Just got back from "What about Dinosaurs" - A biblical interpretation of science. And what an interpretation it was!
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| I'm amazed they can spell these words. |
I started off with a quick chat with the pastor at a local Church (there are 3 local churches, a baptist, a Methodist (notice how Methodist has 'meth' in the name?), and St Andrews. A bit strange how they need 3 different churches in what is literally less than 100 ft of distance.) which was nice. I was immediately struck with that familiar, yet rare, sensation of humanity, of "These are just people, like you or I". They were sorting out their tech, doing the lights, the sound, it was a very much like the start of a gig. That was oddly comforting.
And as I waited for the "sermon" to begin, one may say blindly, unprepared for what was to come; perhaps slightly prepared. I knew I could expect the traditional box answers: The bible proves the bible, a world without God is a world without morals. But at the same time, this standing left me wide open to being blindsided. And blindsided I was.
We began with a prayer. I'm a respectful fellow, so I sat with my eyes closed, following the prayer, as they thanked God for allowing them to come together, and wished well upon the speaker (I secretly wished him to fuck up, and he did. Where's your God now?) finishing with Amen (I mouthed yup) and thus began the speech. It opened pleasantly enough, gave a brief intro to what was to come, another of my prophecies were fulfilled, a reference to the behemoth passage was made, a slide showing all the evidence for a true bible were shown, but never delved into (such as the prophecies that I've never heard any of) and the numerous passages that state the bible is fact (I think I'm the bible, I keep having my prophecies fulfilled). He then laid the ground rules, defining science for himself, as "knowledge, to have knowledge. I make science to be the process with which we gain knowledge, not "nothing more than having knowledge". He then goes on to define the 2 types of science: (and I agree on this part) observational, and historical, which the lines are blurred between. And he's right, the distinction between historical and observational are not clear, and that is not a flaw in the methodology, but a flaw in allowing understanding. We must make it clear that historical science is a much, much more difficult process, and the work that goes into the theories that are drawn as conclusion as a result of the meticulous processes is indeed a task above most. This does not by any means dilute the science, but strengthens it. It's not until people equate testimonies of tribesman with the centuries of lifelong study that we have problems. Especially when it's referred to as 'blind speculation' (the irony)
We then mover further into what evolution is, what it means. In the speakers mind, and thanks muchly to a Charles Lyell, evolution is a science "with an agenda", not much unlike the speakers sermon. An agenda which is to reclaim science from Moses. Not a bad agenda. That's a man who separated a sea. Hardly scientific. So, with science defined, we next approach the topic of the evening - Dinosaurs.
Now forgive me for the sporadic jumping around here, half due to the nature of the speech, and mostly on the part (the mostly being the other half. Maths be damned!) of my sporadic note taking, I was mostly mesmerised by the hilarity that was the seminar. He opens with what dinosaurs are, how they are discovered, and how they died. He states that all dinosaurs were found to have been killed in flooding, or flooding was present, attributing the death of them to Noah's flood. I can find no credible evidence for this claim (lots of creationist sites) so I can't say for certain that he's wrong. I won't doubt a lot of dinosaurs probably died around water, or at least, there was large evidence of flooding. It might even be that the only way for a fossil to have been preserved was by being in a certain "Goldilocks Zone" of water/ sediment. After all, we can't know for sure that all we have found is all that existed. Let's be fair, our scientific knowledge of the past is limited to what we find, and fossilisation is a difficult process, which doesn't always work. It requires specific circumstances. It's all to easy to imply a position on a theory just because it fits our wishes.
The next topic is the process of fossilisation as accounted by the bible. This is a 5 step all encompassing process, which I will list as if he did it, to the best of my notes.
1. CREATED
Dinosaurs, in the biblical way, were created by God, at the same time as everything else. He cites, as they oft do, a man made creation as evidence of God's creation. Zoids, in particular. He shows that to create a Zoid, one needs a mind, it takes intelligence. God has a mind (and so therefore would be a transient being, I suppose) and has great intelligence, because he made all the living things. Wow, what a great guy(!) He also states how animals are created in 'kinds', not species. As if that genuinely changes anything. Oh, and Tyrannosaurs were vegetarians. God made Tyrannosaurs as carnivores, with their massive teeth and claws for tearing meat to eat vegetation in the Garden of Eden. It wasn't until...
2. AFFECTED
| Wouldn't it be nice? No. It would be dangerous. |
3. PROTECTED
And neither did God! Especially not after that massive flood he sent to wipe out all but a select group. Even the dinosaurs got saved! The dinosaurs. On the Arc... He states that the size of them is not an issue, as they just need to be taken on as teenagers. Somehow, the weight of thousands upon thousands of species of beast and bird alike is not an issue for him, nor the weight of a boat that is longer than a football pitch. Physics really isn't the biblical strong point. But neither is biology! As he already covered, there are no species, only kinds, with vibrant variety. And that makes only 50 kinds of dinosaur. How convenient that evolution worked after the flood. Only it didn't. Somehow we managed to get vibrant variety after the flood... It's as hard to follow on this as it was on the speech.
4. DETRACTED
And then the dinosaurs started to die out. Here's where it got weird. Dinosaurs, he said, probably couldn't cope with the new climate (climate change?) and were likely hunted by humans, for their abundance of meat. Hunted by humans? Oh yes... They became dragons!
As the speaker says, without a hint of irony, the word dinosaur didn't exist until it was coined in 1841... but as it says in King James Version of the bible, dragons did! Because the word dragon existed in those days... He tells the tales of accounts of many different dragons, of giant lizards that stalk villages and kill people, and then hide in the reeds (big enough to be a threat, but not big enough to be seen in the marsh.. Sounds familiarly like science fiction...) the one thing I notice of these tales is that generally, it's solitary beasts who live alone. They either have lifespans that stretch thousands of years, or they have no need to reproduce to continue their lives, as if an idea passed down from person to person...
At this point, I remember sitting thinking "all we need now is Loch Ness Monster to be mentioned, and this will be a worthwhile trip. He then continues to account that Plinius Secondus and Marco Polo both saw dinosaurs, or dragons, on their travels to India. This man was convinced that dragons were real. He was also pretty adamant that Beowulf was a factual, historical character. And Grendel? A Tyrannosaurus Rex. Not a troll, which he made certain to mention. Oh no. Trolls don't exist, dragons do. Trolls are myths, let's not be ridiculous! Here's an interesting source which gives an almost blow for blow account of exactly what I sat through (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=152638)
Then comes the mentioning of the Behemoth (Job 40:15-21), as well as biblical passages stating that fire breathing dragons exist, and legends prove that they exist. Let's not forget that electric eels and glow worms and bombardier beetles prove that fire breathing dragons exist. Quite the tangent, right? He then gets back on track
5. COLLECTED = fossilisation
He makes the cardinal sin (pun) of stating that petrification is fossilisation. He also states that tissue found in a T-Rex fossil is proof that the earth is young. Ironically, part of the testing was on the osteocytes, isolating them and subjecting them to a series of tests, which included exposing them to antibodies that target proteins called PHEX, and the epitope that they selected, "so far as it has been tested by the primary researchers" [Schweitzer] is only reactive to bird osteocytes. Which sort of proves the current, prevailing theory that dinosaurs descended to birds.
By this point, I'd lost all concentration, completely submerged in the foolishness, but he plowed on with his "Feel bad, we need Jesus, feel bad", pulling out his slippery slope "With evolution, you get gay marriage" attacks. We then broke for refreshments.
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| Prizes for the best name for this fella. |
Coming back, we were treated with "Are Dinosaurs still alive?" Yes, apparently.
Cryptozoology! A genuine science now. All sorts of accounts of dinosaurs living in our times, like the Loch Ness (oh yeah.) diplodocus' living in the Congo and the Amazon, As well as other sorts of ceratops. Not to mention countless pterosaurs, like the batamzinga and the orang-bati. There are even bio-luminescent ones!
The whole thing raises one massive question. His whole speech was mostly focused on "all this could be fact, it's simply an interpretation of what we see, based on the biblical starting point" in the aim to denounce scientific reason. But why do we instantly jump to wild conclusion rather extensively reasoned conclusions? Why do rather think "That's farfetched" when we hear scientific study, but "That's totally plausible" when we hear fire-breathing dragons in the deep Amazon.
Perhaps there is no such thing as evolution. Perhaps we are still apes, not progressed, not aged over millenia. We're still dumb, panicky beasts. The evidence seems to support it.
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