Dr. Jean K. Lightner, a former veterinary surgeon, has contributed to the growing creationist scholarship on how many "kinds" Noah needed to fit onto the Ark, concluding that the number of mammal "kinds" was 137. Among these was the Greater Gliding Possum, and RationalWiki has helpfully excerpted its description from Lightner's original article:







If that image is a bit indistinct, here's a closer look at the same specimen:



I think that might also answer the question of how Noah and his family dealt with feeding and cleaning up after all those animals....

WTF? hahahahaha

A "veterinary surgeon"? I wonder where she got her veterinary degree? I'm thinking Walmart or maybe she made one in 3rd grade school class with felt tip pens and crayons. I hope nobody ever let her near an animal.

Any possibility of her trolling the Creationists?

KeenIdiot wrote:Any possibility of her trolling the Creationists?

None. The photo was later replaced by one of another specimen, which seems more likely to do things like move and eat and shit.

Thankfully, the internet preserves the original version for posterity.

So was it intentional? An error? How the fuck can you put up a picture of a plush toy in what is supposed to be a 'scientific' paper?

This is baraminology. Their standards are a bit different than what you may be used to in the usual stodgy, atheistic "scientific" paper. As an example, here is RationalWiki again on another of Lightner's research initiatives:

As part of the Ark Encounter project, the usual Answers in Genesis crowd ponders what animals to place on the Ark that represent the kinds suggested in the Bible, and hence they dicuss three baraminological systems: hybridization (animals that can product hybrids represent a kind); cognitum ("A cognitum is a group of organisms that are naturally grouped together through human cognitive senses."), and statistical baraminology. After explicitly rejecting sequence data (who knows that kinds have similar genetics, after all) and exploring the strengths and weakness of each method is performed, they conclude the cognitum approach is best; after all "One reason the cognitum is the preferred method after hybridization is that Adam would have recognized created kinds by sight." (That is, the method that will allow us to make up an answer because it feels right, without having to worry about scientific coherence.)

Now, let's reflect on that a bit. The claim being made here is that a creationist like Dr. Lightner can derive phylogenetic relationships based on simply looking at an organism, even in the form of a picture on the internet, and determining what "kind" it belongs to. This from a woman who can't even tell a plush toy from a real, live animal.

Onyx8 wrote:So was it intentional? An error? How the fuck can you put up a picture of a plush toy in what is supposed to be a 'scientific' paper?

Ask AIG. Everything they produce has an equivalent plushie doll as supporting evidence.

RS

ETA: See post above.

Shrunk wrote:

KeenIdiot wrote:Any possibility of her trolling the Creationists?

None. The photo was later replaced by one of another specimen, which seems more likely to do things like move and eat and shit.

Thankfully, the internet preserves the original version for posterity.

Damn, I'll admit I was hoping otherwise.

Mind-boggling stuff.

Perfect for the homeschoolers!



(That's for the AiG veterinary high school course.)

I never knew ducks were so big back then.

Blackadder wrote:A "veterinary surgeon"? I wonder where she got her veterinary degree? I'm thinking Walmart or maybe she made one in 3rd grade school class with felt tip pens and crayons.

Maybe another graduate of the world-renowned Inkjet University?

Aquarium ornaments, anyone?

And these people think they should be allowed to teach this nonsense in schools?

xrayzed wrote:And these people think they should be allowed to teach this nonsense in schools?

That's one of the more interesting aspects of the aetiology involved in becoming an adherent of doctrine. The moment a doctrine takes hold, an adherent not only thinks that he or she should be allowed to push said doctrine onto others, but regards doing so as some sort of righteous ideological crusade on behalf of whatever brand of TruthTM the adherent subscribes to. Leaving aside for one moment, the faintly absurd brand of hubris involved in regarding oneself as being the recipient of "privileged" knowledge, purportedly denied to other, less fortunate persons, the pertinent fact here centres upon the manner in which adherents of doctrines regard their beloved doctrines as The TruthTM. This unconditional and unquestioning acceptance of doctrinal assertions as purportedly constituting The TruthTM, is what leads to the absurdities and mendacities you see from so many doctrinal adherents, especially when this is combined with the notion that one's pet doctrinal assertions purportedly constitute an "obvious" set of axioms about the world, and that as a corollary, verification of those assertions is considered superfluous to requirements by said adherents.

That central fact, namely, that doctrinal adherents regard the assertions of their pet doctrines as purportedly constituting The TruthTM, leads inexorably to the other manifestations of the doctrine centred aetiology I've discussed at length before. Such as the partitioning of the world according to whether or not it conforms to doctrinal assertions, and the erection of various conspiracy apologetics to try and hand-wave away the parts that don't conform, as purportedly being the result of some malicious action on the part of entirely synthetic "enemies" of the doctrine, "enemies" that are asserted to be so simply because they are not fellow adherents of the doctrine. The "dirty war" in Argentina and other Latin American countries illustrates this principle in action quite starkly: if memory serves, one of the enforcers employed by the Argentine military dictatorship, for the purposes of arranging the "re-education" or the "disappearance" of various asserted "enemies", issued a chilling statement exposing the mindset in all its horror. "First we will deal with the activists. Then we will deal with their overt supporters. Then we will deal with the sympathisers. Finally, we will deal with the indifferent".

That's the mindset you're dealing with. A mindset that thinks it, and it alone, has access to Absolute TruthTM, and as a corollary, thinks it possesses a right and a mandate to do whatever is necessary to serve that Absolute TruthTM.

This reminds me of when Fox 8 decided to warn people of bears using footage of a guy with a cardboard cutout of a bear.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5C2gihnEkE[/youtube]

"This is what the bear probably looked like, except real."