Guest Review: Volume 1: Jonathan Park: The Adventure Begins – 2. The Secret of the Hidden Cave: Part 2

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

This is a guest review of Part 2 of a two-part story.  Read the review of Part 1 here.

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 second episode, The Secret of the Hidden Cave: Part 2.

Plot Summary:

The Park family hope to find ways to help their new friends, the Brenan family, as the Brenans have been hit hard by the recent storm.  Jonathan’s mom encourages him to make friends with a group of boys, the Eagle’s Nest gang.

The baddies -  Simon, Marvin and Vinnie – set fire to the Brenan’s workshop.  They hope by doing this that the Brenans would have even more incentive to sell their ranch.

Dr Park, Jonathan and Jessie hope to recover the fossil and go back to the hidden cave.  While they are there, Dr Park has to leave and Jonathan and Jessie are alone.  The bad guys find them and try to trick them into giving them the fossil and film.  Jonathan manages to outwit them and the Eagle’s Nest Gang manage to create a diversion.  In the end, the bad guys are caught and sent to prison, the fossil find will mean that the Brenans don’t have to lose their ranch and Jonathan has found that he has made real friends.

The Brenans decide to help the Parks build a Creation museum and kindly donate their land as the premise for the museum.

Science ‘Nuggets’:

A lot of fossils aren’t really bones. Minerals in the dirt replace the bones.  They become as hard as rock in the shape of the bone (10:05).  To turn into fossils, one needs water, mud and the right chemical conditions (10:15).

Dr Park mentions two different layers in this story – limestone and theChinle Formation. (17:13)

Bible verses quoted:

Proverbs 18:24 ²⁴A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

Proverbs 19:1 ¹Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity, than he that is perverse in his lips, and is a fool.

Creation/Evolution:

Why Evolution Is Wrong (and Creation Is Right):

Since animals usually rot when they die, it is sort of a ‘strange accident’ when one becomes a fossil (10:35).

Noah’s flood would have caused lots of water and mud.  All the animals that did not make it into the ark would have had the right conditions to be fossilised.  (10:40)

The Flood is attributed as having deposited the limestone layer in the Brenans’ cave. (17:08)

The fact that the Chinle Formation covers such a large area provides evidence for the Flood. (17:27)

What Creation Scientists Believe:

The Flood picked up rocks and mud and set them down in layers.  It also picked up lime-y mud from the bottom of the sea and deposited it all over the world. (17:00)

How the ‘World’ views Creationists:

Jonathan says that his friends think he’s ‘weird’ and his mom says it’s because he thinks the Bible is true and that God created the earth. (6:05)

Advertising:

There are ‘ad breaks’ in the middle of the dramatic stories.  This time it is Dr Kendal Park telling us how his family loves to find evidence that helps build people’s faith in the Word of God.  He invites us to go towww.jonathanpark.com for things to read, do, study, etc. 

Disturbing Points/Factual Errors:

Dr Park solves the mystery of how the coelophysis fossil got into the cave: a smaller flood or a mudslide ‘must have’ picked up the fossil from where it was originally fossilised and dropped it into the cave. (17:45)  How he knows this definitively is puzzling.

One of the Eagle’s Nest Gang boys has firecrackers in his pocket and uses it on the baddies (20:30).  I’m not sure what a young boy is doing carrying explosives in his pocket. I have tried to check out the legality of a minor having possession of a firecracker (in New Mexico, USA), but was unable to.

According to this website, fossils are the remains and/or traces of prehistoric life. For something to be classified as a fossil, it has to be at the minimum 10,000 years old.  At the minimum.  Since most YEC believe that the world is at the most 10,000 years old, I wonder what the YEC definition of a fossil is.

The Chinle Formation is found only in the US, specifically northern Arizona, Nevada, Utah, western New Mexico, and western Colorado.  This, in terms of the entire world, is actually a very small area.

Conclusion:

The story is told in a very engaging manner.  The ‘bad guys’ are somewhat cartoonish in character – Marvin speaks in a stupid “Duh, okay boss” voice – but I suppose that can be overlooked since it is geared at young children.  The children are viewed as the heroes of the story, another aspect which will definitely appeal to young listeners.

There is even less science in this story than in the first.  Most of the time is spent on the drama and the excitement as the story unfolds.  Time is also spent on telling the listeners that Noah’s Flood is responsible for many of the fossils that we find today.

Rather disappointing.