Heaneyland!

Lord love a duck

A couple months ago, Lorinne received a particularly entertaining Jews for Jesus pamphlet on the subway, which I commandeered (with permission) as blog fodder. I lost no time in neglecting to post it and then mislaying it, but I discovered it today while cleaning the apartment, and decided that its time was now.

"You atheists are so cute, I could just pick you up and squeeze you!" I haven't even opened the pamphlet yet and already I'm being condescended to. Nice. I like the (presumably atheist) duck, though.

He's bringing out the glasses, so you know he's making a serious point.

But not serious enough to put the glasses on, I guess. Nonetheless: oh snap! Did he just say that some religious people are atheists and they don't even know it? Oh no he di'n't! How can they fail to believe in god, who has the power to make body parts and podium components vanish into thin air?

Such Christians are represented by a squirrel wearing the robes of a monk, as is traditional.

Glasses on! Quack on, my atheist brother!

So...anyone who criticizes hypocritical religious figures automatically has enough credibility to claim to be god? The duck is clearly as impressed with your argument as I am.

No, your nervous habit of constantly taking your glasses off and putting them back on is what's annoying me!

And so he punishes the wicked by dropping nuts on their heads? Theology is awesome.

Ohhhhh, now the knives come out. How could an atheist ever hope to absorb the concept of a moral code? It's religious faith and only religious faith that prevents us from exploiting our fellow man. Squirrel. Duck.

Note that the squirrel, too filled with pride, is preparing to whale the tar out of the duck for laughing at his mishap with the nut.

Glasses off! I think the lack of glasses symbolizes the man's bland indifference to the persecution the atheist duck is currently experiencing.

Jews for Jesus: proudly persuading atheists to consider becoming agnostics instead.

The duck is now tangled in the monk's robes, symbolizing his willingness to appear to agree with the smug man's proselytizing, if only it will shut him up.

Um...yes, I'm sure that I also don't believe in heaven and hell.

Translation of second balloon: "I'm hope I'm not annoying you by BLOWING YOUR MIND with TRUTHS YOU CAN'T HANDLE."

Except that hooky players believe in the existence of truant officers. Glasses still off, although kept constantly at the ready.

See that nut that's been tossed back into the air? Care to guess what punch line it will lead to in the final panel when it falls? Please do, because that's the last we see of the nut, or the animals.

Big finish! Glasses back on! Anyway, my combover-sporting interlocutor, I think you'll find that most atheists have already considered the question of whether there is a god or not, since believing in god is kind of the default for just about everyone in the United States, and so becoming an atheist is almost always a matter of looking at what you've been taught to believe and deciding, hmmm, no, that doesn't make any sense; I don't believe it.

And now that I'm done, I will hand the job of giving Jews for Jesus a hard time back to someone who can handle it much better than I can: Jackie Mason.