You know what the difference is between this meme and a Fundamentalist Christian imposing his geocentrist religious worldview on Science?
Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just that the Fundamentalist religion being imposed is Nihilism.
To thunder loudly, “You and all you love are insignificant because of your physical size!!!!” is every bit as much of a theological fallacy as crying “You do not matter unless your planet is at the center of the universe!!!”
You and all you love are tiny compared to the nearest tree. You are also enormous compared to the nearest flea. So what?
I think there is an element of sadism at work in memes like this. Sure, I get it: there is a psychological state that gets something out telling off Fundamentalists and making them look and feel stupid. And if that were the only audience for stupid memes like this, I wouldn’t care. But such memes are also read by teenagers contemplating suicide, fathers mourning the murder of their daughter, women trapped in loveless, abusive marriages, and people struggling for light and hope and feeling abandoned by God. The prospect of inflicting despair on such people ought to at least cross the minds of those who toss out such reckless roundhouse punches at their culture war enemies. Wars kill civilians.
Meanwhile, the Christian tradition says to all such dumb appeals to mere Bigness that God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Don’t be bullied by crude grade school philosophy that says, in the final analysis, that a tall SS officer is worth more than short Albert Einstein.
Advertisement
