ravings of a semi-sane madwoman: you can be stupid all you want

Sunday, January 28, 2007

you can be stupid all you want

believe what you want to believe. humans and dinosaurs roamed the JUST CREATED earth together. i really don't care. what i DO care about is don't hoist that crap upon me. i also care when a government agency such as the national parks service accepts a book touting such nonsense as the grand canyon was created by noah's flood 4,500 years ago.

Faith-Based Geology
Resolving a flood of nonsense at the Grand Canyon

Ronald Bailey January 26, 2007

Grand Canyon Village, Ariz.-Did Noah's flood create the vast chasm that is the Grand Canyon 4,500 years ago? Tom Vail's controversial little book, Grand Canyon: A Different View (2003) claims that geology tells us that this is so. Selling Vail's book at Grand Canyon bookstores affiliated with the National Park Service (NPS) has created quite a stir. In fact, I heard most recently about the controversy at The Amazing Meeting 5, a conference put on by the James Randi Educational Foundation last week.
Eugenie Scott, the head of the National Center for Science Education told an audience of 800 self-described skeptics that selling Vail's book in government sponsored bookstores amounted to endorsing bad science and should be stopped. National Park Service Director's Order #6 seems relevant here. That order states: "The interpretive and educational treatment used to explain the natural processes and history of the Earth must be based on the best scientific evidence available, as found in scholarly sources that have stood the test of scientific peer review and criticism.... Interpretive and educational programs must refrain from appearing to endorse religious beliefs explaining natural processes." However, the very next line may contradict the foregoing insistence on best scientific evidence: "Programs, however, may acknowledge or explain other explanations of natural processes and events." Could "other explanations" perhaps include how Noah's flood created the Grand Canyon? ..........

.............For the most part, the park affiliated bookstores offer many genuinely interesting books on the geology of the Grand Canyon. I highly recommend Carving Grand Canyon: Evidence, Theories, and Mystery (2005) by geologist Wayne Ranney. He discusses a number of unresolved scientific issues about just how the canyon was formed, but notes that most of the current evidence is that Colorado River began sculpting the canyon about 6 million years ago. ........