inkdick: october 13 2008 - calvin at the cross
Sorry to all you religious folks out there, but I am under the firm position that organized religion is for the birds. Let me repeat: ORGANIZED religion. Organized religion is what I have major problems with. I think it is fine for the individual to be religious and have their own personal ideas, but once you start lumping people together and forcing them to believe a certain way, you get problems. I mean, look at all the good organized religion has brought us: The crusades, Islamic terrorists, Republicans.
But enough with my rant on organized religions…
Thanks to a simple Google search, I can show you the actual image I saw. Click here if you are so inclined. Religious subject matter aside, I gotta wonder what Bill Watterson feels about all this. I mean, for years his character Calvin has been peeing on things. None of these are officially licensed Calvin and Hobbes merchandise, aka they illegally used the character of Calvin for profit. Does Mr. Watterson drive around in his car and go ape shit mad when he sees a Calvin peeing on something sticker plastered up on the back of some dumb redneck’s pickup? And why Calvin? Why not Dilbert or Garfield? I personally would much rather see Garfield taking a giant dump on the Ford logo. But alas, the mysteries of life.
It is interesting to note that as a society we’ve moved on from illegally using comic strip characters peeing on things to illegally using comic strip characters praying for Jesus.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
nothing says christian like trade mark infringement!
i read an interview with watterson that mentioned the calving peeing stickers, and basically he didn’t take action soon enough, so he no longer has a case. which basically means (if i understood it correctly) that at this point, anyone can use calvin for that sort of thing and he can’t do anything about it.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
The lawyers jump on everything else; I can imagine them letting go of this one. Where are the guys who write up the protection laws? How far do we go?
October 15th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
McDonalds again?
October 15th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Err… Islamic terrorism is not due to “organized islam”, in the sense of a unified islamic doctrine with a bit of hierarchic structure. Actually, islam is a problematic religion because it is highly democratic, where bands of people can run on their own under the name of islam, and there is no real hierarchic boss to stop them. Islamic terrorists are the same as socialist terrorists.
Crusaders was half a popular phenomenon and half a civilization-wide semi-official semi-unofficial reaction to the rise of islamic empires. You can view it as greco-roman socialists battling arabo-turkish socialists, with symbolic reference points that inspired those who needed symbols for themselves or to counter others, and helped concretize expeditions.
Religious organization wise, except for the extremes?, their voter ratio seems 5:5 or 4:6 for reps:dems… Republican party is a legitimate wing of American democracy… Democratic enthusistas should perhaps seriously consider secession/splitting the federation in half, or moving out, cause 50% will remain Republican for quite some time, if not forever, looking at the lack of development in American political ideology…
That said, I’m not a fan of overzealous christianity or any other religion, whether they have a history of violence or not. I’m also against buddhism, especially the ones misinterpreted by new age wannabes, and against atheism… Atheism is largely a terminological illusion. Agnostic is often the more accurate term, misleading too. And damn, atheism-thought-to-bes has killed more than the islamic terrorists and crusaders.
Hello Stalinism, Maoism, Hiterlism. Godless populistic rationalist planning states done a hell of a job killing. Both extremes suck. And its not about organized religion, but either populistic spiritual laziness/stagnation/reliance on a static interpretation of the world and ethics, or individualistic imagination running out of control.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
It’s hard for me to decide which I enjoy more: Pranas’ strips or show time’s comments about them.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:23 am
It should have been Calvin peeing on the cross and Hobbes dressed up as Judas.
David Yoder
October 16th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Christian copyright infringement is actually legal. Though I disagree with showtime’s reactionary tone and wishy/washy apologetics, and his nonsensical tying of socialism to every point for some reason, and the fact that there’s no such thing as “hitlerism,” I have to say that human brutality will out despite the circumstances. Religion, organized or not, is just an extremely effective outlet.
Atheism is actually a very cut and dry umbrella term that includes agnosticism. Are you absolutely, without a doubt, wholly convinced by arguments that a god exists? If not, you are an atheist. The degree, from anywhere to being absolutely certain there is no god (strong atheism, or anti-theism) to varying degrees of agnosticism/uncertainty. Atheism is not a dogma. It has no creed, no moral dictates, no lifestyle guide, nothing to say on the subject of taking action. It is a position on supernatural belief, and tying the horror Stalinist Russia to a simple “they killed them because they were atheists” is misleading, if not outright incorrect. Also, although historians cannot know the true nature of Hitler’s belief or unbelief (he goes back and forth in public statements and journal entires) but he never renounced his Roman Catholocism, and his regime has the tacit support of the Vatican. But that’s just to clarify.
I’m not interested in this game of “who killed more,” because it’s not a worthwhile question, and doesn’t really convince people of either position. It’s kind of a red herring in the debate of what position is true.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Oh man, look at Showtime and MacArthur discussing this. That’s beautiful, man. Things like this are making me start to wonder if I should create an online forum for all my readers to interact on and further have discussions like the one above. Hmm…
October 16th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Pranas do a strip about gay abortion next