Paleophyte Wrote:IIRC, the "real" Nessie was uncovered a few decades back. Before paleontology made the dinosaurs cool and Nessie got its pleisiosaur retcon, it was described as a boiling patch of turbulence on the lake's surface. The actual monster was never seen but was presumably some sort of faery or other supernatural beastie.
The actual "monster" is a product of the fact that Loch Ness is a long, thin loch prone to frequent wind storms. When the wind blows down the long axis of the loch all of the warm water near the surface gets pushed to one end of the loch. When the wind stops the upper surface of this warm water wedge relaxes fairly rapidly. However, the lower surface is a boundary between warm water and cold water, so it relaxes much more slowly, forming a body wave that travels the length of the loch in a few days. Nobody would notice it except that part way down the loch there's a shallow ridge that forces the body wave to the surface. The end result is that a couple days after a strong wind you can be out on the loch in very still conditions and suddenly find yourself in weirdly unexpected turbulence that has no obvious cause. It's easy to see how some superstitious fishermen might have jumped from that to a lake monster.
This is so bigoted. We are talking about a being that inspired so many branches of art, like novels, stories, movies, paintings, comics, and poems. Like this famous painting by Sir Peter Scott, who was not just a painter but also an ornithologist, conservationist, and a naval officer, and who also founded the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau.
![[Image: nessiep.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/sfLCJ3PF/nessiep.jpg)
Not to mention that Nessie inspired morality, like how many times did parents say to their kids: "If you don't behave Nessie will eat you, and if you are good, Nessie will love you." It also inspired numerous scientific papers, and many intelligent people to believe in it, like Arthur C. Clarke who said: "On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I believe in Nessie." Or when medieval saint Columba himself, with other monks, met Nessie - why would they lie about it since they are monks who vowed to never lie.
So to say that Nessie was just water surface turbulence is bigoted and uneducated. You should start reading the blog "History for Anessians."
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
