St Pete mayoral candidate believes dinosaurs walked the earth with men.

[madfloridian]

When I saw this today I though to myself that one of the goals of our new Secretary of Education is to put the control of schools in the hands of mayors. Just imagine a mayor who is anti-evolution, believes in Creationism, and even wrote a shocking letter to the county school board. In it he said that Darwin's theory of evolution caused the rise of Hitler and contributed to the shooting at Columbine.

Yes, our Education Secretary is deeply involving himself in the push to turn control of schools over to mayors.

Now, as if the education secretary doesn't have enough going on, he's wading even further—and more dramatically—into the thorny issue of local control and school governance by declaring that more big-city mayors need to take over school districts. And if the numbers don't rise, he said according to Libby Quaid's Associated Press story, he "will have failed as secretary."

Well, let's see. St. Petersburg is the 4th largest city in Florida...so yes, that would qualify Bill Foster if he were to become mayor.

Hat tip to The Progressive Puppy for the links.

From the St. Pete Times today.

Can Bill Foster's creation beliefs evolve into valid issue in St. Petersburg mayoral race?

“Dinosaurs are mentioned in Job, so I don’t have any problem believing that dinosaurs roamed the earth,’’ says St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Bill Foster. He says he believes dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, though most scientists say there is a gap of at least 60 million years between dinosaurs and mankind."

..."St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Bill Foster believes, contrary to the overwhelming majority of scientists, that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. He believes the world was created in six literal days, and he once complained to school officials when his son was taught about Darwin's theory of evolution in fifth grade.

Is that relevant to the campaign for mayor of Florida's fourth-largest city?

"This city is trying to increase its employment base with respect to scientific organizations and trying to recruit scientific concerns to come here,'' said St. Petersburg architect Michael Dailey, who supports Kathleen Ford, Foster's opponent. "If our mayor has a belief system that basically rejects science, how can people take him seriously?"

Here is more about his letter to the Pinellas County School Board in January of last year.

Foster links Darwin, Hitler...cites evolution in Columbine killings

Darwin's theory of evolution helped fuel the rise of Hitler and contributed to the school-shooting massacre at Columbine, a former St. Petersburg City Council member wrote in a letter urging the Pinellas County School Board to expose students to alternative theories.

"Evolution gives our kids an excuse to believe in natural selection and survival of the fittest, which leads to a belief that they are superior over the weak," Bill Foster wrote board members in a letter received this week. "This is a slippery slope."

He continued: "One of the Columbine shooters wrote on his Web site, 'You know what I love? Natural selection! It's the best thing that ever happened to the Earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms.'"

Foster's letter comes in the midst of an increasingly emotional tug-of-war over the state's proposed new science standards, which embrace Charles Darwin's theory as the fundamental pillar of modern biology. The current standards, written in 1996, do not mention the word "evolution."

The article says further that four of the seven Pinellas County school board members believe in teaching alternative theories. However one warned Foster that ""As an attorney, he should realize there have been court cases on this topic... Encouraging the school district to open what would be a legal can of worms is not very good legal advice."

Florida's so far leading candidate for governor also makes our state stand out by his religious beliefs. Though Bill McCollum won't give a response on the topic now...he supported personhood for the unborn when he was in Congress.

This was just about make birth control illegal if such a bill passed here.

A proposed Constitutional amendment that could outlaw birth control pills in Florida looks a lot like federal legislation that state Attorney General Bill McCollum co-sponsored while in Congress. McCollum, frontrunner GOP candidate for governor, took no stand last week when asked about the "personhood" question that anti-abortion activists are trying to place on Florida's ballot. The proposed amendment to the state Constitution would establish a human being's "personhood" at the start of biological development, which its sponsors define as fertilization.

That would outlaw abortion and, critics fear, might also lead to bans on oral contraceptives and intrauterine devices, because they can prevent a fertilized egg from developing.

I don't know who is leading in the St. Petersburg mayoral race. I surely do hate to think of someone winning who believes the earth is 6 thousand years old. Under new policies he might just get the chance to be in charge of that school system.

[ccharles000]

1. k/r

[chollybocker]

2. It's a yabba-dabba-doo-time campaign!

[daleo]

3. A dinosaur's IQ would have easily beaten this fellow

Given a few million years, conservatives might just devolve enough to make this claim of humans and dinosaurs walking the earth together come true.

[DaLittle Kitty]

49. K & R and... Send Kathleen Ford $50 BUCKEROOS Like I DID! To Save US From THIS MORON!

This jackass is worse than anything that we've yet seen in elective office! :puke: Go Kathleeen Ford... for sanity in Govt!

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Ok this cinches it

the Fundies read a different version of the bible than I read in school... no not public, or in the US... but damn it the Aramaic Old Testament (Original language as close as we can get) I read HAD the book of Job... and damn it I don't remember dinos anywhere in the text.

*******

“Dinosaurs are mentioned in Job, so I don’t have any problem believing that dinosaurs roamed the earth,’’ says St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Bill Foster. He says he believes dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, though most scientists say there is a gap of at least 60 million years between dinosaurs and mankind."

*******

Paging King James, I know you got the Moses and horns thing ahem wrong, yes rays from the glory of God are NOT horns... but I did not know you got the dinos in there when I wasn't watching.

Yes it is time to leave these idiots behind. They ARE the village idiot...

[madfloridian]

6. They decided the "behemoths" were dinosaurs.

And they preach it to the young creationists. I don't know what a behemoth was, but not a dinosaur.

They even have a dinosaur with a saddle at the creation museum. The professor who does the blog called Pharyngula was riding one on a recent visit to the museum. Hilarious.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Behemoth is a bad translation

the word was beast.

But what would I know, I am just a heathen non-believer

:-)

[madfloridian]

8. Ken Ham calls it behemoth.

And you know what an authority he is on science. :eyes:

I don't ever remember seeing any word like that because I was not looking for it

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Well if Ken says it... he is a good scientist, a

fine biblical scholar and a preacher all rolled onto one...

And we all say AMEN!

:-)

Oh and I did not have to look for the word per-se, if animals are not referred specifically, by name that is, they are called beasts.

I have used my knowledge of having read the damn thing more than once against Fundies... I know the damn thing, not on purpose, better than they do.

[Monk06]

11. Ken Ham, living proof that it is possible to be stupid and Australian.

[BolivarianHero]

38. You can prove that just as easily with John Howard...

And you would benefit from the fact that most laypeople would know what the fuck you were talking about.

[madfloridian]

13. Trying to find that video of Ham or someone teaching the "behemoth" song.

It was in the movie by Alexander Pelosi called Roadtrip with God. I think they translated beast to behemoth and then to dinosaur, and they showed a cute little picture of a dinosaur pulling a wagon. :eyes:

[Mariana]

10. The KJV says "He moveth his tail like a cedar."

These literalists decided not to read that particular bit literally and decided that it means that his tail is as big or as thick or as long as a cedar. How a description of the tail's movement has anything to do with its size or shape is a mystery to me, but they believe it.

Some other translations make me wonder if the word "tail" doesn't mean his tail at all. The New Revised Standard Edition, for example, says, "He makes his tail stiff like a cedar." Maybe the writers of the Aramaic weren't comfortable writing "penis".

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. Nah sex is pervasive

the song of solomon is particularly funny, lyrical and sexual. Why most prudes don't really read it... and David, oh my a little old fashioned murder and sex with a married woman... I tell ya, some of them religious fanatics who are prudes have ahem trouble with that.

Me as a story teller... it is GREAT readying. All the elements of Western Story Telling are there.

[madfloridian]

32. lol

That's funny.

:hi:

[gratuitous]

14. Maybe he's talking about the leviathan?

Leviathan is a recurring creature in Hebrew literature, a massive sea creature of terrifying power - the Loch Ness Monster on steroids. As God is dressing down Job near the end of the book, giving examples of God's superiority as creator to humans as creation, God asks where Job was when God laid the foundations of the cosmos? Can Job do what God does? Can Job thread a reed through Leviathan's nose and lead it where he will? This rhetorical fluorish on the part of the God character in the story may be Foster's basis for concluding that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.

Foster is as nuts as the Vatican "scholars" who decided that their reading of Scripture trumped what they could observe with their own lying eyes through Galileo's telescope.

[grantcart]

17. The old testament was never written in Aramaic it was written in Hebrew

No Dinosaurs are mentioned in Job which is presented as a work of fiction and whose defining miracle is the growth of a tree to give Job shade and not being swallowed by a whale.

[billh58]

23. The original

writings of what was to become the Christian "Old Testament," were in Hebrew, and were originally called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh. Early Christians, however, translated those writings into Greek and Latin, which were the beginnings of the Christian Bible. The Dead Sea Scrolls, were written variously in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. It was a combo of Aramaic, the Pentateuch mostly

and Hebrew, if you want to be technically correct.

In fact, Aramaic was the language Jesus spoke, since Hebrew was reserved for studying the bible

You want to really get technical. It was written by four groups of scribes, under orders of King Josiah, in the Seventh Century BCE

Now talk of hairs on fire.

[grantcart]

34. the Pentateuch was written exclusively in Hebrew and scribes were strictly controlled

I have studied directly from copies of the original fragments.

All of it is in Hebrew:

This picture illustrates the contributions by author to the Torah - while there has been some disagreement on whether it was the result of editing from large tracts (the so called 'documentary' source) or from small pieces, (the so called 'fragmentary' sources)there has been virtual complete unanimity on the sources for about 150 years of scholarship.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torah

The Torah is the most holy of the sacred writings in Judaism.<4> It is the first of three sections in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), the founding religious document of Judaism,<5> and is divided into five books, whose names in English are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, in reference to their themes (Their Hebrew names, Bereshit, בראשית, Shemot שמות, Vayikra ויקרא, Bemidbar במדבר, and Devarim דברים, are derived from the wording of their initial verses). The Torah contains a variety of literary genres, including allegories, historical narrative, poetry, genealogy, and the exposition of various types of law. According to rabbinic tradition, the Torah contains the 613 mitzvot (מצוות, "commandments"), which are divided into 365 negative restrictions and 248 positive commands.<6> In rabbinic literature, the word "Torah" denotes both the written text, "Torah Shebichtav" (תורה שבכתב, "Torah that is written"), as well as an oral tradition, "Torah Shebe'al Peh" (תורה שבעל פה, "Torah that is oral"). The oral portion consists of the "traditional interpretations and amplifications handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation," now embodied in the Talmud and Midrash.<7>


Your discussion of authorship is not consistent with any modern scholarship on the Bible which has been well established in peer review scholarship for many decades. While there has been disagreement about whether or not the book was edited from large books or bunches of smaller scraps there is virtually no disagreement about who the original authors were (or atleast the schools and tribes that they came from.) Authors of the original Hebrew Bible are


...The Jahwist (or J) - written c 950 BCE.<10> The southern kingdom's (i.e. Judah) interpretation. It is named according to the prolific use of the name "Yahweh" (or Jaweh, in German, the divine name or Tetragrammaton) in its text.
...The Elohist (or E) - written c 850 BCE.<10> The northern kingdom's (i.e. Israel) interpretation. As above, it is named because of its preferred use of "Elohim" (Generic name any heathen god or deity in Hebrew).
...The Deuteronomist (or D) - written c 650-621 BCE.<10> Dating specifically from the time of King Josiah of Judah and responsible for the book of Deuteronomy as well as Joshua and most of the subsequent books up to 2 Kings.
...The Priestly source (or P) - written during or after the exile, c 550-400 BCE.<10> So named because of its focus on Levitical laws.


While not immediately discernable in the English text they are immediately obvious in the Hebrew because they use such radically different vocabulary and literary styles.

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. Well from what I have read over the years

Genesis One and Genesis two are not in Hebrew, but Aramaic. Genesis Two is also tracking with a story of origins in Babylonian sources. And there is plenty of Aramaic in the first five books

And yes, I have read the damn thing.

When they had the Sea Scrolls here in San Diego it was amazing, since some of it could be read... used a "modern scrpt" while some of it, was like doing Spanish Paleography of the sixteenth century. But the project was started by Josiah, and yes the scribes were supervised, goes without saying. The fact that a human ordered it, is enough to blow literalists heads..

Hey I love the song of Solomon, which tracts an Egyptian poem of 1000 years before... as well

To me the ACTUAL history is far more fascinating than any Deity dictating it to Moses on Mt Sinai... oh and Moses is a myth, did I write that? May I burn in the hell that does not exist in the Jewish tradition...

:-)

One of my two brothers has gotten some religion and during Passover he just is wise and keeps his trap shut these days... but he LOVES the History Chanel proof that Exodus happened... there are a few grains of truth in that beautifully produced program... haviru come to mind, after that... it is sheer fantasy, as much as the story they try to prove happened.

[grantcart]

44. There really is no controversy on this subject and your memory may be playing tricks

on you.


Only two books of the Bible were written in so called Biblical Aramaic:

Biblical Aramaic is the form of the Aramaic language that is used in the books of Daniel, Ezra and a few other places in the Hebrew Bible and should not be confused with the later Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible known as targumim .


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Aramaic


There is NO Aramaic in the Torah. You may be have heard of the Targum which is an ARAMAIC TRANSLATION OF THE HEBREW BIBLE. These translations happened much much later, after 1000 CE.


I didn't say that I read the old Testament, I said that I read the Torah in its original Hebrew.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Aramaic

Again the scholarship on the authorship of the Torah has been firmly established for over 150 years. The authors, all writing in different periods are known as

Jahwist or J http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahwist estimated to have lived 950 BCE or 350 years before Josiah

Elohist or E http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elohist estimated to have lived 850 BCE or 250 years before Josiah

Dueteronomist or D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuteronomist written during the time of Josiah

Priestly Sourc or P http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priestly_source written during 550-450 BCE or after Josiah.


The final edited version was produced around 450 BCE.



Again this has been well established by peer review scholarship for over 100 years and is not challenged by either Jewish or Christian scholars.

[Dr.Phool]

50. I've got an original, autographed copy of the bible.

And it's written in pig-latin.

Or should be. :crazy:

[Libertas1776]

5. Well duh,

of course man walked the Earth with dinosaurs.

And they also loved the smooth, easy taste of Winston brand cigarettes.


Its all in there in the bible; the book of Yabba dabba deuteronomy I believe.

[rpannier]

45. Don't forget their turtle lawn mowers

Wilma was certainly a liberated woman

An early smoker -- thousands of years ago

[drm604]

12. I find it so depressing when adults of apparently normal intellingence

believe that the Flinstones was a documentary. :banghead:

[Barack_America]

15. You betcha!

[marmar]

16. He's right of course.......

[madfloridian]

18. Found it! The video. The song...behemoth is a dinosaur..book of Job.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd3laVISXLA

Watch the excerpt from Road Trip by Pelosi...while it stays up. Ken Ham and associates.

Sickening stuff.

[madfloridian]

19. oops...first line should have read "I thought to myself"

left out the t.

[cbdo2007]

20. Well I guess it is possible...just hasn't been proven yet...

Who knows...maybe we're the idiots here and he knows something we don't (doubt it).

I mean technically there's no proof that there were NOT people around when dinosaurs were here.

[madfloridian]

21. Do you also believe the earth is just 6 thousand years old?

After all God made the earth in 6 days, and rested on the 7th?

[pipi_k]

22. OK, there's no proof that men and dinosaurs didn't walk the earth together, but

if that were so, don't you think that cave paintings (like Lescaux) would show men hunting things other than bison, deer, and other relatively "modern" animals?

shit...If I were hanging out with gigantic creatures like that, I'd be like, Screw the horses!!! I'm gonna paint me a brontosaur!!!

[Warren DeMontague]

24. Technically there's no proof that there's not a 500 foot tall invisible hamster on my roof, either.

[madfloridian]

25. Ha Ha well done.

:applause:

[billh58]

26. No proof?

Evolution is no longer a "theory," among scientists the world over -- it is an accepted working scientific discipline. There is ample "proof" that no hominid creature ever saw a dinosaur, and vice versa.

The earth is 4.54 billion years old. Dinosaurs evolved, and died out, between 245 and 65 million years ago. Mammals first appeared around the time dinosaurs disappeared -- 65 million years ago. Ape-like animals first appeared between 34.5 and 29 million years ago. Hominids first appeared around 2 million years ago, and modern man evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago. All of these dates and ranges are calculated estimates based on radiocarbon dating of identified artifacts, and are accepted by the scientific community the world over.

There was a void of at least 63 million years between the last dinosaur and first hominid.

Note: Substantiating facts available from numerous sources online, and your local library or university.

[Zebedeo]

55. Maybe you need to spend more time in that library

"The earth is 4.54 billion years old. Dinosaurs evolved, and died out, between 245 and 65 million years ago. Mammals first appeared around the time dinosaurs disappeared -- 65 million years ago. Ape-like animals first appeared between 34.5 and 29 million years ago. Hominids first appeared around 2 million years ago, and modern man evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago. All of these dates and ranges are calculated estimates based on radiocarbon dating of identified artifacts"

Really? Care to provide some links showing how radiocarbon dating has been used to determine that the earth is 5.54 billion years old? Might be hard to do, since radiocarbon dating is acknowledged even by its proponents to have an upper limit of 50,000 years.

radiocarbon dating

But if you are a True Believer, I guess you can just make shit up and sound authoritative and hope that no one will call you on it.

[billh58]

56. You are almost correct

about the limits of radiocarbon dating, but the "absolute" reliable range for contemporary equipment is around 60,000 to 70,000 years (depending on the "quality" of the sample). I should have been more specific by using the term radioactive dating -- mea culpa. Determining the age of objects older than 70,000 years, such as the age of the earth, is verified by other forms of radiometric dating which is the broader parent field, and includes radiocarbon dating, plus dating with various other sample isotopes of differing half-lives.

There are many other corroborating scientific methods for dating strata layers, fossils, and other archaeological artifacts. Determining the age of the strata, or rocks discovered with fossils, can help to determine their age.

For further education on the validity of evolution, vs. the mythical, magical, made up shit of "creation theory" and "intelligent design," and actual scientific methods of determining geologic ages, see these links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.html

And, as I suggested before, a trip to the library or your local university is more edifying than Wikipedia and other Internet links, and just may keep you from embarrassing yourself in public -- anymore than you already have.

[Zebedeo]

57. I guess you were close enough

You were only off by a factor of 100,000.

50,000 years x 100,000 error factor = your 5 billion year claim.

But instead of being humble about being caught in your ridiculous lie, you arrogantly continue in your ways, and try to deflect some of your embarrassment onto me.

To that, all I can say is:

Bwahahahahaha!

[billh58]

58. The ages and calculations

presented in my original post are accurate, and I was not "off" by a factor of any amount. I misstated the term "radiocarbon dating," which should have read "radioactive dating," and I acknowledged that. Mea-big fucking deal-culpa, bubba.

Radiocarbon dating is one method in an entire field of radiometric isotope dating technologies. Where is the "ridiculous lie?" Stating the facts is not arrogance, and I am not embarrassed by a simple typographical error which did not alter the veracity of my statement one iota.

The figures presented have been verified and accepted by the scientific community the world over -- except for a few backward and absurd religious fundamentalists. The earth IS 4.54 billion years old, the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, and the first hominids appeared 2 million years ago. No human (or our ape ancestors for that matter) ever saw a dinosaur, and vice versa. These are not "my claims," but the facts as presented by intelligent, educated, and dedicated men and women of science from universities and labs around the world. Most of these measurements and facts were determined, and verified, by radiometric dating.

If you believe that the earth is only 5,000 years old, please continue in your willful ignorance, but please explain to me the 50,000 year-old age of those archaeological artifacts that CAN be accurately measured by radiocarbon dating. Your childish response says a lot more about you, than it does about me. And before you blow another educationally-challenged gasket, the terms "radioactive dating," and "radiometric dating," are interchangeable, and refer to the same process.

[NOLALady]

27. Of course humans were around with dinosaurs.

But, they weren't called humans. They were called snacks.

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. Well if you want to refer to SHREWS as human relatives

you are technically correct....

Our common ancestor with ALL primates and another genus that right now escapes me.

[Warren DeMontague]

42. Whaddaya mean, "no proof"? I've got proof, right here!

[G_j]

29. they still do

right?

:shrug:

[SteppingRazor]

31. As far as who is leading in the mayoral race...

there was a primary Sept. 1. Of 10 candidates, Kathleen Ford and Bill Foster finished second and first, respectively. But the third place candidate, Deveron Gibbons, has endorsed Foster, and fourth-place Scott Wagman has said he doesn't know who to endorse, if anyone. And, really, Ford's no great shakes either.

In all likelihood, St. Pete will soon be run by a nutjob. There's really no avoiding it.

[madfloridian]

36. Ford sounds pretty good on the issues.

http://www.kathleenford.com/page/issues-1

Thanks for the info, guess I am not surprised Foster finished 1st. That's the way things are in Central Florida.

[SteppingRazor]

37. Well, he only finished first by about a percentage point:

Bill Foster, 27%

Kathleen Ford, 25.7%

Deveron Gibbons, 19.5%

Scott Wagman, 15%

Everyone else finished under five percent. The scary thing is that Gibbons has endorsed Foster.

As for central Florida being somewhat conservative, I agree, but I do think St. Pete's something of an exception. It's hardly a conservative town, it's got one of the best newspapers in the country, and the outgoing mayor, Rick Baker, has often served as an example of the kind of Republican that can win in blue districts.

[EmilyAnne]

35. When I was little, I believed that my stuffed animals came alive at night and played with my toys.

Do you think I could get elected on that platform if the voting age was lowered to four?

[guitar man]

39. dinosaurs "walked" as in past tense?

hell, some of them are still here! :D

[Kalyke]

41. Dinosaurs are mentioned in Job? Where?

[madfloridian]

43. Chapter and verse in this video....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd3laVISXLA

About 3 minutes in...ch. 40 verse 15

Believe it if you will.

[Blacksheep214]

46. Child Abuse?

When are we going to recognize that teaching children imaginary crazy shit as fact, is child abuse?

At least fairy tales are honest in their imaginationland themes.

People get killed over the religious based BS! It's a crime!

[alp227]

47. This is why some local officials are unfit to run public schools

Because they can do stupid things like introduce creationism in the curricula when there's more important issues going around like gangs, illiteracy, and college readiness. I hope this mayor loses big time when the people find out how full of shit he is.

[SammyWinstonJack]

48. ROFL!

:rofl: :silly: :crazy: Moran!

[RagAss]

51. And this is The Age of the Cretin !

[Dr.Phool]

52. Hey, this is Florida.

There's a premium on stoopid.

[BurtWorm]

53. If by 'dinosaur' he means old fart who believes in bliblical literalism, then he's right.

They're still walking the earth today, amazingly enough.

:patriot:

[Harry Monroe]

54. "Wilma!!!!"

Dinosaurs are mentioned in Job?? I must have missed that one in my Sunday School Bible Classes as a kid!

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

59. Is this 6,000 years BS found in the Bible?

Where? If the Earth's age at 6,000 years old isn't explicitly mentioned in the Bible, then it looks like these guys are making up their own brand of religion. Either way it's fine with me and they are free to believe anything they want, but at least they should recognize that they have evolved their own unique religion and they are not following traditional Christianity.