Are you familiar with Poe’s Law?  From wikipedia:

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.

The core of Poe’s law is that a parody of something extreme by nature becomes impossible to differentiate from sincere extremism. A corollary of Poe’s law is the reverse phenomenon: sincere fundamentalist beliefs being mistaken for a parody of that belief.

I guess what I’m saying is that I grew up in a community where creationism and the scientific method lived side-by-side.

So did parody and solemnity.

I quickly learned that creationism was not so much about the “reality” of a young universe as it was a set of code words we used to dupe those who made fun of creationism.

While smartypants were talking smack about the dumb creationists and their fundamentalist religion, the creationists were running the factories and businesses in town for whom the smartypants worked.

Creationism was established to delineate the true members of a subculture from the false members and/or outsiders.

The scientific method was as valid a laboratory tool for creationists as it was for noncreationists to create new plastic polymers.

But again, it was the set of code words used during coffee breaks and lunch periods that showed who was willing to suspend their disbelief in order to belong to one group or another.

Code words as ancient as our species.

So, the next time you hear someone debating just how old the universe and our planet are, remember Poe’s Law — you should pay attention to what they’re really saying, not what their words mean on a superficial level.

Outsiders and those without a refined sense of humour will miss the nuanced reasons used by those who espouse creationism as their core belief set.

Do you belong to a particular community?

What would you do to maintain your position in a social setting?

Would you repeat the community’s code words without question or a smidgen of doubt?

Not every subculture uses tattoos, piercings and the breaking of social taboos to define themselves.

Some use words and respect the boundaries that taboos provide.