Dinosaurs
The Bible, Barney, and Beyond
Phillips
1994
Phillips is an author of another book on this site, Saturday Morning Mind Control, in which the author asserts that Saturday morning cartoons are the gateway to evil. This book is more of the same. Dinosaurs, in particular Barney and Jurassic Park, are dissected for the apparent evil that lurks within these shows. He seems to have gathered that a big purple dinosaur with an annoying song about love is anti-Christian. As a mother of kids in the early 1990s, Barney wasn’t my favorite either, but I hardly would call him evil.
Based on the themes of his books, this guy is a giant killjoy. As one 7 year-old told me, “the library always needs more dinosaur books.” Amen, kid.
Mary
A
30+ years later he’s still around. https://www.godloveskids.org/
The good die young, but even the devil doesn’t want Phil Phillips.
If you got that 7 year old and friends that he asked to come with him, record an audiobook on dinosaurs, it could eject this from the collection _and_ serve a patron purpose.
Kid, that should be “the library always needs more GOOD dinosaur books”. Ya need that adjective in there, or else you might end up with crap like this.
I thought Barney was somewhat evil, but not for being anti-Christian. Just for being annoying.
Those last couple pages look like an advertisement for those toys, what with description, maker, and price! Kind of working against his thesis there.
(I have a Jurassic Park T-Rex, and a little Baby “Not the Mama!” Sinclair, plus others. All bought as an adult.)
I don’t think it’s all bad, though definitely not all right either. I do wish people would respect the idea of science supporting the Bible and a young Earth though.
If by “the Bible” you mean a literal reading of Genesis, science simply doesn’t support that. The earth isn’t a few thousand years old and there wasn’t a global flood. It’s established fact that the earth is over 4 billion years old, and children shouldn’t be taught otherwise. I’m not saying this to trash the Bible, I’m a Christian.
The science really doesn’t support it though, and hasn’t since the late 1700s, when people like Hutton and Lyell started figuring out how long it actually takes to lay down rock layers. Sure, there are catastrophic events that can do things much faster, but those leave other telltale signs that just aren’t in most rocks. Add in evidence from radioactive decay products, how far away we can actually see galaxies, and other things, and it really does look like the Earth and the universe are thousands of millions of years old.
Science doesn’t allow for “cherry picking” what data agrees/might agree with a thesis.
Barney may not be anti-Christian, but he is kind of evil. And then there were those hammy kid actors on the show who love school SO much, they stay in after school just so they can be there longer. They sing songs about how much they love eating healthy food and brushing their teeth. Yeah that’s realistic./s
And then there’s a Christian character who is every bit as cringey as Barney and has hammy kid actors following him around like a god: Psalty the Songbook. “Praise the lord!”
Hey now, Psalty had some catchy tunes!
Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato played kids on Barney and Friends. Not sure how that affects your thesis, though.
There were a lot of Christian Barney Knockoffs. St. Bernard, Colby the Christian robot, the Almighty loaf, and many others. Colby even crossed over with Psalty. Then again, there were a lot of Barney knockoffs. Kelley Bear, Sesame Street’s attempt, Corny the alien, Joe Camel, Winnie the Pooh in Too Smart for Strangers, Yello Dino, Dream Bunny, Ms. Udderly, Gary Coleman, Eddie Eagle, Ooga Booga, Theodore Rex, and the exalted Rem Lazar.
Ah, so his big issue is that dinosaurs are against Creationism, therefore Satanic. Sigh.
As a Christian, I say with certainty that how old the earth is or when dinosaurs existed is quite possibly the most low-stakes hill to die on. It doesn’t affect everyday life in the slightest.
I’m sure he’s still lurking around the toy sections of walmart and target being all creepy around the kids.
Ew.
As Mick once sang, Satan is “a man of wealth and taste.” Therefore, Barney isn’t Satanic.
Also the saying “the devil has all the best tunes.”
That rules out Barney.
There actually is a comical piece about Barney being Satan. The website that hosts the joke has loads of ads so I’m going to copy/paste it.
MATHEMATICAL PROOF REQUIRED TO PROVE THAT “BARNEY IS SATAN”
Given: Barney is a cute purple dinosaur
Prove: Barney is Satan
Step 1: The Romans had no letter “U” so they used “V” instead for printing.
Therefore, the Roman representation for Barney would be CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR
Step 2: Taking CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR, and extracting the Roman numerals, we have:
C V V L D I V
Step 3: The decimal equivalent of these Roman numerals would be:
100 5 5 50 500 1 5
Step 4: Adding these numbers together would produce:
666
Step 5: 666 is the number of the Beast
Therefore: Barney is Satan Q.E.D.
I think Phil is taking the joke too seriously.
Now that’s data dredging the old fashioned hard creative way!
Anyone who has lead story hour in front of 20+ kids knows, not only do you need more dinosaur books, but accurate ones! All it takes is one 80’s illustration of a T-Rex and its lights out for you…
Am I the only one who noticed his hilariously OTT glamour shot author photo on the back cover?
Page 31 misspells definitely as “definately”, which is a particular bugbear of mine.
The poor proofreading pales into insignificance given the author’s inability to distinguish fact from fiction, his equation of creationism with science and his misrepresentation of actual science.
Platypuses aren’t dinosaurs!