Visited the Fossil Museum in Gray TN this afternoon. There is a dig on site from which students and paleontologists are pulling out some amazing fossils. I want to preface this article by stating that I am very proud of the community for honoring the scientific find by dedicating resources to the site, as well as moving the direction of the highway in order to accommodate the dig. There are a plethora of fossil samples being pulled from the ground, two of which have been classified as new species. The exhibits are classy looking, and beautiful, and the facility, labs included, appear to be top notch.
This unfortunately is where my admiration for the project ends, as the whole site is absolutely dedicated to forcing evolutionary propaganda down each guest’s throat at every turn, and on every wall. It was egregious how prevalent the indoctrination was. Granted, I was expecting to encounter the millions-of-years mantra several times, but from the beginning 15 ft 4.5 billion year time line on the wall at step one, to the ode to Charles Darwin hallway at the end, it dripped with the insatiable need to reinforce the religion of humanism, naturalism, and evolution.
It was never presented exactly how the dates were determined for the dig (between 4 million and 7 million years ago), but it could be deduced by both typical evolutionary presupposition and normal modus operandi that pre-determined index fossils dated the rocks, and of course the rocks date the fossils (a.k.a. circular reasoning).
In a 1979 interview with *Dr. Donald Fisher, the state paleontologist for New York, Luther Sunderland, asked him: “How do you date fossils?” His reply: “By the Cambrian rocks in which they were found.” Sunderland then asked him if this were not circular reasoning, and *Fisher replied, “Of course, how else are you going to do it?” (Bible Science Newsletter, December 1986, p. 6.)
“The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning . . because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales.”—*J.E. O’Rourke, “Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy,” American Journal of science, January 1976.
“The charge that the construction of the geologic scale involves circularity has a certain amount of validity.”—*David M. Raup, “Geology and Creationism,” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, March 1983, p. 21.
“It is a problem not easily solved by the classic methods of stratigraphical paleontology, as obviously we will land ourselves immediately in an impossible circular argument if we say, firstly that a particular lithology [theory of rock strata] is synchronous on the evidence of its fossils, and secondly that the fossils are synchronous on the evidence of the lithology.”—*Derek V. Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphic Record (1973), p. 62.
“The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling the explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be hard-headed pragmatism.”—*J.E. O’Rourke, “Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy,” American Journal of Science, January 1976, p. 48.
Furthermore, if you will notice the picture I took of one of their displays 
(sorry about the glare), it states another hard-nosed take on how evolutionists practice science. Let me paraphrase the sign for the laypeople that pass by it. “We here at the Gray Fossil Museum already know that these fossils are as old as we were taught in school, therefore we know we don’t have to use a test that may prove it wrong, despite the fact that C-14 has been found in everything from dinosaurs, to coal, to diamonds (see link here on Carbon dating), and may in fact be found here, which would ruin all of our predetermined expensive exhibits. We would not be able to handle reaching conclusions such as a fossil known to be 4.5 million years old with a C-14 result of 12,000 years for example, and if these conclusions were determined, we would of course throw them out based on the obvious reasoning of either contaminated specimens, leaching, our faulty testing, without once considering a change in our presuppositional position that was determined without any observable, demonstrable, repeatable testing whatsoever.”
This type of “science” has unfortunately become more normal, but is intellectually dishonest. I would be willing to bet C-14 was quite prevalent in these fossils, if one of the local scientists had the integrity and courage to test for it. But as you can see from the picture, they have already informed the public that it is wholly unnecessary.
A final note about the Gray Museum is in regards to the story they present about how these fossils got here. According to their “experts”, water leaked into a cavern under the surface, creating a sinkhole which eventually became deep, and then was filled with trapped wild life from tapirs to snakes to bear, and was then fossilized slowly over time. This conjecture makes me want to take everyone involved and set them on the rim of a sinkhole, toss in hundreds of animal carcasses, and make them camp and watch how quickly nature recycles dead flesh. (Don’t mind the smell, that’s just the rotting away of all your theories). I reiterate what science knows already, which is that fossil formation today is exceedingly rare. Is this sinkhole trap an anomaly that explains the possible thousands of trapped animals? What about the billions of other fossils all over the earth? Perhaps the earth was covered with sink holes? Ridiculous. Fossils are made when organisms are buried quickly by mud and water, and the world is filled with organisms that have been buried quickly by mud and water. Sorry Gray Fossil Museum, but it’s time to take Darwin the racist, incestuous philosopher off your wall, and start to practice real science.
J.R. Cooper - Author 