Utah, one of the most spectacular states in the country. It's a major hotbed for dinosaur discoveries and many national wonders of the world. Because of this, and long winters, too, Sadly, there are creationists in Utah who show no shame in spitting out one stupid lie after another, including this guy, Andy McIntosh, who claims to have a Ph.D in aerodynamics, but not earth science. It is not uncommon to have a creationist who major in subjects that is not of earth science and biology.
You see, Andy, in this latest "Answers" in Genesis article Utah's (sic) Testimony to Catastrophe claims,
"All around on the east of the state, one can see evidence of large deposits of Permian to Jurassic sandstone which are now part of the Natural Bridges National Monument about 40 miles north of Mexican Hat and Arches National Parks around Moab. The apparent evidence of vast deposition followed by vast erosion speaks of catastrophic floodwaters."
None has to do with Noah's flood. But knowing creationists like Andy, they would rather give out false testimonies, which Andy is doing, and believed that this is all the work of Noah's Flood than facing the truth that says all the natural wonders are only the work of water and wind erosion that spans over a period of millions of years. Here, he tells about his travels to Utah to see what he and other creationists claimed to be evidence of Noah's Flood which would have been nonexistent if the Flood really did happen in real life. Just like in all subjects, Andy, like all creationists, would proselytized the readers to believe their imaginary ways by using choice weasel religious words to make it sound very persuasive to their lay people.
The article is simply about Andy's travels to Utah in July of 2007 to marvel at the natural wonders of Utah at Natural Bridges National Monument and see what he claims to be evidence of Noah's flood and dinosaurs living with man. Yet, like all creationists, he continuously ignores mountains of evidence that tells him flat out that he's wrong, including his explanations to the formations of the rock bridges and arches at the Natural Bridges National Monument and The Arches National Parks right around Moab, Utah, a paradise for extreme mountain bikers to travel there and perform stunts on their bikes. He also mentions Northern Arizona, where he claims the Grand Canyon was created from the retreating waters of Noah's Flood while ignoring the valid compelling evidence against this fallacy.
The actual explanations behind the arches and the rock bridges is that these were made by wind, water, and erosion that occur over a period of millions of years. The Grand Canyon was form by the Colorado River eating away the sides of the river bed over a period of 17 million years. But creationists, dull-minded as ever, still blurts out their own imaginary causes of those formations by claiming they were all formed by Noah's Flood while their conclusions bears no explanations to why there is only one Grand Canyon in the world while there should have been many of it, if the young earth version of Noah's Flood is true and did occur like they said it did, and why is there real, irrefutable evidence of Native Americans living nomadic lives in the Grand Canyon especially around 4,500 years ago during the time the world was allegedly covered in billions of gallons of water.
The first thing he saw in Utah is Bryce Canyon National Park which is a naturally made amphitheater with tall rock formations called hoodoos. Here, Andy claims they were formed by the fast moving erosive affects of ice and waters of Noah's Flood, 4,500 years ago. This is false. The Hoodoos are very delicate and can erode away very easily. If the fictional violent flood did occur 4,500 years ago, the hoodoos would have never existed. Here we see Andy in blatant denial of the fact that the hoodoos were gradually formed over a period of 40 millions of years by melting snow, rain, and limestone mineral erosion.
He then mentions the cross bedding sandstone at the Natural Bridges National Monument, where in reality, the area was once a sandy beach side that once existed during the Permian Period about 260 million years ago. It may have been formed by receding floodwaters, but it does not necessary mean they were formed by Noah's Flood. "Flood", "flash flood", and "floodwaters" doesn't necessary point to Noah's Flood. Especially when it comes to the fact that the southern lower elevated areas of Utah are more prone to flash flooding than higher elevated areas of the state.
Next, Andy discusses the Native American petroglyphs carved all over especially the famous "newspaper rock" and says,
"Such rock art found all over Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and other western states is not fully understood. No one really knows what the concentric circles mean, for instance, on Newspaper Rock in southeast Utah, or the handprints sprayed on many of the rocks, but some are clearly related to hunting, and the animals are deer, birds, and other creatures we see today."
He's probably thinking this is all done through stencil graffiti while not getting it in his head that the petroglyphs were all carved, pecked, and abraded, none were ever sprayed on. Besides, if they were spray painted, the rain would simply just wash it away. Plus, the term "Newspaper Rock" is also known as The Newspaper Rock State Monument where loads of petroglyphs carvings are dotted all throughout the rock over a period of 2,000 years, including depictions of people hunting animals on horseback and performing rituals in honor of their gods.
He then mentions the dinosaur rock art fallacy where he claims to have seen a faint petroglyph at the bottom of the Kachina bridge depicting a "sauropod dinosaur" with a long dragging tail, long neck with a Flintstone-style cartoonish head at the top, even shaped body, and short, stumpy legs. With any petroglyph like this one, any untrained eye would assume, "If it looks like a dinosaur, shape like a dinosaur, then it must be a dinosaur." regardless of the features on the petroglyph that tells them that it's not what they think it is. In huge contrast to what the petroglyph depicts, Sauropods actually have heads that in most cases resembled horses, tall elephant-like legs that are longer what the alleged rock art depicts, and tails held high for an even balance.
Awhile back, I did an article about how creationists purposely distort rock, pottery, and metal art to fit their own perspectives about it. In that post, I mention a claim about a brass tomb, housing a body of Richard Bell, Bishop of Carlisle, in which creationists claimed to have dinosaur carvings etched onto it. The claim is among the many claims creationists uses in an effort to confirm their myth about dinosaurs living with man several hundreds of years ago to be true. Andy mention this in his article, too. However, as I pointed out, the claim about the so-called "brass behemoths" is false. Both so-called "behemoths" actually depict a lion fighting a dragon with the heads of the lion and the dragon and the dragon's wings being erased due to people visiting the place walking on them over the years; the image actually was found on the floor of the cathedral, not on the tomb. Thus, the claim about the image being "behemoths" found on an Archbishop tomb is indeed false. Another image they distort and parade around depicts what they claim to be Eryops, a Permian amphibian that lived 270 million yeas ago. I've outlined the edges of the picture and found that it did not look like Eryops at all. Instead, the animal depicted in the picture is only just a kiddie-style drawing of a rat. Eryops never in fact had rat-like ears, let alone an upright posture. Now, I've done the same thing with the alleged sauropod petroglyph. Here's 2 undistorted versions of the image.
Now here's the creationists' distorted version of the petroglyph.
![warrior.jpg"](http://www.genesispark.org/genpark/ancient/graphic/warrior.jpg")
The first image is shown on the Genesis Park website, the second image is from bible.ca and the third image is shown on a plaque inside Ken Ham's idiot crackhouse. Each site deliberately distort the petroglyph much differently than each other. Notice the alleged men in the three images. No image of a man was found right next to the so-called dinosaur to begin with. The creationists of bible.ca and AiG have purposely put the man in the 3 images to deceive their followers into believing their dino-man lies. The inspiration behind the men comes from just two vertical lines seen next to a few wavy lines on the upper left side of the undistorted image. Look up close and you'll notice that on top of the two lines appears to be faint designs that doesn't appear to look like a body of a man at all.
Now, lo and behold, Here's what the faint petroglyph really depict according to two paleontologists Phil Senter and Sally Cole who actually exposed the truth about the carving and published a paper about it.
It's a pareidolia made up of only distinct carvings and mud stains.
So much for it being a sauropod..
This is one of the examples of how creationists distort images to suit their own means. To make it interpret exactly what they themselves want the image to be interpret as while throwing away anything else that contradicts their beliefs. Even if they were of dinosaurs, it still does not explain why are there no fossils of dinosaurs and humans found together in the fossil record.
Reference:
Senter, P.; Cole, S.J. (2011). “Dinosaur” petroglyphs at Kachina Bridge site, Natural Bridges National Monument, southeastern Utah: not dinosaurs after all Palaeontologia Electronica, 14 (1), 1-5
Finally, Andy travels through Moab, Utah where he meets up with 2 creationists, one from Canada, the other from Turkey, who took him to Copper Ridge to see dinosaur footprints he believes to have been formed during Noah's Flood that quickly buried the prints before they were given a chance to deteriorate — or so he thinks. Always keep in mind — floods don't bury, they just wash away. The prints would have been completely deteriorated anyway if the Mythical Flood did occurred and rapidly engulf the area, just like footprints in the sand after the beach is hit with a large ocean surge.
In the end, Andy concludes his article by declaring the sites in Utah to be as he puts it a "silent testimony to the immensity of God's judgment in the past…" while being blatantly ignorant of the truth that says these sites were all formed gradually over period of millions of years. If the immensity of God's judgment was like what creationists claimed it was, none of the natural wonders of Utah along with everything else that's of natural wonder would have existed. All of them presented in Andy's article are not only irrelevant to what will happen in the future according to the passage in II Peter 3 which Andy presents at the conclusion of his article, but they are also nothing more than false testimonies to a world that never existed despite what Andy and the rest of the creationist horde stupidly asserts.
