17 Comments

1. 

   The serpent and apple one is not a bad reflection of the adage ‘the forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest’, but it’s not really an accurate portrayal of what happened in the Christian bible. The serpent only spoke to Eve and ‘beguiled’ her, then she gave some to Adam. In fact, he specifically blamed her and not the serpent when God turned up to look for them work out what was happening. Don’t know about you, but this spoiled the whole joke for me.

   (Just for fun…could God’s omnipotence could be questioned in these verses? He could not find them when he turned up in the Garden of Eden, and then questioned if/why they had eaten the forbidden fruit. Shouldn’t he have known where they were and what they’d done?)

2. 

   Stan, I think that calls into question his omniscience rather than his omnipotence.

   There’s also the point that He told him there was *one* tree he could not eat the fruit of. But after he did, He threw them out of Eden lest they eat the fruit of a *different* tree.

3. 

   “I think that calls into question his omniscience rather than his omnipotence”

   Potato, potato.

4. 

   Let’s try to make those five comics appear, thus saving each reader five external click trips:

   

   

   

   

   

5. 

   P.S. That last “Off the Mark” comic made me wonder why I haven’t seen any “Mirror” apps for mobile devices. It turns out that there are some out there, but the reason that they aren’t that popular(*) is because they simply aren’t needed: Apple made them unnecessary. After switching to the front camera on the iPad on which I am tapping out this comment, I discovered that the photo preview is in fact a mirror image of what the camera “sees”, but when the shutter is triggered, the recorded photo is in the proper orientation.
   P.S. (*) – There used to be a surprising number of “mirror” apps for “Palm” devices (despite their low monochrome resolution and lack of any camera). All the “mirror” did was to blacken the monochrome screen, enhancing the reflective effect of the display’s polished glass surface.

6. 

   At end of a week of bad “aging app” gags on “Off the Mark,” this last one was actually funny.

7. 

   Stan & Arthur: presumably God also created lawyers: never ask a question to which you don’t already know the answer.

8. 

   When I got the iPad, I tried to use the front camera as a “natural mirror”, that is see myself in the same orientation as others do. As Kilby noted, that doesn’t work.

9. 

   For the record, not displaying the full week of Off the Mark on the main page was my call: I decided that six of the same strip on the same page stretched the “fair use” concept.

10. 

    @ Bill – Ooops. I figured that there might have been a “length” issue, but I did not consider the legal angle.
    P.S. @ Ooten Aboot – Calvin had a different interpretation of that lawyer’s precept (in the second panel):

    

11. 

    P.P.S. On the subject of getting people to eat (what is good for them):

    

12. 

    “(Just for fun…could God’s omnipotence could be questioned in these verses? He could not find them when he turned up in the Garden of Eden, and then questioned if/why they had eaten the forbidden fruit. Shouldn’t he have known where they were and what they’d done?)”

    Sometimes you ask the kids what happened to find out what happened, and sometimes you ask the kids what happened to see if they’ll tell you what happened.

13. 

    It’s okay, Kilby: I can’t be held responsible for what some guy in Germany posts in the comments section!

14. 

    God created the angels and made them praise him all the time, but angels do not have free will and do only what God makes them do. So all that praise wasn’t satisfactory as it was not voluntarily given.
    So God created Man WITH free will, so that when Man praised God all the time it would be voluntary. He did this knowing full well that Man would not voluntarily praise God all the time. He also deliberately gave Man a perverse streak, and placed Man in the garden and made only ONE rule for Man to follow, KNOWING FULL WELL that Man because of the perverse streak would break it. Sometimes psychotic parents will formulate rules and set up a toddler in a position such that he can’t help but break a rule so that they can punish him for it. That’s what God did.

15. 

    “Sometimes you ask the kids what happened to find out what happened, and sometimes you ask the kids what happened to see if they’ll tell you what happened.”

    Yea, that was the only answer I could think of as well. However, this must be an assumption rather than the written word, which is taken quite literally when it serves whatever purpose.

    There seems to be a lot of loopholes for God, I’ve noticed.

16. 

    ” the written word, which is taken quite literally when it serves whatever purpose. ”

    Some people get their religion by assuming, first, that every word in the Bible is literally true and correct, even the parts that contradict each other. But WHY assume that? “Because it’s the word of God”. OK, so God told you (or someone) something, but didn’t think you (or they) were ready to hear the inerrant truth.
    He didn’t tell a bunch of shepherds the full story of the creation of the universe, because they didn’t have the words for “proton” or “nanometer”. He set up a universe where everything is winding down to heat-death, but life grows more complex. He left out the several billion years where there were no people in the universe, because the shepherds wouldn’t have been interested in that.

17.