I'm also not of the opinion that there were no prehistoric animals so, yes, obviously there would be real fossils and there would be reason to study them. I don't believe that the people teaching and studying prehistoric life and digging up trilobites and such are part of an enormous conspiracy any more than are the people involved with the study of, for example, aerospace engineering, satellite communications, space exploration, planetology, etc. But that doesn't mean there aren't gigantic hoaxes connected with these subjects either.
I appreciate your skepticism but mine goes in the other direction.
Based on what we are learning about human nature and how we psychologically handle false information (and have historically done so) I find it hard to believe that the Big Bang, the 14 billion year old universe, Earth's formation and the dinosaurs are
not just another Creation myth. Albeit one which incorporates specificity and detail to discourage doubt.
Creation myths are what we use to explain the world around us. It just so happens there is
some truth in all of them, but plenty of legend and creativity in each of them. The number of people invested in an idea give power to its 'reality' in our collective consensus.
Do I think dinosaurs may be real, faked or something in between? Yes!
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I once attended a very strange "Creationist debate" held at a micro-mega-church in a very conservative community. It was between the execrable hypocrite Michael Shermer (whose personality and whose magazine I greatly admired during my 'scientific awakening' before I met him in person - lulz), a die-hard Bible-thumping businessman preacher and a mild-mannered bespectacled professor representing the "middle way". The "debate" barely approached the rational exploration of science but focused entirely on the internal mystical beliefs of each of the three participants.
Shermer responded to absurd audience questions like, "how does a crate of oranges dumped out create a perfect lined-up grid of oranges by coincidence?" and "How did God create the lawn chair?" (poor man, he sighed heavily at that one).
The dinosaur question was at the
heart of the science being looked at
to determine the creation of the entire universe! The preacher decided that dinosaurs had been put on Earth by demons to tempt us into Satanism, and that any bones found were actually of very large lizards that had grown very large because of their age. Shermer dismissed this point - and the allusion to humans living much longer lifespans - outright, and skipped to the connection between whale fins and human hands, showing a common design. The middleweight was very kind and didn't offer much except an attempt at diplomacy that nobody paid attention to because most people were there to apparently see some kind of fight. He presented me with a book, and he seemed to basically accept much of modern science but also continually point to the mysticism and/or Christian God as the source of a 14-billion year old universe.
This is why I really think it's our responsibility on this forum to stick to the facts, the evidence and what we've learned about psychology while not abusing the "diplomacy" of the middle way. I had the sense that all three of these people were basically just having an intellectual argument about
how to approach the subject (with no basis in science) rather than an actual analysis of the forensics.
If we can manage to stick to literal forensics of propaganda, media culture, geology, fossilization, carbon dating and so forth, and
resist going off into tangent theories about the Sun and Earth and the cosmos at large, I think we could really "dig" into some good stuff. Of course the subject of dinosaurs is connected to everything, but I think we can do it.
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As an example, let's look at the NASA threads. Are there a small group of people who know something about aerospace technology? No, there are thousands - possibly millions - and hundreds of millions who at least think they know something because it's been told to them.
Why is there just one official President of the United States, when there could be two or three or a dozen all claiming to have been elected legitimately? Because the media keeps order and sets the ground rules. The power to control human power itself ... is massive. They have convinced us of not just "incidents" like 9/11, 7/7, Titanic, Hindenberg, etc. but the facts about entire periods of time like World Wars, pre-history and entire sciences: space travel, radiation, flight physics and cause-and-effect.
I don't think they're afraid to invent evidence. On the contrary, they seem to be gaining greater and greater confidence in their ability to do so, and to do it
at the rate at which people's skepticism, inquiry and demand for evidence increases over time. With technology's help, and crowd control, and security -- coupled with our species' very easily-satisfied curiosity and slow rate of awakening -- I see there could easily be something to the idea of dinosaurs being an invention "spun off" of real geological science.