Sigh. . . A Head-Exploding, Religious Propaganda Piece Disguised As A Funny Internet Meme

Today, I came across an image/writing that caused me to shake my head so furiously that it almost launched from my body, and also caused my blood to boil to the point I could sizzle bacon on my lap. I don't want to cause this site to become any more mind numbing than it already is, so I'll refer you to a link rather than post the image here. Now it is extremely late, so I am going to keep this rant to the bare minimum. I've never ever seen any definition for atheist that has come even close to that, and I understand it was meant to be humorous, but it is a textbook example of completely missing the point. This little meme isn't describing any fundamental necessities for being an atheist, but rather seems to be a shot at abiogenesisists or big bang theorists (and of course, the always necessary jab at evolutionary biologist). It should be noted that a person can be one of the above but none of the others. Actually, a Christian -- who probably wouldn't call themselves an atheist by the modern accepted definition -- can also be a version of any of the above terms (except atheist, as I already just explained).

Once again, it is an example of a certain group that feels the irresistible need to attack an issue that doesn't even need to be attacked. It is a demonstration of specific people that need to describe an entire group of people in a completely fallacious fashion in order to make them look bad. It gets a little tiring having to watch both sides throw completely vindictive (and even worse, unfounded) pot shots at the apparent opposition. You'll have a few atheists painting all Christians or other religious groups as ignorant and fear mongering and intolerant, when the reality is it is only a very small minority of vocal fundamentalist radicals. Then on the other side, you have the originally mentioned piece of propaganda, which is just as erroneous and unfair, especially since lot of the things described don't necessarily even connect or relate.

There seems to be this vicious, hate-filled desire to create people of differing views into the enemy. Of course, all this does is create an endless cycle of needless bitterness and friction. This unnecessary battle distracts all groups of the greater purposes such as promoting love and helping the needy. The bigger problem is, pieces of propaganda like this serve no purpose other than to infuriate one group and allow another to laugh at the previously mentioned group's expense. Of course the real kicker is when you look around at the sites that host an image like this, you find comments like, 'Satan's minions doing his evil work' or 'fools destined for eternal damnation', which shows the hate filled bile this stuff fuels.

The unfortunate thing is this will never lead to any type productive or enriching dialogue between these groups, but rather just stir up more rage that leads to completely IQ reducing 'debates' (i.e. insult exchanges). The goal should be understanding, and a promotion of community despite differing views rather than inciting unnecessary tension. As stated before, if some would actually do historical research or be open to hearing the other side, they would find out a lot of the current debate is relatively new (this past century), and at one time things like science and religion lived relatively harmoniously together. As I previously mentioned in past posts, belief of certain components of science do not automatically make one an atheist or religious (thus why the above meme is so infuriatingly pointless).

I've now spent way more time on this tonight than I planned. I definitely want to compose a more in-depth post on this topic in the future.