On Mary Anning

Greetings, mortals!  I hope you've been well.  As you may have seen, today's Google doodle is an homage to Mary Anning.  God created Ms. Anning's soul and shepherded it to Earth 215 years, 9 months ago today.

Ms. Anning is, of course, best known as the protagonist of the tongue twister, "She sells seashells by the seashore."  She is second best known for those of her achievements to which your scientists have assigned the greatest meaning, including her identification of the best-of-its-time icthyosaur skeleton, discovery of what you call the plesiosaurus, and location of the first pterosaur outside of Germany.

Ms. Anning's discoveries (many of which were initially passed off as the work of male scientists because of the sexism endemic to the contemporary scientific community), caused a tremendous shift in the thinking of the early 19th Century's scientists.  It is no exaggeration to say that her work was not only instrumental in the acceptance and popularization of the concept of extinction -- misguided though that concept is -- but laid the foundation for modern paleontology and the exploration of what you incorrectly believe to be long-disappeared ecosystems.

Now, before I continue, I want to give credit where it's due.  Ms. Anning was curious, tremendously dedicated to her work, resilient, and, among humans, brilliant.  But all of her fame, and all of her work, is founded on a lie.  Well, except for the tongue twister part.  But the rest of it?  All founded on a lie.

None of what Ms. Anning discovered was the remains of some fanciful creature that lived in what you call the Jurassic Period.  They were skeletons that I, Decipiatur, put together and buried in the Earth to test Man's faith in God's Creation.  The same is true of the "fossils" she collected and sold: None of them is the remnant of some ancient creature.  They're just more false evidence of past life on Earth, fashioned by me as a test of your faith.  Even the coprolites she analyzed are my work (some of the least glamorous, by the way.  But when God commands you to create and then fossilize poop, what do you do?  You create and then fossilize poop).

Unfortunately, Ms. Anning's admirable rigor and extraordinary ability to correctly identify which pieces of my various false skeletons went together led her, the scientific community, and eventually much of the world away from the Light of God.  Her commitment to discovering my frauds made you believe that animals have existed and gone extinct, that there have been ecosystems on the planet for more than 5,700 years, and so on.  Essentially, Ms. Anning and her contemporaries were both so thoroughly fooled by my work and such good proselytizers for what my frauds meant to them that they persuaded you to doubt not just whether God's Creation is perfect, but that the Earth was created by God at all.  That's partly why she, like most scientists from the 1700s on, is (very regrettably) suffering eternal torment in Hell.

At this point, some of you may be asking, "Decipiatur, why would she burn in Hell because she was fooled by your work?  You're a divine being, endowed by God with the power to create frauds that appear genuine to all known and knowable human faculties.  Of course she was fooled!  Isn't that cruel?"  To which I answer, "I don't make the rules, God does, and how dare you question our Almighty Father!?"

I also answer that the point here is for you to listen to the truths God has revealed to you through the Bible, prophets (not the false ones, though, careful with that), your religious leaders (only the ones who are right, mind you) and this blog.  You're then to believe those truths despite all of the contrary evidence you can perceive with your God-given senses.  That's what faith is, after all.

Some of you may also be asking, "If these are mere tests of faith, why not make it possible for us to detect that they are the work of the divine?"  Because you're smart and would figure that out.  Then it would be evidence for the divine.  That would, in turn, lead you to God through the use of reason rather than on faith, which is not how this works.  Again, you're to believe the truth of God's Word in the face of all contrary evidence.  Seriously, people, keep up with me here.

Anyway, thank you for reading about the work of the remarkable, Hell-damned Mary Anning.  If you have thoughts or comments, I invite you to post them in the comments, below.  Please refrain from the use of profanity, blasphemy, and heresy.

And heterodoxy -- just to be safe.

See you again soon!