Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

Tyrannosaurus rex Started Out as Coconut-Eater

Posted by "GrrlScientist" on March 28, 2007
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According to the creationists, the mighty and fearsome T. rex started out as a coconut eater until humans ruined it all — after the fall, innocent T. rex suddenly found it had to make a living by eating meat instead of coconuts.

In the middle of the lobby of the 50,000-square-foot Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., a 20-foot waterfall tumbles. Two life-size figures of children with long black hair and in buckskin clothes play in the stream a few feet from two towering Tyrannosaurus Rex models that can move and roar. The museum, which cost $25 million to build and has a sea of black asphalt parking lots for school buses, has a scale model of Noah’s ark that shows how Noah solved the problem of fitting dinosaurs into the three levels of the vessel–he loaded only baby dinosaurs. And on the wooden model, infant dinosaurs cavort with horses, giraffes, hippopotamuses, penguins and bears. There is an elaborate display of the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve, naked but strategically positioned so as not to display breasts or genitals, swim in a river as giant dinosaurs and lizards roam the banks.

Before Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise, museum visitors are told, all of the dinosaurs were peaceable plant-eaters. The evidence is found in Genesis 1:30, where God gives “green herb” to every creature to eat. There were no predators. T-Rex had such big teeth, the museum explains, so it could open coconuts. Only after Adam and Eve sinned and were cast out of paradise did the dinosaurs start to eat flesh. And Adam’s sin is a key component of the belief system, for in the eyes of many creationists, in order for Jesus’ death to be meaningful it had to atone for Adam’s first sin. [story]

This stuff belongs in a skit on Saturday Night Live. I can’t believe that any rational human would actually believe this tripe, unless they have been smoking a little too much “green herb” themselves.

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Comments

  1. #1 coturnix
    March 28, 2007

    Cookoos and nuts thinking of coconuts?

  2. #2 Gerry L
    March 29, 2007

    I’d like to see some enterprising educators develop a lesson plan to help kids who are exposed to this dreck figure out how to see through it. Much like Consumer Reports (or something like it) has lessons for kids to understand how advertising works to manipulate consumers.

  3. #3 Chris' Wills
    March 29, 2007

    Well it was lucky for T Rex that opening coconuts is so similar to eating meat :o )

    I have always wondered how Ken Ham and the other snake oil salesmen at AIG and other places, can go around deliberately trying to foster ignorance in the young?

  4. #4 Boo
    March 29, 2007

    Of course, according to Genesis there weren’t any children until after the Fall, so presumably the animatronic dinosaurs will be shown eating the kids?

  5. #5 lmf3b
    March 29, 2007

    Forget the T-Rex. I want to know what the first anteaters ate.

  6. #6 Ex-drone
    March 29, 2007

    Those must have been some coconuts to require those teeth and sustain that body mass. So why do creationists have a problem the concept of exaptation?

  7. #7 Richard Simons
    March 29, 2007

    If there was no death before the Fall, presumably there were also no births, as otherwise the earth would be very quickly over-run with everything imaginable. So where did the baby dinosaurs come from?

  8. #8 Jordan, FCD
    March 29, 2007

    I am a Christian. I know many scientists who are Christians. I have rarely encountered one that views the Bible as a scientific textbook. It is not. There are a lot of faith based theories out there and none of them should ever be taught as science.

  9. #9 JB
    March 29, 2007

    Dude, I’m gonna get high and go see that crazy shit. Who would believe it? I dunno. I’ll go find out.

  10. #10 arby
    March 29, 2007

    Amazing. I agree with JB, the best part of a tour of the “museum” might be the people watching. Or maybe that would just be too depressing, even with herbal help. I think I’ll pass. rb

  11. #11 David Harmon
    March 29, 2007

    Just FYI, these guys’ theology is almost as bad as their “science” — in fact, each is causing problems for the other.

    Specifically, these folks have bought into what one of the biggest Christian heresies of our time; the identification of Eden with Heaven. While both are sometimes called Paradise (the word originally meant a walled garden), they’re theologically quite distinct.

    In particular, Eden was never meant to be a place where everything was “good” — it was a place for creatures which were not concerned with good and evil (i.e., not moral agents). (So there’s no problem with animals chomping each other in the first place!) The reason why humans got kicked out after eating the Fruit of Knowledge can be summed up in those PETA-style nuts who dream of interfering between predator and prey.

    Note also that the attempt to personally return to Eden, is an essentially evil goal, because it tries to renounce all moral responsibility.

  12. #12 llewelly
    March 29, 2007

    Forget the T-Rex. I want to know what the first anteaters ate.

    Yogurt.

  13. #13 anon
    March 29, 2007

    wtf?!? I hate creationists

  14. #14 Darren Naish
    March 29, 2007

    I thought that the cretinists had tyrannosaurs down as eaters of sugar cane, not coconuts. Apparently they’ve even discovered sugar cane fossilised between its teeth. Yeah…

  15. #15 Mustafa Mond, FCD
    March 29, 2007

    Forget the T-Rex. I want to know what the first anteaters ate.

    Shredded coconut.

    But every coconut is a potential life, a precious snowflake that could become a full-blown coconut tree some day, so to say that there was no death and no killing is misleading. I hope those T-rex at least restricted themselves to only unfertilized coconuts.

  16. #16 chris y
    March 29, 2007

    I thought that the cretinists had tyrannosaurs down as eaters of sugar cane, not coconuts. Apparently they’ve even discovered sugar cane fossilised between its teeth.

    … and they became extinct because with those teeny little arms they couldn’t reach to floss properly, so they starved when all their teeth rotted out. Indeed.

  17. #17 drekab
    March 29, 2007

    Richard Simons: If there was no death before the Fall, presumably there were also no births, as otherwise the earth would be very quickly over-run with everything imaginable. So where did the baby dinosaurs come from? < \I>

    Not that it matters since this whole thing is crazy, but Noahs Ark came way after the fall, FYI.

  18. #18 bobzimmy
    March 29, 2007

    Green Herb? I smoke the stuff daily and even I don’t fall for this BS, nor do any of my 1/2 baked friends. As someone who attended catholic school for 8 years I can honestly say that religion is a farce. I’m just glad I finished school before all this creationist crap started. I am now a devout atheist and really wish that people would put a little less faith in a 2000-year-old fiction novel, because really that’s all the bible is. The bible is no more factual than the Da Vinci Code or The Onion’s daily headlines.

    P.S. F jesus and F the pope. Sinead O’Connor was right.

  19. #19 tom
    March 29, 2007

    How did an animal with a giant head and next to no arms handle coconunts? It’s head was 5 foot long and it’s arms can’t reach it’s mouth so how did it get a coconut in it’s mouth? How did dagger teeth grip a coconut?
    How can people believe something with so many faults even when I’m ignoring the fact no coconuts have been found in a T Rex and that such a large animal couldn’t be sustained on coconuts. I’m also interested to know what a cheetah or velociraptor ate seeing as you don’t need to be agile to “hunt” plants.

  20. #20 MR
    March 29, 2007

    I’m with Bob on this, don’t go blaming :cough: herbal material for this shit. Various inhalable plants may cause one to find Spongebob significantly more meaningful… HOWEVER, it won’t make you think T-Rexs cuddled with hippopotami. Although, Cuddling with Hippopotami would be a bitchin band name… where are my cheetos.
    :)

  21. #21 Richard Simons
    March 29, 2007

    drekab: “but Noah’s Ark came way after the fall, FYI.”

    Oops – of course it did. For a few minutes my thinking processes were on a par with Ham and his gang (the Hamsters?).

  22. #22 Paul Sunstone
    March 29, 2007

    It fascinates me the lengths these folks will go to create and support their willful ignorance. Twenty-five million to back a lie? Humans are certainly the most insane of the great apes.