John Price sent me some scans from another Pinkoski masterpiece, titled Discovered: The True! Genesis Story of Creation. A Presentation of Ron Wyatt’s Material. It’s clear that Pinkoski has completely swallowed all of Ron Wyatt’s pseudo-archaeological hokum—Wyatt was an outrageous fraud, and even devout Christians and creationists back away from him.
We discover that Pinkoski is a repeat offender: here he’s using his silly “PYGMIES + DWARFS” argument again. He seems obsessed with this idea that because the bible mentions giants, any variation in human size is confirmation of biblical accuracy.
This is classic Wyatt: completely uncritical, credulous acceptance of any old myth, for which he then usually claims to have discovered rock-solid archaeological proof. Add a little Atlantis/Mu New Age gobbledygook to your Genesis literalism, anyone?
Then, to support his ideas, he tosses in bogus bones. Here’s a “thumb bone”, supposedly, although I doubt that Wyatt ever had the anatomical competence to assess it properly. He reminds me of Ed Conrad.
This is the thumb bone of a human being who lived on earth before the Flood! As you can see, it measure 3 3/4 inches in length, which is over twice as long as the thumb bone in a normal sized full grown person’s hand!
The people who lived before the Flood were of a greater stature than modern day mankind. Noah was approximately 12 feet tall, and there’s a good chance that Adam was closer to 15 feet in height! (See page 27.) Bones have been found that prove that mankind was once this large, and there also exist several giant skeletons of many animals that we now have only in small species.
Wyatt was an utter goofball and a blatant bunco artist, which makes Pinkoski a very gullible mark indeed.
afarensis says
It looks like a third metacarpal to me, but without either a better picture or the bone itself I couldn’t say for sure…but I can’t explain pygmies + dwarfs!
Joe says
This has long fascinated me – that so many evangelical ‘literalists’, when you listen to them, actually turn out to believe in the literal truth of (a) the Bible and (b) any old shit that sounds sort-of right, especially from movies they happen to have seen. Wiccans and Satanists are also pretty seriously given to this kind of thing, picking up odds and ends of ‘folklore’ and ‘history’ from bad horror movies.
Stupac2 says
Haven’t humans gotten taller over the past few hundred years? Not that actual science concerns creationists, but if humans have been documented as getting taller as time goes on, wouldn’t we all have been PYGMIES + DWARVES in biblical times?
TheBrummell says
Thanks for the re-posts, PZ. I had forgotten the origins of the “PYGMIES + DWARFS” thing.
Something just occurred to me, reading this post. Adam is illustrated wearing fur shorts (or perhaps it’s a skirt). I thought everyone in the garden of eden (including the dinosaurs, big cats, crocodillians, etc.) was vegetarian and immortal – where did Adam get the fur?
PZ Myers says
Yeah, and look at the Trinity story, and he’s got god floating alone in the cosmos, but wrapped up in a weird toga-ish ribbon of fabric. It’s nothing but fundy prudery — god and the patriarchs couldn’t have been naked, ever, and if you saw them that way, they’d turn your skin black and make you live in Africa or something.
The Ridger says
People have been getting taller lately – if by people you mean specific groups of them – but that was after a period where they got shorter. A lot of that depends on diet, after all. But the range of sizes is pretty fixed – no fifteen-footers, no populations of three-footers.
mark says
Hmm…so if someone moved next to a present-day glacier and fed their young children on food provided by the melting ice, those kids would grow into giants? Couldn’t they just give their kids vitamins? Or does the Bible say that pre-flood nutrients in food gathered from melting glaciers are qualitatively different than nutrients available today?
Rey Fox says
What I simply can’t believe is that some people take seriously those who use so many underlines, exclamation points, and bold-texted items. That’s how Matthew Lesko speaks, for crying out loud. For CRYING out LOUD!!!!1
Keith Douglas says
So the guy isn’t only a biblical literalist, but also a Plato-literalist. Which in some ways is worse, since Plato basically tells the reader (or listener) the Atlantis story is fiction.
phare says
Hmm… so nutrients from the glaciers turn you into a long-lived giant, huh? I’m definitely going to have to give that glacier beer a try.