Palin Reportedly Said Humans and Dinosaurs Coexisted

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A Wasilla-based music teacher and liberal political blogger is claiming that then-Mayor Sarah Palin told him after a 1997 commencement address for home-schooled students that “dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time.”

Young Earth Creationism is a relatively common strain of Christian evangelicalism. It believes God created the earth over the course of six days roughly 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. It has always struggled with dinosaurs. The scientific establishment says dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago and have fossils to prove it. YEC believers are often forced into the argument that the Devil planted the fossils to fool faithless humans, or that human footprints can be found alongside preserved dinosaur tracks.

Which explains why, on the third day, God created the Remington bolt-action rifle.

Whoever does the next Palin interview — and since Katie Couric proved to be too tough an interrogator, I have to assume it’ll be Regis and Kelly — needs to ask if Palin believes in Young Earth Creationism and what her views are dinosaurs are. Matt Damon wants to know!

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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