Why we fight

Posted by Josh Rosenau on July 20, 2011
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Tomorrow, I’ll be speaking to the Texas Board of Education to urge them not to undermine science textbooks, and to reject any supplement that includes creationist content. The only textbook supplement I know of that was submitted containing such creationist content comes from a one-man publisher called International Databases. ID, LLC’s supplement, not surprisingly, promotes IDC.

If only that were its greatest flaw. The supplement is rife with errors, probably over a thousand all told. It doesn’t address all the topics required from supplements. And there’s this:

i-3cb04a6e8135c99928ba2461c1f32e2f-IDLLCmapslide.jpg

I’ve driven from Salt Lake City to Yellowstone. It’s a drive almost due north. If you drive due east, as this map would have you do, you get to Colorado, not Wyoming (home of Yellowstone National Park). You certainly wouldn’t get to Yellowstone. The supplement has a whole section devoted to a travelogue of Glacier National Park, and another focused on an old mining town in Colorado. The author clearly likes traveling the west, but he doesn’t seem to know the geography.

Still, it’s more accurate than the supplement’s biology.

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Comments

  1. #1 david
    July 21, 2011

    they left out the wellsville and drum mountains, which both expose cambrian rocks. The Lodore formation at Dinosaur National Monument is also cambrian.

    if the picture is a complete shot from the source (not cropped), then also note that it shows far more of Colorado than it does of Nevada. Nevada has many fine cambrian outcrops. see fossilsites.com/STATES/NV.HTM

  2. #2 Lewis Thomason
    July 21, 2011

    Hopefully you can at least make them think about what you say,the board isn’t very good at taking advice from a non-creationist.

  3. #3 mkfreeberg
    July 21, 2011

    Okay now let me see if I’ve got this straight…

    You fight creationism, so that people will have good maps of Utah, Idaho and Colorado and don’t go driving off in the wrong direction?

  4. #4 jre
    July 21, 2011

    Does the supplement give any dates for geological comparison? You’d think that anyone interested in the subject would have quickly discovered that YNP is covered in multiple layers of lava, the youngest of which is about 640 kY old, so the chances of finding any Cambrian fossils there are … slight.

    I also wonder if the author had some actual site in mind. The wrong location shown for YNP corresponds roughly to Kremmling, CO, which has some nice Cretaceous fossils. Same problem, though.

    If the supplement was prepared by a Young Earth Creationist, the issue goes away, since the answer is always “years, schmears.”

  5. #5 David
    July 22, 2011

    jre #4: “YNP is covered in multiple layers of lava”

    there’s lots of lava, but it doesn’t cover the park. The north side of Yellowstone has marvelous paleozoic outcrops, some with lots of fossils.

    http://nature.nps.gov/Geology/paleontology/pub/grd3_3/yell1.htm

  6. #6 jre
    July 22, 2011

    Son of a gun. I stand cheerfully corrected. YNP’s status as an actual Cambrian site may not be germane to the present discussion (since it’s not in NW Colorado), but I’m happy to have the information. Thanks!

  7. #7 Melissa
    August 5, 2011

    I love what you said here “The supplement is rife with errors, probably over a thousand all told”. I clearly agree with you.

    Melissa.