I have posted this essay on my science blog as well,
but I include a final paragraph on this blog that was not on the science blog.
The last couple of days, I have had the privilege of
working, again, with Glen Kuban down in the bed of the Paluxy River near Glen
Rose, Texas (Dinosaur Valley State Park). Usually we work alone, or with a
couple of other people, but this time there was a little crowd. A BBC film crew
brought their cameras and even a photographic drone to get video footage of the
dinosaur trackways, which I have written about numerous times previously in
this blog, for example here). They also
came to interview Glen, who has worked on these tracks (and knows each
footprint by name) for 37 years, and he will not get some worldwide recognition
for the work he has done. Congratulations, Glen! You deserve it.
Watch for the BBC video when it comes out. It will be
called Rediscovering T Rex. The
trackways in the park are not T. rex, but there are very few verified
footprints of T. rex. But in the Paluxy river bed you can see long trackways of
Acrocanthosaurus, which was similar
to T. rex in many ways. The BBC does not yet have an American distributor for
this video, so far only Canada and France, but I’ll bet that within a year or
so you can find the video on Amazon or your local library.
I have posted a YouTube video of Glen and the film crew, if you want to
experience what it was like to be there.
We were at the trackway site that was made infamous in
the 1970s-era creationist movie Footprints
in Stone, where creationists claimed that human footprints overlapped
dinosaur footprints, thus proving, they claimed, that the entire evolutionary
timetable of Earth history was wrong. The evidence of human footprints in
110-million-year-old mud (now limestone) was skimpy and some of it faked. Most
creationists, even those who have not publicly disavowed the “manprints of the
Paluxy,” pretty much ignore them. The son of the producer of the creationist
movie, when he discovered that his father had misled his viewers about these
footprints, destroyed all remaining copies of the movie. There was no
discussion of this uniquely American controversy with the BBC crew, even though
they knew about it, because it is such a dead issue even among creationists;
certainly European viewers would wonder why anyone took so much as two breaths
to talk about the supposed man-prints.
But there are still passionate creationists, mostly in
the Glen Rose vicinity, who believe that the supposed man-tracks are real and
that they prove that not only are all evolutionary scientists wrong, but even
most creationists. They are a crazy little cult. They still have a museum right near the state park, although it
appears to be on the skids and is now only open two days a week. I have posted
essays in this blog about the Mantrack cult in the past (for example here).
The state park personnel who were with Glen, me, and the BBC crew told me that
this little cult has so effectively spread the hoax that lots of visitors still
ask them how to find the man-tracks. It gets pretty intense sometimes, and
rather than to create a confrontation, the park personnel sometimes have to
simply walk away or busy themselves with some other park visitor.
We sort of expected that some members of this cult would
come and try to disrupt the BBC filming. This did not happen, however, perhaps
because there were a half dozen park employees on the scene. This track site is
hard to find but the cult members, some of whom own adjacent land, can get
there. They act as if they also own the river bed, and have in the past tried
to keep Glen from studying the tracks. Actually, the river bed belongs to the
state of Texas.
But one of the cult members came by, claiming that he was
taking photographs for the City of Glen Rose. I very much doubt that the city
government actually sent him, however. They might have posted some of his
photos in the past, but he was acting in no official capacity. Of course, this
man, whose name I forgot, and just as well, started going through his little
speech about how belief in the man-tracks took less faith than belief in what
he called “strict evolution.” Glen had told me beforehand almost verbatim what
this little speech would be. It is as if the cult members are programmed to
give their little speeches, and they will not respond to anything you say. They
act as if they are brainwashed.
But that was not actually the precipitating event. The
man started by saying that a cold front was coming through this weekend, and
that it would only be about 92 degrees instead of the normal 97 degrees. This,
he claimed, disproved the entire science of global warming. As I am one of the
climate scientists that Donald Trump hates and Emmanuel Macron loves, I had to
point out that this was an invalid conclusion. Global warming does not mean
that temperatures never decrease; it means that they increase more, and more often, than they
decrease. Well, this was all the cue he needed to self-identify as a right-wing
extremist (or words to that effect; I did not yet so label him) and launch into
his speech.
This man went on to comment on the fact that
paleontologists have stopped using the genus name Paluxysaurus and started using Sauroposeidon
instead. This shows, said the man, that scientists are wrong about this and,
why not, everything else also. But changing names of organisms reflects the ongoing
process of coming to better understand the evolutionary history of the
organisms. And, of course, science advances because scientists make mistakes
and then learn from them, something that religious cults almost by definition
cannot do. Cults believe themselves to be directly inspired by God, and to
admit one mistake totally undermines their reason for being.
I wish to make two points from this. First, the religious
fundamentalists are now attacking all of science and education on two fronts.
Formerly, they focused all their attention on evolution. Now, they also
consider climate scientists to be servants of Satan. This is why scientific and
educational organizations, all the way from national and international
organizations such as the AAAS and NCSE to local ones such as the Oklahoma Academy of Science and Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education, of both of which organizations
I am a past president, disseminate as much information about climate science as
about evolutionary science.
The second point explains the title of this essay. The
lumpy limestone of Dinosaur Valley State Park has proven to be one of the most
creative blank slates upon which a religious cult can write its own version of
the history of the universe. The dinosaur footprints are real enough. The
supposed man-tracks are incomplete dinosaur footprints. On some of these
prints, the dinosaur toes have eroded away. On others, the creationists have
deliberately ignored the dinosaur toe prints. Early creationists film footage
and notes show clearly that they knew
the dinosaur toe marks were present. In a few infamous instances, creationists
have even carved human toes on the dinosaur prints, or carved entire fake human
footprints in the limestone. Rather than getting insights from the evidence in
the limestone, they have used the limestone as a blank notebook on which to
write their own version of reality, a version not even shared by most
creationists.
It is unclear whether these cult members are dangerous.
Of the hundreds of videos I have posted on my Darwin Youtube channel, the only ones on which rabidly angry
comments have been posted were those in which I showed Glen Kuban at work in
the Paluxy riverbed. A couple of times I have wondered whether to report these
creationists to the FBI, but their comments were just short of personal threat.
Of course, there were atheist comments also, which insulted the creationists.
The creationist comments did not threaten the atheist commentators, Glen, or
myself with any violence; they merely hoped
that God would rain down fire and brimstone from the sky to destroy us and our
children, that’s all. The blank pages of limestone on which this cult writes
its version of reality includes at least the hope that everyone who disagrees
with them will be destroyed.
I must now add that I have had many of the same
experiences as many of the readers of this blog. We have been driven away from
doctrinal religions because of fundamentalists and the rabidly violent things
that they believe. Is this fair? Should I reject Christianity because of
fundamentalists who believe that God wants them to have their guns ready to use
against the rest of us? Of course there are members of every religion who
esteem the pathway of peace. There are lots of churches, and mosques, that
proclaim peace and love. Should they be held guilty for what their bloodthirsty
co-religionists do and say? No, but here is the problem. There is nothing
within the structure of religion itself, particularly not the doctrinal ones
such as Christianity or Islam, that prevents hatred and violence. I consider
peaceful Christians and Muslims to be enablers of the violent ones because they
believe that their scriptures are, in fact, the sword of the Lord. I have the
greatest esteem for Jesus of Nazareth, even while I totally reject
Christianity. Christianity is a system of violence and oppression that has
falsely taken the name of Jesus as justification for its destructive evils.
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