Did I promote the “Mormon Religion” by publishing my web page “Searching for Ropens and Finding God?” I would be delighted if a reader not yet a member of my church investigated the LDS faith after reading that page, yet that was not on my mind when I wrote it. This needs explaining.

A biology professor in Minnesota wrote a blog post, the other week, blasting my research and investigations into sighting reports of apparent pterosaurs (AKA pterodactyls). Most of his declarations about my intentions, however, were false. His mistake about my purposes in writing that page on lds-nonfiction-dot-com, however, was interesting to me; I was actually writing to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who might enjoy reading my most recent book, Searching for Ropens and Finding God (every person deserves to know the truth). That’s why the page is on lds-nonfiction, instead of something like “Christian Nonfiction-Book Readers” or something like that. I was simply targeting members of my own church.

I suggest blog writers stick to issues rather than pin imagined motivations onto the names of those with whom they disagree. Bulverism may be getting worse, since C. S. Lewis invented that name. Since the biology professor in Minnesota was trying to discourage readers from considering my writings, using bulverism, I’ll quote, on the subject of bulverism, from the third edition of Searching for Ropens and Finding God:

The Smithsonian post suggests that Jim Blume and David Woetzel are themselves a problem, as they attempt to persuade people that dinosaurs and pterosaurs are still living. Switek says they’re creationist explorers, which nobody denies, but that labeling implies we should doubt modern pterosaurs could exist. Be aware: most eyewitnesses are non-creationists, a fact unknown to many skeptics. (Thus many eyewitnesses are shocked at what they see.) Let’s avoid even a hint of bulverism, examining ideas for their own strengths and weaknesses. Keep to the subject, the concept that one or more species of pterosaur may be still living. [page 295]

C. S. Lewis gave us “bulverism,” lamenting the decline of human reasoning. He defined the word in the mid-twentieth century: “The modern method is to assume without discussion that he [someone whose opinion you dislike] is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.” How much better to talk about the subject at hand! [page 326]

###

Evidence for Pterosaurs and Honesty

For modern living pterosaurs, however, we have BOTH physical evidence and eyewitness evidence. The difficulty some persons have with it, however, is that reported eyewitness encounters with living pterosaurs dominate the physical evidence, in both quantity and quality. So if you quickly scan a few sentences on one or two web pages, on modern pterosaurs, you’ll see only one or two sighting accounts, probably eyewitness evidence, not physical.

Live Pterodactyl

In daylight, seven native boys or teenagers climbed up to a crater lake, around 1994, on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, with no worry about the legendary ropen. Why fear the ropen, for the flying creature comes out at night, rarely in daylight; but this day was different.

Strange Flying Creatures and Bulverism

“Bulverism” C. S. Lewis labeled the slick ploy of avoiding reasoning on a subject by pointing out the reason ones opponent is so silly. Do some criticisms of living-pterosaur investigations qualify as bulverism? I believe so.

.

Nonfiction spiritual/true-life-adventure/cryptozoology book by Whitcomb

Searching for Ropens and Finding God

This cross-genre book is becoming known as “the Bible of modern pterosaurs.”

The Amazon page quotes the nonfiction book Searching for Ropens and Finding God:

Three Christians—one middle-aged LDS-Mormon high priest and two Protestant young earth creationists—explored Umboi Island in two separate expeditions in 2004, interviewing eyewitnesses of a glowing animal of the night: the elusive nocturnal ropen. [from the back cover]

That page does not mention that the author is that latter-day saint. The book itself mentions my membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in the first chapter, although little is said about it except the following:

My confidence with humans came from serving in Louisiana and Mississippi for two years as a volunteer missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (I myself was a convert at age twenty-two). [page 15]

So is this book LDS nonfiction? Much of it covers research and expeditions by my Christian associates and me, emphasizing how people of various belief systems need to be open minded to the work of those of different faiths:

This is not propaganda for any human philosophy, yet I extoll the accomplishments of those Young Earth Creationists who have been my associates for many years. I suggest we allow ourselves to find literal truth in the Bible, regardless of whatever passages we had assumed were mainly symbolic. For those who think that pill too bitter, at least avoid ridiculing those labeled “creationist.”

SFRFG I wrote for persons of many faiths (not including atheists, who can be offended). With that said, parts of it can be more easily appreciated by LDS readers. Living true to one’s testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ—that is not mentioned explicitly in the book, yet I hope it is understood by LDS readers. During the past eleven years, I don’t recall any temptation to compromise my convictions, although I have often associated with Christians of other faiths.

Religious Bias

Latter-day saint readers should well understand the following:

What went wrong? They had already made arrangements for a party of two Americans to fly to Umboi; in addition, Woetzel didn’t want to change plans by adding an explorer he had never met: At that time, to him I was a stranger, an unknown Mormon Californian. Left out of the expedition, I was dejected.

I ended up leading the first expedition of 2004, and Woetzel led the second. Since then, we have cooperated a number of times, in promoting the truth about eyewitness testimonies of apparent living pterosaurs. (To the best of my knowledge, only two scientific papers have been written on this subject and published in a peer-reviewed journal: one by Woetzel and one my me.) As it turned out, the two separate expeditions we led in 2004 were the best way of investigating sightings by natives on Umboi Island. Although we all failed to photograph or videotape a ropen, our differing interview techniques succeeded in complementing each other. In addition, most of the interviews were non-overlapping, with their eyewitnesses being mostly different from my own.

So, is this an LDS nonfiction or not? Yes, read the book and decide for yourself.

LDS Nonfiction Author

LDS author Jonathan David Whitcomb wrote the revised and enlarged third edition of the book Searching for Ropens and Finding God.

.

Third edition of Searching for Ropens

.

Press releases are traditionally written as if unbiased news, not in first person (If thine “I” offends thee, pluck it out). I have found the following useful when writing a press release in which I need to quote myself.

Write what you want to say in the release, then before finalizing it, write those exact words in a blog post. Of course you’ll need to use your name, probably spelled the same, in both of them. Just remember to publish the blog post before publishing the press release. If you can include the title of the post in references at the bottom of the release, it can show the news publisher it is valid and safe to publish.

I’ve not read The Miracle of Father Kapaun; keep that in mind. I’ve read mostly from the Amazon “Look Inside” excerpts for this nonfiction biography of a war hero.

Let’s examine the technical quality in one brief excerpt, remembering that the quality of ideas, the noble life, the Christ-like example—those can compensate for imperfect English with ease. What follows, I hope, will not distract from the deeper value of this book. For the moment, I merely encourage improvement in writing quality in one detail.

Quality Writing

Consider the following sentence, keeping in mind the context: an army chaplain who assisted wounded soldiers during the Korean War. What do you think of it?

He literally carried a wounded soldier on a long, torturous forced march to the prison camp.

I don’t imply that any basic rule of English has been violated: I see nothing wrong in punctuation or spelling. By the way, if you thought that “torturous” was the wrong word, I disagree, for the soldier was probably suffering pain relevant to a word like “torture.” The problem is subtle.

Whether it’s by a medic or chaplain or regular soldier, a wounded comrade is carried in somebody’s arms. The word “literally” can distract from that simple act, tempting the reader to wonder, for a moment, how a wounded soldier could be non-literally carried. I know this is trivial in itself, but it gives us a clue that the writer is probably not professional, and imperfections can add up over the course of 200 pages.

The point? Avoid any adjective or adverb (or any other word) that will distract from what we want to portray.

A Distracting Metaphor

Accidentally distracting the reader need not come from one word. A poorly thought out metaphor can be distracting, as in the following example of my own making, keeping to the same subject:

Using the word “literally” in the above sentence is not in itself disastrous, not like tripping while carrying a wounded soldier and dropping the man onto the ground.

Notice how the above metaphor does the opposite of what is intended? We imagine the fall and the poor injured soldier hitting the ground—a serious accident—but the point was intended to be that something is not disastrous. Beware of putting “not” in front of a metaphor.

The Miracle of Father Kapaun

While writing this post, two or more copies of The Miracle of Father Kapaun may have been sold on Amazon, for it’s now ranked #574. The quality of English is not a strain on sales of this book, or many other books I suppose, when the interest and value is great.

Priest, Soldier and Korean War Hero

.

How do you promote the sales of the third edition of your nonfiction book? I’d like to know that. On Amazon, the first two editions of my cryptozoology book Live Pterosuars in America are still being purchased while the newly published (expanded, improved) third edition, at almost the same price, has not sold a single copy.

It’s not that the earlier editions were received poorly. Favorable reviews from ordinary readers include the following:

“I couldn’t put this book down. It is absolutely fascinating to read about eyewitness accounts of the people who have seen these creatures. To learn about these testimonies from such an open minded perspective is refreshing in the extreme! The way that our school systems and scientists alike are indoctrinated is sad. There is so much money out there being used for research, if only they would use it for good. I highly recommend this book to anyone! People should know the truth about what is going on. No one ever hears anything about this unless they conduct extremely specific internet searches, even then, information is minimal. Jonathan Whitcomb needs to write more books!” [review on Amazon.com, referring to second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America]

From a common reader who comments like that, what author could ask for more? But it seems that the online word about the first two editions has spread so far on the internet that it takes attention away from the improved third edition.

How does the book relate to the common LDS reader? Written purely in cryptozoology genre, in contrast to the first edition of my first book Searching for Ropens (which had many references to religious concepts and principles), my recent nonfiction takes the reader into the experiences of eyewitnesses of apparent living pterosaurs. Live Pterosaurs in America allows readers to use their own religious (or non-religious) perspective in evaluating the possibility of modern living pterosaurs, regarding the origin of life and how various concepts of evolution relate (or do not relate). To the point, following the Savior’s commandment in the eleventh chapter of Third Nephi, I avoid religious disputation by avoiding tearing down another religion.

From the Book Description on Amazon:

Encounter eyewitness accounts of living pterosaurs in the United States. Live “pterodactyls?” In the United States? Many scientists have long assumed all pterosaurs died millions of years ago. Now take a whirlwind tour of many years of investigations in cryptozoology, and prepare for a shock: At least two species of pterosaurs have survived, uncommon, not so much rare as widely, thinly distributed.

I just received a dog-eared nonfiction book from an associate, a man who has more field experience, in cryptozoology, than I have. I learned much, but not from the content of the book itself: I am the author. I learned from the hand-written notes in that copy.

I had assumed that this second edition had been well edited, although editing had been done only by me. My friend’s detailed comments (on some pages, filling up much of the blank space) made it obvious that a third edition is in order. Of course, that decision needs to be taken in context: Using POD (publishing on demand), I had approved that second edition just a few days before I discovered a major typo on the back cover, so I had already been planning on a third edition.

For the most part, my associate’s work was neither substantive editing nor copy editing. He was setting me straight regarding his perspectives and opinions on several details covered in the book (some details are beyond the experience of any but a few cryptozoologists in the world). How important is peer review!

To the novice writer of nonfiction, I suggest the following order, after you are sure of a market for your book and a means to following through with marketing (some writers write books on those subjects; take marketing seriously).

1. Write your book, rewriting it to some degree but not too deeply into improving the English . . . not yet.
2. Give a copy to a trusted associate who is an expert in the field. Review the comments, more than once before deciding what needs changing.
3. Perfect the manuscript as best you can, whatever types of editing you do.
4. Consider professional substantive editing.
5. Consider professional copy editing.

###

About Jonathan Whitcomb

Fear not the light of unfamiliar hue
Washing sand at first
Then penetrating the depths
It bids a hidden feast emerge at last

In nonfiction writing, how should we hand out criticism? When we find that a person is really in error, we must remember this is a real person, someone whose life in general may have only limited relevance to that error. Consider the alternative you have to offer, and be willing to acknowledge how he may be correct in some detail, in spite of his mistake. By all means concentrate on the truth. An example is in order.

Are Reports of Living Pterosaurs Anecdotes?

In this post, I referred to a critic who disputed the validity of a report of an apparent living pterosaur. I left out the name of the critic, not even linking to his web site. This may be the safest way to point out a weakness in someone else’s written idea, but I also offer this as an example of how not to criticize, for that critic mentioned the name of the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn and then flatly declared that his report was a hoax. Since “hoax” includes “lie,” that could be a case of libel; since I found Kuhn to be highly credible (I interviewed him by phone), that criticism of the U.S. Marine appears to be the worst form of criticism.

In part, the critic said in his blog, “I had been planning on writing a post called ‘Thoughts on Eskin Kuhn’s Pterosaur Sighting’ . . . an American soldier named Eskin Kuhn saw a pterosaur while stationed in Cuba. The claim is a hoax. I no longer have the patience for dealing with creationist-related debunkings and I have no intention of actually writing up one for this topic.”

The critic who seems to have carelessly handed out libel wrote only a short paragraph, with no indication of having done any research or detailed analysis. He was then confronted by an unexpected response from an angry Mr. Kuhn. I think the critic could have avoided that confrontation by using common sense and writing responsibly.

This case deserves an explanation. In 1971, Eskin Kuhn was assigned to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (a U.S. military installation). One clear day, while he was taking a break outside, he saw two long-tailed creatures flying together, at close range and low altitude, with no obstruction to his view. Being a talented realistic artist, that same day he drew a sketch of the two apparent pterosaurs. He later gave a detailed report for cryptozoologists. For four decades he has stood by his account of his experience, in spite of occasional criticisms or brusque dismissals.

I began my investigations in cryptozoology while actively working as an independent forensic videographer, working with attorney firms, mostly in Southern California. My experiences interviewing accident victims, their caregivers, and others, gave me some foundation for interviewing eyewitnesses of apparent living pterosaurs (not that the accidents were monstrous experiences; I just learned to listen openly and ask appropriate questions for each situation). Early in 2010, I phoned Eskin Kuhn; he had no warning. I questioned him about his 1971 sighting, with the same approach I normally use for those interviews: unlike an attorney questioning a witness in court, more like a detective questioning someone on the street. That approach leaves open all possibilities for discoveries: potential truth in the witness account and potential errors in perception, credibility issues both positive and negative. The person so interviewed rightly perceives I am open to hearing truth, but the questioning subtly allows me to later catch potential problems with credibility and perception, as I review my record and memory of the interview.

Both during my telephone interview with Eskin Kuhn and after reviewing it later, I found him to be highly credible. If there were any hoax, he would have spoken differently than he did, so the careless critic appears to have been completely wrong in his accusation. Since I was not Mr. Kuhn’s attorney, bringing his case to court, I felt no need to mention the name of that critic, although in other cases (other critics of eyewitness accounts) I have mentioned names. But that’s for another post.

__________________________________________________________

Child care in Long Beach

Have you noticed the one strange category for posts on this blog? Why “Live Pterosaurs?” It’s just me . . . my specialty in writing two cryptozoology books: Searching for Ropens and Live Pterosaurs in America. I know many fantasies have been written about dangerous dragons in faraway places and fantasy creatures appearing in ones backyard; but I write nonfiction.

What? Dragons are real; pterosaurs, nonextinct? Now you know why you’ve never heard of my nonfiction books: They’re published only in English (I hope that will someday change), and they contradict some fundamental cultural beliefs in most English-speaking nations (I hope cultural beliefs will someday change for the better). In other words, my books have usually sold poorly, for in our culture modern pterosaurs fly too far above the heads of dogmatic universal-extinction proclamations, and glowing nonfiction dragons glare too brightly to be discerned by modern professors who’ve long assumed “fictional legend.”

That deserves more explanation. I believe that some of the old tales of fire-breathing dragons came from real animals: non-extinct bioluminescent pterosaurs; I believe that one of those species (of what some of us would call “glowing pterodactyls”) was a venomous Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur that the ancient Israelites, at the time of Moses, called “fiery flying serpent.” I did not invent that idea; I do support it.

My belief in modern pterosaurs is reinforced by continual emails from around the world, emails revealing eyewitness encounters with flying creatures far unlike any known bird or bat, emails that I sometimes quote in blogs and books. Why do I believe most individuals who write to me about those sightings? Most of them appear credible, some of them passing my probing questioning as honest eyewitnesses (neither hoaxers nor insane) some of them standing by their accounts even under ridicule, even for years, unwavering. They deserve someone who will write in their defense. I continue to write.

I know “living pterosaur” appears strange. Too many Westerner critics have assumed that strangeness must live only in a delusion held by me and my associates; nevertheless, eyewitnesses continue to send me emails and I continue to write about their sightings of live pterosaurs. I don’t deny how strange this appears, but I stand by the credibility of those who bravely admit their encounters with strange flying creatures.

You may write on subjects and in genres worlds apart from my own (if you write fictions about dragons, worlds apart they are indeed); but if you write with passion about the truth in your own nonfictions or the truths within your fictions, I may be of some service. I would like to share my experiences. Keep writing.

____________________________________________________________

Long Beach Child Care