I make no secret of the fact that I regard the theory of evolution as no more than unscientific mumbojumbo and that the evidence overwhelmingly supports special creation. I also make no secret of the fact that evolutionists frequently abandon science and massage the data in order to defend their religious fairytale. And I say that as a Biochemist, Systems Analyst, Educator and a Minister.

The case of the extinct New Zealand flightless bird called the Moa is a case in point. Similar to the Emu and Ostrich, it was, however, much larger with the tallest ones reaching a height of 3 metres. Since modern native Maoris have no historical knowledge of the Moa, it has been assumed that these birds have been extinct for tens of thousands of years.

But back in 1866, in a drained swamp at Glenmark. north of Canterbury, a large collection of Moa bones were found. German geologist Julius von Haast began a systematic investigation. During excavations, von Haast estimated that the Moa became extinct around the period of the dinosaurs. According to traditionally accepted geological dating founded on evolutionary assumptions, this would place the extinction around 130,000 years ago.

A few years later more Moa remains were unearthed near Southbridge at the mouth of the Rakia River but this time together with the bones of Homo sapiens - 'modern' man. This at once forced von Haas to revise his proposed 130,000 years date for the extinction and propose a much later time, to 'Stone Age' man. This dating also established the approximate arrival of the earliest Maoris in New Zealand, and the extinction of the Moa was then proposed to have been the destructive hunting methods of the Maoris who used to set the scrub on fire to drive the birds out into the open for mass-slaughtering.

In 1872, in an excavated cave near Christchurch, Moa remains were found in strata that also included tools and implements much more sophisticated than those used by Stone-age man. Von Haast, who was by now the director of the Canterbury Museum, was forced again to revise his dating for the Moa extinction, to about 1100 A.D.

In 1939 a 15 year-old farmer's son named Jim Eyles who lived in Marlborough, dicovered nearby several graves containing human remains. In the graves were also found well-fashioned tools such as adzes, chisels, needles and fish hooks, as well as ornaments and necklaces. Also discovered in the site was a Moa egg, which, of all his finds, gave Eyles the most fame.

Later excavations in the area turned up bones of other creatures such as eagles, swans and crows, as well as two types of Moa, proving that all these species existed together. The ornaments were of Polynesian design and confirmed the earliest settlement date for the original Maoris to be about 1100 A.D. This proves that the extinction of the Moa could not have been long after that period, round about 1,000 years ago, not 130,000! The reason why mdoern Maoris have no passed-down stories about Moa hunting seems to be that they were largely crop-growers and not hunters. They are believed to have arrived in New Zealand about 1300 A.D. Excavations in the North Island have revealed that living Moas of a smaller size than those in the South Island survived until the 1500's.

Be that as it may, the extinction date of only 800 years ago is a vey far cry from the dinosaur period - whenever that actually was - and it surely calls into question geological dating of other extinct creatures. The finding in recent times of living Coelocanths, once confidently stated by some geologists to have become extinct 300,000 million years ago, is another such case. And now they have found dinosaur tissue in fossils! This causes one to wonder how much of fossil dating generally is mostly prejudicial guesswork on the part of those with a religious agenda to promote ... the religious agenda of evolutionary atheism.

Acknowledgements

[1] Malcolm Edwards, The Moa and Geological Dating in Glad Tidings (Solihull, England: 2010), #1512, pp.16-17