The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here

The song title refers to a belief held by some religious individuals that the Devil himself planted dinosaur bones deep into the Earth to dissuade and confuse humanity. Asked by Ultimate-Guitar.com why the band named their fifth album after this cut, guitarist Jerry Cantrell replied: "It's a song; we came up with the song first and we started thinking about what to call the record. It was just an oddball, cool title. I can guarantee you nobody else has ever called a record this."

The song contains the lyrics, "The devil put dinosaurs here. Jesus don't like a queer. No problem with faith. Just fear." Cantrell explained to Revolver magazine: "There are two things you never want to get into a conversation or argument about: politics and religion. But f--k, I guess we're going to be talking about this for a while. [laughs]" He added: "Read a fu--ing paper. What I've seen is the most basic message to most faith systems is in contradiction with how it gets applied. The human element seems to f--k it up. It seems to f—k up the basic truths of acceptance, loving your brother, helping each other out, not trying to kill each other or steal each other's s--t. Those are all pretty good ideas. And most of your major religions have those things as basic tenets of the belief system. It always amazes me that some of the most hateful and hurtful things are done in the name of some sort of belief system."

Cantrell told Noisecreep that he's sick of the hypocrisy that's he feels has taken over many facets of organized religion. "I think there's overwhelming evidence that things aren't working right now," he said. "We need to start growing up as a people. When you're teaching people that being gay is a mortal sin, yet a good portion of the people teaching this are fu--ing kids, there's a huge problem. "It's insane when a religion tells you it's OK to strap a bomb on yourself to blow someone else up because they believe in something different," he continued. "If a religion is teaching you that it's OK to hurt somebody, exclude somebody, dominate somebody – I have a problem with it. 'The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here' just speaks to the lamer parts of how those things are taught and the sh--ty things we do to each other because of our different beliefs."