Bay of Fundie

Conservapedia is a fun site to cruise around. It’s like the Weekly World News. It’s so crazy that you can’t imagine anybody taking it seriously. I doubt that anybody believes the WWN, but the scary thing is that some people actually believe Conservapedia.

If you don’t laugh you’ll cry, so let’s laugh a little at the Conservapedia article on kangaroos. (You might want to read my prior article on fundie taxonomy, if you haven’t yet. It explains how fundies have their own classification scheme, “baramins”, instead of using the evil taxonomy created by those atheistic, puppy-killing, baby-raping evolutionists.)

Kangaroos are the largest Marsupials alive today. They are now native to the continent of Australia. There are four sub-kinds in the kangaroo baramin…

“Now native”? How about always native? (More on this below, or should I say “moron this below”?) Then they tell us there are four “sub-kinds”. That’s about as scientific as they get, folks.

…or at least sixty-nine species according to evolutionary views, which include wallabies and tree-kangaroos.

I’m kind of surprised they even mention the evolutionary perspective. Maybe that’s so they can discredit it with their Bible. I mean who are you going to believe? Omniscient, Almighty God or some clown with a PhD?

I’m sure you’re aware that scientists use Latin names (binomial nomenclature) for all species. One reason for this is to help them classify the species within the larger context of evolution. The other reason is so they can know which species other scientists are talking about. Common names for plants and animals vary widely throughout the world. For example, the American bison (Bison bison) is more commonly known as a buffalo. True buffaloes are native (excuse me, “now native”) to Africa (Syncerus caffer) and Asia (Bubalus bubalis). If two scientists start talking about “buffaloes”, how can they be sure that they’re talking about the same thing? Hence, binomial nomenclature.

This raises the interesting question of how creationists handle this problem. I don’t know what they do. Maybe they don’t have this problem, because there is no such thing as a fundie scientist.

Here’s the funny part. If you look at the alternate text description (in the HTML) for the image of the Eastern Grey Kangaroo on the Conservapedia page, it lists the kangaroo’s scientific name, Macropus giganteus! They aren’t even using their own system!

Like all Marsupials, female kangaroos have a pouch on their stomachs in which they carry their young.

Really? Attached to the stomach, you say? Wouldn’t the joey suffocate, being inside its mother’s abdomen like that? This is typical of the accurate descriptions that Conservapedia is known for.

The newborn joey weighs as little as .03 ounces when first born, after which it crawls into its mothers pouch…

Note the blind adherence to the U.S. customary system of measurement, even though it’s impractical in this situation. Conservapedia doesn’t want to be anything like Wikipedia, which uses the evil (read non-American) metric system. Conservapedia sticks to good-enough-for-my-great-great-grandfather pounds and ounces, just like they stick to 3000-year-old fairy stories to explain the origins of the Universe. The fact that something better has come along in both cases is irrelevant. “Conservative” apparently doesn’t mean “resistant to change”; it means “rabidly afraid of change”.

The other thing to notice about the quoted sentence is that “mothers” is spelled without an apostrophe. That error is repeated throughout the article. The content reads like it was written by a second grader. The spelling is proof.

Kangaroos have adapted to the varied conditions across Australia in many ways.

Sounds like evolution to me!

The tiny newly born kangaroo (less than 25 mm long)…

Whoops! How did millimeters slip in here? This is especially surprising, considering that 25 mm is almost exactly one inch. It would have been easy to make the substitution.

…moves unaided into its mother’s pouch and attaches itself to one of four teats.

Wow! I can’t believe a fundie was able to build up enough courage to use the word “teat”! Careful there! The next thing you know, you’ll be reading Playboy and raping women!

…but as it matures and begins to grow hair it also develops the ability to release and reattach itself to the teat.

When most guys mature and begin to grow hair, they develop the ability to grab teats. I thought we were supposed to be talking about kangaroos here.

Consistent with their view that the fossil record as a whole does not support the evolutionary position, creationists state that there is a lack of transitional fossils showing an evolutionary origin of kangaroos.

Just keep this sentence in mind for later.

According to the origins theory model used by creation scientists…

Two mistakes here:
1. Origins “theory” isn’t a theory, because it isn’t accepted by scientists.
2. Creation “scientists” are anything but scientists.

…modern kangaroos are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah’s Ark prior to the Great Flood.

Holy crap! You’ve got to be frakking kidding me!

After the Flood, these kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia.

They must have left immediately for Australia, because there are no kangaroos living in the Middle East! In fact, they must have made it to Australia in record time, because there are no kangaroos anywhere between Mount Ararat and Australia. What did they do? Hop a Qantas flight?

The idea that God simply generated kangaroos into existence there is considered by most creation researchers to be contra-Biblical.

Well, if it’s not in the Bible, it couldn’t have happened, even if God did it! Sorry, God. You’ve been rejected. If it’s not in the Bible, you didn’t do it!

Remember above when it said that creationists do not accept evolution of kangaroos, because of the “lack of transitional fossils”? Yet they claim that kangaroos hopped off the boat on Mount Ararat and somehow managed to migrate thousands of miles to Australia without leaving one single fossil behind?

There are fossils that show the evolution of kangaroos. There are no fossils that show that kangaroos ever inhabited the Middle East. Who are you going to believe? Omniscient, Almighty God (for which there is also no proof) or some clown with a PhD (and mountains of evidence)?

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 8:28 pm and is filed under BoF Toon, Creationism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.