Yesterday I blogged about how the National Park Service is selling a young-Earth creationist book about the Grand Canyon in its stores. Today the Washington Post wrote an article on the subject. It contains a response from the National Park Service, which I find pretty unbelievable. They claim that they are in fact reviewing the matter. The review was supposed to be done in February, but it's been delayed while lawyers at the Interior and Justice Departments "tackle the issue." No deadline is set for the decision, and the book will continue to be sold until one is made.
Tackle the issue? Do these folks really need an extra eight months (and counting) to recognize that the Grand Canyon is millions of years old, and was not formed in Noah's Flood?
The book has been moved from the science section to the inspirational section. But from what I know about it, it's not claiming to offer inspiration but facts. The intellectual cowardice continues.
It's amazing, as a former US Forest Service biologist how political leadership puppets the agencies around. I'm surprised the president doesn't form the flat-earth consortium. It's painful for scientists when pseudo-science rules the roost. Science is non-ideological; politics as we know is. The two are conflated now more than ever. I quit the Bush administration and won in court for an unemployment claim. That's an example of what we're dealing with here. My fingers are crossed.
This isn't an isolated incident. The Park Rangers at Mammoth Cave National Park are giving equal time to Noah's flood when they talk about the water that formed the cave.
I wrote about my exposure to it here:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0105833/2003/09/21.html#a387
It's just politics - they're waiting for the election. Not that it's a good reason, but it's the reason.
John Sladek years ago parodied the whole appeasement approach to Young-Earthers by having Flat-Earthers successfully put into law the non-existence of geosynchronous orbits. To prevent telecommunications disaster the satellite makers made the comsats self-aware, hence legally able to assert their own existence.
Appeasement will not do. The Young-Earth belief is absurd non-science and non-sense and should be legally recognised as such. No more "equal time" BS in the Courts.