New at Reason

January 26, 2007

Ronald Bailey sits down with a delightful new book about how Noah's flood created the Grand Canyon. Oh, you didn't know?

Comments

|1.26.07 @ 7:23AM|#

"Why not get the Park Service out of the business of approving books for sale? Instead just let private bookstores inside the parks decide what they want to offer."

A good suggestion, perhaps. But private bookstores are few and far between in the Park. If the Park Service decided to privatize their giftshops and bookstores, the libertarian in me would cheer. But the Parkgoer in me might be better served by those guys running their own store.

I'd rather have some dumb creationist book among a bunch of photo books on the Canyon than a place where the focus is on profitability and the Grand Canyon section is dwarfed by the Grishams, Jances, Kings, Sedarises, and others.

I'd like a better selection process, but will we be better off if that leads to the Park Service bookstores looking like those seen at airports?

|1.26.07 @ 8:37AM|#

Non-practical, illogical, extreme diatribe about how the entire Grand Canyon ought to be private property in the first place in

3

2

1.......

|1.26.07 @ 9:08AM|#

Some parts of the Grand Canyon *are* privately owned. There are several ranches at the bottom, and a Native American reservation.

And if anyone should own the canyon and get the tourism profits, it should probably be the Havasupi, Navajo, and Haulapai.

Still, damming it like people were suggesting before it became a national park would make a pretty awesome lake. :)

|1.26.07 @ 9:09AM|#

Yawn. So there are lots of people, maybe even most people, with wrong beliefs about biology and geology, and these beliefs will rarely be changed by exposure to the right beliefs. But this is not a great danger to civilization. Let's focus on more important but more tractable problems, like wrong beliefs about economics.

creech|1.26.07 @ 9:41AM|#

You mean it wasn't Paul Bunyan dragging his axe?

|1.26.07 @ 10:12AM|#

"Let's focus on more important but more tractable problems"

Hear hear!

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/01/26/gore_film_sparks_anger_in_wash_school_district

|1.26.07 @ 10:29AM|#

....several angry residents argued that "An Inconvenient Truth" was, indeed, scientifically true and that saying otherwise is "deliberate obfuscation."

Scientifically true? Compared to what? Bowling for Colombine? Or The Day After Tomorrow?

ed|1.26.07 @ 10:33AM|#

Ron,

You forgot to add the disclaimer that you own no shares in supernatural beliefs.

|1.26.07 @ 10:57AM|#

The geologists are wrong!
The biologists are wrong!
The physicists aer wrong!
The astronomers are wrong!
The geneticists are wrong!

Now, some goat herders from 3,000 years ago, They got it right! Why are all you "reasoned" people blinded by science when the truth is plain to see in the holy book? Heretics you are, one and all.

|1.26.07 @ 11:02AM|#

Don't forget the climatologists. God hates them, because they hate America.

|1.26.07 @ 11:08AM|#

Old Hand:
You may not agree with An Inconvenient Truth, but it is well within the bounds of valid science. I think string theory is a crock, but it too, is within the bounds of science. No, science does not have all the answers. Yes there is still disagreement among reputable scientists on many subjects. The age of the Earth and Universe is not among them. Do you see the difference here?

|1.26.07 @ 11:11AM|#

"Unlike secular geologists, creationist geologists don't need to speculate about history because we accept the eyewitness accounts of past events, preserved in a reliable written record-the Bible"

Ahem.

Tradition says the Pentateuch, including the account of the flood in Genesis, was written by Moses and the later prophets. Since Moses was several generations after Noah, I'd like to know how these "biblical scholars" call that an "eyewitness account."

|1.26.07 @ 11:39AM|#

Aresen,

Don't confuse the literal fundamentalists; it's too cruel. Would you send a Down's Syndrome kid on a snipe hunt?

|1.26.07 @ 11:41AM|#

mobile, I have in the past made exactly the same point.

Andrew Coulson gives some poll numbers that show that a plurality or bare majority of Americans believes God created the earth a few thousand years ago.

I'd like to see similar numbers on economic questions, specifically on the Theory of Comparative Advantage. Not only do I think that more people don't believe in it, but there is more theory and evidence today that can be used to convince them.

And the measurable effect on the rest of us from people understanding economics is overwhelmingly larger than the measurable effect from people understanding evolutionary cosmology, geology, and biology.

|1.26.07 @ 11:45AM|#

Don't confuse the literal fundamentalists; it's too cruel. Would you send a Down's Syndrome kid on a snipe hunt?

de stijl, So who's going to clean the coffee off my monitor? ;-)

|1.26.07 @ 11:49AM|#

And the measurable effect on the rest of us from people understanding economics is overwhelmingly larger than the measurable effect from people understanding evolutionary cosmology, geology, and biology.

Since they can't get high school earth science or biology right, do you really have much hope for them mastering economics?

|1.26.07 @ 12:05PM|#

Since they can't get high school earth science or biology right, do you really have much hope for them mastering economics?

Let's see... The current theories on earth science and biology go against everything they are taught at home and in church -- ideas they have been raised to hold on faith, not reason, and to hold more important than any other.

The current theories on economics do not have to get past such resolute conceptual walls placed in their minds by their upbringing.

Except maybe for the Marxists...

|1.26.07 @ 12:05PM|#

J sub-

That's the most depressing thing I've read all week.

|1.26.07 @ 12:06PM|#

Marxism : Economics :: Creationism : Science

|1.26.07 @ 12:24PM|#

de stijl

I was merely pointing out that their knowledge of the bible is as lousy as their knowledge of science.

One of my favorite dirty tricks is to ask a fundamentalist: Who cut off Samson's hair?

Usual answer: Delilah.

Wrong. She summoned a servant who cut off his hair.

|1.26.07 @ 12:29PM|#

"Tradition says the Pentateuch, including the account of the flood in Genesis, was written by Moses and the later prophets. Since Moses was several generations after Noah, I'd like to know how these "biblical scholars" call that an "eyewitness account.""

Oh, that's easy -- even though Genesis was written by the hand of Moses, Moses was acting as a ghost writer for Yahweh, and Yahweh, being omnipresent, omniscient, and several other omnis to boot, saw the whole thing go down.

VM|1.26.07 @ 12:31PM|#

"several other omnis to boot, saw the whole thing go down."

very nice!

de stijl: LOL!

Aresen: evil! :)

bill|1.26.07 @ 2:32PM|#

There's still a question how the canyon formed? I saw a whole show on Discovery about it. Contrary to popular belief the river didn't cut down to create the canyon. The land that makes up the canyon is actually a plateau that rose up. As it rose the river cut its' it way through. In other words the river is at the same elevation as it always was, the land around it just got higher.

|1.26.07 @ 2:40PM|#

due to the sorry state of morality in the USA

we have more people fervently believing that they ought to believe

than we have actual fervent believers

religion, politics, economics

reduced to tribal factions

|1.26.07 @ 2:43PM|#

These people are crazy but pretty harmless. I think Ronald Bailey gets a little bit too upset about them. There are people in this world who think that it is okay to circumcise their daughters and force them into polygamous marriages before they are 15. Worse, there are well healed Western intellectuals who think that these traditions are worthy of respect and anyone who questions them a sellout or a racist. Somehow when you start thinking about things like that, a few nutcases who think Noah's flood created the Grand Canyon don't seem so bad.

|1.26.07 @ 3:15PM|#

bill

I saw the same program, but that theory has been around for some time. It always struck me as funny in the Roadrunner vs. Coyote sense - where the sawn-off branch stays hanging and the tree falls out of the picture.

[puhlease, Mr Creationist, 'theory' sense of the closest fit to established facts.]

biologist|1.26.07 @ 3:59PM|#

this one thing is less than critical, a battle not worth fighting, but it is an interesting microcosm of the larger war on ignorance vs. war on science that doesn't agree with our predetermined beliefs.

more importantly, as the commenter formerly known as Gary Gunnels has just informed me, Kent Hovind has just been sentenced to 10 years in prison for tax fraud.

Russell|1.26.07 @ 4:16PM|#

5,000 _years_ ! You've got to be kidding- everyone knows the canyon is between five and six days old--
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2007/01/what_in_creatio.html

|1.26.07 @ 5:40PM|#

One of my favorite dirty tricks is to ask a fundamentalist: Who cut off Samson's hair?

Usual answer: Delilah.

Wrong. She summoned a servant who cut off his hair.

So I guess that whenever anyone criticizes Truman for nuking Hiroshima, you call bullshit on him and point out that it was actually Paul Tibbets who did it?

|1.26.07 @ 6:22PM|#

So I guess that whenever anyone criticizes Truman for nuking Hiroshima, you call bullshit on him and point out that it was actually Paul Tibbets who did it?

Don't you mean Thomas Ferebee?

|1.26.07 @ 6:45PM|#

Seamus

Bepends, with MikeP's correction, if we're talking about the party responsible or the agent.

Fundamentalists seem to think that their knowledge of the bible is superior to that of anyone, including a damned-to-hell atheist like me. Which is why I like to catch them on trick questions. eg: How did Christ spend 3 days in hell if he was buried Friday afternoon and rose before dawn on Sunday?

Hint: Jewish time-keeping.

|1.26.07 @ 10:11PM|#

"there are well healed Western intellectuals who think that these traditions are worthy of respect and anyone who questions them a sellout or a racist."

I'd hate to find out what the "sick" Western intellectuals think then....

|1.26.07 @ 10:24PM|#

"And the measurable effect on the rest of us from people understanding economics is overwhelmingly larger than the measurable effect from people understanding evolutionary cosmology, geology, and biology."

Yes. And there are plenty of people who master, or at least are able to grasp the basics of these sciences in high school or college, and yet who remain economic medievalists. Some of the most brilliant people I know are just completely lost when it comes to understanding some fairly basic economic principles.They can discuss the latest scientific theories with insight and clarity but get them on economics and they start babbling like flat earthers or religious fundamentalists of various stripes.

Part of this is due to false but negative associations between free market economics and various sorts of social problems as well as continual myth making in the media. But I like to believe if they just started getting a real education in economics starting in the ninth grade we'd be on our way to a new Enlightenment of sorts.

|1.26.07 @ 10:45PM|#

daoud

I am making an assumption that english is not your first language; my apologies if I am wrong.

The idiomatic expression "well healed" means that the individual referred to is financially well off. Its converse "down at the heals", means someone is poor. Both expressions derive from the time when shoes were more expensive relative to income, so a person who was poor had to wear his shoes longer, resulting in the heals wearing down. A person who could afford to buy new shoes frequently did not wear his heals down and hence was "well healed."

OTOH, tne pun implicit in your counterpoint: "sick" intellectuals, is amusing.

|1.26.07 @ 11:13PM|#

Aresen,
You buh abuhssumebuh inbuhcorrectly. English is my first language. And my last as well. I did know what "well-healed"(heeled?) means but I didn't know the origin. Thanks, that was interesting. However, isn't it spelled, "well-heeled"? That's what led to my little joke.

|1.26.07 @ 11:14PM|#

Aresen, I'm guessing that daoud speaks English just fine, and was wryly and indirectly trying to point out that it is not spelled "well healed".

|1.26.07 @ 11:23PM|#

Yannick or Joakim?

|1.27.07 @ 12:48AM|#

Oh well, at least my caveat saved me from having both feet in my mouth.

[Why didn't I notice the misspelling? I usually a nit-picker on that myself.]

*|1.27.07 @ 1:55PM|#

I usually a nit-picker on that myself.

I usually two.

|1.28.07 @ 10:56AM|#

AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHH!