As a Catholic for over 30 years of my life, I have read both sides of the story. (I’ll not bore you with details of my personal road to atheism, but it involved much of the research you suggest.) I’m not against you or your faith.

~chris

I enjoy comic books and swimming, but the two are just not compatible.

Gail

An example would be his attack on Hemingway. I’ve read little of the critical literature on Hemingway, so I’m no authority on whether or not Dave’s take on EH– which is made not personally, but in terms of his relevance as a cultural figure– is feasible. Evidently Dave did read extensively in the EH literature, but it’s possible that his take on the marriage of Ernest and Mary has no relevance to any reality but the one in Dave’s head. But Dave’s argument as to EH’s deleterious effects on manhood is still fine comics, if only because it’s so unorthodox (”what, Papa H. was really P-whipped? Say what?”)

Few of the other indie guys– Campbell being a possible exception– don’t seem to have the slightest interest in ideas as such. More or less following the lead of Crumb, they deal more in allusion than analysis. That’s a weakness I pointed out in an earlier post here to Jennifer de Guzman, and which I addressed in a blog-essay (see my blog, which was overdue for its weekly flogging).

(Hmm, sounds doity…)

I’m retiring from talking about Dave’s theories for a (hopefully long, long) while. I think it’s an interesting discussion here and I’ve enjoyed participating. But I agree with the folks who are saying I keep making the same points over and over. So enough from me!

Best wishes to everyone!

Gail

Sometimes I get frustrated by some of the ridiculous things Dave says, but this experience really has clarified my thinking regarding separating the art from the artist, and my dislike of Dave’s (I feel) bigoted and empty theories really didn’t affect my enjoyment of his talent at all.

Gail

As for putting him head and shoulders above other indy creators, I would say many of them do their philosophizing through their work more than through rants and promotional chats. I’m not sure Dave has granted us anything we didn’t already have…rather, he seems to be trying to join in the waterskiing fun but he’s got the skis on backwards and forgot to untie the boat from the dock.

Or dadocks.

Gail

That really has no relevance to what I was saying.

Enjoy your faith, I’m happy for you. I don’t care that others disagree with me. I’m only stating MY beliefs.

Dave made up a bunch of crazy nonsense and supported it with false statistics. That’s bad thinking no matter what justification you have.

Gail

Otherwise, how can you possibly rectify two Judas dying scenes? What do you do with the mention of the seraphim who brought on the flood? There’s plenty there that is completely unprovable.

The Bible uses science because science exists. It talks about rivers flowing because, well, they flow. But the whole point of the Bible is faith.

If you ever try to defend your faith with science, you’re going to fail.

And (bringing it around), that’s what the issue is here. You can believe whatever you want, but when you make “science” fit in with your beliefs, your setting yourself up to be shot down. And Dave certainly deserves some shooting down.

“Science is what it is. It is self-correcting. It scrutinizes, and allows for independent verification. Faith is the opposite. I have nothing against it, but the two are not compatible disciplines.”

I’m not sure if this was in any way a response to my post. I didn’t speak of “faith,” but maybe that’s simply a continuation of her contention that she wouldn’t have a problem with Dave’s beliefs if they didn’t make a pretense to scientific reality.

Anyway, I don’t believe that science is self-correcting for anything but scientific experiments. Because of science’s dependence on experimental validation its partial to the paradigm of the closed system. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but it’s questionable whether reality itself constitutes a closed system comparable to that of the scientific experiment. I understand why science has to think that reality is a closed system, in heuristic terms. But that assumption is not necessarily the truth.

Example: Richard Dawkins garnered a measure of fame from writing a book called “The Selfish Gene.” This POV is congruent with scientific views of the gene as a closed system. Of course the gene isn’t a closed system in the real world, but science is partial to anything that affirms that paradigm. Can you imagine the reception a counter-claim titled “The Unselfish Gene” would gather from mainstream scientists? (And no, this has nothing to do with my first name.)

In my view the opposite of science is not faith but philosophy, and faith-based concepts are a subset of philosophical endeavor. Philosophy is in every way as substantive a discipline as science, even if there are bad philosophers even as there are bad scientists. Dave Sim (to answer Steve Taylor’s question about Sim’s relevance) is not the worst philosopher ever born– though he’s not very good overall– but one of his significant acts for comics was to open the medium to this kind of discourse. As bad as his reasoning sometimes is, I put it leagues ahead of almost every indie comics-creator out there, simply because he understands the form that philosophical discourse must take.

End lecture.

1) Dave Sim and Cerberus both deserve to be in the Valhalla of comic books. There could be no real room for rational debate about that.

2) If Dave’s true thought/point in his views is simply “I like the old-fashioned household sort of gender roles, and I think more people feel comfortable in those than not” then that would be one thing, and I could maybe even believe that (in part because phrases that start with “I think most people feel” are overly vague).

3) However, if you read some of his essays and longer explanations on men and women, they are so ridiculously absurd that they are truly funny to me. Some may say if I laugh at them its not valuing how dangerous they are, but I’m sorry, the shit he said is so outlandish that I laugh every time I read it (in particular, http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/sim.html has some very funny stuff that he’s said over the years).

4) To whoever asked how someone could know what a group of people think: there are very reliable ways of determining such things. Gallup polls are very accurate. With only a few hundred to maybe a thousand observations from a random sample of a population, you can have a very good indication of how many people share an opinion. The only difficult bit is the “random sample” part.

– Jonathan

Well what do you know, people have different beliefs then you.

Gail

Ok this is way off topic at this point but im the one that probably made it get there. There are probably many books written hinting at biology, physcics, chemistry to scriptural references. I do not think faith and science are incompatible. You only have one side of the story, there are probably many references on the net about science and the bible. You can probably google “science and the bible” and find some answers there.

Alright enoiugh about that, i will have to see more of daves previous articles to judge whether or not he is a misogynist. So far from what ive seen, his views are honestly not that different from a lot of people in the US. But again i am a new fan of his and just barely read his early cerebus stuff so what do i know.

Gail

i’m pretty sure that if he was sitting across a table and getting into his personal beliefs about whatever feminist conspiracies he was preaching about in the mid and late 90s, i’d be sold for the whole conversation, and probably for a few days after.

i also believe that his belief system is one that is in a flux, ever changing according to what he observes and contemplates as the years pass.
which is a million times more enlightened then me and my silly two thousand year old religion in which i had no hand in creating or adapting

Best,
Gail

But yes, at the end of the day, Dave’s claim that he’s not a misogynist is at odds with his ridiculous and completely fake-sourced bile. I would not lay this in any way at the feet of male-dom, however, as a genuinely astounding amount of guys have no use for Dave’s hogwash at all.

In any case, I’ve taken plenty of crap from Dave’s toadies and even people who simply don’t want to see the great man questioned by anyone, let alone a woman. I’ve been called the worst names imaginable, and support seemed to be a bit scarce at times.

But I’m still fine with it. I think Dave’s evasion and unimpressive reasoning process is pretty well exposed to all but the most blindered of individuals.

And Chris, dead on.

Matt, I wasn’t saying you came to your faith blindly. But faith is faith. It doesn’t need or even desire independent verification. One only has to believe. A scientist, however, needs to be able to show that an independent scientist in Oslo can achieve the same results as one in Seattle.

And science actively discards disproven theories. Saying science can’t answer everything is fine. It can’t. It doesn’t pretend it can.

I don’t know that anyone actually ever questioned Dave’s religion, now that I think about it. It’s his made-up, craptacular grasp of science and statistics that I found most irksome.

Gail

Though I repeatedly tell myself, “Dave Sim has absolutely no relevance to your life,” I find it interesting to see how many people — almost all male — come out in support of his views of traditional gender roles and essentialism.

Dave Sim should consider Proverbs 31:10-31 for a portrait of a good Christian (or Jewish, in its context, actually) woman. I see a woman who commands the money of her household and works outside the home while her husband yammers away at the gates of the city. Hmm.

My admiration of Gail has rocketed off the charts

The scientific method doesn’t have all the answers, but it has proven to be the most reliable way to find them. Scientists may create bullshit, but science never does.

“Science is not without flaw, theory and reality are two different things.”

Science is not a list of “facts.” It’s a method. As Gail wrote, it’s self-correcting, because new theories with better results replace old theories. There is no dogma in science. If someone insists that a scientifically obtained theory cannot possibly be wrong, then they don’t understand what science is. BTW, coming to your own conclusions based on study and research is admirable, but it is not independent verification. You must perform experiments that duplicate others’ results (e.g., drop a rock to verify the theory of gravity).

Faith is not incorrect just because it is not science. The fact no god’s existence has been scientifically proven does not prove that none exist. (“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”) Faith and science are not enemies, they are, as Gail again wrote, just not compatible.

Chris Lite

well, it seems to generate a lot of debate, so it seems that interest is there..

~

Coat

For years, Dave has said that all of this was fact-based. In truth, NONE of his statistics are even CLOSE to correct, and they actually refute his conclusions.”

I dont really know his history with fake statistics? How do you know they are fake? Did he use anecdotal evidence? In all honesty, some of his opinions are not necessarily in the minority especially in the US.

“Science is what it is. It is self-correcting. It scrutinizes, and allows for independent verification. Faith is the opposite. I have nothing against it, but the two are not compatible disciplines.

Gail ”

Faith does not allow for independent verification? I did not come to believe in my faith because someone told me to. That situation almost always results in apathy. I studied and researched it and came to it on my own. Science is not without flaw, theory and reality are two different things.

Gail

For years, Dave has said that all of this was fact-based. In truth, NONE of his statistics are even CLOSE to correct, and they actually refute his conclusions.

People shouldn’t use statistics if they don’t understand them.

If Dave has said his beliefs were all faith-based, then I’d just have to say fine, the man believes what he believes. He doesn’t need evidence. But that’s not what he said at all.

Grady, I’m pretty sure he’s either buying Ger out or has already done it.

Can anyone verify this?

Gail