RalstonRock #fundie

RalstonRock #fundie cracked.com

*On a Cracked article about stupid-looking dinosaurs*

Holy s**t can't scientists ever do something cool? Look just because you were beaten up in fourth grade it doesn't mean you have to keep throwing all of these s****y dinosaurs at us. I know the dinosaurs are just made up anyway, you took random dragon bones and started rearranging them into bullshit shapes to impress your basement dwelling science friends. Next time I want you idiot paleontologists, fossilologists, and geologists to start creating a dinosaur with an ak-47 instead of a dick on it’s head, okay? Maybe the people will start supporting your bogus career. Personally, I used to humor this whole theory of evolution thing, back when science was all about atomic explosions and curing smallpox. These days, science is about the Earth getting colder and dinosaurs looking increasingly stupider. What a crock of shit. This is why I support creationism, there are no surprises and everything is based on fact. You know, facts like reptiles have scales, birds have feathers. This isn’t Harry Potter, you can’t just shove two random animals together and call it a “hippogriff.” It’s a disgrace.

68 comments

old comment by Jordab the Folf

God, what a terrible parent.. You're teaching your kids that it's okay that people hate them because they're going to /die?/ Yeah, they will, when they kill themselves because your shitty parenting ruined their lives. You take things away from them because they're "unholy," you teach them to be assholes to people that actually think... When they actually gain some sense of their own, and realize that everyone around them hates them because you've turned them into hateful, spiteful people, they'll do it. Do you think that driving your kids to suicide will send you to Hell, His4Life? You should honestly have your children taken away from you. I worry for them, immensely.

old comment by sidhe

*koff*

I have a five year old. Accordingly, I've been forced to become an expert on the current state of paleontology with regards to the Mesozoic era (or maybe I just have an awesome daughter who uses words like "Mesozoic" and who wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up).

Birds are dinosaurs. They are directly evolved from theropods. Reference? Archaeopteryx and Confusciousornis (sp?) (and others), both proto-avians, but distinctly sharing features with the theropods.

When you see any bird of prey, don't think, "bird," think "flying velociraptor." A pigeon is a compsognathus, etc. You may thank science for making your day a little more awesome. ;)

old comment by Anon

@sidhe:

Smart kid. If you're looking for birthday presents, I recommend this book: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/nouvian/index.html (60 USD new, but available on Amazon for <40 USD and used for ~20 USD). The text might be a little dense for a five-year old (you'd have to learn some more interesting vocabulary), but the pictures are gorgeous. Nouvian is an exceptional editor.

>>You may thank science for making your day a little more awesome.<<

I was told that there are three things that get people interested in science: outer space, dinosaurs, and stuff blowing up.

I definitely went through the dinosaur phase, and now I study the debris of explosions in space...

@t:

There is mention of Jesus in works attributed to the 1st century historian Titus Flavius Josephus, but whatever original content there was has been mangled by later Christian additions and interpolations of the original text (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus). There are similar mentions in the works of Tacitus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ).

The current consensus is that Jesus and John the Baptist were two of a number of schismatic Jewish preachers active in Israel in the decades before the First Jewish-Roman War. Jesus was born 7-2 BCE and died 30-36, likely executed on the orders of Pontius Pilate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus).

Beyond the basic fact of his existence and association with John the Baptist, there is no evidence of any of the miracles attributed to Jesus, or of a resurrection. Those all appear to have been later additions, since they do not appear in 1st century texts.

@Micharion below:

You are mistaken. Quoting Wikipedia: "Avians (modern birds), as direct descendants of one group of theropod dinosaurs, are a sub-clade of saurischian dinosaurs in phylogenetic classification." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saurischia

old comment by Anon

@The Duelist:

Tacitus mentions a group of followers of Jesus in Rome at the time of the 64 CE fire in the city. But you're quite correct that there is no substantiated information about his having had a very large following while he was alive (although he was enough of a nuisance to be executed by the Romans) or on the details of what he taught, and that all of the canonical Christian scriptures date to well after either Josephus or Tacitus. All stories of miracles and of resurrection were later inventions.

@Micharion:

Birds are dinosaurs in the same sense that we are mammals. This is the definition of Dinosauria (or Mammalia) as a clade - that is, an ancestral species and all of its descendants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clade).

If you want to call a group 'dinosaurs' and exclude birds from them, you have to define it as an evolutionary grade instead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_grade). But all modern classification systems are based on clades, and put clade Aves as a sub-group of clade Dinosauria. This also means that there are many animals conventionally called 'dinosaurs' that aren't part of Dinosauria. For example, Dimetrodon was more closely related to us (and the other mammals) than it was to any reptile.

Incidentally: humans and the rest of clade Mammalia and Dinosauria (including all living birds) are all members of clade Amniota, with the last common ancestor being ~340 million years ago.

old comment by sidhe

Anon:

I believe if I handed her that book, she would start making a high pitched squealing sound, gather her plush whales, sharks, and giant squid, and being at least pouring through the pictures while asking for definitions as she tried to read. In other words, she'll have it by the end of the year. Thanks! :)

And, as far as the science rule goes, she also loves space ("There are eight planets, and a bunch of other stuff.") and explosions (Mythbusters is a daily routine).

Micharion:

Yeah, pterosaurs, mosasaurs, etc. weren't dinosaurs, but birds are part of the clade, tied through small theropods that got feathers and gliding/flying ability. I, personally, find it awesome that dinosaurs aren't really extinct, just not recognizable to the average person.