Science and Religion – Modern Pterosaur

July 1, 2015

Dinosaurs Dated to Thousands of Years Old

How do dinosaur bones relate to long-tailed ropens that are reported to fly in North America? The ropen appears to be a huge Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur, notwithstanding those flying creatures were supposed to have all fallen to the ground many millions of years ago, and recent dating of dinosaur bones tell us that those huge creatures of the earth lived only thousands of years ago.

Both dinosaurs and pterosaurs have been assumed, by many Americans, to have lived only millions of years ago, with their fossils bones somehow evidence for their ancient existence. Carbon-dating of dinosaur bones has now shown that assumption is false. No C-14 should exist in the remains of something that lived millions of years ago. But results of testing are consistent: A number of types of dinosaurs have been dating to recent ages, even to less than 60,000 years in age. Pterosaurs living in our modern world now make sense, in light of recent dinosaurs.

Human experience and scientific testing cannot be dismissed out of personal distaste for the religious beliefs of the persons that are involved or are assumed to be involved in the sightings and in the radiocarbon testing.

Radiocarbon in Dinosaur and Other Fossils

That’s the title of a scientific paper by Brian Thomas and Vance Nelson, published in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, Volume 51, Number 4 (Spring of 2015). Here’s an excerpt from that article:

[page 303, after a paragraph on carbon-dating fossil wood]

Next, a whole hadrosaur caudal vertebra (ICR 021 Institute for Creation Research), minus its spinous process, was donated by Mr. Paul Koepp of Dallas, Texas. . . .

Abundant disarticulated hadrosaur and ceratopsian fossils occur on the Schmidt ranch, as at other Hell Creek Formation sites, mostly across Montana. . . .

The interior trabecular bone was plainly not infilled with sediment, and retains its in vivo spongy structure, albeit colored almost black . . . This fossil also yielded radiocarbon in amounts well within the detection threshold of the AMS technique at 20,850 +/- 90 BP for the interior trabecular portion, and 28,790 +/- 100 BP . . .

Conclusions

Carbon-14 dating of dinosaur fossils shows them to be only tens of thousands of years old (at most), and this is the only direct dating-measurements that have been done on such supposedly ancient bones. (Other radiometric dating methods had not been done directly on those fossils, and the interpretations depended on a number of assumptions.)

This is completely in harmony with the finding of soft tissue in T-Rex and other dinosaur bones. It also makes sense in light of the many sightings of pterosaurs that still fly overhead (though usually at night). Ropens are not extinct but still living.

Ridiculing a religious belief is no substitute for objective consideration of these many findings. And let the evidences be made known, not covered up.

Jonathan Whitcomb

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Dinosaurs dated to be young

. . . dinosaur bone apatite had been successfully RC dated in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s and significant amounts of C-14 were detected and reported.

Neutron Capture in Carbon-Dated Dinosaur Bones?

Awkward Explanation for Carbon-14 Dated Dinosaurs

American Hammerhead Ropen

The American cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb gave the name “American Hammerhead Ropen” to a type of apparent Rhamphorhynchoid that has been reported . . . to live in North America.

Pterosaur Sightings in the USA

Details are now available on ninety important sighting reports: apparent pterosaurs in the lower-48 states of the USA, with data compiled at the end of 2012.

Scientific Testing of Dinosaur Bones

“Not everybody embraces a dinosaur that is not yet completely decomposed.” . . . Carbon-14 methods cannot date anything older than a few tens of thousands of years old . . . Dating accuracy may be as high as 60,000 years, at best, but carbon-14 just does not last much longer.

Recent Sightings of Ropens

For the past eleven years, I (Jonathan Whitcomb) have interviewed eyewitnesses of apparent pterosaurs from various areas of the world. Many of those whom I have questioned report a flying creature resembling what my associates and I call ropens.

Dinosaur Bone Contains Radiocarbon

Scientists believing in deep time (i.e. millions of years) would not expect to find radiocarbon (C-14) in dinosaur bone. . . . they assume that the “terrible lizards” died out some 65 million years ago. . . . what happens if researchers actually test whether dinosaur fossils contain C-14? They find it.

January 30, 2015

Religion in “Searching for Ropens and Finding God”

Jonathan Whitcomb - from a mini-documentary

With a title that includes “finding God,” how much religion is in my recent nonfiction book? Actually not much. I wrote Searching for Ropens and Finding God (fourth edition) with readers of all faiths in mind, for anyone open to some kind of positive spiritual experience. Let’s allow the book to speak for itself with these excerpts:

Title Page

[This] soars above disputes about religion, revealing why an official discovery of an extraordinary animal was delayed for so long. Above all, this explores human experiences—of eyewitnesses and those who interviewed them. People have become connected by common encounters: Persons of various faiths, with various levels of education, from various countries and cultures, have seen a living pterosaur.

First Page of Acknowledgements

The pioneering investigations of three men illuminated the path for my own expedition: James Blume, for decades a Baptist missionary and plane pilot in Papua New Guinea; Carl Baugh, founder and director of a creation-science museum in Texas; and Paul Nation, an associate of Baugh.

Second Page of Acknowledgements

The prayers of family, friends, and other Americans were answered when I found Luke Paina, who became my interpreter, bodyguard, and counselor. By the grace of the Father of us all, Luke and I were welcomed like brothers by those we met on Umboi Island, and through the friendship of humble native Christians in remote villages, we were fed, sheltered, and led to those who made this book possible: the native eyewitnesses. Thank you . . .

Introduction

Expect answers in this book: why my associates and I traveled to a remote tropical island to search for living pterosaurs and why only a few professors have given us any hope that they still live. . . . I hope my readers will discover more than adventure—a purpose in life—as worthy a purpose as I have found. This is no instruction manual for finding God, yet I suggest that the spiritual quest gives us the highest reward. . . .

Is this a tool for promoting Biblical Creation and ridiculing evolution? Clear thinking we need, without fear, allowing us to discover both truth and error in whatever camp we find ourselves, entrenched or visiting, at the moment. Beware of simplistic labels.

Chapter One

The existence of life I credited to God, from childhood choosing to respect the Bible as nonfiction. When I was ten, my father, psychologist for the San Bernardino School District in California, showed me the largest collection of bird eggs in the Western United States, in the museum in our own little town of Bloomington. The variety of eggs and birds, all dead, fascinated me. Then I read the labels. Non-birds becoming birds discomforted me, for each type of life appeared to have a role in its own basic form.

If all of the above gives a reader no offense, with its religious tones, the book as a whole should not offend that reader. Does it improperly mix religion and science? It’s really more of a cryptozoology book with reasoning about the meaning of eyewitness testimonies and the adventure of searching for modern living pterosaurs.

Jonathan David Whitcomb

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Flood of Genesis

Did every variety of every type of creature enter the Ark of Noah? Why should they? Take the obvious example first: Would Noah have taken every breed of dog into the Ark, if all the present-day varieties existed in his day? No. Only a few genetically-healthy dogs would be needed, for they would have all the traits that could later become active in our modern breeds, even though the countless traits would not be outwardly visible in those original ancestors.

Scientific Paper on Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific

While both ropen lights and meteors are fast-moving flashes of lights in the sky, several characteristics distinguish them (Whitcomb, 2007). For example, Abram of Opai Village, Umboi Island, described a ropen light that flew down to a reef and stayed at or near the surface of the sea before flying back toward Mount Bel (Whitcomb interview) . . . Analysis of 2004-expedition records suggest that many suspected ropen lights move away from Mount Bel early at night but toward it late at night.

Religion and Belief in Ropens

. . . the eyewitnesses come to us with different religions, almost as if religion had nothing to do with encountering a live “pterodactyl.” . . . A person who sees an apparent pterosaur is just as likely to be an atheist as a Bible believing Southern Baptist.

Fiery Flying Serpent

The Fiery Flying Serpent of the Old Testament is also found in the Book of Mormon. In fact, in First Nephi, Chapter 17, verse 41, it is more clearly a flying fiery “serpent” that afflicted the children of Israel at the time of Moses, more clear than at least one of the relevant passages in the Bible, in that “flying” is included.

November 21, 2014

Religion and Belief in Ropens

Among many of the investigators of reports of modern pterosaurs, over the past two decades, religious belief is important, even critical, in searching for ropens. Yet the eyewitnesses come to us with different religions, almost as if religion had nothing to do with encountering a live “pterodactyl.” That eyewitness perspective dominates in a press release that I had published earlier this week.

Flying dinosaurs – Who believes they’re alive?

When I wrote that press release, I had no intention of putting down the importance of religious belief in those who have searched for living pterosaurs and for the eyewitnesses who have encountered them. Press releases need to be brief, and this one I intended as an introduction to this narrow field of cryptozoology. There was just not room enough to explain the religious side of the investigations.

A person who sees an apparent pterosaur is just as likely to be an atheist as a Bible believing Southern Baptist. A Christian may perhaps be more likely to report their sighting to me, compared with an atheist reporting to me, but I have seen little evidence, over the past eleven years, to suggest this is a major issue. Most eyewitnesses show no sign of holding any extreme position on science and religion.

The press release quotes from the title page of my book Searching for Ropens and Finding God (fourth edition): “Persons of various faiths, with various levels of education, from various countries and cultures, have seen a living pterosaur. . . .” But the beginning of that release makes it clear that belief or disbelief in those “primitive” flying creatures is the subject of that brief introductory posting, not belief or disbelief in God:

Your belief [in huge featherless flying creatures in Papua New Guinea] depends a great deal on where you lived your childhood: in a village like Gomlongon on Umboi Island or in a western country like the United States.

Non-Eyewitnesses of Pterosaurs

This environment differs from the perspectives of eyewitnesses. Somebody hearing about or reading about a sighting of a pterosaur-like flying creature—that person mostly believes or disbelieves based upon culture. If you were raised in a society in which such an animal is always assumed to be impossible living in the present, you reject the report; otherwise you consider it possible.

In my late teens, decades before I became actively involved in cryptozoology, my younger sister was surprised at what her high school friend told her. The other girl declared that she had seen a giant pterodactyl fly up into the mountains, just north of her house in Altadena, California. In my older years, after I had started writing nonfiction books about modern pterosaurs, my sister remembered her friend and told me about the sighting.

I phoned the lady, who still remembered me and my sister. She added a detail about size: The creature was as big as a school bus. The point? If I had overheard that eyewitness reporting the encounter to my sister, in the late 1960’s, I would have dismissed the whole thing, perhaps ascribing it to some mental defect or poor judgment on the part of that girl. I’m just as human as anyone else, relying upon deeply entrenched cultural assumptions. I have changed since my teenaged years, in several ways, including allowing myself to learn by exposure to beliefs in other cultures. Yet we need to understand and remember how strongly cultural beliefs can pull us, either towards truth or towards error.

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Religion and living pterosaurs

Whitcomb advocates open discussions about various axioms of origin philosophies in Western societies, as well as open discussions about interpreting scientific evidences. His purposes include encouraging average persons to think for themselves.

Nonfiction – Bible of Modern Pterosaurs

As riveting as some fictional tales of dragons, Searching for Ropens and Finding God is a nonfiction about pterosaurs with long tails, apparently real animals that live in our modern world.