Pharyngula::Why is it called biblical literalism?

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Friday, June 03, 2005

Why is it called biblical literalism?

PZ Myers • 55 Comments (last page)

How nice—having an open thread overnight provided me with some entertaining reading this morning!

Henrik Aasted Sørensen mentioned this fascinating description of a creationist comic book—it has an account of evil angels leading the dinosaurs on a last-minute assault on Noah's Ark, and announces that 'THIS EVENT IS NOT A FABLE AND IS NOT A "MYTH"…IT IS VERIFIABLE SCIENTIFIC FACT!' It looks like a fun story, but what might the evidence for this be?

The fossil remains of numerous dinosaurs have been found with their heads and necks arched upwards, as if in their death throes they were straining to to keep their heads above water!

Wow. I've seen lots of dead birds with their necks arched in that same way, and in the deserts of Utah and Eastern Washington I've found deer and antelope skeletons in the same pose. I'd always thought that it was because when neck ligaments dried, they tended to pull the head back. I guess instead they must have all drowned.

The author also throws in the old story that the Chinese character for "boat" is verification of the Noah's Ark myth: a story that has been debunked, but still gets wafted around in creationist circles.

The description says that the book can't be bought anymore, but I discovered that this is not true. The author, Jim Pinkoski, has a website and sells the book and many others for the low, low price of $4.95. I had to order a copy to add to my collection. I also ordered the one that gives the Christian interpretation of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which shouldn't be too much of a stretch at all.

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Comments:

#27039: — 06/03 at 09:29 AM
Dear me, that is one hillarious interpretation on the whole thing. I wouldn't mind my own horde of dinosaurs to assault things as well, shame they all got killed off by the flood. If I had been the evil angel commander, snorkles and SCUBA gear would have been mandatory.

#27040: — 06/03 at 09:37 AM
Oddly enough, I've seen raccoons, deer, and uncountable opossums dead on the roads here with the same "gasping for air" posture. I didn't realize The Flood had been so recent, or had produced tire tracks across what I'd naively assumed was merely roadkill.

did

#27041: Mad House Madman — 06/03 at 09:41 AM
wouldn't this theory also mean that all the elphant fossils and dinasaur fossils have to be found WAY below all the other species, since they weigh more.

I'm no evolutionary expert but I don't think that's the case!

#27048: — 06/03 at 10:00 AM

I didn't realize The Flood had been so recent, or had produced tire tracks across what I'd naively assumed was merely roadkill.

Not tire tracks, did, tread tracks. Obviously God didn't tell Noah to build a wussy rowboat- the Ark was an amphibious assault vehicle, and anything that didn't drown got run over.

#27049: UrsulaV — 06/03 at 10:08 AM
A.R.K., of course, would then stand for...what..."Amphibious Roving Killamajig"?

#27051: — 06/03 at 10:15 AM

I wouldn't mind my own horde of dinosaurs to assault things as well, shame they all got killed off by the flood.

There's still hope! According to Kent "Dr. Dino" Hovind, some dinosaurs may still exist. If you hustle, you can catch his presentation on the topic at the Southern Crypto Conference on Saturday, June 18, 2005:
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2005/4/emw226944.htm

#Dr. Kent Hovind (Living Dinosaurs/Dinosaurs in the Bible): He will present information presented concerning dinosaurs in the Bible reflecting his extensive study in the field of cryptozoology and that there may still be some living dinosaurs in remote corners of the world.

You can also hear more traditional cryptozoology presentations on Bigfoot, giant catfish, etc.

This is not a paid endorsement.

#27056: UrsulaV — 06/03 at 10:24 AM
...okay. So if I've getting this straight, the guy thinks that dinosaurs were on the ark, and thus lived through the flood, and we can now locate them via cryptozoology.

Which can only mean one thing, to my mind--CHUPACABRAS ON THE ARK! Think of the action movie potential! Vin Diesel is Noah, tracking the Goat Sucker Menace through a floating menagerie of DEATH! Can he stop the chupacabras before they drink the blood of two of every goat species, rendering the future world forever goatless?

I can see it.

#27057: — 06/03 at 10:32 AM

...okay. So if I've getting this straight, the guy thinks that dinosaurs were on the ark, and thus lived through the flood, and we can now locate them via cryptozoology.

"Dr." Dino is a raving Creationist lunatic. Some Creationists distance themselves from him because he is too darn wacky. Look him up on the web when you need a laugh, if you have the stomach for it.
http://www.drdino.com/

He's even got his own FAQ at Talk.Origins:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/

Find out where he got his "doctorate"! Read about his oh-so-genuine $250,000 offer! Unfortunately you are too late to attend his Creation Boot Camp (May 13-15, 2005):
http://www.creationbootcamp.com/

#27058: Joseph ODonnell — 06/03 at 10:32 AM
Call a hollywood producer, we have the next big action movie of the last 6000 years!!!

#27067: — 06/03 at 11:03 AM
For whatever it's worth, not only is this guy a science illiterate, but the emphasis his website places on Saturday being the sabbath puts him pretty firmly in the "funny little heretic" camp from the orthodox Christian perspective, as well. My guess is he's Seventh Day Adventist. Nicest folks you'd ever care to meet, real clean-living types, and only about half as crazy as Mormons. But in their history and in their doctrine one quickly sees that rational thought, much less scientific discovery, is not a big priority with these people.

#27069: coturnix — 06/03 at 11:10 AM
Ligamentum nuchae - the big ligament that starts on the atlas and ends in the tail.

As a little kid I loved reading cryptozoology books by Bernard Heuvelmans. Anyone else here? I realized later that most of it was loony, but some of it was not. Is there such a thing as legitimate cryptozoology? Do people who discover new species in jungles of Laos consider themselves cryptozoologists or is the term permanently tainted by the Yeti people?

#27070: — 06/03 at 11:15 AM
But nobody's ever seen a dinosaur gasping for breath. Therefore, by creationist logic, it couldn't have happened.

#27071: PZ Myers — 06/03 at 11:16 AM
I knew I should have mentioned the magic words "nuchal ligament" and "taphonomy"

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#27073: — 06/03 at 11:18 AM

I'd always thought that it was because when neck ligaments dried, they tended to pull the head back. I guess instead they must have all drowned.

PZ, don't you see the brilliance of it? Just as the Adam's apple is a reminder of the Forbidden Fruit stuck in our sinning craws, and the dusteating snakes a reminder of God's waxing wroth with the Serpent, the raised heads of dead beasts are a memento diluvii for all of us. And deluded darwinists complain that God doesn't demonstrate His Presence! What do you expect- that He would Spam us, or appear on CNN?

#27075: PZ Myers — 06/03 at 11:24 AM
Whoa...did you just make that up, or have people actually seriously suggested that the thyroid cartilage is a reminder of sin from god? I just realized what the name "Adam's apple" implies, and I've never even considered its derivation before!

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#27077: — 06/03 at 11:39 AM
Adam's apple? You never knew that tale of Adam's sin?

Wow. I had heard that for as long as I was growing up!

#27079: covington — 06/03 at 11:44 AM
Yeah, that was what we were specifically taught in catholic grade school.

We were also taught that men have one less rib than women (and chastised for actually counting them, detached 'floating ribs' aside).

#27080: Thomas Wilburn — 06/03 at 11:45 AM
You know, the myth about languages having ties to each other (mama in Chinese, mama in English) isn't just a Creationist thing. Most people don't really understand the statistics of it. There's a really good writeup at zompist.com:

http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm

#27081: — 06/03 at 11:45 AM
Has anyone looked around the cartoonists web site? He is ALL ABOUT the "late, great" Ron Wyatt ... what a collection of loons.

My favorite bit (about the ark of the cov.):

"We had over 300 full color pictures on approximately 90 photoboards on display in the Museum of God's Treasures in Gatlinburg -- and ONLY ONE of those 300 pictures was a "fuzzy" picture, and it was fuzzy for a special reason! The reason was that God did not want us to be able to see the Ark of the Covenant yet!"

Glory! And hallelujah! God shut the eyes of our cameras and therefore the world!

How do these people manage to procreate, and why can't we legislate against that?

#27083: — 06/03 at 11:52 AM
The kind folks at Merriam-Webster (by way of the Jewish World Review) provide a derivation for "Adam's apple" here:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0904/dictionary_men090804.asp

#27085: PZ Myers — 06/03 at 11:55 AM
Wow. I feel so stupid now -- I've heard the term since I was a wee little sprat, and never ever connected it to Genesis.

Now I'm wondering what other words I take for granted that are also tainted with christianism.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#27087: Alon Levy — 06/03 at 12:02 PM
Mama isn't a chance resemblence; it's babytalk, which is liable to evolve in parallel in several completely unrelated languages.

#27089: Joseph ODonnell — 06/03 at 12:05 PM
And they do it just to get you specifically, they have a little conspiracy against you and everything you know.

Muaahhahaha.

#27090: — 06/03 at 12:13 PM
I'd say Bill Watterson has good grounds for a lawsuit here.

#27092: Thomas Wilburn — 06/03 at 12:17 PM

Mama isn't a chance resemblence; it's babytalk, which is liable to evolve in parallel in several completely unrelated languages.

Alon, I'm not sure your background--I myself am not a trained linguist, although I've dabbled in it and speak both Chinese and Spanish semi-fluently. So I'm not going to say you're wrong, because I just don't know.

That being said, that seems like a fairly unlikely assumption to me. There are a lot of phonemes that can make up baby-talk, and could therefore become these words. You're also assuming that the word proceeds from the child, when it seems much more likely that it's a word invented by the parents and imitated by the children.

I think the latter is supported by the way that words like "ma" and "pa" descend from larger words, mother and father (well, the romance roots mater and pater, probably). Again, I could be wrong, but I don't really understand why it would be more plausible that the languages would add syllables to the baby talk, instead of the baby imitating sounds it hears from the parents (as we know happens with the sounds and phonemes of radically different languages).

Still, I'm not a trained expert. These are just my educated guesses.

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Friday, June 03, 2005

Why is it called biblical literalism?

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