Gather ’round, children, and dear old Unca Jack will explain to you how the dinosaurs went extinct. It’s not how you think. There were no meteors or comets, no egg-eating mammals, no saurian pandemics. It’s because so many plants died in the great flood.
And then, you see, since only the dinosaurs were afflicted with this oxygen deficit, God’s chosen people could then run around with pointy sticks and kill them all as they tried to hide in the clouds on mountaintops.
Isn’t that sweet and heartwarming? God saved the beautiful dinos so they could gasp and choke and suffer while little people slaughtered them. From this we learn that God loves all the creatures great and small, but he especially loves the ones who say “HAW!” when the butchery begins.
The Chick theory may also have some synergy with the Larsonite Extinction Hypothesis, which would help explain the remarkable specificity of the oxygen problem.
So how come the lack of butchered dino bones on mountain tops Chick? If you going to tell a lie at lest make it good one.
According to this verse, dragons sound more like crocodiles or alligators.
I actually did a search for “dragon”, for a post I did in honor of the Fairy Tale Mausoleum opening.
Chick is the same as Ham. “They existed in the past, so they must have been included on the ark.” Of course, he also ignores all science or observation that contradicts his magical beliefs.
Bob L,
Duh. The cavemen took the bones, too. Them’s good eatin’.
This is priceless… Decaying plants released all that oxygen, the result of which was to make the air thinner! Big dinosaurs could no longer breathe! But what about all the small dinosaurs and the big mammals? They must all have been facultative anaerobes, including Noah et al.
The almighty will never cease to surprise me.
Wow. Jack Chick has reached new heights of stupidity. That was inane even by his standards. He’s completely self-parodying at this point.
I really like that Cain and Abel are pictured as Cave Men.
I see what appears to be Mexicans hunting the dinosaurs to extinction. Chic publications should stop picking on Hispanics. They have the same right to eat dino tacos as anyone.
I’m going to have to put this off until tomorrow, but I’m going to have some comments on this foolishness.
Just out of curiosity – if you reduce the amount of oxygen in the air, does that in fact slow large animals more than small ones? Or would the smaller ones get slower by the same amount? Or more, if they had faster metabolisms?
I’m amazed at the changes to be made to astronomy and atmospheric physics based upon the second panel. The canopy of water above the earth demolishes the whole rain cloud theory. But I have to wonder how far out in to space the water goes. Is it boiled by the sun? How can the sun burn if it’s surrounded by water?
In the fourth panel is he trying to say that plants increase atmospheric pressure? Does that imply that Jupiter has lots of plants because it has high atmospheric pressure?
I know, just drink the Kool Aide and become a believer.
Yeah that’ll happen.
Yay! PZ used my submission!
I think PZ should muss his hair a bit, put on a bowtie, trim the beard, and see how closely he can resemble Chick’s standard stereotype evilutionist atheist professor…
This is almost the same stock character used in Big Daddy. Perhaps PZ would look more professorly in pince-nez?
I have a vintage Larsonite Extinction Hypothesis coffee cup. I found it in a layer right above the remains of a Marlboro-starved T. Rex., I think.
Did god not plan far enough ahead with that flood thing? Surely the all-knowing and infallible would not make such an apparent mistake. Sheesh.
So let me get this straight. God goes to all the trouble of saving the dinosaurs from the flood, only to have them die due to changes brought about by it? And I thought I’d heard everything from these guys.
Well ‘slaughter, on the panel showing God and Jesus, you’ll note they are standing on a cloud of water vapor at a distance from earth about twice that of the moon.
You gotta love Cain and Abel depicted as very northern appearing cave men. I’m sure the ‘Flinstones’ have spread the idea that man and dinosaurs co-existed (remember their pet ‘Dino’?)
Interesting too that that Jews are protrayed as lavishly dressed, evil, betrayers, even shown in the same panel as the word ‘dirty.’
“I see what appears to be Mexicans hunting the dinosaurs to extinction. Chic publications should stop picking on Hispanics. They have the same right to eat dino tacos as anyone.”
No, they’re saying “Haw.” They’re clearly rednecks. Proto-Republicans even.
But how come Satan is depicted as a crocodile as he tempts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? Inquiring minds want to know.
Paul (#3) – What Mr. Chick was trying to say was that “those trillions of destroyed plants” made oxygen when they were still alive, and that the lack of all those plants on the post-flood Earth is what made the air thinner. Or was it thicker? Whatever. Either way, it’s idiotic in the extreme. In Chick’s scenario, the miniscule surviving population of sauropods would have starved to death for lack of flora long before they’d have suffocated. (This is just mind-numbingly stupid. Are we sure this isn’t a Chick parody?)
And like a 20 foot tall crocodile too…
I could understand if an 8 year old wrote that but an adult who is supposed to have cognitive skills.
I never thought people could be that stupid, but then didn’t our president say “is our children learning?”
clearly they are not.
So, it’s the big animals which died. The little ones still had enough oxygen to live. I get it.
This is why elephants are known only from fossil remains, while velociraptors prowl the Appalachians.
everything chick does is a chick parody.
I’ll join Mr. Humbert in wanting to know more about the crocodile satan — is the devil really a dinosaur? Very confusing.
“while velociraptors prowl the Appalachians.”
That would totally kick ass. I’m adding that to my wishlist which includes the return of mammoths to the Yukon and greater northwest.
Hmmmm… I hadn’t considered oxygen deprivation as a foundation of faith before. Maybe religion arose in this oxygen-deprived atmosphere. Could the bible have its origins in the death of brain cells long, long ago?
qedpro:
Clearly they _is_ not.
I’m just curious about the apparently universal signifier for females of whatever species: long eyelashes. Yup, female dinosaurs had eyelashes. They’re usually shown with hairbows, too–but that would just be silly.
Ridiculous! The dinosaurs all died assaulting the ark led by Satan himself. Everybody knows that, Snake.
You taught us this Completely True Fact yourself, PZ! How will you live up to your reputation as a pig-headed, dogmatic, fundamentalist atheist if you keep revising your understanding in light of new evidence?
Wait a minute. Are ChickCo a bunch of Magi Deniers? Apparently so.
Weird.
– Why did the Chick cross the page?
…
…
…
– To get to the after life.
And if not, think of the heat from acquired kinetic energy when the water/ice/whatever “collapse” to ground. Steamed Earth.
[I get something of the order of 2 MJ/kg linearly – at ~ 4*10^-3 J/(kg*K) heat capacity that’s an, um, high temperature increase, slightly offset by the water/gas phase transition.]
On plants I guess a mechanism that somewhat could increase atmospheric volume is that their metabolism release gases from minerals. But since they also affect humidity, solar radiation (directly by reflection and indirectly by greenhouse gases) et cetera, I’m unclear on the net volume and pressure contribution.
In any case, it won’t be anything of the order of a Chick tract.
– Why did the Chick cross the page?
…
…
…
– To get to the after life.
And if not, think of the heat from acquired kinetic energy when the water/ice/whatever “collapse” to ground. Steamed Earth.
[I get something of the order of 2 MJ/kg linearly – at ~ 4*10^-3 J/(kg*K) heat capacity that’s an, um, high temperature increase, slightly offset by the water/gas phase transition.]
On plants I guess a mechanism that somewhat could increase atmospheric volume is that their metabolism release gases from minerals. But since they also affect humidity, solar radiation (directly by reflection and indirectly by greenhouse gases) et cetera, I’m unclear on the net volume and pressure contribution.
In any case, it won’t be anything of the order of a Chick tract.
This is why elephants are known only from fossil remains, while velociraptors prowl the Appalachians.
Bingo, Blake. Chick seems to be assuming that all dinosaurs were, like, you know, REALLY BIG, man!
I read my four-year-old son stories every night. One of his faves is a dinosaur book from Leopard Books. I’d reckon he knows more about dinosaurs than Jack Chick does.
So God’s an idiot? He instructed Noah to waste all that space and food on the ark just so the last surviving dinosaurs could die due to the postdiluvian atmosphere? Maybe that’s why the people in panel 13 don’t trust him. I’ll bet Li’l Jehovah was always coming up with harebrained
Anyway, I wrote about ‘stupid God’ apologetics earlier today, which is obviously evidence that I’m psychic. Perhaps Sylvia Browne would have greater accuracy if she changed her last name to ‘Brownian’.
Egad! My brain just went numb!
To quote our buddy Orac:
“Oh The Stupid! It Burns! ”
Oops. I didn’t finish my thought. I was going to suggest that Li’l Jehovah was probably always pestering the other kids with an invitation to take part in some harebrained scheme or another. The other deities all had the good sense to stay away. If only they’d told the proper authorities, Li’l Jehovah might have gotten the help he needed long ago.
Astonishing. Really, I have more respect for dinosaur deniers. They are at least consistent.
And they follow the venerable tradition of believing that nothing can ever die out — God would never allow one of his creatures to become extinct.
Net volume and pressure contribution? For each oxygen molecule plants release into the air, they take a carbon dioxide molecule out. I don’t know about the water vapor balance.
I can tell you, however, that absolutely nothing changes over 40 days, especially when the oxygen consumers die out along with the oxygen producers, for crying out loud.
Astonishing. Really, I have more respect for dinosaur deniers. They are at least consistent.
And they follow the venerable tradition of believing that nothing can ever die out — God would never allow one of his creatures to become extinct.
Net volume and pressure contribution? For each oxygen molecule plants release into the air, they take a carbon dioxide molecule out. I don’t know about the water vapor balance.
I can tell you, however, that absolutely nothing changes over 40 days, especially when the oxygen consumers die out along with the oxygen producers, for crying out loud.
The dinosaurs are suffering from lack of oxygen so they go and hide is on top of a mountain?
result: even less oxygen and conk it from natural causes
as opposed to option b: stay near sea level
result: can breath and hence able to go bruce lee on the badly armed hunters.
not really been thought through.
piss poor design by god as well, forgetting about the side affects although it might be a cunning attempt to say “look he makes mistakes” and hence counter the questions about why if we were created or intelligently designed do we appear so badly designed (blind spot on eye, back problems that kind of stuff).
Amusing that God is demoted to stevedore on the Ark, “putting” animals there, and “opening doors” for them and such.
Hey, God, get me a beer while you’re up?
“Plants, animals, and people where drowned and sandwiched with the dinosaurs into layers of mud and rock”
Look, ID finally made a testable hypothosis! According to this, we should find human fossils in the same “sandwich” layers as dinosaur fossils! I wonder if anyone has thought to look into that…
At #4 & #8, I was wondering about that, too. Why only the (large) dinosaurs died out. Wouldn’t the humans be the canaries in the coal mine, so to speak? Wouldn’t creatures who could hibernate survive better because they’d use less oxygen in an oxygen-deprived environment?
I’d like to see a modern fundevangelist admit God makes mistakes. No, they tend to either ignore the bad design elements or cop out with the nebulous “God must have a plan.”
So, Noah was a yeast? Worse luck for his wife.
Ksenya (#16), Thanks for the clarification. Obviously, I need a refresher course in Flood biology.
…they tend to either ignore the bad design elements or cop out with the nebulous “God must have a plan.”
Actually, one of my favorites is the “since The Fall, genetic mutations have been causing humans to become further and further from the perfection that was Adam”.
Too bad there’s no evidence that humans used to have extra ribs or differently designed eyes. Although I guess you could argue that at least one rib had to go in order for god to fashion woman. Trade incredible back pain for sex? Sounds like an okay deal.
Is Jack T. Chick still alive? (Is he even a real person for that matter?)
God’s curse upon the serpent:
Presumably if being made to crawl on his belly was a punishment, the serpent must have started out with some other means of locomotion. If not wings or a jet pack, why not legs?
Naahhh! They died from constipation! The old foolish idea that Gymnosperms acted as laxatives and that, when Angiosperms became dominant, the laxative effect was diminished.
And they follow the venerable tradition of believing that nothing can ever die out — God would never allow one of his creatures to become extinct. Which is of course why we can still see the dodo, thylocene, and Yangtze river dolphin happily cavorting in their respective habitats, and the Vancovuer Island marmot has nothing to worry about.
And doesn’t smallpox count as one of god’s creatures. It’s sure not doing so well in the wild anymore.
I’m really tired of these attempts to reverse-engineer explanations for life and the planet’s ecology based on the Bible.
It’s barely entertaining.
It’s moronic.
Grow up and get a fucking life, you tiresome Jesus-freaks.
Gaaaaaaaa!
Well, Paul (#40) we all need a refresher from time to time, because Floodology is a very difficult subject indeed!
Oh that Chick! He’s got it all wrong! Dinosaurs were around as recently as Marco Polo’s time! Look, dragons were everywhere, even after there was plenty of oxygen!
http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/3449
Chick…Apologetics Press…Dragons must be in the air these week in the YEC camps. I don’t know how many people have heard of Apologetics Press, but their web site is a source of endless amusement.
Susan
It’s not your fault, but because of you, I have now learned more about Jack T. Chick than I ever wanted to know. Fortunately Altzheimers is just around the corner for me.
Go to Jack Chick and Chick Tract on Wikipedia. (Suddenly I know how a certain hypothetical serpent might have felt.)
The most fun Chick non-factoid I found in the Wiki articles is that “witches are brought in to cast spells on rock music recordings before they are marketed to the public”.
The purpose of the spells is to allow demons to possess listners!
It appears it was his Canadian mother-in-law that converted him to fundamentalism. My deepest apologies. If only that new northern border fence had been up sooner.
Halfway through I still couldn’t decide whether it was parody or serious, it’s so ridiculous.
Thanks PZ for more evidence for what I always believed – creationists are stupid.
If I may quote Was (Not Was) on this subject:
boom! boom! shaka laka laka boom!
boom! boom! shaka laka boom boom!
Oh, please. Everyone knows what really happened. The dinosaurs, being of course dragons (see Chick, above), ate too much dead plants. Said decaying, dead piles of plants were fermenting, which caused the dragons to get drunk, then of course they started having fire-breathing shootout contests, and before you know it they were all a heap of ash. Do I have to explain everything to you people?
What is it with Chick tracts and the use of “Haw!” This is not the first time I’ve seen him use that to represent a sort of contemptuous laugh (or at least that’s how I interpreted it).
Someday psychology will fully mature and be able to show how a latent part of Jack Chick’s brain was the little rationalist within him, the rational homonculous with a great sense of wry humor, who was driving his hand to make these things for the entertainment of us folk.
If the dinosaurs went extinct, why are there still birds?
If you go to the main page and look at the directory for all the propaganda comics you will notice that there are several awful ones that proclaim that they were “adapted for black audiences”. I guess they don’t even try not to be racist anymore.
Torbjörn Larsson @ 27:
Alas, it looks like the heat of vaporization of water is 2.2MJ/kg. So not steamed, just flattened and lightly simmered.
Man, This is crap even for Jack Chick. On panel 9, the hunter says “Dino Burgers”. Didn’t Jack say in panel 19 that back then they were called dragons? (In 1841 they were renamed “dinosaurs”!) Jack’s tract is about as accurate as the Bible that he worships as his god! Yes, I do believe that people who say the bible is 100% correct in history and science are worshiping it as an idol. Because, the existance of God (to fundamentalists) relies soley on the inerrancy of that book. That is why nuts like Chick, Ham, and Hovind are defending it to their deaths. That is why no rational proof will ever disuade them from their attacks on science. Fundamentalists are worshiping an idol. That is a fact!
If everyone called them dragons until the 1800s, then why did the Paleolithic hunter call them dino-burgers? He can’t even be consistent within his own comic.
D’oh! Beaten by Robert because I let the page sit for a couple of minutes before hitting post. That’ll teach me not to multitask.
The whole jesus story is just so batshit crazy it makes my head hurt It’s like some abusive, alcoholic grandfather’s sunsetting ravings…
I so love my children that I drowned them in the bathtub, burned my house down, and then made one of em come back to life and eat crackers and kill gasping dinosaurs with pointed sticks. I am so MADLY in love with my creation that I am going to burn the living SHIT out of the whole thing UNLESS you kiss my white, hairy ass, NO WAIT! I’m going to burn it all up ANYWAY! BUT you can get a heads up on my “Escape Plan!” For a short time only those who ARE BATSHIT CRAZY LIKE ME can stay with me forever and ever and ever on a happy cloud of my own design, after I blow the world up. Haven’t quite worked out the bits after I blow the world up though, I’m sort of in the middle of those plans. Let’s just say we’ll hang out and be cool for all eternity. No sense in getting all worried that I might just get bored with hangin out on a goddam cloud with you lot for all eternity. Who knows, some of you might get a bit uppity, stop kissin my arse and then I’ll have to think of some really nasty ways of killing you. You thought Hell was bad? HAR! That’s kid’s stuff compared to the twisted shit I got kickin around in my omnicient noggin, and don’t you forget it, eh? C’mon, give us a hug! I LOVE YOU ALL SOOOO MUCH!!!!
If this isn’t a parody, it’s terrifying that someone’s brain could be so damaged to the point of believing such lunacy.
How’s this for irony: There’s a hypothesis that the reason dinosaurs became dominate is because they, like birds, had more efficient lungs and were therefore more hypoxia tolerant. When oxygen levels plummeting after the Permian extinction it may have given the early dinosaurs an edge; the less efficient mammalian lung couldn’t compete. Peter Ward wrote about this hypothesis in his book Into Thin Air.
To top it off, Chick has his dinos hiding on hypoxic mountain tops. Oh Jack, please learn some basic science so mocking you isn’t SO easy.
I got a sick feeling to my stomach when I saw the name Jeffrey Schwartz, and thought you meant this guy.
http://www.pitt.edu/~pittanth/faculty/schwartz.html
http://www.pitt.edu/~jhs/
As I understand it, he had published some mildly unorthodox ideas in human evolution…, but only mildly unorthodox. Fortunately it is not him.
Oops, how did I get on this page!?
On page 11, Chick writes,
“Plants, animals, and people were drowned and sandwiched into layers of mud and rock… ”
Well, if the creationists are correct, wouldn’t it be simple for them to produce fossil rabbits in the Pre-Cambrian (with a nod to JBS Haldane)? Surely, Chick and his droogs have discovered, oh, Indricotherium fossils next to modern human remains or evidence of Dicynodonts that fed on raccoons. Surely a holy man like Jack Chick wouldn’t be fibbing to us, would he?
And what about aquatic species? Assuming God flooded the earth, then why have the trilobites vanished? Were they also sinful? Whither the mosasaurs and the sea scorpions?
Since God created all the sea creatures on Day 5, and since they should not have been affected by the flood, why can’t I have a pet Hallucigenia for my aquarium?
You know what really pisses me off? I’m a cartoonist. HOW THE HELL DO YOU MAKE FUN OF THESE PEOPLE? Seriously, Their Reality has Lapped Our Satire. How the hell do you satirize stuff that is already completely beyond satire in its own right?
But, but, but …
It’s hiding in a cloud. And clouds are made of water. And water is full of oxygen. Where’s the problem?
Surely that deserves a reposting of Paleohyrax reprobae ;)
Akitagod, There may yet be mammoths in Canada. There are people who want to introduce elephants to south Texas. The elephants will restore the praries there by eating mesquite trees. Mesquites suck up all the water with an osmotic pressure that is the second highest of all trees. They turn ecologically diverse dry praries into scorched earth scrub brushland. Elephants would eat mesquites and make possible a more diverse biome just as mastadons did long ago. Throw in a few tens of thousands of years of evolution and some shaggier elepahntkind might come to wander the north.
Wouldn’t all that anaerobically rotting vegetation have produced a mix of methane and hydrogen sulphide [sulfide for you Amenricans]? If I remember correctly, H2S [rotten-egg gas] is more toxic to humans than HCN [hydrogen cyanide]. Presumably, this would be toxic to all mammals and possibly all vertebrates like birds and dinosaurs!
Check out Halfmooner’s Chick Tract parodies at the Skeptic Friends Network – They are hilarious.
Rotting vegetation? What rotting vegetation? There was no, errrr, I mean, that is, it got washed down the, ummm, the drain, you know, with all that extra water, into the center of the Earth, which is like a giant septic tank, and I think, no I’m sure, this was maybe proven by a great science movie documentary film called The Core or was it one of those noisy crunchy-crunch garbage disposal thingies?
Wouldn’t the higher oxygen levels made problems for the people? How did Noah handle the drop in O2? Would the Ark explode if someone lit a match? Inquiring minds want to know!
I did read the book on the O2 hypothesis. Very interesting, even if the data they use to drive it (the O2 level readings) comes from a controversial technique (I mean that the measurements are controversial and not conclusive, not sure of the technique per se). If the results are correct, there was less O2 during the dinosuars reign, not more. A good read, but I’ll wait on more work to see how this pans out.
Sad thing is, this might be based on recent studies on bugs, which concluded that the reason we don’t see 10 foot long dragon flies is precisely because their method of metabolizing oxygen **won’t let them get that big** with the amount we currently have in the atmosphere. The problem being.. Mammals, birds, and one must presume dinosaurs, have (or had in the later case) these things called lungs and circulatory systems, which are more efficient and **not** limiting with respect to the size you can get using them (usually its food intake and competition that effects size of species now). Mind you, some changes in oxygen levels could have “some” effect, but that would be presumably negative at high levels for everything “other” than insects, since more oxygen produces oxygen poisoning, if its high enough. And then… oh, hell with it. I doubt its based on anything factual, or no more so than any other vaguely overheard bit of info, which could then be misinterpreted in the most insipidly stupid way possible. lol
. . . the canopy of water above the earth collapsed.
Imagine you’re a fundie and you believe all the other horseshit in this tract. Wouldn’t you at least draw the line at believing there is a huge reservoir of water on top of the sky?
Notice all the Jews shown, except Jebus, have big noses? Is this something to do with the lack of Oxygen as well?
A site in Britain has a collection of evilutionist cartoons from the 20’s and 30’s.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/cain/projects/ejn/ejn_comics/
These are from “Evolution: A Journal of Nature”. Thanks to NoGodBlog for the link.
you people are blind scientist worshipping FOOOOOOOOOLS!
there I said it
GOD PUT THOSE DRAGONS ON THE ARK SO *HIS* PEOPLE WOULD HAVE TASTY SNACKS WHILE THE EARTH RECOVERED.
BEING THE LORD’S OWN, THEY DID *NOT* PRACTICE SATAN’S “CONSERVATION” – THEY KNEW THAT THE BELIEVER IMMEDIATELY USES UP ANY AND ALL ANIMALS, PLANTS AND RESOURCES – IF GOD WANTS THEM TO HAVE MORE, HE’LL MAKE MORE. IF NOT, HE’LL END THE EARTH ANYWAY.
EVERY TIME YOU DRIVE A LARGE ANIMAL TO EXTINCTION, AN ANGEL GETS HIS WINGS.
Yeah, all that talk of comets and dinosaurs is a crock, to hide the truth about sinning and stuff…I think Mr Chick has been on our side all along, he’s a subversive.
No.
This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
(There isn’t, of course, a huge reservoir of water on top of the sky. It all fell down during the Flood and is no longer there. Previously it was held up by the almighty hand of the Lord. What’s one more miracle?)
Wow, bernarda, those comics are great. I can’t imagine anyone having the guts to publish them in a paper today, sadly.
Of course, back in the day creationists said dinosaurs did not make the ark, because they were too big. From Evolution magazine, which appears to have been published between 1927 and 1938: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/cain/projects/ejn/ejn_comics/pages/comic_EJN_N05.htm
Creationism: Constantly shifting sand.
You would think all that water up there in the sky would be quite the greenhouse maker. Sky must have looked pretty crazy too, what with the moon and stars shining down through the waves…
Yeah, Bernarda, those are cool. This one is prophetic.
As for this:
I can’t speak for my alternate-universe-Fundy-self, but I can toss in my two cents: “Not necessarily.”
I heard this exchange in a chatroom not too long ago:
* He: Well, IF the Flood really happened..
* She: Of course it did!
* He: … God would have had to have had a giant canopy of water suspended over the earth…
* She: Yes…
And so on.
She thought Evolution was ridiculous and shouldn’t be taught (“We didn’t come from monkeys!”) and He thought Evolution was an elegant but hopelessly flawed theory (he accepted microevo but not macroevo).
He thought nothing that happened here on Earth particularly mattered, because it was just a way station on the way to Eternity with God.
She was utterly convinced The Flood happened as described. He entertained it as entirely plausible, because, well hey – God!
She was a nurse. He was some sort of scientist or engineer.
Sigh.
So I guess Noah, who was ordered by the voice in his head to collect two of EVERY kind of land critter to repopulate the earth, blew it big time.
Schizophrenic religious figures can be so incompetent.
(Hmmm…I wonder how all that extra water selectively knocked off the AQUATIC reptiles & dinos).
Well, being air-breathers…
*(Hmmm…I wonder how all that extra water selectively knocked off the AQUATIC reptiles & dinos).*
There were no aquatic dinosaurs…not in the sense of how a whale is an aquatic mammal.
FTP (#72): Couldn’t find the Chick parodies on SFN. Deep link or better directions, please!
Wow, that was really…mind-numbingly bad. Thanks for posting just the amusing bits, PZ.
Leaving aside the misrepresentations of evolution–ONLY the dinosaurs ruled the Earth; ugly, misshapen, unkempt professor suggesting that a comet the size of a mere bus killed the dinosaurs (presumably by landing on one)–let’s get right to the blasphemy.
According to this comic, although mankind was pushed out of the Garden for what Adam and Eve did, things only started to go downhill after Cain killed Abel. I guess Chick conveniently ignores that while the Bible treats Cain’s sin as a murder, it dwells on Adam & Eve’s as a catastrophic betrayal of the first order.
Reading and posting too fast: Bernarda pointed to the comics before I did, and, if I’d had my coffee, I’d have not been so rude as to not give Bernarda the hat tip.
The site at UCL makes a copyright claim. I’m asking if there is such a claim on the comics.
Isn’t it interesting that some of the stuff is exactly the same 70 years later? Discouraging, too.
Great job dissecting the insanity which is that tract, and also the arguement against Evolution. You will dig this: http://www.316now.com has 9 short films based on actual Chick Tracts. Hilarious. Check it out.
There were no aquatic dinosaurs…not in the sense of how a whale is an aquatic mammal.
hmm. let’s take a look at that:
whales: devolved limbs, migrated nostrils, streamlined shape, high aspect ratio flukes…
ever looked at an ichthyosaur fossil?
seems like a great deal of convergence to me.
what about mosasaurs?
or are you simply talking pure classification and not morphology?
no, then you wouldn’t have included the larger classification of “mammal” in comparison.
uh, you do know about ichthyosaurs, pleiseosaurs, and mosasaurs, right?
you tell me:
like a whale or not:
http://www.cmstudio.com/image/Mosasaur.jpg
like a whale, or not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyosaur
Similar to modern cetaceans such as whales and dolphins, they were air-breathing and also were viviparous (some adult fossils have even been found containing fetuses).
hmm.
Ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs, and plesiosaurs were not dinosaurs.
Ichthyosaurs were diaspids distantly related to dinosaurs, while plesiosaurs were distantly related to lizards, and mosasaurs, themselves, were true lizards, and are suspected of being the ancestors of snakes.
Ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs, and plesiosaurs were not dinosaurs.
Ichthyosaurs were diaspids distantly related to dinosaurs, while plesiosaurs were distantly related to lizards, and mosasaurs, themselves, were true lizards, and are suspected of being the ancestors of snakes.
I do hope you were making a clarification, and not thinking that was the OP’s point?
look at the quote again:
“….not in the sense of how a whale is an aquatic mammal.”
yes, of course by classification there technically were no “aquatic dinosaurs”, but I really doubt that was the OP’s point, don’t you?
do note that i even mentioned:
“or are you simply talking pure classification and not morphology?”
before concluding he couldn’t have been, given the larger comparison to mammals in general.
if you weren’t simply trying to clarify for general purposes, read for comprehension, not detail please. If you were, my apologies.
If I may stick my snout in here for a moment:
For what it’s worth, I don’t doubt it at all. I think that was exactly Josh’s point, nothing more or less. A pedantic quibble perhaps, but hey, it’s a point he’s qualified to make.
I’ve always assumed Jack Chick was a surrealist collective, along the lines of the Subgenii, laughing all the way to the bank on the back of insane fundamentalists.
That vapor canopy the creationists love to mention is based on the firmament mention in Genesis.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. Genesis 1:6-8
What this describing is not a water canopy, but a solid dome set above the earth. The reason the sky is blue is because we see the water in heaven through the (glass, crystal) dome. When it rains, God opens windows in this dome to let the water rain down to the earth. Makes sense to a bronze age scholar, because if rain falls from the sky then there must be water up there. There would have to be something to hold that water up there too. According to this bronze age cosmology, the stars are hung from the dome, and the sun and moon are dragged around it by horses (or other means). That is why the sun is created 13 verses after light. Night and day was even created before the sun.
This is the biggest proof to me that the Bible is not inerrant. If it was inerrant wouldn’t the cosmology described in genesis be a little more compatible with modern discoveries? If the bible is inerrant, why does it perpetuate a bronze age myth?
dhonig: Maybe you should become a journalistic cartoonist, and just report, and see if anyone notices.
Mark S.: Alas, the fundies would tell you that “of course not, there’s no vapour canopy NOW, silly …”
Ichthyic,
I’ll agree with Kseniya and Stanton–I think that’s exactly what Josh was saying, and that was the point of his bringing up whales. They are mammals by classification, whereas the Mesosozoic aquatic reptiles aren’t dinosaurs in that same sense.
Regarding Anton’s, Kseniya’s, and Stanton’s comments…YES, it was my point. And I guess it can be seen as trivial, but I don’t actually think it is. Calling an plesiosaur or something an aquatic dinosaur is like calling an airplane a flying car. Cars and airplanes both have engines and wheels and they both carry people around. I think if I start referring to Piper Cubs as flying cars it’s gonna raise some eyebrows, though.