The DWR Sunday Religious Disservice – Second Thoughts.

@Steve

We’ve mostly done away with one set of mystical beliefs, but have fallen head first into, an arguably, worse set of beliefs.

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Grokked it for you :) –

The meme, featured in the August 17, 2025, post on Dead Wild Roses, employs a stark visual metaphor to critique the interplay between declining religion and emerging cultural absurdities. The upper panel depicts a school bus, labeled with the text: “The less religion there is in the world, the more rational and intelligent people become. It’s good religion is declining.” This statement reflects a secularist argument, positing that the erosion of religious influence fosters rationality—a claim rooted in Enlightenment ideals, though contested by data showing complex correlations between religiosity and cognitive metrics.

The lower panel shatters this optimism with brutal irony: a train, emblazoned with “Pregnant men” and a faint cross in the background, barrels into the bus, reducing it to wreckage. The phrase “pregnant men” serves as a hyperbolic jab, likely targeting transgender or gender-fluid concepts that defy biological norms—ideas some conservatives decry as irrational, especially when amplified by media or policy debates. The collision suggests that the decline of religion has not ushered in enlightenment but rather a new wave of perceived lunacy, undermining the initial assertion.

This two-panel structure mimics a classic bait-and-switch: the first frame lures with a plausible thesis; the second delivers a sardonic rebuttal. The cross, subtly present, may imply religion’s lingering critique of such shifts, while the American flag on the train hints at a cultural context—perhaps the U.S.’s polarized discourse on gender. The meme’s intent is clear: to mock the notion that abandoning religion inevitably yields reason, instead painting a picture of a world where dogma’s absence breeds its own brand of intellectual debacle. Its tone, sharp and unsparing, aligns with the blog’s penchant for dismantling sacred cows with a twist of dark humor.

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