Thursday's Thoughts - Special Meme Edition

True, Boromir, true (sorry text is not centered)

I missed Monday's Meme Madness since I was away, so I thought I would have a special edition of meme dissection. Since it's Thursday, it's time to take Thor's hammer and smash some stupid memes! On today's menu: creationist memes!

Meme #1: "Offers to help you understand evolution so you'll believe it; Doesn't understand it himself"

For starters, this meme rests on a tired trope that I've discussed before that atheists are all teenage males - always males - in some kind of rebellion-against-authority-and-therefore-also-religion phase. The numerous memes like this usually show the angsty teens with the accoutrements of adolescence, those attempts at signifying individuality, like the one here with the hat.

Let me just say that there is nothing wrong with being a teenage male, in rebellion or not, who is questioning the veracity of religion, and my point here is not to denigrate such individuals. We were all adolescents once, asking questions, searching for ourselves, looking for those signifiers that would become our signature style. If you are such a person, keep looking, reading, searching! More power to you.

My beef is actually with reducing atheism to something that is a phase and appropriating honest seekers (i.e. teenage males) to dismiss such pursuits as unworthy of further consideration. Atheism can just be dismissed because look who has embraced it as a pose.

Here, the representation includes evolution as an extension of atheism. The idea is that it's a stupid teen boy, what does he know?, so we can dismiss him without a second thought.

Moving on to the text, we read that the person in question is presenting knowledge beyond his understanding. Now, assuming the person doesn't "understand evolution" (a vague statement if there ever was one), it doesn't change whether or not evolution is true. We could be living on a planet where no one understands evolution, and that doesn't alter the facts of the matter. The only thing that changes is our knowledge of them. Even when everyone thought the earth was the center of the universe, that didn't change the fact that our sun is the center of the solar system and we are not the center of the universe. 

As I said, "understanding evolution" is a vague statement, and I'm not sure what the meme-maker really means. Does the teen know absolutely nothing or is it more like he's been asked a very specific question that a biologist could answer but is beyond a layman's grasp of the process? I mean, I don't know everything about evolution. I know the general mechanisms, I know about some key transitional forms and fossils, I know any number of things, but there are plenty questions I couldn't answer. 

My inability to respond with the correct mechanisms does not disprove evolution.

To finish up, I'd just like to point out a bit of projection in this meme. Christians who buy into creationism cannot explain how skydude put the universe together or created humans. In fact, there are a lot of things Christians can't explain about their god or their religion, like why bad things happen to good people, why good people who don't believe what they do are condemned to hell, or why Yahweh didn't have a better plan for humankind's salvation than to sacrifice himself to himself. What they often say is "God works in mysterious ways." So if you can't explain these things, are you wrong?

Meme #2: "If mutations cause a loss of DNA information how a life form gave rise to more advanced life?"

A lot of creationism memes are just plain ignorant, and this one fits into that category. Like, meme-making person, learn something about evolution. I mean seriously! 

The meme relies on the notion that new forms can only come about from "new information" or "more information" because more learning equals more knowledge. It ignores that when DNA is reproducing itself there are "copying errors" that create mutations, and it ignores that DNA can split or even fuse. I suggest you read up on the fusion of chromosome 2 to see how "loss of information" (i.e. fewer chromosomes) can lead to a "higher form."

The meme is not really worthy of more discussion than that.

Meme #3: "Lemme see if I got this correct: I survived, humans survived, but every form in between died off"

What next? If humans came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? hahahahaha! So hilarious. I mean, this is another one that is just dumb and misunderstands evolution completely. Do we really need to say that we did not come from modern monkeys? That we evolved from a common ancestor?

You would think with all the current research in genetics and even epigenetics, there wouldn't be ignorant memes like this, but it's easier to take a misunderstanding of evolution and just laugh at how stupid scientifically-minded people are. Look how dumb! "Evolutionists" don't think humans were created by a supernatural deity who exists outside of space and time and gathered some clump of dust to make the first man and then his rib to create a woman who then was enticed by a talking snake to eat a magic apple causing the fall of mankind! Idiots!

Time to put Thor's hammer away! More meme massacres on Monday! Have a great day everyone!