How are you doing, comic-wise?

[Sortelli]

You can't be didactic without being didactic. It's not the Christian aspect of the thing, it's wearing the Cause like a Badge.

Swap out "Christian" for something else and it would be just as obnoxious.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Next issue: Is there ever a christian comic or film that isn't overly dramatic? Is there no place of subtlety in there? In christian comics and film, there are no mild annoyances - there are only indicators of incoming apocalypse; There aren't people we dislike - there are only satan's pawns; Every little thing is a cause for hysteria and paranoiac attack. So it's not just the values that I can't swallow. It's also the vein-popping execution that is bad.
And on a personal note, I won't except a christian comic where omission of ritual repeating of half-earnest words at the end of the day is considered a cardinal sin, and yet passing judgment onto the others is a statement of purpose.

I should be feeling a bit guilty about a comic that has only a few pages, but I feel the need to point it as an example that a level of artistic skill, and even a sense of humor, can actually be a disadvantage if you don't understand the medium, if you don't step back and consider whether something is appropriate or not. If it turns out that this comic is actually a stealthy satire of fundamental christianity that I didn't catch, my face will be awfully red. But the way I see it right now, I don't see how this will ever be a good comic.

I guess I'm less critical of it because I checked out the dude's about page after I read the couple pages he has, and it doesn't seem like he's trying to make waves with this thing, just using the comic as a medium to share his ideas. I've seen much preachier works, to use a rather relevant word. I'm looking at it like a gag-a-day kind of journal-but-not-really type comic that's written by someone who happens to be a Born-Again Christian, and whose beliefs are sometimes the message of that particular comic, as opposed to being a tract trying to propagate those ideals.

People's morals/values/whatever tend to seep into their work, and of course some people are better at "holding back" than others are, but I don't find that an inherently terrible thing, especially when it's done as innocuously as this guy's stuff. It's not as vitriolic as the typical political cartoon, it's not as mind-numbingly propaganda-ish as a Chick Tract, it's just a comic about things this fellow values. I don't really get a sense of trying to prove a point from him, he seems pretty humble.

Again, it's not something I'll be interested in following, because I don't share those values. However I don't think their presence automatically makes it a bad comic, writing-wise. I'm just not part of the intended audience.

Shit, I hope it doesn't come across like I'm trying really hard to defend this random infant comic Just throwing in why I found it cute at best and gently irritating at worst.

[robotthepirate]

Next issue: Is there ever a christian comic or film that isn't overly dramatic? Is there no place of subtlety in there? In christian comics and film, there are no mild annoyances - there are only indicators of incoming apocalypse; There aren't people we dislike - there are only satan's pawns; Every little thing is a cause for hysteria and paranoiac attack. So it's not just the values that I can't swallow. It's also the vein-popping execution that is bad.
And on a personal note, I won't except a christian comic where omission of ritual repeating of half-earnest words at the end of the day is considered a cardinal sin, and yet passing judgment onto the others is a statement of purpose.

I should be feeling a bit guilty about a comic that has only a few pages, but I feel the need to point it as an example that a level of artistic skill, and even a sense of humor, can actually be a disadvantage if you don't understand the medium, if you don't step back and consider whether something is appropriate or not. If it turns out that this comic is actually a stealthy satire of fundamental christianity that I didn't catch, my face will be awfully red. But the way I see it right now, I don't see how this will ever be a good comic.

I guess I'm less critical of it because I checked out the dude's about page after I read the couple pages he has, and it doesn't seem like he's trying to make waves with this thing, just using the comic as a medium to share his ideas. I've seen much preachier works, to use a rather relevant word. I'm looking at it like a gag-a-day kind of journal-but-not-really type comic that's written by someone who happens to be a Born-Again Christian, and whose beliefs are sometimes the message of that particular comic, as opposed to being a tract trying to propagate those ideals.

People's morals/values/whatever tend to seep into their work, and of course some people are better at "holding back" than others are, but I don't find that an inherently terrible thing, especially when it's done as innocuously as this guy's stuff. It's not as vitriolic as the typical political cartoon, it's not as mind-numbingly propaganda-ish as a Chick Tract, it's just a comic about things this fellow values. I don't really get a sense of trying to prove a point from him, he seems pretty humble.

Christianity is a pretty intense thing for a lot of people and there's plenty of ways people express this passion, most of which look like nonesense to the outside world. Speaking in tongues being an excelent example of this. This guy is expressing the emotions of his faith through art, so it's understandable that it's not going to appeal to everyone. It'd be a bit like trying to write a comic about the daily problems faced specifically by women without making it come across to men as a feminist soap-box. Not that that isn't doable, but if your target audience is women (or in this case Christians) you risk losing your impact on them in the process. Or if you want another example it's like hosting a rock band, in a rock venue, but turning down the volume in case theirs anyone in the audience who doesn't like rock music.

I'm sure my examples can be easily torn apart.

Like Cuddly said, he seems more to be expressing his own feelings rather than impose beliefs on others.

[Yeahduff]

Christianity is a pretty intense thing for a lot of people and there's plenty of ways people express this passion, most of which look like nonesense to the outside world. Speaking in tongues being an excelent example of this. This guy is expressing the emotions of his faith through art, so it's understandable that it's not going to appeal to everyone. It'd be a bit like trying to write a comic about the daily problems faced specifically by women without making it come across to men as a feminist soap-box. Not that that isn't doable, but if your target audience is women (or in this case Christians) you risk losing your impact on them in the process.

If you're doing it right it doesn't matter.

[LibertyCabbage]

To be frank, I don't think that adhering to conventional rules would have helped Lightbringer become a significantly better comic.

Are you implying that the comic was essentially a lost cause? That's a bold statement, I guess, although perhaps more palatable in hindsight. Although, I can't say Lightbringer's particularly piqued my interest, unless, perhaps, if Linkara or Serge felt inclined to chime in.

I think it's about the need to categorize things. People like to have nice and neat formula to help them understand things.
Take internet critics. I always thought that art criticism is not supposed to answer to a question "Is this good?" but rather to a question "Why is this good?" That is, it's an attempt to understand what is it in art you like that makes them so great, rather than to find a set of rules that help you categorize a comic. Now, internet critics, in my opinion, often do fall into trap of doing the later, which isn't surprising considering the obsessive-compulsive inclinations of average internet inhabitant. Instead of analyzing art, they're practically synthesizing it.

As far as webcomic critics go, I generally disagree. It's not really a matter of "Is this good?" vs. "Why is this good?" because most critics don't do either. Instead, you get three camps: the ass-kissers ("Jack"), the ass-kickers ("John Solomon"), and the legit critics ("El Santo"). For the first two camps, there's no real sense of "good" or "bad" because those concepts are inherently relative while the reviewers only deal with absolutes. In other words, if everything is "X," then "X" lacks meaning. This should be fairly obvious, but there's a notable level of demand for what the ass-kissers and ass-kickers supply. Specifically, the former caters to creators who crave validation, and the latter caters to readers who crave Internet drama.

Then artists follow suit because, I guess, they've read same rules on many places or because people told them to (sometimes it's justified, but other times you can see folks just going through the motions of repeating the same conventional wisdom), because, as you said, they take those rules as something of a guarantee that they'll make their comics at least ok, which, I think, isn't the case because because those rules hit only the most obvious problems, the ones that are easily summed.

I suppose you could describe it as imitation without intuition. What happens is that whenever you have an intuitive creator doing something innovative, you get plenty of imitators who try to replicate the work without having a developed intuition, and the result's, at best, a cheap knock-off, and, at worst, a bastardization. Nevertheless, familiarity's extremely appealing, and, as a result, creators will naturally gravitate towards the familiar.

Some people say that about comics too.

Yeah, I mean, it's really kind of a pervasive phenomenon.

Really? I thought it was absolutely terrible.
...
fundamental christianity

For me, the main reason it isn't terrible's because it isn't fundamentalist. Instead, it's evangelical, although I'm not sure how significant that distinction is outside of the U.S. Being evangelical, it's merely forgettable, which is a crime a whole bunch of webcomics are guilty of, most of which aren't religious in nature. For me to consider something to be terrible, it has to go as far as to actually be unpleasant to read to some extent. This? It's just boring, and I doubt it would've been mentioned here (or anywhere, really) if it weren't for the coincidental resemblance. (In fact, I almost even forgot to mention it in my post, hence the edit.) Although, I will say that I enjoyed reading your commentary on the subject, which is very acute and ended up practically qualifying as an informal review.

Don't you think that a lot of arguements lately are ending with person A telling person B what person B really 'meant' when he said this or that? It's like, when we reach the point where we agree, someone still has to throw in the last "ok, but you were still wrong and I was still right". Like if folks see arguement as a competition and, unsatisfied with tie, they still try for the last attempt to win after the race is over, using no less than a, gasp, semantic arguement.

My current philosophy's that anyone who tries to "win" an Internet argument automatically "loses" because they're demonstrating that their time and energy isn't valuable enough to save for something that isn't completely pointless.

The Bishop's Wife comes to mind. Very obvious christian themes, but doesn't cram anything down your throat. The atheist Prof. is portrayed as being very jovial and intelligent and no one tries to convert him. The Bishop and the Greedy Old Lady are both given very relatable and understandable motivations for their actions. The angel is even portrayed as being kind of a jerk and a bully. And it's a very "small" story. No fire and brimstone, just a man who's let his work take over too much of his life.

I've never heard of it, but it sounds interesting.

Swap out "Christian" for something else and it would be just as obnoxious.

Right. And I would add that, for "message" comics, a person's not doing a very good job of spreading their message if their comic's an obnoxious piece of shit that nobody wants to read except maybe to make fun of it. (See Easy Breather.)

Again, it's not something I'll be interested in following, because I don't share those values. However I don't think their presence automatically makes it a bad comic, writing-wise. I'm just not part of the intended audience.

What I found the most relevant there's that the guy spent his comicking career as a penciler. So, uh, maybe he might wanna consider, y'know, sticking to penciling.

Christianity is a pretty intense thing for a lot of people and there's plenty of ways people express this passion, most of which look like nonesense to the outside world.

I'm with ya. Would it be better if this guy was complaining about any of the miscellaneous stuff people bitch about in their webcomics? Not really. Is it worse than when people make comics glorifying pedophilia, necrophilia, or rape? Hell no. He's just making comics about something he's passionate about, even if it's not something that a lot of webcomic readers can necessarily relate to.

[IVstudios]

The Bishop's Wife comes to mind. Very obvious christian themes, but doesn't cram anything down your throat. The atheist Prof. is portrayed as being very jovial and intelligent and no one tries to convert him. The Bishop and the Greedy Old Lady are both given very relatable and understandable motivations for their actions. The angel is even portrayed as being kind of a jerk and a bully. And it's a very "small" story. No fire and brimstone, just a man who's let his work take over too much of his life.

I've never heard of it, but it sounds interesting.

It's my mom's favorite Christmas movie. She makes us watch it every year. (Not that that's a bad thing. I've grown to quite like it.) It especially impressed me because it's from the 1940's, and you don't usually see a lot of sympathetic villains and morally ambiguous protagonists in old Christmas movies.

[Cope]

To be frank, I don't think that adhering to conventional rules would have helped Lightbringer become a significantly better comic.

Are you implying that the comic was essentially a lost cause?

The early chapters of Lightbringer are actually being remade right now with better art and writing. As it turns out, when you cut down on the verbiage and excise the adolescent moralising against pacifism, all you're left with is a bunch of superhero cliches.

[McDuffies]

I guess I'm less critical of it because I checked out the dude's about page after I read the couple pages he has, and it doesn't seem like he's trying to make waves with this thing, just using the comic as a medium to share his ideas. I've seen much preachier works, to use a rather relevant word. I'm looking at it like a gag-a-day kind of journal-but-not-really type comic that's written by someone who happens to be a Born-Again Christian, and whose beliefs are sometimes the message of that particular comic, as opposed to being a tract trying to propagate those ideals.
People's morals/values/whatever tend to seep into their work, and of course some people are better at "holding back" than others are, but I don't find that an inherently terrible thing, especially when it's done as innocuously as this guy's stuff. It's not as vitriolic as the typical political cartoon, it's not as mind-numbingly propaganda-ish as a Chick Tract, it's just a comic about things this fellow values. I don't really get a sense of trying to prove a point from him, he seems pretty humble.

Again, it's not something I'll be interested in following, because I don't share those values. However I don't think their presence automatically makes it a bad comic, writing-wise. I'm just not part of the intended audience.

Shit, I hope it doesn't come across like I'm trying really hard to defend this random infant comic Just throwing in why I found it cute at best and gently irritating at worst.

But LC later says:

Not really. Is it worse than when people make comics glorifying pedophilia, necrophilia, or rape? Hell no. He's just making comics about something he's passionate about, even if it's not something that a lot of webcomic readers can necessarily relate to.

So it's definitely not ok to "just share your ideas" in a comic, or to let your ideas "seep into your work" if these ideas happen to be positive stances towards pedophilia, necrophilia and rape. But if we accept this (and I believe that we all do), then we have to agree that there are cases where "he's just sharing his ideas" and "his values just naturally seeped into his work" are not valid defenses. And if there are such cases, then there is a possibility that this comic is one such case. We actually have to consider what these values are and whether they actually have a place in art and society.

Now for this guy and his comic, moment it first pointed fingers in judgement of people who live differently from him, comic becomes problematic. The moment he looked condescendingly (+ ignorantly) at one of basis of my system of believes, I started hating his creation on a personal level.
Yet if he was making statements in the same tone about, say, football in the same manner, that wouldn't have been problematic. But he is talking about Christianity. Christianity has historical baggage. It has crusades. It has Inquisition. It has a whole history of discrimination towards other religions, nations, races, genders and social classes to account for. This guy is not just expressing his humble opinions on an innocent topic. He is expressing his opinions on possibly the most controversial topic of all the time, and as far as we can see, he is taking the side that has previously in history led to some terrible things. You just can not look at Christianity as any ol' topic of conversation.
As a christian myself, I have another perspective on things. To me, every understanding of Christianity that favours rituals and church's addendums to humility and tolerance (and therefore to original Christ's teachings) is a distortion and mockery of my own religion. Mind you I'm also not the kind of christian who'd devote all his time exclusively to talking about christianity so what do I know.
Additionally:

it's not as mind-numbingly propaganda-ish as a Chick Tract

"There are worse things than this" is also not a defense. There are worse things than anything you can think of.

he seems pretty humble

This comic is not humble. Maybe the guy is, but it does not come through in his comic. The comic is loud and antagonizing.

I should remind, though, that the main reason I lashed out at this comic was, it was a perfect example of how a comic can follow all conventional wisdom of comic-making, and still be bad. Cause if you return to my previous post, it's not just the faith issue that is problematic.

Christianity is a pretty intense thing for a lot of people and there's plenty of ways people express this passion, most of which look like nonesense to the outside world. Speaking in tongues being an excelent example of this. This guy is expressing the emotions of his faith through art, so it's understandable that it's not going to appeal to everyone. It'd be a bit like trying to write a comic about the daily problems faced specifically by women without making it come across to men as a feminist soap-box. Not that that isn't doable, but if your target audience is women (or in this case Christians) you risk losing your impact on them in the process. Or if you want another example it's like hosting a rock band, in a rock venue, but turning down the volume in case theirs anyone in the audience who doesn't like rock music.

Hmm, not being able to relate to a topic of the comic should leave you cold towards that comic. If the comic actually irritates you, that means that you are actually able to relate to a topic, except that this topic is presented in a comic in a way you consider wrong. After all, I'm a christian, how is a christian comic supposed to be not-relatable to me?

There's a lot - and I mean a lot of works of fiction that talk about problems specifically of women, that don't come across as a feminist soap-box, and yet they are still powerful. In fact, most of good and durable ones are. Not writing in the full-on aggressive feminist mode does not mean sacrificing your work's clarity. In fact, their power lays in universality, in ability to make me, a man, feel something I otherwise wouldn't have. Preaching to the choir is easy. Reaching outside the choir where power of fiction lies.
There are some christian-themed works that reach outside the choir. Many of these are various christmas and easter specials. Peanut's first christmas special seems to be universally beloved, even though it is considered fairly heavy on christian-specific themes. Films like "The last temptation of Christ" and "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" are universally respected as masterpieces of cinema all over the world. Many directors who have strong christian themes in their work, such as Tarkovsky, are hailed among christians as well as among non-christians.
You just have to have something up your sleeve other than the old "you are going to heaven and everyone who doesn't think exactly like you is going to be eternally tortured in the worst ways you can imagine."

[McDuffies]

Are you implying that the comic was essentially a lost cause? That's a bold statement, I guess, although perhaps more palatable in hindsight. Although, I can't say Lightbringer's particularly piqued my interest, unless, perhaps, if Linkara or Serge felt inclined to chime in.

Well, um, Linkara had a lot (and I mean really lot) of learning to do before he'd gain ability to write well, and by that point he'd probably either finish the comic or lose interest in it (I'm talking in past tense because I haven't checked his comic recently and don't know what it's like now.For all I know, it may have become good). But if I'm considering whether the premise could have turned out into a different comic, well I do think that most of premises can, and in this case probably have, since the basic arc of Lightbringer is something I've seen superhero comics doing often in last few decades.
But what I was getting at exactly, is that problems that the comic had couldn't have been summed up tidily. The closest would have been saying "write what you know", but then, who of us does know about top crime world, or about psychological processes of people under great stress and responsibility, or what have you? And yet you often see comics talking about these topics in a convincing manner, and yet the way link imagined these things was straining the loosest suspensions of belief. Yet, he wasn't working strictly from his imagination, but was following suit of other comics that were similarly unconvincing, or was adhering to typical pop-culture representations of those. So the basic advice to him (as well as many, many other artist whom I've read or reviewed) would have been "start reading actually good comics", which to their mind they were already doing, or yet better, "stop reading comics altogether" because a big problem is that people are involuntarily rewriting comics that are their favourites, without adding anything substantial to them, and through several generations of rewrites, current versions get a distinctly awful, several-degrees-detached-from-reality approach.
Which, again, most of people will ask you how are they supposed to be writing from reality, when they're writing a comic about a superhero fighting a supervillain, to which I have an answer which is very long and digressive, and I think I've repeated it many times over.

As far as webcomic critics go, I generally disagree. It's not really a matter of "Is this good?" vs. "Why is this good?" because most critics don't do either. Instead, you get three camps: the ass-kissers ("Jack"), the ass-kickers ("John Solomon"), and the legit critics ("El Santo"). For the first two camps, there's no real sense of "good" or "bad" because those concepts are inherently relative while the reviewers only deal with absolutes. In other words, if everything is "X," then "X" lacks meaning. This should be fairly obvious, but there's a notable level of demand for what the ass-kissers and ass-kickers supply. Specifically, the former caters to creators who crave validation, and the latter caters to readers who crave Internet drama.

I guess there is more than one way to look at the issue of comic criticism, and I'm currently interested the one I described.

Solomon is to me a good example of a guy who beefed on conventional rules and sticks to them like a foo'. Reading his reviews of, say, CRFH and Sluggy was pretty much that - him listing a list of rules and venting how these comics don't obey his precious rules, while I, the reader, imagine choking him and yell at the screen "WHO CARES! HE WORKS!" General impression of these reviews was that his irritation with these comics came not from the genuine dislike, but rather from his irritation that these comics were breaking the rules he believed in, that he presumably worked on a rigid value system that would neatly point to him which comics are good and which aren't, and that these comics were stomping over his system, committing the sin of being unclassifiable by his classification.
Solomon's style points that his beef with the comics is personal. He seems like one of those guys who thinks that, if you disagree with him, you are effectively calling him a fool, and in the same way, a comic that does not believe in his ideas of what a good comic should act like is calling him a fool.
I imagine that he might have liked those comics if he didn't read them strictly to find in them validation of himself. I'm not saying that he certainly would have liked them. They're far from perfect in every way. But if he didn't act so much as if those comics harmed him personally, I would have been more likely to believe that he really look at the comic, and not at his own reflection in it.
Compare that to Websnark's approach, who always started from a page that he particularly liked and built upon that a theory of why he liked that particular bit, and in that way, through the process of reading, built a flexible value system, and there are examples of two poles of the issue that I was speaking of.

I suppose you could describe it as imitation without intuition. What happens is that whenever you have an intuitive creator doing something innovative, you get plenty of imitators who try to replicate the work without having a developed intuition, and the result's, at best, a cheap knock-off, and, at worst, a bastardization. Nevertheless, familiarity's extremely appealing, and, as a result, creators will naturally gravitate towards the familiar.

What I am worried about is that authors are often discouraged from invention, like Cuddly was in this case, I think.

Yeah, I mean, it's really kind of a pervasive phenomenon.

I don't care. I think that when a generation that read "Ghost world" when the were kids replaces current generation in power, things will be better for reputation of comics, though kids'll still be proving that video games are not just for kids. Until they replace their previous generation, of course.

***
Incidentally I am doing better than usual comic-wise, I'm writing something, second draft currently in progress (first one being laughably bad), and if this comic works out for me, I might consider making it a series. It's kinda coincidental and funny that it's a comic about witchcraft.

[Terotrous]

Wow, that has got to be the most indepth critique of a comic that only has 5 strips ever written.


That being said, I don't find this comic particularly offensive. Sure, it's proselytizing, but as longtime reader of Sinfest I think I've become desensitized to it.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

re:McDuffies: Fair enough, I understand what you're saying. Yeah, the big bang strip in particular was what made me think "Yeah, this is definitely not for me." I guess my bias is that where I live, I'm used to evangelical/fundamental Christianity being a lot meaner and more disgusting than it is in this comic, so this seems rather passive and inert to me.

[Cope]

Holy shit the smug ignorance of that big bang strip is overwhelming.

[Humbug]

Yes, I agree lightbringer is still too heavy on the prose. Personally I don't like inner monologue and thought bubbles so i told my writer to absolutely avoid those in the comic. Characters are much more fun when they are playing off other characters and you can get so much more of their personality from simple banter than you would with exposition.

[K-Dawg]

Heh I dunno, I am pretty sure all 9 visitors I had on Monday were me, uniques be darned. I just should have known better than to look, it's way too early for that.

Hey your comic is sexy hot, and take it from me a guy who reads comics.

[robotthepirate]

Now for this guy and his comic, moment it first pointed fingers in judgement of people who live differently from him, comic becomes problematic. The moment he looked condescendingly (+ ignorantly) at one of basis of my system of believes, I started hating his creation on a personal level.

I don't get your point with the first 2.

The first I read as a jokey criticism of the author himself and as something a lot of Christians can relate to (I know I can). Man has something to pray about and keeps forgetting, we've all been there. It may as well have been about remembering to book a dentist appointment as far as how judgemental it goes.

The second wouldn't be at all out of place in a secular comic (which is fine, because it's agenda it set entirely by the author), it's just a joke about how time absorbing social media is with a hefty nod to Braveheart. Though if we're talking systems of beliefs I can't stand to watch either that or The Patriot without feeling a tad racially abused by Mel Gibson.

As for the Big Bang strip. It offends you so much that it makes you hate the rest of the comic? They say the probability of reality turning out the way it did by chance is about the same as a tornado whipping through a scrap yard and building a working jet fighter (though I doubt anyone's done the calculations), and you can make arguments either way but on both sides you will have people saying that the other is preposterous.

Maybe it is ignorant (which it certainly is if taken literally) but the other side of that coin is that the big bang will remain an unproveable theory until someone replicates the conditions and creates a new universe. So it's understandable that some people are dismissive, eventually one of them was going to make a comic about it.

Now an aside so people don't think I've got something against McD personally or that I've returned to the forum just to wade through heavy debate (neither of which are true).

Wow, that has got to be the most indepth critique of a comic that only has 5 strips ever written.

And how!

I wish it was that (that I am going the extra mile). Actually I just have too many commitments as it is.

I just think you're doing the right thing by taking your time instead of trying to rush things.

Cheers, that makes me feel better about it.

And we're back

Yet if he was making statements in the same tone about, say, football in the same manner, that wouldn't have been problematic. But he is talking about Christianity. Christianity has historical baggage. It has crusades. It has Inquisition. It has a whole history of discrimination towards other religions, nations, races, genders and social classes to account for. This guy is not just expressing his humble opinions on an innocent topic. He is expressing his opinions on possibly the most controversial topic of all the time, and as far as we can see, he is taking the side that has previously in history led to some terrible things. You just can not look at Christianity as any ol' topic of conversation.
As a christian myself, I have another perspective on things. To me, every understanding of Christianity that favours rituals and church's addendums to humility and tolerance (and therefore to original Christ's teachings) is a distortion and mockery of my own religion. Mind you I'm also not the kind of christian who'd devote all his time exclusively to talking about christianity so what do I know.

The history of Christianity has a lot of humanity in it. The crusade, the inquisitions, the child abuse are all reasons why I am wary of large organised religion, the bigger it gets the easier it is for people lose their way unnoticed and remain in a position of leadership, and for people to follow that leadership blindly. More people means more planning what to do and less praying what to do. So I'll agree with your stance against "rituals and church's addendums", there's nothing wrong with rituals as such, but they should be personal things that aids faith in practise rather than a replacement of it. With regards to the comic though I don't see where he's supporting these things. Though I'm happy to change my opinion if he does a "said my 20 rosaries, sins are forgiven" comic.

Saying that this man shouldn't share his own personal faith or that it has to be a controversial subject because of the church's dark past would be like stopping a child from saying he enjoys football because of the sport's record of fan violence and racism, or like suggesting people cannot talk about life in Germany because of the Nazis, or that the UK should never again be allowed to make children's television after almost every man I grew watching has been accused of child abuse and/or rape in the last few months. I consider the crusades no more an act of Christianity than I consider the Nazi party an effort to perfect the human race, bad things get done for bad reasons and are disguised as good things with good reasons to trick people into going along.

Of course, as we've discussed in the past, the second one puts one's personal work onto the internet it ceases to be private and falls subject to the opinions of all who chance across it. He's going to have to live with that. In a sense I feel that the comic is a already success purely for being able to create such debate and interest after so few pages.

All I can say is I don't see the same things you do when we look at the same pages.

[Cope]

As for the Big Bang strip. It offends you so much that it makes you hate the rest of the comic? They say the probability of reality turning out the way it did by chance is about the same as a tornado whipping through a scrap yard and building a working jet fighter (though I doubt anyone's done the calculations), and you can make arguments either way but on both sides you will have people saying that the other is preposterous.

You really should look up the term "false equivalence".

[robotthepirate]

As for the Big Bang strip. It offends you so much that it makes you hate the rest of the comic? They say the probability of reality turning out the way it did by chance is about the same as a tornado whipping through a scrap yard and building a working jet fighter (though I doubt anyone's done the calculations), and you can make arguments either way but on both sides you will have people saying that the other is preposterous.

You really should look up the term "false equivalence".

...The random formation of the universe cannot be compared to the construction of a designed object even if they could both be considered equally complex?

[Cope]

No, I mean that it's not good enough to say that both sides consider the other's position to be preposterous, so they must be even. The evidence has to be examined, and the evidence supports the Big Bang. Not everything about it is understood, but that should not be taken as a blank canvas for supporting any story that one wishes to be true.

Also, the detonation of a stick of TNT is fundamentally dissimilar to an expansion of spacetime. That comic is simply ignorant, even if we're generous and allow that it was a clumsy metaphor.

[IVstudios]

As for the Big Bang strip. It offends you so much that it makes you hate the rest of the comic? They say the probability of reality turning out the way it did by chance is about the same as a tornado whipping through a scrap yard and building a working jet fighter (though I doubt anyone's done the calculations), and you can make arguments either way but on both sides you will have people saying that the other is preposterous.

You really should look up the term "false equivalence".

...The random formation of the universe cannot be compared to the construction of a designed object even if they could both be considered equally complex?

It's not a great comparison on a lot of levels (for starters, you'd need to give the tornado about 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tries). Not that I want to get into a theology debate, but reducing an entire complex theory down to one pithy sentence (or a 4 panel pithy comic) tends to irk people. Think about it as if someone did a comic about Christianity and boiled it down to "You kill people because your imaginary friend told you to." Rather an oversimplification of a massively complex culture and belief system.

[RobboAKAscooby]

It's interesting to note that scientists don't generally describe the formation of the universe as a big explosion and the term "The Big Bang" was coined by a creationist trying discredit the whole theory but since in general the public seems to like exciting concepts the term "Big Bang" was adopted by science as an identifiable/relatable shorthand for the complex theory of the universe's expansion.



On a completely unrelated note, how's everyone doing comic-wise?