Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution

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Accelerated Christian Education's high school biology textbook, used in some private religions schools, argues Darwin's theory of evolution doesn't hold water if dinosaurs co-exist with man. And apparently they do. To this day. Nessie is proof. The Herald quotes from the textbook:

"Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur."

"How American fundamentalist schools are using Nessie to disprove evolution"

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1267464616 Mike Vella

Hey, they have their own Onion in Scotland. Right?
- http://codeflow.org/ Florian Bösch
  
  It’s called ‘tatoe
http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

They need to go all the way to Scotland to prove the existence of living dinosaurs? Plenty of those in Washington…
- CH
  
  Yea, I love listening to dinosaurs! … Well, except early in the morning when I’m trying to sleep!
  
  But I can’t quite figure out how not having dinosaurs, even the mini ones of today, would disprove Evolution. Although I guess logical reasoning isn’t the point. Make some bogus reasons that sounds laughable to the simple uneducated mind of your minions, and make sure that you keep them that way so they can’t think for themselves. Mission accomplished. Although that Loch Ness reasoning is pushing it even for Young Earthers.
  - WhyBother
    
    The really weird thing is that you usually see radical creationists argue that dinosaurs and man _must_ have coexisted, because otherwise the dinosaurs would have had to live and die off well before man came along, which throws off the timing presented in Genesis. I think that short-lived creationist museum even had a saddled dino statue to illustrate the point.
    
    I suppose there’s also a “fossils are a lie created by Satan” wing of creationists out there as well, which means this group straddles the gap between the dinosaur cohabitation and deceptive fossil camps.
    
    I’m really starting to hope that somewhere out there there’s a categorical organization of heretics, nuts, and delusions. That would be something worth seeing.
    - http://twitter.com/KEdwardK Keith Edwards
      
      Actually, it’s the “fossils are a lie created by God” wing of creationism. It’s called the Omphalos Hypothesis. Here’s the summary from Wikipedia:
      
      The Omphalos hypothesis was named after the title of an 1857 book, Omphalos by Philip Henry Gosse, in which Gosse argued that in order for the world to be “functional”, God must have created the Earth with mountains and canyons, trees with growth rings, Adam and Eve with hair, fingernails, and navels (omphalos is Greek for “navel”), and that therefore no evidence that we can see of the presumed age of the earth and universe can be taken as reliable.
      - Cincinatheist
        
        I’ve also seen this referred to as “Last Tuesday-ism.” As in, well, if that’s the case, how do we know that God didn’t create the Earth last Tuesday.
      - Thad Boyd
        
        I like it. It sounds like “fallacy”.
        
        (Or, well, phallus, as in, what a bunch of dicks.)
    - Cincinatheist
      
      Unfortunately, that creationist “museum” (I shudder to use the word museum in association with this place) was not so short-lived. Just like Jesus, it refuses to die. It’s still alive and kicking:
      http://creationmuseum.org/ And now the AiG nutjobs that run it are trying to build a theme park espousing the ‘fact’ of the global flood as well:
      http://arkencounter.com/
      
      Ugh.
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

If New Wave came from Rock then why is there still Rock?
- Ambiguity
  
  Or why is there evidence that Neanderthal interbred with Home sapiens? Kind of implies they knew each other, and perhaps even liked one another.
http://twitter.com/Cola82 Cola Johnson

It’s funny because plesiosaurs couldn’t bend their necks like that, but wevs. We might as well be a nation that lives in fear of leprechauns, at this point.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Drop/100000929402049 Robert Drop
  
  Leprechauns!? Where? I’m getting out my shillelagh…
  Sure, plesiosaurs couldn’t hold their necks up like that, and dinosaurs couldn’t breathe fire either, but that doesn’t stop the creationists from claiming they did.
- Karl Oestreich
  
  leave me lucky charms alone ya little bastards
- http://twitter.com/mspspeak matt perkins
  
  right, it’s clearly a handiosaur….
dbergen

Tell me Timmy, is your daddy a monkey? No? Well mine wasn’t either and I think that about settles this, right? Plus Nessie.
Jonathan Donald

A blurry photograph is scientific evidence that a plesiosaur lives in Loch Ness. Okay. Good enough for me.

By the way, I’m the King of Spain, and here’s a blurry image to prove it.
- Sagodjur
  
  I have a blurry photo that proves I own the known and unknown universe. I’ll be expecting your tribute payments soon.
- Judas Peckerwood
  
  If you don’t believe the photographic evidence you should watch “Jurassic Park”, an awesome documentary on this very topic.
- CH
  
  All hail King Jonathan!!!
- http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan
  
  Hedberg said it was you, not your image.
- John Vance
  
  Do you now vacuum the turf at SkyDome?
petertrepan

Know what’s happening in Alabama right now? Alabama Public Television has been commandeered by a politically appointed board of right-wing evangelicals who are replacing legitimate educational content with shows about creationism and about how the founding fathers intended for the leadership of the United States to be Christian only.

http://blog.al.com/archiblog/2012/06/alabama_public_television_shou.html

Please get the word out about this if you’re in the region. Not many people seem to be aware of it.
- petertrepan
  
  The “American History” series in question is The American Heritage series by David Barton. Read the positive reviews for an idea of the tone:
  http://www.amazon.com/American-Heritage-Series-David-Barton/dp/B001RJ78TE
  
  The creationism series is Voices of Creation, which I haven’t been able to locate.
  
  Two APT executives have been fired so far for refusing to run the shows, and six more have resigned over the board’s “new direction” for APT.
- Sagodjur
  
  ”An example he cited was this: “DNA prevents evolution,” he said.”
  
  Um…and hammers prevent carpenters?
  - CH
    
    Yes! That’s why he had to quit his day job and start wandering the streets preaching to earn a living.
  - JProffitt71
    
    And cancer is just the devil telling you not to touch yourself.
- http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
  
  Quote* from board member,
  
  “Pub-lic TV is fir reckonin an Ah appreciate reckonin but they ain’t reckonin bout God near nough n’ Imma Agin It so we reckonin to correctin em.”
  
  *not an actual quote
- JProffitt71
  
  Also, I believe this should be a boingboing post if absolutely true. That is outrageous.
mtdna

1. Plesiosaurs aren’t dinosaurs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plesiosauria
2. Dinosaurs do survive today. They’re called birds. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html
3. Dinosaurs are freaking awesome!
- GTMoogle
  
  Pfft, if birds are dinosaurs, then I’m a monkey!
  Note: I am, in fact, a monkey.
  - http://twitter.com/hewbass Matthew Bassett
    
    Note: you are, in fact, an ape. A great ape to be specific.
    
    Unless of course I turn out to be wrong and we actually share our planet with an until now unheard of species of intelligent monkeys. With internet access.
    - CH
      
      I was going to suggest the movie Space Chimps as a proof, but then I realized Chimpanzees are in the Hominidae family, too, so never mind.
    - rrh
      
      I’m a fucking stupendous ape.
    - http://twitter.com/ducchau99 duc chau
      
      Oh… that’s rather presumptuous. What if he’s one of a million monkeys logged onto Boing Boing banging away at a keyboard and by pure chance typed something intelligible that happened to describe his physical form lsj98uy okjho4i93498hj odh983489y9hfh47*(&98 4900)(* 00344 dkjhf92872 9270r97fs 8phf98hjh jkkshfkhaf9834h adskjhf kjhf,sdsfsadf sdjklfh h9f 98dl ksjfd9 p[[[a39 w48[w9u0`u3 u[0apjm f09w u0f
- malindrome
  
  4. Ninjas fight all the time.
- http://dbcooper.livejournal.com P.F. Bruns
  
  Also, clearly Nessie has stealth characteristics not present in the Mesozoic area (based, at least, on a cursory analysis of predation rates based on fossil and coprological studies), since detailed tomographic scans of Loch Ness have been unable to definitively detect the massive creature. You lose again, fundamentalists: Nessie PROVES evolution!
  - DewiMorgan
    
    The absence or otherwise of extant dinosaurs is completely and utterly unrelated to whether the theory of evolution is true or false.
    
    That’s why it’s FUNNY.
- http://twitter.com/logosamorbos Jennifer Bridgens
  
  Don’t you know that .edu references can’t be trusted?! They’re all liberal witches and warlocks! And wikipedia is just run by a bunch of socialists. So much for your “evidence.” :-P
- AnthonyC
  
  Also, crocodiles
howaboutthisdangit

Judging from the quoted paragraph, that high-school textbook is written at an elementary school level.

Oh wait, it IS doubling as religious propaganda, so the reading level is about right.
- CH
  
  Are you actually allowed to read religious propaganda yourselves? Isn’t that kind of dangerous? People might actually start thinking!
  - http://weirdly.net Jacob Ewing
    
    If the churches had their druthers, “the one percent” would refer to those amongst the literate.
    - John Vance
      
      For Protestants, they sure do seem keen on undoing the Reformation…
s2redux

McCain set a new standard with his choice of Sarah Palin, but Romney’s got a great chance to out-do him. Please-oh-please, Mr. Mittens, select Bobby Jindal as your running mate.
- http://www.jimdraws.com Thorzdad
  
  Careful what you wish for.
Green Ghost

Guess they aren’t aware that the guy who faked the photo admitted doing so in 1994! I just visited the area in May and even the local museum admits its all bunk.
- chenille
  
  Well, yeah. Everyone knows that if you have bad reasoning, you also need a bad premise to make the conclusion true. That’s simple logic, I’m sure you’d understand if you attended a good school like these.
  - evanberkowitz
    
    If you have bad reasoning, then you can make the conclusion true regardless of your premises…
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Drop/100000929402049 Robert Drop
  
  It probably doesn’t matter to them – this is not the first time where I’ve seen acknowledged fakes being used as evidence for creationism, and I’ve also seen creationists fabricate their own “evidence,” so they don’t necessarily believe in it themselves. It’s just useful to convince people when actual evidence can’t be found to show how right they are.
Andrew Singleton

I… Fake Picture… Proves…

What?

As a Christian I am offended and troubled at these shennanagins.
- Roger Strong
  
  Why? The Lock Ness Monster is part of the Christian faith. The earliest known reference is when St. Columba converted the Picts to Christianity by telling Nessie to bugger off. Look it up.
  
  If you don’t have faith in the existence of the Lock Ness Monster, you may as well disbelieve in all the other miracles associated with all the other saints too. All good Christians believe in the Lock Ness Monster.
  - Andrew Singleton
    
    Bah. Nessie’s been shown to be a fake. Champ and Ogo Pogo on the other hand. They’re about as real as Witchcraft is.
  - firefly the great
    
    Psst, there was this thing called the Reformation, a few hundred years ago. Kind of a big deal. Surprised you aren’t familiar with it.
    - Roger Strong
      
      What of it? Saint Columba owned Nessie a thousand years before the Reformation. Even Protestant denominations are known to name parishes after him.
      - firefly the great
        
        Protestant denominations don’t tend to have “parishes,” let alone name them after saints, which are not part of their theology, except as a general term for all people who are saved. Anglicans/Episcopalians are an exception there since they’re not really part of the Reformation.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Did Nessie used to live on Iona?
  - CH
    
    Oooh, you are right! And that also proves the existence of dragons!!!! Please tell me there was some saint doing something with unicorns. I want unicorns, too!!!
    
    Edit: Yes!!! Lots of Christian unicorns here: http://www.unicornlady.net/christianity/christianity.html#The Biblical Unicorn
cholten99

Sadly not just in the US. This poison also happening in the UK : http://leavingfundamentalism.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/accelerated-christian-education-validated-by-uk-government-agency/
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/OKEONAMLFIOS5WI7MPQY6SXBCQ IRMO

Best argument against evolution that I ever heard.
http://twitter.com/rollinia Charlie Knoles

On the other hand, the existence of the Yeti proves that humans evolved from the apes.
- Felton / Moderator
  
  Dammit, you beat me to it.
- CH
  
  … unless the Yeti is a big monkey.
  - Felton / Moderator
    
    … or Jesus Christ.
    - http://weirdly.net Jacob Ewing
      
      He died in the tundra for you!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Everybody jokes about the yeti, but when you’re at Everest and you have to leave your tent in the middle of the night to pee, and you’re all alone in the big dark, the yeti suddenly seems very, very believable.
  - Paul Renault
    
    Never heard of a pee bottles, eh?
    http://www.amazon.com/Do-All-Outdoors-Pee-Bottle/dp/B004MXD18Y
    
    or if you’re from Dartmouth, NS, you might call ‘em piss jugs…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45rIRGX-ZJY
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      When you have to carry everything that you need and there’s no running water, that seems bizarre.
http://twitter.com/therantguy therantguy

The best part…even if Nessie was real…it STILL does not disprove evolution…so what if, in some random corner of the world, a bunch of dinosaurs manage to survive and find a niche from the asteroid until now, how does that make the mass extinction and eventual evolution of the mammal mutually exclusive?
- CH
  
  There you go, thinking! Stop doing that right now!
- http://theangryhug.blogspot.com William Owen
  
  Because, duh.
http://www.facebook.com/MichaelDawson5423 Michael Dawson

Using a myth to prove another myth, sounds like religious logic to me.
Felton / Moderator

I’m going to have trouble reconciling this unassailable scientific proof of creationism with the existence of bigfoot, our best evidence for the theory of evolution.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Drop/100000929402049 Robert Drop
  
  Obviously the only way to settle the issue scientifically is to have Bigfoot and Nessie fight it out.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000335676462 Mona Tara Morgan
    
    I’d fork over $39.99 to Pay-per-view to see that.
    - Andrew Singleton
      
      Already happened in Celebrity Deathmatch.
      
      Nessie Won.
    - s2redux
      
      And if you really want to see it as PPV, Amazon’s got you covered, for $1.99.
      - http://twitter.com/beep54orama B E Pratt
        
        Wow! So MTV actually has something watchable? Who’da thunk?
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Obviously the only way to settle the issue scientifically is to have Bigfoot and Nessie fight it out.
    
    Wrong. Bigfoot riding Nessie versus raptor Jesus.
    - http://twitter.com/hoben freejack
      
      Surely the chupacabra would have to be involved in some way. Maybe he can be the ref?
      - Andrew Singleton
        
        Eh the Chupacabre/Jackalope tag team is the obligitory third leg of the triad of terror match-up. We’re saving the official announcement til people start getting bored with the idea of Bigfoot Vs Jesus.
Karl Oestreich

All one truly needs to do to prove the connection between modern Homo Sapiens and distant ape-like ancestors is to look at the followers of “Intelligent Design”. QED
wysinwyg

Sorry, Christians, Nessie is evidence of Gruad’s genetic experiments, not Yahweh’s. Get your Secret History straight.
Wreckrob8

The photo’s blurry. Looks like the FSM to me.
- malindrome
  
  Totally shopped. By aliens. In 4004 BC, on the day after God created the Earth.
- phuzz
  
  It’s an elephant, swimming.
  Ok, that’s just a theory, but it definitely *looks* like an elephant swimming, and around the time this photo was supposed to have been taken, there was a circus, with two elephants, camping by the shores of the loch.
http://www.facebook.com/dtobias Daniel Tobias

If the Loch Ness Monster turns out to really exist, then scientists will be able to study it (and perhaps sequence its DNA), and, very likely, determine where it fits in the evolutionary family tree. Until then, it’s entirely premature to make any claims about how a creature seen thus far only in fuzzy pictures and third-hand accounts might fail to fit evolutionarily.
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

Every time I think we’ve reached the logical limits of Teh Stupid, these guys keep raising the bar.
OohErMissus

I find my flabber so ghasted, I can only offer this….

Edit: Sorry, the .gif wasn’t working. http://mlkshk.com/r/8KUN
robbersdog

Sharks and crocodiles both easily pre-date the dinosaurs. If this was their point they didn’t have to go that woo on us! Although if you’re trying to disprove evolution then you’re probably going to go all in on the crazy :o)
- Beanolini
  
  Not to mention coelacanths, horseshoe crabs, tuataras, hagfish, cycads, horsetails… I could go on.
http://clarinerd617.myopenid.com/ Henry Goodwin

Plesiosaurs aren’t dinosaurs.
Mister44

The other day I found a book, I think it was Dinosaurs by Design, at a garage sale. It made me want to scream. I should have bought it and made a point by point rebuttal of it. Oh man – these people aggravate me.
- penguinchris
  
  If you like dinosaurs and get aggravated/enraged by creationists and their ilk, DO NOT go in the gift shop inside the gigantic concrete brontosaurus in Cabazon, CA. They just opened some sort of creationist dinosaur amusement park there too.
  
  From what I can tell, the guy who made the concrete dinosaurs was not a creationist or anything, he just liked dinosaurs and wanted a roadside attraction. If I’m remembering correctly, it was after he died that the creationists bought the place.
  
  I should note that I bought a $2 poster from their clearance bin that shows the statues come to life and terrorizing the freeway, with a snappy creationism/intelligent design motto on it, to put up as a joke when I’m at a university again getting a geology PhD :)
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    On the other hand, do have lunch at the Wheel Inn. They serve buttermilk.
mesocosm

Charles Darwin was a Christian.
- http://twitter.com/KEdwardK Keith Edwards
  
  But he wasn’t a Creationist. He was a squishy soft, liberal — an Anglican, no less! Weird to think that a mildly-open minded Victorian would be considered a flaming liberal by current American political standards.
  - mesocosm
    
    Darwin referred to God as “the Creator” in Origin of Species – see, for example, the book’s final paragraph.
    - TimRowledge
      
      And that -assuming it is even true, which would be unusual for a Darwin related claim coming from a god-booster – has what relevance to modern understandings of evolution? Unlike religions, science has this thing called ‘progress’ as an important aspect. Darwin could be wrong in pretty much any aspect in those original writings and it wouldn’t have a damn of impact on the Modern Synthesis. The only real importance would be historic. And thinking of historical stuff, in Victorian England -as in much of Europe for a thousand years or more of church hegemony – it would be real difficult to not be considered christian. It was simply the default, assumed, position. Happily some of us have a better grip on reality these days.
CSBD

Doesn’t the fact that their “Bible” aks the “Word of Dog” and “What it really means” keeps changing prove evolution is happening?
ab167

I used this very same textbook at the wacko Christian school I attended for the entirety of my pre-college life. Some universities do not accept credits from some of these courses and require incoming students from such schools to enter remedial courses (as well they should): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Christian_Schools_International_v._Roman_Stearns

Sociological Images just featured some of the same publishers a few days ago: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/06/21/a-close-look-at-some-evangelical-textbooks/

I have suppressed a lot of memories, but I remember very clearly an editor’s note in an excerpt from Huck Finn in our literature book. When Huck says, “All right then, I’ll go to Hell,” in reference to helping Jim the escaped slave despite the consequences, the editor, in brackets, saw fit to inform eleventh grade readers that (a) helping an escaped slave was illegal in the South, so Huck was doing something immoral, and (b) saying you’ll go to hell is SRS BUSINESS, so now Huck’s going to burn.
K.C. Shaw

I have a blurry photo of a faked water monster. Your argument is invalid.
jimbeaux

“They’re watching the Flintstones as if it were a documentary” – Lewis Black
Sigmund_Jung

How do you prove the existence of an imaginary being? Use imaginary monsters.

That fits the bill perfectly.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002042736154 Ah El

Evolution *IS* real. I know that because The Lord told me so.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1648730333 Charles Gilliland

I attended Desert Christian Baptist school in Lancaster, CA from 3rd to 8th grade. We spent more time learning about Creationism in seminars given by church elders and “guest speakers” than we ever spent learning about the scientific theory, basic biology and other lessons typically taught at those ages. Far more time was spent learning why evolution is wrong, than learning what supports it.

This is likely typical of religious schools, but this article reminded me of one particular, related seminar we attended.

It was a slide show narrated by a guest speaker who was “washing the scales from our eyes” and giving us evidence that not only are scientists wrong, but look(!) there are still dinosaurs on this earth! A slide showed a Japanese fishing barge that had pulled in a large desiccated corpse from the ocean. We were told that this was a sea animal of mysterious origin and quite possibly a dinosaur(!!) The speaker told us that not only were scientists wrong about evolution, they couldn’t even keep their lies straight(!!!).

You tell an auditorium full of kids between the ages of 6 and 14 that dinosaurs are real and that evil scientists are keeping them from us, and you’ll end up with an auditorium full of instant allies for the cause.
Jesse in Japan

What kind of horrible textbook is this? They clearly need to put commas around the aside, “for short.”
http://www.facebook.com/niklas.nystrom Niklas Nyström

I’ve sailed the Loch Ness in its whole lenght. It’s truly as beautiful as it is world famous. But its size doesn’t compare to its fame… Small and narrow. The probability for a HUGE sea monster to thrive, breed and feed there and still remain unseen is… well… not very high. But using known fake photos of this elusive fantasy-monster in order to deny evolution and genetics is hilarious! You could say these people are dangerous fanatics and what not… but I think that the world would be a lesser place without them. Stupidity at this level is highly entertaining! And it also makes the really dangerous ones look stupid… I sure hope this isn’t just an urban legend.
/Niklas Nyström, Sweden
http://www.facebook.com/niklas.nystrom Niklas Nyström

Monsters are interesting! So far, no one has ever seen one. But everyone would be able to recognize one if they saw it. In an instant: there it is! But to be honest; an alligator taken out of its ordinary context would probably count as a monster. My suggestion is therefore to catch an alligator or a huge nile-crocodile, put it in Loch Ness and simply wait for the results.
Andrew Singleton

You know guys…

I’m not saying it’s aliens buuuuuut.
CognitiveDissident

Please delete this.
CognitiveDissident

The line to “Dark Ages Fun O’Rama” forms to the far right. The waiting time is 0 minutes. No, you don’t have any choice, you have to go along for the ride. Be sure to enjoy the ride, you will be punished (in one way or another) if you don’t.
http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo

/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk