Do your own research?

I can taste the irony. Or maybe that's just blood

LOL, sooo close and then WHOOSH, totally missed the point

This one makes my teeth itch

The last section of the comic kinda hits deep to me because that's exactly what happened once I worked up the nerve to leave Christianity. That was before I noticed the title, which just made it ironic.

I might still be religious if the creationist community didn't exist. I met a lot of creationists in college. It was a mild culture shock. I believed in God and evolution. No issues.
They kept pestering me to look into the arguments. Long story, short: I eventually did. I just kept finding liar after liar. Found the lies didn't stop on at pseudoscience either.
Thank you, creationist community. My life is better now.
- There's an old joke that the best way to create an atheist is to have them read the bible cover to cover. The more you know, the less it makes sense.
- Same. The denomination I grew up in was adamant that the Bible had to be literally true in its entirety or none of it was valid at all. One I'd convinced myself that evolution was real and the universe was more than 6000 years old, I was like... "Welp, guess I gotta be an atheist now."

Coming from the "I did my own research" crowd this shit is mind boggling. Aren't they the ones disagreeing with the scientific community regularly?

Waking up as a conservative must be like

Oh boy time to look for credible information on Facebook!

They have the horse blinders on and also have the fucking mouthpiece attached that makes them spew the rhetoric they see on headlines of Fox. And don’t you dare ask for any further details because that’s just asking to hear the same headline again
- Omfg it's infuriating...
  When we had Trump and all the Russian investigations my dad would send me some bullshit fox news opinion article and then I would spend hours going over the actual information from the government, id go over the hearing, I even explained numerous times how this or that individual uses specific words as they have legal meaning from xyz source.
  His reply would be another fucking Fox news opinion article.

Remember the study that linked lower intelligence to right wing beliefs?

That's why so many people become way more liberal after they leave home and go to higher education, they literally grow their brain.

- That's why I am leery of people who live in the same small town all their lives. How can you have any reasonable perspective on others? But you go to university and meet a broad spectrum of people with diverse ideas and backgrounds and you come to realize you don't know very much yet. And you learn. That's why conservatives hate higher education and rant and rave that it indoctrinates their children away from being conservative, it is SUPPOSED to because you are being EDUCATED away from the beliefs of stupidity they hold. Because conservative beliefs are stupid.

Anyone else think a lot of conservatives feel this way?

Nah, too self aware to be conservative. They've already done their research in the form of listening to half a dozen right-wing commentators. They're all saying the same thing so that must make it true.
I would say something like "this comic goes both ways" but it is way too stupid anyway so im not giving it any credit.
A lot of everyone feels this way, really.
If the world will suddenly give birth to an ultimate rational argument to go conservative, we'll face the same issues. It's just that for now feeling and understanding coincide.
It is very important to keep in mind when holding any political discussion. We can be wrong. We are emotional about our positions. Doesn't necessarily make them any wrong, just makes us attached to them beyond pure absolute cold reason.
- I think awareness of these biases can be enough to avoid them. I am certainly a leftist but if a conservative position makes sense, and has logic, reasoning, and data behind it, then I would likely support that position. Dogma has no place in the modern world.

"Flaired users only"

How very pro free speech they are!

There was literally a popup that I saw posted on here a little while ago from r/conservative that tells you essentially "this is a conservative safe space, difference of opinion is not welcome, we do not wish to have outsiders try to change our beliefs. This is for conservatives to discuss conservativism."
They're a fucking joke.
- "Look at me, I'm the snowflake now."
- Are you upset at the hypocrisy or the concept itself?
- And just like hexbears all their focus and attention go to liberals lmao. Same energy in both circles.

"Anyone else think a lot of liberals feel this way?"

/r/Conservative, "Flaired users only."

...

Republican projection once again I see. They are nothing if not consistent (and predictable).

And masterful gaslighters

They posted about a study on "do your own research" today on Vice. Very interesting read.

Scientists Explain Why ‘Doing Your Own Research’ Leads to Believing Conspiracies https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7bjpm/scientists-explain-why-doing-your-own-research-leads-to-buying-conspiracies

There goes every doctoral thesis.
- doctoral theses aren't researched with a google search.

Da bibble is full of the truths I need. There's no smaller seed than a mustard seed, and bats are another variety of bird. Is it the truth, or is it what you've been told you must believe lest ye risk ostracizing yourself from your peers?

I feel projection of right wing levels.

There's no smaller seed than a mustard seed
There might be more to that one than you think.
Here was the only group in antiquity with a different explanation for the sower parable (that it was about physical creation of the cosmos) talking about the mustard seed:
That which is, he says, nothing, and which consists of nothing, inasmuch as it is indivisible — (I mean) a point — will become through its own reflective power a certain incomprehensible magnitude. This, he says, is the kingdom of heaven, the grain of mustard seed
Pseudo-Hippolytus Refutations 5.4
This group kept describing seeds as being indivisible points that make up all things and were the originating cause of the universe.
Language pretty much straight out of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura where describing the atomism of Epicureanism for a Roman audience couldn't use the Greek atomos ('indivisible') and used the word for 'seed' instead.
In a book widely popular in the Roman empire 50 years before Jesus was born.
In fact, Lucretius's book is not only the only surviving book from antiquity to explicitly describe survival of the fittest being the mechanism by which mutants in nature survived or died off based on adaptation, but specifically used the language of "seed falling by the wayside of a path" to describe failed biological reproduction.
Again, in a book 80 years before a guy allegedly talking about how only what survived of randomly scattered seeds multipled and the seed that fell by the wayside of a path did not. In a public saying that was the only one in the earliest gospel to canonically have a "secret explanation" later on. Why were they so threatened by this saying?
There may have been more to the context around what these sayings about seeds from a guy killed by request of religious orthodoxy leadership were about in a culture where also from the 1st century a Rabbi was recorded as saying "why do we study the Torah? To know how to answer the Epicurean."
Don't just take at face value what cannonical Christianity says with its damage control versions of secret explanations and boring ass nonsense about 'faith growing.'
- Both your comments are fascinating but I'm not sure what then was Jesus trying to say when speaking about the seeds? In most of His actions Jesus speaks out against the empires of man, how does this lend into that narrative?
  Full disclosure: I consider myself an original Christian, I believe the good news(gospel) is that when Jesus returns He will establish a fair, equitable, and just society here on earth, resurrect everyone then invite them to participate.
Don't forget the fact that the Bible requires that any woman who isn't a virgin when married be executed. So, pretty much every republican woman.
If they actually followed the Bible, there wouldn't be any Republicans left.
- The Old Testament only applies when it’s convenient
- It also gives instructions to priests on how to perform abortions if a woman isn't faithful to her husband!

Conservatives & strawman arguments go together like peanut butter & jelly.

And projection
- Can confirm, pb & j & projection sandwiches are the bomb

"Science: two biological genders!"
"Oh yeah? Also science: 3.5 billion years of evolution."
"I don't wanna talk about this anymore, I have a headache."

...and so it goes...

Fun fact: Modern science does not say that there are only two biological genders but that even on a biological level, there is a spectrum. For example, there are measurable differences between the brains of a woman and a transgender man and there are more viable chromosome combinations than XY and XX.
- Klinefelter syndrome with XXY is the most common of the non-standard combinations, but only account for about 1/1000 of male births. Combinatorics of sex chromosome aneuploidies such as XXX, XXY, XXXY and so on does only give a finite number of combinations.
  I do not really see why this argument is brought up so often. Is it neccesary to speak of chromosmes to validate gender identity?
- Heart's in the right place but can I just break down "biological gender" for a sec? Gender is more or less a Victorian euphemism for "sex". The word's original usage and origins are actually close to "genre" like book genre and in modern usage it works closer to "genre" as it describes an internal sense of affiliation to a cultural or phenotypic category or abstention from category drawn culturally broadly along reproductive groups. It's a fuzzy line that we don't use biology to try and police on purpose. It's more the realm of psychology and wrapped up in questions of what supports a fulfilling life of interpersonal connection.
  Gender is a lot of things but if you are talking about sexual characteristics and intersex people it's important to distinguish and highlight that discussions about sex characteristics and gender distinctions are two separate conversations with two mostly unrelated minorites. Very often I see intersex people's existence being used as a conservative gotcha for support of trans folk like myself and... It doesn't work. They know trans and intersex folk aren't the same thing and you are trying to red herring them off of the discussion they really want to have. Also... Intersex issues deserve more individual spotlight where they aren't mashed in with transgender advocacy. They have their own unique battles with beaurcracy, society, mental health and so on. Give em some love sometimes. Talk about how our social concepts of binary sex has medical and social consequences for them. They need the press too.
  Severing the old euphemism "gender" completely from the word "sex" so we can better have these discussions is a start. A lot of Conservatives use the two interchangeably to imply that gender doesn't exist, to them it is just a synonym for sex so word combos like "biological gender" is developing into a unique alt right dog whistle with it's own google alt-right web result pit so just wanna give you a heads up on that front.
Basic biology: there are 2 genders
Basic math: 15 is not divideable by 4
- Mathematical biology: the amount of genders is not a natural number (assuming it's a spectrum), but it is countable
biological gender
Is that something like clockwork joke or liquid ennui?
Because of the fact that it takes roughly 100,000,000 years for DNA to double in complexity, some scientists have estimated that we actually are closer to 7 billion years of necessary evolution to create us. That just raises more questions though since our planet is around 4.5 billion years old.

I think the content speaks for itself. It's shit.

But let's talk about the typography: as someone who uses LaTeX, and irrationally hates bad typography, this one seems targeted. Look at the absolute state of the fourth panel! Ewwww. The river--- I just can't!

The content is great!
the original comic is exactly why deprogramming cult members is hard: they recoil at the mere hint of a thought that the base of their community and identity might be wrong
It's deeply ironic that deeply religious cult members like modern day US “conservatives” unironically post this comic

I'm sure Zach loves his comic being used against him. The gall...

LOL they keep trying to call their apologia 'research' in order to give it unwarranted respectability

Interestingly, it happens that when you don't know how to actually do research (like, can you interrogate your sources, put them in appropriate context, evaluate what they have to say critically?) you're more likely to land on disinformation sources or feed yourself confirmation bias than you would have been if you'd read what experts have to say on a given subject.

Facts don't care about your feelings

Unless they are alternative facts. Alternative facts are very feeling dependent.
- I said it as a joke because the way facts are presented and framed matter. "Facts don't care about your feelings" is something Ben Shapiro likes to say when he misinterpret facts.

This is true of every single partisan, anarchist, liberal, conservative, whatever.

bOtH sIdEs!
Some people do form opinions based on reality...
- Yeah and it's caused me to lose friends and limit contact with certain family members who only care about what conservatives say is "real"
And centrists, for that matter.
- Especially centrist. "I don't do anything that feels too extreme", sure this is based on facts
I’d say it’s true of idiots regardless of their political orientation, yes. But there exist non-idiots who can change their opinion
I mean you're right that we all form opinions based on emotions and the social pressure from our tribe, and it takes deliberate effort to counter that. I guess you're getting downvoted due to the echo of "both sides", but that wasn't how I read your comment.
- The fucking irony of the "flaired users only" tag above it is just so funny.
He has a point.
If you can't describe at least a few downsides to your tribe's vision for humanity you haven't asked enough questions. Extremists, almost by definition, don't see the downsides to their own views. This is why they don't like "centrists"; we ask questions they don't like the answers to.
- I think what they don't like is being told there's some sort of 'middle ground' with groups like Fascists. Like are we compromising on which minorities aren't allowed to exist, or which groups are 'un pure' and forced to leave (said) country?
  There's also the rather awkward point the 'centrist' starts parroting right-wing talking points...

Damn this is a good one

this could work for liberals or conservatives

note i said liberals not leftists