

Dinosaur Denialism - tokenadult
http://www.skepticblog.org/2011/12/14/dinosaur-denialism/

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cynicalkane
I don't understand why certain skeptics take it upon themselves to be such
nasty people. For example:

 _"Then the site jumps into other crackpot ideas, like Tom Gold’s abiogenic
origin of petroleum (long ago falsified), and presents a list of 19th century
naturalists who talked about dinosaurs because they allegedly made up their
discoveries in order to promote evolution! Once again, this doofus is so
ignorant of history that he has no idea that half that list consisted of
devout individuals who were “creationists” and most of them worked on
dinosaurs in a religious context. Not only that, but they were not trying to
“prove evolution”—their work was done decades before Darwin’s book came out in
1859. Give this guy an “F” in history…."_

The primary point of this paragraph appears to insult the person being talked
about. The paragraph doesn't actually say anything, it's just a summary
peppered with insults. Furthermore, it's very unlikely to convince anyone that
doesn't already agree with the author.

It seems like there's a large part of the skeptic community that doesn't
understand you can't be so purposelessly condescending and yet convince the
unconvinced--especially when you're pretending to be some rational authority
whilst being so foaming-at-the-mouth. Which is a shame, because skepticism is
a fine cause.

~~~
ugh
I think ridicule is perfectly appropriate once the beliefs you are talking
about get batshit insane. Ridicule is a powerful tool, not so much to convince
those who already believe, rather to convince those thinking about believing
or on the fence about whether to no longer believe. It’s also a powerful tool
to remind everyone that batshit insane beliefs are still around and that it’s
apparently easy for humans to believe in them.

More specifically, I think it’s great to have both: People who painstakingly
taken even the most batshit insane ideas serious and engage them on the same
level and people who ridicule. That’s not a contradiction for me.

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droithomme
He's got a single reference for one crackpot that wrote an absurd article.
There are dozens of other tiny groups of crackpots on different subjects as
well with opinions about a flat earth, a hollow inside out earth, the
holocaust, and the moon landings as examples.

I have talked with moon landing deniers and holocaust deniers but in my life
I've never met a single one of the dinosaur deniers. Dinosaur deniers are a
very small group, on par with flat earthers. There are clearly many more
people that deny the holocaust and the moon landing than there are that "don't
believe in dinosaurs". This makes sense. Dinosaurs are difficult _not_ to
believe in given how many museums have skeletons available for viewing with
bones that obviously don't belong to any currently alive species. Whereas with
the moon landing, you have man made equipment in museums, but sure, to someone
it could seem like it was all a big faked conspiracy to intimidate the
Russians. That sort of at least sounds plausible even though it's not true,
and few people actually personally know astronauts or rocket scientists. (I
know several of both, but would still believe in the moon landing even if I
didn't.)

So where am I going with this? His article is intellectually dishonest because
he talks about a "whole group of extreme creationists who deny that dinosaurs
existed", suggesting it is a large number of people, which it is absolutely
not. He then tries to connect the whole thing to anthro global warming
skeptics, which is a completely different kind of thing since you have real
scientists and scientifically competent people asking reasonable questions,
and people in politically entrenched positions refusing to respond with raw
data. It's completely different from dinosaur skeptics who if we could find
them would be easily discredited with a few days of museum visits.

~~~
burgerbrain
To be fair, if dinosaur deniers really are on par with flat earthers, then
there very well may be a "whole group" of them.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society>

Religious people tend to cluster geographically/socially too, so the formation
of actual "groups" would not surprise me.

~~~
droithomme
Yeah, although the FES itself (265 members according to the reference you
cited) is not serious, it's more of a counter-cultural movement of people in
on the joke.

I meant instead to refer to people who _really do_ believe the earth is flat,
and suggest that those and dino skeptics are similarly sized populations.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were 265 true dinosaur skeptics globally
since it takes all kinds. Interestingly, many people in many primitive
cultures won't be among the skeptics since many tribal people have either seen
dinosaurs or know those who have. (Mokele Mbembe)

~~~
burgerbrain
Eh, if you say so. They seem sincerely crazy to me.

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lukejduncan
Just in time for the season.

I once had a very heated debate at a family Christmas party (the first my now
fiance attended). It all started when I assumed my aunt was joking about
dinosaurs not existing and ended in my being offended by her attempt to
discredit my Googling by claiming that it's impossible to believe anything
that comes off of a screen as small as my iTouch. She is now referred to as
the dinosaur aunt.

No lie.

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Impossible
I worked with a guy that believed all of this stuff at a game company.
Granted, he was an artist and not a programmer, but still odd see someone with
beliefs like that work in a tech related field.

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iterationx
OP agrees with the standard model of history taught in public schools. Not
sure what exactly he's skeptical about.

