Monday Meme Madness - Dumb Atheists Ain't Accept my Evidence Edition

It's the first Monday of November, and that might mean there are elections in your area. So after you laugh at these dumb memes, go get informed on all the candidates and ballot initiatives!

I have posted several weeks of creationist memes, so this week I went looking for just atheism memes, and woo boy, did I find some silly ones. Let's get right to it!

Meme #1 "Atheism I find atheist (sic) to be the most miserable people on the planet! Why? Because they are trying to deny they have a FATHER... even though they themselves are proof!"

Can I just say that I love how pissed off stock photo dude is in the picture? I love the steam coming out of his ears, and that frown! That is some nice illustrating right there. Yes, that picture proves it! Atheist are the most miserable people on the planet! That picture has convinced me.

Skipping over the illiterately singular word atheist, my first complaint about this meme is esthetic. I don't like the change of font and justification. Why, oh why, is that middle section centered in the column? I'm not a fan of that cursive why. That's really fussy. I'm not sure why it's necessary. What is being communicated with that font? Also, why the all-caps on father?! Did you really mean to internet shout that word?

I also wonder if the meme maker actually knows any atheists. I know lots of atheists, and they don't seem any more or less miserable than any Christian or other theist out there. Sure, life has its challenges, and there are deaths, illnesses, problems, etc. So, there may be times when anyone, theist or atheist is sad, or "miserable."

And do I have to add that there are places chock full of atheists. A lot of eastern religions do not require a deity, so does this mean that they are miserable as well?

Oh, wait, no, sorry. This person is clearly only concerned with Christianity. The quote from Psalms is a clear message that the only way not to be miserable is to be Christian. My guess is this person has no clue about other religions or what goes on in secular nations.

Now, the actual rationale for saying atheists are miserable makes no sense to me. Obviously the meme-maker means father in the sense of heavenly father, Yahweh, not our dad. Why on earth would we be miserable about not believing in a "father"? And in what way are we proof?

I don't know if this person is trying to imply that our presence indicates we came from two parents (most of us have a mother and a father and even in the case of gay and lesbian couples there is genetic material from male and female), therefore our presence on this earth means we had some ultimate creator, i.e. the God of Christianity.

Let's just get this straight, we have natural explanations for why we are here that do not require some supernatural being. We are not proof of any deity, and I have seen no evidence for any creator.

I think I have a headache from this meme.

Meme #2: "Butthurt atheists go online... make scumbag atheist meme against christians because they're too open minded and advanced to take a joke"

My main question is why is Richard Dawkins being used to illustrate this meme? I'm very confused about why that was the image of choice.

Next up on the complaint train, why can't these people use proper punctuation and capitalization? I mean, I make typos, but I'm not making a 21-word meme! I'm writing whole paragraphs. Like, proof-read your shit!

I like the bit of poisoning the well in this meme with the epithets "butthurt" and "scumbag." The assumption is that atheist memes are only ever because the atheists in question got a logical spanking and they are upset. They choose to run to a safe medium where they don't have to respond to the perfectly reasonable Christian apologist.

Now, this may in fact be the case sometimes. I won't try to claim every atheist is some wonder of reason and logic. Certainly, I've seen my share of mocking posts and memes from atheists. And I think the same could be said for lots of groups. Getting "butthurt" is not unique to any group.

From a logic point of view, I don't understand the end. They are too open-minded and advanced to take a joke? Is that sarcasm? 

This is a terrible meme: it is a form of name-calling, dismissing atheists as butthurt and unwilling to engage; Dawkins is a bad choice to illustrate; the "they" in "they're" is ambiguous. It's not really witty. I don't feel any sting of this. The criticism, such as it is, just seems stupid to me.

I see this meme-maker seeing some atheists memes he or she doesn't understand and saying "Stupid atheists! I'll show them!" 

I guess I should be happy they stuck with one font.

Meme #3 "When a Christian confronts me with evidence I can't refute... ...I just pretend nothing was ever said like all atheists."

Again with the Richard Dawkins! I don't know if this is referring to a video that was in some creationist film and you can see on YouTube somewhere in which he realized that his interviewers were creationists, and he was stunned. I know creationists like to treat it as some gotcha, but if you've ever thought you were in one situation and found out you were in another, you can relate to Dawkins. 

The sad thing is that the internet never forgets and doesn't care about your contextualization.

I don't know if that's the case, but what I will say is there are plenty of atheists out there in various venues talking with Christians and refuting their evidence.

Usually Christian evidence is pretty thin: (1) the Bible; (2) prophesies that came true; (3) some anecdote about praying and getting a sign. None of these are very convincing.

The Bible is just a text. It doesn't prove there was a talking snake or a dude who walked on water. It doesn't prove there is any kind of deity or that said deity drowned the earth or anything. It's evidence that various people believed in a deity and told stories about it. Some of the stories seem to have some evidence they occurred, but maybe not as written. Some of the stories were ripped from other peoples. Some, like Psalms, is poetry. 

If you actually look into prophesies, this line of reasoning isn't very convincing. Just take the favorite, that Israel would be reinstated as a nation. People actively worked for, like, a millennium to establish Israel. Jewish populations in Eastern Europe had zionist parties in the 18th and 19th centuries, and after WWII, there were battles in what was Palestine. There's no mystery. People wanted to make it come true.

And anecdotes are the worst. Oh, you prayed and five weeks later a friend invited you to church? Yeah, overwhelming. Oh, you asked god for proof and the following week you found an old Bible in the basement? That's it! I'm a believer!

Or maybe, this meme-maker thinks logical proofs are evidence? Those proofs are not convincing. I've heard so many demolished, but worst, even if you accepted the logical proofs, at best the ones I heard don't get you to the Christian god.

I don't think this meme-maker ever really engaged a skeptical atheist. If he/she did, he/she would then be a butthurt Christian posting scumbag Christian memes on the internet...

That's it for the memes! We'll see what delicious memes we find next week.