A little story about something that happened in Arkansas back in 2005…
My husband and I were visiting some friends in Bella Vista, Arkansas, where they had just bought a home.
During this trip, we decided to visit a popular local cave and mill.
During the tour of the cave, the leader of tour – our humble guide, decided to tell some stories to entertain us all, while we were waiting to start a particular part of the tour. There were some stragglers, and he was waiting for them to catch up. He seemed like a likeable person who loved to talk about what a bad job Texas was doing educating its kids. One example he gave was how, for a long time, it was not a requirement to take U.S. history in order to graduate high school, but you needed to take Texas state history instead in order to fulfill the requirement of being versed in “U.S.” History. The stories were funny, but it was at that point when things got weird…
When the rest of the group caught up with us, we all gathered to hear more about the cave. We were directed by the group leader to look up at the ceiling of the cave (which was only a foot or so above our heads) as he described what we were looking at. We could see clearly fossil imprints of shells, exotic underwater aquatics and plants. (Very cool, I thought to myself) Then he said, “by looking at these imprints, we can guage exactly how old this cave is”. Can anyone here give me their own estimate as to how old this cave might be?”
Right away, some girls in front of us enthusiastically answered, “I know, I know! This cave was created during the time of the Great Flood!”.
I was FLOORED by how stupid and uneducated these people were around me.
I couldn’t believe my ears, as I was about the say that it had happened many millions of years ago.
The leader of the group responded to these girls with an enthusiastic “Correct! You are correct! It happened during the Great Flood of Noah’s Ark! Ladies and Gentlemen, this cave has been dated to be as old as 3,000 years!”
Not less than five minutes ago, we were all joking about how screwed up the education system is in Texas. And now these same folks are nodding in agreement about using a *biblical* age in dating a cave with fossils in it!
Yes, indeed, our kids is learnin’!
