Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Palin's excellent dinosaur adventure

Uh oh. Those relentless investigative reporters of the right think they have caught lefty celebrities and mainstream media stars getting hoaxed by a humor site and spreading lies about Sarah Palin. Warner Todd Huston has a column up on a dozen or so right-wing sites with the poop on our latest perfidy.
As if we needed another reason to think that the excitable Maureen Dowd and the empty headed Matt Damon are... well, excitable and empty headed… we get the newest raindrop in their river of blather as proof that their "research" into a subject seems to consist of hearing an unsupported claim and deciding it represent gospel truth. Our latest proof is that they both seem to have been taken in by a nutrooter lie, a fake quote that claims Sarah Palin said, "dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago."

Both seem to have fallen for a parody of Governor Palin invented by a blogger whose post seems to have been taken literally. The following self-identified "fake Governor Sarah Palin Quote" was posted on August 30: "God made dinosaurs 4,000 years ago as ultimately flawed creatures, lizards of Satan really, so when they died and became petroleum products we, made in his perfect image, could use them in our pickup trucks, snow machines and fishing boats."

[...]

[H]ow do these two darlings of the far left explain away their use against Palin of a known nutrooter lie? I suppose, like most leftists, truth doesn’t matter to them if the end result is a win for their side. After all, for the left, the ends truly do justify the means.

Huston shouldn't be so quick to declare victory on that one. Many creationists do believe that the men of Genesis and dinosaurs lived together, that Noah carried dinosaurs on his ark, that dinosaurs are the dragons and monsters of ancient and medieval lore, and that they have only gone extinct in historical times. Google the word dinosaur along with Behemoth and Leviathan. Take Ken Ham (please! Ba-dump), the owner of the fancy new creation science museum in Kentucky.
In the Bible, in Job 40:15-24, God describes to Job (who lived after the Flood) a great beast with which Job was familiar. This great animal, called 'behemoth,' is described as 'the chief of the ways of God,' perhaps the biggest land animal God had created. Impressively, he moved his tail like a cedar tree! Although some Bible commentaries say this may have been an elephant or hippopotamus, the description actually fits that of a dinosaur like Brachiosaurus. Elephants and hippos certainly do not have tails like cedar trees!

[...]

Interestingly, the word 'dragon' is used a number of times in the Old Testament. In most instances, the word dinosaur could substitute for dragon and it would fit very nicely. Creation scientists believe that dinosaurs were called dragons before the word dinosaur was invented in the 1800s. We would not expect to find the word dinosaur in Bibles like the Authorized Version (1611), as it was translated well before the word dinosaur was ever used.

Also, there are many very old history books in various libraries around the world that have detailed records of dragons and their encounters with people. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly for creationists), many of these descriptions of dragons fit with how modern scientists would describe dinosaurs, even Tyrannosaurus. Unfortunately, this evidence is not considered valid by evolutionists. Why? Only because their belief is that man and dinosaurs did not live at the same time!

At least one Alaskan claims Palin went along with this theory up until a few years ago. From Philip Munger's Progressive Alaska. "[In June 1997] I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time." In another version of the story, Munger told an interviewer "I pushed her on the earth's creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she'd seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them." About eight years later he ran into her again. "At this time, people were beginning to encourage her to run for Governor. Once again, we found ourselves being able to talk privately. I reminded her of the earlier conversation, asking her if her views had changed. She was no longer 'necessarily' a young earth creationist, she told me. But she strongly reiterated her belief that 'The Lord is coming soon.' I was trying to get her to tell me what she felt the signs were, when she had to move on." Unless Huston can discredit Munger as a witness, the truth on this one is, at best, that she used to believe that people and dinosaurs once lived together, but now she isn't sure.

By the way, the Matt Damon clip that is circulating does not "propagate [that] as fact." He question it. He says it is important to find out if that is something she believes. But lets not let facts get in the way. If there is one thing the right loves as much as a good press bashing, it's a good Hollywood bashing. By linking Dowd and Damon on this one it's a twofer Huston and his readers. Huston can be as snide and sarcastic as he wants, but he's wrong on this one. So, how will they explain away the use against Dowd and Damon of known wingnut misinformation when this gets out? Will they just ignore it? "I suppose, like most leftists rightists, truth doesn’t matter to them if the end result is a win for their side. After all, for the left right, the ends truly do justify the means." Yeah, my enemy is just plain evil, that must be the explanation.

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