Meet Megan Fox, who is not the dopey actress from the Transformers movies, but is instead a dopey homeschooling mom who doesn't believe that organisms transform over time. She has her very own YouTube channel where she reviews children's books and pursues a single-minded crusade against corruption on the public library board of Orland Park, Illinois.
Ms. Fox recently took a visit to the Field Museum's "Evolving Earth" exhibit -- it's actually "The Evolving Planet," but whatevs, that's the smallest error she's made -- to "audit it for bias." Guess what? Steven Colbert was right! That science museum was just FULL of liberal bias and reality -- if you believe the lies of science, that is. Her amazing video has kind ofblown up on Reddit and could well be the greatest internet hit of Thanksgiving Week 2014.
Within the first two minutes, Fox has already completely bollixed a Charles Darwin quote that most creationists simply love:
Darwin once said, "If the single cell is more complex than I think it is, then all of my theories... are... I'm gonna have to start all over again."
We totally remember how he said that, only it wasn't about cells at all. The way Darwin said it in our universe, in On the Origin of Species, went a lot more like this:
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
Cells are organs, aren't they? That Darwin quote -- the real one -- is, in fact, where the whole "intelligent design" mania for "irreducible complexity" comes from, the search for some biological structure or process that's just so incredibly complex that it couldn't possibly have evolved (like David Sedaris's fictional proboscis monkey Socrates, they usually go for the eyes ). For heaven's sake, Ms. Fox, you're not just bad at science, you're actually bad at pseudoscience! Indeed, the entire video is a tribute to critical thinking gone haywire, as Ms. Fox lives out the Dunning-Kruger effect for us.
Fox explains that since everything we've learned about cells since Darwin's day is just so incredibly more complex than what he knew, surely he would be forced to admit that he was completely wrong (at least in that timeline where he was an idiot who predicted we'd never learn more about cells after 1859):
Between now and then, what we've discovered is that the single cell, if the single cell then were, you know, a Buick, the single cell now is a galaxy, so Darwin himself would have said, "OK, back to the drawing board, none of this makes any sense." But yet we're still stuck with hundred-year-old science. It's disgusting. No one cares. Does no one care? Does no one want to know the truth? 'Cause I want to know the truth, and this (points to text on an exhibit about eukaryotes, which someone just totally made up because she can't pronounce it) makes no sense.
Now that is just dumb, because General Motors makes Buicks, and Ford made Galaxies, but they've been out of production since 1974 anyway, and even Fords are way more complex today than they were back then. They didn't even have CD players! And why are we still using dusty, hundred-year-old science when all the real facts you need are in the Bible, which is not a hundred years old? The whole thing is just so horrible that Fox stalks away from the display, literally almost in tears. "It makes me so angry! I get...angry!"
And we still have 27 and a half minutes to go. We have a confession: we honestly tried to only hit some high lowlights for you, but damned if we didn't just end up transcribing most of the best observations in the video. It was totally worth the lost sleep.
At3: 15,Fox is pleased with a display of trilobite fossils, because they are real things that you can look at, and not made-up ideas about how they got to be that way:
This is where there's actual science...see, fossils. That's science. Don't tell me how they got into existence, 'cause you don't have a clue. You don't have a clue. I don't want to hear about your theories and your stupid theories about how these creatures came from one cell, when you can't prove it to me. No one can prove it. "Oh, but we think that's what happened!" No, just show me the animals, tell me about them, don't tell me you know exactly how they came to be, 'cause you don't. And don't tell my children that you know, either, that makes me angry. I would prefer that we tell them "It's OK not to know. It's OK to say 'I don't know.'" [murmured: "stupid!"] This is really cool though. The prehistoric ocean.
5: 10:At a display about the transition of life from the oceans to the land, she goes Full Ken Ham: "How do they know this? You're talking about '470 million years ago' ... these are just guesses off the top of their head." She is not impressed that scientists pretend they know the order of events in Earth's past, because, obviously, theyweren't even there. "How do you know this? It's just a fairy tale! They're just making it up!" says our intrepid critical thinker, noting that nothing in the display mentions any alternate explanations at all. "No one knows! No one!"Reading another sign about how Earth's first land plants were "small and moss-like," she asks, "Oh yeah? How do you know? Did you have a video camera there? Where's the tape? I wanna see the evidence." Fox positively beams at the camera, proud of the stunning gotcha! she has delivered to those fraudulent "scientists" and their fables. She dismisses some plant fossils, because how could anyone know they're actually older than anything else? It's not like they have a manufacturing date stamped on them, stupid scientists! (Yes, of course they do, but radiometric dating is all made up, too.) "Someone's going to have to fill me in: there must be a hidden videotape from 470 million years ago that these people all are in possession of, and haven't shared with the rest of us." Where's the video, you bastards? WHERE IS IT????
At9: 30,Fox disproves evolution altogether, noting that there are no transitional fossils anywhere, ever: "That's why they call them 'missing links' -- they're missing!" And she's right, you know: there isn't a single fossil where the fossilized organism is captured in the very moment of evolving into another organism, because fossils are not made by morons, we guess.
11: 30:A hearty "Who writes this stuff?" at the complete guesswork about the first tetrapods' emergence onto land, because, again, how do they know? Maybe those critters just always had feet, because "that's the way they were made. With feet. Like alligators, you know, that are in the water and the land?" Hello, "scientists," have you ever even heard of alligators? The sheer stupidity of science once again overwhelms Ms. Fox, because just look at the crazy stories "scientists" want us to believe:
It’s not like their fins fell off and then they grew feet. That’s what they want you to believe, that their fins fell off and then they grew some feet and started walking on the land. This is the dumbest theory I’ve ever heard in my whole life. It’s not good, it’s really not good. It’s bad. It’s very bad. Do you know how complex feet are?
After all, people who make robots have not been able to replicate a foot that a robot can stand on just like a human foot. Where is your Darwin now, huh? "It's like saying a Coke can didn't have a designer." Or that Clarence Thomas didn't leave a pube on one.
At15: 00,Fox sees a family, with Dad reading an exhibit sign to the kids. In a whisper, she says, "They're buying it. They're buying it. They're teaching it to their children! 100%, hook, line, sinker! Buying it!" This is almost the scariest part of the video, because we feared she'd confront the family and point out how they'd been hoodwinked, but no, not this time. There's always the possibility she'll do a sequel!
17: 30:We finally get to the good stuff, the dinosaurs, which is what people really want to see, and why do they even have that other stuff, which is all made up anyway? Nobody cares about that, and you get the impression that if Megan Fox ran the Field Museum, it would be all dinosaurs, which are interesting and real, not stupid. "I think they should just put these things in here and let people wonder and exclaim over them." And then she tells us about her visit to the Indianapolis Children's Museum, where she saw something really impressive: "They have a skull on display that is clearly a dragon, there's no other way to describe it, it's a dragon skull" She describes how it looks exactly like a dragon, and her kids said, "Mom! It's a dragon!" And she agreed, and her mom even agreed that it was definitely a dragon! But then the so-called "scientists" started to cover up the truth:
Well the technician goes, "Oh, no no no no no. That's not a dragon. No. That's a dinosaur." OK, well, but lookat it! We know what we're talking about, right? (holds fingers up to side of head like horns) Like a dragon, with horns, and the whole deal? "Oh, no. Not a dragon. No." Yeah, you're going to dash the little hopes of my children, because imagination, they just can't have that. So then I ask her, well what's it called? This is the best part. What is it called? She says, "Dracoris hogwartsia." [Actually, it's "Dracorex" -- Dok Z] You know what that means? "The dragon of Hogwarts!" The person who found this dinosaur got to name it, and they called it Dracoris hogwartsia, the dragon of Hogwarts. The cover of Time Magazine is sitting right next to this skull...and you know what the cover of Time Magazine says? "Dragons!" ... And we have to ask ourselves, do we believe, I mean, there's no evidence yet of flying dragons, of fire-breathing dragons, but there's plenty of people around the world who wrote these stories about dragons, who drew pictures of dragons, who said they saw dragons. And then we have this dragon skull that looks exactly like a dragon like people have drawn from stories.
And yet here's this woman in a lab coat saying to me, "That is not a dragon, no no no no. It's a dinosaur."
The Indianapolis Children Museum's Dracorex hogwartsiaMoral of the story? "Language is important, people. I maintain that that is a dragon. So does the guy who discovered it. Hello, Dracoris hogwartsia? You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried."
For once, we agree with her wholeheartedly. You really couldn't. Science needs to be based on what things look like, and that's all, or you'll crush the children's willingness to believe wonderful things.
Just wait until she learns that scientists now informally refer to a stegosaur's spikes as the Thagomizer, after the late Thag Simmons.
But you see, there's a reason they're not willing to acknowledge that people have seen dragons -- it "throws their whole time scale off by, oh, several hundred million years." And they won't dare publicize the very real cave paintings of dinosaurs, which definitely exist (She also refers to this alleged stegosaur carved in stone on a temple in Cambodia, which in her retelling has become a cave painting). Amazing the lengths to which science will go to hide the truth, isn't it? And Fox didn't even know about these cave paintings until ten years ago, in a creationist magazine. They're definitely in a cave in France.
25: 30:Time for some proto-humans, and Fox sighs: "This is a fantasy. This is a fantasy, like dragons, except dragons aren't a fantasy, like their idea is 'Dragons aren't real.' No. This isn't real. It's something they just made up. Incredible. Ha!" How does she know, huh? Was she there when they made it up? Hey, we see how this game works! Ms. Fox's camera guy is concerned, because he knows this section really upsets her. And she does get very angry at a sign that says that scientists agree that evolution is real, because she knows that lots and lots of scientists don't agree on that at all, no they do not. Lots of gaps. Huge gaps."Nobody considers that Neanderthals could just be people with big foreheads...it doesn't prove anything!"
Then it's out through the gift shop, where you can buy dinosaur plushies. How do they even make those? What are they made of? Unicorns? Probably. You don't know. You didn't see it happen. Don't pretend like you know. Suddenly, the video is over, and we are sad, and we realize that we have just seen the most brilliant video of the week, maybe of all time. Megan Fox, do you have a newsletter?
Update: Via a note fromTwitter, a bit more on Megan Fox: Turns out she's also a featured blogger at rightwing loonhub PJ Media. What a surprise!
I thought Jesus Chrysler drove a Dodge.
But how did Jesus leave Chicago/ Headed to New Orleans?