Made By Mammals (The Coolest Image You’ll See All Day) September 5, 2009

Made By Mammals (The Coolest Image You’ll See All Day)

By Guest Contributor
September 5, 2009

As stated at The Reason Project:

“Made by Mammals” is an unyet published editorial project by Andy Marlow, an English graphic designer based in Madrid. Images were created to accompany and emphasize quotes taken mainly from leading intellectuals such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett who criticize religion and its role in modern society.
The main aim of the book is to provoke thought, reflection and rational debate on religion.

The most thought-provoking image for me was this one:

Picture 1

I suspect someone in Sedalia is seething right now.

(via Heaving Dead Cats)

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  • I’m not sure what will offend the Fundies more…that the image bespeaks evolution, that atheism is portrayed as being more advanced than monotheism, or that every one of those characters has a dirty, dirty NAKED COCK dangling between their legs.

    /this episode brought to you by the letter M
    //penis

  • Amy G

    cousinavi, I like the letter “M” 😀

  • sc0tt

    Atheism’s penis should be bigger.

  • @ Amy G:

    Mmmmm.

  • Miko

    I wouldn’t say that monotheism is an evolutionary step between polytheism and atheism.

  • Tom

    Hey, lets be fair now, polytheistic societies have been just as warlike as monotheistic ones. It should have a sword to! Or at least a club.

  • Autumnal Harvest

    I assume the point of the cartoon is that more evolved things are “better” in some objective sense, although that’s not really how evolution works. And as an atheist, I of course understand why atheism is better than theism. 🙂 But can someone explain why monotheism is better then polytheism? Seems to me that this cartoon just buys into monotheist propaganda.

  • Jeff Satterley

    I want that on a t-shirt!

  • violetq

    If you go to the Made by Mammals website, it shows the quotes that go with the image:

    “Historians of religion recognize a progression from primitive tribal animisms through polytheisms such as the Greeks, Romans, and Norsemen, to monotheisms such as Judaism and its derivatives, Christianity and Islam.” -Richard Dawkins

    “Monotheism is in its turn doomed to subtract one more God and become atheism.” -Ibn Warraq

  • Helen

    What about having another one with breasts instead of a penis? As a proud atheist woman, I feel excluded 🙂

  • @ Helen

    Breasts? What are those good for except looking delicious under a light t-shirt in a well air-conditioned room?
    Pfft!

    /Penis

  • «bønez_brigade»

    The dangling centerpieces fit it well, since patriarchy is somewhat dominant in religions.

    —— —— ——

    @Autumnal Harvest
    It’s similar to Freud’s relation of types of religious beliefs [and nonbelief] to age transition in The Future of an Illusion:
    animism (infancy) —> polytheism (childhood) —> monotheism (adolescence) —> atheism (adulthood)

  • Matto the Hun

    a dirty, dirty NAKED COCK dangling between their legs.

    I clean my dangling, naked cock every day damn it!

  • I clean my dangling, naked cock every day damn it!

    You can scrub and scrub til your trembling little flange is RAW…it will still be DIRTY, you filthy little animal.

    /mostly because you can’t keep your grubby little mitts off it

  • Autumnal Harvest

    violetq, bonez_brigade, I understand that it’s saying that monotheism is more advanced and in some sense better than polytheism. I’m questioning what basis they have for that belief—repeating that belief, or quoting that Dawkins also has that belief, doesn’t do a lot to convince me.

    I understand monotheism came after polytheism, but how does that make it better? Is Islam better than Christianity, which is in turn better than Judaism? Is the Is the later development of Mahayana Buddhism, with its emphasis on worshiping the bodhisattva, who grant you access to a better afterlife, an improvement of Theravada Buddhism? Is the relatively late Bahaii belief that all religions are true, and at their core, the same, the best of all? And hey, Bahaii comes after atheism, chronologically.

    Atheists shouldn’t just uncritically accept the Christian norm that monotheism is better than polytheism.

  • John Morales

    That’s really clever.

    I’m impressed.

  • ChameleonDave

    Atheists shouldn’t just uncritically accept the Christian norm that monotheism is better than polytheism.

    But it is. Oh, they are both false beliefs, but the former is clearly a mark of primitive societies, whereas the latter is found where people are more advanced. Similarly, anthropomorphic gods are a mark of the primitive, whereas abstract gods are a sign of an educated mind seeing the absurdity of religion and trying to sanitise it, making it more clinical and superficially scientific-looking.

    These are all faltering steps on the way from the most primitive conception of magic and of the world, to a clear understanding of the way things actually are.

    In much the same way, modern birds (atheists!) could not have evolved from anything but therapod dinosaurs (Christians, etc) with their hollow bones (single, relatively abstract god), which had in turn evolved from other, heavy-boned dinosaurs (anthropomorphic polytheists).

    So, therapods were ‘better’ than the other dinosaurs, if one considers the eventual ability to fly (be free of superstition) to be a good thing. This is despite the fact therapods themselves could not fly, and the fact that one is not obliged to see any particular evolutionary trait as good.

    Note that the image doesn’t say anything is ‘better’, but merely places things on a timeline. I’m just replying to your inference, accepting it as valid for the sake of argument.

  • «bønez_brigade»

    @ Autumnal Harvest,
    In Freud’s case, he explained how the gods have taken on more anthropomorphic qualities as the centuries have passed — due to us learning more and more about the world around us, of course. For example, as knowledge of the workings of Earth progressed, there was no longer much of a need for gods of various geological & climatological events. Naturally, the number of them decreased.

    Using Freud’s model based strictly on chronology, I guess you could make a case for Buddhism Bahaii as being “elderly adults”; but I think he was basing it more on our advancement of knowledge through the ages.

  • AxeGrrl

    The lack of priapism makes me question the potency of ALL of the figures!

    Hasn’t the person who designed that ever been to Greece?

    Now,the Greeks know how to depict a penis (delusional/wishful as it may be:)

  • Autumnal Harvest

    Chameleon, bonez_brigade, just saying that polytheism is more primitive, and monotheism is more advanced doesn’t make it so. There’s no reason to think this, other than that’s the standard monotheist propaganda. The two of you provide no evidence that monotheism is associated with a better understanding of the world, and I see no historical evidence for this. It’s certainly not the case that “as knowledge of the workings of Earth progressed, there was no longer much of a need for gods of various geological & climatological events.” When monotheism developed in Zoroastrian and Hebrew cultures, they didn’t know any more about how the world worked than their surrounding cultures, and knew significantly less than other Asian cultures. They bundled all the magical powers of different deities into one (tribal) all-powerful god—this doesn’t reflect any improvement in our knowledge of the world.

    The worldwide success of monotheism is due to the fact that Christianity and Islam were particularly violent proselytizers, not to any inherent virtue of monotheism. Indian and East Asian cultures have done quite well for themselves without going through some “improved monotheistic” phase.

  • Alexis

    My sixth grade teacher (around 1960) smugly declared that the progression from from polytheism to monotheism showed that we had reached the pinnacle of religion. I sat there confused wondering if she hadn’t stopped one god short of that goal.