At dinner the other night, it came up that one of my fellow fraternity pledges does not believe in dinosaurs. At first I thought it was a joke; something he had said in an inebriated state of mind or that someone had made up about him. But my brothers and I asked and he assured us that he did not believe in dinosaurs. Apparently they are a manufactured concept developed by a vast network of paleontologists around the world.
This angered pretty much everyone. It seemed blasphemous – an assault on intelligence and common knowledge. We jumped all over him for it, and though we were quick to tell him he was wrong, we struggled to piece together anything of serious factual substance to actually prove to him he was wrong. It was frustrating, but we didn’t know time periods, fossil records or evolutionary evidence anymore than the dinosaur heretic.
It was tricky arguing for something so deeply ingrained in my mind as truth, but so disconnected from my actual knowledge. Having never been challenged on the subject, I had never made the effort to learn much more about dinosaurs than what “The Land Before Time” offered.
But it wasn’t his disbelief that I found noteworthy, or the massive number of unnerving Web sites I found devoted to the discrediting of paleontology. Instead it was the reaction by my friends and me to his initial statement of disbelief. There was an immediate “how dare you think that” sentiment among all of us, even though we were far from educated on the subject. We were nasty and ridiculing. Perhaps he had something interesting to point out, some motivation for a conspiracy or some loopholes in the theories of dinosaurs that exist today. It is never a bad thing to be skeptical of something, and the existence of creatures 60 feet high should definitely warrant some skepticism.
Unfortunately his argument was based on a literal acceptance of the Bible and a pseudo-creationist disregard of scientific evidence. Regardless, I found my own initial reaction to him disturbing. I couldn’t help but think of my own unconventional beliefs. I have been in the same position as the dinosaur disbeliever, and though I may have reasons based in scientific evidence instead of the Bible, if society doesn’t agree with me it doesn’t matter.
As humans we have a habit of ridiculing ideas that seem out of line with anything that we believe to be “of scientific consensus,” “proven” or “factual.” We may not know anything beyond the fact that we are told something is true, yet we vehemently defend it. I think it has to do with a general inability of people to separate egos from knowledge. It’s a dangerous feature of the human psyche; one that can keep a society believing in something utterly wrong for decades. It can be avoided with a little open-mindedness however. All it takes is more restraint from attacking those who deviate from the “consensus,” and we may just be able to assist in the pursuit of knowledge. You don’t believe in dinosaurs? I’m all ears.
Weinberg freshman Cody Kittle can be reached at r-kittle@northwestern.edu.
