Doug Phillips: Man of Integrity?
I recently wrote a post concerning Doug Phillips’ strange view of “honor”. He’s obsessed with the idea of honor, and won’t shut up about it, but his ill conceived and even more ill timed alliance with Doug Wilson, and Phillips’ reaction to the subsequent pedophile scandal at New Saint Andrews College revealed that he’s got a pretty elastic definition of “honor”. People have always said that if you’re doing business with a man who won’t shut up about how important honesty is to him, grab your wallet and run the other way. The same principle would seem to obtain when it comes to those who are always going on about how important honor is to them.
On that post, I received the following comment.
Comment by Dana
6/20/2006 @ 12:21 pm
This is not the first time this has happened. In 2002 Doug Phillips and VF came out as a tour group to my property in Colorado through what turned out to be a group of very dishonest and unethical so-called “Christian” dinosaur diggers whom Doug practically deified in his forum. A film was made from that experience called “Raising the Allosaur”. It was loaded with inaccurate information. Myself and others raised objections both to the film and, as soon as their character came to light, the diggers. I approached Doug both privately and through VF itself. We were all labeled a bunch of greedy hypocrites, and Doug himself never even bothered to respond. When word finally started to get around the creationist society VF simply deleted references to the diggers they supported and took the film off their shelves. Of course this didn’t take place until the film had been their leading money-maker for months on end. Never was there a whisper of apology to anyone who had made a stand for truth, rather they were berated and judged as being people who were out to get those who had been bought by the blood of Jesus.
So I googled a bit, and found some more info, by the same person. It doesn’t look too good for Mr. Honor and Integrity:
This email was forwarded to Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, concerning the facts of the “Raising of the Allosaur” video. The author of this letter, Dana Forbes, is the owner of the property where the allosaur was discovered and is an eyewitness of the events which transpired during its discovery and excavation.
Dear ***********,
Your e-mail of 8/11/2003 was passed on to me by someone who was involved in the 2001-2002 excavation of the allosaur from my property. I was the landowner the film refers to, and thought it might be helpful, even though some time has elapsed, to pass along what transpired.
I quote from your email: “I watched the documentary on the Allosaurus. It was the DeRosas and Doug Phillips’ team that excavated it. I also understand that there was an agreement that what Doug Phillips’ team found they could have. As far as I know Joe Taylor was not involved. The site is owned by a Christian home schooling couple, and the DeRosas have the fossil rights.”
First of all the Vision Forum group that came out was just a tour group. They were given an opportunity to dig some at a site that I had found the year before. We had already excavated some field jackets encasing parts of the allosaur’s spine in 2001. This was done under Joe Taylor’s direction and supervision. The DeRosas were there helping, but so were a number of others. The VF group in general was a fantastic group of people who helped move a lot of dirt and helped locate some important bones. They did no actual removal of significant bone material. During their digging they uncovered a neck vertebra at which point they were done. Joe Taylor came out after the VF people left and conducted the excavation of the vertebral column including the skull. The DeRosas were clearly involved, but they did not direct the removal of anything from the site. Joe did. (By the way, the vertebra that the Vision Forum group uncovered was removed in a separate jacket from the skull and was a dirt load of distance from it). Doug Phillips and VF had no rights to any of the bone material excavated. The DeRosas, Joe Taylor and my family all had a stake in the allosaur. It is amazing that Joe’s team, the main ones responsible for “raising the allosaur”, are given no credit in the film at all. Joe’s Mt. Blanco team is not mentioned. Let me repeat, those most responsible for quote “making the film” based on its given title received NO credit whatsoever. Additionally certain necessary others involved and our family as well are not listed in the credits. However, home schooled boys and girls out on an adventure with their parents are said to “raise from the ground what appears to be the most complete Allosaur…ever found in the history of paleontology (gross overstatement of bone percentage), including the monster’s giant skull.” * And Doug Phillips’ name is listed everywhere. (*Taken verbatim from the back cover of the “Raising the Allosaur” video. Italics are mine.)
Other major problems with the film include the comment that I found the bones with a scintillator. The awareness of bones on the property came from a local old-timer and my actual discovery of my first bones came as a direct answer to prayer. Later, I did use a handheld scintillator in an effort to help find new sites, but this mostly led to dead ends. Most of my discoveries came from what I believe to be a God given ability to see the bone material and then the ability to follow it up to its source. The site that is called the “behemoth site” was discovered by my son, Evan. A paleontology student from Mesa College in Grand Junction discovered what the DeRosas have termed the “steg site”. I found the allosaur site and had removed other bone from it before any excavators were ever on the property.
We were never involved with the Grand Junction Museum or the Museum of the Rockies. One of the world’s largest dinosaur fossil museums did express an interest in partnering with me, but that is a far cry from “major, major museums…chasing after” me. There are other less glaring, yet important technical inaccuracies.
The video certainly conveys the idea that the DeRosas and Doug “did it all”. It also incorrectly describes the landowner’s story. I communicated with Doug Phillips about the problems with the film, but he never connected with me. Later, when I questioned Doug, based on the allosaur “documentary”, about his qualifications to host a Christian film contest which cited integrity as a major standard, I received angry accusations from his establishment that I was simply looking out for my own gain.
Personally, we do not view this film as a documentary. It has too many flaws and promotes fantastical PR for VF and Creation Expeditions. Frankly I believe it has done a tremendous amount of harm. Not only does the film reduce the scientific value of the discovery because of lack of true reporting of the facts, but it also in the long run hurts the home school movement that the producer indicated that he was trying to promote. Hyperbolism does not sit well with science and does not belong in the creationist’s toolbox. Exaggeration eats away at the foundations of integrity and virtue that we are trying to instill in the upcoming generation. There are other issues as well that I prefer not to go into here. Vision Forum could tell their own story, but they had no right to tell or make any one else’s story their own. For us, the film promotes a falsehood that masquerades as truth. I think you would find it hard if not impossible to find anyone who was originally part of the dig project on the Forbes Ranch that did not feel that way or worse about the film. This is of course magnified when one realizes the amount of money that VF probably made on the film as well as the other doors of opportunity flung open because of the falsely placed notoriety gained from it. Hope this corrects some of the misunderstandings surrounding the history of the site. I am copying this statement to those that were indicated as having received your original statement.
Dana Forbes
Come to think of it, I do recall a few years back where Phillips and Vision Forum were hyping their movie Raising The Allosaur. Really hyping it. And, just as this post says, they no longer carry it. No, it doesn’t look good at all, if this person’s story about deceit, misrepresentation, disrespecting and failing to credit the real discoverers, and taking the credit for himself and VF is to be believed. And if they’re not telling the truth, then why did Doug Phillips and Vision Forum pull Raising The Allosaur off the market?
Why is that, Doug Phillips?
