Looking into things further
| January 22nd, 2007According to a campaigning group, staff at the Grand Canyon are not allowed to officially comment on the of the geological feature Apparently, the reason is that the geologic age is way in excess of the apparently 6000 year old age of the planet according to Creationists. Not sure I believe the story, and will look into it further…
Tom Coates, Links for 2006-12-30
That never sounded a plausible story and now we know for sure it’s nonsense. Actually, I already knew it was nonsense. When I visited the Grand Canyon there was no end of information about its age and wonder at the fact of its relatively recent emergence – recent in geological terms, that is.
The Grand Canyon, quite old when I last visited
So how come Mr Coates even bothered to publish a silly rumour, even if he did promise to check it (I wonder how that checking of his is coming along). I think the answer lies in the mea culpa on the Skeptic website which publishes the facts of the matter after conducting some real research, rather than vapour research.
Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, explains the orgin of the hoax, how he discovered it was a lie, and why he thinks he was taken in. He writes,
Unfortunately, in our eagerness to find additional examples of the inappropriate intrusion of religion in American public life … we accepted this claim by PEER without calling the National Park Service (NPS) or the Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) to check it.
Coincidentally, the highly recommended podcast The Skeptics Guide To The Universe from The New England Skeptical Society just this week offered some advice on not being taken in by conspiracy theories, including the wise suggestion to be extra wary if the hypothesis just happened to coincide with your political beliefs or was convenient to your world view. That’s what happened with Michael Shermer, he says as much, and it’s what happened with Tom Coates – although he doesn’t say as much.
Coates has history in his dislike of religion:
Sir Elton John would like to ban all organised religion It’s a sentiment with which I find myself sympathetic to [sic]
and in a willingness to overlook homegrown stupidity when there’s a chance to moan about the US right:
In the meantime, sir [sic], you should know that half of America doesn’t believe in evolution
he said, apparently missing the BBC poll indicating that less than half of Britons accept the theory of evolution as the best description for the development of life, according to an opinion poll
.
The facts of this Grand Canyon matter weren’t difficult to find. A real life Park Ranger blogged about it and another Grand Canyon park interpreter said, of the hoax, something that could explain why Tom Coates was so ready to repeat the idiocy:
o insinuate a conspiratorial link between the NPS and organized religion are misguided and founded in fervent anti-Christian opposition, not reason or the law.