"You Do Know That the Flintstones was Only Partially Based on Fact, Don't You?" - Stephen Merchant

There are elected officials who think that this actually happened.

I got the idea for this drawing from reading the Conservapedia page on dinosaurs. For those of you that don’t know, Conservapedia is exactly what you think it is, namely, an online encyclopedia for people who find the entries on Wikipedia to be too liberal.

In future posts I’ll be taking a look at my favorite aspect of this site, the Conservative Bible Project. So, you know ... look forward to that.

For now I wanted to briefly examine this whole issue of dinosaurs.

Obviously, old-earth creationists don’t have any problems with dinosaurs because their view allows for an accurate geological and evolutionary timeline. However, the young-earth creationists have a real problem in that, if there view is true, dinosaurs and man had to coexist. Dinosaurs would have had to be created within the same week as humans, after all.

Now, one would think that something like Tyrannosaurus would bear a mention in the creation story, or perhaps in some historical writing. It probably would have stood out when Adam was naming all the animals.

Original name: Holy $#@!

Certainly, the creationists have a response to this, but I find it hollow. I’ll let you read over the arguments put that they put forward as I think that these speak for themselves (Just for added fun, look over one of my favorite Chick tracts). You could go to talkorigins if you want to refute certain claims.

Is this proof that man and dinosaurs coexisted? No ... No it is not.

The thing that really interests me about all of this is the length to which people will go to make something fit into their belief system. Obviously, dinosaurs were not be written about in creation stories because ancient people did not know of their existence. End of story.

But no, if you believe that the biblical story of creation is truth, then you have to find some explanation for any discrepancy. You’ll search for any anomaly or ambiguous term that might fit and create a whole fantasy around it, regardless of any original intention.

As a comic book guy, I’m used to this. We do this kind of rationalization all the time. Hell, Marvel comics even had a regular fake prize, called a No-prize, for readers who could explain away continuity errors. I can’t tell you how much time I spent trying to figure out a way to justify Batman’s use of guns in his first appearances, when one of the defining aspects of his character was his hatred of guns.

Reality, of course, was that there was no continuity. Batman is a character that has been drawn and written by scores of creative people over seven decades. You can’t really reconcile every error or change to make a coherent whole. It’s just a fun mental exercise.

Of course, when explaining away why Spiderman’s costume had a color change, the best that I could hope for was a mention in the letters column. When you do the same rationalization with religion, it is called apologetics and you can earn a degree.