The Stonemaker Argument is a website with cartoons that pursue the skeptical frame of mind, and it’s pretty good. The first one I saw is about cavemen and a meteorite, which they begin to worship.
I especially like the final panel. I like to remind myself sometimes that the Universe is fairly indifferent to our exhortations. People, both happily and sadly, can be influenced, though.
There are only three different pages there so far, but I hope more go up soon. This is a pretty good resource!
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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September 3rd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
FEED!
Crap.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Yeah, I have to agree… what the heck’s up with the feed? I use Google Reader too, and your posts have just started to become chopped off after a couple of sentences.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:44 pm
I love the watchmaker argument. But I’m pretty sure hardcore creationists just won’t get the point of it.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:07 pm
An even better version of this is “Winslow” by Phil Foglio. Winslow is a stuffed alligator, the kind you get at the county fair for knocking the milk bottles over with a baseball… but, in this case, the alligator is one of Plato’s “perfect forms” and is thus indestructable… the rest of the comic details mankind’s attempts to understand and sometimes deify him. Through it all, Winslow remains indifferent.
Thanks for sharing, Phil.
BTW, how was the “Ms. Klingon Empire” pagent this year?
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
hahaha It is kind of funny!
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:34 pm
This is completely off-topic and for that I apologize, but when did your RSS feed switch to partial entries? I follow your blog through RSS and it was a surprise to suddenly find only partial entries in the feed.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
How about science education through cartooning? We have a weekly webcomic, called Epo’s Chronicles, that tries to teach basic astronomy, science and math concepts through an engaging storyline. However, this week’s entry is not part of the storyline, as it is an extra “eposode” about the renaming of GLAST to Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. We translate each week’s comic and supporting materials into Spanish, French and Italian as well. Enjoy!
http://epo.sonoma.edu/EposChronicles/
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Phil Plait: “I like to remind myself sometimes that the Universe is fairly indifferent to our exhortations.”
This was tongue-in-cheek right? I hope you mean “completely indifferent.”
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Also check out “A Brief History of Religion” by David Horsey, also featuring cavemen with rocks. Click on my name to see it.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I like the “Dr. Noodle Improbability” one best. Where’s an infinite improbability drive when you need one?
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Here’s some more stone age antics; they make the Simpsons look like the Partridge family:
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Yay!
It’s http://www.darklegacycomics.com/ in disguise
The World of Warcraft community has been enjoying his comics for quite some time…
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Pretty funny, thanks for sharing
PS: The Dr. Noodle Improbability was great but doesn’t it aid creationism’s ideas? ie, something that improbable must have been caused by a divine being…
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:13 pm
I’m curious about the motivation to worship. What drives people to worship god(s)? I’d think you could sustain a pefectly good belief system populated by all kinds of gods without requiring people to worship them.
Now, I’m not talking about celebrating a god’s beneficence, i.e., singing hymns of thanks that the crop came in. I’m talking about the need to prostrate yourself, sometimes literally, admit your innate evilness and corruption and lavish the god with praise in hopes that it will forgive you.
Why do we do that?
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Justcorbly:
I suspect the motivation to worship would have something to do with two factors:
1) If I prostrate myself before ye, will ye please not smite me?
2) If I get others to prostrate themselves before ye, will ye look the other way whilst I pinch their wallets?
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:40 pm
kuhnigget – I think it may also be 3) If I prostrate myself before ye, will you become my wish-fullfilment device?
I like the fact that the rock in the Meteorite seems to be named after the villanous archaeologist from Lost Ark.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:32 pm
MattGS:
That’s because those bloody creationists’ can’t even agree amongst themselves on what the hell is Creationism!
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:40 pm
justcorbly:
Prof. Richard Dawkins gives a good explanation in his article Viruses of the Mind or “memes” for short.
Er, it’s a long read!
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:00 pm
@ Ivan3man:
“That’s because those bloody creationists’ can’t even agree amongst themselves”
Creationism doesn’t need to mention a specific God to be valid…uh, unless someone mentions the wrong God, in which case they clearly are mixing theology with science.
Proper creationism just deals generally with the concept of Yahwe…er…that is, some “unnamed” creative force.
Um. You know.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:22 pm
RE: kuhnigget
Like… er… ‘Intelligent Design’?
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Why do people feel the need to worship? My guess is because they anthropomorphize the supposed deities. Kuhnigget touched on this in his examples.
How do you get another person who has more power than you do to look favorably on you and perhaps grant your requests? You do things that you think will sway their opinion your way.
In the same way, deity-worshippers, consciously or not, assume that said deity is just like people around them, and therefore susceptible to being swayed by such actions.
At least, that’s my take on it at the moment.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:53 pm
@ Todd W: “Why do people feel the need to worship?”
Because some people just can’t let go of that emotional security blanket called ‘faith’ — during adolescence, they simply replaced ‘Santa’ with ‘God’!
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:05 pm
@IVAN3MAN
Hmm. Yeah, that too, I guess. It is kinda habit forming.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
“Like… er… ‘Intelligent Design’”
Given the state of my knees these days, I’m not sure I’d label any of their designers “intelligent.” Getting around on built-in wheels now, that’d be the ticket!
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:54 pm
@ Todd W.
Furthermore, ‘God’ did not create Man in his ‘image’; it was Man who created ‘God’ in his image — which is why his ‘God’ has the same intolerances and prejudices as the man who created him, and the reason for all the bloody religious conflict in the World. (I just had to get that word “bloody” in there!)
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:57 pm
@IVAN3MAN
“it was Man who created ‘God’ in his image”
I thought I implied that. Ah well.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 pm
It has a bit of a Dragonball Z look.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:03 pm
@ kuhnigget
Sorry to hear that, mate. Have you tried compression bandages for your knees?
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:23 pm
@ Todd W:
“I thought I implied that. Ah well.”
I had realized that, but anthropomorphism implies ‘nice’ human atributes to animals/gods/inanimate objects.
I was just explaining what I think is the underlining causes of war.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
In fairness, they don’t really need toothpaste yet (unless they live on Hispaniola).
September 4th, 2008 at 5:51 am
Oh no, not more cartoons poking fun at Islam. Is it just me who remembered the “Black Stone” at the corner of the Kaaba in Mecca is supposedly a meteorite remnant.
September 4th, 2008 at 8:26 am
@ Todd W: “Why do people feel the need to worship?”
I’m convinced that some parent in the far past got tired of answering a child’s questions and said the equivalent of “God did it” or perhaps “Don’t do that, or God will get you”, and the rest is elaboration and CYA, followed by power games.
Dennis
September 4th, 2008 at 11:20 am
It was a bit aimless above and beyond portraying small probabilities/large number ideas. But assuming everything being equal, an observation that seems improbable reveals that there is in all likelihood an underlying process responsible. Say, big bang responsible for the observable universe as opposed to a massive vacuum fluctuation.
@ Nathan Myers:
Eh, why a nitpick, why the obtuseness, and why at the surface a contrafactual statement? IIRC the paleontological evidence is that human populations dental statuses takes a nosedive when they adopt agriculture. Also, albeit bacterial phylogeny is a mess there is definitive signs of coevolution between Streptococcus mutans and its current host, signifying some shared history.
[As major religions correlate with agriculture I think the comic portrayed not only a realistic background but a likely one. Not that the details would detract from the message or the LOL.]
September 4th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
It’s a nice illustration of the Lithic Principle.
September 4th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
@Torbjörn: What have you got against fairness? Many people who have access to toothpaste, and perhaps even use it, are no different from the people in the strip; consider Davidlpf. Although I am doubtful that he has a tail.
September 6th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
@ Nathan Myers:
I don’t have anything against fairness, and in all fairness those people did need toothpaste.
As for the rest of the commentary, congratulations; it is again a prime example of obtuseness.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:42 am
There seems to be a fair bit of cruelty towards cartoon characters there …
The guy in the white room? What did he do to deserve that horrible and long drawn out death?
It seems to me it demonstrates that if the cartoons authour was God we’d all be in a hell of a lot of trouble.
… & are kids really so dumb they’ll confuse a cupcake with a bird? Not likely! If naught else that shows in what utter contempt athiests hold the intellect of the normal people – & how they’d like to toy with ‘em if they could..
The moral I take from it :
When people play God – things go horribly wrong.
When God plays God – all ends right..
June 29th, 2009 at 10:43 am
TACCL
You missed the point of the cartoon entirely. The entire thing was about *chances*, that while being HIGHLY improbable, it’s not impossible.
And the cupcake vs bird argument was stating that the watchmaker’s argument comes from: you see a watch in a forest, and notice it must be designed due to its complexity; since lifeforms are ALSO complex, we are designed too [by a god]! The author says that choosing complexity as the defining quality for “being designed” is a logical fallacy, because arbitrarily you could choose “color” to mean an item is “tasty”. Thus- cupcake vs bird.
I know I restated what the author wrote, but eh… Good comic by the way!