In a development completely unimportant in both theology and science, fundamental Christians have expressed their opposition to feathered dinosaurs.
A little background here: Creationistas, who believe the Bible to be literally true, have always had tough going with the dinosaurs. The explanation they've offered for these beasts having once ruled the Earth and then abruptly gone out of business is that dinosaurs co-existed with Adam and Eve, somehow refraining from not devouring them like a couple of slow-moving meat pies, until all the dinos were killed in Noah's Flood, which accounts for all those huge bones being buried in petrified mud.
This is a nice story. Not as nice as the story of Noah, though, who as you recall was said to have collected two of every species on Earth to ride out the Flood with him on his Ark and repopulate the planet after it had gone through the spin cycle of God's divine fury. Even elementary school children have trouble with Noah (Every kind? Even bugs?) while more sophisticated critics wonder how the Middle East-based patriarch managed to collect two jaguars, for example, and how did he get those jaguars get back to South America when things dried out?
It's no use arguing with fundamentalists about this, or anything else. If you employ all the reason, logic and research at your disposal to prove to the satisfaction of yourself and any witnesses present that the Old Testament is just a bunch of entertaining if somewhat grisly Jewish folk tales, all Bible-believers will say to you when you have completed this feat of ratiocination is "I'll pray for you." This means "Shut up."
Even fundamentalists don't believe the Bible to be literally true when it comes to Noah, though, because the Bible says he collected a pair of every kind of creature and he obviously left out all the dinosaurs. I'm not saying this wasn't a wise choice on his part. Those big boys take up a lot of cubits.
The news that many dinosaurs were apparently feathered has been out for a while, too. Even some paleontologists admit disappointment at the transformation of these creatures from silent reptilian brutes that could gobble a human up like an appetizer meatball to chirping, feathery monsters that could crunch Chris Christie in half faster than your dog can snap up an accidentally dropped buffalo wing.
The source for this article actually confesses that “Dinosaurs used to be cool, feathers came in, and now it’s like, they’re going to ruffle their plumage when they come after me, and that is not scary.”
Well good for you, missy, but personally, if some thirty-foot tall monster with teeth the size of maximum permissible carry-on luggage bags came lumbering after us, I would not be pausing to check if it was molting. I would be busy seeing if I could run faster than you. Your cavalier attitude toward feathery menaces tells me you have not experienced, as I have in a previously documented incident, an attack upon your person by a murderous creature of the poultry persuasion.
The creationists don't like the feathered dinosaurs because it makes the evolution of birds from these prehistoric monsters seem likely. Evolution is anathema to this school of thought, which holds that Jehovah popped all the creatures of the Earth into existence from the raw snot of Creation on one of its seven days.
So if you observe a Christian of the fundamentalist persuasion sitting in a Chic-fil-A eating a dry, pickle-flavored sandwich and crunching down some wood-chip tasting waffle fries in order to express the homophobia required of him by the Bible, my advice is not to tell him he's really eating dinosaur.
Unless you want him to pray for you.
A little background here: Creationistas, who believe the Bible to be literally true, have always had tough going with the dinosaurs. The explanation they've offered for these beasts having once ruled the Earth and then abruptly gone out of business is that dinosaurs co-existed with Adam and Eve, somehow refraining from not devouring them like a couple of slow-moving meat pies, until all the dinos were killed in Noah's Flood, which accounts for all those huge bones being buried in petrified mud.
This is a nice story. Not as nice as the story of Noah, though, who as you recall was said to have collected two of every species on Earth to ride out the Flood with him on his Ark and repopulate the planet after it had gone through the spin cycle of God's divine fury. Even elementary school children have trouble with Noah (Every kind? Even bugs?) while more sophisticated critics wonder how the Middle East-based patriarch managed to collect two jaguars, for example, and how did he get those jaguars get back to South America when things dried out?
It's no use arguing with fundamentalists about this, or anything else. If you employ all the reason, logic and research at your disposal to prove to the satisfaction of yourself and any witnesses present that the Old Testament is just a bunch of entertaining if somewhat grisly Jewish folk tales, all Bible-believers will say to you when you have completed this feat of ratiocination is "I'll pray for you." This means "Shut up."
Even fundamentalists don't believe the Bible to be literally true when it comes to Noah, though, because the Bible says he collected a pair of every kind of creature and he obviously left out all the dinosaurs. I'm not saying this wasn't a wise choice on his part. Those big boys take up a lot of cubits.
The news that many dinosaurs were apparently feathered has been out for a while, too. Even some paleontologists admit disappointment at the transformation of these creatures from silent reptilian brutes that could gobble a human up like an appetizer meatball to chirping, feathery monsters that could crunch Chris Christie in half faster than your dog can snap up an accidentally dropped buffalo wing.
The source for this article actually confesses that “Dinosaurs used to be cool, feathers came in, and now it’s like, they’re going to ruffle their plumage when they come after me, and that is not scary.”
Well good for you, missy, but personally, if some thirty-foot tall monster with teeth the size of maximum permissible carry-on luggage bags came lumbering after us, I would not be pausing to check if it was molting. I would be busy seeing if I could run faster than you. Your cavalier attitude toward feathery menaces tells me you have not experienced, as I have in a previously documented incident, an attack upon your person by a murderous creature of the poultry persuasion.
The creationists don't like the feathered dinosaurs because it makes the evolution of birds from these prehistoric monsters seem likely. Evolution is anathema to this school of thought, which holds that Jehovah popped all the creatures of the Earth into existence from the raw snot of Creation on one of its seven days.
So if you observe a Christian of the fundamentalist persuasion sitting in a Chic-fil-A eating a dry, pickle-flavored sandwich and crunching down some wood-chip tasting waffle fries in order to express the homophobia required of him by the Bible, my advice is not to tell him he's really eating dinosaur.
Unless you want him to pray for you.
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