all in the past.
The Catholic Church was in the past, and remains in modern times, the most evil organisation that has ever existed, by a collossal margin, no other institution, either religious or secular, comes within a thousand miles of being as bad.
Catholic apologists, fuck you, your hands are literally blathered in innocent blood.
@John Cowan. The idea of a Christian Church ruled by sinners but protected by God is shown by Boccaccio (Decameron, I, 2, see http://www.atuttascuola.it/decamerone/g_01/1_02.htm) in 13th Century. Curiously enough, this idea is akin to an anomistic view, according to which the ‘unconditionally saved’ can indulge in any behaviour because God has chosen to save them after all.
@nina & bus_henry:
to paraphrase Terry Pratchett – “just because there are no humans, doesn’t mean there is no ‘receiver'”
A forest is almost never empty.
@ gsw – I just said ear – it doesn’t have to be human ear
@ John Moore – I think the universe and things in it are pretty indifferent to mere humans, we don’t make things exist or real by our presence.
I guess I didn’t express my thought fully, because you are extrapolating what I said too far.
We know light exists because it allows us to see things around us. But those things still exist in the dark.
The sun itself is the explosions, we see a corona and then there’s blackness around the sun because there’s nothing for light to reflect off of.
We can see fire and we see things in a flickering illumination around the fire, but we don’t see a beam of light from the fire to the trees or people around the fire – light is invisible to us until it’s reflected off of something.
if light itself were visible, then it would be hard to see other things on the other side of the light
@ nina you are not wrong per se. You do seem to understand some of what you speak. Sound exists without an “ear” to hear because the atmosphere is what propagates the wave. Light needs no medium as it is both characteristics of waves and beams. We see things that reflect specific wavelengths which give us colors. Funny thing is humans only perceive about 5% of the total spectrum of energies. Which always leads me to be extremely humble about our ability to understand things totally.
Actually, it is just a pseudo-philosophical riddle and only a matter of definitions, not a matter of being right or wrong, Nina.
If, like most people do, you define ‘sound’ as a wave of varying pressure propagating through matter, and the ‘hearing’ perception as transformation of pressure into electric nerve and brain activity, then you say: sound exists without anyone hearing it. If on the other hand you define ‘sound’ as the experienced product of hearing instead of the wave – then there is no sound when it is not heard.
Common practice is to consider the soundwave as sound.
@ John Moore. Seeing isnt everything. We can make prosthetics to perceive other wavelengths that we did not evolve to see. I am using one now- so are you.
@ Daoloth I assume you are referring to the monitor I am using to read this website with. It only produces pixels in the red blue green spectrum which as best I know we have been able to see all along. The varying hues produced provide the spectrum of visible colors. We have created prosthetics to perceive other wavelengths like x-rays, cosmic waves, microwaves, uv waves (t.v), radio waves, etc. Clever little buggers aren’t we……
nina: The later centuries have had a lot of sects too. As for the Knights Templar, it was the King of France who destroyed them, not the Church.
Stonyground: I doubt that competitions for Maximum Evilness have much merit. The Church has never killed people en masse in the style of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, but it has had much longer to act. And I am by no means one of its defenders, any more than I defend dictators.
Dear Author, this strip is utterly wonderful. (Just in case anyone hasn’t mentioned it lately). We are greatly in your debt for such fine comedy (though doubtless you’d admit the three big religions give you consistently top quality raw material).
Is it time for J&M to run as a print column too, in Private Eye perhaps ? Or might they not have the nerve… Ah – sorry, I forgot that Mr Hislop is a follower of the Celestial Teapot isn’t he, so that’s a non-starter I suppose…
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
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
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
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I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
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November 16, 2011
bwhahahahaa another perfect one – okay, I vote for this as my favorite.
It packs all the hypocritial, convoluted thinking and plain denial of reality all into one tidy package.
http://ntrygg.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/respect-the-right-to-but-not-the-beleif/
forgive me…. if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, was there a sound?! if there is a parallel universe, please send help ASAP
I like the guardian’s headline – that says it all ๐
Thanks Author!
Aren`t they just the inventors of PR, anyway…
On the contrary, the fact that the Catholic Church has survived two thousand years of being run by dimwits and crooks is the best possible evidence of its divine origin and sustenance. Any merely human organization would have collapsed long ago. (I forget who said this.)
@bus_henry – no, for there to be sound there has to be a reciever for the wave to convert it into sound
I perfer to frame that concept as, if a Mime falls down in front of a crowd, does anyone care?
@John Cowan
I don’t think it has been 2000 years – the early centuries saw many sects of xtian beleivers
and from whenever it did settle down into just the Catholic Church – kind of like the last guppy in the tank – the international corporation that it is now would bear very little resemblance to their origin century
Probably why they took out the Knights Templar – they were better organized as the first multi-national corporation
True story about a mime who had a heart attack during a performance and tried to signal the audience about his problem but they all thought it was part of the show.
On Irish radio interview yesterday, re. his knowledge of child abuse by one of his priests when he was a bishop, Cardinal Seรยกn Brady said (drink up now),”You CAN’T judge acts of 35 years ago by today’s standards.”
This from an organisation that judges the acts of today by standards from 2000 years ago.
SSSPOIIIING!!!!!!!
They lied. It never was a god’s representative on Earth. No god. For ever and ever, amen.
Ramen! Praise His Noodlyness ๐
This is super-mega fantastic ๐
@ nina & bus_henry
Does that mean that the other side of the sun is dark because there is nobody to receive and convert whatever comes from there into light?
I remember Tommy Cooper died on stage. But he was a comedian not a mime player. Was his dead comedy, where the public thought it was part of the show?
Where is that line in the bible that says the roman catholic church is gods representative on earth?
J backs the Catholics for their brand of fundie-ism then?
Since everything that happens MUST be God’s Will (TM) and the RCC is the One True Church (TM), everything that happens in the One True Church (TM) MUST be God’s Will (TM).
That’s one of them there logical silojisms. Right? Right?
Hello? Is this thing on?
“I was only following orders”
A fitting quote for “Pope Nazi” I guess
@ Shaughn Light is electro-magnetic wave so on another side of sun there are electro magnetic-waves but no light because it is human name for electro-magnetic waves that we can perceive with eyes. If there are no eyes – there are no light.
For those who missed it: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/16/vatican.exorcist.devil/
(70,000 exorcisms in his life? Wow. Wilt Chamberlain must be so jealous.)
“I stand corrected” Hilarious! J, da spin doctor!
@cile1977,
My Seconic “light meter” has no eyes, yet somehow it knows!
@Cile1977 – but since there is nothing whatoever there to perceive whatever it is and convert it to electro-magnetic waves…
The whole idea ‘it is not there unless perceived by someone’ comes pretty close to solipsism, doesn’t it? With a little Kantian ‘Ding an sich’flavour added.
“Nothing occurs without the permission of God, and he allows even holy people, even saints, to be possessed by the devil,” Amorth, Chief Exorcist, said.
So how does that whole “freewill” thing work again?
There is no UV from the Sun until someone gets burned.
@Shaughn
no, there’s still waves, but no perceiver to convert it into a sound
light is different from sound –
light isn’t really experience directly, but makes other things visible – those things are still there in the dark
waves aren’t converted into sound until they hit a reciever – an ear or a recording device
Methinks light is a real and direct experience, Nina. Try looking in the sun.
And I doubt very much that the magnetism on a tape or in a chip or the pattern laser burned in a CD perceived although it is by a recording device, is sound.
Whatever it is there is before you experience it, you can only name it after your sensory experience of it. And Occams razor requires to take the least amount of propositions – so a tree falling makes noise, at the other side of the sun there is light, regardless anyone perceives it or not. Perception of the phenomenon is perception, not the phenomenon itself.
By the way, applying Occam’ Razor the inevitable conclusion must be that god (Al, Jay, whoever) is a superfluous hypothesis.
Those people who still feel able to defend the Catholic Church despite everything that has occured are truly fascinating. It is not even possible to claim that although the RCC has a really shitty history of corruption, torture, mass murder, genocide, forced conversion, grand theft, obscurantism and sexual depravity, while at the same time falsely claiming the moral highground and pompously lecturing everyone else on how they should live, that that evil stuff is all in the past.
The Catholic Church was in the past, and remains in modern times, the most evil organisation that has ever existed, by a collossal margin, no other institution, either religious or secular, comes within a thousand miles of being as bad.
Catholic apologists, fuck you, your hands are literally blathered in innocent blood.
thanks for sorting out that woolly nonsense @Shaugn
@John Cowan. The idea of a Christian Church ruled by sinners but protected by God is shown by Boccaccio (Decameron, I, 2, see http://www.atuttascuola.it/decamerone/g_01/1_02.htm) in 13th Century. Curiously enough, this idea is akin to an anomistic view, according to which the ‘unconditionally saved’ can indulge in any behaviour because God has chosen to save them after all.
@Shaughn
the sun isn’t light per se, it’s a continuous explosion sending out light in all directions of it’s spherical surface
the light can be detected by the heat, the radiance and measuring radiation
we see things light reflects off of, not the light in between us and things.
@nina & bus_henry:
to paraphrase Terry Pratchett – “just because there are no humans, doesn’t mean there is no ‘receiver'”
A forest is almost never empty.
@ nina Thats like saying there is no solid unless someone touches it. There is no universe unless there is someone in it.
@ gsw – I just said ear – it doesn’t have to be human ear
@ John Moore – I think the universe and things in it are pretty indifferent to mere humans, we don’t make things exist or real by our presence.
I guess I didn’t express my thought fully, because you are extrapolating what I said too far.
We know light exists because it allows us to see things around us. But those things still exist in the dark.
The sun itself is the explosions, we see a corona and then there’s blackness around the sun because there’s nothing for light to reflect off of.
We can see fire and we see things in a flickering illumination around the fire, but we don’t see a beam of light from the fire to the trees or people around the fire – light is invisible to us until it’s reflected off of something.
if light itself were visible, then it would be hard to see other things on the other side of the light
I am also okay with being totally wrong, it’s not my area of expertise, but some one will have to explain why I am wrong.
@ nina you are not wrong per se. You do seem to understand some of what you speak. Sound exists without an “ear” to hear because the atmosphere is what propagates the wave. Light needs no medium as it is both characteristics of waves and beams. We see things that reflect specific wavelengths which give us colors. Funny thing is humans only perceive about 5% of the total spectrum of energies. Which always leads me to be extremely humble about our ability to understand things totally.
Actually, it is just a pseudo-philosophical riddle and only a matter of definitions, not a matter of being right or wrong, Nina.
If, like most people do, you define ‘sound’ as a wave of varying pressure propagating through matter, and the ‘hearing’ perception as transformation of pressure into electric nerve and brain activity, then you say: sound exists without anyone hearing it. If on the other hand you define ‘sound’ as the experienced product of hearing instead of the wave – then there is no sound when it is not heard.
Common practice is to consider the soundwave as sound.
It’s always fun to actually think about what you think that you know.
and, if you’re really lucky, get a new perspective or learn a new idea or fact
@ John Moore. Seeing isnt everything. We can make prosthetics to perceive other wavelengths that we did not evolve to see. I am using one now- so are you.
@ Daoloth I assume you are referring to the monitor I am using to read this website with. It only produces pixels in the red blue green spectrum which as best I know we have been able to see all along. The varying hues produced provide the spectrum of visible colors. We have created prosthetics to perceive other wavelengths like x-rays, cosmic waves, microwaves, uv waves (t.v), radio waves, etc. Clever little buggers aren’t we……
Yes, but it doesnt receive visible light waves does it? It converts them into em.
nina: The later centuries have had a lot of sects too. As for the Knights Templar, it was the King of France who destroyed them, not the Church.
Stonyground: I doubt that competitions for Maximum Evilness have much merit. The Church has never killed people en masse in the style of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, but it has had much longer to act. And I am by no means one of its defenders, any more than I defend dictators.
Didac: Thanks.
[…] And the ever perceptive Jesus and Mo: […]
[…] Jesus and Mo. […]
Dear Author, this strip is utterly wonderful. (Just in case anyone hasn’t mentioned it lately). We are greatly in your debt for such fine comedy (though doubtless you’d admit the three big religions give you consistently top quality raw material).
Is it time for J&M to run as a print column too, in Private Eye perhaps ? Or might they not have the nerve… Ah – sorry, I forgot that Mr Hislop is a follower of the Celestial Teapot isn’t he, so that’s a non-starter I suppose…
How come every time ‘Mo speaks, I hear the voice of H. Jon Benjamin doing the Coach McGuirk character from Home Movies?
This is definitely one of your best!