Originally published at: Why dinosaur bones were the real nail in religion's coffin - Boing Boing
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It’s funny to me that the Cabazon dinosaurs are the featured photo for this article because that tourist trap got bought by some religious young-earth creationists years ago, and the gift shop there is full of books explaining how dinosaurs fit into a literal interpretation of the bible. (Or at least that was the case when I made a stop there about 15 years ago.)
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It’s an intriguing premise, even though 19th-century religious fundies started retconning the terrible lizards into their fairytales almost immediately.
Still, it must have been a well-deserved and long-overdue body blow to them.
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There is zero doubt in my mind that if incontrovertible proof of intelligent life on other planets were discovered it would still have relatively little impact in belief on Christianity or other major religions. Retcons would come quickly.
There was even an original episode of Star Trek that implied that Jesus was visiting different planets at different times and that he just hadn’t got around to all of them yet.
Edit to add: one of the plot details that I thought was a neat idea in The Expanse was that Mormonism was still going strong, and that the belief system and sense of mission for Mormons was basically exactly the same as it is now, just with spaceships instead of bicycles.
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It’s still true. A devout USian I know says dinosaur bones were put on earth by God to “test our faith.”
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Stories always get muddled.
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“Be patient! It’s a big universe and I’m only human. Well, except for my dad being God… But even so!”
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In a similar vein, I’ve heard theories (a/k/a guesses) that dinosaurs “proved” the underworld and, as a result, promoted religion. A river bank would get eroded and these creatures would start to emerge from the ground. They weren’t just bones being revealed, they were demons of the underworld coming for a visit.
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the idea that there had been species that were not around anymore really must have been an earthquake, a civilization defining moment
No. Not at all. The Victorians surely knew that there were species that were not around any more. (?)
The key point was that these bones were “prehistoric” - that they were obviously so old that 6,000 years was a major error. Not simply that the bones’ owners were no longer here as a species.
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Via Yoy Luahda…
Except for that fact that many religious people fully believe in science. Given that the modern scientific method was developed by religious people, it’s seems rather weird to assume the dichotomy. Sure, there are religious people and atheists who push it, but the reality is that it’s just another form of us v. them politics that seeks to divide people in service of keeping some people in power over the rest of us. But the truth is that plenty of religious people manage to both practice their religion and embrace science.
But sure… Religion is “dead” I guess… 
It’s true that some believe that. Others, of course, don’t believe that. 
I don’t know… I just see this as just yet another attempt to divide people. The New Atheists are just as complicit in that as right wing literalists, too. Which shows that they only really care about the conflict, but about the fight and keeping the division paying out dividends.
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The dinosaur remains in the UK really confused people when they were dug up, in good part because they are almost uniformly fragmentary. So much so, that the first megalosaur femur illustrated in 1763 was actually named Scrotum Humanum by Richard Brookes; and only tiny fragments were recovered all the way through to the 1824 Megalosaurus jawbone found in Stonesfield which was the year it was officially announced at The Geological Society in London.
The conflict with religion was almost immediate, William Buckland who gave Megalosaurus its name wrote that it had been created ‘to diminish the aggregate amount of animal suffering’.
In the UK, religion really didn’t get beaten into shape until 1860 when the awesome Thomas Huxley debated Bishop Samuel Wilberforce on the impact of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.
Wilberforce supposedly asked Huxley whether it was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he descended from a monkey. Huxley is said to have replied he would not be ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor, but he would be ashamed to be associated with a man who used his god given gifts to obscure the truth.
As for acceptance of geological time, to be fair religion had largely conceded the literal truth of Ussher’s timeline from the late 18th Century, not least because of James Hutton’s extraordinary work in Scotland which had come up with the idea of uniformitarianism.
As he memorably put it: ‘The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now. No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle. We find no vestige of a beginning - no prospect of an end.’
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Eh, can’t read the article, but pretty sure that
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nothing is the nail in religion’s coffin, because over all it is still going strong.
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I don’t think dinosaurs did much damage. Their “discovery” in the early 1800s was a formality, people have been finding fossil bones and shells since before homosapiens existed. The existence of dinosaurs don’t really contradict the Bible. In 3rd grade we had our big dinosaur unit (I had Pachycephalosaus). I remember me or some other kid asked if dinosaurs were in the Bible and the teacher (who was one of those people who didn’t give A+s because only God was perfect) said that “great beasts” were mentioned.
An old earth complicates things, but again doesn’t actually contradict anything. Especially if you see Genesis as an overview and analogy, and not literal. Even evolution can jibe with religion.
It’s only zealots and people with hubris that their interpretation is the only correct one that has to reject dinosaurs.
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I don’t think I’d have what it takes to earn that title, but damn, I want it.
Never mind, I’ll take this one. Sounds like a member of GWAR.
I had no context for The Expanse before watching the show, so that reveal took me by complete surprise and actually had me lol’ing. Of course they would be one of the first to take that risk. And the ship design was just… 
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Sure. Obviously.
I did write “devout,” guess I should’ve written “especially devout”? 
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I’d say (as @Mister44 noted) zealots maybe? I’ve known plenty of devout folks who were willing to engage doubt and discussion on their faith, so I don’t think being devout is the same as being a zealot…
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Maybe, though the person I spoke of (anecdote not being data, etc.) isn’t at all a “zealot,” and is perfectly reasonable otherwise. It’s just that their brain seems to switch into a kind of robot or automaton mode whenever the topic of religion comes up.
Which isn’t so strange or surprising to me, really. I’ve known many other people who get let’s say, irrational, when certain topics that click for them that way come up.
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You read the two books in question instead?
