Frodassic Park

Dinosaurs have long been a sticking point for creationists ever since they entered stage left in the 19th Century and started taking Victorian logic for a joy ride. It’s been wildly entertaining watching Christians pour through the Bible ever since, trying to account for how these petrified skeletons could have ended up on Earth when, as everyone knows, the planet is no more than 10,000 years old.

Here is a selection of a few favorite chestnuts:

• Since God created every creature on the 6th day, He must have created Dinosaurs that day too. He was just a little preoccupied when he wrote it all down later and neglected to tell anyone about it.
  
• Before Adam & Eve’s little transgression, all animals were vegetarian and none died, making the choice of claws and sharp, pointy teeth purely an aesthetic one.
  
• Two of every kind of dinosaur found their way onto Noah’s Ark, having presumably discovered a way to improve the vessel’s buoyancy first.
  
• Having survived the flood, they sort of just, well, died out, in a manner much more precise and conclusive than that suggested by evolutionists. One possible candidate behind the extinction is hunting by man, despite the fact that the latter had just been decimated by unseasonal floodtides too, and presumably wouldn’t have risked the survival of their own species by hunting creatures with 12 inch-long teeth.

Feel free to check the accuracy of these summations at answersingenesis.org. Incidentally, if all the answers are in Genesis, presumably that makes the rest of the Bible redundant.

Frodology does not take this route. We do not attempt to squeeze a whole epoch of capricious, prickly reptiles into the pages of a book where they have no wish to be. It would be like trying to make a monkey wear a hat that’s too small. As nice as it might look, it just wouldn’t fit. The fact is that Frodo spent his time on Earth with some pretty crazy looking creatures, but we can’t conscionably call any of them dinosaurs.

Instead, what Frodologist scientists have realized is that dinosaurs are actually totally fake. Indeed, early classifiers must have agreed, as ‘dinosaur’ is Latin for ‘just a pile of bones’. Their sudden appearance in skeletal form in the 1820s seems just a little transparent. Have you ever noticed how the combination of an alligator, a giraffe, a rhino, and something with a really long tail looks kind of like a dinosaur?


Looks kind of like a dinosaur

Paleontology isn’t even a genuine discipline, as it was invented by Joseph Smith in the middle of the 19th Century following the issue of a warrant for his arrest for fraud. At that juncture in his life, Smith was between cons and beginning to despair of ever parting thousands of gullible people from their cash. He initially coined the word ‘paleontology’ to cash in on the dinosaur craze, but later abandoned it to focus on starting Mormonism, as even he felt that the deceit was a little insidious.

But no one can get away with such an ambitious hoax indefinitely. In the end, it was the Victorian appetite for the ridiculous that gave the game away to our team of scientists. In an era where all walks of life readily swallowed ideas as preposterous as cure-all elixirs, Dracula, socialism and penicillin, is it any surprise that dinosaurs were readily accepted as plausible? Of course all of those ideas are totally preposterous by modern standards, dinosaurs included. Even the names are a bit loopy. Stegosaurus? Sounds like a plastic toy. Velociraptor? Yeah, it's fast, we get it. The same goes for the megalosaurus, tyrannosaurus, and thesaurus. If those wily tricksters had set the bar of credulity just a little lower, we might still count ourselves amongst the duped.

I just thought you should know.

Accelerating particles, or accelerating us all to Hell?

An eminent Frodologist scientist, author of The Large Hadron Collider: State-Sponsored Witchcraft, has made waves in the press recently for lambasting the world’s largest particle accelerator as a portent of doom. And if you think I’m exaggerating, you should read his award-winning article published in Scientific American, “Excessively Verbose use of Language as a Portent of Doom”. Truly enthralling stuff.

And while we agree that these magic tricks going on deep underground in a tunnel in Switzerland will probably spell the end for our existence, we don’t necessarily agree with his conclusion. See, ‘doom’ is such a messy, negative, unscientific word. Officially, Frodology much prefers use of the emotively neutral ‘Apocalypse’. Well, technically we call it the Frodocalypse.

Why are we looking forward to the Frodocalypse? Because through embracing the opportunity to contribute our own paltry masses to the phenomenal density of the black hole that will suck us thither, we will be bound to a land of Good & Plenty. No, wait, they’re sold by Hershey’s. Bread and honey? Milk and honey? Wine and cheese? It doesn’t matter. We will enter a land of bounty, despite the logical contradictions involved therewith. It is said that Frodo promised that, on their deaths, believers would receive seventy-two Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points.

In any case, the race to the Apocalypse is heating up out there, and considering some of the alternatives to the Frodocalypse, we’re confident that most people would prefer our version of paradise. In the States, black people nationwide are agitating for the Tupacalypse, while Hassidic Jews are preparing for a very curly Sidelockalypse. And in the belfries of rural Ireland, cries can be heard of Holyfockalypse!

Cynics note that, at least scientifically speaking, there is minimal chance of the Big Bang reoccurring, and very probably, life will carry on as usual. But I’ve been thinking. Christian creationists criticize the theory for being unable to explain what came before it. Who created the Big Bang? It seems obvious now that the only possible candidate is Frodo. That’s right. Frodo created the Big Bang. You might say he banged and he banged big. But he doesn’t want us to know. No, because how Frodo bangs is his little secret. It’s personal. So when these conjurers manage to smash some dust particles together, as is my understanding of the process, Frodo will go Dr Strangelove on our asses.

Thus it came as a tragic shock today to learn that the LHC is temporarily disabled while it undergoes repairs. Surely, we must be calm and patient as we sit and contemplate the approaching End of Days. But at the same time, it worries me that the LHC will never fully get going. Something about the project smacks of underachievement. This Hadron, for one, is a dubious choice to pilot the tests. His last public works project, Hadron’s Wall, failed to keep the Scots out of England and now sits a very unimposing three feet off the ground. And what’s this about shooting particles around at almost the speed of light? Gee, that’s almost impressive.

So, unfortunately, we are forced to conclude that, however desirable it may be, there will be no Big Bang, and there will be no Frodocalypse. Nor will there be any free upgrades on Virgin Atlantic, or an extra ten kilos of luggage allowance. Life tomorrow will be much like life was two months ago. Except that our savings will have evaporated and our bankers will be unemployed.

Snap.