Bill Maher nails it as always:

New rule: now that they’ve finished reading the Constitution out loud, the teabaggers must call out that group of elitist liberals whose values are so antithetical to theirs. I’m talking of course about the founding fathers.

In the video, he references this crazy f*cking painting:

I want to stab my eyes out.

For those of you who aren’t up to speed with your 4chan memes, you’ve been missing out. Behold, the fingerbox:

Your typical, baseline model fingerbox.

What is it? From Encyclopedia Dramatica:

A finger box, though ostensibly a relatively simple device, is in fact a staggeringly complex machine comprised of several thousand finely crafted components. These are most often distributed in sets of nine, but the poor, the disenfranchised and the mentally handicapped have all been observed amusing themselves for hours at a time with just a single unit. Finger boxing (also referred to colloquially as ‘fingering’ and/or ‘boxing’) is a rapidly growing trend among teens aged 13-18. The first instance of the device, though in a cruder and less intricate form, was invented by Sir Eustace Henry Trollington more than 130 years ago in Dunbartonshire, Scotland.

A Finger box basically creates a variety of sensations by stimulating the nerves of the finger tip, though the fun was short-lived when a group vicious saboteurs started contaminating the devices with old razor-blades, broken glass and ebolavirus. Panic ensued as a result of the dismemberments, lock-jaw and in some cases, slow and inexorable deaths. This led to the inevitable banning of the devices by the UK parliament in 1919, with the rest of the developed world quickly following suit.

No, really, what is it?! Know Your Meme gives a great explanation, but basically the fingerbox is a way of ferreting out newcomers on forums. Someone will post a picture of a fingerbox, at which point everyone who’s in on the joke will compliment the original poster on the quality of his/her fingerbox, or wax nostalgic about fingerboxes they used to own. Inevitably, the trap is sprung when someone asks “what is a fingerbox?” The trollers then proceed to lol vigorously at the n00b. Pretty stupid, right?

That’s what I thought, until I realized this phenomenon is analogous to bizarre religious doctrines like the Trinity. Many ambitious people have endeavored to explain a triune God who sent himself to earth to be killed so humans could be forgiven in his own eyes, but it remains a perplexing part of Christian dogma.

However, it may not be important whether belief in the Trinity actually makes sense. Like the fingerbox (or a secret handshake or codeword), such articles of faith could serve to define an ingroup, and nothing more.

In fact, the success of these phenomena may be due, in the end, to their incomprehensibility. One of the roles of religion — and 4chan — is to provide members a sense of belonging. This sense is augmented when the qualifications for membership become stricter. Religious groups “up the ante” of exclusivity by being increasingly demanding of their constituents — the harder it is to make the cut, the awesomer it is to be a member of the extra-special cool club. Ultimately, this may explain certain commonalities in practices among the world’s religions: abstinence, fasting, dietary and sartorial prohibitions, eschewal of certain music and dances, and demonization of certain sexual practices, to name a few. It makes sense that this process could extend to the articles of faith themselves, such that paradoxical or outlandish dogmas act as stringent qualifying criteria: “if you can believe that, then you definitely deserve to be a member!”

Intriguingly, nuttier beliefs could be an asset to a religion?

In Breaking the Spell, Dan Dennett makes the point that America is a thriving free market of religious ideas in vigorous competition. It makes sense that the religions that offer a better “product” — that is to say, exclusivizing doctrine — would be more successful by garnering more adherents. In other words, there’s a tendency towards an arms race of crazy beliefs, wherein sects with loonier beliefs are more fit and have greater selective advantage.

Anyway, next time you’re listening to some Christ-bot defend Noah’s Ark or Jonah living inside a whale, and you’re like “lol wut?” … you have just been pwned, ya n00b.

I think of this every time I type “facebook” in the address bar, so I finally made it a reality: