The crazy dinosaur denialist movement

They roamed majestically, fought fiercely and conquered all before them…they were also, according to a worrying new fundamentalist view point, a bad influence on children. Russ Swan gets his teeth into the crazy dinosaur denialist movement…   

Now, I appreciate April the 1st has come and gone…and I’m glad, because if it were April 1st then you’d definitely be tempted to assume I'm making all of this up. I'm not.

I'm not saying that everything below was originally presented with the utmost sincerity – I honestly hope at least some of it is a spoof – but I promise you the anti-dinosaur movement is an actual thing.

Yes, that's right. There are people alive today who not only deny that the terrible lizards ever existed, they are campaigning to have them obliterated from our culture. Dinosaurs set a bad example, and are to blame for many of society's ills. If only people would stop making up so-called facts and applying so-called science, the world would be a better place. A better place without dinosaurs.

It may come as little surprise to learn that the dino-denialists have their roots in religious fundamentalism. What may be a surprise is the level to which the movement's adherents take their campaign. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people holding sincere beliefs that just happen to be different to mine. We are unfortunate to live in an age of religious intolerance, and things might be a little less fraught if everybody could just shrug their shoulders and not get quite so wound up.

Some of us put our faith in learning and knowledge, seeking truth through experimentation and discovery. Others shun that approach and prefer to trust a book written a few hundred years ago. That's cool: I'll keep out of the way of your superstitions and rituals if you keep your hands off my modern non-fiction.

But when you start trying to undo the learning that we have put so much effort into, while you have been doing nothing but re-reading some old bedtime stories, all bets are off.

I have to add that, compared to the atrocities taking place in the Middle East, the issue of the existence of dinosaurs might seem rather trivial. It may be the same basic mindset that drives jihadist extremism and dinosaur denialism, but there are important differences. The most significant of these are that the dinosaur campaigners are closer to home, and crazy in a less sinister sort of way, and so are much easier to make fun of.

The movement came to public notice in February with a bulletin board posting on Mumsnet, a website catering to shrill middle-class harpies and their self-indulgent devotion to their own little angels. Under the headline 'I'm getting sick and tired of dinosaurs being forced on our children', the post begins by pointing out that dinosaurs were invented by "curio-hungry Victorians" and that their existence is "disproved" by Darwinism.

You have to love the flexibility of the arguments put forward by fundamentalists. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday they are likely to deny evolution in favour of creationism – but on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday they will invoke Darwin in their tirade against palaeontology.

"Nothing about dinosaurs is suitable for children, from their total lack of family values through to their non-existence from any serious scientific point of view", the Mumsnet post continues. It then veers into territory so surreal that it's hard not to sniff a hoax: "Recently my sister foolishly gave my two youngest some dinosaurs toys for Christmas. After telling her to get out of my house I burnt the dinosaurs. My children were delighted because they know that dinosaurs are evil. I am fortunate that my family has been very supportive, and has disowned my children's former aunt."

It's easy to dismiss this as the work of a lone nutter, and anybody with a rational bone their (non-fossilised) body will take comfort from the scorn heaped on the subject in the thousand responses generated before the site admins closed it down. But, nutter or not, the person calling themselves Cadministry (CAD being Christians Against Dinosaurs) is not alone. There are at least two Facebook groups devoted to the topic, although you have to wonder how many of the thousands of members have joined ironically, and a whole raft of wacko YouTube videos on the topic.

Here I learned that a recent cyclone in Queensland was a divine response to the new Jurassic Park movie, and discovered more than I ever wanted to about the 'museum-industrial complex' and what goes on behind the scenes to 'maintain the lucrative worldwide dinosaur fraud'.

These have to be parodies. Please God let them be parodies.

I also found an unexpected link to heavy metal music which begins with a stern warning: 'contains foul language, satanic imagery, and dinosaurs'. Metal fans, apparently, are more than averagely likely to support the hoax. And this really proves just how stupid the fundamentalists are. Everybody knows it is glam rock fans that really love T Rex.