Grand Canyon Creationist Book

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Blight

Social climber
Jan 5, 2007 - 06:41am PT
You're so right.

Those religious types are too dogmatic to see that science should never, ever be questioned.

If only they could be as open-minded as you, they too would see that only one interpretation of the evidence can be permitted.

Perhaps one day they can embrace your way of tolerance and see that all ideas other than yours should be stifled and ideally censored.

If only they'd stop getting all riled up and whining about every imagined slight against their beliefs, they'd be much happier, more peaceful people, right?

Right?
Patrick Sawyer

climber
Originally California now Ireland
Jan 5, 2007 - 06:48am PT
begat Spanky

LMAO


EDIT

Those religious types are too dogmatic to see that science should never, ever be questioned.

Blinny, I don’t know if you are being facetious or serious, but I don’t think anybody here thinks that science shouldn’t be questioned. Questioning science is one of its main tenets, whereas religions are presented as being absolute.

426

Sport climber
Buzzard Point, TN
Jan 5, 2007 - 08:53am PT
No doubt, D.

The point of science is to "always be questioned"...at least according to every science minded folk I know...


“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”-MT
eeyonkee

Trad climber
Golden, CO
Jan 5, 2007 - 10:29am PT
Sheesh, not Blight again!

edit. Blight, science is questioned ALL of the time...by qualified individuals who happen to be other scientists. There must be 100,000 disparate pieces of evidence for an earth much older than 6000 years. Look at any 1-inch thick deposit of shale and you have an interval that probably exceeds a time-span of 6000 years. You would have to be a complete idiot (or brainwashed more likely) to believe in a 6000 year old earth!
426

Sport climber
Buzzard Point, TN
Jan 5, 2007 - 11:29am PT
HighDesertDJ

Trad climber
Arid-zona
Topic Author's Reply - Jan 5, 2007 - 03:47pm PT
Blight if you read my original post I was simply raising the question as to whether or not there was anything wrong with selling the book at the bookstore. Billing it as 'science' is another question, and I was glibly just pointing out the inheirent conflict with blindly denouncing science's ability to date the Grand Canyon white blindly benefiting from the same science's accomplishments.

Thanks for putting me in my place though! Now I understand how preventing NPS officials from quoting such questionable sources as "geologists."

Del: Thanks for looking that up. Websites are often not up-to-date with current gov't policies, but this is also the reason I didn't bring up the issue in my original post. I could not find a credible source that stated the "NPS officials can't date the Grand Canyon" thing. If anyone can find any other proof that this is just a propoganda front that would be great.
Blight

Social climber
Jan 5, 2007 - 08:03pm PT
Blight if you read my original post I was simply raising the question as to whether or not there was anything wrong with selling the book at the bookstore. Billing it as 'science' is another question, and I was glibly just pointing out the inheirent conflict with blindly denouncing science's ability to date the Grand Canyon white blindly benefiting from the same science's accomplishments.

Oh,I agree completely!

Only carefully screened official questioning of science can be allowed. Unapproved questioning like this book cannot possibly be considered.

After all, unless we decide what is and isn't official science before any enquiry begins, how will we know which enquiries to dismiss out of hand?

After all, without a simple rule of thumb like that, we'd end up allowing all kinds of ludicrous ideas to be considered - we'd have to listen to crazy people saying crazy stuff like the universe is finite and had a beginning and will have an end, at the very same time as science tells us without doubt that the universe has always existed and will always exist.

Imagine that!

You are so right. As you all say, we must restrict questioning of science to ensure that science can be questioned freely.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 5, 2007 - 09:08pm PT
I think Blight fancies himself the Forum iconoclast...
...and it isn't particularly good to make science iconic, for just the reasons Blight parodoies.

But on the otherhand, censoring NPS employees from discussing the geology of the Grand Canyon and eliminating the discussion from pamphlets distributed by the NPS on that geolgy while at the same time distributing a book about the creationist view of the origin of the Grand Canyon seems to be a bit outrageous.

Both sides of the story can be available, but I don't understand why the NPS is compelled to give equal time.

In fact, it is important that people are allowed to follow through on the logical consequences of both representations of that history. Sort of like a high level episode of "Myth Busters"...

...but I don't see why the government should be compelled to represent all sides of a particular issue in light of the weight of scientific evidence.
philo

Trad climber
boulder, co.
Jan 5, 2007 - 10:56pm PT
First we faced the grim idiocy of the born agains banning of teaching evolution in schools. No Dorthy, Darwin aint in Kansas anymore. And now we have to tollerate this quasi religious BS about the age of planet earth. Wow, talk about going retro-grade.
We all know that the Grand Canyon was plowed by Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox.
Gene

climber
Jan 5, 2007 - 11:33pm PT
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.

That’s a good thing if, like me, you view the operative word as “official.”

As stated above, the GCNP site states:
That's a tricky question. Although rocks exposed in the walls of the canyon are geologically quite old, the Canyon itself is a fairly young feature. The oldest rocks at the canyon bottom are close to 2000 million years old. The Canyon itself - an erosional feature - has formed only in the past five or six million years. Geologically speaking, Grand Canyon is very young.

So the answer, unofficially of course, is that the canyon bottom is way old, and the canyon’s current incarnation is geologically young.

Put your pitchforks and torches away.

Now if we could only get them to put commas in numbers with four or more places…..
MZiebell

Social climber
Prescott, AZ
Jan 5, 2007 - 11:34pm PT
A quick point of clarification: I don't believe the National Park Service is selling this book. The Grand Canyon Association - a partner association of the NPS - is.

cintune

climber
Penn's Woods
Jan 8, 2007 - 11:00am PT
Roger Breedlove

climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Jan 8, 2007 - 12:15pm PT
Wow, the Canyon is only one inch deep? The great snake's trompe l'oeil, I presume. Fooled me.

Hey Ed, do you remember the report of some guys who slowed down light is some sort of goo, thereby claiming to disprove that light always travels at the same speed? What's the explanation for that? I don't recall any thing in the Bible about this.

(And, what would the purpose of stars be if it weren’t to emit light. Makes more sense to create light, observe how cool it is, and then figure out how set to automatic mode—lowers the maintenance costs. If it were created the other way around it would have been a very dangerous place, what will all those hulking masses flying around the universe and no way to see them.)

Buzz
deuce4

Big Wall climber
the Southwest
Jan 8, 2007 - 01:30pm PT
Roger, but of course light travels at different velocities depending on the medium. In a vacuum light travels at its maximum velocity, which is constant.

This month's BQR (Boatman's Quarterly Review) has a good article about the methods of aging the Grand Canyon. It is written in "guidespeak," thus easy to understand and explain. Summary: the age of the Canyon is based on two principles: the geologic theory of superposition (younger rock is found on top of older rock), and the radioactive dating of certain rock types. For example, even though sedimentary rock (the majority of rock in the Grand Canyon) cannot be dated with radioactive dating techniques, the occasional lava flows can. One method for dating ancient lava flows is using the decay rates of Potassium 40 to Argon 40. The theory is that hot lava precipitates out Argon 40, so all Argon 40 found in solidified volcanic rock must be created by the decay of Potassium 40, which has a half life of 1.3 billion years. Once the date of the lava flows are discovered by radiometric dating techniques, then the age of the sedimentary rock can be estimated by its relative position.

Though this article doesn't go into it, from what I understand the accepted age of Earth (4.5 billion years) is based on the estimated age of the universe (something like 11 billion years). Since Earth contains byproducts of a supernova (heavy elements), then it must have formed after the time it takes for a star to form and explode, which is presumed to be 5 billion years or so.

It's all theory, in my book. There were radically different beliefs 100 years ago, when the age of the earth was thought to be only a couple hundred million years old, and there will likely be a whole different set of sceintific beliefs in 100 years hence. Thus, although it is highly improbable that Earth is only 6000 years old, there's no harm in respecting those who believe that number.
bobinc

Trad climber
Portland, Or
Jan 8, 2007 - 01:48pm PT
There's no harm in respecting the flat-earthers unless they are influencing/making policy along the lines of "Jesus is coming so we don't really need to think about what we are doing in our time left."

It must be aggravating to the Armageddon crowd that the end of the world keeps getting postponed.
deuce4

Big Wall climber
the Southwest
Jan 8, 2007 - 02:00pm PT
I heard lately from a definitive source that its going to be in 2011, so there's no need to worry about global warming, the demise of hundreds of living species per day due to our impacts, or the continued domination of sovereign nations with our superior killing technology.

"...just watch TV and have a couple of brews..."
eeyonkee

Trad climber
Golden, CO
Jan 8, 2007 - 06:02pm PT
deuce4 - I - Whereas I can more or less see your point, you have not fully described, by any means, the evidence for a 4.5-5 billion-year-old earth. Before any absolute ages were ever estimated, we had a few hundred years of collected fossil evidence. Turns out that dinosaurs are ALWAYS found in strata that are significantly lower (older) than humans and all of the other large mammals. Fine, so this tells us, unequivocally that dinosaurs are older (relatively) than humans and other large mammals (we know now that small mammals existed during most of the reign of the dinosaurs).

Now, of course, the bible never mentions anything about dinosaurs; so we have this issue where we know dinosaurs existed (we have the fossil evidence), we know that they must be older than large mammals (including man), and our "history" of the earth, as depicted by the bible, never mentions them. We also know that we have great thicknesses of strata that are lower (older) than any strata that contain dinosaurs. So, relatively speaking, we know that dinosaurs preceeded man and other large mammals and that a great period of time preceeded the dinosaurs.

Now let's get to the absolute age dating. Yeah, it might seem like black magic, but all of the absolute age dating methods (uranium-lead, potassium-argon, for older ages) agree with one another, by and large, to a few percentage points. We are talking about tens of thousands of age dates.

I could go on and on. All of this evidence when compared to some middle ages religious scholar's interpretation of Genesis for the age of the earth is a slam dunk. Science may refine these ages somewhat, but there is absolutely no way that it will be concluded, ANYTIME in the future (except in a world run by religious zealots) that these ages are wrong by an order of magnitude or more.
deuce4

Big Wall climber
the Southwest
Jan 10, 2007 - 05:01pm PT
Agreed: a 6000 year old earth theory is for brain-dead people who prefer to have others think for them.

But I have more pity for brain-dead people than antagonism. Except for that brain-dead arsehole in the Whitehouse (and like you say, any others in the political realm who try to dominate their idiotic neocon mindset on others).
Toker Villain

Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
Jan 10, 2007 - 06:22pm PT
I don't care how long its been there eeyonkee, what I want to know is whether you need a triple set of cams to lead the Book of Spanky.
Jaybro

Social climber
The West
Jan 10, 2007 - 07:18pm PT
"Thus, although it is highly improbable that Earth is only 6000 years old, there's no harm in respecting those who believe that number."

True, as long as it's not presented AS SCIENCE, then it is pernicious, decadent, nonsense that drags us all down.

Also, what DMT & eegrug said.
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