Tall creationist tales from the Grand Canyon

[Anodyne]

The Grand Canyon was formed a few thousand years ago by Noah's flood, and not a few million years ago by geological forces, right? So says a glossy book still on sale in Grand Canyon National Park, despite scientists' protests.

The National Park Service has been promising to reconsider whether to sell the book since 2003 (New Scientist, 9 July 2005, p 8), but an investigation by the Washington DC-based pressure group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility discovered that the review hasn't happened. PEER also charges the NPS with blocking the publication of a pamphlet which describes creationism as non-scientific and advises park rangers how to distinguish science from religion in explaining geology to the public.

NPS spokesman David Barna compares the park's bookshops to a public library, with books on "many alternative beliefs", adding "it is not our role to tell people what to believe".

However, PEER director Jeff Ruch says that by selling the book, the government-funded park is breaking its own rules by appearing to support a religion.

www.newscientist.com/article/dn10949-tall-creationist-tales-from-the-grand-canyon-.html

[Jack]

I wouldn't be surprised if many people believed that. I once read a Christian comic book that claimed that fossils were buried by the devil to trick people. There are hundreds of similar stories. My belief is that God created the world through measures that can be detected by scientific studies.

[drooperdoo]

The gobbledy-gook of Creationists aside, I've always been suspicious of the conventional explanation for the Grand Canyon [that it's the result of a small stream that has eroded the rock after millions of years]. It makes sense--until one realizes that the Grand Canyon is unique in the world; there aren't any other holes like it--though there are countless millions of other streams.

Why didn't any other stream cut into the Earth like the stream at the Grand Canyon did?

Why no "Grand Canyons" in Europe, Asia or Africa?

Surely these places have streams, too.

(No, clearly some other geological force is at work here. It makes more sense, in light of modern scientific advancements, that it's the result of unique placement at the cusp of tectonic plates and is the result of shifts. The old 19th Century stream-cutting-into-the-earth theory doesn't hold water, no pun intended.)

[enigma]

This story doesn't pass the smell test.