Kolbe Report 7/6/24

7:53-9:19 Horn then talks about Hugh Owen, Director of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, and how Hugh used the aforementioned dinosaur depictions and other similar data as evidence for the existence of dinosaurs in the recent past, and he includes a clip of LifeSiteNews' John-Henry Westen interviewing Hugh, wherein Hugh tells Westen, using the female pronoun, that Grendel, in Beowulf, was some kind of a T. Rex dinosaur whose arm Beowulf tore off, killing the creature.

-- Horn corrects Hugh's incorrect pronoun and points out that Beowulf used a sword (not true: discussed below) to kill Grendel. While accuracy is important, these two errors are irrelevant to the point Hugh is making.

-- Horn then says that it's silly to say that a human killed a T. Rex, and shows an illustration of a man next to a very large T. Rex. This is a non sequitur because any cursory internet search for theropod dinosaurs would reveal that there were species of T. Rex-like dinosaurs that were small and close to humans in size.

-- Also he does not at all address Hugh's point that those dinosaurs surviving the harsh [(by Antediluvian standards) post-Great Flood] environmental conditions and also posing any kind of a threat to both human beings and livestock, were hunted down.

-- He also does not address Hugh's categories of dinosaur existence evidence that he presented in the Westen interview: we find all over the world very accurate drawings, sculptures, mosaics, and cave paintings of all different kinds of dinosaurs.

9:20-9:26 Horn then brings up Bill Cooper's book, "After The Flood" as the source of Hugh Owen's idea about Grendel.

-- Horn, however, does not at all address the detailed linguistic arguments for Grendel being a dinosaur that Cooper presents in the chapter (Chapter 11) in his book dedicated strictly to "Beowulf."

-- Nor does Horn point out, as is written on page 150 of Cooper's book, that, prior to killing Grendel, Beowulf was already renowned among the Danes in Hrothgar's court for having killed various hazardous monstrous animals making the local sea lanes hazardous for the open Viking boats, and a number of these creatures are described.

-- Has he even opened Cooper's book?

9:27-9:47 As proof that Grendel is not a T. Rex, Horn states that: Grendel is not specifically described in "Beowulf," he is a descendant of Cain, he is larger than any other man, and his Mother is said to be in the form of a woman. He further asserts that Grendel and his mother are probably a hominid or human-like monster, but definitely not a pair of T. Rex's.

-- On pages 149-150, Cooper writes in his book that "[T]he monster Grendel preyed on the Danes for twelve long years (AD 503-515). Are we seriously to believe the that these Danish Vikings, whose berserker-warriors struck such fear into the hearts of their neighbours, were themselves for twelve long years rendered helpless with terror by a hairy dwarf, even a 'giant' one?" The hominid explanation just doesn't wash.

-- On page 154, first full paragraph, we read how the Danes considered monstrous creatures to be Cain's descendants, and that they also attributed demonic qualities to these creatures for the havoc they wreaked. [Let us recall that the Danes are fearsome Vikings.]

-- On page 155, first full paragraph, we read that Grendel and the other creature that was assumed to be his mother because of its older appearance, were bipedal, larger than any human, but not necessarily human. Also, their appearance suggested maleness and femaleness.

-- The remainder of page 155 after and through the first paragraph of 156, we read that Beowulf, with his strong grip, wrenched Grendel's small arm off.

-- In the first full paragraph of page 166 of Cooper's book, we read that Grendel swiftly killed his prey with his mouth or jaws, which would have to have been therefore very large, and thus Beowulf's strategy of pressing himself against Grendel's chest between the arms to be out of harm's way would have made sense. This setup makes a T. Rex a very plausible candidate for Grendel...either a juvenile one or of a species that was not as large full-grown as the true T. Rex: possessing an outsized muzzle, it could not reach Beowulf tucked under its jaw.

-- At this point, it seems fair to ask if Horn has even read Beowulf?

9:48-10:33 Horn then plays a clip of Dr. Kevin Mark speaking at a 2024 Kolbe Center Conference about the human footprints among the dinosaur ones along Texas' Paluxy River. A photo of the Alvis Delk print from the Paluxy valley, depicting a dinosaur footprint intersecting a very obvious human one, is prominently projected behind Dr. Mark.

Horn claims that scientists have shown that the human Paluxy prints are the result of erosion.

-- First, Horn does not address how the very anatomically detailed Delk print could be the result of erosion. Nor does he make any attempt to declare it fake, especially given the detailed information about it visible on screen behind Dr. Mark.

-- Second, which scientists is he referring to who claim that the human prints are products of erosion?

-- Third, a subtle point, but significant, why does he label Dr. Mark as "a speaker listed as Dr. Kevin Mark" and not simply as "Dr. Kevin Mark?" Is he casting aspersions on Dr. Mark's credentials? If so, why?

-- Fourth, the author of this critique, credentialed with a BA each in Geology and Physics, an MSc in Meteorology, and an STB and STL (Sacred Theology), has personally touched and looked closely at the various human footprints from the Paluxy that are on display at the Creation Evidence Museum of Texas, and has seen no evidence of fakery nor of production by erosion. In fact, at last Summer's (2023) dig on the McFall Ranch along the Paluxy River, he was asked to evaluate the several dozen human footprint candidates uncovered during that week, and found nine to be reasonable candidates: one is attached [ATTACH], while the remaining ones were less detailed but deeper: human-foot-shaped prints that had five scallops at the broader toe end, the scallops decreasing unidirectionally in size, like human toes do. The excavation-sponsoring Creation Evidence Museum of Texas was cautious about labeling them definitively as human, given that they were not as obvious or as detailed as the Delk or other obvious prints displayed in the Museum, and given the controversy about the Paluxy human prints in general.

10:34-10:45 Horn claims that the Paluxy human footprint evidence is so bad that even other creationists reject it, and cites the Answers in Genesis website as an example, where these footprints are presented as evidence to be avoided. The page cited and shown here, the pertinent section starting with the words "Evidences to Be Avoided: Paluxy River Tracks." What Horn neglects to mention are the final ones of that section:

"At this stage, we advise caution, but we also encourage researchers to publish documented findings in reputable peer-reviewed journals such as ARJ, CRSQ, etc."

In other words, properly document any legitimate findings of human footprints, and we'll consider their authenticity. It is not a blanket dismissal of the evidence but a request for airtight data from the site.

10:46-10:58 Here Horn uses a thirty-eight-year-old (1986!) quotation from prominent Creationist John Morris against the authenticity of the Paluxy human prints.

-- Aren't there more recent ones? Much more work on the issue has been done since then, as this author can attest.

-- Also, Horn only reads part of the text he highlights on screen, omitting the final clause (capitalized):

"It would now be improper for creationists to continue to use the Paluxy data as evidence against evolution UNLESS FUTURE RESEARCH BRINGS NEW FACTS TO LIGHT." (This quote is from this link.)

10:59-13:00 Horn rightly says in the final minutes of his video that the Creationist/Young Earth claims would not be an impediment to good standing in the Catholic Faith for either existing Catholics or for converts to the Catholic Faith who believe these claims.  He also rightly says that bad/inaccurate science is detrimental to evangelizing others regarding the Catholic Faith, and includes a lengthy apropos quote from Volume 2 of St. Augustine's "The Literal Meaning of Genesis" to bolster his point: maintaining bad Science as part of Revelation discredits Revelation in the eyes of those who would have otherwise considered Revelation seriously.  In the words of St. Augustine:

Now it is quite disgraceful and disastrous, something one should be on one’s guard against at all cost, that they [unbelievers] should ever hear Christians spouting what they claim our Christian literature has to say on these topics, and talking such nonsense that they can scarcely contain their laughter when they see them to be toto caelo, as the saying goes, wide of the mark. (Lit. Mean. Gen. I, 39(19))

This statement is continually quoted against Catholics who defend the traditional reading of Genesis, but, as our colleague Joseph Gedney has pointed out:

To cite this passage in favor of theistic evolution, one would need to assume that evolution has been proven to be a viable scientific hypothesis--which it hasn’t, but we will not go into that in this article—in order for St. Augustine’s instruction to be applicable to the origins debate. But there is a huge problem with touting this as a proof that St. Augustine believed that all revelation, Holy Scripture, and the Faith itself must bow before the demands of natural science. For if the people who make these claims actually read St. Augustine’s works instead of spouting whatever they have heard others say, they would see that in exactly two paragraphs from St. Augustine’s previous statement, he directly attacks the principal error of all theistic evolutionists:

Some of the weaker brothers and sisters, however, are in danger of going astray more seriously when they hear these godless people holding forth expertly and fluently on the numbers of the heavenly bodies, or on any question you care to mention about the elements of this cosmos. They wilt and lose heart, putting these pundits before themselves, and while regarding them as great authorities, they turn back with weary distaste to the books of salutary godliness, and scarcely bring themselves to touch the volumes they should be devouring with delight – shrinking from the roughness of the husks of the wheat and eagerly eyeing the flowers of the thistles (Lit. Mean. Gen. I, 40(20)).

But this is exactly what we are experiencing in the Church today! The mass exodus of youth out of the Church is not taking place because unbelievers are laughing at us for being “unscientific” -- although they do laugh at our pathetic attempts to reconcile Genesis 1-11 and the writings of Church Fathers, like St. Augustine, with evolution. No, the Catholic Faith is fading because we exalt “pundits” like Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, and Lawrence Krauss above God and the Magisterium of His Church. So now we, and the world at large, “turn back with weary distaste to the books of salutary godliness and scarcely bring” ourselves “to touch the volumes” we “should be devouring with delight”—volumes such as Genesis, and the works of the Fathers, Doctors, Popes and Council Fathers in their authoritative teaching.

If we had a fraction of the love and devotion that St. Augustine had for Genesis, the Church would not be undergoing her current crisis of faith. For as St. Augustine so beautifully put it: “…[T]he authority of this text of scripture, surely, overrides anything that human ingenuity is capable of thinking up” (Lit. Mean. Gen. II, 9(5)). Indeed, ever since we began to deny the truth of the historical narrative of Genesis, we have surely been “shrinking from the roughness of the husks of the wheat and eagerly eyeing the flowers of the thistles.”

-- In short, Mr. Horn’s critique falls flat in two ways: first, in his failure to give due weight to the testimony of Sacred Tradition and authoritative Magisterial teaching that affirms the literal historical truth of the sacred history of Genesis; second, in his, at best, insufficiently researched "debunkings" of creationist evidence for human and dinosaur coexistence both from the beginning and in the recent past, and using these as examples of the bad science he's cautioning about.

In summary, Horn's video is long on persuasive rhetorical technique, but short on the research that would almost certainly turn his anti-creationist claims concerning human/dinosaur coexistence around one hundred and eighty degrees.  We hope and pray that he will investigate the evidence we present for the traditional reading of Genesis more deeply and join with us in helping to defend the traditional doctrine of creation as the foundation of our faith and as the only firm foundation for a culture of life.