One of the saddest facts in religious discussions, and I believe one of the main reasons people remain atheists, is that so many people are incapable of hearing other views out. When Bible Brain was still just two Facebook pages, the article format would be a meme with a large block of explanatory text, rarely being less than 3 paragraphs. 9 times out of 10, those who commented would focus entirely on the memes, demonstrating, and in some cases outright admitting, they did not even read the accompanying explanation.
With a few exceptions, most God Squad Apologetics posts have been transferred to Bible Brain and turned into articles, including one featuring the meme seen to the right. The original meme is satirical; it very intentionally does not accurately represent the views it is criticising. Satire, by a fairly standard definition, is "the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues".
Just as with Bible Brain's current article format, God Squad Apologetics and Path Treader Ministries memes were always used as headers, or book covers, and were never supposed to be taken alone. Taking them on their own would result in very serious misunderstandings. In this case, no less than 15 paragraphs accompanied the original meme. Yet, these went largely ignored by the atheistic commenters. One of them, who admitted "You are right, I didn't read your full post, apologies", completely missed the satirical nature of the meme, and initially accused me of setting up straw men. Another sarcastically remarked "You made a few typos", before going through each of the points in the meme and "correcting" them. In the header image, I have copied and pasted his "corrections" (I had to add "created our universe" to the first point so it still made sense).
With the atheist's "corrections", the original article is completely untouched. The Big Bang and abiogenesis are still anti-scientific nonsense that contradict just about every relevant natural law we have discovered. Climate Change still has a long track record of failed doomsday predictions, indicating it is about as valid as Harold Camping's end of the world failure in May 2011, and the alleged Mayan prediction that 2012 would be the end of the world. Life is still known to begin at conception. Homosexuality would still see a natural decline, rather than increase, if indeed it was genetic, of course due to the fact homosexuality prevents reproduction. The gender binary, far from being disproven, is literally essential for the continuation of the human race, and has been for 6,000 years.
All of the above are facts. If you believe in the Big Bang, abiogenesis, or the gay gene, you are denying science. If you don't believe in the gender binary, or the law of biogenesis (note how I have to mention that one twice because it really is such a well established fact), you are a science denier. If you are so gullible that you believe mankind is having such a negative impact on the world's climate, we're going to die in the next decade if we don't fork over tonnes of cash and give it to the oh so reliable government, you are a science denier. That's not to say we shouldn't be good stewards, of course. The Bible does teach that we should be looking after our environment, and it can be damaged by our activities, though not to the apocalyptic extent described by money-grubbing fear mongers.
The irony is, by attacking the meme while leaving the actual article untouched, those who accused me of setting up straw men set up their own straw men. Meanwhile, although they defined their anti-scientific beliefs, none of them ended up defending those anti-scientific beliefs, nor did they begin to show Christianity and science were in conflict. All they did was show an apparent inability to read 15 paragraphs. Even if they were only able to focus on 1 paragraph at the same time, they'd see a disconnect between the meme. For example, here is the original text on climate change:
"On the flip side of origins is eschatology. Here, we move from false stories about the past to incorrect predictions about the future. In our modern world, climate change (which was once called global warming) has become a serious concern. Yet, ever since the 70s (even before then), doomsday predictions have failed time and time again (hence the name change). Climate Alarmists, rather than admit defeat, have merely slid back into the shadows, claiming they weren't wrong, they just miscalculated. Compare this with religious doomsday preachers (and believe me, my unbelieving friends, Christians find them just as annoying as you do), who bring a scourge upon the entire Church with every false prediction."
That's quite a disconnect from the satirical version in the meme. Notice, not even a mention of cow farts. In the meme, yes, cow farts, because some climate alarmists genuinely do suggest cows are a major contributor to climate change through constantly farting, and that we could reduce our impact on the environment if we stopped breeding them for burgers and ate bugs instead. Thus, satire. I exaggerated a genuine claim to make a point. But in the text, there was no exaggeration. It is a fact that climate change was originally called global warming. It is a fact that after multiple failed predictions about the ice caps melting and flooding us out, the name was changed. It is a fact that throughout its ideological history, climate alarmists have constantly warned that we are never more than a decade away from some climate disaster with catastrophic implications. Even the excuse "we weren't wrong, we just miscalculated" is a genuine excuse climate alarmists use. Even one of the atheists who commented on the original post had previously told me "Climate predictions haven't been wrong, they have been correct within the bounds of their uncertainty, and those bounds have been gradually shrinking".
But of course, that's hardly an excuse. For one thing, yes, they absolutely have been wrong. If someone comes along and says to you "in 10 years, New York will be underwater", then 20 years later it's still going strong, that prediction is, by definition, wrong. Even I was told by my geography teacher, well over 14 years ago, that it wouldn't be long before snow would cease to fall in England. Well, turns out, a little over a week ago, on the 27th of November 2021, we had snow. And theoretically, there's more to come tomorrow (December 7th 2021). My weather app is more accurate than climate doomsday predictions, and the number of times that thing has got me caught in the rain is no joke.
Of course, in spite of the fact the Bible tells us only God knows when the end will come, Christians actually have our fair share of Doomsday preachers. Harold Camping, for example, predicted a giant earthquake would ring in the end times in May 2011. 10 years later, Harold Camping is dead, but we live on. And people use failed Doomsday preachers to smear Christianity. Now tell me, how is it that Christianity, which explicitly teaches that no man knows the day or the hour (Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32), still suffers when Christians go rogue and claim to know the day or the hour, yet when Climate Alarmists so consistently fail, you're still called a science denier if you don't want to pay extra taxes or support No Meat Mondays?
But I repeat myself. The original article made the simple point: Those who so often claim science has refuted Christianity often, dare I say always, have some very anti-scientific ideas. In this article, I want to point out that these same people apparently lack the depth of thought to read beyond a meme. Not all of them, of course. That would be a stupid thing to say. But apparently, it's a lot easier to criticise the format of a satirical meme than deal with the fact that, scientifically speaking, when you stray from the Bible, you're going to end up believing complete nonsense. And sometimes, that nonsense even breeds further sin. Far better to trust the infallible God than the craziest things human beings spit out.