We have previously discussed the increasing difficulty faced by creationists who believe that the earth is just a few thousand years old or that dinosaurs walked at the same time as humans. However, Wayne Propst insists that he has proof and he had to walk no further than his front year. The creationist in Tyler, Texas insists that he has found fossils from Noah’s Ark buried in his yard. “From Noah’s flood to my front yard, how much better can it get?” Not much, Propst, not much.
The article says that Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collection James Sagebiel identified the snail fossils as 35-40 million years old. That would not seem to purport with the creationist timeline. Having the Ark contents end up in Tyler Texas would also seem a bit off Noah’s navigational map.
Nevertheless, the curator and director of Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum Joe Taylor in Crosbyton, Texas supported Propst. The museum supports creationist theories and Taylor is quoted as saying that evolution is just an “old-fashioned theory.”
The museum is drawing attention to the story.
It is still not clear why such fossils would necessarily mean that they came from Noah’s ark but that is only a number of curious elements to the story. A check with the museum site and local stories appears to show that this is not a hoax story.
Of course, as we previously discussed, he would not be the first creationist to find fossils that would seem to challenge rather than support his theories.
Though, the collections manager of Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collection James Sagebiel said that the fossils are 35-40 million years old.
Other researchers said that the purported flood occurred in the Middle East, and there is no scientific evidence that the flood covered the entire earth. Taylor believes that among other animals Noah took dinosaurs on his ark, but researchers believe that this would be impossible.
Source: ABC
You can go to the coastline along CA and see the waterlines of ancient seas high up on the cliffs. The Earth was much warmer during cyclic climate change eons ago. For instance during the age of the dinosaurs there were some dino species living in what is now Antarctica. Although it was situated somewhat differently, it was much more temperate than the block of ice it is now.
Not only was the water line higher when the polar caps melted, but the continents themselves have broken apart and drifted over the eons and plate tectonics, drastically changing inland seas, and topography. I recall finding a few fossilized shark teeth about an hour and a half inland from the ocean.
I never could understand why people view the Bible as a science textbook. If the prophets used it to teach genetics, physics, astrophysics, or anatomy thousands of years ago, they would have been promptly stoned and no one would have ever heard of “The Bible.” It’s purpose is not to answer all of our science questions for us. It teaches spirituality and morality. We have these highly developed brains and a sense of curiosity with which to explore the workings of the world around us. Why would God steal all that fun? My faith is not challenged with the next physics discovery, or when a scientific theory is proven or disproven. The two have nothing to do with each other. I cannot imagine having such a shaky faith that the next scientific discovery could send me into an existential crisis or deep denial.
Karen S
You are on point re. the primary theme of the Bible. I would suggest that there is science, primitive though it may be, in the Genesis account. The creation story provides a sense of sequence akin to an evolving. Some ascribe an order to createdness which irritates the proponents of chaotic evolvement. But that order at its very base shows a basic understanding of how things came to be. Whether the story is divine in nature and source is one thing. That it provides the ancients with the sense that the universe did not issue from a multiarmed goddess’s womb or other instantaneous acts of fancy may provide a comfort to the readers in a not very comfortable world of their day.
That is not to say that as it is read today that Genesis is not without controversy in its science. The sequence involving light and plants. Or even measuring a day before an earth and sun are juxtaposed. But it does clearly show a void, then a cosmic event then plants, then fish, then land and air animals then humans. Not bad for a nomad people. Even 50 yrs ago our understanding of the origin of the moon was wrong, and we had no concept that our sun is actually a third iteration of coalescence and pending explosion (“a few years” years hence).
@PaulCS
You are right. Plus, most of this “Young Earth” crap is just an attempt to be ideologically pure. If you say one part of the Bible isn’t 100% accurate, then what’s the next part you’ll toss out?
In other words, the same reason Jews don’t eat bacon. Or bang their heads against that brick wall in Jerusalem. To them, “Thou shalt not eat bacon!” is on a par with “Thou shalt not commit adultery!”. Break one law, and next you’ll be breaking the others.
Which is the same reason why Mark O’Malley was crawling all over himself apologizing for making the heretical, “All Lives Matter!” statement. The Young Earth idiots make up stuff out of whole cloth to support their “Every word in the Bible is absolutely 100$ True and Accurate!” nonsense, just the same as Democratic Party Liberals make up stuff like “White Privilege”, or “Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder” to support their idiotic nonsense about systemic racism being to blame for the lousy state of Black America, not their own stupid welfare polices.
Like I always say, “Stupidness is ubiquitous!”
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@JPC
How true! Did you know that Sherman Hemsley, the guy who actually played George Jefferson, died in 2012??? That was a great show. I think I watched like every episode on syndication.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
In order to join Noah, presumably penguins trekked from Antarctica to the Middle East.
Maybe, though, instead of making fun of people with primitive beliefs about the nature of reality I could pause in worried awe at the vast stupid sweeping the land…everyone knows what Jefferson said about the future of a democracy in the hands of the uneducated.
JPC – Many scientists who have worked on the problem of Noah’s Flood, know that the Sumerians had a flood first, so they have gone to them as well. It is currently thought that the Great Flood occurred when the Mediterranean broke thru a land bridge, and connected with the Black Sea. There is a lot of scientific proof for this theory. Again to have to accept that whoever wrote the Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis had an incomplete understanding of the completeness of the world. Only THEIR world was flooded. Still, there are flood myths in many other civilizations, including the Andes.
Rumor has it that the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum will be merging with the Flat Earth Society.
Propst is just your typical ideologue who makes himself believe stuff in support of his “belief system.” As such, Propst’s particular stupid belief is pretty harmless in the overall scope of things. At least he isn’t trying to interject Goldman Sachs into my utility bill like the idiots who believe that global warming is “settled science.”
My goodness, a “model” is NOT by its very definition, “settled science.” And really, predicting a one degree temperature increase 100 years from now??? ROTFLMAO! From Britannica:
Sooo, all things considered, I think Propst is stupid, but pretty harmless, and global warming proponents also stupid. But not harmless. Plus, the college educated AGW folks probably have much less excuse to be stupid, than some random dude in Texas.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Where the heck is this fella from? Walk along any creek bed in central Texas and you can pick up hundreds of fossils in a few minutes.
Oops. I got it now
Sometimes, it is that they haven’t studied geology. Like here. From the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum Wikipedia entry:
He’s an artist turned fossil hunter and cast maker. But he’s not talking about papier-mâché or finding bones. On those subjects his opinion might have some value.
I haven’t seen that in anything I’ve read so far. Would you have a link?
Didn’t Jesus shoot down all the dinosaurs?
Of course Noah stocked the Ark with dinosaurs. How else would the genetic make up of the Komodo Dragon, Benito Mussolini, and Donald Drumpf survived?
He found fossils of snails. That’s all.
But apparently he was taught mythology instead of geology so he said they were from the Great Flood (instead of the Western Interior Seaway of the Cretaceous period which covered most of what is now Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interior_Seaway ). And the yokel media not only believed him, but found a creationist and presented him as a confirming expert.
Perhaps the creationist “expert,” Joe Taylor, might have been more helpful if he’d actually studied geology, or paleontology, or history or anything else beyond Genesis. And perhaps the media reporting this story might be more helpful in pointing out that the “expert” presented is in no way qualified
fiver, it is not that young earth creationists have not studied geology, but rather that they interpret the geological data differently and disagree with the interpretations of modern geology. According to prevailing theory, the Western Interior Seaway existed in a much older period of time from these fossils that Wayne Propst found, so you might want to brush up on modern geology yourself. The turret snails, coral, and bird fossils found by Propst are according to current popular theory 35 to 40 million years old. The waters had receded and Western Interior Seaway no longer existed at that time.
The reason Wayne Propst thinks the fossils are from a great catastrophe like Noah’s flood is because these are marine fossils found in his front yard. The fossils are all jumbled up together, snails, coral, and bird bones. Being located 250 miles from the coast at an elevation of 544 feet, it is simply a common sense approach that a great flood is responsible for washing all these organisms together and depositing them in the area of his front yard thousands of years ago.
While people put confidence in the paleontologist consulted, James Sagebiel, the year he gives is not from examining the fossils himself or by any radiometric dating methods done with the fossils. His estimates come from his geological theory of when the sediment in that area were deposited. This has been the situation in science now for many decades, where the theory of evolution is used to make dogmatic statements about observations without any necessity of examining the empirical evidence directly or doing any tests to date the evidence. According to James Sagebiel’s understanding, the sea level was 500 feet higher and 250 miles further inland. This is how he accounts for marine fossils being found in that area.
I’ve often found the story of Noah fascinating. To me it makes sense when looking at the time and context and how that shaped peoples understanding of their world. Most primitive civilizations started near river banks due to the fertile soils that are a result of… yes, floods. Thus the term flood plains. Now, if you have ever lived near a river and experienced a flood you have seen how large and destructive the event can be. Now, picture a time when there was no internet or cell phones (I know the horror) a time when record keeping was not it’s best. Now picture person traveling from civilization to civilization and he keeps hearing about the great flood that covered everything that they could see. It would make sense for this person to assume that the whole world must have been covered at one time.
Growing up Catholic I’m always grateful that the greatest man I’ve ever known, my dad, sat down with me when I started to question things like Adam and Eve and he told me that the bible stories message was what was important. My dad is a very logical man and taught college math for 29 years but I’ve never meat anyone with more faith than he. Such a cool mix.
There are several mythologies that have world floods, including some in the Americas. It is possible he has found the American Noah’s Ark.
An exceptionally well educated engineer friend of mine was a firm believer of the concept that somehow God (an or the “other”) had a hand in guiding part of the cosmos to bring forth the present day on Earth. It may have been ex machina (watchmaker) or hands on tweeking. He did not want to just be lazy and say God did it. He wanted to take things as far back as possible, to the molecular/nuclear level. He marveled at the Michael Behe approach in looking at the machinery in single cell animals.
Then Mt St Helens went off. Within a relatively short time the vast fields of ash was cut by rain and snow runoff which exposed the various layers with their different consistencies and various shades of gray.
Lo and behold something changed. He noted that he was witness to strata and carvings of valleys that were remarkably like the Grand Canyon on a smaller scale. Not sure what really happened to him but he was a converted creationist from then on. If the forces of nature could construct that geological formation, then certainly God could have formed the GC in a much quicker manner than we could imagine. There were no “other” signs of dementia until many yrs later shortly before his death.
I learned that his perception was his truth..not my truth…his truth. We just never entered into that territory.
So let the guy believe what he may. Why take away his joy?
How many of us still yell at the TV when our team is obviously lining up for the wrong play? Do we think that by yelling or that other trick of turning off the tv will make a difference in the score?? Now who’s God?
Chinggis say Chinggis’ fifth grade teacher was fossil. Very old. From before Curt Flood. Propst not have good fifth grade teacher so he need to learn from fossil now. Like Chinggis learn from fossil in fifth grade.
Well, at least the idiot isn’t picking up rattlesnakes and speaking in tongues to them.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
They went up in the air and came down. How? On a skintoyd. It is a multi thousand year old device which allowed humans to ascend to high altitudes and come down thousands of miles away. Never heard of it? Ask Milton Friedman.