Dinosaurs and Man

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

[Minimalist]

Really! It's that simple!

Unfortunately, not to the terminally simple.

[Cyberman]

I think I'd've gone for "wilfully simple", but the point is a good one and well made.

[Angrboda]

…Justin Barrett thought that there may be something more to people's thoughts about God than they themselves believed. So he used a very simple, tried and tested method. He got his subjects to read specially prepared stories and to retell them after a while. The point of this is that people cannot store a text verbatim if it is longer than a few sentences. What they do is form a memory of the main episodes and how they connect. So when they recall the text people often distort the details of a story. Between the bits that are actually preserved from the original they insert details of their own invention. For instance, people read in Little Red Riding Hood that 'she went to her grandmother's house' and a few hours later say that 'she walked to her grandmother's house'. Minor changes of this kind or additions reveal what concepts people use to represent the story. In this particular case, they show that people imagined the heroine walking rather than taking a bus or riding a motorbike, although the story did not mention anything about how she travelled about.

So Barrett did two things. First, he asked his subjects to answer the simple question, What is God like? People produced all sorts of descriptions with common features. For instance, many of them said that an important feature of God is that he can attend to all sorts of things at the same time, contrary to humans who by necessity attend to one thing and then to another. After this, Barrett had his subjects read stories in which these features of God were relevant. For instance, the story described God as saving a man's life and at the same time helping a woman find her lost purse. After a while the subjects had to retell the story. In a spectacular and rather surprising way, many subjects said that God had helped one person out and then turned his attention to the other's plight.

So people both say explicitly that God could do two things at once – indeed, that is what makes him God – and then, when they spontaneously represent what God does, construe a standard agent who attends to one thing after another. Barrett observed this effect with both believers and non-believers, and in Delhi, India, in the same way as in Ithaca, NY. These experiments show that people's thoughts about God, the mental representation they use to explain what God does and how he does it, are not quite the same as what they say when you ask them. In fact, in this case, one contradicts the other. In each person there is both an official concept – what they can report if you ask them – and an implicit concept that they use without being really aware of it.

Barrett coined the phrase 'theological correctness' to describe this effect. In the same way as people sometimes have an explicit, officially approved version of their political beliefs that may or may not correspond to their actual commitments, people here are certain that they believe in a God with non-standard cognitive powers. However, the recall test produces what could be called a certain 'cognitive pressure' which diverts their attention from the desire to express 'correct' beliefs. In such a context, people use intuitive expectations about how a mind works, which are available automatically since they are activated to make sense of people's behaviour at all times. When the task allows for conscious monitoring, we get the theological version; when the task requires fast access, we get the anthropomorphic version. This shows, not only that the theological concept has not displaced the spontaneous one but also that it is not stored in the same way. Very likely the theological concept is stored in the form of explicit sentence-like propositions ('God is omniscient', 'God is everywhere'). By contrast, the spontaneous concept is stored in the format of direct instructions to intuitive psychology, which would explain why it is accessed much faster.

— Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained, pp. 87-88

[Justtristo]

I wanted to ask this question to Young Earth Creationists who believe that Leviathan was some kind of plesiosaur or dinosaur?

Do you honestly believe a sea dwelling creature like a or any other animal has or had the ability to breathe fire?. I ask this because Leviathan according to the Old Testament breathes fire.

[popeyespappy]

Footage of Dr. Patton taking the lie detector test

Given the context, that was fucking funny.

[Zen Badger]

I got to the bit where he says "contradicts the bible" and quit.

If this man is a real scientist I'm the pope.

He'll be one of those peanuts that automatically rejects anything that isn't in accordance with his stupid book.

And that is not science.

Here is a fine example.

[The Grand Nudger]

I wanted to ask this question to Young Earth Creationists who believe that Leviathan was some kind of plesiosaur or dinosaur?

Do you honestly believe a sea dwelling creature like a or any other animal has or had the ability to breathe fire?. I ask this because Leviathan according to the Old Testament breathes fire.

^This. Magic, demons, and, apparently, fire-breathing fucking dragons

:hangs head in shame:

[Justtristo]

I wanted to ask this question to Young Earth Creationists who believe that Leviathan was some kind of plesiosaur or dinosaur?

Do you honestly believe a sea dwelling creature like a or any other animal has or had the ability to breathe fire?. I ask this because Leviathan according to the Old Testament breathes fire.

^This. Magic, demons, and, apparently, fire-breathing fucking dragons

:hangs head in shame:

Don't forget demons causing conditions from bipolar disorder to epilepsy

[The Grand Nudger]

You know the demonic (or spirit) explanations for illnesses have never bothered me. People the world over have proposed this as an explanation for something that actually happens, a problem that actually exists. Fire breathing dragons are a flight of pure fantasy, all credibility is completely eroded the minute the authors propose dragons. There is nothing to observe and explain with dragons, not a thing. People sometimes assume that "dragons" were an explanation for dinosaur fossils, but take a moment to really mull that over. How precisely does one go from a pile of bones to fire-breathing (or flying, or maiden stealing, or frost creeping, or boat smashing-fisherman killing[leviathan]) dragons? You don't. The dragon story already exists, and, at best, you just claim the bones for the pre-existing narrative. It's absurd to me that a text can propose dragons in one breath and "history" in the next and not receive the sort of critical eye that such a tale deserves. Why not throw your chips in with Kraken, Panlong, or Uncegila? Before the allegory or symbolism camp chimes in..allegory for what, symbolism for what? Uh-huh. Make no mistake, these people believed, they believed so strongly that this creatures existence was seen as a proof of gods existence and power (which is exactly what the leviathan narratives purpose is, plain as day, just from the text).

Would you prefer that the text read, "who is so great but god that can create a fictional creature?" - I may have a few suggestions as to an answer for that question-