Editing 900: Religions

{{comic
| number    = 900
| date      = May 18, 2011
| title     = Religions
| image     = religions.png
| titletext = But to us there is but one God, plus or minus one. —1 Corinthians 8:6±2.
}}

==Explanation==
The late {{w|Harold Camping}}, a Christian pastor, wrongly predicted that the world would end in May 21, 2011. Since it didn't, he moved the date to October 21 of that year, and when that passed uneventfully, he recanted his belief that the end time could be calculated. In the {{w|Christianity|Christian belief}}, the end of the world is called "the second coming" (referencing the return of Jesus); some sects believe this will be preceded by an event called "the Rapture."

The first frame is a reference to raptors in {{w|Jurassic Park (film)|Jurassic Park}}, and certainly [[:Category:Velociraptors|not Randall's first raptor joke]]. In this film, the raptor dinosaurs get much more dangerous once they learn how to open doors. [[Cueball]] mishears [[Megan]], which is why he thinks she said "raptor" instead of "Rapture".

In the second frame, Cueball describes his personal approach to religion, starting by saying that he is Christian but only attends church services on Christmas and Easter. This is a {{w|Lapsed Catholic|well-known phenomenon among lapsed Christians}}, and if Cueball is not a regularly practicing Christian, it would certainly explain why he isn't particularly interested in this fundamentalist aspect of Christian belief. However, from here, his description takes a turn towards the ridiculous, when he says that every other day of the year is spent "at the mosque". Not only are mosques the place of worship for a completely different religion (specifically, {{w|Islam}}), they also generally hold communal services only on Fridays, so for Cueball to present this practice so matter-of-factly is quite absurd. When Megan questions the ubiquity of his practices, he replies by saying that this practice is vetted by his rabbi - a spiritual leader in {{w|Judaism}}, a third separate religion. While all three of these are {{w|Abrahamic religions}}, and as such have some overlap in their beliefs and texts, combining them all into one religion would be far from a simple process; either Cueball is simply being contrarian for comedic purposes, or he is involved in a very strange religious sect indeed.

The third frame is a math joke in which Megan references {{w|error bars}} which are used on graphs to indicate the uncertainty. So, Megan believes in one God (monotheism), as she says in the comic. But if she is still trying to find the error bars, and from the title text it is "one, plus or minus one", that could be in the range of zero ({{w|atheism}}) to two ({{w|Dualism|bitheism}}). With larger error bars, this could also reference the doctrine of the {{w|Trinity}}, which holds that there is "one God in three Divine persons": the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. Some consider this position to be polytheistic, as others would consider atheism to merely leave the number and nature of gods undefined (and, as a seperate concept, {{w|agnosticism}} rendering it as untestable whatever the hypothetical value might be).

The title text is a supposed excerpt from the holy text of experimental monotheism. {{w|First Epistle to the Corinthians|1 Corinthians}} is a book of the {{w|Christian biblical canons|Christian Bible}}. Megan refers to chapter 8 verse 6 (±2), which would be [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+8%3A4-8&version=ESV verses 4–8]. Verse 4 says "...There is no God but one". Confusingly, verse 6 says "yet for us, there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live." (That could be self-consistent if the passage assumed that Jesus Christ is a lord but not a god, but little, if any, mainstream denominations of Christianity seem to follow such a doctrine).

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan talking.]
:Megan: So are you worried about the rapture?
:Cueball: No, unless it figures out how to open doors.
:Megan: I said ''rapture.''

:Cueball: Oh, I'm not really into that. I'm the kind of Christian who only goes to church on Christmas and Easter, and then spends the other 363 days at the mosque.
:Megan: ...I don't think that's a thing.
:Cueball: <small>Our rabbi swears it's legit.</small>

:Cueball: What religion are you?
:Megan: Experimentalist Monotheism.
:Cueball: Which is?
:Megan: We believe there's one god, but we're trying to find the error bars on that number.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:Velociraptors]]
[[Category:Statistics]]