Te Fires of Creationists, and Rallying for Science

—KENDRICK FRAZIER

You have to hand it to the creationists, especially the “young-Earth” variety. They are endlessly creative in concocting new rationales for their worldviews. Even when they have to twist into mental contortions, they manage to say it all with a straight face. For example, if, as they contend, the Earth is only six thousand years old, instead of 4.6 billion, and if all life were created the same day instead of evolved over time, that means dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time. And if that’s true, then maybe dragon legends actually are evidence of human contact with dinosaurs. And so if they can only show that dinosaurs breathed fire. . . . Yes, I know. Impossibilities multiplied by implausibilities. But these people are serious. They write school textbooks endorsing these absurdities. So for our cover article, Philip J. Senter takes them seriously. A vertebrate paleontologist, he carefully examines each hypothesis, one after the other. Senter has great patience. But the end result is a fire hose of cold water quenching each fire-breathing hypothesis. Where then do dragon legends come from? Senter explains that too. In a shorter companion article, he then tracks down a separate bizarre claim that Australian Aborigines may have known of the extinct plesiosaur. I’ll not give away the ending, but think Golden Books.