It’s really hard to make humor out of ignorance. These examples are all too close to arguments I routinely and repetitively hear.
Come on, what about whales?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Those questions listed on the right hand side? Pretty sure science can actually answer a lot of thoae already actually. Not just the ticked off ones.
During my occasional forays into the (mostly) wasteland that is Facebook, I regularly get served some of the stupidest creationist arguments in that pathetic book. Seriously, just yesterday I saw “If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”. That and flat-earthers — who regularly demonstrate that they could not pass high school physics.
Hey, I did ask for directions a couple of months ago (cuz I was right on time for an appointment, but they’d moved the office!).
“All we need are some rock star science communicators like Bill Nye or Neil DeGrasse Tyson to explain things in a way that the common people can understand.”
Yeah? How’s that working for you? Rhetorical question, it isn’t! You can package science into pithy sound bites or “dumb it down” for the laymen, but that doesn’t mean squat when scientists tell people facts they don’t want to hear.
We are living in the world that Asimov and Sagan warned us about: A world where fact is determined by popular opinion rather than evidence and experimentation because actually expertise and knowledge is considered “elitist!” Everyone is allowed “their own truth” that doesn’t have to comport with objective reality and woe be to any “soulless, arrogant scientists” who come along to tell Joe and Jane Beercan they’re wrong.
“Pretty sure science can actually answer a lot of thoae already actually. Not just the ticked off ones.”
I think that’s part of the joke. “Consumers not buying it”. The joke imagines treating the argument seriously that if consumers don’t understand the science then science needs to back off. So although science can explain whales from amoebas, love of crocker spaniel, Easter Island faces, Aliens, and heliocopters, etc. that there are ignorant “c’mon” counters so science backs off on them. To make the joke particularly funny is it allows the “sciency” sounding a smelling stuff like “litmus paper” and “periodic tables” not because it’s convincing but because the “consumers” don’t understand or care about them at all. It’s just “sciency stuff”.
Why would anyone expect there not still to be monkeys?
You want idiotic arguements from creationists who know better? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kk7MVJKDoQ in which Andrew Snelling, an Australian creationist who actually has a PhD in geology who claims to “OBLITERATE All of the Geological “Proof” for Evolution.” See 34:34 in which he “proves” that continental drift was actually high-speed motion (and therefor the earth is young) because the collision of India and Asia raised the Himalayas. (That is true,) But Snelling points out that a 1 mph collision between two cars won’t cause much damage while a 100 mph collision will! Also true, but car collisions are hopeless at understanding collisions of continents!
@ 6
Because they think evolution means that one animal can mysteriously change into another species. i.e. A Capuchin monkey wakes up one morning to discover they turned into a human overnight.
@6 and @8
because they think ‘evolution’ is like it occurs in pokemon cartoons – one critter acquiring enough experience points until it can elevate to a ‘better’ / ‘more powerful’ form
or
that speciation occurs in a single generation (a crocodile giving birth to a duck)
both scenarios are NOT what science dictates – (and both are ridiculous) but that is the straw man that they argue against
Bowhead whales can live more than two centuries, and despite their extreme body mass they can avoid cancer.
I definitely want science to solve bowhead whales, and inject me with their DNA. I don’t care what whales are descended from. Unless it’s xenomorphs. I fucking hate xenomorphs.
Oh dear, to true to be funny…!
@7: Oh gods, I am stupider for having watched that. If you really want to run with the car crash analogy, it would go more like: collide the cars as slowly as you like (say, centimeters/year), but keep pushing them together with hydraulic rams — they’ll crumple very nicely. And the Himalayas are still rising because the plates are still moving. I knew this from frosh geology-for-engineers; no one with an actual degree could be that ignorant. Snelling has to know that he’s bullshitting.
Brings back memories of the time I spent on talk.origins: lies, damned lies, statistics — and creationist arguments.
Also: I subscribe to academia.edu (which is a mixed bag of legitimate peer-reviewed papers, and cranks who upload their latest brain farts, like this one) and get notified of papers about (among other things) evolutionary ethics. Today it sent me “THE ETHICS OF DARWIN OR THE ETHICS OF DESIGN: HOW SCIENCE AND SOCIETY HAVE BEEN IMPACTED BY THE ERROR OF EVOLUTION” by some Baptist pastor, which again makes the usual crap claims about Darwin promoting atheism, influencing Hitler, etc, etc.
On a relevant note: here’s a review of a book about science denial, by a prof of mine: https://social-epistemology.com/2026/06/12/a-review-of-gabriele-contessas-science-denial-tommaso-piazza/. I think I’m obliged to read it.
Steve, I took a look:
Special-purpose definition if I ever saw one. Motivated.
Me, I make it that denialism is defined by the rejection of that which is denied, not by its basis.
@ 2. stevewatson :
Yup – and the same very much goes for Climate Demiers too. The same bullshit PRATTs* over and over and over and fucking over again. So over it.
@5. woozy : Yeah, fair point.
PS. No goals yet and half-time in the Australia vs Paraguay World Cup Soccer game. Play about to resume now.
.* Points Refuted Already a Thousand Times.
[StevoR, you know you can use an escape *]
* I mean \* shows as * when escaped.
It’s markdown, so don’t swim upstream, go with the flow.
(Let the symbols free! Told you 3 times now)
@ ^ John Morales : Okay thanks.
PS. Still no goals scored yet.
Well, that’s soccer for ya.
(My mate once opined that’s why soccer fans are thuggish and need to be separated, whereas Aussie Rules fans can mingle and barrack without aggro. There’s plenty enough scoring action on the field in footy to sublimate it)