Above, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker dodges question about evolution from a Brit interviewer.
Governor Walker, of course, is ever mindful of the concerns of his base – which kind of mitigate against open discussion of, well.. reality.
Below, a spokeswoman for “Christians Against Dinosaurs” (CAD) opines that that this whole “dinosaur” thing is just another hoax for scientists to make money. (You know, like climate change) See if this reasoning sounds familiar…..
If the group is a hoax, however, it is a convincing one. CADministry has been spreading her gospel in other online forums, and “Christians Against Dinosaurs” has a YouTube channel featuring videos dating back months in which a woman explains how “the dinosaur hoax” has been perpetrated.
“A fossil is not actually a piece of bone,” she says. “It’s actually a bone that was once in the ground that has been filled with limestone, calcium, and other stone-like deposits, so at the end of the day, it’s a rock made out of rocks.”
“So,” she continues, “you have a rock that’s [six-inches long], and you hand it to a paleontologist, who chips away at it until you have something looking like a bone — and that is a fossil.”
She then dumps a cup full of broken shards on the table in front of her, and asks viewers to pretend that they are paleontologist and put those shards back together into whatever they originally were. “If you’re a paleontologist and you want to keep your job,” she says, “you turn that into a brachiosaurus skull.”
Scott Walker’s non-response to a question on eeeeevolution just shows what an eeeeediot he is. I can’t wait to hear Rick Perry’s thoughts on the subject. Maybe we could include that topic in the televised Repugnant debates?
And is this “Through the Looking Glass Day” on Crock? Are we going to hear from The Red Queen and The Duchess on AGW next? I knew the religious and political fundamentalists were more than a bit wacky about evolution, but had no idea a group like CAD existed and was actually “campaigning”.
A visit to their site is enough to make one dizzy, particularly those of us who may have been science educators or have any science training and knowledge of paleontology. An excerpt that is particularly unsettling:
“….the mother began by complaining that “I am getting sick and tired of dinosaurs being forced on our children”. “Something needs to be done,” she continued. “The science behind them is pretty flimsy, and I for one do not want my children being taught lies. Did you know that nobody had even heard of dinosaurs before the 1800s, when they were invented by curio-hungry Victorians?”
Dinosaurs FORCED on our children? INVENTED by CURIO-HUNGRY Victorians? JFC and LMAO, but that is simply bat-shit crazy, and sounds like something Palin or Bachmann would say.
The CAD clip is unbelievably bad on so many levels, both content and production values-wise. The only good thing I can say about it is that the cleavage and “mobility” thereof (and the hair) DID catch my attention. (I will not deny what eeeeevolution and my Y chromosome have given me)
PS How do the CAD folks get along with those who are running the Creation museum? They have dinosaur with saddles rides for kids, and show Jesus and the Apostles riding dinosaurs. Seems like a dichotomy.
Ironically, it was Georges Cuvier, who did a lot of the heavy lifting in cataloging all sorts of ancient animal bones including dinos, but them man was a young-Earther and anti-evolutionist. He also cataloged relative antiquity in the strata around Paris and believed that catastrophic changes caused faunal regime changes, which he alluded could be climate related (though he considered the last ‘regime change’ the biblical creation):
DISCOURSE ON THE REVOLUTIONARY UPHEAVALS ON THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE AND ON THE CHANGES WHICH THEY HAVE PRODUCED IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM (1825): http://www.victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/cuvier/cuvier-e.htm
There’s some great stuff about Cuvier and Lyell and catastrophism in The Sixth Extinction.
Cuvier was not a young-earther– he didn’t have a definite view on just how old the earth is, but he knew more than enough to rule out 10Kyr. Claude Albritton is a good source, including a book of translations of Cuvier’s work. As you say, he was a catastrophist– he thought the transitions in fossils he had documented in the Paris Basim, with incursions of the sea in between, had been caused by catastrophic transitions. He also argued convincingly that mammoths (and by extension other fossil forms) were extinct. His debates with anti-evolutionists turned on opposition to his biological taxonomy, which (correctly) documented major groups; evolutionists like Lamarck generally opposed the idea of extinction at the time, so the debate was rather different from how we would think of it today.
From my readings of the man, his argument against evolution was 1) because we don’t see evolution on, say, a 100 year time scale, then adding up 100 or 1000 of those 100 year intervals should produce no different result; and 2) because of this lack of directly observable evidence, he thought evolutionists were applying almost a circular rational in their application of evolution to biology; and 3) he didn’t like evolutionary vestiges (Erasmus Darwin argued the existence of male breast nipples on mammals was evidence for transmutation) because he didn’t think large systems like the circulatory system were capable of change over time.
My mistake on the ‘Young Earther’ premise. It was founded from another of Cuvier’s arguments against evolution and what he felt were circular arguments the evolutionists were using: “Cuvier, however, in turn criticized how Lamarck and other naturalists conveniently introduced hundreds of thousands of years “with a stroke of a pen” to uphold their theory. Instead, he argued that one may judge what a long time would produce only by multiplying what a lesser time produces. Since a lesser time produced no organic changes, neither, he argued, would a much longer time.” Rudwick, Martin J. S. (1997). Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-73106-5
I was astonished by the poor interpretation of the processes of fossilisation, also the backwards interpretation of the history of fossil discovery and recognition displayed by the speaker with shifting ‘Deck Cargo’. But then living in Southern England the Jurassic Coast is but a fossil’s throw away.
livinginabox has already provided a useful narrative but those wishing to dig deeper could do worse than look up these:
‘The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World’ by Deborah Cadbury
‘The Map That Changed the World: A Tale of Rocks, Ruin and Redemption’ by Simon Winchester telling the story of William ‘Strata’ Smith
‘Cassell’s Atlas of Evolution: The Earth, its Landscape, and Life Forms’ this is a fascinating volume still worth seeking out in spite of its publication date. It is chock full of well worked illustrations and includes useful lists of sources. So struck was I by the utility of geological time laid out in a spiral that I decided to rework it by splitting up some sections further and adding a tree diagram of Eons, Eras, Periods and Epochs which I have plaed on the net:
http://lionels.orpheusweb.co.uk/Misc/RevGTSL2010.jpg
‘Architects of Eternity: The New Science of Fossils’ by Richard Corfield which has much of interest to those into palaeoclimatology.
Richard gave a talk during an evening seminar which I attended in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard where he related his experiences in travelling the oceans and engaged in sediment core drilling. The extended narrative can be found in his later book ‘The Silent Landscape’ where he ties it in with the voyage of HMS Challenger which began from Portsmouth in December 1872.
But of course the condescending subject of that propaganda video would rather live in her little bubble along with others of her kind.
Winchester is not entirely reliable– the semi-popular tradition in English over-emphasizes Smith’s work, which was certainly impressive, but not as ground-breaking as it’s often said to have been. On the continent the age of the earth wasn’t nearly as controversial– England seems to have been much more influenced by concerns re. a departure from biblical time.
Ah! Well, makes up for some of the propaganda with US capture of Enigma machines from U-boats e.g. U-571. Just saying.
Having written that, credit where credit is due, Smith produced innovative work and Winchester’s attempt to portray it is useful for the general reader as brought out in this:
From the Archives: The map that changed the world by Simon Winchester.
Those with deeper knowledge of the subject will understand the context notwithstanding.
As for US propaganda, I cite:
Bill Clinton, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1997
“…, Along the way, Americans produced a great middle class and security in old age; built unrivaled centers of learning and opened public schools to all; split the atom and explored the heavens; invented the computer and the microchip; …,”
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres65.html
It is undeniable that the USA has achieved many truly remarkable and impressive scientific and technological feats that were formerly thought to be impossible or unachievable. However, with the rise of anti-science, the scientific and technological edge is likely to be increasingly at risk.
———
Americans Split the atom? No, that was Rutherford in 1919 (New Zealand).
Americans “Invented the computer”? It would appear not.
Depending upon the definition. The first ‘computer would be one of the following:
The Greeks’ Antikythera mechanism [inventor unknown] (~205 B.C.);
Charles Babbage’s Difference engine (1847-1849):
Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine (~1843) partially built in 1871, fully in 1991;
“Z3”, 1941 by Konrad Zuse, a German civil engineer;
“Colossus” Alan Turin / Tommy Flowers (1943);
21 June 1948, the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine – nicknamed ‘The Baby’ – became the first computer in the world to run a program electronically stored in its memory, rather than on paper tape or hardwired in.
mbrysonb.
Would you care to expand upon your rather vague comment?
If what I said was untrue, I am anxious to learn in what way.
I truly hope CAD is a hoax.
yours
Frank Johnston
“[T]hat is simply bat-shit crazy, and sounds like something Palin or Bachmann would say.”
Yes indeed, and isn’t it telling that the craziest folks you can think of were Republican elected officials?
The woman in the video needs an education, to learn about Mary Anning (British fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist who became known around the world for important finds she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis. Her discoveries included the first ichthyosaur skeleton correctly identified; the first two plesiosaur skeletons found; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and important fish fossils. Note: None of these are dinosaurs.), or William Smith (Who conceived, researched and created the first geological map, the map that changed the world and that greatly advanced the Industrial revolution and led to our modern technological society), or Richard Owen (the palaeontologist who coined the term dinosaur). The woman in the video is either an idiot or a liar, fossils were known for a long time before there was any idea of dinosaurs. Apparently when William Smith was at school, fossil brachiopods were used as ‘marbles’, later he was the first to use fossils to identify differences between otherwise seemingly identical horizons.
As for dinosaurs, try this: http://tinyurl.com/k3yl72w
Warning: link contains images of theropod dinosaurs with feathers.
She is also libelling the highly skilled staff who prepare specimens for display in museums.
The evidence for dinosaurs is so compelling, that even Answers in Genesis says dinosaurs existed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGtRcwgdPJc
It was both William Smith in the UK and Georges Cuvier in Paris that mapped out relative antiquity in the strata.
I overlooked Cuvier. Yet another example of independent discovery, closely spaced in time.
So….. What did she use to glue the fossils that make up her brain together.
Diluted horsepucky?
You got to be kidding, politics, religion and dinosaurs, what a surreal mix.
The young lady needs a good hairstylist and if she is serious i.e. not a new generation of Monty Python sketch artists, then a science tutor. I see there is a more popular group called Dinosaurs (and paleontologists presumably) against Christians. If she is from a representative group, I have only one observation… WE ARE DOOMED.
What a smug little snotty person. She represents so well… lol.
She must have run across one of the best hoaxes of all time — Onyate Man!
http://www.nmsr.org/Archive.html
Take note GOP, if “Old Blighty” can do it so can you !!!!
“This pledge marks a turning point in the collective effort to take Britain’s energy system out of the Victorian age and into the 21st century.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31456161
Good news! Dinosaurs fight back! (or some humans do it in their name)
Some funny stuff here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dinosaurs-Against-Christians/1528181477395175