Meme Madness Monday - Where's the Evidence? Edition

Welcome to this Monday's edition of meme madness! There is so much madness, madness oozing all across the internet. Who has evidence? What counts as evidence? Before we succumb to upside-down logic of the creationist, let's just get right down to it and take a claw hammer to the stupidity.

Meme #1: You say there is no evidence of the existence of god - The fact that there is abundant evidence for god shows this to be a lie.

Okay, so memes are supposed to be pithy, so I can't fault the maker for not listing whatever he means by evidence. But the problem is, memes are supposed to be pithy yet understandable. This meme seems to be a school yard taunt. "You're stupid!" "No! YOU're stupid!"

When I've heard of the supposed evidence of "god" I usually get (1) the Bible, (2) look all around at how complex and intricately designed the world/universe is, (3) I prayed once and something happened, (4) miracles, and (5) prophesies.

To which I answer:
(1) The Bible is a set of claims, you need to prove the claims, the claim can't prove the claim. The Bible is also a clump of all kinds of stories, laws, aphorisms and poetry. Some parts being true does not automatically prove other parts.

(2) All I can say is science. There are natural explanations for how things work that don't require divine intervention. And as many have pointed out before me, there is only a tiny speck on a tiny planet that we can live. Most of our world is uninhabitable to us without serious technology. The universe is not as fine-tuned as some claim. And there is a lot of bad design in nature. It's not enough to prohibit reproduction and living, but an all-knowing all-powerful designer could have done much better.

(3) Correlation does not equal causation. Some of these supposed answered prayers too years according the claimant. Also, when a person prays and doesn't get a positive request, he/she says, oh well, it wasn't according to god's plan/the answer was no/etc. What is the point if you only get what god already planned on giving you?

(4) For every "miracle," I have found explanations that required no divine intervention.

(5) The prophesies are always unimpressive. A common one is Israel returning to its people, but really humans were working on that for a looooong time. Jews in the diaspora even had political parties dedicated to zionism and they fought after WWII to reclaim Israel. There are also unfulfilled prophesies, like the destruction of Tyre and Egypt.

I don't know what the meme-maker had in mind, but when I've heard Christians defend their god-belief, they usually get all their arguments cast aside and say "you gotta have faith."

Besides all that, the meme isn't funny or clever or anything a good meme should be. At least there are no typos. I'll grant you that.

Meme #2: We teach you how to think critically and examine evidence. Except for evolution. We will tell you WHAT to think. And don't ask embarrassing questions.

It would be at least clever if it were half true. I have watched a lot of videos about creationists, and this is a line that comes up so often: there's no evidence. Or, it's just a story.

This meme strikes me as pure projection. It really is religion that teaches you what to believe and tells you to have faith. It is religion that tells you you shouldn't ask embarrassing questions, like should a priest or preacher spend time alone with children.

And I have heard creation "scientists" say that if they come up with a finding they would believe their Bible and reject the data. The Bible dictates how the findings are to be interpreted.

For anyone interested in how evolution actually works, there is a model that has to do with how organisms procreate and in doing so pass along their genetic material. The procedure for copying DNA is imperfect and can result in copying errors that make alterations in the genetic material so that mutations arise. Sometimes it's as simple as chromosomes splitting or fusing. These errors are random, but the selections pressures dictate which organisms are well-adapted to an environment and live to reproduce and thus continue this process. 

The evidence for this is massive: genomics, the fossil record, experiments on the lab, observations in the field (just recently, a new speciation event in Galapagos finches has been noted), and the fact that we take advantage of these mechanisms in breeding and producing better fruits and vegetables. The latter is a form of intelligent design. We select the characteristics. Note that we don't always know all the outcomes of our breeding, as evidenced by experiments on the silver fox. In that experiment, selecting for one trait meant many more changes in the animal's physique.

The theory of evolution also has made testable claims: ring species, for example. Here's a bigger list of predictions. If creationists want to falsify the theory, they should work on that.

However, what creationists like to do is locate unexplained phenomena or gaps in our understanding. Or they take advantage of those areas where the science hasn't settled on a definitive answer.

What the real problem for them is, they don't have evidence. They have an old collection of books and the world does not line up with the claims of a flat earth with a dome over it.

And can I just say, it's amusing to think that the way evolution is taught in science class is just: hey kids, you all evolved from a monkey! Now go do the exercises on page 40!

Finally, why is the supposed biology teacher looking a a map? Is she supposed to be showing the holy shrine of the Galapagos where Saint Darwin had his revelation?

Finally finally, I'm glad only one word are all-caps. This shows restraint and an understanding that the reader will emphasize that word. Kudos to you, meme-maker!