DM: Make a Decepticon check.
Player: *Rolls out.*
DM: You have failed your Decepticon check, everyone knows you’re an Autobot now. Roll for initiative.
Dina (and the Shortpacked! store, for that matter) also exist in the universe of Girl Genius – the comments over here made note of it when Sparky!Dina made an appearance a little while ago.
The appropriate term to describe that expression is “aghast”, meaning “to be filled with horror or shock.” That’s exactly the kind of expression you’d expect to see as visual example of the term, and it’s the best term for describing that sort of “caught between horror and disbelief” meaning that is being discussed.
And I remember Joyce has made that same face Dina makes in the last panel, but based on a quick archive dig it wasn’t because of anything Dina said. Still, parallels! Totally!
Also, I bet Amber isn’t there. So, Dina will tell Walkie that his princess is in another castle. Which will arouse Joyce’s Shipper-Sence.
They’ll find her in Sal’s room, in Sal’s bed, with Sal. Sal will make an “in bed with yer woman” joke. Joyce’ll know something’s going on, but she can’t quite…
Wow, I think Dina might let Joyce in just to educate her on how wrong she is. Also that final face she has is amazing, I hope that is a random gravatar in the future.
I just read the alt text and did a google search, I now have a new appreciation that I didn’t have to listen to any of my extended family’s creationist views as a child. Holy crap.
Dina and Joyce have a long-running feud with respect to evolution. When they both went to get flu shots, for instance.
It’s not like Dina *loathes* Joyce or vice-versa, far from it. Dina likes her a hell of a lot more than she likes Raidah, for instance, but it’s a point of contention.
literally in this comic Joyce offends all Dina studies by telling her something completely preposterous about dinosaurs. How are you surprised Dina doesn’t like Joyce and her lies?
I think Dinah actually comes off as pretty damn obnoxious here. Her gatekeeping is cute except for the fact that she’s denying Joyce entry to see her friend and Walky’s friend (Amber). Imagine if Dinah was asking Joyce what her favorite Catholic Saint was and then slamming the door in her face.
A) Amber has already said she doesn’t want to be friends with Joyce.
B) Dina’s been doing the screening since Amber asked her to make sure she’s left alone.
C) Frankly, even if she weren’t, Dina’s allowed to decide who is and is not allowed in her room. It’s not just Amber’s space. Dina’s allowed to decide Joyce isn’t allowed in because she doesn’t like her shirt colour. It sucks she shares her space with Amber, but if Dina doesn’t want people who don’t live in her room there, then Amber’s just going to have to meet her friends elsewhere.
It is however a particularly ineffective way of screening people – at least if done for Amber’s sake. High risk of both false positives and false negatives.
Whether it is healthy or not for Amber, Dina is doing her best to limit the number of people who are in their room BECAUSE AMBER ASKED HER TO. It really doesn’t matter what Joyce and Walky want or if they are friends with Amber – and even if Amber didn’t ask her to, Dina would be entirely within her own rights to decide she doesn’t want anyone in her room based on whatever criteria she likes.
I think “lies” is too harsh. What shes saying isn’t true, yes, but its what she’s been made to believe is true through 18 years of brain washing. While she has made strides since starting college, you can’t expect her to have shed all her beliefs in 6 weeks
It’s just past 7 in the morning, if someone were to wake me up at that time when I knew I’d be able to sleep because math class was cancelled my reaction would probably also be “oh it’s you” quite regardless of who it was that woke me up.
Pretty sure Dina is also in the math class. She did get back Walky’s notes at one point (the drawing of former TA Jason being eaten by a T-Rex while exclaiming “oh no my bowtie!”). There’s not really any way she could’ve gotten those unless she were in the same class.
She is in the same class, but a different section. Penny is her TA and she goes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Walky, Joyce, etc. go on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
It contradicts the Bible all over the place, that’s what. And it isn’t at all possible that the Bible or their understanding of it could be wrong, so it must be that the rest of us are interpreting science wrong instead.
Yes on “or their understanding of it” – there are religious approaches in other religions/denominations that also believe that neither the Bible nor science could be wrong, but their conclusion is that since science is demonstrable, then it must simply be a particular understanding of the Bible that’s mistaken, so they reinterpret, and that’s totally fine with those folks!
The Catholic interpretation is (simplified) that the Bible is inerrant in regards to its role as instruction in spiritual matters. Genesis is there to give us important truths about the nature of ourselves and the role of sin, not to give a factual blow-by-blow of prehistory.
Mind you, it’s a 2000 year old organization made of billions of people. It has a lot to answer for and I left the Church because of some actions its taken (three guesses which) but it’s also wrong to treat it as an entity.
It is an entity. Like any other large organization, countries or corporations or whatever. It’s perfectly reasonable to treat it as an entity.
That doesn’t mean it’s responsible for anything that any individual Catholic does or vice versa, but the Church has policies and takes actions that it is responsible for. Good and bad, of course.
except it is literally impossible to interact with the entity “the church”, right?
vegans are responsible for a lot of atrocious chili recipes, but it is unjust to hold the next vegan you talk to responsible for crappy chili. in point of fact, that vegan is much likelier to have suffered through a bowl of crappy chili than you are.
I dunno, I’m against corporate personage and support its removal. A large part of why so much evil gets done by organizations is it’s against the idea of a lot of people to say, “No, it’s not Toyota. John did this and John deserves to go to prison for it.”
YMMV.
Again, I left the Catholic Church over the pedophilia scandals. My beliefs didn’t change but I want the people behind it in jail.
@ego: In about the same way it’s literally impossible to interact with the entity “Walmart” or the entity “United States of America”.
And yet both of those do things and affect people across the world.
And I did say “doesn’t mean it’s responsible for anything that any individual Catholic does or vice versa”. Not all Catholics are responsible for everything the Catholic Church has done, but the Church itself does things and can be held responsible for them.
The vegan analogy breaks down because there is no organization of vegans setting policy and hiring people to spread bad chili recipes.
That reminds me of some Animal Planet special I once saw about how dragons could theoretically have been real and also explaining how they could fly and breathe fire.
There’s no inherent reason why a species of some sort couldn’t evolve to breathe fire. Methane production is common (maybe universal?) in mammals, e.g.
Evolution would need to solve two other problems: a reliable ignition method, and a way of storing sufficient quantities of a gas that is not particularly easy to store using only biologically-grown containers. (If you’re going to use fire as a weapon, you’re going to need a LOT more methane than human intestines can store.)
The main problem with “methane (and other gaseous) breath weapons is that is dragons would be burning their faces off instead of breathing fire. See, gases don’t expand in one direction. You can prove this with burps and farts : They don’t just shoot out of your body in one direction.
So the methane wouldn’t just go out of their lungs and leave: it’d make a cloud that includes the fire breather’s head. Easy Experimental proof: If you wear glasses on a cold winter day and breathe out “frost breath” your glasses get fogged up too.
Animals can’t breathe fire, lightning, nor ice, not with current evolutionary biotech. Poison sprays are two thumbs up, though.
Well, you can keep from fogging your glasses up if you blow hard, so the animal would just have to do that when lighting its breath. Obviously, it wouldn’t want to be breathing fire every time it exhaled, so there’d need to be some control mechanism anyway.
If I recall correctly, in the special the explanation they for firebreathing and flight was that they said that dragons could have evolved from archosaurs so that they’d have a false palate they can close like in crocodiles and alligators so that they don’t accidentally breath back in the fire they create while their mouths are specially adapted to resist fire and that they would produce flame by having some super strain of bacteria that produces a lot of methane or some other flammable gas that they store in multiple special sacs that also help lighten them for flight. Anyhow then they said that dragons would have special teeth in the back of their mouths that at flat and that they’d eat ores and minerals like platinum that’d get ground and stuck on those special teeth and they’d use it to create sparks that’d ignite the methane.
Maybe they ate a lot of things that are on fire? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean…I don’t know why they WOULD, because most living creatures wouldn’t, but if I had the ability to not die from terrible injuries, I would probably try to eat something that was actively on fire. I do things like that. ^^;
I think the thought process by the Fundys is: The bible is the word of god. If god is real (and all powerful/all knowing) then every part of the bible must be accurate.
In order to show the bible to be accurate, then they have to come up with what they think is a “scientific” explanation for everything in the bible… from a justification for the story in genesis and the flood, to a description of prehistoric beasts.
Gotta point this out before a fundie laughs in your face instead of standing so speechless you can hear the crickets. That’s not exactly what Jesus is all about – at least, not the way he’s been written to satisfy the Nicean standardization of the Christian mythos.
Rather, he’s all about establishing a new deal between humans and God such that supercedes/overwrites the way that things were established between the two parties as written in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is ‘correct’ to Jesus as written, just (partially) obsolete.
That’s splitting hairs when Jesus did in fact say that Moses’ law was made for humans by humans and God’s law was made for God. He references it in divorce, stoning, and why you can do good works on a Saturday.
I’m just Sayin.
*puts on Goku outfit*
Then again, I think the fundamentalist idea that the Bible was meant to be literal and inerrant has never been a original and fundamnetal (ironic) part of the faith. It’s a new thing (500 years or so) created to undermine the Catholic Church.
She’s bitter to both of them. Walky is the reason for this security check (INDOMINUS REX ATTACK!!!) and Joyce is everything she stands against, as well as being Becky’s longtime crush
Willis says Joyce is autobiographical, and he obviously doesn’t hold Joyce’s preconceived notions anymore, so I’m guessing Joyce eventually breaks. College has already chipped away at her beliefs, and now that Becky is showing her that you can believe in evolution and God simultaneously, she may be forced to reconsider. For Joyce, change comes through the heart, not the brain.
rereading this i’m slowly having that slow, dread-filled realization that Joyce isn’t piecing this together from disparate information, but that this was something someone taught her. That the look in Panel 4 isn’t displaying vague recollection, but a genuine inquiry. it could breathe fire why wouldn’t it be my favorite. Yikes.
Maybe not. I certainly wouldn’t rule out creationists believing anything, but this seems to source to a anti-creationist book describing Ken Hamm’s creationist museum, which does have a triceratops with a saddle, but it’s as a thing for kids to climb on and “ride”, not part of the actual exhibits.
I can’t tell if that last face Dina is making is due to the horror of hearing that creationist theory or if her mind is just blown from picturing the awesomeness of a dinosaur breathing fire?
“But how would a trait arising in Carabidae and derived from similar traits in closely-related species be found in a member of Hadrosauridae whose relatives had no such similar traits?”
e.g. “I know that bombardier beetles don’t actually breathe fire, but primitive humans wouldn’t know the difference between a chemical burn and a short-lived flame?”
unfortunately, the hypothesized fire-breathing has nothing to do with what bombardier beetles do. The beetles don’t create fire. They shoot hot liquid. No fire involved.
Our church was considering changing denomination affiliation, for reasons. This was 15-20 years ago.
So, a rep sets up a presentation, as you do. We show up, and he has this big chart. Lines all over, with lots of small lettering, so everything could fit. And, he had a huge stack of thick books, that were the required reading, and explained all the stuff on the chart. All important stuff. I guess. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. But, it was implied that there would be tests, and, if you couldn’t give the right number of angels dancing on a pin, you would be in trouble.
Now, whether you believe or not, the bible is pretty straight forward about stuff. Yeah, the old testament contradicts it’s self sometimes, but, you can ignore that if you want. No, really.
No, it seems people want secrets. There’s got to be hidden codes, that you can only unlock if you pay the right leader to tell you what they say. And, this is probably where all those extra books came from. The love your neighbor bit was just cover for the compressed info that’s the real message. Available for just 25 monthly payments of 49.95 (plus shipping and handling).
Creationists aren’t even large percentage of American Christians, let alone Christians in general. It’s kind of like Scientology (which is 40,000 people). They are entertaining and horrifying enough to draw a lot of attention.
It’s not remotely like scientology in numbers. 38% of American adults are creationists, and that’s without counting intelligent design proponents. That’s not 40,000 people, but a hair over 87 million adult creationists. As for being a large percentage, I’d consider that 38% pretty large. Christians are about 75% of the U.S. population, and while not creationists are Christian a significant amount of that remaining 25% aren’t religious and thus aren’t creationists, with the larger minority religions also not being that creationist as a whole.
Rough estimate, it’s about 50% of American Christians. I’d call that a large percentage.
Though that’s probably overstating it, since it all depends on what you mean by “Creationist”. Young Earth Creationists are a much smaller group than Creationists in general. I’m not sure where “fire breathing dinosaurs” falls.
Some variations on creationism are even compatible with evolution – god started the process and maybe guided it through the “random” events and mutations, but everything’s related and the fossil and genetic records are reliable guides.
You’re right that it’s certainly much larger than Scientology, even in the more extreme variants.
I only recall the ‘kickstarted evolution’ bit, nothing about random events or mutations. I mean, they’d probably say it was god’s will, but I don’t recall anyone asking about the nuances on that.
“God kickstarted evolution” isn’t in that 38% (it’s in a different 38%, the numbers are surprisingly similar as of the latest major survey). That 38% is just young earth and old earth creationism, actively opposed to evolutionary theory, working out to about half of U.S. Christians.
Which is over 2,000 times as common as Scientology.
Difference to me is Dad knew his stories were full of shit and Cqlvin caught on pretty quick. Joyce and her parents DON’T know their stories are shit and incredibly wrong. Huge difference.
I’m going to actually take a crack at Dina’s game here and say that my pick would be an Ankylosaurus, you the turtle type like one with a wrecking ball at the tip of it’s tail.
If you don’t already know, David Yost (Billy) is on Twitter, and he’s super nice. He’s always retweeting stuff from Blue Ranger fans and wishing people a happy birthday.
Stegosaurus. I can’t say my initial reasoning as I’d settled on that one by the time I was five (named it as my favorite animal on the first day of school; have evidence of this) but it’s pretty neat that Gary Larson is the reason the spikey bit on the tail is called the “thagomizer”
Archaeopteryx. Not that its particularly unique, but its discovery caused such a revolution in our understanding of dinosaurs (as well as serving as a prime example of a transitional fossil.)
Parasauralophus (which is actually absolutely cool, it doesn’t need to be turned into a dragon).
Achillobator (all the cool aspects of Velociraptor, plus a cooler name…albeit one that combines Greek and Mongolian – Achilles Hero).
Therizinosaur (fat, floofy theropod herbivores with giant claws).
Vulcanodon. How much cooler can you get than “Volcano Tooth?”
(Yeah, I know the teeth in question don’t actually belong to the specimen that was discovered, and that Vulcanodon is about as primitive as you can get and still be considered a dinosaur. My response to that is: “Volcano Tooth.”)
They’re quadrupedal, so they’re not that primitive. (The ancestors of all dinosaurs were bipedal. Sauropods and ornithiscians dropped back to four secondarily.)
I’d like a link or title to the study that suggests that. Sincerely. That theory sounds absolutely fascinating and I want to learn about it and read it. My current understanding of dinosaur phylogenic theory is that dinosaurs descended from synapsid species that were quadrupedal.
The early sauropodomorphs and ceratopsians were bipedal too, right? Even barring the existence of direct fossil evidence of their common ancestors (Staurikosaurus, Eoraptor, etc.), that provides indirect evidence in favor of the earliest true dinosaurs being bipeds.
Mine’s Microraptor. It was an article about them in the newspaper that got me interested i dinosaurs to begin with. And all four of their limbs were wings, which is pretty neat in and of itself.
Went to fundy private school, can confirm. This is mentioned in the bible, when Job and God talk about the behemoth (sauropod) and leviathan (fire-breathing dragon). Not just parasauralophus, but loads of dinosaurs, because they have enormous cavities in their skulls and “scientists don’t know the purpose of them”. (allegedly.)
(Even in 7th grade, my thought was “um, sinuses? so their head isn’t 700lbs?)
I wonder if picking a modern avian would be taken as an appropriate answer, since yeah, birds are dinosaurs, or if she would consider it a smartass answer to say “toucan”.
I’d say chicken. When they found sample genetic material from the T-Rex and compared it to modern animals, the one it matched closest to was the chicken.
Just in case you’re not trolling: No-one ever found “sample genetic material from the T-Rex”. Fragments of DNA can last a long time in the right conditions, but not 66 million years.
True, it wasn’t actually DNA. Supposedly what was discovered was very short bits of organic material/protein, which they were able to (sort of) work backwards to analyze it and compare it to other animals.
On the other hand, there is the possibility that the lab doing the analysis made a mistake, and that the sample was contaminated. (I’ve read a news report suggesting that, but I’m not sure how reliable it was.)
Well, if that’s what you want to talk about, OK. But Mary Schweitzer’s lab originally used ostrich protein as a comparison, not chicken. Later tests did use chicken, though.
She’s gotten quite a bit of flack over the years, and tried to respond with demonstrations that they accounted for contamination, or that biofilms just don’t give the same results, and so on. Other paleontologists are also reporting that sometimes, proteins in bone can be very well preserved.
Dino / dragon connections aside, how does Joyce know so much about bombardier beetles? That doesn’t seem like it’s in her wheelhouse of topics she’d be familiar with.
One Creationist line of arguments against “evilution” is that the bombardier beetle could not possibly have evolved naturally, as its chemicals would’ve blown itself up long before it got to its current stage.
Actually, it’s because Duane Gish (that asshole) put out the idea that fire-breathing dinosaurs work like bombardier beetles, although that doesn’t make any sense, and this stuff is taught as science to Christian seventh graders.
How would they really even work to be honest? Would the body heat emitted from a Parasaurolophus’s diaphragm ignite some sort of flame with its gas like breath? Wait no that doesn’t make since considering dinosaurs would be cold blooded.
We’re not sure if dinosaurs were ectothermic! I think! Especially with them having feathers -> insulation -> endothermic maybe! and also for the big ones, high volume-to-surface-area ration means megalothermy maybe- they were so big that they just didn’t radiate heat as fast as they generated it through normal body function- except obv they must have, but it would have made them effectively warm blooded, and also is suggestive of large-surface-area soft-tissue structures to dissipate heat, like the ears of elephants or fennec foxes
Joyce. Joyce. JOYCE! Your answer only applies in the Pokemon fandom. So you either start playing Pokemon or you take away your bullshit creationism from serious science discussion.
And Walky, I know from this universe and from the previous Walkyverse that you don’t like science, so I ask you with education to not encourage your alternate universe wife.
Evolutionists: “POKEMON TEACHES CHILDREN THAT EVOLUTION HAPPENS WITHIN AN INDIVIDUAL’S LIFE TIME RATHER THAN GRADUALLY BETWEEN GENERATIONS. IT MUST BE EVILS!”
Children: “Pokemon are awesome!”
Evolutionists who likes to play Pokemon: “Pokemon um… teaches important concepts and… increases awareness and… LOOK, A WAILMER!”
That the inaccurate naming which will garner vocal offense from both sides of an opinionated and visible divide all but guarantees a new franchise instant and widespread publicity needed to become a cornerstone of its genre 20+ years later?
I think you could say Meowth evolved from an ordinary alley cat to a bilingual cat, and be accurate.
I think evolution means gradual change over time and has positive connotations.
Wait… didn’t creationists use to hate bombardier beetles at some point? I think it was on their list of biological features that can’t possibly evolve, together with eyes and bacterial flagella (and for whatever reason they manage to pick the most OBVIOUS example of things that actually have evolved multiple times through convergent evolution).
They don’t hate it. They just drop it from their list of things to Gish Gallop on when biologists figure it out and the answer gets common enough that most biologists they “debate” know it.
That’s alright, there are always other ridiculous lies that the evolutionists won’t know how to debunk off the top of their heads.
Hmpf. Bah. That’s fair enough. If nothing else, that has taught generations of students all about evolutions of eye and flagella and bombardier beetles.
The cult I was in used the beetles as an example of why evolution had to be false, for the reason you mentioned above (claiming it “couldn’t possibly evolve”, and that it had to be the product of an intelligent designer).
Ok so before I wasn’t keen on Dinas vetting system but I guess it can be useful
As an atheist from a country (NZ) where religion isn’t really that big of a deal (Well there is Bishop Brian Tamaki…) one of the more interesting things about this strip (to me anyway) is Joyces fundie views on things and how a lot of posters here arn’t surprised at all
I would say “fuck you for sending us Ray Comfort,” but I understand the need to dump him, and here was a reasonable place. You can’t, after all, make American fundagelicals any stupider.
You know what I find adorable? This is all a surprise and shock for Dina, which means Becky hasn’t told her.
Now, it COULD mean that Becky wants to spare her feelings, but I find it much more likely that little miss rambles-five-words-for-butt-just-to-get-a-reaction saved this doozy for a ‘special occasion’.
If so, that special occasion will be as soon as her shift ends and Dina will need a lot of comforting.
You mean that becky hasn’t told Dina about the whole “Dinosaurs are the source of Dragon myths” that fundy Christians hold?
Its probably just that it never came up. Dina knows Becky had a bad educational upbringing. Becky probably realizes that now, has rejected the whole “bible is to be taken literally”, and just doesn’t see the need to mention “oh, did you know I was taught that dinosaurs=dragons” since Becky probably already sees that as wrong.
I mean, this is DINA we are talking about. This is akin to walking up to the biggest Doctor Who fan you can find and exclaim how much you LOVE the Doctor and then start gushing about the chemistry between Andrew McFarlane and Liz Burch.
Sadly, this is an actual thing among some (not all) young-earth creationists (YECs), based on a hyper-literal reading of a poetic description of a crocodile (Leviathan) in Job 41, specifically verses 20-21: “Out of his nostrils comes forth smoke, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals and a flame comes forth from his mouth.” It’s basically describing an attacking crocodile from the perspective of some poor sod who has the misfortune of being attacked while carrying only wood or bronze weapons, complete with seeing the puffing of the crocodiles breath across the water as smoke, but some YECs ignore the genre (poetry) and start trying to guess what dinosaur it could refer to.
What if their math class is cancelled because someone finally noticed the computers were hacked…they’d blame Walky or Sal since their grades changed the most over time
Did Amber take everyone’s hardcopy stuff, or just walky’s?
Hopefully if they find a hack, they’d notice when it was and what was changed.
As for Sal, her grades went up more incrementally, so she’d hopefully be okay. I’d bet she’s hardly the only one to struggle at first and figure things out as she goes.
Every time I see a new theory or explanation used to justify Young Eath Creationism, I am awed by the sheer mental gymnastics it takes to ignore centuries of historic and scentific discovery. Its the same sort of schadenfreude I get watching trashy reality TV like Jerry Springer or Toddlers and Tiaras
A lot of early 19th century biology and geology was perfectly in line with creationism. They WANTED to prove the bible right, especially the geologists were interested in what England looked like before the flood.
…but as evidence and fact congregated it got harder and harder to fit in a young earth-timeline, and finally they just started to say that maybe… just for the sake of argument, earth is just a tiiiiny bit older than thought… kinda a bit older…. kinda a bunch of million years older (later revised to BILLIONS). That and fossiles paved the way for evolutionary theory.
But a lot of very serious theories from early 19th century are perfectly in line with creationist thinking, so they have a lot of material to draw from.
This is simultaneously a success for, and a flaw in, Dina’s guest-vetting system.
Success: Identifying people whose crazy you don’t want to hear.
Flaw: Having to listen to their crazy in order to learn you don’t want to listen to their crazy.
I love how HAPPY Joyce looks in the second-to-last panel when she remembers her childhood dinosaur. She tries to be supportive of Becky, and she wants to be a good friend of Dina, but most of the time she doesn’t get that whole dinosaur thing.
But here and now, she and Dina can share the joy of awesome dinosaurs and… ooops, that’s not what happened at all.
I absolutely love panel five. It’s like Joyce said something so crazy that it completely broke through Dina’s usual detachment. Dina probably expected Joyce to say something nonsensical… but what she got was so absurd that it completely blindsinded Dina and left her speechless.
Joyce, the correct answer was: “I don’t have a favourite dinosaur; can we stop playing this game and instead can you tell Amber I need her help on a purely technical question?”
That said, I’m loving how Joyce’s reply is making Dina react. If it wasn’t completely out-of-character for her to do so, I’d accuse Joyce of doing this deliberately, just to make Dina flip out because that reaction is almost too funny for words!
Joyce answered the question truthfully. Not her fault Dina liked the answer.
(Also, until AMBER asks Dina to stop restrict admittance based on sweet Dinosaur facts this is a viable method. She has already asked for Joyce not to be admitted once.)
I’m 100% SURE Joyce doesn’t play up her childhood beliefs to get a reaction out of people.
…I’m 90% sure.
(Unlike Becky, who I’m 100% sure does it for shit, giggles and sweet dinosaur cuddles)
From panel 4 onwards, it is clear that Joyce is literally making stuff up from off of the top of her head. If nothing else, if I were Dina, I’d award her a ‘most original fanfic’ prize on the spot!
(Joyce talking about a fire-breathing dinosaur)
Heheh, didn’t think Joyce would be the one talking about the mythical drag-
(Sees twitter post)
HOW?!?!
She will tonight, after a distraught Dina seeks comfort.
Dina: “And, and then she said that they coincided with humans with no regard for the fossil record. Why would she say that with no regard for the fossil record?”
Becky: “There, there. Let’s read about the latest proteomics study to make you feel better.”
Dina *grabs Becky’s head, looks her in the eyes*: “Becky, please tell me YOU don’t believe there were dinosaurs capable of ejecting a boiling chemical spray from separate compartment in their cranial features.”
Becky: “Well, I did until a month ago, but….”
Dina *Whimpers, hugs Becky tight.*
Becky *Soothing, singsong, voice*: “There, there… The Paleozoic ages are cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian…” *gently strokes the still shaking Dina over back*
At least she didn’t refer to its crest as a pompadour, eh? 😉 …but for real, even with the Southern Christianity I was raised in, I’d never heard of the fire-breathing dino stuff. That’s next level! I was like Dina as a kid because one day, another kid tried to insist that dinosaurs weren’t real, that God just “put the bones into the Earth to test our faith” which was the stupidest thing I had ever heard in my life up to that point.
This comic is so illuminating. I had thought I had gotten rid of the remnants of my childhood “science” classes, then it brings up things like this and I go “What?? That isn’t true? …Shit, of course not.”
Has anybody postulated that Dina’s face here is in response to Walky’s reaction to Joyce’s assertions yet? “She’s converting people who believed in evolution to her crazy creationist ideas ? Make it stoo-oooooo-ooooo-p!!”
Oh boy, I’d been looking forward to this! And Joyce’s answer is, uh, even more horrifying than I ever could have imagined! It’s sweet of her to try to connect with Dina on a ‘factual’ level, it’s just that, well, poor Dina o.o
I think that’s the worst, from Dina’s perspective. Joyce is not trying to rile her up or be provocative. She genuinely tries to connect with Dina on her own ground, with her own interest. This is a very nice thing Joyce is trying to do.
And she does it by talking about fire-breathing dinosaurs inspiring tales about dragons.
They WOULD be, for the same reason we now can laugh at all the craziness the Greek pantheon was up to. Unfortunately, people actually believe that stuff, meaning instead of humorous it’s horrifying.
Bonus Creationist Round: This is actually related to how dinosaurs went extinct. You see, all that firebreathing takes up a lot of oxygen, which was okay when there was a lot oxygen around. But then oxygen levels in the atmosphere started decreasing, and dinosaurs still needed a lot of oxygen, and their nostrils didn’t increase in size, and so they all suffocated to death.
…but… that… but that doesn’t make… like, even if we postulated the existence of a specific fire breathing dinosaur AND a link between global oxygen levels, natural selection would ensure that particular trait was quickly weeded out and system biological effects would mean that… NO, I WILL NOT START A DISCUSSION BY POSTULATING FIRE BREATHING DINOSAURS!!!!*
*) I mean, I gladly would if people didn’t actually believe it.
A large part of my Uni “hazing” consisted in us having to make ridiculous dissertations on the fly, like “Explain how to make planting tomatos on the Moon viable, and comment on the socio-economical impact of such activity.”
None of them were nearly as out-there motherfucking crazy as what these folks believe.
Of course not – they have put lots of actual work in it.
And that’s the thing – I LOVE that sort of stuff. I’ve attended BAH-fest. I organised something similar myself. I’m a role player, scifi-nerd, enthusiastic “What-if”-er… but when those things are used to deceive rather than to illuminate or amuse… yeah, not funny.
I theorize that God wants us to go to space but not until we can learn to work together as one despite our differences.
Not having differences does not count I mean sure it might seem great short term but it does not give us the experience needed interact with his other creations.
JBento, this is the seed of a beautiful Bad Ad-Hoc Hypothesis submission. BAHFest season is over for now, but keep an peeled for a BAHFest near you in 2019.
That reminds me of this one theory I heard where dinosaurs became extinct because they farted themselves to death. That they produced so much methane and other noxious gases that the air became so bad that they all suffocated and died. I spent like a good 10 minutes laughing at that theory.
The best thing about the Parasaurolophus is that if you could get a herd of a bunch of hadrosaurian species together at, say, sundown or another time they make the rollcall, it’d probably be the most awesome orchestra possible.
Dat Dina Face. I’ve made that face. Mainly when fixing someone’s computer… Someone once spent several hours organizing their windows foler into alphabetical folders aranged by file extensions… And they couldn’t understand why the damn thing wouldn’t turn on next time they restarted…
whoops broke the Dina no refunds
D=
D:
I feel like you’re just trying to make sure Billie’s butt is at the top of the comments…
And we thank them for it.
You say that like anyone wouldn’t want that.
It is a worthy goal.
D:<
DM: Make a deception check.
Ouch, crit fail.
I think it crited so hard it overflowed…
You’re assuming that Joyce was trying to deceive.
But she’s not lying.
Self deception. Cause, she ain’t fooling anybody else.
I read “Decepticon check” and then Jetstream showed up…
DM: Make a Decepticon check.
Player: *Rolls out.*
DM: You have failed your Decepticon check, everyone knows you’re an Autobot now. Roll for initiative.
Dumbing of Age Book 9: Creationism is Sometimes Pretty Rad
that’s the one that all the creationists buy, only to discover that the entire Slipshine catalogue is also inside
Along with a bonus story featuring Dina explaining the facts behind every dinosaur-related creationist “fact” Joyce knows.
I want both the porn and the scientific facts!
Would you settle for unscientific dinosaur porn?
https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3767
Be careful what you ask for…
My initial thoughts went to Chuck Tingle.
There… one page before that… I… DINA?!
Yes well it is just a cross over if it was the same universe where are all the Ai?
Dina (and the Shortpacked! store, for that matter) also exist in the universe of Girl Genius – the comments over here made note of it when Sparky!Dina made an appearance a little while ago.
It’s on Amazon. The kids who wrote it paid their way through college with it. XD
Dumbing of Age Book 9: It Has Hollow Chambers in its Crest
(I note that my phone now autocompletes “Dumbing of Age Book 9”)
Probably as soon as you hit the letter “d”.
creationist dinosaurs would make rad D&D monsters
I love Dina’s look of horror in the last panel because it looks like she’s turning into a vengeance ghost and it about to suck out Joyce’s soul
That’s on anime levels of facial expressions!
Is that horror? I think it is mind-boggled disbelief. Like how I feel when I hear trumpies talk about the great things Trump has done.
The appropriate term to describe that expression is “aghast”, meaning “to be filled with horror or shock.” That’s exactly the kind of expression you’d expect to see as visual example of the term, and it’s the best term for describing that sort of “caught between horror and disbelief” meaning that is being discussed.
Alternatively, that is the face of someone in the throes of [demonic] possession. It’s kinda a coin-toss. 😛
I think that’s more an “URGE TO KILL… RISING!” expression. 😉
It looks like the next panel would be Dina screaming “Blasphemer!” or “Infidel”, or something similar.
And that was how Joyce died.
That IS the face of murder…
I think Joyce is Dina’s natural hard counter. Panel 5 is a system reboot.
It goes both ways, too! Their respective knowledge sets are incredibly dangerous to each other.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/proven/
And I remember Joyce has made that same face Dina makes in the last panel, but based on a quick archive dig it wasn’t because of anything Dina said. Still, parallels! Totally!
Holy crap Dina turned into someone from the Gorillaz universe
Or from Binding of Isaac.
Dina has always been Noodle in her “go to university” phase. In my headcanon.
*refuses to play “Puff The Magic Dragon” on the hacked Muzak*
I have my limits!
How about Trogdor the Burninator instead?
THATCHED ROOF COTTAGES!!!!!!!!!!!
But, little Johnny Paper!
This is your uncommon reminder that Joyce is still pretty fucked up by her religion.
Blue screen of horror!
Also, I bet Amber isn’t there. So, Dina will tell Walkie that his princess is in another castle. Which will arouse Joyce’s Shipper-Sence.
They’ll find her in Sal’s room, in Sal’s bed, with Sal. Sal will make an “in bed with yer woman” joke. Joyce’ll know something’s going on, but she can’t quite…
pffffthahahahahahaa
Wow, I think Dina might let Joyce in just to educate her on how wrong she is. Also that final face she has is amazing, I hope that is a random gravatar in the future.
Maybe Dina is going to say the reason Joyce sucks.
The alt text… same here. Creationism is one hell of a drug.
I just read the alt text and did a google search, I now have a new appreciation that I didn’t have to listen to any of my extended family’s creationist views as a child. Holy crap.
I don’t know why Dina has such a chilly attitude towards Joyce. I can’t recall their last interaction ending badly.
Probably because she’s aware of how fucked up Becky’s upbringing was and knows Joyce hasn’t discarded ALL of those screwed up beliefs yet.
As today Illustrates.
Away with you! I can save this one!
Joyce believes in creationism. Dina does not approve.
Dina and Joyce have a long-running feud with respect to evolution. When they both went to get flu shots, for instance.
It’s not like Dina *loathes* Joyce or vice-versa, far from it. Dina likes her a hell of a lot more than she likes Raidah, for instance, but it’s a point of contention.
Dina also views Joyce as her rival for Becky
Not really? She was afraid of that when Becky and Joyce went back to Le Porte for the weekend, but those concerns were very emphatically laid to rest
If anything I’d say she views her as an intellectual bad influence on Becky.
I don’t think it’s a response to Joyce so much as a response to the absurd misinformation regarding dinosaurs.
I believe brasca1 is referring to Dina’s greeting in panel 1.
I’m pretty sure it’s almost entirely because of the creationism.
literally in this comic Joyce offends all Dina studies by telling her something completely preposterous about dinosaurs. How are you surprised Dina doesn’t like Joyce and her lies?
I think Dinah actually comes off as pretty damn obnoxious here. Her gatekeeping is cute except for the fact that she’s denying Joyce entry to see her friend and Walky’s friend (Amber). Imagine if Dinah was asking Joyce what her favorite Catholic Saint was and then slamming the door in her face.
A) Amber has already said she doesn’t want to be friends with Joyce.
B) Dina’s been doing the screening since Amber asked her to make sure she’s left alone.
C) Frankly, even if she weren’t, Dina’s allowed to decide who is and is not allowed in her room. It’s not just Amber’s space. Dina’s allowed to decide Joyce isn’t allowed in because she doesn’t like her shirt colour. It sucks she shares her space with Amber, but if Dina doesn’t want people who don’t live in her room there, then Amber’s just going to have to meet her friends elsewhere.
It is however a particularly ineffective way of screening people – at least if done for Amber’s sake. High risk of both false positives and false negatives.
It is cute and funny though.
Well, yes, but it’s Dina and dinosaurs. Anybody who gives a REALLY GOOD ANSWER can’t possibly be a bad person!
And if they stress her out, Dina’s willing to remove them. 😛
Besides, we’ve seen what happens when Amber wants to let people in. She texts them a correct answer.
Whether it is healthy or not for Amber, Dina is doing her best to limit the number of people who are in their room BECAUSE AMBER ASKED HER TO. It really doesn’t matter what Joyce and Walky want or if they are friends with Amber – and even if Amber didn’t ask her to, Dina would be entirely within her own rights to decide she doesn’t want anyone in her room based on whatever criteria she likes.
I think “lies” is too harsh. What shes saying isn’t true, yes, but its what she’s been made to believe is true through 18 years of brain washing. While she has made strides since starting college, you can’t expect her to have shed all her beliefs in 6 weeks
It’s just past 7 in the morning, if someone were to wake me up at that time when I knew I’d be able to sleep because math class was cancelled my reaction would probably also be “oh it’s you” quite regardless of who it was that woke me up.
It’s almost definitely later by this point–math class is at 10am, so I imagine Walky was waking up around 9am.
Dina’s in a different section. She wouldn’t be in that class today regardless.
Pretty sure Dina is also in the math class. She did get back Walky’s notes at one point (the drawing of former TA Jason being eaten by a T-Rex while exclaiming “oh no my bowtie!”). There’s not really any way she could’ve gotten those unless she were in the same class.
She is in the same class, but a different section. Penny is her TA and she goes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Walky, Joyce, etc. go on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
*Penny WAS her TA
Professor Rees didn’t know what he was going to be dealing with this semester.
Yes, this.
dina being dina, it’s about the paleontology. but dina being human, becky having pined for joyce all those years probably contributes somewhat.
C’mon, Joyce, the correct answer was “Becky”.
Actually I would have gone for this cartoon
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/sinproofed/
The True Beckysaurus
Poor Dina. I wonder if she’s also thinking, “Was Becky also taught this??? Becky was TAUGHT THIS.”
oh, you missed those strips, didn’t you?
Oh god.
Stupid fucking-WHY? WHAT IS WRONG WITH BASIC SCIENCE? AGHHHH
It contradicts the Bible all over the place, that’s what. And it isn’t at all possible that the Bible or their understanding of it could be wrong, so it must be that the rest of us are interpreting science wrong instead.
Yes on “or their understanding of it” – there are religious approaches in other religions/denominations that also believe that neither the Bible nor science could be wrong, but their conclusion is that since science is demonstrable, then it must simply be a particular understanding of the Bible that’s mistaken, so they reinterpret, and that’s totally fine with those folks!
The Catholic interpretation is (simplified) that the Bible is inerrant in regards to its role as instruction in spiritual matters. Genesis is there to give us important truths about the nature of ourselves and the role of sin, not to give a factual blow-by-blow of prehistory.
Catholics may embrace evolution, but the Chrch still has to answer for many things I don’t wanna list here.
Mind you, it’s a 2000 year old organization made of billions of people. It has a lot to answer for and I left the Church because of some actions its taken (three guesses which) but it’s also wrong to treat it as an entity.
It is an entity. Like any other large organization, countries or corporations or whatever. It’s perfectly reasonable to treat it as an entity.
That doesn’t mean it’s responsible for anything that any individual Catholic does or vice versa, but the Church has policies and takes actions that it is responsible for. Good and bad, of course.
except it is literally impossible to interact with the entity “the church”, right?
vegans are responsible for a lot of atrocious chili recipes, but it is unjust to hold the next vegan you talk to responsible for crappy chili. in point of fact, that vegan is much likelier to have suffered through a bowl of crappy chili than you are.
I dunno, I’m against corporate personage and support its removal. A large part of why so much evil gets done by organizations is it’s against the idea of a lot of people to say, “No, it’s not Toyota. John did this and John deserves to go to prison for it.”
YMMV.
Again, I left the Catholic Church over the pedophilia scandals. My beliefs didn’t change but I want the people behind it in jail.
@ego: In about the same way it’s literally impossible to interact with the entity “Walmart” or the entity “United States of America”.
And yet both of those do things and affect people across the world.
And I did say “doesn’t mean it’s responsible for anything that any individual Catholic does or vice versa”. Not all Catholics are responsible for everything the Catholic Church has done, but the Church itself does things and can be held responsible for them.
The vegan analogy breaks down because there is no organization of vegans setting policy and hiring people to spread bad chili recipes.
@ego did you really just compare protecting child rapists to bad chili recipes?
No, actually not. An anology is different from finding things comparable.
A comparison doesn’t need to be two equivalent things, but analogies are a type of comparison.
Fair warning: I don”t believe those so-called “truths” about the nature of the human self and the role of “sin” either.
I believe in good and evil and how one can elevate a person while the other destroy them.
Science doesn’t have dragons. I mean fuck it, who wants science if it doesn’t have dragons?
That reminds me of some Animal Planet special I once saw about how dragons could theoretically have been real and also explaining how they could fly and breathe fire.
There’s no inherent reason why a species of some sort couldn’t evolve to breathe fire. Methane production is common (maybe universal?) in mammals, e.g.
Evolution would need to solve two other problems: a reliable ignition method, and a way of storing sufficient quantities of a gas that is not particularly easy to store using only biologically-grown containers. (If you’re going to use fire as a weapon, you’re going to need a LOT more methane than human intestines can store.)
Flint striking pyrite. The Neandertals used it.
Light oil ignited by a bit of methane.
The main problem with “methane (and other gaseous) breath weapons is that is dragons would be burning their faces off instead of breathing fire. See, gases don’t expand in one direction. You can prove this with burps and farts : They don’t just shoot out of your body in one direction.
So the methane wouldn’t just go out of their lungs and leave: it’d make a cloud that includes the fire breather’s head. Easy Experimental proof: If you wear glasses on a cold winter day and breathe out “frost breath” your glasses get fogged up too.
Animals can’t breathe fire, lightning, nor ice, not with current evolutionary biotech. Poison sprays are two thumbs up, though.
Well, you can keep from fogging your glasses up if you blow hard, so the animal would just have to do that when lighting its breath. Obviously, it wouldn’t want to be breathing fire every time it exhaled, so there’d need to be some control mechanism anyway.
Bah. I like my dragons magic.
If I recall correctly, in the special the explanation they for firebreathing and flight was that they said that dragons could have evolved from archosaurs so that they’d have a false palate they can close like in crocodiles and alligators so that they don’t accidentally breath back in the fire they create while their mouths are specially adapted to resist fire and that they would produce flame by having some super strain of bacteria that produces a lot of methane or some other flammable gas that they store in multiple special sacs that also help lighten them for flight. Anyhow then they said that dragons would have special teeth in the back of their mouths that at flat and that they’d eat ores and minerals like platinum that’d get ground and stuck on those special teeth and they’d use it to create sparks that’d ignite the methane.
How in the world would one ‘specially adapt’ a fireproof mouth before adapting the ability to breath fire?
Maybe they ate a lot of things that are on fire? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean…I don’t know why they WOULD, because most living creatures wouldn’t, but if I had the ability to not die from terrible injuries, I would probably try to eat something that was actively on fire. I do things like that. ^^;
Dinosaurs cooked flambe!
How did Bombadier beetles evolve to shoot caustic steam out their ass?
We live in an odd world.
Science can create dragons! Cybernetic dragons! Genetically engineered dragons! Alien dragons! Screw magically existing things! Create things with existing resources!
*is confused at the concept that magic and science are separate*
Oh wait, we don’t live on Asgard.
OR DO WE.
“Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.”
– Gehm’s Corollary to Clarke’s Third Law:
Indeed, you just know somebody’s going to MAKE dragons happen if we last long enough as a species.
I find the thought rather pleasant.
Well, they already did it on Pern.
I think the thought process by the Fundys is: The bible is the word of god. If god is real (and all powerful/all knowing) then every part of the bible must be accurate.
In order to show the bible to be accurate, then they have to come up with what they think is a “scientific” explanation for everything in the bible… from a justification for the story in genesis and the flood, to a description of prehistoric beasts.
I remember this being explained to me and then pointing out, “But Jesus is all about saying how the Old Testament is wrong.”
*crickets chirp*
Gotta point this out before a fundie laughs in your face instead of standing so speechless you can hear the crickets. That’s not exactly what Jesus is all about – at least, not the way he’s been written to satisfy the Nicean standardization of the Christian mythos.
Rather, he’s all about establishing a new deal between humans and God such that supercedes/overwrites the way that things were established between the two parties as written in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is ‘correct’ to Jesus as written, just (partially) obsolete.
That’s splitting hairs when Jesus did in fact say that Moses’ law was made for humans by humans and God’s law was made for God. He references it in divorce, stoning, and why you can do good works on a Saturday.
I’m just Sayin.
*puts on Goku outfit*
Then again, I think the fundamentalist idea that the Bible was meant to be literal and inerrant has never been a original and fundamnetal (ironic) part of the faith. It’s a new thing (500 years or so) created to undermine the Catholic Church.
Which one gets “Oh, it’s you” from Dina. Walky again?
Or Joyce the Creationist?
Since the rest of her comments seem to be addressed to Joyce, I assume that one is as well.
She’s bitter to both of them. Walky is the reason for this security check (INDOMINUS REX ATTACK!!!) and Joyce is everything she stands against, as well as being Becky’s longtime crush
Now I want a few more strips in a row to open with “Oh, it’s you”.
Hahaha Dina got a shocked Joyce face. I don’t see the tumblr link on this page anymore.
I kinda hope it will be used as a censor bar at some point 🙂
I think I’ve seen something like that on the Malaya Joe slipshine teaser on tumblr
I never expected to see that face on Dina. Good job Joyce, you broke her.
Forget Amber and Sal, THIS is the fight that will last forever
Willis says Joyce is autobiographical, and he obviously doesn’t hold Joyce’s preconceived notions anymore, so I’m guessing Joyce eventually breaks. College has already chipped away at her beliefs, and now that Becky is showing her that you can believe in evolution and God simultaneously, she may be forced to reconsider. For Joyce, change comes through the heart, not the brain.
Okay, fine, but the ARCHETYPES will last forever.
So many nice colors in this comic
was not prepared for that alt text
Willis needs appropriate gestures of support.
Suck it up, Wills
OK, you made me laugh.
rereading this i’m slowly having that slow, dread-filled realization that Joyce isn’t piecing this together from disparate information, but that this was something someone taught her. That the look in Panel 4 isn’t displaying vague recollection, but a genuine inquiry. it could breathe fire why wouldn’t it be my favorite. Yikes.
and i just read the alt text this is too much.
At least she hasn’t brought up Triceratops dressage in the pre-Flood era.
Please tell me this is also something people really believe?!!
Maybe not. I certainly wouldn’t rule out creationists believing anything, but this seems to source to a anti-creationist book describing Ken Hamm’s creationist museum, which does have a triceratops with a saddle, but it’s as a thing for kids to climb on and “ride”, not part of the actual exhibits.
If that’s too much, I highly recommend you do not google videos of Kent Hovind with scientifically minded friends and a ready supply of liquor.
Kent Hovind…now that name takes me back (well, further back than today’s strip did already).
Google didn’t find any videos of “Kent Hovind with scientifically minded friends and a ready supply of liquor”. 🙁
Google has failed humanity.
Again.
Poor Joyce. They never found her body.
….Eighty years later when she dies in her sleep of natural causes. Her grand kids botched the funeral arrangements.
Nope. She’s about to die.
Trust me, I have patreon/joke.
I can’t tell if that last face Dina is making is due to the horror of hearing that creationist theory or if her mind is just blown from picturing the awesomeness of a dinosaur breathing fire?
Definitely the first one.
“But how would a trait arising in Carabidae and derived from similar traits in closely-related species be found in a member of Hadrosauridae whose relatives had no such similar traits?”
“Common designer! CHECKMATE, ATHEIST!”
But then “hollow chambers to let it breathe fire” is a not-quite-completely-wrong-but-really-close description of a bombardier beetle, too.
I think it would be hilarious if JOYCE points that out next strip while Dina is still flummoxed.
e.g. “I know that bombardier beetles don’t actually breathe fire, but primitive humans wouldn’t know the difference between a chemical burn and a short-lived flame?”
unfortunately, the hypothesized fire-breathing has nothing to do with what bombardier beetles do. The beetles don’t create fire. They shoot hot liquid. No fire involved.
I keep that book by my computer at home, in case I need to scan another page to prove to people it exists.
OK. Story time.
Our church was considering changing denomination affiliation, for reasons. This was 15-20 years ago.
So, a rep sets up a presentation, as you do. We show up, and he has this big chart. Lines all over, with lots of small lettering, so everything could fit. And, he had a huge stack of thick books, that were the required reading, and explained all the stuff on the chart. All important stuff. I guess. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. But, it was implied that there would be tests, and, if you couldn’t give the right number of angels dancing on a pin, you would be in trouble.
Now, whether you believe or not, the bible is pretty straight forward about stuff. Yeah, the old testament contradicts it’s self sometimes, but, you can ignore that if you want. No, really.
No, it seems people want secrets. There’s got to be hidden codes, that you can only unlock if you pay the right leader to tell you what they say. And, this is probably where all those extra books came from. The love your neighbor bit was just cover for the compressed info that’s the real message. Available for just 25 monthly payments of 49.95 (plus shipping and handling).
Yeah, we didn’t go with this guy’s freaky cult.
For reasons.
Whoever Taught Joyce that is guilty of Child abuse…
whoops that convicts a large chunk of our great nation
It’s okay to tell stories of fictional fire breathing monsters, but many things her mother and brother do count as child abuse.
Creationists aren’t even large percentage of American Christians, let alone Christians in general. It’s kind of like Scientology (which is 40,000 people). They are entertaining and horrifying enough to draw a lot of attention.
It’s not remotely like scientology in numbers. 38% of American adults are creationists, and that’s without counting intelligent design proponents. That’s not 40,000 people, but a hair over 87 million adult creationists. As for being a large percentage, I’d consider that 38% pretty large. Christians are about 75% of the U.S. population, and while not creationists are Christian a significant amount of that remaining 25% aren’t religious and thus aren’t creationists, with the larger minority religions also not being that creationist as a whole.
Rough estimate, it’s about 50% of American Christians. I’d call that a large percentage.
Though that’s probably overstating it, since it all depends on what you mean by “Creationist”. Young Earth Creationists are a much smaller group than Creationists in general. I’m not sure where “fire breathing dinosaurs” falls.
Some variations on creationism are even compatible with evolution – god started the process and maybe guided it through the “random” events and mutations, but everything’s related and the fossil and genetic records are reliable guides.
You’re right that it’s certainly much larger than Scientology, even in the more extreme variants.
God kickstarted evolution is what my Catholic school taught, yeah.
It’s “God of the gaps”, but for the moment it’s not falsifiable.
I only recall the ‘kickstarted evolution’ bit, nothing about random events or mutations. I mean, they’d probably say it was god’s will, but I don’t recall anyone asking about the nuances on that.
“God kickstarted evolution” isn’t in that 38% (it’s in a different 38%, the numbers are surprisingly similar as of the latest major survey). That 38% is just young earth and old earth creationism, actively opposed to evolutionary theory, working out to about half of U.S. Christians.
Which is over 2,000 times as common as Scientology.
40,000 is still a large chunk. I meant number of people, not percentage.
…. okay, now I’m imagining Calvin’s dad on trial for all the tall tales he told Calvin.
Difference to me is Dad knew his stories were full of shit and Cqlvin caught on pretty quick. Joyce and her parents DON’T know their stories are shit and incredibly wrong. Huge difference.
So, does that make it better or worse?
My official favorite drawing of Dina, ever, is the last panel.
Awesome gravatar
I’m going to actually take a crack at Dina’s game here and say that my pick would be an Ankylosaurus, you the turtle type like one with a wrecking ball at the tip of it’s tail.
Tight. Mine’s the triceratops because the blue ranger was my favorite pre-green ranger
Being a power rangers fan officially makes you cool in my eyes.
But…but…the triceratops is the pink ranger’s mech! (In my favourite of the three dino-themed series.)
I was about to object, but then I remembered Dino Charge is actually amazing and Shelby is a major highlight.
Same, but mine’s because I loved Cera in Land Before Time.
There is now an episodic Land Before Time cartoon. My 4 year old located it on YouTube and is now a big fan.
I remember seeing episodes of that when I was a kid! I was also a fan.
If you don’t already know, David Yost (Billy) is on Twitter, and he’s super nice. He’s always retweeting stuff from Blue Ranger fans and wishing people a happy birthday.
Stegosaurus. I can’t say my initial reasoning as I’d settled on that one by the time I was five (named it as my favorite animal on the first day of school; have evidence of this) but it’s pretty neat that Gary Larson is the reason the spikey bit on the tail is called the “thagomizer”
Ichthyosaur. *gets door slammed in faace*
*opens door just so he can re-slam it*
That’s fair.
Spinosaurus. I always just thought it looked cool. Even before its skeletal anatomy was revised.
Archaeopteryx. Not that its particularly unique, but its discovery caused such a revolution in our understanding of dinosaurs (as well as serving as a prime example of a transitional fossil.)
I’ve always liked Archaeopteryx just because its name is so damn cool.
Corvidae.
*cue fight in 3… 2…*
Valid dinosaur family, invalid as a dinosaur genus (if Dina requires a genus, you’d probably want Corvus, its type genus).
Parasauralophus (which is actually absolutely cool, it doesn’t need to be turned into a dragon).
Achillobator (all the cool aspects of Velociraptor, plus a cooler name…albeit one that combines Greek and Mongolian – Achilles Hero).
Therizinosaur (fat, floofy theropod herbivores with giant claws).
Vulcanodon. How much cooler can you get than “Volcano Tooth?”
(Yeah, I know the teeth in question don’t actually belong to the specimen that was discovered, and that Vulcanodon is about as primitive as you can get and still be considered a dinosaur. My response to that is: “Volcano Tooth.”)
They’re quadrupedal, so they’re not that primitive. (The ancestors of all dinosaurs were bipedal. Sauropods and ornithiscians dropped back to four secondarily.)
I’d like a link or title to the study that suggests that. Sincerely. That theory sounds absolutely fascinating and I want to learn about it and read it. My current understanding of dinosaur phylogenic theory is that dinosaurs descended from synapsid species that were quadrupedal.
Ok, first, Dinosaurs did not evolve from synapsids. Synapsids are the group that contains mammals. Dinosaurs are within the sauropsids (ie, reptiles).
As to the actual common ancestor of all dinosaurs… The earliest dinosaurs (as opposed to the earliest archosaurs or the earliest reptiles) were smallish (about 1m long) bipeds. Obviously, of course, if you go back further, you hit a quadrupedal ancestor again. But, barring a really remarkable find, we can say that the MRCA of dinos were bipeds.
The early sauropodomorphs and ceratopsians were bipedal too, right? Even barring the existence of direct fossil evidence of their common ancestors (Staurikosaurus, Eoraptor, etc.), that provides indirect evidence in favor of the earliest true dinosaurs being bipeds.
Yep, they were.
Yi. It’s a weird bat-bird hybrid of a dinosaur…and one of the relatively few for which we have some idea of what color it was. 😀
Obligatory when Yi is mentioned…
(I am not sorry.)
Albertosaurus. Home province represent!
Funnily enough, we also have parasaurolophus remains.
Don’t forget that Hadrosaur that was found in Leduc, pretty close to my house, in fact.
I frequently drive into the Columbia Valley and pass the turnoff to Burgess en route. We live in a neat place for fossils!
Hard to pick. I might say Baryonyx, maybe.
Anky’s my favourite, too!
Mine’s Microraptor. It was an article about them in the newspaper that got me interested i dinosaurs to begin with. And all four of their limbs were wings, which is pretty neat in and of itself.
Went to fundy private school, can confirm. This is mentioned in the bible, when Job and God talk about the behemoth (sauropod) and leviathan (fire-breathing dragon). Not just parasauralophus, but loads of dinosaurs, because they have enormous cavities in their skulls and “scientists don’t know the purpose of them”. (allegedly.)
(Even in 7th grade, my thought was “um, sinuses? so their head isn’t 700lbs?)
I was like “what, the Bible never says Leviathan can breathe fire” but there it is, Job 41:21.
Side note, the ultimate mythical murdermonster is playful (Psalm 104:26). Joyce is definitely playing with fire here.
So many new Dina faces!
I need a full version of Dina’s face in panel 7 in my life.
Same
Tired, eternally disappointed Dina is a Top 10 Dina Look, right up there with What and Oh My What On Earth Is She Saying?
I wonder if picking a modern avian would be taken as an appropriate answer, since yeah, birds are dinosaurs, or if she would consider it a smartass answer to say “toucan”.
I think acknowledging birds as dinosaurs would be worth enough points to get in.
Should say cassowary. That Murder Bird already sorta looks like an Oviraptor.
I’d say chicken. When they found sample genetic material from the T-Rex and compared it to modern animals, the one it matched closest to was the chicken.
NOPE NOPE NOPE.
Just in case you’re not trolling: No-one ever found “sample genetic material from the T-Rex”. Fragments of DNA can last a long time in the right conditions, but not 66 million years.
True, it wasn’t actually DNA. Supposedly what was discovered was very short bits of organic material/protein, which they were able to (sort of) work backwards to analyze it and compare it to other animals.
On the other hand, there is the possibility that the lab doing the analysis made a mistake, and that the sample was contaminated. (I’ve read a news report suggesting that, but I’m not sure how reliable it was.)
Well, if that’s what you want to talk about, OK. But Mary Schweitzer’s lab originally used ostrich protein as a comparison, not chicken. Later tests did use chicken, though.
She’s gotten quite a bit of flack over the years, and tried to respond with demonstrations that they accounted for contamination, or that biofilms just don’t give the same results, and so on. Other paleontologists are also reporting that sometimes, proteins in bone can be very well preserved.
A lot of her research is freely available, now:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mary_Schweitzer
I suspect he’s saving this up for some future strip.
okay I just googled “Parasaurolophus creationist” and this is on the first page of Google results. The strip has been up less than half an hour.
We don’t mess around.
Some poor bloke working at Google must be looking at the most recent top searches right now and be very confused.
Counterargument: Anyone working at google and aware of search trends is probably pretty jaded by this point.
I got this: https://creation.com/was-leviathan-a-parasaurolophus
I just can’t believe how seriously they believe in firebreathing dinosaurs xD
Final panel Dina is hilarious, but honestly, all of them in this strip are gold.
Dino / dragon connections aside, how does Joyce know so much about bombardier beetles? That doesn’t seem like it’s in her wheelhouse of topics she’d be familiar with.
One Creationist line of arguments against “evilution” is that the bombardier beetle could not possibly have evolved naturally, as its chemicals would’ve blown itself up long before it got to its current stage.
Yeah, part of the whole “irreducible complexity” thing.
(The thing is, even extant species of bombardier beetles have different degrees of complexity…)
Ah, so that’s how she knows about it. I guess that makes more sense than Joyce looking up random animal facts. Thanks for the answer.
Actually, it’s because Duane Gish (that asshole) put out the idea that fire-breathing dinosaurs work like bombardier beetles, although that doesn’t make any sense, and this stuff is taught as science to Christian seventh graders.
Jack Chick used to crib out of D&D books.
Goddammit Joyce, you broke Dina.
WHAT, CREATIONISM HAS DRAGONS!?
*immediately throws evolution out the window*
If you throw evolution out of the window I will call the misogynist Richard Dawkins on your case and an army of evolutionary scientists. I dare you!
Had. It assumes they all went extinct.
Evolution ALSO has dragons.
… granted they’re not flying and don’t breathe fire, but they’re about as big as we are and have a poisonous bite. … and also, you know, EXIST.
Excuse me? There’s a (common) flying dragon that does indeed also exist!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_volans
Oh, hey, right, those things.
….. AND THEY’RE RELATED TO THE JESUS LIZARD!
…. I don’t know what to do with that connection, honestly, but every option is hilarious.
It’s not exactly a close relation, but yeah, they’re in the same infraorder according to Wikipedia.
It’s rare to agree with both Dina and Walky, but…
That thing that Joyce said is both horrifying in its absolute wrongness, and kind of awesome, all at once.
It’s only horrifying if believed and taught to children in earnest. Otherwise it’s just awesome.
How would they really even work to be honest? Would the body heat emitted from a Parasaurolophus’s diaphragm ignite some sort of flame with its gas like breath? Wait no that doesn’t make since considering dinosaurs would be cold blooded.
She used the bombardier beetle analogy, so the heat would come from a chemical reaction.
Also, we’re pretty sure dinosaurs were warm-blooded, these days.
We’re not sure if dinosaurs were ectothermic! I think! Especially with them having feathers -> insulation -> endothermic maybe! and also for the big ones, high volume-to-surface-area ration means megalothermy maybe- they were so big that they just didn’t radiate heat as fast as they generated it through normal body function- except obv they must have, but it would have made them effectively warm blooded, and also is suggestive of large-surface-area soft-tissue structures to dissipate heat, like the ears of elephants or fennec foxes
No, Walky. I don’t have to admit any such thing.
Joyce. Joyce. JOYCE! Your answer only applies in the Pokemon fandom. So you either start playing Pokemon or you take away your bullshit creationism from serious science discussion.
And Walky, I know from this universe and from the previous Walkyverse that you don’t like science, so I ask you with education to not encourage your alternate universe wife.
Someone has to defend the Dinosaur Girl.
pokemen? I pray for her soul
I like you very much and these are not lies.
Why, thank you! I like you too!
POKEMON TEACHES CHILDREN ALL ABOUT EVOLUTION! IT MUST BE EVILS!
Evolutionists: “POKEMON TEACHES CHILDREN THAT EVOLUTION HAPPENS WITHIN AN INDIVIDUAL’S LIFE TIME RATHER THAN GRADUALLY BETWEEN GENERATIONS. IT MUST BE EVILS!”
Children: “Pokemon are awesome!”
Evolutionists who likes to play Pokemon: “Pokemon um… teaches important concepts and… increases awareness and… LOOK, A WAILMER!”
If they’d just called it metamorphosis, Pokémon wouldn’t have been such an easy target for outrage.
I KNOW, RIGHT!
That the inaccurate naming which will garner vocal offense from both sides of an opinionated and visible divide all but guarantees a new franchise instant and widespread publicity needed to become a cornerstone of its genre 20+ years later?
I think you could say Meowth evolved from an ordinary alley cat to a bilingual cat, and be accurate.
I think evolution means gradual change over time and has positive connotations.
OK, but Pokemon evolution takes about half a minute.
Yep I’m saying the theory of evolution is not the only use of the word. And Pokemon was still misusing it.
DID THEY WHAT????
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/cobwebs/
Wait… didn’t creationists use to hate bombardier beetles at some point? I think it was on their list of biological features that can’t possibly evolve, together with eyes and bacterial flagella (and for whatever reason they manage to pick the most OBVIOUS example of things that actually have evolved multiple times through convergent evolution).
And the reason they then started to hate it was that their interest in it attracted evolutionary biologist who explained how it evolved.
They don’t hate it. They just drop it from their list of things to Gish Gallop on when biologists figure it out and the answer gets common enough that most biologists they “debate” know it.
That’s alright, there are always other ridiculous lies that the evolutionists won’t know how to debunk off the top of their heads.
Hmpf. Bah. That’s fair enough. If nothing else, that has taught generations of students all about evolutions of eye and flagella and bombardier beetles.
The cult I was in used the beetles as an example of why evolution had to be false, for the reason you mentioned above (claiming it “couldn’t possibly evolve”, and that it had to be the product of an intelligent designer).
But… but that claim has been disproven by scientists. Didn’t they read the article?
*realizes how stupid I sound*
What the hell.
Ok so before I wasn’t keen on Dinas vetting system but I guess it can be useful
As an atheist from a country (NZ) where religion isn’t really that big of a deal (Well there is Bishop Brian Tamaki…) one of the more interesting things about this strip (to me anyway) is Joyces fundie views on things and how a lot of posters here arn’t surprised at all
Thanks for sending us Ray Comfort, btw.
I would say “fuck you for sending us Ray Comfort,” but I understand the need to dump him, and here was a reasonable place. You can’t, after all, make American fundagelicals any stupider.
No, but they can always get more bananas.
Mind you, I grew up loving evolution and dinosaurs as part of my religious education.
So paras are one of my favourite dinos and I have a sticker of one on my laptop and… maaaaan I love the idea of fire-breathing dragon parasaurolophii.
You know what I find adorable? This is all a surprise and shock for Dina, which means Becky hasn’t told her.
Now, it COULD mean that Becky wants to spare her feelings, but I find it much more likely that little miss rambles-five-words-for-butt-just-to-get-a-reaction saved this doozy for a ‘special occasion’.
If so, that special occasion will be as soon as her shift ends and Dina will need a lot of comforting.
You mean that becky hasn’t told Dina about the whole “Dinosaurs are the source of Dragon myths” that fundy Christians hold?
Its probably just that it never came up. Dina knows Becky had a bad educational upbringing. Becky probably realizes that now, has rejected the whole “bible is to be taken literally”, and just doesn’t see the need to mention “oh, did you know I was taught that dinosaurs=dragons” since Becky probably already sees that as wrong.
And deprive herself of sweet, sweet head-cuddles like this?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/doozy/
Nah, she’s totally savoring it!
Ooh, I forgot Walky already earned Dina’s “fake dinosaur boy” title. Boffo.
The “Oh it’s you” makes me think that Dina knows all about Joyce’s fundyness.
She does, just not this part of it.
“Knowing” is one thing.
Experiencing quite another.
I mean, this is DINA we are talking about. This is akin to walking up to the biggest Doctor Who fan you can find and exclaim how much you LOVE the Doctor and then start gushing about the chemistry between Andrew McFarlane and Liz Burch.
Sadly, this is an actual thing among some (not all) young-earth creationists (YECs), based on a hyper-literal reading of a poetic description of a crocodile (Leviathan) in Job 41, specifically verses 20-21: “Out of his nostrils comes forth smoke, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals and a flame comes forth from his mouth.” It’s basically describing an attacking crocodile from the perspective of some poor sod who has the misfortune of being attacked while carrying only wood or bronze weapons, complete with seeing the puffing of the crocodiles breath across the water as smoke, but some YECs ignore the genre (poetry) and start trying to guess what dinosaur it could refer to.
Joyce, how can you be so adorable yet terrifying at the same time
That’s one of her basic characterization points.
Well put by Walky here
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/godpertunity/
YESSS I’M SO GLAD I KNOW THIS
Creationism is so good, it’s like fan theories about reality.
oh girl you just didn’t try to do that
What if their math class is cancelled because someone finally noticed the computers were hacked…they’d blame Walky or Sal since their grades changed the most over time
Did Amber take everyone’s hardcopy stuff, or just walky’s?
They wouldn’t cancel class for that. They’d hand it off to IT and watch for future intrusions like hawks.
Hopefully if they find a hack, they’d notice when it was and what was changed.
As for Sal, her grades went up more incrementally, so she’d hopefully be okay. I’d bet she’s hardly the only one to struggle at first and figure things out as she goes.
“What, the computers have been hacked, and we just fired two disgruntled TAs . It clearly must be the work of students, those little rascals.”
Every time I see a new theory or explanation used to justify Young Eath Creationism, I am awed by the sheer mental gymnastics it takes to ignore centuries of historic and scentific discovery. Its the same sort of schadenfreude I get watching trashy reality TV like Jerry Springer or Toddlers and Tiaras
A lot of early 19th century biology and geology was perfectly in line with creationism. They WANTED to prove the bible right, especially the geologists were interested in what England looked like before the flood.
…but as evidence and fact congregated it got harder and harder to fit in a young earth-timeline, and finally they just started to say that maybe… just for the sake of argument, earth is just a tiiiiny bit older than thought… kinda a bit older…. kinda a bunch of million years older (later revised to BILLIONS). That and fossiles paved the way for evolutionary theory.
But a lot of very serious theories from early 19th century are perfectly in line with creationist thinking, so they have a lot of material to draw from.
Ah. Thank you for the brief lesson. 🙂
Heh, sorry for getting a bit rambly. I take any excuse to talk about my favorite subjects.
The history of science? Or evolution?
YES!
The term scientist wasn’t coined until the 1820s. They tended to be called “natural philosophers” before then.
And of course “Fucking asshole”,
Or maybe that was only Newton and Hooke when they talked about each other.
Dina only says contractions when she’s angry.
This is simultaneously a success for, and a flaw in, Dina’s guest-vetting system.
Success: Identifying people whose crazy you don’t want to hear.
Flaw: Having to listen to their crazy in order to learn you don’t want to listen to their crazy.
Dina puts herself in harms way to save people from stupid, just like she saved her Becky. She is a hero like that.
I love how HAPPY Joyce looks in the second-to-last panel when she remembers her childhood dinosaur. She tries to be supportive of Becky, and she wants to be a good friend of Dina, but most of the time she doesn’t get that whole dinosaur thing.
But here and now, she and Dina can share the joy of awesome dinosaurs and… ooops, that’s not what happened at all.
Yeah, at some point, I need to know who came up with that one and programmed poor Joyce with it.
I don’t even think she got the poor Bombardier Beetle right either!
Duane Gish came up with it, and it’s in creationist textbooks for 7th graders.
I absolutely love panel five. It’s like Joyce said something so crazy that it completely broke through Dina’s usual detachment. Dina probably expected Joyce to say something nonsensical… but what she got was so absurd that it completely blindsinded Dina and left her speechless.
So… parasaurolophus, eh Joyce?
Because of the fire breathing thing.
Right.
Nothing to do with the fact it looks like it has a giant dick on it’s head…
The horror on poor Dina’s face
Joyce, the correct answer was: “I don’t have a favourite dinosaur; can we stop playing this game and instead can you tell Amber I need her help on a purely technical question?”
That said, I’m loving how Joyce’s reply is making Dina react. If it wasn’t completely out-of-character for her to do so, I’d accuse Joyce of doing this deliberately, just to make Dina flip out because that reaction is almost too funny for words!
Joyce answered the question truthfully. Not her fault Dina liked the answer.
(Also, until AMBER asks Dina to stop restrict admittance based on sweet Dinosaur facts this is a viable method. She has already asked for Joyce not to be admitted once.)
I’m 100% SURE Joyce doesn’t play up her childhood beliefs to get a reaction out of people.
…I’m 90% sure.
(Unlike Becky, who I’m 100% sure does it for shit, giggles and sweet dinosaur cuddles)
Becky’s also trying to clear the nonsense out of her brain and relying on Dina to tell her what’s nonsense.
The cuddles are certainly part of the motivation.
It’s even stranger when you see it https://d29jd5m3t61t9.cloudfront.net/dinosaurhome.com/components/com_mojo/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/FullSizeRender1_v_1464219011.jpg
Dina’s silent scream makes my day.
From panel 4 onwards, it is clear that Joyce is literally making stuff up from off of the top of her head. If nothing else, if I were Dina, I’d award her a ‘most original fanfic’ prize on the spot!
Don’t we all wish. This is apparently a real creationist thing.
Hovertext says otherwise.
Also, the twitter sidebar.
Yeah, no, I’ve seen that book. It’s a real thing.
(Joyce talking about a fire-breathing dinosaur)
Heheh, didn’t think Joyce would be the one talking about the mythical drag-
(Sees twitter post)
HOW?!?!
LOOK AT HOW OFFENDED DINA IS. I NEVER NEW I NEEDED TO SEE THAT IMAGE BUT I DID.
https://i.imgur.com/siA7C.gif
NO WALKY DON’T ENABLE HER HELP HER GROW
Also, forth panel Joyce.
Cute.
Am gay.
Joyce: Take that, Aethiest!
Did…did Becky keep Dina up all night?
She will tonight, after a distraught Dina seeks comfort.
Dina: “And, and then she said that they coincided with humans with no regard for the fossil record. Why would she say that with no regard for the fossil record?”
Becky: “There, there. Let’s read about the latest proteomics study to make you feel better.”
Dina *grabs Becky’s head, looks her in the eyes*: “Becky, please tell me YOU don’t believe there were dinosaurs capable of ejecting a boiling chemical spray from separate compartment in their cranial features.”
Becky: “Well, I did until a month ago, but….”
Dina *Whimpers, hugs Becky tight.*
Becky *Soothing, singsong, voice*: “There, there… The Paleozoic ages are cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian…” *gently strokes the still shaking Dina over back*
At least she didn’t refer to its crest as a pompadour, eh? 😉 …but for real, even with the Southern Christianity I was raised in, I’d never heard of the fire-breathing dino stuff. That’s next level! I was like Dina as a kid because one day, another kid tried to insist that dinosaurs weren’t real, that God just “put the bones into the Earth to test our faith” which was the stupidest thing I had ever heard in my life up to that point.
Every time I think Evangelical fundamentalism can’t get any more weird…
Wot.
Good Dina faces in this strip.
This comic is so illuminating. I had thought I had gotten rid of the remnants of my childhood “science” classes, then it brings up things like this and I go “What?? That isn’t true? …Shit, of course not.”
*Makes Dina-face*
But have you seen that the first parasaurolophus that was described was the Parasaurolophus *walkeri*? Probably a coincidence, but a nice one.
Has anybody postulated that Dina’s face here is in response to Walky’s reaction to Joyce’s assertions yet? “She’s converting people who believed in evolution to her crazy creationist ideas ? Make it stoo-oooooo-ooooo-p!!”
Well, they’re not getting in.
Ever again, no.
Thank you for this precious gift. Fire-breathing parasaurolophus gives me life.
Oh boy, I’d been looking forward to this! And Joyce’s answer is, uh, even more horrifying than I ever could have imagined! It’s sweet of her to try to connect with Dina on a ‘factual’ level, it’s just that, well, poor Dina o.o
I think that’s the worst, from Dina’s perspective. Joyce is not trying to rile her up or be provocative. She genuinely tries to connect with Dina on her own ground, with her own interest. This is a very nice thing Joyce is trying to do.
And she does it by talking about fire-breathing dinosaurs inspiring tales about dragons.
Dina already has ONE fundie to help reeducate! She doesn’t have the time for another one entirely! Much less one that’s on a hard mode setting!
Becky’s trying to reeducate herself, so Dina really only needs to point her to the right resources.
But she is partly correct, dinosaur fossils did inspire dragons, just no fire breathing involved.
Twitter is doing a nice series of #ChristianAltFacts. Wish I could say they are humorous.
They WOULD be, for the same reason we now can laugh at all the craziness the Greek pantheon was up to. Unfortunately, people actually believe that stuff, meaning instead of humorous it’s horrifying.
Bonus Creationist Round: This is actually related to how dinosaurs went extinct. You see, all that firebreathing takes up a lot of oxygen, which was okay when there was a lot oxygen around. But then oxygen levels in the atmosphere started decreasing, and dinosaurs still needed a lot of oxygen, and their nostrils didn’t increase in size, and so they all suffocated to death.
Ain’t stupidity fun?
…but… that… but that doesn’t make… like, even if we postulated the existence of a specific fire breathing dinosaur AND a link between global oxygen levels, natural selection would ensure that particular trait was quickly weeded out and system biological effects would mean that… NO, I WILL NOT START A DISCUSSION BY POSTULATING FIRE BREATHING DINOSAURS!!!!*
*) I mean, I gladly would if people didn’t actually believe it.
A large part of my Uni “hazing” consisted in us having to make ridiculous dissertations on the fly, like “Explain how to make planting tomatos on the Moon viable, and comment on the socio-economical impact of such activity.”
None of them were nearly as out-there motherfucking crazy as what these folks believe.
Of course not – they have put lots of actual work in it.
And that’s the thing – I LOVE that sort of stuff. I’ve attended BAH-fest. I organised something similar myself. I’m a role player, scifi-nerd, enthusiastic “What-if”-er… but when those things are used to deceive rather than to illuminate or amuse… yeah, not funny.
I theorize that God wants us to go to space but not until we can learn to work together as one despite our differences.
Not having differences does not count I mean sure it might seem great short term but it does not give us the experience needed interact with his other creations.
JBento, this is the seed of a beautiful Bad Ad-Hoc Hypothesis submission. BAHFest season is over for now, but keep an peeled for a BAHFest near you in 2019.
Whoops! Ninja’d by not reading ahead!
In keeping with the themes of religion and evolution, here’s Matt Inman’s (The Oatmeal) presentation on Jibbers Crabst.
That reminds me of this one theory I heard where dinosaurs became extinct because they farted themselves to death. That they produced so much methane and other noxious gases that the air became so bad that they all suffocated and died. I spent like a good 10 minutes laughing at that theory.
I remember this Christian girl in high school who once told me that Noah’s flood was so devastating was because it had never rained before that.
The best thing about the Parasaurolophus is that if you could get a herd of a bunch of hadrosaurian species together at, say, sundown or another time they make the rollcall, it’d probably be the most awesome orchestra possible.
*Googles it…points to her avatar*
…I…I’ve no words. Dear sweet merciful crap, what is they DOIN’?!
Her eye makes me think of the Gorillaz, I am hollering. Hahaha
Lmao how long have you been saving this story up for use in the comic
I can’t believe that in all the Dina/Joyce interactions we’ve seen, this has never come up
The facial expressions in this comic are all just the best XD That last panel Dina face lmao
Dat Dina Face. I’ve made that face. Mainly when fixing someone’s computer… Someone once spent several hours organizing their windows foler into alphabetical folders aranged by file extensions… And they couldn’t understand why the damn thing wouldn’t turn on next time they restarted…
I always thought that was an urban legend with this as its source: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20170714
I’ve had a printout of this carton next to my desk for more than 10 years now, but couldn’t find when it was originally published.
Dina. Please let Joyce in so you can educate her. I don’t care if she doesn’t believe it; you have to try.
Also Parasaurolophus is rad.
Smarmosaurus? Dorkasaur?
This is going to be the most denied entry since a certain Balrog tried to cross a bridge in the mines of Moria.
You have won today’s comments, good sir or ma’am.
Joyce, you ain’t dumb but you ain’t never making my pub-quiz team.
there is SO much rage in Dina’s face, like Amber will be tied to a chair clockwork orange style with a movie of Walking with Dinosaurs on screen…
Willis please post a full-size blown-up version of Dina’s face in the last panel please and thank you
Call it a hunch, but I don’t think they’re getting in that room.
I’m surprised Amber isn’t restraining Dina from trying to scratch Joyce’s eyes out.
Wouldn’t it be not a myth, then?
I’m honestly just surprised Joyce named a real dinosaur name.
I love Dina’s horror-stricken face.