Then the article tries to make points about said memes without any kind of back-up whatsoever. The point is that memes are not fully thought-out, totally convincing arguments, which is true. I might criticize such a meme or argue against the opinion it represents, but I would never suggest that such memes should be trashed or disallowed. I disagree with many such memes, but recognize that people sometimes express their opinions through that medium.
Whether such ideas or opinions are expressed well or poorly is not the measure that should be applied to whether they should be allowed or not. But, to say that all of them should be "thrown in the trash" is ridiculous and borders on being a censorship issue. They rarely express an opinion in a convincing way, I think. Memes of all types are simplistic, of course. Posting such a meme on an Internet venue is yet another choice of someone who wishes to express something. That someone has turned it into a visual meme is another choice of expression. Penn Jillete's statement, combined with a photo, is obviously his opinion about the matter.
#Penn jillette into the trash it goes free
That sort of flies in the face of our tradition of free expression here in the United States, I think. And a society whose foundation was authority had a vested interest in creating a mode of empirical research that was unquestionable. A civilization interested in racial and gender hierarchies naturally created such orders and hierarchies in elements, living things and even among scientific disciplines. Technology had developed to a point where men could make observations of celestial bodies or microorganisms that weren’t detectable by the human eye, so the entire concept of observation itself needed to be revised. The obsessions with making measurements and relevant distinctions derived from a political and economic context where quantification, division and the establishment of borders were crucial to society. Thus, science had to reflect the influence of a mindset where domination and control were all-important. Europe at the time was developing colonial empires. Science was developed by men in a very male-centric culture. Just like the art or language of that era, science is a creation of its time. I keep saying that it’s not like we discovered the scientific method like mountaineers discovered snow-capped mountains in equatorial Africa. The development of modern scientific inquiry took place in a certain historical and cultural context.
I honestly couldn’t care less about theological discussions, but if you’re going to talk about religion and suffering, then you’re obliged to recognize that the matter has been addressed more than a few times by theologians.
Let’s begin by admitting that, on the spectrum of sophistication for arguments, bad-things-happen-therefore-God-doesn’t-exist is on the crude end. There’s so much wrong with this meme I don’t know where to start. There are plenty of emotional needs in play when we talk about religious belief as well as the lack thereof, and we’ve all just learned to rationalize beliefs we didn’t arrive at through rational means. The idea that the foundation of our worldview is nothing more than data processing, and everyone would come to the same correct conclusion if they really thought about it, is something that panders to our self-image as rational decision-makers but isn’t accurate. Some people are more comfortable with the prospect of making a Type I error rather than a Type II error. Belief or lack thereof is more a function of personality, or the bonds you formed (or didn’t) with the faith community in which you grew up. Saying science is better than religion isn’t saying much, but let’s not make science seem like something it’s not.Ĭome on. Penn Jillette is a great magician, but even he can’t make an agenda disappear. I’m going to look at three memes that I think misrepresent freethought and critical thinking. Sometimes, however, they’re the medium of our discourse, so the bite-sized bits of our thinking that they represent should at least be in the ball park.