Duty Calls

To be sure, my comment was absolutely a dumb cliché! If your response to it was to feel like a fool, though, then that’s on you. 😉

Ah, I see your point now; this is basically just like how the author was making the point that refrigerator stores have an annoying way of trying to sell people butthole pictures in this comic:

Your comment was the only one calling for the termination of the pursuit of deeper meaning in the comic, which is an anti-intellectual stance.

I have no desire to terminate anything. For someone going to so much trouble to express how much you care about the importance of intellectual discussion, you are working extremely hard to avoid engaging your intellect when it comes to my comments.

I agree completely that the comic is parodying a particular cliche of a militant atheist. I disagree that the intent was to provide serious social commentary.

And I did not find either of those comments grating; I was merely citing them as evidence that not all of the discussion here is “intellectual”. Honestly, the real avenue of criticism that was left open to you that I was expecting you to take was to point out, correctly, that they were heavily cherry-picked for their unreasonableness; it actually surprises me a bit that instead you called them not “really off the mark” as if they were inherently reasonable responses.

Example intellectual comments being posted here:

I didn’t realize neckbeard atheists oppressed so many people compared to religion, thanks to the author for opening my eyes

So many militant atheists. Saying so much, all just to prove the comic right.

Having said that, my specific objection is not to all of the discussion taking place here, but to the fact that a lot of the comments seem to be projecting their own personal viewpoints onto the comic.

Also, I was not shouting people down; I was speaking in all caps to be funny. It’s fine if you personally did not think I funny, but that was the intent (which in retrospect could probably have been conveyed more clearly if I had also dropped the comma so that it was purely a stream of words), just like it was the intent of the comic author to make a dumb joke rather than to state a strong opinion about atheists. I think that it is useful to separate the intent of what an author was trying to accomplish from your own thoughts on the subject.

Sure, but that also means that I get to make my own contribution to the discussion. 😀

DEAR LORD PEOPLE, SOMETIMES THERE IS NOT A DEEPER MESSAGE AND IT’S JUST A DUMB JOKE!

Seriously, check out the other comics by this artist. They just like absurdist humor, like this one:

I’d say Sarah doesn’t know much about cats or is just lazy.

Or maybe it is just a dumb joke?

“We are picking the most important fights and lying down on the train tracks on those fights.” - also Schumer, immediately after saying that.