Pharyngula

Even the lovely island of Malta is infested with creationists…who have somehow acquired positions of authority in private schools.

Far from becoming extinct 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs actually co-existed with early humans, and even helped in the construction of the pyramids.
This is the word of Vince Fenech, Evangelist pastor and director of a fully licensed, State-approved Creationist institution which admits children aged between four and 18.

I have to wonder what the point of licensing schools is when the process is so porous that flaming incompetents like Fenech can run them.

Comments

#1 Aphrodine
August 22, 2008

So that’s how the pyramids wre made! T-Rex and all of is buddies chipped in to help! It’s so obvious to me now!!1111eleventy
#2 SC
August 22, 2008

and even helped in the construction of the pyramids.

Is that a new twist, or just new to me? Would be hilarious, if it weren’t being taught to children in school.
#3 u238chaos
August 22, 2008

“T-Rex and all of is buddies chipped in to help!

”

Behold the power of the coconut.
#4 SC
August 22, 2008

Ah. I see it’s not part of the school’s curriculum. Hilarious, then.
#5 RM
August 22, 2008

Dinosaurs would have been excellent help in building pyramids. I wonder if they were unionized?
#6 SC
August 22, 2008

I wonder if they were unionized?

That’s one picket line I doubt many would cross.
#7 JStein
August 22, 2008

This would be hysterical, if they weren’t teaching it to kids.

I never get tired of the “T-Rex was a vegetarian… and his teeth were used for cracking coconuts!” argument.

Personally, I had never thought of them as a useful labor source, because of their arms, but I suppose if they could crack coconuts with their teeth, lifting stuff with their arms isn’t far off.
#8 mango
August 22, 2008

The poor children won’t know any better but to believe their “teacher.” Children would believe in Santa Claus into adulthood if their parents did, just like they do Jesus for example. This “dinosaurs built the pyramids” scenario is the same situation.
#9 SC
August 22, 2008

Fenech suddenly seems very keen on being quoted. “We don’t just teach our students about evolution,” he continues enthusiastically. “We also teach them, for example, that abortion is murder… and you can quote me on that, too!”
…
“We do not teach that abortion is murder,” he insists, contradicting himself totally in less than five minutes. “What we teach is ‘Thou shalt not kill’.”
#10 cervantes
August 22, 2008

Well of course that’s true! Haven’t you ever seen The Flintstones?
#11 Amber
August 22, 2008

Gee, and all this time I thought mammoths were used to build the pyramids.
#12 ennui
August 22, 2008

the dinosaurs actually co-existed with early humans, and even helped in the construction of the pyramids

It all makes perfect sense now. The dinosaurs were space aliens.
#13 jimvj
August 22, 2008

That the dark skinned denizens of Egypt could have built the pyramids on their own smarts (and the labor of slaves) sticks in the craw of most light-skinned racists. They have to invoke inter-stellar aliens, magical but extinct civilizations, or – as this idiot says – dinosaurs.
#14 Norman Doering
August 22, 2008

Aphrodine wrote:

So that’s how the pyramids wre made! T-Rex and all of is buddies chipped in to help! It’s so obvious to me now!

What? You never noticed all those dinosaurs in their hieroglyphics before? And was not one of the Ten Plagues of Egypt in the Old Testament a plaque of velociraptors?
#15 Kristine
August 22, 2008

*innocent face*
Um. Didn’t the “giants in the earth” that existed “in those days” [allegedly the dinos] also mate with the “daughters of earth” and bear a new race of “mighty men?” Maybe that’s how some of those old biblical patriarchs had so many children – their kids hatched in a litter of dino eggs? Do we really want to teach kids that they’re a mixture of man and dinosaur, rather than mostly ape? Hey, whatever floats your boat, or, er, builds your pyramid.
*/innocent face*
#16 Nick Gotts
August 22, 2008

Amber@11,
Chronologically, mammoths could have been used. There was a small population of (small) mammoths on Wrangel island, off NE Siberia, until around 4,000 years ago, centuries after the largest pyramids were built. Indeed, perhaps capture and export for this purpose caused the mammoth’s final extinction, and pyramid-building declined thereafter 😉
#17 s1mplex
August 22, 2008

Hey, maybe he’s just a really enthusiastic ornithologist! After all, dinosaurs didn’t go completely extinct. 🙂

Although, I’m still not sure how birds could have helped build the pyramids…
#18 J
August 22, 2008

…the dinosaurs actually co-existed with early humans, and even helped in the construction of the pyramids.

I need to get to Baen Publishing quick! I have an AWESOME idea for an alternate-history scifi novel…
#19 Ouchimoo
August 22, 2008

WOW! *note to self, read PZ’s article fully before just clicking on links to creationist websites!!!* OMG

“Dinosaurs helped build the pyramids, school director says”

I just about died of shock.
#20 Dunc
August 22, 2008

That the dark skinned denizens of Egypt could have built the pyramids on their own smarts (and the labor of slaves) sticks in the craw of most light-skinned racists.

They didn’t use slaves either – pyramid construction was a relatively high-status occupation.
#21 SteveM
August 22, 2008

So apparently he thinks Dinotopia is a history book?
#22 Karley
August 22, 2008

I’m not surprised. You know how horrible those Maltese men are.
#23 SteveM
August 22, 2008

Um. Didn’t the “giants in the earth” that existed “in those days” [allegedly the dinos] also mate with the “daughters of earth” and bear a new race of “mighty men?”

No, it was “…the sons of god saw the daughters of men and took them for wives…”. “There were giants in those days” is separate.
#24 Patricia
August 22, 2008

I wonder if that idiot director calls all the females in his life simply ‘woman’?
People shouldn’t be surprised Malta is crawling with christians, the Knights Templar’s & Knights Hospitallers went there after SalaHadeen kicked their hind ends out of Jerusalem.
#25 Cliff Hendroval
August 22, 2008

That the dark skinned denizens of Egypt could have built the pyramids on their own smarts

They couldn’t have been that smart…not only were they unable to draw pictures of the dinosaurs that helped them build the pyramids, but they also had a slave revolt where the deity of the slaves (who just happened to be the Creator of the Universe, Lord of the Starfields) plagued them with boils and frogs, turned their river to blood, killed all the first-born male children, and destroyed their army in a spectacular fashion and they didn’t even notice!
#26 Epikt
August 22, 2008

Er–how do you train something like T. Rex to do your bidding? Do you threaten to hit it with a stick?
#27 Nick Gotts
August 22, 2008

Epikt@26,
No, no, no, that’s quite unnecessarily cruel! You just reward any approach toward the desired behaviour with a coconut.
#28 Marcus Ranum
August 22, 2008

Epikt asks:
Er–how do you train something like T. Rex to do your bidding? Do you threaten to hit it with a stick?

You fool! Before the fall, T.Rexes were gentle creatures that were happy to pitch in and help their human playmates whenever possible. In fact, T.Rexes were popular work-animals because of their gentle dispositions and their sweet coconut-scented breath.

Did you miss class the day they explained all this stuff?
#29 J
August 22, 2008

Wasn’t all of this settled by Stargate SG-1?
#30 SteveM
August 22, 2008

Not too impressed with the author of that article either:

Does it? I would have thought it merely illustrates that unlike the Earth, the moon has little or nothing in the way of atmosphere… and dust is usually generated as a result of particles which combine as they are buffeted around by the movement of atmospheric molecules. Also, the moon’s gravity is two thirds less than it is on Earth… which in turn means that dust is practically weightless, and therefore doesn’t settle.

The moondust argument is based on a steady accumulation of cosmic dust hitting the moon. And most dust on Earth (at least household dust) is actually human skin particles.

Second, one-third Gee is not “practically weightless”, and no matter how little mass the dust has it will settle. What he is thinking is that on Earth, something that light won’t settle, being suspended by brownian collision with the air. On the Moon, in a vacuum, dust settles just as fast as a bowling ball. Watch the dust kicked up by the astronauts and notice how it does not “billow” or form clouds, just nice perfect parabolas.
#31 Kristine
August 22, 2008

So – since we now know that birds were never dinos, did dinos (“giants”) also mate with the “daughters of birds” to create the Maltese Falcon? (Come on, now – can that be a coincidence?) And what about Bigfoot? Don’t forget Bigfoot! Isn’t Ken Ham (who I now realize is named after Noah’s son! It all fits!) building a Bigfoot wing at the Creation Museum?

Oops, I guess not. Ken Ham Blames Bigfoot Hoax on Evolution.

Now I’m confused. So the HMS Goliath never went to Malta after all? What?

(Dont’ mind me, I’m just having fun surrealist-googling again. I learned that from the creationists.)
#32 SteveM
August 22, 2008

You fool! Before the fall, T.Rexes were gentle creatures that were happy to pitch in and help their human playmates whenever possible

So Adam and Eve built the pyramids?
#33 Kristine
August 22, 2008

And SteveM, stop spoiling my fun. 😉 Are you sure there was no daughter-of-men hanky-panky with those giants? (Size matters, as we saw with Pluto.) And everyone knows that moondust is comprised mostly of gouda rind. Geez.
#34 Ploon
August 22, 2008

Well, Malta is pretty darn conservative. Divorce is illegal. Under any circumstances.
#35 SteveM
August 22, 2008

Are you sure there was no daughter-of-men hanky-panky with those giants?

No, I didn’t say that exactly. 🙂

I know this is all a bit of fun, but I have always been intrigued by that particular line in the Bible. I used to interpret it as meaning that the whole Adam and Eve story did not refer to the creation of all mankind, but only to the Jews. Or even more metaphorically, that the creation story is only about creating that “spark of humanity” that supposedly sets us apart from “mere animals”. So, the answer to the question of where did Cain’s wife come from is that she was one of the other humans that lived at the time outside of Eden but was not yet instilled with the “spark” of humanity.

Or it could mean the “sons of god” were aliens and the “daughters of men” were humans. Actually that makes more sense.
#36 Norman Doering
August 22, 2008

SteveM wrote:

Not too impressed with the author of that article either

Interesting, I was so focused on Vince Fenech’s crazy ideas that I didn’t even notice how bad that author’s moon dust argument was. I should have too, I remember the creationist’s moon dust argument from when I was in high school. I knew it was refuted, but I couldn’t have told you how without a Google search. So, I did one: Basic, over simplistic, answer: Not really as much cosmic dust as they once thought (In 4.5 billion years a layer of about one and a half inches of cosmic dust would accumulate on the moon).

I liked the article so much that I linked it to the words “abysmal levels of ignorance” in one of my blog posts.
#37 immunosequestration
August 22, 2008

ok ok so why not teach genesis?

i don’t mean a lame tranny into english i’m talking hebrew.

hard it isn’t.

“bahray shee bara eloheem”
that thar eloheem how them old skool writers wrote “gods”.

xtian trannies leave that info out.

there are lotsa other places in the bible where eloheem is explicity plural.

so kids The Bible says (p << .05) that the GODS created the world. Its gods word and if you don't believe it you're going to hell. amen. well amen is really amun kinda like tut ankh amun but thats a different system of divine nomenclature.
#38 Rayven Alandria
August 22, 2008

Sometimes it’s hard to believe people are really that stupid, but they are. Scary.

I watched the third part of Dawkins’ series on Darwin and I was so appalled by the creationists that it actually made me feel a bit ill. The worst one was that blond, obnoxious bitch. Her passive aggressive, arrogant tone made me want to reach through the screen and strangle her. I can’t figure out why some people think Dawkins is mean or rude, I think he is very calm when faced with such staggering stupidity. I sure couldn’t do it, I would have lost it and started yelling at the morons. I think people like creationsist/IDiots are dangerous.
#39 immunosequestration
August 22, 2008

sorry formatting error….

shoulda read so kids The Bible says that the GODS created the world (with a p value under .05)
#40 SteveM
August 22, 2008

… a lame tranny …

poor girl

… xtian trannies leave that info out.

Yeah, what do xtian trannies know anyway except hair and makeup?
#41 SC
August 22, 2008

Final Justice: MST3K
#42 Barklikeadog
August 22, 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNicxcZKMaQ&feature=related

This is the real story of the Bigfoot!
#43 Kristine
August 22, 2008

Or it could mean the “sons of god” were aliens and the “daughters of men” were humans. Actually that makes more sense.

Von D�niken actually speculated that in one of his books (yes, I went through that phase, at twelve).

I can’t figure out why some people think Dawkins is mean or rude, I think he is very calm when faced with such staggering stupidity.

I agree totally. I have nothing near his patience. That’s why I’ve descended into jokes. For something supposedly “uplifting,” creationism sure is depressing.
#44 negentropyeater
August 22, 2008

Ah well, according to the European Commission’s Eurobarometer 225 on social values, science and technology of Jan.2005, of all 25 member nations, Malta breaks several records :

– highest % who answered I believe there is a God with 95% (when the EU25 average was only 52%)

– highest % who answered that obedience was a very important quality that children must be encouraged to learn at home, with85% (EU25 average 56%).

– lowest % who answered that “Decisions about science and technology should be based primarily on the advice of experts about the risks and benefits involved” (and not based on the general public’s view), with 41% (EU25 average 66%)

– lowest % who consider that it is a moral duty to protect nature, even if this means limiting human progress, with 78% (EU25 average 89%)
#45 Ouchimoo
August 22, 2008

LMFAO @ #25’s comments!
#46 David Marjanovi?, OM
August 22, 2008

Well, it’s like with Croatia, Poland and Ireland: Catholicism is part of Maltese national identity.
#47 Rey Fox
August 22, 2008

That’s what I love about America. No silly religions in our national identity.

In theory, at least.
#48 James F. Elliott
August 22, 2008

Wasn’t Malta the last bastion of the Knights Hospitaller? This makes a crazy kind of sense.
#49 BobC
August 22, 2008

Far from becoming extinct 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs actually co-existed with early humans, and even helped in the construction of the pyramids.

I think this was a joke. Nobody could be that stupid.

Off-topic: This article from the National Secular Society is about Richard Dawkins’ TV show The Genius of Charles Darwin.
#50 HennepinCountyLawyer
August 22, 2008

“You fool! Before the fall, T.Rexes were gentle creatures that were happy to pitch in and help their human playmates whenever possible. In fact, T.Rexes were popular work-animals because of their gentle dispositions and their sweet coconut-scented breath.”

I don’t know why people have such a hard time grasping this, since we have a T. Rex living in our midst, and he’s gentle to the point of being sickening. Barney is a T. Rex!
#51 salix
August 22, 2008

Hey, maybe he’s just a really enthusiastic
ornithologist! After all, dinosaurs didn’t go
completely extinct. 🙂

Although, I’m still not sure how birds could
have helped build the pyramids…

It’s a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a two-and-a-half ton block of stone.

Wait a minute! Supposing several hundred thousand swallows carried it together!

Nooo….. They’d have to have it on a line…

(and etc.)
#52 immunosequestration
August 22, 2008

were creationists smart they would threaten to teach that T REX WAS A SCAVENGER!
#53 Ranger Jay
August 22, 2008

Don’t the people of Malta drive around in cars with stone wheels that they propel with their feet?
#54 Epikt
August 22, 2008

Nick Gotts:

No, no, no, that’s quite unnecessarily cruel! You just reward any approach toward the desired behaviour with a coconut.

What do you do if it decides your head resembles a coconut? Whack it across the snout with a rolled-up newspaper?
#55 Nicole
August 22, 2008

Psshht. Dinosaurs didn’t build the pyramids. Aliens did.

Teach the Controversy!

http://controversy.wearscience.com/design/ufo/
#56 Patricia
August 22, 2008

SteveM – For crying out loud, weren’t you home the day those two nice young fellows knocked on your door? They know the answer to your question. No, Adam and Cain didn’t tag team Eve until she had a daughter. That would be incest. Yes, Adam & Eve had many more children, and Cain married one of his sisters. No, that is not incest because…wait for it…SCIENCE has proven, that Adam and Eve were created by gawd with perfect DNA. Therefore no harm could be done by a brother and sister marrying.
See! Now you know the TRUTH. 😉
#57 amhiox
August 22, 2008

Well, humans certainly couldn’t have built the pyramids. Since the population started with only two individuals in 4004 B.C., by the time the pyramids were build there may have been 30 to 40 people in Egypt at the time, tops.

How else could they have done it, except with dinosaurs?
#58 Torbj�rn Larsson, OM
August 22, 2008

I think this was a joke. Nobody could be that stupid.

Well, the article is poorly written, so how is one to tell? It doesn’t clearly state that the creationism was taught outside of its religion classes (but it very likely were), and it confuses EU with the Council of Europe. The problem with CoE resolutions is that they AFAIU aren’t enforceable, so as opposed to the post claims I believe the schools and the licensing system can be as poor as Malta wants.

While Malta was among the latest EU members (2004) it has been a CoE member since 1965, so the journalist had plenty of time to catch up on the fact. I mean, since CoE resolution 1580 exists and was passed, and US is a CoE observer at the Parliamentary Assembly, does the journalist then also think US through the Bush administration would awake to the dangers to science and education that creationists pose? The very thought!
#59 negentropyeater
August 22, 2008

Far from becoming extinct 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs actually co-existed with early humans, and even helped in the construction of the pyramids.

Confusing dinosaurs with elefants ?
Ah well, science-minded people are so picky.
#60 David Marjanovi?, OM
August 22, 2008

Wasn’t Malta the last bastion of the Knights Hospitaller? This makes a crazy kind of sense.

ROTFL!!!
#61 PeteK
August 22, 2008

I think Kent Hovind visited Malta…Nooe could become that stupid uninfluenced by Hovind and his ilk…
#62 Patricia
August 22, 2008

Amhiox – You have proved your point beyond doubt. I am now a dinopyramidist. Thank gawd the demons didn’t infest the T-Rex’s, they all would have went gay and gone extinct!
#63 scooter
August 23, 2008

JEEEEEZ I can’t believe you people are so ignorant. The giants that bred with human females were Niphilim, not DINOSAURS.

Don’t you people know ANYTHING?

You are going to find out about the Niphilim soon enough, because the Hadron Collider is plot by Freemasons to punch a hole in the Van Allen Belt so that the Niphilim can return from planet Niburu, and the battle for Armageddon is on.

If you don’t believe me, you will certainly believe this guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt1Yo610lG0

who spells it out clearly enough for even a bunch of dumb science kooks to understand.
#64 SC
August 23, 2008

Re my #41: I see that Karley @ #22 beat me to it! What are the odds? (Well, pretty good around here, probably. :))
#65 MrKAT, Finland, EU
August 23, 2008

In 2005 Eubarometer 224 science gallup poll, 63% of Maltese citizens accepted human evolution from earlier species.(EU mean 70%). 29% of Maltese citizens chose True to claim “The earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs” (EU Mean 23%). So Malta is not exceptionally YEC compared to EU – yet..
#66 Claire
August 23, 2008

I heard they hired the dinosaurs to build the pyramids since they were so impressed with their work at Stonehenge, since that is the only way that stone structure could have been erected too.
#67 Nick Gotts
August 23, 2008

What do you do if it decides your head resembles a coconut? Whack it across the snout with a rolled-up newspaper? – Epikt

Well, my head doesn’t resemble a coconut, not being hairy on top – so the problem wouldn’t arise!