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.