Note: I am still recovering from TAM 5! I will try to sit down tonight and get a good entry written about it. But until then, I have some other things to say.
What with the Grand Canyon stuff still going on, I sometimes find people asking what the big deal is. Why worry so much about a book that says the Grand Canyon is only 6000 years old?
Besides the obvious — the book is dead wrong, it is antiscience, it is in violation of the First Amendment, and the National Park Service has been very dodgy about doing anything about it — young Earth creationism garbage does real damage to people’s ability to discern reality from fantasy.
Lauren Becker, a science interpreter who has taught at museums and parks around the country, says it better than I do: She wrote an essay for CSIPCOP about it that’s wonderful. Read it, think about it, discuss it below.
Tip of the ranger hat to Johnny Five for the link.
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Er… it should be ‘CSICOP’, at least when the essay was written. It’s CSI now, though, I think that might tend to confuse people…
As for the book being in the Park’s book store, even in the ‘Inspiration’ section, it purports to be an ‘alternative’ science book (I think) on the origin of the Grand Canyon. It’s presence in the store could cause confusion to some especially to young kids whose parents don’t know any better.
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Nitpick:
As the BA explains in his book, there is no center to the expansion. Every galaxy sees all the other galaxies flying away, the more distant ones receding faster. We aren’t even special enough to have the Universe running away from us.
Nits aside, quite a good article.
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:23 pm
What a fantastic article. The bits about honesty remind me of how many religious people I know are dishonest, not just with themselves, but in the case of fundementalist leaders seeking political power, dishonest with everyone.
As for other parts of the article, I particularly liked this one:
“If your sense of self-worth, your purpose in life, is based on the belief that you and the universe were created specially for one another, science is truly a harbinger of doom. You can shoot the messenger, but ignoring reality is no guarantee that it will go away. Like a talk-show celebrity, the significance you desire is, sadly, based on unmerited importance. Truth be told, though the performance was entertaining, your show is just a dot among 6 billion dots on a bigger dot flying around a brighter dot lost amid a billion, billion more dots separated by vacuous space.
But here’s the cool thing: at least you are a dot. I am a dot, too. This means that, though we are insignificant to the cosmos, we are incredibly significant to each other. We and our fellow dots. What should we do? Don’t be afraid. The lack of a deity is not an opening for chaos. It is a call for responsibility.”
My own personal belief is that we, each one of us, is more precious just because we exist, even if it is just by random chance rather than divine intervention. In fact, the fact that any of us are here at all should be significant in and of itself. Pity that so few people can be bothered to look at it that way.
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Nitpicking myself:
Of course, nearby galaxies can be moving towards each other, thanks to gravitational attraction (for example, the Milky Way and M31). I should say these things correctly the first time.
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Blake,
This jumped out at me too:
“from the center of the cosmos which, did we mention, is very far away from us.”
Details, details.
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Very good article. Well put. Wish I could do that…
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Love your site! Found it through The Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
Please note that Michael Shermer’s eSkeptic magazine has issued a retraction regarding the Grand Canyon Story after doing some fact checking.
See http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-01-17.html
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:53 pm
I retract my comment. Obviously the PEER mess is old news. I did not follow the links above.
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Maybe it’s me but I find the idea of things happening and ending up the way they did, espeasally the more imprabable things like life and evolution, happening by the combanation of certain factors and over great spans of time to be so much more amazing and Miraculaous than “God did it”
It’s more dangerous to belive you have all the answers and refuse any evidence that you don’t than to aknowledge that you don’t know everything.
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:39 pm
I just read a wonderful article on quantum computing by P. Warren titled “The future of computing - new architectures and new technologies”, printed in IEE Proc.-Nanobiotechnical in 2004. In it, he alludes to the theory that our very consciousness is based on quantum phenomena (in his section on quantum computing). To think that my very thoughts could be based somehow on the superposition of particles is more amazing to me than “God did it”; it’s absolutely amazing.
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:03 pm
I’ve been enjoying reading this site immensely! I’m curious, you said…
“Besides the obvious — the book is dead wrong, it is antiscience, it is in violation of the First Amendment, ”
I’ll buy the first two, but how is the book in violiation of the First Amendment?
January 22nd, 2007 at 6:26 pm
For various reasons, I am extremely skeptical of the notion that consciousness could be rooted in quantum phenomena. Of course, the entire world is quantum, in a sense: it’s the principles of quantum mechanics which determine the properties of materials out of which the world is made. Like Democritus of Abdera said twenty-five hundred years ago, “Nothing exists save atoms and the void”, and quantum physics constitutes the rules by which atoms play.
The challenge, then, is not to say “all is quantum” (a statement with no more content, by itself, than saying “all is love”). In what way do the strange and esoteric mathematical descriptions of the atomic and sub-atomic world build up the everyday stuff with which we are so familiar? This is a deep problem, one with many mysteries left to resolve, and physicists spend lots of time worrying about it. One thing which we do know is that when you put a lot of quantum particles together, at a certain point they stop acting in the quantum way and become better approximated by Newton’s laws of classical mechanics. This is odd, because if you put a pile of classical pieces together, you get a bigger classical object! Newton’s laws reproduce themselves at higher scales, but the quantum laws do not.
It’s a bit like discovering that all the ordinary houses on your ordinary street are made of bricks from Faerie.
So, in order to test the idea that consciousness, Mind, Spirit or any such vaguely defined phenomenon has a quantum flavor, we need to know if essential aspects of Mind depend upon objects which are small enough for quantum oddities to apply. Lengths, time scales and temperatures need to be sufficiently small to avoid the problem of decoherence, the tendency of quantum objects to collapse into classical behavior.
On the one hand, we have fairly specific models of how brain cells might contain tiny switching elements to which quantum mechanics might apply. The most notable by far is Penrose and Hameroff’s proposal that “microtubules” — protein rods which form a kind of cellular skeleton, used for transporting molecules around and giving the cell mechanical rigidity — can transmit quantum pulses. Unfortunately, this model doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny very well: decoherence steps in and ruins everything. Hameroff, an anaesthesiologist, came up with a (moderately wacky) way in which this “model” explained the action of anaesthetics. Supporters made a big fooferaw about how scientists had no other model to explain aneasthetics, but oops, never tell a scientist that something can’t be explained; we now have biochemical theories which handle anaesthetics without needing to invoke quantum consciousness.
The neuroscientists have also done a very good job finding places in brains where neurons can be probed directly. In the barn owl, for example, there is a brain part called the inferior colliculus, which the owl uses to process sound. We can identify places in the inferior colliculus where neurons act like AND gates: they have two inputs and only produce an output when both inputs fire simultaneously. Models exist to explain this in terms of ion fluxes through the neuron’s cell membrane (”dendritic computation” is one term, referring to the dendrites which carry the input signals). These models do not invoke quantum mechanics.
One of the better general resources I have found on this subject is a paper by Litt et al., in the journal Cognitive Science (2006). They lay out the evidence that
In essence, we can enclose all the quantum weirdness within “black boxes” and discuss the interaction of the boxes using classical science. There’s legitimate science in figuring out what goes on inside those black boxes, but it’s equally legitimate (and perhaps more useful) to understand what happens when they hook up together.
Penrose has also argued that classical computers cannot perform some of the tasks which humans do quite readily. This argument from computational complexity, however, also falls flat. Solomon Feferman dissected it fairly neatly in a review entitled “Penrose’s Gödelian Argument”; more recently, Mark C. Chu-Carroll has written relevant posts about “quantum complexity classes” at his blog Good Math, Bad Math.
Then we have the people who claim that quantum entanglement can explain telepathy or telekinesis. Using esoteric jargon and vague pseudo-math to lend credence to a phenomenon which nobody has experimentally observed, and which experiments have quite frequently ruled out — it’s a bit like a ghost leading a blind man.
This is the realm of Deepak Chopra and the charlatans who made What the Bleep Do We Know. To them, quantum is just a handy term, on a par with “energy field” or “Good Side of the Force”. None of the specifics of modern physics relate in any way to their specious psychobabble. There’s more good science in the Beach Boys’ song “Good Vibrations” than in Chopra’s whole catalog. They want the credibility of modern science, the trust people place in the competence of white-coated Einsteins, but they’re not willing to pay the price. They want to provide the appearance of reconciling science and faith, but what they have truly reconciled is jargon with gullibility.
January 22nd, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Wow. As long as people are nitpicking, I’m surprised no one mentioned the big error in this article: “Why worry so much about a book that says the Grand Canyon is only 6000 years old?” Actually, YECs believe the Grand Canyon was formed by “Noah’s” flood, which they believe occured around 2350 BC. (Nevermind the fact that the first Egyptian dynasty started around 3000 BC and their civilization was uninterupted by this “global flood”.) Anyway, the YECs think the Grand Canyon is only about 4350 years old.
January 22nd, 2007 at 9:07 pm
I find it interesting/amusing that two people can point to the exact same thing, and arrive at completely different conclusions. A scientist will call the Grand Canyon a chronicle of two billion years of geologic history. A creationist will point to it as indisputable proof of Noah’s flood.
I like to tell a story about something I once saw, that was sculpted—not by the Colorado River, but—by the Mississippi. A few years ago, I was flying in to Baton Rouge. As I was looking out the window of the plane, I saw twisting patterns in the land, caused by meanders of the river over time.
Just as there are rules for men, there are rules for rivers. The chief rule a river has to follow is gravity. Gravity brings it from the mountains, to the ocean. As it nears the ocean, and the land flattens out, the very same gravity causes particles of silt to trickle out of the water, and settle on the riverbed. Eventually, so many of these particles are deposited, that the river’s path no longer points down, and it must search for an easier path to the sea, for it is lazy. As it changes direction, a bend forms. The speed of the waterflow is slower on one bank than on the other, so silt is more likely to precipitate out on the slower edge than on the faster one. This leads to more land being deposited on the inside of the bend, and more being eroded away on the outside of it, leading to the river changing direction even more. Eventually, all that is left in its original path is dry land, a curvy pattern of dried mud, and an oxbow lake here or there.
Now, I’m not saying that God isn’t behind all of this. But if He is, then He orchestrates it with far more patience than is generally attributed to Him in the literature.
January 22nd, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Interestingly, David Deutsch (in “The Fabric of Reality”) argues that in a quantum-many-worlds picture, the human brain is actually the largest (known) structure in the multiverse. This is because (iirc) the information it carries is coherent across a large cross-section of the multiverse. I found it a very interesting alternative point of view to the more familiar “insignificant dot on an insignificant dot” picture. Think of it as a reminder that the relative-size of things is dependent on what metric you use, and simple things like mass and length are not the only meaningful metrics.
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:53 am
Just clicking on the link, I have no idea whether the site I’m going to is an agnostic/atheist site, but the line “The lack of a deity is not an opening for chaos” completely ruined an otherwise effective article for me. I find it highly unlikely that the majority of people who believe in God or a higher power also disbelieve scientific FACTS as a matter of principle. Scientific THEORIES are, by nature, debatable but only the most faithful/brainwashed practitioners of faith use the “God did it” reason to blanketly explain everything. I don’t see why some people find it so hard to mesh God and science together. The “amazing” properties of science that some commenters have referred to only give me more proof that a higher power started the whole ball rolling all those billions of years ago. Thanks for reading.
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:34 am
I find it interesting/amusing that two people can point to the exact same thing, and arrive at completely different conclusions. A scientist will call the Grand Canyon a chronicle of two billion years of geologic history. A creationist will point to it as indisputable proof of Noah’s flood.
I’m not sure that they’re arriving at different conclusions by following the same path. Lookup “Wilbur Glenn Voliva” if you really want to see how strict adherence to Biblical Literalism can lead to “completely different conclusions” than what others see.
Excerpt from wikipedia: “Voliva was a pioneer in religious radio broadcasting. Listeners to his 100,000-watt (0.1 MW) radio station were treated to thundering denunciations of the evils of evolution and round earth astronomy” - both of which he renounced on Biblical grounds. He had all kinds of “explanations” as to why the scientists were wrong about the sphericalness of the earth, and claimed that the sun was 32 miles in diameter, moved (while the earth stayed stationary), and it was only a few thousands of miles from the earth. Mr. Voliva, a fundamentalist preacher, scorned “so-called fundamentalists who strain out the gnat of evolution and swallow the camel of modern astronomy.” He had thousands of followers. All of this was happening up through the 1930s.
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:18 am
Lauren Becker does some excellent essays which are read on the Point of Inquiry podcast. I’d particularly recommend the Carl Sagan one:
http://www.pointofinquiry.org/?p=68
And this one about theology:
http://www.pointofinquiry.org/?p=84
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:08 am
Theropod: “I find it interesting/amusing that two people can point to the exact same thing, and arrive at completely different conclusions. A scientist will call the Grand Canyon a chronicle of two billion years of geologic history. A creationist will point to it as indisputable proof of Noah’s flood.”
Here’s the thing, though: the creationist has to ignore the fact that the layers of the Grand Canyon cannot have been formed by a flood. The Coconino Sandstone layer alone is proof of that. He has to wave his arms furiously and hope that people don’t look too hard in order to get the global flood explanation to “explain” things at all.
The scientist looks at what’s there and tries to think of how things might have happened to produce what she sees. The creationist knows in advance what he wants to find, and insists in spite of reason and reality that what’s out there is consistent with that expectation.
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:24 am
Was the Coconino Sandstone layer named after George Herriman’s Krazy Kat? (-;
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:16 am
While we’re picking nits -
Quoth the BA: “it is in violation of the First Amendment”
Eh?
Mind you, from what I have read, this book is junk and for that reason it should not be for sale. Unless you can persuade me otherwise, I think the statement that having it for sale violates the 1st Amendment is wrong. Congress has passed no law that states the Park Service MUST have that book for sale to the exclusion of others or any other such nonsense.
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:20 am
Eh?
The government is not selling this book, a non-profit, non-government organization is. I see no violation of the 1st admendment.
I do see violation of common sense.
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:51 am
We’ve been over this, jrkeller, your excuse is not legitimate. The bookstore is owned by the NPS, it is located in an NPS facility, it is operated under contract to NPS, and all materials sold must be approved by NPS. The GCA is a de facto government agent to carry out the needs, desires, policies, and practices of the NPS.
The book sale may not be unconstitutional, but not on the grounds you offer.
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:05 am
The bookstore is not owned by the NPS, it is a part of the private independant organization, the CGA. As you have stated, it has a contract with the federal government. How could the federal government have a contract with itself? A government contractor is not the federal government. There are clear laws and their contracts deliniating the differences between what a federal contractor can and cannot do. I know that some companies and their employees like to pretend that they are the government, but they are not. These contracts for the NPS are governed by two laws, one passed in 1965 and 1998. These contracts also protect the contractor, by prohibiting the federal government from changing their mind and saying something like not we want to do this instead of this.
If by placing religious works in these bookstore without government approval violates their contract, then the federal needs to penalize the them including if necessary cancelling the contract. If the feds are telling them to put the book in the store, then that would be a violation of the first amendment
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:15 am
This link has a whole collection of articles about the book when the issue first came up. The last few articles address the legal issue of selling the book. Personally, I would rather the book be sold than play censorship book wars, but they didn’t have to approve selling it either.
http://www.freeinquiry.com/skeptic/badgeology/grandcanyon/controversy.htm
BTW, the book does sell. A pity.
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:26 am
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-01-17.html - I don’t see any mention of this article in any of the comments posted about this subject since Jan 17. I think it’s interesting that this debate has appeared in *Neil Gaiman’s* blog as a rant against the New Scientist’s lack of fact-checking.
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Melusine,
That’s a nice link.
If you feel like dumbing down, you can to go Tom Vail’s site and see he what he has written about this. To his credit, he presents the criticism of his book. What’s nice about his site, you can read the actual letters he or his lawyers sent to the NPS and the NPS response.
http://www.canyonministries.com/index_files/Controversy.htm
BTW, it has sold about 40,000 copies.
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:11 pm
The Bad Geology site promotes the other Bad sites - such as this one, Bad Meteorology, Bad Archeology, Bad Chemistry, and so on. I should send Tom Vail this link:
http://badgeology.com/
I’m sure he’s already seen it…and buried his head in the sand.*
I’d say the Biblical plaques in the park bother me more than the book in the bookstore. And unlike the anthropological history of past Indian tribes and their myths/customs, the Vail book contains essays that are not of that nature - it does contain bad science. And though it may not be unconstitutional, it is still contradicting the mission statement of the GCPA. If they want to operate like a Barnes & Borders-A-Million, then I’ll buy the books on Amazon.
* I know that ostriches really lay their heads flat on the ground, which makes it look like it’s stuck in the ground from afar.
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:02 pm
I hope he gets the Bad Environmentalism section up soon.
Mesuline said, “And though it may not be unconstitutional, it is still contradicting the mission statement of the GCPA.” I feel it is also contradicting the mission statement of the NPS and its general guidelines.
January 23rd, 2007 at 5:43 pm
From previous blogs my impression was they put the book in the inspirational section rather than the science section. I suspect that’s good enough for the first ammendment.
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:49 pm
What’s “inspirational” about having someone lie to you about the age and geomorphology (geological history) of the Grand Canyon - and hide thefact that what they’re flogging is made-up nonsense rather openly acknowledging their view is metaphorical / mythical rather than actual as with the Native American books?
Great essay - thanks
Very minor nitpick :
Our Sun AIN’T an “average Star”.
About 75 % of all stars are very dim red dwarf stars far dimmer, cooler and smaller than ours. These are the real “average stars” and despite being the commonest sort you can’t see a single one with unassisted eyesight. (Proxima Centauri, Baranrd’s Star, Wolfd 359 & Lalande 2118 are all amongst our nearest neighbours and most haven’t even heard of them.)
Another 10 % are white dwarfs, burnt out ex-stellar core ‘cinders’. Of the remaining 10 % of stars most are slightly cooler and smaller orange dwarf (K V ie- main-sequence type) stars like Epsilon Eridani and Alpha Centauri B. Then a handful (5 % odd) are other G-type stars -most dimmer than ours, a few brighter. (Sun =G2, G type runs from G0 at the hotter, brighter end down to G9), Then there are the very few F or A type stars over twice as bright as our Sun eg. Sirius, Procyon, Altair, Vega. Finallyless than 1 % are B, O Wolf-Rayet, LBV-Hypergiant, giant, supergiant and the other type sof star. Of course, these stars are visible from a very long way away and so dominate our night sky -although they’re really extremely rare …
But that is just a minor point in context..
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:18 pm
!!@#@&**! typos …
The examples of red dwarf stars I mentioned are correctly written :
Barnard’s Star, the second closest star to us. (Or fifth closest counting our Sun & the three stars of Alpha Centauri separately.)
Wolf 359 (as in the ‘Star Trek’ mythology)
Lalande 21184 (right numerals?) the star closest after Wolf 359 which has, or at least was suspected of having, exoplanets orbiting it
.. & well
Proxima Centauri or Alpha Centauri C which may or may not be a very distant part of the Alpha Centauri stellar system orbiting the brighter pair which I spelt right first time.
If you’re wondering the human eye can see - in ideal conditions and at peak -down to about sixth magnitude. Barnard’s Star is a ninth magnitude, M5 V + class star (apparent) and has an absolute magnitude (ie. how bright a star really is if seen from a standard distance of 33 ly) of just 13.3. Proxima Centauri ’s absolute magnitude is dimmer still at 15.4 and Wolf 359’s the worst yet glowing at only magnitude 16.6 from the standard thirty-three light years distance.
No white dwarf is visible without optical assistence either - the closest examples being Sirius B, or “the Pup”, lost besides its first magnitude partner with only absolute magnitude 10, Procyon B also lost besides its brighter partners glare at just 13.1 absolute magnitude & then the nearest first single white dwarf Van Maanen’s Star which despite being a mere fourteen light years away has an apparent magnitude of 12.4 and, seen from a distance of thirty-three light years where apparent and absolute magnitudes are identical, would rate only 14.2 magnitude.
______________
+ V = Main Sequence class in luminosity type astronomical shorthand. This means its “burning” Hydrogen into helium rather than fusing Helium or other elements as with the giant and supergiant M type stars such as Antares, Betelguese and Arcturus which have other Roman numerals after their spectral types.
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:29 pm
uplate said,
“I find it highly unlikely that the majority of people who believe in God or a higher power also disbelieve scientific FACTS as a matter of principle. Scientific THEORIES are, by nature, debatable but only the most faithful/brainwashed practitioners of faith use the “God did it†reason to blanketly explain everything.”
As Lauren Becker said in her essay, some people who believe in God will outright disbelieve scientific fact when it contradicts either what they read from the bible, or what they were taught in church. As history has shown, some people will go to great lengths to deny, ignore or subdue such facts, or even take hostile actions (i.e. the Crusades, Salem Witch Trials, 9/11) because of their interpretation of a religious book.
And please expand on what you mean when you say scientific THEORIES are debatable.
A person’s opinion (one use of the word theory), and a scientific Theory (like general relativity) are two completely different things. That confusion is often used by those of faith who question the validity of scientific facts that disagree with scripture as part of their argument.
January 24th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Thanks, Melusine, for keeping the “Barnes & Borders-a-Million” meme alive. It’s a little like singing “Alice’s Restaurant”: if three people do it, they’ll think it’s a movement. Now we just need that third person. . . .
As far as I can tell, I was the first one to use the phrase — 8 October 2006 at Cocktail Party Physics.
January 24th, 2007 at 8:37 am
Oh, and Alex, Neil Gaiman has updated his blog entry to say the following:
I’m almost suspicious enough to say that New Scientist changed their article (it seems. . . different from when I glanced at it yesterday), but I don’t have an archived copy to check. The magazine does, however, have a shoddy track record.
January 24th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Blake, it’s a good saying - like when people say “Cinema One Too Many” or such similar things. For me it especially works, because here in Houston I tend to go to the Borders, in Connecticut the Barnes & Noble is closest, and in Florida, the Books-A-Million is the closest. They aren’t the best book stores in any of those places, just the most convenient…with coffee. They are definitely the trifecta of big corporate bookstores and thus try to appeal to mass taste and $$.
I will use it often. Thanks. (-8~
January 24th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Ohhh…I just realized you may not have seen that I gave you credit for that a few threads ago. See here. Funny, I assume some people read ALL the comments!
January 24th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Melusine, I noticed that you’d given me credit (sweet, sweet credit!) — I just wanted to let you know that, to the best of my knowledge, it was original with me.
January 24th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
jrkeller, I am well aware that a government contractor is not the government. What is at issue is the level of “ownership” of the bookstores. Are they private property owned and operated independently by the GCA, a private non-profit corp? Or are they federal property owned by the NPS and operated for the NPS, by approval of the NPS, that just happen to be staffed by GCA personnel on a service contract?
I note the letter filed by the Alliance Defense Fund on behalf of Tom Vail.
http://www.alliancealert.org/aa2004/2004_01_12.pdf
Notice how they frame each and every argument to the NPS about NPS decisions and NPS responsibility. Nowhere in that letter is any mention that the GCA is private and can therefore sell whatever they wish. That is a red herring. The issue is what the NPS approves for sale in NPS owned stores in NPS parks, that happen to be staffed and run by a service contract.
Again, I think there are solid grounds that the book sale is not unconstitutional, but for very different reasons.
The GCA did not place the books on sale without approval. The record is clear that the approval process was accurately followed by the GCA. There is no violation of their contract. You are also correct that the NPS directing a private entity to sell something would be a violation. Neither of those is the situation at hand.
Melusine said:
> Personally, I would rather the book be sold than play censorship book wars, but they didn’t have to approve selling it either.
Part of what is sorely neglected in every discussion I see is the criteria for evaluation used by the NPS for what can be sold in park stores. If we had the criteria list and the evaluation form all filled out against that list, we could easily see if the claim that it was evaluated neutrally and approved is accurate. Unfortunately, PEER’s FOIA request for the documents about the evaluation were replied to that those documents do not exist. Ergo, there’s no record. I would still like to see the NPS criteria listed, even if there’s no document of how the book measures up.
Specifically, it seems to me some criteria for evaluation include:
* Relevance to the location - the Grand Canyon.
* Marketability - does it sell well, or is it ignored?
* Furthering of NPS goals and aims - promotion of the history and meaning of the location, with emphasis on the well-founded scientific explanations for origins and causes.
There may be other criteria. Now to me, it is obvious that the book meets the first two criteria I listed. The question is how does it fit with item 3? One argument for the book is has emotional and significance worth to a lot of people - the Inspiration. It has cultural heritage, which puts it on equal footing with Native American myths and such. From those criteria, there is a valid argument that the book does fit with the overal goals of the NPS, especially in presenting a balanced view. However, the reservation is that the book presents itself and findings as good, alternative science. And to back that up, some of the authors do have credentials in science fields. However, I don’t think you’re going to find articles with the same themes in the peer-reviewed science literature, and the academic worth of the content of the book is in question. That is the basis for taking issue with the book. It presents itself as valid science when it has not met the scientific review process.
It seems to me that one could legitimately exclude the book on the grounds that it does not meet criteria three. Or it could be included on the grounds that it does meet criteria three, not for scientific accuracy but for alternative views and other forms of meaning. So as I say, there is potential justification for the book to be on sale in the stores.
I just would like to see the official criteria.
Regarding censorship, excluding the book for the evaluation above would not be censorship - Tom Vail has the right to publish and market the book to any venue he wishes. It would be a customer decision, equivalent to any private store evaluating the content on their shelves for marketability and compliance with their aims. Just like a Christian bookstore is not going to market Black Sabbath records (unless they have a section for materials to throw on bonfires?), the NPS could exclude books that don’t meet their aims.
January 24th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Melusine said:
> I’d say the Biblical plaques in the park bother me more than the book in the bookstore.
They bother me a little, too, but there is some wiggle room that has not been fully explained that would justify the existence of the plaques - at least the legality of them.
Specifically, were the plaques actually displayed and maintained by the park service? Or were they donated and displayed by the private religious group? What approval did the NPS have in the initial installation of the plaques?
I don’t think the NPS should be in the religion business, and I don’t think it appropriate for the Park to be displaying private religious plaques. If they do, they should display equally any private plaques by any religious group. Let’s test this and get a Wiccan plaque, a FSM Plaque, and an Ethical Culture Society plaque made up and try to get them displayed.
Devo said:
> Our Sun AIN’T an “average Starâ€.
It’s not particularly large, nor particularly small, nor particularly massive, nor particularly old, nor particularly young, nor particularly central, nor particularly uniquely placed, nor particularly special in any characteristic to stand out. It is not unique. By that criteria, it is “average”.
Some Guy said:
> And please expand on what you mean when you say scientific THEORIES are debatable.
I would agree that, in principle, theories are debatable. Theories are explanations - they are attempts to tie together the observations and data into a model that is coherent and makes sense. Theories are always subject to reevaluation in light of new evidence. But I agree to concern, because most people who make a statement like that do so with the motivation of calling Evolution “just a theory”, as if it makes it unsupported, unreasonable, and invalid. Scientific theories typically get carefully scrutinized, and last because they match the evidence. Any alternate explanation not only has to match the data at least as well as the current one, but must also find data that disagrees with the current one that the proposed one explains better. Evolution is well-supported and Creationism fails to provide anything new or better.
January 28th, 2007 at 9:48 am
The idea of the plaques bother me, because when I’m walking around parks I want to be assaulted with manmade objects as little as possible. Would I crumble upon seeing them? No. But who needs that irrelevant stuff in a park. Bring a book with you if you need words to inspire you.
At Brazos Bend State Park, in the heavily travelled areas there are nice wood signs showing all the different kinds of birds and alligators you see - stuff like that is OK. It’s very helpful - it’s about the park. Maps are a good idea too. The occasional bench with the donator’s name on it is OK, I suppose.
It’s not the legality of the issue that bothers me so much, it’s the integrity of it all. It’s sort of like the insertion of “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance, which was not written that way (and was revised twice thus). It was written for all, and the parks are for all, and I get tired of people who feel it’s necessary to parade their religion around by usurping everything (our currency, etc.) It’s like you are walking around amidst the wilderness and someone is reminding you of what to think. Just be there! Let the canyon talk to you.