I’m just trying to figure out what the difference between an artist’s rendering of a dinosaur and one of something like Noah’s Ark that make’s one “deceptive propaganda” and the other not. Your explanation is about as clear as mud.
I hope you can work it out but my hopes aren’t high when if you seriously believe this;
“One man’s “illustration” is another man’s “propaganda”.
Cheers.
Yes, I will explain.
If you go to a large museum you'll see statues from ancient Rome and Greece, many of them nudes. Michaelangelo's David comes to mind as well as other heroic characters.
Obviously the nudity is not reality nor is eroticism. It is a propaganda tool to portray the individual in heroic physical perfection. The nudity was not nakedness in the intent of the sculptor. Nor was the nudity the message.
The underlying message was the virtual worship of human bodily perfection and the hero was supposed to have it.
That similar devices were and are used in art and advertising makes them propaganda first and any illustrative value is accidental if it exists at all.
Looking at the depictions of so-called “cavemen” as naked, grunting brutes, it takes not too much intellectual vigor to understand the propaganda behind them.
The same could be said of the
Dinosaur or ark, it can either be illustration or propaganda depending upon the context and purposes of the artist.
“For instance, “the very notion of beauty was something Darwin wanted to explain: the beauty of orchids actually masked a complex contrivance for getting pollen onto insects; the beauty of an Argus pheasant’s feathers was the result of sexual selection.”
If Zimmer is correct in his assessment of Darwin then even beauty is little more than a propaganda tool.