Skip to main content

That some dinosaurs still exist . . .

Today alone, I have seen news articles that ought to scare the bejeezus out of most religious people, but they don't.  I think it is evidence that miracles do exist, or maybe only that thinking is not needed for survival.

For instance, somebody with a shovel or a hand trowel dug up a skeleton of an incredibly huge dinosaur in Argentina:  the Dreadnaughtus schrani.  It was described as having a body about the size of a house, and nearly as long as a Boeing 737.  It lived about 77 million years ago, and weighed about 65 tons.

Millions of people reading about that believe that the earth is . . . oh . . . 6 or 8 or 10 thousand years old.  That is to say, Dreadnaughtus schrani is 77 thousand times as old as creation.  And if you can digest that without choking on the absurdity of a recent creation, you might try to think about how old the universe actually is:  more than 13,000,000,000 years old.  13 billion.

Syria and Iraq are being overrun with people who believe that if you do not believe what they do, religiously, you deserve to have your head cut off.  And one of our own mental geniuses on one of our own TV shows says we should offer them the same deal:  convert to Christianity or have their heads cut off.  In other words, join them!  The Spanish Inquisition was way ahead of its time!

The Church of Latter Day Saints has put on display some of its own magical mystery artifacts:  an original page from Joseph Smith's translation of a document revealed to him by an angel, written in "Reformed Egyptian", whatever that is.  "Reformed Egyptian" is not a known language, except to Joseph Smith.

All over this good land, there are people who say, every day, that we ought to be, or that we are, a religious nation, ourselves, with our own official religion; not Islamic, in our case, but fundamentalist Christian.  Dreadnaughtus schrani did not exist 77 million years ago, the earth is a recent doodad, and God wants all of us to be ignorant of most of the things we know to be true.

Most of the religions we know had their beginnings very recently, as things are measured geologically, but even so, the view of the world as described in those religions is a bit like seeing something encased in pitch a couple of thousand years ago.  Our normal, schoolbook, common sense, and scientific view of how the world works, of what is possible or desirable, is very different from the way people thought even a few hundred years ago.  We can see in Syria and Iraq today, what people thought a few hundred years ago, and what happens when you give people who think like that an Uzi or an axe.

Angels do not bring books written in Reformed Egyptian, and the earth was not created millions of years after Dreadnaughtus schrani died; may they rest in the rocks!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more

Are You There?

I have been looking at the information that Google provides about this blog, particularly whom the audience is, by country.  Nothing is provided about individual readers; nothing at all.  And that is good:  we ought to be able to read things without it becoming a public event. Most of the people who read this blog--the vast majority--are in the United States.  That makes sense.  That is where I am, who I am, and what I write about, mostly.  It seldom happens that anyone responds with a comment, but I am always delighted when they do.  No!   Almost always delighted.  There have been a few nonsense responses--nonsense strings of words, and what appear to be barely intelligible religious scoldings--but all-but-a-few comments have been appreciated. Here are the facts--real facts, not alternative facts: In the last month, in addition to the preponderance of pageviews in the U.S., the most activity from readers has come from France, China, Portugal, Romania, and Russia.  I think I
2 comments
Read more