Dan Stern Cardinale offered an opportunity to creationists: come to his channel and present their affirmative evidence for their theory of origins. It was an open invitation to anyone to show up and explain their perspective. I could have guessed that no one would show up, because participation would require 1) a theory, and 2) evidence, and they don’t have either.
I was right. No creationists even tried.
Dan expected this to happen, too. He prepared a brief discussion of a creationist paper: Donny Budinsky of Standing For Truth, a used car salesman and a creationist propaganda site, titled “From Kanto to Cambrian,” which uses Pokemon to explain the ordering of fossils by the great flood.
You can’t make this stuff up. Budinsky says,
This idea is not presented as a final word, but as the beginning of an ongoing research project. Just as Pokémon captivates younger generations, this analogy may provide a creative, accessible, and scientifically robust way to engage new audiences in the creation-evolution debate.
I have never before heard Pokemon described as scientifically robust
.
Go ahead, read the ‘paper’ for yourself, but Dr Dan has already torn it apart.
This bit of “writing” by Donnie Deals is so exquisitely beyond parody that I can’t figure out how to end this sentence.
As bad as that one creationist site I visited several times in the past that uses old, inaccurate, outdated dinosaur paleoart, along with ancient art depicting mythical animals made up of amalgamated body parts of extant animals and humans, to make false comparisons between dinosaurs and mythical monsters resembling snakes, lizards, lions, and other extant animals.
This idea is not presented as a final word, but as the beginning of an ongoing research project…
Once again, the standard position every pig-ignorant troll falls back on as soon as they’re called out for their obvious lies and bullshit: “I’m just trying to start a conversation!”
Pokemon is completely irrelevant and for the argument they are making penguins vs. kangaroos would make a lot more sense and be more robust. (The idea being that rabbits and dinosaurs simple lived in different places and humans …. well humans had strict cultural taboos not to bury their dead in places where the dinos roam…. I guess.) It seems to ignore that the basis of the argument was that fossils were not localized in the first place….
Just like R.J. Reynolds using Joe Camel, Ken Ham using dinosaur theme parks, now this Budinsky is butting in to the crowd of scammers by using Pokemon to appeal to children (or childish minds) to buy their harmful nonsense.
“scientifically robust way to engage new audiences in the creation-evolution debate.”
Not even close to science or robust.
There is no debate.
I wonder if the owners of Pokemon can sue these clowns for copyright infringement or misuse of their IP…
Until they can connect Pokemon fossils to the evolution tree, they have nothing, not even the beginning of an ongoing research project.
Ran my statement through Word Copilot, they never mentioned Pokemon or fossils, just defined research projects and systemic investigations. Wonder what that says about Creationists? Maybe that their BS is non-existent. I see the use of Pokemon for their project as targeting of children. Can you say grooming.
I saw that last name and thought, “Oh god, I hope he’s not related to Mr. Budiansky because that would suck!”
Here’s who I’m referring to:
https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Bob_Budiansky
Also: I would be extremely skittish publishing that because Nintendo absolutely LOVES to sue over the tiniest thing.
Funny that the cover art has no picture of Japan. Just a distorted version of part of North America.(The northern areas of Canada are missing and the border where they should be is wrong.) Kanto is a large area on the main Japanese island of Honshu that includes the Greater Tokyo region.
Whenever I hear or read the word “robust”, I reflexively visualize C3-PO doing a face-plant and shattering into flinders.
@stuffin It’s a shame because there actually is an official educational initiative sponsored by the Pokémon franchise that does teach about real-life fossils (https://www.fieldmuseum.org/Pokémon-fossil-museum), which is what I thought the above post was about at first. That’s probably what Budinsky is trying to distract from by writing up creationist nonsense.
@crivitz I’m all for giving that idiot a nice intellectual bollocking, but there’s no need to insult fans of the Pokémon franchise, which people love to unfairly dismiss as childish due to judging it by whatever Pop-Tarts commercial they remember seeing for it in 1999. Its fandom is full of talented people who make romhacks to programmatically fix errors and glitches that Gane Freak missed, enhance the games by porting back newer features, write new stories and make new art, and basically handle the series better than its owners do in some respects. And as mentioned in my previous comment, the franchise is sponsoring a real-life fossil education event, which is probably why Budinsky is trying to “counter” it with creationist idiocy.
Unless I’ve completely misunderstood your comment and you’re referring to creationists in general rather than people who are into a video game series, in which case I apologize.