Guest Review: Volume 1 of Jonathan Park: The Adventure Begins: The Secret of the Hidden Cave: Part 1

Otter’s Note: Kathy is a Riparian Church guest blogger from Australia who has very kindly consented to republish her thoughtful review of the Jonathan Park pro-creationism series here.  She holds the copyright to her own posts.  I felt it was worth increasing awareness of these reviews since they lay out in close detail some of the falsehoods that move under the banner of faithfulness to the Word of God.   Many thanks, Kathy.  — Otter

The Jonathan Park CDs are produced by Vision Forum Ministries.  Through these CDs, VF hope to ‘provide children and adults with scientific evidence  that is in harmony with the Word of God’.

Their tagline: This is our Father’s world, God created it; we can explore it, so live the adventure!

So, without much further ado, let’s take a look at the first episode, The Secret of the Hidden Cave: Part 1.

Plot Summary:

Dr Kendall Park, a vertebrate paleontologist and his young son, Jonathan, are on a ranch near Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, to try to dig up a fossil.  Dr Park hopes the fossil will provide evidence for a worldwide flood.  Unfortunately, a severe storm breaks out, making their attempts extremely difficult.  Dr Park and Jonathan find refuge in a cave.  Meanwhile, the storm is getting worse and everyone in the vicinity of Abiquiú is told to evacuate.  The Brenan family, who own the ranch the Parks are on, which consists of Jim, his wife Martha, their daughter, Jessica “Jessie”, and their dog, Shadow, are affected. (They also have a son, Ryan, who is staying with Grandma and so does not appear in this episode.)  The Brenans go into the cave, find the Parks there and make friends with them.

There are also some ‘baddies’ -  Simon, Marvin and Vinnie  – who are excited that the flood has caused severe damage to the Brenan ranch.  They hope to make an offer to the Brenan family to buy their farm and sell it later at a profit.

Dr Park does indeed find a fossil, but before he can retrieve it, rescue helicopters arrive and he has to abandon his efforts.  Everyone is told to keep the fossil find a secret.

Science ‘Nuggets’:

While walking around in the cave, Jessie tells Jonathan how stalagmites are formed. (8:40)

Jonathan tells Jessie that ocean fossils are sometimes found in caves.  (9:03)

Jonathan tells Jessie that Ghost Ranch is home to thousands ofCoelophysis fossils. (9:19)

Dr Park says that there are thousands of dinosaur graveyards and mentions Dinosaur National Monument. (11:05)

There are bats in the limestone cave that Jonathan and Jessie are in.   Bats are often found in limestone caves.

Bible verses quoted:

[I think the people at VF are KJV-Only and hence, all Bible verses quoted by them are from this version.]

Romans 10:9 ⁹That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

Creation/Evolution:

Why Evolution Is Wrong (and Creation Is Right):

Dr Park is intent on letting people know that there is ‘scientific evidence for the flood of the Bible.’ (5:20)

Jonathan tells Jessie that his father was a very well-respected paleontologist for a museum.  The more he studied fossils, the more he realised that the evolution story ‘just didn’t fit’.  Jessie agrees and says that the Bible even mentions dinosaur-like creatures. (10:10)

Jonathan says that Dr Park discovered that most of the dinosaurs were killed by a lot of water. (10:20)

Dr Park says that he was puzzled with the presence of clam shells with dinosaur bones found at Dinosaur National Monument.

Dr Park says that ‘many’ scientists agree that water was involved in the burial of the dinosaurs (11:23).  He begins to wonder about the possibility of a Great Flood as opposed to the oft-believed idea of a meteor impact.

Jonathan says that his father is out to find evidence against evolution (15:40).

After Dr Park is fired, he and his family move in with his father (Grandpa/Benjamin) who encourages him to ‘trust God and let Him show him the truth’.  So Dr Park stays up night after night to read the Bible and he finally believes it all, including Genesis where it says that God created everything.  Jessie says that ‘some Christians don’t even believe that.’ (17:40)

‘A lot of people believe in Jesus, but they don’t believe that God created the earth like it says in Genesis or that there was a worldwide flood.’ (17:50)

Jonathan says that he found it [meaning the Bible and Creationism] hard to believe at first but that he always knew that he ‘didn’t come from apes and stuff.’  (17:55)

Dr Park finds what looks like a dinosaur skull with reddish deposits that appear to have come from ‘outside the cave’. (19:28)

How the ‘World’ views Creationists:

When Dr Park tries to share his ideas with his colleagues, they first argue that his methods were wrong and then they told him to keep quiet about what he had found. (11:40)

‘These were supposedly objective scientists?’ [spoken by Dr Park about his colleagues.] (11:48)

‘And when you didn’t keep quiet, they started talking about you behind your back and saying you’d gone a little nutty (11:50),’ [spoken by Martha in sympathy.]  Then she explains how she knows: ‘That’s how it’s like to be a Christian sometimes.’ (11:56)

‘Many people seem to be concerned about what’s popular, not what’s true.’ (12:00)

It is revealed that Dr Park was fired from his job because his ‘recent conclusions “failed to uphold the most current scientific research”‘ (16:03)  He interprets this to mean that he didn’t play by their rules. (16:05)  When he questions their timetables which show ‘millions of years’ his colleagues felt that his conclusions were unreliable (16:10) and called him a ‘loose cannon in the scientific field.’ (16:15)

Jonathan tells his friend Mark that his father got fired because he (Dr Park) didn’t agree with ‘millions of years.’ (16:50)

Advertising:

There are ‘ad breaks’ in the middle of the dramatic stories.  One of them is Angela Park, the wife of Dr Park, who tells the listeners how she has seen the importance of explaining the Biblical and scientific message of Creation.  She acknowledges that tough questions stump many Christians and cause children to question their faith.  So she recommends the Back to Genesis audio series.

Disturbing Points/Factual Errors:

Dr Park criticises his (former) colleagues for being not objective because they do not accept his findings.  And yet, he is on a mission to ‘prove’ that there is evidence for a worldwide flood as mentioned in the Bible.  So, really, Dr Park is not being objective either.

Jonathan says he does not believe that we came from apes.  Hurray!  Evolution does not say that we came from apes either.

Jessie says that some Christians don’t believe in (Young Earth) Creation(ism) in a derisive tone.

Overall, it’s the tone the characters take when referring to non-Young Earth Creationists that I found disturbing.  (Actually, ‘disgusting’ would be a better term, but like Martha Brenan says, “Now is a good time to practise ‘loving thy neighbour.’”)

Conclusion:

The stories are very interesting and the writers at VF have done a commendable job in producing a series that young listeners would find engaging.  The voice actors are excellent in portraying their various characters (either the ‘good guys’ or the ‘bad guys’), the sound effects are realistic and everything is very cleverly and neatly wrapped up in 25 minutes.  It even ends with unanswered questions to entice listeners to come back and find out what happens next.

That’s the good part.

And now for the bad news.

For a 25-minute show, there is actually very little science content.  This is very disappointing for a show that purports to be about science.  Only about five minutes is dedicated to mentioning (or demonstrating) real-life actual scientific discoveries.  I believe it is actually less than five minutes, but I’ll be generous and round it up to that.  In this particular episode, the following are mentioned/demonstrated: Ghost Ranch, Coelophysis, National Dinosaur Monument, and bats living in caves.  The listener is not encouraged to find out more information about these things, but rather he/she is simply told that dinosaur graveyards are real and seem to indicate a wordwide flood.

Significantly much more time was spent presenting the need to debunk evolution, uphold (Young-Earth) Creation(ism), and to expect opposition.  Every time the words ‘evolution’ or ‘millions of years’ were said, they were said with a derisive tone.  This happened every. single. time. If this were a DVD, I’m sure you would be able to see the characters rolling their eyes.

Dr Park is depicted as being unfairly dismissed.  Unfortunately, we only have his side of the story, so I’m not ready to sympathise with him just yet.  However, the listener has to assume that he was fired because he believed in Creation.

In conclusion, I found this program short on science and big on YEC propaganda. Nevertheless, this program is not entirely useless.  It would be great to listen to as an exercise in ‘Spot the anti-Evolutionary Ideas’, or to spot the straw man arguments, or to see how many times evolution is misrepresented.  But, I would not recommend this to anyone wishing to use it as a Science curriculum for their children.  If your child got 5 minutes’ worth of science out of a 25-minute program, you’d want your money back, wouldn’t you?