Science Memes
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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If you are here asking: "Is this a science meme?"
Probably, yes. We use the Dawkins definition of meme: a replicating idea, not just an image macro with a fact on it. A good post here doesn't need to teach you something. It needs to make you ask something: who, what, where, when, and especially why or how.
Science isn't a filing cabinet of facts, it's a conversation. For example, a photo of an eel or other localized wildlife counts because most people never see one, and wonder is the first step of inquiry. A car meme counts if it makes you curious about what's under the bonnet. If you want to talk about something you noticed in the world, chances are someone else wants to talk about it too.
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See the pinned paper on Shitposting as Public Pedagogy if you want the academic case for why this works.
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Eh. Probably not. Protestants don’t really give a rat’s ass what the Vatican thinks, and the official position of the Roman Catholic Church on creation is “Theistic Evolution,” whereas these nonsense Protestant textbooks teach that evolution isn’t real.
Source: grew up in almost as close to Catholic as a Protestant church can get, but was still taught that the office of the papacy is “a form of Antichrist.”
How much do you care about this belief that electricty is a complete mystery? Were you even aware that this was a mainstream teaching of a small sect of Christians before you saw this meme?
I dunno if we can call Evangelicals a small sect at this time. Especially not in the US. Catholicism is a "small sect" in the US, for the most part.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism
Please note the "Global Statistics" section which notes that evangelicals exist in over 120 different countries, including countries in Europe, South America, Africa and Asia.
I don’t care at all about “this belief that electricity is a complete mystery.” It’s not a part of any form of Christianity with which I am familiar. It strikes me as the kind of thing someone might write in a children’s textbook because they themselves don’t know what they’re talking about and aren’t going to let that stop them from selling a textbook.
But I also don’t really care what the Vatican says, except as it has an impact on the world. My beliefs, as they are, are in no way affected by the Vatican.
For what it’s worth, I was never taught this nonsense. The Christian school I attended growing up was actually a phenomenal education, lacking only in specific areas like evolution. We consistently scored higher than most other area schools on everything, including science. My understanding of electricity when finishing 8th grade and moving over to public school for high school was as good, if not better, than the average middle schooler (which isn’t, you know, a profound understanding, but also not “no one knows” either).
I don’t think this particular textbook is indicative of religious education in the US in general, and it’s clearly an old textbook based on the image, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if there is some wackjob church that teaches this shit. There are crazy people in all corners of the world, after all.
All I was saying was that, in general, Protestants are more likely to care what some old textbook says than what the Vatican says. They still teach Young Earth Creation, after all. Perhaps not this textbook though.
Edit: Happy cake day, by the way!
Yep, you long-form summarized my point. For the most part, Christians in the US do have an understanding of modern phenomena, and they aren't any crazier than most Christians anywhere else on the planet.
Gotcha. Broadly I agree with that, although I will say in response to “they aren’t any crazier” part that I fear the evangelical movement in the US more than most places. They seem to not care at all about their actual religion and instead worship power. It’s disconcerting to say the least.
But it isn’t about a misunderstanding of modern phenomena, it’s about a misunderstanding of their own scripture.
The evangelical movement's outsized influence in the US is rooted in the Republican's "southern strategy" to make a big umbrella of the fringiest racist, chauvinist and fundamentalists, and use them to elect shitty hate-bait politicians.
They aren't actually powerful, someone just handed them a really big megaphone.