I came across some older stuff on Carl Baugh this evening and was startled to discover that, after 300+ posts on this blog, I’d never blogged anything about him. Time to fix that.
Carl Baugh is the young earth creationist who claimed to have discovered human footprints amid dinosaur footprints near the Paluxy River in Texas (see the picture below by Glen Kuban). The problem is that Dr. Baugh’s doctorate is in Education and it came from a recognized Christian degree mill. Now, I don’t want to cast aspersions on creationism (young or old) since I personally know many highly-credentialed creationists with PhDs in genetics, physics, botany, geology, and biology. What bugs me is pseudo-credentialed attention seekers doing shoddy or dishonest work in the name of faith. I can’t think of many things more counter-productive.
Baugh’s Paluxy River bed “find” has long been debunked. But worse than that, the young earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis has even condemned his work. Ouch.
I grew up about 60 miles from the Paluxy river and my dad worked at the Glenrose, TX nuclear power plant. My parents were fans of Dr. Baugh’s after he came and spoke at our church. One summer in the mid 80’s, when I would have been around thirteen, my dad and I volunteered to go on a “dig” with Dr. Baugh. I happily signed up, envisioning grids and notebooks and bones sticking out of the ground all sorts of romanticized notions I had of paleontology. (Also: Dinosaurs!)
We spent all day moving a slab of limestone the size of a Volkswagen beetle with car jacks and an iron jimmy bar my Dad brought. (If it hadn’t been for my Dad and his jimmy bar, they would have gotten nothing done that day.) Once the rock had been shoved and scraped across the stratum that he wanted to see, Dr. Baugh and his associates spent a lot of time looking at the uneven surface of the newly exposed rock, trying to find something to impress the volunteers. He pointed out what was supposedly a sauropod track, but looked like random variations to me. Now, this rock surface was not anything like the surfaces in the state park a few miles away. Those are flat and the tracks are very well-defined. (Sauropods are very heavy animals, and when they leave tracks, it’s pretty obvious.) This weren’t that, not by a long shot.
Then he and his associates spent a while trying to find a good angle to photograph it from so the shadows would fall just right. When that didn’t work, we all loaded up and went back to the Creation “Museum” (a camp trailer on his back lot) where he gave us the tour. It was all lame chunks of rock and plaster casts of really big feet accompanied by conspiracy theories and tales of “evidence” lost or sabotaged by evil Darwinists. He was also in the process of building a huge hyperbaric chamber that was going to prove that Adam and Eve were fourteen feet tall.
No procedures. No documentation. No discoveries. Just a bunch of yahoos screwing around, carving out sections of river bank with a car jack and a jimmy bar.
I remember watching The Daily Show (back when it was still funny) where Dr. Baugh says that “The Flintstones” is probably very true to life!
100% Crackpot.
“Just a bunch of yahoos screwing around” – can’t say it better than that.
When I read the quote AIG mentioned from him “Before the Flood, the earth was surrounded by hydrogen which was so cold it was metallic and this collapsed when God shouted.” ???!!!! WHAT? Wow, if this guy ISN’T a Luciferian whose mission it is to attempt to discredit creation he sure is a natural at it.
oh well, the poor young earthers. i feel so sorry for their own inability to see how stupid they are. oh btw a/m, i don’t believe in evolution as most young earthers try to label people who don’t believe in a young earth.
Everyone must be dumb as sh@#t in Texas!