{"id":27947,"date":"2026-11-09T13:06:20","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T21:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=27947"},"modified":"2026-11-09T13:06:20","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T21:06:20","slug":"secondhand-logic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=27947","title":{"rendered":"Secondhand Logic"},"content":{"rendered":"

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With really<\/em> inconvenient timing, my right shoulder went “screw you Deutsch, I’m outta here!” when I was just a few days away from finishing, and drawing became impossible. This has happened before, but rarely at such a unfortunate moment – I had this cartoon 90% drawn, but I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d be able to finish before my self-imposed end of month deadline.<\/p>\n

(The 10% not yet done was the shading and highlighting, aka “the fun part.”)<\/p>\n

Fortunately, my shoulder eventually got better, and here we are.<\/p>\n

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The seed of this cartoon came a few years ago. I was watching a video about the old “no watch without a watchmaker” argument and imagined it pictured as two friends debating as they walked past a gigantic half-buried pocket watch.<\/p>\n

I liked the image and wanted to draw it. And I liked the idea of doing a cartoon on this subject – it’s something I find fun to think about, and also a departure from the usual partisan arguments. So I began writing a cartoon to incorporate that image, and ran into a problem: It was going to be HUGE. I wrote draft after draft, and finally had to admit that I couldn’t fit in all the arguments I wanted to include.<\/p>\n

For instance, here’s a few panels that wound up on the cutting room floor:<\/p>\n

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Even after multiple iterations of cutting the script, the strip was still going to be much larger than my usual cartoons. Which is fine – I really like doing bigger comics now and then, and I know some readers enjoy the giant strips too.<\/p>\n

But that brought up a new problem: how to fit this in my drawing schedule?<\/p>\n

So I laid it out, and it sat on the back burner for years. Then, a few months ago, I began drawing it for real, doing a couple of hours on it here and there between working on other cartoons.<\/p>\n

This month, I decided it was far enough along that I could get it finished. And the drawing seemed to be going well – I even found a color scheme that I liked the look of. Plus, I was enjoying doing a strip in which the two debaters actually seem to like one another.<\/p>\n

And just then my shoulder went on strike. Aaaargh. (And, also, ouch<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

And one enormous, weird comic strip later, here we are! I hope you all enjoy this break from our usual programming.<\/p>\n

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON<\/strong><\/p>\n

PANEL 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two men are talking on a sidewalk. One has brown hair and a mustache, and looks smugly confident. The younger man has curly blond hair and wears a T-shirt.<\/p>\n

MUSTACHE: I know a question no atheist can answer!<\/p>\n

BLOND: What is it? My cousin Edna over there’s an atheist \u2014 I’ll try it on her!<\/p>\n

PANEL 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

The blond man walks toward a woman sitting on a park bench.<\/p>\n

BLOND: Hi Edna! I’ve got a question no atheist can answer!<\/p>\n

EDNA: Sounds like fun. Hit me!<\/p>\n

PANEL 3<\/strong><\/p>\n

Close-up of the blond man, gesturing enthusiastically.<\/p>\n

BLOND: Imagine you’re walking when you notice a watch half-buried in the path.<\/p>\n

PANEL 4<\/strong><\/p>\n

A large panel showing the blond man and Edna walking and talking. Behind them is an enormous, partially buried pocket watch. The characters appear several times as their conversation progresses.<\/p>\n

BLOND: You’d know there must be a watchmaker, right? It’s too complex to exist unless someone made it.<\/p>\n

BLOND: But the universe is much more complex than a watch. So it has to have a creator. Which proves God exists! Checkmate, atheist!<\/p>\n

EDNA: I see your point… But if complex things can’t exist without a creator, then who created God?<\/p>\n

BLOND: No one “created” God. God just exists.<\/p>\n

EDNA: But if God “just exists,” then complex things can exist without an intelligent creator.<\/p>\n

PANEL 5<\/strong><\/p>\n

Edna gestures as she talks.<\/p>\n

EDNA: Now let me ask you one! What’s the point of “killer questions” to prove God exists?<\/p>\n

PANEL 6<\/strong><\/p>\n

A giant hand emerges from the clouds, offering a book to two scientists. The book is entitled “PROOF by Me, God.”<\/p>\n

EDNA (off-panel): If God exists, he could easily prove it, right?<\/p>\n

PANEL 7<\/strong><\/p>\n

A wide-eyed man talks to a skeptical woman in a park. God, portrayed as a gigantic man with a long white beard, hides behind a tree, giggling.<\/p>\n

EDNA (off-panel): But he hasn’t. So either he doesn’t exist, or he wants to remain unproven.<\/p>\n

MAN: But he was just here!<\/p>\n

GOD: Hee hee.<\/p>\n

PANEL 8<\/strong><\/p>\n

Edna continues speaking as she and the blond man walk.<\/p>\n

EDNA: So by trying to “prove” God exists, could you be going against God’s wishes?<\/p>\n

PANEL 9<\/strong><\/p>\n

The blond man stands still, looking stunned, with one hand against his face, as Edna continues walking.<\/p>\n

BLOND: Um…<\/p>\n

PANEL 10<\/strong><\/p>\n

The blond man, waving his arms enthusiastically and grinning, has returned to his mustached friend.<\/p>\n

MUSTACHE: What did she say?<\/p>\n

BLOND: She was totally stumped!<\/p>\n

KICKER CAPTION BELOW THE COMIC<\/strong><\/p>\n

Barry the cartoonist, looking very<\/em> conceited, talks to the reader.<\/p>\n

BARRY: People have asked variants of the watch question since Cicero in 45 B.C. But now I’ve drawn a cartoon, so the question is settled forever!<\/p>\n

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CHICKEN FAT WATCH<\/strong><\/p>\n

Panel 1:<\/strong> A discarded piece of paper on the sidewalk reads “Litter Bugs R Among Us.”<\/p>\n

Panel 2:<\/strong> A wanted poster is nailed to a tree. A building in the background is a giant robot. Another building is made of giant Lego blocks.<\/p>\n

Panel 3:<\/strong> A building in the background has rows of windows with people whose heads are shaped like Os and Xs, in a tic-tac-toe game formation. Another building has a skier zooming down the sloped roof.<\/p>\n

Panel 4:<\/strong> A cave in the background has a mailbox reading “Plato,” and a shadow figure is visible inside, recalling Plato’s allegory of the cave. Two little anthropomorphic rodents wearing fancy Victorian clothes walk together in the foreground. A realistic bird with a Disneyesque cartoon duck head flies overhead.<\/p>\n

Panel 5:<\/strong> An evil bunny smoking a cig is on the grass.<\/p>\n

Panel 6:<\/strong> The two scientists are drawn with eggs for heads; a caption labels them “egghead scientists.”<\/p>\n

Panel 8:<\/strong> One of the trees has an arm sticking up out of the ground instead of a trunk.<\/p>\n

Panel 9:<\/strong> A building is topped by a gigantic birthday cake.<\/p>\n

Panel 10:<\/strong> A turtle wearing glasses is walking on the sidewalk.<\/p>\n

EDNA’S TATTOOS:<\/strong> Over the course of the strip, Edna has a tattoo of a triangle on her left arm, and a tattoo of an oval on her right arm. The oval turns into a stick figure with an oval head, waving at us. Then, looking serious, Oval holds up a sign saying “beware of Triangle Head.” Then we see a triangle-head stick figure holding a gun. Then, as Oval looks the other way, a gun is pointed at the back of Oval’s head. Finally, we see a gravestone with a picture of Oval on it.<\/p>\n

BLOND MAN’S T-SHIRT<\/strong>: Over the course of the strip, the blond man’s T-shirt displays a disagreement about burger joints. “Eat at Joe’s”; “Joe’s? Nah Jo’s food is better”; “Jo’s not better you liar!”; “Joe’s a total hack!”; “You take that back!”; “Joe’s burgers taste like dust.”; “Yes, but yummy dust!”<\/p>\n

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Secondhand Logic | Barry Deutsch on Patreon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With really inconvenient timing, my right shoulder went “screw you Deutsch, I’m outta here!” when I was just a few days away from finishing, and drawing became impossible. This has happened before, but rarely at such a unfortunate moment – … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-cartooning-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27949,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27947\/revisions\/27949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}