On one occasion a few years ago, I gave two presentations at a parish each of which included a Q and A session when skeptics or critics could voice their objections. The pastor attended one of the presentations and told a friend of mine that it had given him “much to think about,” but he did not find fault with anything I had said. No sooner had I left the parish, however, than I received an email from the pastor informing me that a professional scientist in the parish had sent him a critique of the Kolbe Center’s website which had obviously convinced him that we were charlatans for teaching that humans and dinosaurs have co-existed on Earth and that there might be a few surviving dinosaurs in remote environments on the Earth today.
Live Coelacanth off Pumula on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, South Africa
If I had been given an opportunity to reply to our critic, I would have pointed out that for many decades it was the “consensus view” in natural science that the coelacanth was a “transitional form” between aquatic and terrestrial vertebrates which became extinct 70 million years ago. If someone had suggested in those days that the coelacanth was "still living" before the definitive proof was found, he would undoubtedly have been accused of "tomfoolery" by many in the scientific community. Nevertheless, the international mass media were rocked by the news that a “living coelacanth” had been found off the coast of Madagascar in 1938. As reported in an article by Dr. Jerry Bergman:
In 1938, the discovery of a live coelacanth near Madagascar astounded evolutionists. It was like finding a live dinosaur! Once the discovery was confirmed, newspaper headlines all over the world proclaimed the amazing news.
The shock was not only because these fish had disappeared from the fossil record allegedly vast ages ago, only now to be discovered alive, but also because it supposedly provided “a glimpse of the fish that first walked on land”. The coelacanth “was generally thought to be the ‘missing link’ between aquatic and terrestrial vertebrates”. This was critical to evolutionists because the vertebrate sea-to-land transition is one of the most important steps in their story.
The coelacanth was already badly deteriorated before being mounted by a local taxidermist. Nonetheless, when finally subjected to expert examination by South African ichthyologist J.L.B. Smith, he confirmed it to be a coelacanth, and published his findings in Nature. Smith became obsessed with finding another one, but an extensive years-long search, not helped by the intervention of WWII, failed.
Dr. J. L. B. Smith
Following the war’s end in 1945, Smith distributed thousands of leaflets in three languages with pictures of the fish. These offered £1,000 sterling (c. US$60,000 today) for information leading to new specimens. After seven years, in December 1952, one was caught near the Comoro Islands, off the south-eastern coast of Africa. It now had to be preserved and transported to Smith’s lab hundreds of kilometres away, before it rotted like the first one had. The French Prime Minister, an admirer of Smith’s book about African fishes, arranged for Smith to fly to the Comoro Islands carrying formalin preservative.
Coelacanths have unique traits that make it difficult for evolutionists to claim what creature they evolved from, and what creature they might have evolved into.
When he saw the fish, Smith was ecstatic; his 14-year search had finally paid off!
I hope we can agree that if the attitude of scientists like the parish critic had prevailed, it would have been even more difficult for J.L.B. Smith to demonstrate what is now universally acknowledged to be true—namely that an organism thought to have been extinct for 70 million years is alive and well in the world today.
If our critic had carefully examined the material on our website, he would have realized that there is abundant evidence that dinosaurs and humans have existed together on Earth, including the discovery of soft tissue, C-14, red blood cells, and even intact strands of DNA in the remains of dinosaurs, as reported in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Kolbe scientists have done original research in this field, especially in regard to C-14 dating of dinosaur bones, and our research has been accepted for presentation at world-class geoscience conferences. However, the dismissive attitude and smug confidence in the consensus view of scientists like our critic retards scientific progress and makes it difficult for dedicated researchers like Ademar Rakowsky to break new ground—especially when, like J.L.B. Smith of coelacanth fame, we must raise the money for our research from sources outside of mainstream academia.
On the Kolbe website we have just re-posted an article on evidence for a surviving pterodactyl-like creature in a remote region of Papua, New Guinea. The article has been revised to include some additional information. Perhaps, one day, some young reader of this newsletter will lead a successful expedition under the patronage of Our Lady of Guadalupe to document the existence of pterodactyls on Amboy Island!
Through the prayers of Our Lady of Fatima, may the Holy Ghost guide us all into all the Truth! Amen.
