Entry tags:

duck-billed fire-breathing dragon, fun with fundies, ideas for pokemon

Dinosaur Wank- Big, Old, and No One's Really Positive What Happened
Okay, so someone links to a relatively cute article about the Top Ten Myths About Dinos on a science forum. (Myth 1, Dinosaurs coexisted with humans, Myth 7, Dinosaurs were slow and sluggish animals, etc.) Right off the bat, someone starts in on 'evangelicals' probably not accepting #1, thus sending out some sort of subsonic signal across the internet for everyone with a bible and black helicopter fetish to show up and proclaim they are really the sane ones, really truly.

jteamjohn kicks off the WTFery with, Why don't you try to understand if what "evangelicals" believe may be true since almost anything we know about what happen to the dinosuars is myth or unexplainabe. I believe in my heart that dinos and man where here together. It is because of evidence that I have studied leads me to this belief. I believe man saw dinos becasue one of them wrote about them, Job.

Aaand they're off.

Is the Bible a peer-reviewed document?
Didn't I see cave drawings of 'dinasaurs' and man together?
Um, carbon dating is like guessing and therefore science is faith-based so haha, suck it, scientists*!
Did you know hippos don't have tails that look like trees? That means the Bible mentioned dinosaurs!
Dinosaurs and people lived together in a vegetarian utopia but I await your ignorant responses**!
You know, if I put what you "believe" in "quotes," it makes me look more "right."
Well, I was taught about Pluto, but now there's no planet Pluto, so science must have erased it!

And that's just page one and two. It goes on to name-calling, off-kilter assumptions about people of faith, a random quote by Pliny about Vesuvius from out of nowhere, and...

*screeches to a halt*

Dinosaurs could breathe... flame? Really? On page 3:

The fermenting plants in the stomach of the Parasaurolophus produced a combustible gas that ignited when the dinosaur channeled it through it's headcrest and out it's nostrils, as a defensive weapon. The Parasaurolophus was a "fire breathing dragon."

....Yes. Dinosaurs? Totes breathed flame. Don't believe him? Just look at the dinosaur's head and diet! It's obvious.

It goes on for quite a bit longer, but once I got to fire-breathing parasaurs, I knew I had to share.

*Some statements may be wildly paraphrased to make them funnier.
**That one was, um, not.

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	hallidae 2008-03-03 06:16 am UTC (link)
	See, I always thought it was elephants, because it talks about the long necks and the legs like trees, and I was thinking that if you never saw an elephant swim before, that trunk poking out of the water would look an awful lot like a neck. But your theory makes more sense, now that i think about it. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

platedlizard
2008-03-03 06:37 am UTC (link)

It's my dad's theory, really. He's a chemical engineer which totally makes him an expert on biblical archeology, lol. But it does makes sense.

More sense then believing humans and dinosaurs lived together at the same time, anyways.

I have to say, elephants make sense too! No doubt the Hebrews had heard of them even if they weren't local. (I can't remember if they were or not). Also, telling and retelling stories about critters that live far away can change the way that creature is perceived. For example, the earliest stories of the unicorn* describe a creature that resembles a rhino, and from that we somehow got to a pretty white horsey with a horn. No actual real white horses with horns needed.

*I pulled that out of a vague memory from when I was eight and unicorn-crazy. ~~This means I am correct and true!!1!~~ Take twice daily with grain of salt.

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	electricwitch 2008-03-03 12:38 pm UTC (link)
	There was a smaller elephant race that populated the North of Africa and parts of Europe at the time, I think, but the Romans killed them all in battle and Colloseum fights. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	theladyfeylene 2008-03-03 10:59 pm UTC (link)
	I thought the long neck and legs like trees was referring to Behamut/Behemoth/whatever way you want to spell it, the land counterpart to Leviathan... which is generally accepted to be either a hippo or an elephant. But it's been a couple years since I read up on either, so I'm not entirely sure. (Reply to this)(Parent)

spawn_of_kong
2008-03-04 04:09 am UTC (link)

Actually, there are two other giant creatures of Biblical lore: besides the Leviathan (a water monster), there's the Behemoth (a land monster) and the Ziz (a sky monster).

There's not much mention of the Ziz, although it sounds a lot like the Roc (the giant bird from the Sinbad stories) to me. The Leviathan and the Behemoth, however, are supposedly destined to fight each other at the end of the world, and whoever loses is the one we humans get to eat, or somesuch. [/Mythology Geek]

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