It’s gotten rather annoying. Joseph Mastropaolo is this antique dogmatic young earth creationist who hasn’t said a single thing that’s novel or believable in 20 years, and somehow his name has been snared by the media. He’s getting promoted everywhere. I’m getting all this email and twitter notes telling me to debate him — I’ve even had a couple of students bring him up and suggest that they’d like to see me debate him. NO WAY. He’s dumber than Jerry Bergman, and meaner, too.
Look. Here’s an example of the kind of thing he’s prone to declare: that, for instance, humans hunted T. rex.
As for how human beings were able to survive in the same neighborhood as a Tyrannosaurus rex, Mastropaolo said that humans beings would have been able to trick them.
"Human beings were smarter the further back we go in time because they have been less degenerated by the pollutants that we’ve been putting into the air, water, and soil," he said. "T. rex … could be herded into a blind canyon and have rocks dropped on their heads from above. And they’d soon be done in."
Furthermore, Mastropaolo believes that they could even have been domesticated the "way we have domesticated cattle and elephants."
See what I mean? Please, please, please stop telling me to engage this loon…and media, could you wake up and recognize that he’s not credible about anything?
And, for the record, we have never domesticated elephants.
Tamed individuals, yes, domesticated, no.
What a moran.
Listen to me, Mandrake, humans could hunt T rex back then because we were healthier before Communists started sapping and impurifying all our precious bodily fluids.
I became aware of this during the physical act of love. Women sense my power, Mandrake… and they seek my life-essence.
Tame T Rex? Human riding a tame T Rex?
Human riding a tame T Rex herding apatosaurs.
Your argument is invalid.
Louis
wow, what an idiot. It’s always so cute when creationists can’t actually get anyone who knows anything about evolution etc to support their nonsense. I wonder, do they take their children to mechanics and their cars to pediatricians?
Another yahoo who thinks The Flintstones was a documentary.
Hey, he’s got a Ph.D. in kinesiology.
Jerry Bergman has a masters in kinesiology.
It’s making me wonder what you have to do to get a degree in kinesiology. It sounds like it might involve brain damage.
Really big rocks. Fortunately, humans were a lot stronger the further back we go in time, having had their vital bodily fluids less degenerated by the fluoride we’ve been putting in the water. I mean, Jesus could lift a boulder the size of Texas.
Well, the humans could also have dug pits and put poisoned spikes at the bottom.
Or, they could have nuked them from orbit (after all it’s the only way to be sure).
Wow, ancient humans were really smart, I never realised.
Marshall Will and Holly, on a routine expedition……
“Human beings were smarter the further back we go in time…”
Well obviously. They would have to be. To … you know … build the time machine an’ all
Mike.
“See what I mean? Please, please, please stop telling me to engage this loon…and media, could you wake up and recognize that he’s not credible about anything?”
I trust you realize that the media gave up on credibility when Cronkite retired. Now it’s all about entertainment. Perhaps you should mud wrestle him.
TEACHTHECONTROVERSY
PZ
Willful ignorance has nothing to do with brain damage.
I notice some new t-shirts there. And they still have the “end of the world in 2012” one.
The media evaluate someone’s credibility before quoting him? Surely you jest.
Pfft. Anyone who has read Grappler Baki knows that humans back then PUNCHED T. rex in the face.
I can certainly see why there’s no good reason to engage this guy in debate, but I think you’re wrong to be so frustrated over the amount of media attention he’s getting. We should all be rubbing our hands together and cackling in glee. Yes, yesssss … this is a very good representative of creationism. In fact, why not use him as the public face of Christianity? And then that little line which represents the “Nones” will soon fly up and up and away, out of the graph.
It’s Christians who should be shuddering in horror over Mastropaolo’s publicity, concerned that he is being secretly funded by atheists. Maybe we should send him a few bucks and a megaphone, just to see them sweat.
Must go shopping! Thanks for the find, Owl.
@ Owl: I’m kind of surprised I didn’t pick up on the reincarnation one. Just sat there staring at it going … dead cats turn into coffins with humans as an intermediary step?
More on topic: Challenge him to a debate refereed by the AGU, and make him put the money up first.
ooooh
mud wrestling…
Is it in Applied Kinesiology ?
‘Cause that’s a brand of chiropractor-flavored baloney, which would fit the theory about how nonsense tends to cluster in the same mind.
Not that it’s impossible that he does have a degree in the legitimate thing.
Engineers and MDs are also well represented in the overall population of cranks.
“Human beings were smarter the further back we go in time.”
Mastropaolo has a point here. Creationists are also humans and they were certainly smarter the further back we go in time.
Perhaps someone should send him a Monitor lizard to tame.
They’re that effing smart and the best hunting strategy/technology they could come up with is drop rocks on them? How is it that the corrupted and presumably less intelligent indigenous and aboriginal peoples around the world today use more sophisticated hunting methods? Snares, traps, poisons, projectiles…
Sheesh, we know that superior hunting technologies have been around since long before he thinks the Earth was made. The smart (and I use the term loosely) thing to do would have been to credit these superior early men with their invention rather than pinning the most simplistic, primitive thing he could think of on them.
Well, we are talking about a raving moron talking about magic white people, after all.
Joseph Mastropaolo has devolved to be dumber than T-rex!!!!! (Dur, where did that rock fall from? Musta have come from the Lard.) He musta thought the Chicxulub impactor was hefted by a 900 year old superhuman. HIS INTALECT ROX!!!
Domesticate a T. Rex?
I just want to point out that domesticating a true carnivore is batshit. YOU have to feed them animals or pieces of them, or at least provide them meat-eating/hunting activities, and the bigger they are the more they eat. I’d imagine a T. Rex would need enormous volumes of grub that somehow a non-existent person of 65 mya would have to discover for said T. Rex. I call bullocks on that just based on that fact.
And also on it because it’s fucking batshit stupid wrong to say we coexisted with dinos.
What a willing idiot.
It appears to be a popular major with those on athletic scholarships…
Does he have a real degree in kinesiology? Or does he just call himself a kinesiologist?
The creationists may “debate” with the evolutionists anytime they desire. But the format isn’t in their favor. It is called the peer reviewed scientific literature, where evidence, not rhetorical tricks, win the arguments.
Submission information for
Science
Nature
If they are unable to “debate” in the only proper forum, the Pullett Patrol™ as a few words for them. Bawk, bawk, bawk, BAWK!
Odds of 100 grogs to one that not even one crebot will attempt to publish anything…
Well now, let’s be fair. Joe doesn’t say anything about taming those “so-called dragons,” just outsmarting them. And you know, he’s right. Our ancestors did outsmart them beasties. They waited, oh, 60 million years or so to come along. By then, all the dinosaurs were gone.
PZ: You’re right not “debate” this joker. He and others like him are not interested in debating anything. For them, a debate is merely an opportunity to “witness for the Lord” and preach their brand of snake oil blarney.
Not only were they stronger, remember, they were also much much taller, so much so that many of the dinosaurs were like cattle and sheep to them. If you doubt this, how is it there are…….. Pygmies + Dwarfes???
So wait a minute, they were smarter so they could have figured this out? What’s his excuse, he fucking came up with the idea! Does he live on another planet where he’s not exposed to these pollutants? Or is he just immune to them?
*head esplodes from teh stoopid*
Wait. Is this the guy whose self published book was totally in Comic Sans?
petejohn:
No, no. T Rex ate stuffed pumpkins, man. Their teeth were all adapted to that stuff. So says Kent Hovind.
WellI was taught (in public school mind you) that it was watermelons. That is why their teeth were so sharp. You know, cause watermelons are hard. Makes sense, no?
Yazikus:
Oh no. That’s awful, that is truly awful, for a school to teach such nonsense.
*thinks*
nope, can’t see how it does.
“Dumber than a sackful of drowned mice.”
-Rich Hall*
*Those who watch QI will have seen the birth of that…
..right around the time the women make like a Birch and leave…
;)
wait… that is how he identifies ancient man as being MORE intelligent than modern man?
I think Sarah Palin could even one up that*.
*think: rifles… helicopters…
I know, right? I hadn’t even really thought of it until that awesome article in the Skeptical Inquirer, about the Doctrine of Original Herbivory (which I love to say outloud). I was then like, whoa, my 2nd grade teacher was a straight up YEC and I had no idea.
that actually would settle things just about as well as any other form of debate with this idiot would.
@icthyic
Well that is your first problem, right there.
ah, right.
*goes off in search of large alcoholic beverage*
*plops tankard of fivep-day-old grog in front of Ichthyic.* It’s on the house.
So how did the ecosystem handle all those redundantly filled niched?
How exactly, short of a forest fire, would you ‘herd’ something big as a school bus (well, a short one?) and too dim to actually have ‘fear’? I don’t think beating the bushes would work, somehow.. And since they can’t count, I don’t think ‘a bunch of small meals on feet’ would be particularly likely to make them run away any more then ‘one small meal on feet’ would.. since lots of their prey species were herds anyway.
well first you have to domesticate triceratops so you can ride them. then you can use a group of triceratops riders to intimidate the rexes into moving, then….
Another problem with the “all animals were herbivores at the beginning” nonsense is that creationists seem to ignore one of the largest habitats on the planet. The deep sea. A place where no plant can thrive. Did all those freaky deep sea fishes, giant isopods and colossal squid live in shallow water to graze in kelp forests? Did they move to the deep sea after Adam and Eve discovered sin? I mean the shallow seas must have been REALLY overcrowded in the beginning. Ken Ham might be able to bullshit about T-Rex eating watermelons but I would love to hear what brain fart he would pop out if he were to consider the problem of deep sea creatures. Hell, are creationists even aware of these animals? After all, they know fuck all about the rest of the natural world.
Marc Bolan domesticated? Never.
Deep sea creatures are no problem. Mr Noah’s clogged drain caused a lot of food to wash into the oceans. Where it eventually sank. So there was a constant drizzle of sinking food, and piles of the stuff on the bottom.
Also: luring an animal into an enclosed space and then dropping a rock on its head. HIGHLY INTELLIGENT MASTER PLAN, amirite? Takes a mental giant to come up with that one.
He did, however, domesticate a white swan so he could ride it.
So Biblical times were basically like a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, eh?
@ #14:
There might be a dollar or two in marketing an unbroken set of The End Is Nigh t-shirts:
http://www.bible.ca/pre-date-setters.htm
@# 54:
Is that swan being “ridden” in the biblical sense?
I dare anyone to get on google maps and find the canyon he is describing. We all see it in our heads from cartoons. I have spent a lot of time running around Utah and Nevada-never seen it. Canyons get shallower and shallower until they are not canyons anymore they don’t have cliffs at the end of them.
Human beings were smarter says a human being who says we hunted dinosaurs. Irony?
He was watching the Valley of Gwangi documentary.
Timecube!!! *cackling with happy madness*
:-)
LOL in meatspace!
You’ve never seen a box canyon? I see that the Wiki page mentions, but has a dead link to, a page on the Wardell Buffalo Trap (found via the obvious google).
(Which is not to suggest the Mastropaolo is not a loon)
…is he suggesting that modern humans would be incapable of thinking up such a solution? Because he seems to have managed it, and he’s patently an idiot, even by modern standards.