Poe's Law states:
quote:
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.
Details from here.
Poe's Law points out that it is hard to tell parodies of fundamentalism (or, more generally, any crackpot theory) from the real thing, since they both seem equally insane. Conversely, real fundamentalism can easily be mistaken for a parody of fundamentalism. For example, some conservatives consider noted homophobe Fred Phelps to be so over-the-top that they argue he's a "deep cover liberal" trying to discredit more mainstream homophobes.
History
Poe's Law was originally formulated by Nathan Poe in August 2005. The law emerged at the creationism versus evolution forum on the website Christianforums.com. Like most such places, it had seen a large number of creationist parody postings and these parody posts were usually followed by at least one user starting a flame war (a series of angry and offensive personal attacks) thinking it was a real post. Nathan Poe summarized this pattern in his original formulation of the law:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article.
The law caught on and has since slowly leaked out as an internet meme. Over time it has been reformulated to include more than just creationist parody but rather any parody of fundamentalism, whether religious, secular, or totally bonkers.
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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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