US National Parks promoting "Creation Science"!

Score another one for "Faith Based" bullshit over science!

The Bush administration has approved the sale of a fundamentalist Xtian pseudoscience text at Grand Canyon National Park. The book, "Grand Canyon: A Different View" claims that the canyon is a few thousand years old, and was created during the "great flood" of Noah's Ark fame, rather than being the result of billions of years of geological uplift and erosion.


http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_14313.shtml

 

That is fucking ridiculous! Seems to me seperation of church and state needs to be enforced a bit more strictly than it is now (is it at all now?).

 

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I can just see those people saying "I told you so" then proceeding to speak in tongues...what strides backwards we are making every day this administration is in office....a few thousand years..please!

 

People have the right to be anything they want. Unfortunately the right people take the most is the right to be ignorant. There are still plenty of people who believe the world is flat. If they chose to look, they'd see that the flood story told in the bible most probably relates to a massive flood of the Euphrates (ironically the Euphrates is more or less in the US these days) in Samarian times. Whereby a merchant and his ship was carried to sea and returned to land days later in what today is known as Bahrain (or somwhere down teh Persian golf I think it was Bahrain). He made it back to Samaria (Messoptotamia/Iraq/USA whatever you know it as) and his story went down inlegend. Much like Santa, untill hundreds of years and iterations of the story was committted to the texts Jewish faith in a Temple in Jerusalem. This is where the first link was found, an ancient Jewish document with a striking resemblance to the story of Noah (down to the name) was found in an archeological dig and the story was traced back from there. Anyway it might not be that and the world may have been covered in a flood for 40 days and 40 nights and god chose to remove the evidence from the geological record, whilst adding in 4.2 billion years worth of geology.
Let 'em buy whatever books they want. Though it is quite humorous watching the separation of church and state in the US disappear. Does that have implications on America being a free coutnry? Or just implications for the definition of free, I supose you could change either.

 

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quote: It is rather strange that an industrialied country like the U.S. takes religious scripture so literally. I don't know of any other modern industrialized country that has this attribute.


There isn't another one, every country that has become industrialized has lost its fundamentalist religion, the US is the exception......although to be fair, it is still a minority, thank god.

 

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The fundamentalists have way more power than I'm comfortable with them having... Living in the bible belt, it can be disturbing how much is based on 'faith' or someshit... for example that fucktard Roy Moore, he has a lot of support in this area (apparently he's running for president too, on the constitutionalist ticket or someshit (thats what I heard anyway...))...

 

I thin you hit a good point thereabout the administration...everyone is so busy complaing about Bush..but stop and think about the people that actually support him and everything he does...thatr scares me more than he does.I used to work with a guy that was firmly convinced the earth was only 22oo years old..all this science and carbon dating stuff was nonsense, his answer was"where did they get the knowledge" (supposedly God just zapped doctors and scientists with ways to solve problems)...it never occurs to people like him that these people are building on several hundred( in some case thousand) years of research and study, gathering several college degrees while hes stuck i na lil NC town pop.1000 with a 7th grade education.......the old saying ignorance and arrogance go hand in hand has definitley shown itself these last 4 years...God bless Texas:&

 

Some church leader quotes.

"Keep the masses poor and ignorant."
"This myth of Christ has served us well."

sorry I cant remember the exact Pontiff for either, not important enuff to me.

 

"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!" ​

Pope Leo X.
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"Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the scientific method is valid. George Bush is a Christian, and God guides him, and we must follow to glorify God."

That's the kind of thinking we're dealing with. Someday they'll get what's coming- too bad we're gonna take the punishment for living alongside them.

 

I don't see what you are upset about.

I don't think Creationism is a valid explanation of how the Universe started, but the Big Bang theory is full of holes too, not all of them black ...

However, remember this book is FOR SALE - the government is not giving it away using taxpayers money. I am sure there are other books that delve into the geology of the Grand Canyon also FOR SALE.

If people want to spend their money on junk that's fine with me. I don't see that as a problem.

 

The difference is that the Big Bang theory - while incomplete - is at least a roughly accurate description of how the universe began, based on the scientific method. Creationism has no credibility whatsoever.

I agree with you though, that as long as taxpayer money isn't being used to pay for this nonsense, I don't see what the problem is.

 

The Big Bang theory itself isn't being disputed here. The age of the planet is. There is incontrovertable geological evidence that "young earth" creationism is a pile of bullshit.

Why this is a problem is that part of the National Park Service's mission is to promote an understanding of the EARTH SCIENCES, and the forces that shaped the landscape of the US. Allowing such pseudoscientific crap to be sold alongside fact-based materials gives these religious tracts a false legitimacy.

Plenty of material is also available at the parks concerning, for example, Native American lore including their creation myths. But you don't see stories about the earth being carried into existence on the back of a giant turtle being presented as SCIENTIFIC FACT. The fact that this book claims to specifically refute accepted scientific theories places it in a different category. It is making demonstrably FALSE CLAIMS, and should not be made available in taxpayer-funded facilities without at least some kind of disclaimer regarding its accuracy.

 

I again am suprised by the amount of fear that exists in these free
speech forums in regard to new ideas, or at least those ideas that contradict
what you already believe. These forums should be about learning and exchanging ideas, not blind propagation and proselytizing. Many of us have not progressed beyond the my-dad-says-it-so-it's-true phenomonen of childhood; that father figure has simply transformed into partisan sets of books, media, friends, or personal experience.
HOw much do you know about creation science or science period? Clearly not from personal experience; not one of us-except Strom Thurmon, who is not talking- was there and thus no one can say far sure what happened. Then where have you acquired such rigid beliefs: from your own experience, from your schooling, or do you form your decisions based on your spiritual beliefs? I think it must be the latter, because if you looked
into the "scientific" facts then you would realize that Creation science has the same amount of credibility (often more) as mainstream science. Incontrovertible Geological evidence?...what exactly are you refering to:
the fossil record, carbon dating, the layers at the Grand Canyon?
The fossil record is very interesting yet somewhat decieving. There exists
a tendancy to assume that fossils formed over millions of years one layer
at a time, but that is not the case at all. In that scenario animals
simply rot and turn to dust. Rather, fossils form by high pressure and the rapid burial of a flood that one might see in, say a great flood perhaps. I urge
you to investigate the influx of fossils in the geological record; it asks
some disconcerting questions. ANd for carbon dating, I am hardly willing
to put my trust in something that fails to be accurate over 6000 years.
Lastly, if you want to learn something, I urge you to look into what happened
at Mt. Saint Helens, after the last eruption. They now have a mini-canyon
containing countless similarities to the Grand Canyon, and amazingly these took only a few days to form, not millions of years.
Now I am not trying to offer irrefutable proof for Creation; because, I can
not prove Creation anymore than I can prove God's existence, or you prove
his non-existence. What I am attempting to demostrate is the reality that
exolution is just as much a religion as Creationism. It requires blind faith-you did not see it happen nor does one see it today-countless assumptions, and the desire to want to believe it. I urge you not to give the answers before the questions are asked. In doing so you do a disservice to yourself, and if persons like you restricted this book at the Grand Canyon you would be doing
a disservice to humanity and, in essence mock free speech.
Do you really think that we know so much more than the billions that
have come before us-Undoubtedly, I mean we have the VCR, and the microscope and we are more skilled at killing, ignoring the needs of others, and wasting time than ever before- I don't think so.

 

Absolutely false. Mainstream science has overwhelming amounts of evidence supporting its claims. Creationism has NO evidence supporting its claims...it thrives just by picking at the faults of REAL scientists instead of presenting any theories with any scientific merit.

You're kidding, right? Where did all the water come from for this great flood? Why do the continents show no geologic evidence of ever being underwater in the last hundred million years?

Bullshit. Evolution is NOT blind faith because it makes predictions that can be tested with experimentation. While the theory of evolution may not be perfect, it is much, much more accurate than creationism.

I don't see why anyone would have a particular "desire to believe" in evolution, as you put it, as opposed to any other scientific or pseudoscientific theory...it doesn't offer an afterlife or threaten you with hell. Evolution is just evolution.

 

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