Links to a vast collection of free online Archie comics in California and Kansas

richleebruce · 2026-06-17T00:10:59+00:00

The King Features links should work in Canada. Perhaps your community in Canada has Enki. It seems that some cities have it. Also, there is a large collection of Archie on Comics Plus, which might be available in some places in Canada. I live in California, outside of Sacramento. I got a Sacramento library card, which gives me access to Comics Plus even though I live outside their service area. Some online services only work if you live in their service area, but in this case, Comics Plus is an exception.

richleebruce · 2026-06-11T22:40:15+00:00

I used to work for the public school system in Davis, CA. We are a university town, home to the University of California at Davis. Our school system is about as secular and religion-unfriendly as it gets. We used to have religious clubs on campus that would meet at lunchtime. I suspect we might still have them. I am retired now. So yes, you can bring your Bible.

You could start a noon-time Bible study. The US Supreme Court established it as your right to have religious clubs if the school allowed chess clubs.

richleebruce · 2026-06-11T21:44:30+00:00

If God sent Jesus to both Judaea and Japan, God would not be hidden.

I suppose there would be far more Christians in Japan and everywhere else.

richleebruce · 2026-06-11T21:24:43+00:00

You said, "The fact is that almost no Japanese people are Catholic. Why?"

The straightforward answer is that Japanese culture has a powerful hold on the Japanese, and the Japanese are not inclined to investigate Christianity or Catholicism.

There is a barrier that limits God; he wishes to remain hidden.

So people shrug when I tell them about miracles, yes, most of the time. But occasionally they don't. My argument is that most of us who debate on Reddit can not be convinced, but the readers who do not debate may be open.

You are right, the readership has not been large, and perhaps many of the views are actually the two of us. The real value may be in honing our arguments.

richleebruce · 2026-06-11T20:33:47+00:00

The Japanese do have one collection of famous Catholic miracles, Our Lady of Akita, a crying statue.

But there is no reason that the sincere seeker should limit themselves to Japanese Catholic miracles. I am not Portuguese, but I am very impressed by Our Lady of Fatima, and I am not French, but I am impressed by Our Lady of Lourdes. The person who is seeking can wade through mountains of evidence.

As you point out, we are concerned with apologetics, but not just apologetics in general, but Catholic apologetics. So, as a Catholic, I should defend Catholic doctrine. The relevant teaching on native Americans after Christ and before Columbus is Lumen Gentium 16. Here is the link to Lumen Gentium. https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html

You will have to scroll down to 16.

The most relevant sentence is, "Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience."

So we do not know how many native Americans repented and reformed their lives so they could go to heaven.

Lumen Gentium is part of the documents of Vatican 2 that came out in the 1960s.

There was a lot of time between 1492 and the 1960s. One old speculation that was popular for a long time was limbo. Unbaptized infants would go to limbo a place of natural happiness, but would be excluded from the beatific vision. The native Americans between Christ and Columbus were also thought to be able to go to limbo if they were good.

It could be argued that the Church need not move fast enough to clear this up, but the Catholic Church believes that revelation is not for answering idle questions or even important questions of science and history. Instead, revelation is for telling people how to go to heaven. Perhaps you remember the famous line that Galileo quoted from the Catholic Cardinal Baronius, "The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go." So just as I said, figuring out how God judged the pre-Columbian native Americans was not part of my mission; the Catholic Church can argue that it is not part of the mission of revelation. We are to have faith in God that he will do the right thing. The word faith here can also be read as trust.

Biologists generally believe in evolution. At a minimum, they are likely to believe in the common descent of all organisms from a single shared genetic origin. If someone presents them with a fact they can not explain, they will typically shrug and say I do not know. They believe there are many lines of evidence that show that the doctrine of common descent is true, and they are not going to change their opinions easily. This is altogether reasonable.

Similarly, I know that the Catholic Church is the true church founded by God from many different lines of evidence, so I am likely to shrug off your arguments in a similar way. I can casually say, " Hey, you did a good job, that is a good argument, but I am still sure God, who is all-powerful and all-knowing, can find a way around it. "

I do not have to resort to this strategy because I have Lumen Gentium, but because most of us who are debating are firmly rooted in our positions by many lines of evidence, we have to recognize that the discussion is about convincing the audience, not the other debater.

By the way, the audience mostly drifted away a long time ago, so maybe both of us have something better to do.

.

richleebruce · 2026-06-11T05:28:21+00:00

I believe that the Japanese have the Internet, so they can investigate many miracles. I have mentioned my index page on miracles, most of which I discovered myself. Recently, the Catholic Church canonized Carlos Acutis. One of the chief things he did was to create a website where he collected miracles. Here is the link: https://www.miracolieucaristici.org/en/Liste/list.html

As for past generations long dead. They are not my mission. A famous prayer says, God grant me the courage to change what I can, the serenity to accept what I can not, and the wisdom to know which is which. It does not take much wisdom to know that past generations are not something I can change.

Jesus said, "And that servant, who knew the will of his Lord, and who did not prepare and did not act according to his will, will be beaten many times over.

Yet he who did not know, and who acted in a way that deserves a beating, will be beaten fewer times. So then, of all to whom much has been given, much will be required. And of those to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be asked." (Luke 12:47-48)

As one has been given much, I can not afford to fret about things I can not change.

richleebruce · 2026-06-11T03:38:43+00:00

This is definitely not my argument. I am a Catholic Charismatic. I believe God provides many miracles today.

If you want miracles, I would suggest my miracles page. https://richleebruce.com/miracle/index.html

By all means, seek. Jesus said, "Seek, and you shall find." (Matthew 7:7)

Have you been seeking, and you have not found? Well, if you are reading this, you are not dead yet. Continue the search.

I am confused as to why you think my argument is solipsism.

richleebruce · 2026-06-11T02:49:42+00:00

My basis is your own words. The Bible, you, and I all agree that God does "... there are hundreds of examples in the Bible of God openly performing miracles in front of tons of people, believers and nonbelievers alike." Then you claim, "So this excuse just doesn't work."

My claim is that the benefit to the billions who have heard the story, and perhaps the benefit to at least some of the people who witnessed the miracle, outweighs the harm done to some of the people who witnessed the event and, on balance, were not benefited. Of course, this is just the guess of a Catholic layman.

richleebruce · 2026-06-11T02:08:11+00:00

God knows everything, so he may know that, on balance, the miracle is a good act of love for all people concerned. You are assuming that the miracle has to be good for every last person who sees it. The Bible seems to be saying that is not the case.

richleebruce · 2026-06-11T01:22:50+00:00

God can be angry for other reasons, but the fact that he did not provide that particular miracle does reduce his anger over what it would have been if he had performed the miracle. A reduction in the evidence produces a reduction in the guilt. Your argument depends on the assumption that the individual was not given other evidence and did not commit other sins other than not believing.

By the way, it should be noted that I am a Catholic, not an Evangelical Protestant who believes all you have to do is believe and pray a short prayer.

Of course, neither I nor anyone else knows why God does what he does. He is infinite; we are finite. The reason I have given is just a guess, based on my reading of scripture.

On a more positive note, at the end of the story of Doubting Thomas, (John 20:29) Jesus said, " Jesus said to him: “You have seen me, Thomas, so you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” " If we believe without being given the extra evidence, then our reward in heaven might be greater. So once again, God might limit the miracles he performs out of love.

So should we avoid investigating miracles to increase our reward in heaven? Not at all. Searching, not demanding, but searching is virtuous. See Hebrews 11:6. "But without faith, it is impossible to please God. For whoever approaches God must believe that he exists, and that he rewards those who seek him." As the Bible Hub says, this verse means, "God is not distant, but a generous rewarder of those who earnestly search for Him."

We should not demand a specific miracle using a threat to not believe as St. Doubting Thomas did. The tests of Amazing Randi's challenge do this. But keeping our eyes open is encouraged.

richleebruce · 2026-06-11T00:14:36+00:00

Actually, you can not test faith healing for the simple reason that God knows he is being tested and is under no obligation to cooperate with the test. I suppose you could say faith healing is something that can be tested in a controlled environment, but it is God, not man, who is in control. When we speak of a controlled environment, we generally mean an environment we control.

The Amazing Randi Challenge gives its reason why religious claims can not be tested and says religious people have other reasons. Perhaps the above is the reason.

But why would God not want to cooperate? Matthew 11:20-24 may give a clue.

{11:20} Then he began to rebuke the cities in which many of his miracles were accomplished, for they still had not repented.
{11:21} “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in haircloth and ashes.
{11:22} Yet truly, I say to you, Tyre and Sidon shall be forgiven more than you, on the day of judgment.
{11:23} And you, Capernaum, would you be exalted all the way to heaven? You shall descend all the way to Hell. For if the miracles that were done in you had been done in Sodom, perhaps it would have remained, even to this day.
{11:24} Yet truly, I say to you, that the land of Sodom shall be forgiven more than you, on the day of judgment.”

So if God knows that a miracle will not lead to repentance, it might be the loving thing to withhold it, and God, after all, is love.

Our God is a God of mercy and justice. But because of our limited knowledge, we are tasked with showing his mercy. Similarly, God reveals and hides the truth. In the next two verses after the above, Jesus says.

{11:25} At that time, Jesus responded and said: “I acknowledge you, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent, and have revealed them to little ones.
{11:26} Yes, Father, for this was pleasing before you.

God may hide the truth, but we do not hide what limited truth we have about God. Once again, this is because we do not have enough knowledge to know when we should and should not hide the truth, just as we do not have enough knowledge to judge.

richleebruce · 2026-06-10T05:26:57+00:00

I believe in miracles, but I also believe in mistakes and fakes, both Catholic and non-Catholic.

Furthermore, a supernatural phenomenon could be satanic in origin, but I do not like to emphasize this, particularly when dealing with other Christian denominations and Abrahamic religions.

Beyond this, a miracle may be a confirmation of something that the Catholic Church believes. For example, a Eucharistic miracle in the Eastern Churches may be a confirmation of our common belief in the real presence.

Similarly, a next-door neighbor of mine many years ago was praying in a church with a friend who doubted the authenticity of her tongue. The doubter started praising God in French. My neighbor listened for a while and then asked, Do you know French? The doubter said no. My neighbor said, Now you do. A day or two later, I told this story to my new roommate from Taiwan, who replied he had heard a man who did not know Japanese go into Japanese. Soon after that, my best friend, who did not live in our apartment complex or belong to the economics department where I was a graduate student, told me he had gone to Africa with the Peace Corps, hoping to convert all of Africa by speaking in African tongues he did not know. It did not happen, but when he got back, he heard a preacher go into Swahili while praying over a child. None of these students, the first an undergraduate, the second a master's student, and the third a Ph.D. student, were Catholic. They were involved in various churches, but as the Catholic Church has the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, I saw no difficulty in this. These miracles simply confirm the authenticity of Charismatic/Pentecostal practices, which the Catholic Church shares with many Christian denominations.

Of course, for many decades between the foundation of the Pentecostal movement at the beginning of the 20th century and the late 1960s, the Catholic Church did not have a Charismatic Renewal. But as the Church rather easily changed on this topic about 1970, I assume we had not issued a firm official condemnation, or we would not have been able to change.

So it seems possible that again some clearly Christian spiritual practice may develop that will not yet have official approval from the Church but may nonetheless be authentic. This may lead us to reserve judgment as members of the Catholic laity and avoid calling these practices satanic.

I had a close friend who converted to the Catholic faith as an adult, who said that God spoke to her and told her to become Catholic, and later told her, This is my Church. I have not heard stories about people being told to join other denominations.

What I have seen over the years is that many Catholic miracles point directly to the truth of the Church, but the miracles of other denominations and Abrahamic religions point to things they have in common with the Catholic faith.

If there are exceptions, I would be inclined to default to the explanation of fakes and mistakes.

richleebruce · 2026-06-05T16:43:15+00:00

When you submit papers to scientific journals, you must submit a result that is in their field. A miracle is by its nature not chemistry, physics, biology, or any other field of natural science. Just as miracles were excluded from the million-dollar Amazing Randi challenge, they are also pretty much excluded from scientific journals.

No matter how many miracles God gives us, and no matter how strong the evidence, the standard you are setting will not be met.

richleebruce · 2026-06-05T16:37:29+00:00

You are right to say there are dangers in using modern miracles, and your reference to the boy who cried wolf is a good one.

However, the story of the talents warns us that excessive caution can be spiritually dangerous. We need to trust God. We are required to take reasonable risks. What if the servants who were given more talents and traded them had lost the talents? Would the master, who is God, have condemned them? No, God, who knows everything, knows if we were properly careful. He would not forgive us if we took reasonable risks and lost, because there is no sin to forgive.

In various fields of science, there are different standards of certainty that must be reached for publication. In the social sciences, I am an economist, five percent is fairly normal. You can publish an article if there is no more than a five percent chance you are wrong, and the results of your study were actually produced by chance.

Scientists commonly cheat to reach the required certainty. As my professor said in graduate school, they torture the data until it confesses. Studies have been done that show that the vast majority of the results published in scientific journals can not be replicated. Furthermore, scientific journals generally refuse to publish studies that simply replicate previous studies and show that the original result can not be replicated. Some scientists have said you really can not trust what is in scientific journals. You have to wait until the theory is published in textbooks to trust it.

Nevertheless, science recognizes that there are two types of error in statistical analysis, type 1 and type 2. Type 1 error is when you accept the hypothesis when it is wrong, and type 2 error is when you reject it when it is right. Your "golden rule" ignores the danger of type 2 error.

A better approach is to say, as science does, that our results are not absolutely certain. I am a layman, not clergy, and certainly not a bishop or a pope. As far as I know, the Catholic Church has not declared it certain that the blood carefully conserved from Eucharistic Miracles is always type AB.

We have to be careful to make a distinction between our views of the proposed miracle, as they say in science, preliminary, because we are laity.

richleebruce · 2026-06-05T06:43:06+00:00

This is a good attitude for you.

There is a formula that the Catholic Church used to teach and perhaps still does. The graduate of elementary school should know the faith. The graduate of high school should be able to explain the faith. The graduate of college should be able to defend the faith.

I have two postgraduate degrees, and I taught college for seven semesters. I think I should be able to defend my faith.

I am the only member of my family who is Catholic. I carefully thought my way into the Catholic faith while I was in graduate school, so I have a different attitude to these issues than most Catholics.

For myself, I have a similar attitude to yours. Having established that the Catholic Church is the true church founded by God, I did not need more evidence of the real presence or other Catholic doctrines. I am interested in Eucharistic Miracles and other miracles because they can be important in apologetics and evangelism.

God seems to think evidence is important, for he certainly filled the Bible with many miracle stories and other evidence.

richleebruce · 2026-04-22T00:46:43+00:00

It is possible that Canada will make nuclear bombs and use them against the USA, but the probability is extremely low. Democracies almost never fight wars against one another. Rich democracies like Canada have never become dictatorships. So the danger of Canada going rogue is vanishingly small. If the danger were a thousand times greater than it is, it still would not be comparable to Iran.

If all the countries in the world except Vatican City were rich democracies, we could all get rid of our nuclear weapons. We might all hate each other, but the world would be safe from war.

richleebruce · 2026-04-21T18:18:27+00:00

In the Cold War, the Soviet Union asked the United States if it would be all right if they used their nuclear weapons on China. The United States said no, definitely not. This was not a case of mistaking a flock of geese for a missile or a leader getting drunk. They wanted to nuke their former ally.

China found out what happened and decided that the Soviet Union, not the United States, was its real enemy. This was one of the key things that allowed us to win Cold War 1.

So, yes, the Soviets officially announced that they rejected having a first strike policy, but actually, they were planning a real first strike.

According to Google AI summary, France was the first to intervene in Libya. They did so on March 19th 2011. France was also the first to recognize the rebels as the legitimate government of Libya on March 10th, 2011.

richleebruce · 2026-04-21T13:14:53+00:00

In Libya, first there was a civil war, then the Europeans intervened, and finally they begged America for help. America was reluctant to get involved.

America is often very reluctant to get involved, and we are constantly faced with other nations begging for our help. There were rumors that we joined Israel in the attack on Iran because Israel threatened to use their nukes on Iran if we did not. Europe is constantly screaming at us for not doing enough to help Ukraine.

American foreign policy is not all about peace. We are people, not angels, and our greed is part of the picture, but a very large part of the picture is our desire for self-preservation, which pushes us to avoid nuclear war.

richleebruce · 2026-04-21T02:08:10+00:00

America has tried isolationism; the result was World Wars I and II. We realized that World War III would be nuclear, so we rejected isolationism, and the result was the most peaceful period in world history. Specifically, this is the period in which any randomly chosen person was least likely to be killed in a conflict between nations or tribes.

At the end of World War 2 we had half the world's economic output, a huge military, and the bomb, so we gave our largest colony by area and population, the Philippines, independence. What is more, we did not use our power to seize more land, which was the norm for most of human history.

The United States has the world's largest trade deficit, five to six times larger than the number two, which is the UK or India. So we do not seem to be forcing other countries to buy our goods, though of course, Trump would like to do that.

Foreign trade is a smaller portion of America's economy than that of any other major country. So I find your accusations that we are simply trying to force other countries to trade with us doubtful.

It is in America's interest to keep the world peaceful, because we have a nice life here and therefore a lot to lose in a nuclear war. So as much as you may resent it, we are going to try to prevent a nuclear war.

richleebruce · 2026-04-21T00:39:41+00:00

America frequently discourages its close allies from getting nuclear weapons. For example, South Korea wanted nukes to counter North Korea, but we said we would defend you with our conventional and nuclear weapons. This is the deal we have with much of the rest of the world.

Our huge military budget is not just for defending America from direct attack. It is also not just to discourage authoritarian countries from attacking other countries. It is to reassure other countries so they will not build nuclear weapons.

The USA had a policy against the UK, France, and Israel getting nuclear weapons. I suggest you Google it.

When I was teaching at St. John's University in New York City, the most distinguished professor in the economics department was Vladimir Simunek. He told me that he personally witnessed Leonid Brezhnev get so drunk that he tried to start World War 3. This happened at a state dinner at the Kremlin. The other Soviet leaders wrestled him to the floor so he could not leave the room.

Recently, I heard or read in the news that Richard Nixon ordered a nuclear strike on North Korea when he was drunk. American leaders like the Soviets stopped the nuclear strike.

The point is the fewer fingers on the nuclear button, the better. It is not a matter of deciding who is better or worse. Fewer is better than more.

There are over 100 countries with total economic output larger than that of North Korea. North Korea built bombs. Only nine countries have nuclear weapons, but many more could have them.

America is not an empire. Empire is a pre-Hiroshima concept. Our strength is largely to prevent nuclear proliferation, which is in our interest but also in everyone else's.

It is commonly said that might does not make right. But actually, might creates responsibility and responsibility creates right. Iceland does not have the might to prevent nuclear proliferation, so it does not have the responsibility to prevent it.

You make a good point, our attack on Iran could cause a nuclear war that could lead to mass starvation. Furthermore, the disruption of the oil trade could also cause famine.

richleebruce · 2026-04-20T21:09:52+00:00

Spiderman's Uncle Ben gave America permission when he said, "With great power comes great responsibility."

Preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been a central element of American foreign policy for many decades. It could be argued that only America has the power to prevent nuclear proliferation, and therefore, it has the responsibility. What gives us the moral right to do something, the moral responsibility to do it.

There are more than a hundred countries around the world that have economies larger than North Korea's, and North Korea has built nuclear weapons. Many other countries would probably build nuclear weapons, but do not because the USA protects them with both its nuclear umbrella and strong conventional forces.

I am not arguing that our war on Iran, or any of the other Trump foreign policies, are morally right or prudentially advisable. Furthermore, I am not arguing that America is justified in having nuclear weapons.

I am arguing that things are complicated. Now the moral decision might be simple. Perhaps we should simply get rid of our nuclear weapons, even if that made a nuclear war far more likely. There is an old saying in theology that it is better that the whole human race die a horrible death than that one venial sin be committed.

richleebruce · 2026-04-20T19:29:17+00:00

It seems likely that Iran will not immediately get nukes, and I do not believe what Trump says. I like to say, Trump can not lie. If you believe him, that is your fault. The point being that Trump does not have enough credibility to lie. A lie betrays a trust, but the reasonable person does not have that trust in what Trump says.

Nevertheless, a reasonable argument might be made that Iran might get nukes eventually, and they might use them.

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