David and Goliath 2012

 

As you may have previously surmised, I am not into rock music. Classical is more my style. So, prior to a few days ago, if someone had dropped the name Brandon Flowers while conversing with me, I would have been completely clueless.  Not so today. Although I’ve not listened to him sing, and I cannot name any of his hit songs, I will now call myself one of Brandon Flowers’ fans. Why?

While on a concert tour this summer, Brandon was being interviewed on a Norwegian TV show when the host asked him questions about his Mormon faith. After Brandon responded with positive remarks about prayer, the Church, etc. the host brought out another guest, the famous atheist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, true to form, launched into an attack on Joseph Smith, whom he called a “charlatan,” and the Book of Mormon, which he called “an obvious fake.”

It was apparent that Brandon was surprised by this deliberate and cynically planned ambush. The goal of the show seemed to be: Let’s humiliate this Mormon guy -- and don't give him a real opportunity to respond.

So, after Dawkins spewed forth his huge disdain for the Mormon faith (looking directly at Brandon as he did so), Brandon responded: “The book's been studied and torn apart and looked at — and I am not one of the professors that have done it — but to call this man a charlatan, I take offense to it.” He also told Dawkins that he (Dawkins) “needed to do his research” (on the Church and the Book of Mormon). Dawkins huffed that he had done his research, “obviously.” 

Brandon, of course, was absolutely right. Real scholars who have actually done honest research on the Book of Mormon, undoubtedly would agree that there were tell-tale signs that Dawkins had done no true research. His argument against the Book of Mormon was a "straw man" argument that would earn Dawkins a C-minus in any college logic class. Dawkins, in fact, is himself the charlatan -- a person who pretends to have expert knowledge or skill that he does not have. He specializes in sound bites, and he has no real interest in the truth. Obviously!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8uEr69s5nQ&feature

Time to Stamp Out "Meme"

Several times recently, as I was reading something on the internet, I tripped over the word “meme.” Judging by the context, I surmised that the word was akin to motif, meaning a recurring theme, idea, or design as found in music, literature, or art. However, when I attempted to parse the “meme” of President Obama’s use of teleprompters, I was mystified. If “meme” was akin to motif, it also obviously carried with it an aspect of derision, as an object of ridicule.

I looked up “meme” in my Webster’s New World Dictionary Third College Edition (copyright 1988)—it was not to be found. The word apparently came into usage sometime after 1988. So, I resorted to Wikipedia. As it turns out, “meme” is jargon concocted by Richard Dawkins. . . . . Enough said? (Consider the source?)

The word's meaning only recently, it seems, has mutated and insinuated itself into the mainstream media as the fad term in use by pseudo-intellectuals and talking heads (hence, the Obama-teleprompter- “meme”—which makes absolutely no sense). One mutation of the word’s meaning is, according to “the daily meme” website:

“In the context of . . . blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it’s some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on. I generally consider these to be actual questions and not some multiple choice quizzes that determine some result at the end (what color you are most like, what cartoon character are you, what 80s movie are you).”
Dawkins originally contrived the word to describe “self-replicating and evolving ideas.” He thinks that the origins and perpetuation of ideas have much in common with self-replicating genes. I know. It is nonsensical. The thing that you must understand, however, is that particular ideas that are “memes” to Dawkins are more especially those that he disagrees with and thinks ridiculous—viruses of the mind, as it were—such as religion.

Ironically, Dawkins uses no “science” to validate this gene-like “meme” notion; and logic fails. On the other hand, if he only meant it as a metaphor or a simile (a figure of speech), it is neither compelling nor illuminating. Dawkins’ specialty is reductionism (any method or theory of reducing data, processes, or statements to seeming equivalents that are less complex or developed: usually a disparaging term), to his own detriment.

What to do with “meme,” then? I recommend that every time you hear or read the word “meme” presented with any kind of seriousness, that you feel pity for the person who used the term, just as you would for any verbal fad follower. You might ask them what they mean by “meme.” See if they can define it, or if they know its origins, or if they only know it in its mutations. You might also suggest to them that the baggage attached to the term, its nebulous meanings, and it’s faddism make it a distasteful and annoying blight on the English language and adds nothing to a good conversation, nor brings any illumination to the mind.