HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON? PARK SERVICE WON’T SAY — Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

Washington, DC — Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

In a letter released today, PEER urged the new Director of the National Park Service (NPS), Mary Bomar, to end the stalling tactics, remove the book from sale at the park and allow park interpretive rangers to honestly answer questions from the public about the geologic age of the Grand Canyon. PEER is also asking Director Bomar to approve a pamphlet, suppressed since 2002 by Bush appointees, providing guidance for rangers and other interpretive staff in making distinctions between science and religion when speaking to park visitors about geologic issues.

In August 2003, Park Superintendent Joe Alston attempted to block the sale at park bookstores of Grand Canyon: A Different View by Tom Vail, a book claiming the Canyon developed on a biblical rather than an evolutionary time scale. NPS Headquarters, however, intervened and overruled Alston. To quiet the resulting furor, NPS Chief of Communications David Barna told reporters and members of Congress that there would be a high-level policy review of the issue.

According to a recent NPS response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by PEER, no such review was ever requested, let alone conducted or completed.

Park officials have defended the decision to approve the sale of Grand Canyon: A Different View, claiming that park bookstores are like libraries, where the broadest range of views are displayed. In fact, however, both law and park policies make it clear that the park bookstores are more like schoolrooms rather than libraries. As such, materials are only to reflect the highest quality science and are supposed to closely support approved interpretive themes. Moreover, unlike a library the approval process is very selective. Records released to PEER show that during 2003, Grand Canyon officials rejected 22 books and other products for bookstore placement while approving only one new sale item — the creationist book.

Ironically, in 2005, two years after the Grand Canyon creationist controversy erupted, NPS approved a new directive on “Interpretation and Education (Director’s Order #6) which reinforces the posture that materials on the “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 [and] Interpretive and educational programs must refrain from appearing to endorse religious beliefs explaining natural processes.”

“As one park geologist said, this is equivalent of Yellowstone National Park selling a book entitled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan,” Ruch added, pointing to the fact that previous NPS leadership ignored strong protests from both its own scientists and leading geological societies against the agency approval of the creationist book. “We sincerely hope that the new Director of the Park Service now has the autonomy to do her job.”

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=801


I'd comment on this, but I don't know what to say.

I...I...

Well f*ck. I just don't know what to say either.

So does this mean I should retract my application to UC Berkeley's geophysics undergrad program? Because I don't know if I could suspend my belief in geology for two whole academic years. I'm betting it would have an adverse effect on my grades.

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

I recall seeing a video a few years back that detailed how the Grand Canyon had been formed over millions of years of slow water erosion through many layers of rock.

But then a smaller scale canyon was formed elsewhere in the US over a period of a week during severe flash flooding - complete with all the geological layers of rock etc.

My pov is - if science is 100% dead-certain of something, then let it be printed as fact.  If however the age of the canyon is just a best-guess based on debatable evidence, then it shouldn't be presented as fact.  Ditto for evolution - it should be presented as science's best guess so far, rather than as unquestionable fact.  Because when we reach the stage where theories are presented as facts, that's the time when inquiring minds switch off, and we stop learning...

Well, as I'm sure you already know, I wholeheartedly disagree. First off, there is no way a smaller canyon could develop layers like those seen in the Grand Canyon over the course of one week. That is bull. All a flash flood likely did was expose layers that were already there. Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon?

Secondly, evolution, as I've stated in the past, is an observable fact. The explanation for the fact is is the theory of evolution and debate about the theory's validity is practically non-existent among real scientists. I sit here, eyeing my 300 million year old fossilized crinoid embedded in rock that dates from the Pennsylvanian epoch of the Paleozoic era, scratching my head.

Mike, your 2cats

Theories aren't being presented as facts but as explanations for observations made by the scientific method. There is a method and in no way does this close off one's mind. However, it does often present what for some folks is a bitter pill or an inconvenient truth.

Debatable evidence? Explain. 

Mike, your 2cats

2cats, you sure know how to charm a girl and her geogeek heart...

CybacaT, please explain what you mean by a smaller canyon forming during a flood, complete with layers. Are you saying the layers of soil were deposited during the flood into configurations which created a canyon? Or are you saying that the flood waters cut through layers of rock to create the small canyon? Because I have responses for both but I'm waiting to see which case it is before proceeding.

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

Yes I have been to the Grand Canyon and even though I'd read before about the size of it, I was still impressed when seeing first-hand how massive it is.

A I said, the video I saw was years ago, so my memory is sketchy.  But here's a different Geological perspective on the GC that is similar:

http://www.origins.org/articles/bohlinray_grandcanyon.html

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n1/radioactive-dating

Dr. Bohlin has a B.S. in zoology. Well the BS part is right anyway. And why should I take the executive director of Probe Ministries (www.probe.org) seriously on matters of science? Well, afterall, he can explain, through scientific methods I'm sure, what happens after death. With such prophetic powers at his disposal he is obviously in the know. He makes it pretty clear in his argument about the age of Earth that Christian conservative Old Testament scholars and Christian scientists are not in universal agreement on the topic. As for non-Christian scientists and non-Christian laymen's opinions, I guess they don't really count  because, well, they're non-Christians! He says the age of Earth is a question of both scientific and biblical interpretation. I say it is only a question of biblical interpretation if you are interpreting the bible metaphorically. People are quick to take any evidence of ancient flooding as evidence for the flood in the Noah myth. But the myth of eternal return (Eliade) in the form of a flood or other catastrophic disintegration of cosmic order followed by an eventual re-creation is so prevalent among societies everywhere and throughout human history as to be archetypal. How does one explain the flood (or its equivalent) when encountered in myths that pre-date the Bible?

As for the Grand Canyon itself, as Amanda or any other serious geologist already knows, the principle of superposition can help explain the phenomenon of demonstrably older layers showing up beneath younger layers of sediment. But this little bit of freshman level knowledge has apparently confounded our good 'Doctor' who spent TWO WHOLE HOURS studying the strata. A large gap in between layers can be explained, I believe, by a long period of relative stablity in the geological processes that helped form the canyon. Also, the age of the shale does not necessarily indicate the time it was deposited.

Mike, your 2cats

I had to chuckle listening to NRP on the weekend.  There were new scientific theories concerning the origins of life...including that life may have started generating more than once, and this was influenced by space matter.

It's the old story where science is dead certain, and downright arrogant about what they know.  Then next week, it's a story that starts - "What scientists once thought to be true could in fact turn out completely different based on a new finding/theory/scientific movement who NOW think XYZ is true instead, completely turning on it's head long-held scientific beliefs.".

To me these theories chop and change like the weather, so I sometimes question the enthusiasm and zeal with which some leap to the stoic defence of scientific theories...which are little more than the best guess available (assuming you're trying to think of a theory which doesn't include God).  But good luck to you.

What you could try is writing them down, putting them in a box, and then rechecking them 10-20 years from now.  You'll probably get a good laugh out of some of the wild tales you were being told back at the beginning.  As for me, I'll stick with the "theory" that was written thousands of years ago, and has stood the test of centuries of criticism and scrutiny - it has just a teensy bit more credibility for me than the latest musings of the week from a scientist needing to justify their existence and attract funding. 

Myself, I don't think science and belief in God need to be at odds with one another. The Doonesbury cartoon, drawn by Bush's Yale classmate btw, is the humorous depiction of the deep-seated fears coursing through the veins of some on the Left, that the Big Bad and Stoopid Fundamentalists on the Right are going to plunge us into the Neo-Dark Ages of an American Theocracy through their ignorance. The article from a "public interest" website is the less amoozing version. Ironically, it has become the (pardon the term) missionary task of these smart people to demonstrate how stoopid and dangerous these pushy fundamentalists really are. Now some of the smart people actually believe in God themselves, but they're not like the stoopid people who are relentlessly pushing us toward the Theocracy. The smart ones, atheists or believers, use their missionary zeal to deal with the most pressing problems of our age... putting the skids to any more horrifying inroads toward the NDA of AT.

And so, these wee little stories pop up with as much seriousness behind them as those guys a half century ago running around Times Square with a sandwich boards proclaiming "The End is Near!" I do not believe the American centers of academic science are in any grave jeopardy of being overrun by the likes of the Trudeau (hahaha) cartoon character. Evidence of this fact is that once again, like every year, in 2006, by and large, it was the US scientists who were the winners of international Nobel Science Awards. None of whom have been taken to secret prisons, btw. 

Didja ever think that MAYBE the intent of such articles and cartoons is to influence the political agenda of their readers by exaggerating reality???  

Now, once our terror over the bulldozing anti-scientists had been aroused by the PEER article, any one of us could have done a simple check of the Grand Canyon National Park website.  I held my breath and took the plunge, expecting to read, "Who knows how many decades old the Grand Canyon is? 300 years? 500? Only Goooooood can say...!" Scary as it was, I wanted to see if the scary Bush anti-science minions had gutted the factual for the foolish, as suggested by the fear-mongering article.

Here's what I found. Must be some brave, brave renegade working on the website. He/she may find him/herself in the anti-God Dissenters Gulag once THIS is discovered! How could he/she claim ANYTHING is older than the Bible says??? 2000 MILLION years and then he claims that is YOUNG? Very YOUNG!

Speaking of gravity (we were, weren't we?), wasn't it Isaac Newton who did some work on that theory? Must have actually been his intelligent doppelganger or his evil twin brother who passed along the theory to Ike. Otherwise, how can you reconcile such folderol as this:

We could go on and on with those stoopid scientists, authors, philosophers, doctors, mathematicians, and even filmmakers and musicians -- you name it -- whom over the years, in addition to their expertise in those fields, also believed in a supreme being -- aka God. To be fair though, the great majority of them came along before the days of the uber-informed Internet and thus were deprived access to the True Path of Critical Thinking.

Are there not bigger fish to fry?  Like how much longer this relationship between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie can survive. 

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Oh, that doesn't appear to be the ACTUAL Grand Canyon National Park website, Booth. 

Ah, but you knew that.

Shivering in my boots over the sheer horror of it all.

With the glory of the Internet you can Google anything at all and find earnest folks trying to sell you one proposition or another. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between what's seriously a BIG threat and what is unworthy of a blip on anyone's radar.

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

It's not located on nps.gov that's all.

The SCARY book you reference, Booth, is ranked a whopping #45,197 on Amazon's top rated books!  Not an unqualified best seller.  Now we wouldn't want to advocate "censorship" would we?  Think of what that would do to all those 9/11 conspiracy theory books.

If they banned the book, the doom and gloomers who worry so about the blooming theocratic movement would have a durned hard time obtaining all their evidence of what's in store.  No, I think, all in all, it's a lot safer to allow the book to exist and have the naysayers write reviews at Amazon or over at PEER's website.  You know, warn the people.  Just like you all are doing here. 

Phew, that was close though!

Susan 

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Did I? Oh, now I remember. The beleagured atheist and his offending bumpersticker, right? Aw, you know it wasn't personal. But hmmm, you rightly identify a "Don't panic" theme developing in my oeuvre. I really do have the sense that there's too much disproportionate rage and misdirected angst these days. It's true. And there I go, raining on parades when I spot 'em.

But I would never deny the pleasure in discussing the less important things in the world, Booth. In fact, the next time you post a thread about the dangers faced by the secular humanists at the hand of the rabid fundamentalists, redeem this card...

I swear, I won't make a peep.  Next time.  And I'll leave the cancer cures to the scientists of either ilk.  

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Okay.

Susan 

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Evolution has had no serious contenders for its "best guess so far" position in science. Our growing knowledge over the years has not fundamentaly changed the theory, only deepened our understanding of it. In Darwin's day, we had Natural Selection as a cause for evolutionary changes in populations. Over time we have added mutation, gene flow, and genetic drift. People ask why human beings are not evolving or why we still have apes if we evolved from apes. I have answers to both questions and, honestly, could probably come up with an answer for any question regarding evolution you might send my way. None of it should be perceived as a threat to your religion because it isn't...though it may be a threat to your personal religious world view. I've got one of those, too, and yet I'm fine with the science.

As for whether or not human beings are still evolving consider the following scenarios and show me exactly how it flies in the face of your religious beliefs:

Note: There are exceptions to these basic scenarios. There are always exceptions.

1. In the Himalayas evolution has solved the problem of lower oxygen levels affecting fetus growth by increasing blood flow, which carries oxygen, to the placenta.

2. In the Andes low oxygen levels resulted, through evolutionary means, in larger lung capacities.

3. Peoples of the Arctic regions are believed to have increased the overall surface area recieving warmth from sunlight directly overhead by retaining shorter distal limbs and more squat profiles. By contrast, people in the African plains are much taller (decreased exposure to the sun when directly overhead).

4. People along equatorial zones increased their melanin over eons resulting in darker skin as a protection from the harsh sun. In colder climates, people likely spent more time indoors, especially in winter seasons and didn't require as much protection from sun and, so, decreased the melanin levels resulting in lighter skin. People in colder regions of the orient also developed lighter skin but, apparently, through different sets of genes. Two different evolutionary paths, in other words, leading to a solution to the same problem: too much sun. But, apparently, some folks would still like to believe skin color makes one superior to another when it means merely that one person has more or less melanin.

5.More research is being done to determine exactly why the peoples native to the Americas at the time of European conquest were so susceptible to European diseases, to the point where, as some estimates have it, 95% of populations were killed off. It doesn't make evolutionary sense, as Charles C. Mann points out, for a bug to kill off its host population so thouroughly. Aside from the obvious fact that the native peoples represented virgin soil for previously unknown diseases (ones that Europeans had often built up immunities to by constant exposure), they had fewer human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) than Europeans suggesting more relative genetic homogeneity. Also, helper-T cells in native populations were predisposed to attacking parasitic invaders rather than micro-organisms as is the case in Europeans. Research suggests that there are two types of helper-T cells: those that fight parasites and those that fight micro-organisms. People have more of one than the other depending on what sort of invaders they encountered more often as tykes.

All these scenarios jive with evolution easily. Now it may be difficult at times, and at times impossible, to tell exactly which evolutionary processes occurred when and where but one or more processes can indeed explain them. The more we understand about biocultural evolution the more the picture gets filled in. These evolutionary adaptations (for that is what they are) do not happen to individuals (individuals don't evolve which is why, Cybacat, I never did grow those horns despite the many times I banged my head against the wall when reading your posts) but to populations over time. The basic definition of evolution is this: variations in allele (ie gene) frequencies over generations. That is all. Nothing so controversial really.

As for the apes? Well, we didn't descend from modern apes, afterall. Modern apes and modern humans shared a common ancestor. Since the split we followed different evolutionary paths so we don't look the same. Apes have adapted quite well into their particular niche and, were it not for human intervention, see no need for becoming extinct if they can help it! That is why they're still around, albeit few in number, those crazy buggers.

Mike, your 2cats

I found this relevant:

Flow Charts of The Scinetific Method vs. the Faith Method

http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/2007-01-15%20--%20science%20vs%20faith.png