2011-08-21
Original: 2011-08-21 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
An elderly man with gray hair, gesturing with open hands, speaks.
Man: "Say you were walking outdoors, and you found a watch. And you opened the watch and found many intricately interacting parts, none of which made sense without the others? You would conclude there was a DESIGNER. Now, suppose the watch kept shocking you at random times, regardless of how good or bad you behaved, and the shocking seemed not to be a defect, but rather a standard feature of the design."
Caption (below panel): William Paley proves that there's a God, and that he's a dick.
Votey:
A pocket watch is drawn, with a speech bubble coming from it.
Watch: "Also, no bacon or adultery!"
An elderly man with gray hair, gesturing with open hands, speaks.
Man: "Say you were walking outdoors, and you found a watch. And you opened the watch and found many intricately interacting parts, none of which made sense without the others? You would conclude there was a DESIGNER. Now, suppose the watch kept shocking you at random times, regardless of how good or bad you behaved, and the shocking seemed not to be a defect, but rather a standard feature of the design."
Caption (below panel): William Paley proves that there's a God, and that he's a dick.
Votey:
A pocket watch is drawn, with a speech bubble coming from it.
Watch: "Also, no bacon or adultery!"
Alt text
A cartoon of an elderly gray-haired man gesturing with both hands as he delivers a long argument: he says that if you found a watch outdoors full of intricately interacting parts, you'd conclude there was a designer; then he supposes the watch kept shocking you at random times regardless of how well you behaved, and that the shocking was not a defect but a standard feature of the design. A caption underneath reads: "William Paley proves that there's a God, and that he's a dick." In the votey aftercomic, a hand-drawn pocket watch has its own speech bubble declaring, "Also, no bacon or adultery!" — casting the watch (a stand-in for God) as a petty, punitive designer.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.