A purity culture within skeptical and scientific communities where opposition to pseudoscience becomes so intense that it transforms into a crusade against the impure—treating not just pseudoscientific claims but those who hold them as enemies to be purged. Anti-pseudoscience puritanism demands perfect orthodoxy in distinguishing science from pseudoscience, treats any ambiguity or uncertainty as weakness, and engages in public rituals of condemnation for those who fail the purity test. It's the skeptic community that turns on its own members for insufficient zeal; the debunker who treats anyone who entertains an unproven claim as contaminated; the science advocate who sees the fight against pseudoscience as a holy war. The irony is that in becoming puritanical, it abandons the very scientific values it claims to defend—open inquiry, proportionality of response, and the distinction between being wrong and being bad.
Example: "The skeptical forum turned on a member for suggesting that maybe some alternative medicine had value—Anti-Pseudoscience Puritanism, treating any deviation from orthodoxy as heresy rather than just disagreement."
by Dumu The Void March 14, 2026
Get the Anti-Pseudoscience Puritanism mug.A purity culture within communities that elevate "evidence-based" as the supreme standard of legitimacy, where proper relationship to evidence becomes a test of virtue and belonging. Evidence-based puritanism demands that true members base all claims on approved kinds of evidence (usually quantitative, experimental, published in high-impact journals), treat other forms of knowledge as illegitimate, and maintain the purity of evidentiary standards against contamination by alternative ways of knowing. Members compete to demonstrate their evidentiary rigor, their commitment to "what the evidence shows," their willingness to dismiss anything that doesn't meet their standards. The result is a community that claims to value evidence while being dogmatically closed to the full range of human knowledge, treating "evidence-based" as a club rather than a commitment.
Example: "She cited decades of community experience, and they dismissed it as 'anecdotal'—Evidence-Based Puritanism, where only their kind of evidence counts, and anyone who doesn't have it is simply ignored."
by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal March 14, 2026
Get the Evidence-Based Puritanism mug.An internet rule dictating that those who condemn and demonize fan service for normal, sane people often define themselves as queer or as LGBTQ "allies".
Such individuals will often engage in gaslighting tactics, equating physically attractive female characters to pornography or maintain that ugly or masculine-looking female characters are better because of "realism", even in otherwise fantastical settings and despite the escapist nature of fiction. This is a bizarro mirror image of conservative Christian puritanism that such people often found themselves opposed to in previous decades.
Such individuals will often engage in gaslighting tactics, equating physically attractive female characters to pornography or maintain that ugly or masculine-looking female characters are better because of "realism", even in otherwise fantastical settings and despite the escapist nature of fiction. This is a bizarro mirror image of conservative Christian puritanism that such people often found themselves opposed to in previous decades.
"OMG, what do you care what Mary Jane Watson looks like? Shut up, your porn-brained incel!"
"You have pronouns and pride flags in your twitter bio and your likes are full of futa. The Iron Law of Bizarro Queer Puritanism remains undefeated."
"You have pronouns and pride flags in your twitter bio and your likes are full of futa. The Iron Law of Bizarro Queer Puritanism remains undefeated."
by JD_543975834 January 1, 2024
Get the Iron Law of Bizarro Queer Puritanism mug.by Babyface1936 February 1, 2020
Get the Puritanical mug.The Puritans were members of a religious reformation movement known as Puritanism which arose within the Church of England. Puritans were the more extreme Protestants within the Church of England in the late 16th century who thought that the English Reformation wasn’t far enough in reforming the doctrines and structure of the church. They wanted to purify the Church of England as it was too similar to the Roman Catholic Church. In the 17th century, many Puritans emigrated to the New World, where they sought a holy commonwealth in New England.
by skskoop September 30, 2019
Get the puritans mug.A bunch of religious zealots, name "puritans" for their faith in the olde ways, who left Europe to come to America and kill all the natives! Nice guys, eh?
by Anti-Patriot November 30, 2003
Get the Puritans mug.by Nova Prospekt December 23, 2007
Get the Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia mug.