Not sure that Dawkins has anything to offer in the way of a fix. But it's certainly one more clear illustration of how contagious stupidity and political cowardice have made people's brains freeze up.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

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and explain to tourists what's what. When I encounter the floor people in stores or low level employees in government who have their tongues tied by upper management, I just step in and speak up. I tell customers, clients, patients, or tourists who have questions, but aren't getting answers what the real skinny is. Upper management is usually horrified, but can do very little. I'm sure they are glad to see me go.

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They,at the Canyon, should say it like it is. Noah had sweet FA to do with it ; it's age it's erosion etc etc. There are more of us, real thinkers, than them! the Idiots.
When they, the religious Idiots, got rid of the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland I thought I had seen & heard it all; not so.

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So it only took 40 days and nights of rain to make the Grand Canyon according to those who beleve anything.
God used his hose and pissed it into existence....and bush is a great president and we are winning in Iraq. Right.

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Shoots the hell out of that 40 days and 40 nights doesn't it?
I wonder if even the evangalists are dumb enough to believe that pile of gibberish. Surely we have seen enough floods in this country to know that floods don't cut through mountains of solid rock in such a short period of time.

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Sharia law at the park and women will be forced to wear full-on burka-garbs and have to walk 4 paces behind the men? These "Noah's flood created Grand Canyon" people are as crazy as the islamics.

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Dawkins is a fundamentalist and has nothing useful to add to the conversation except pissing off anyone who doesn't already agree with him. In fact, he is counterproductive, imho.

If you want to do something about this, you should consider supporting the important work of the National Center for Science Education, in Oakland. It was their people on the ground for the Dover trial; it was they, not Dawkins, who are doing the pick-and-shovel work to counter virtually every stupid anti-evolution, pro-'Young Earth' event that pops up. I just met with their director yesterday and I'm joining. Anyone who supports the teaching of actual science in schools and in museums, etc., should, too.

Verily, I have spoken unto you. ;)

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In Genesis 12: "And the Lord God lobbied President Roosevelt and he created a WPA project to deepen the Colorado River. Verily, the workers were commanded to dig the canyon as deep as the depression and so they didst."

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Just making sure.

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Forty days and nights of rain is not the whole cause of the flood, as claimed by the myth. Here's what the Bible actually says: "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights." - Genesis, chapter 7, verses 11 and 12 (King James translation)

What are those "fountains of the great deep" and "windows of heaven"? To understand the rest of the myth, you have to look at pre-scientific flat-earth theory. The cosmology of the book of Genesis is based not only on the belief that the earth is flat, but also that it is surrounded by water above and below. The waters above the earth were believed to be separated from the earth by a dome that the Bible refers to as the "firmament." Thus, the flood was supposedly caused by release of water from below the earth and from above the dome of the the heavens.

For further discussion of the flat-earth cosmology of the Bible, see the article, The Flat-Earth Bible.

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Something is dreadfully wrong. I believe in the first amendment but it distresses me that there are minions (or millions?) who will believe anything they read. There have been profiles done on these nay sayers. Maybe they exist in other countries. Are there people out there from countries other than the U.S that read AlterNet?

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Ummmm. people... Wake Up and do alittle simple research. The National Park Service website clearly states that the park is 1800 million years old and gives a detailed scientific explanation of its development with NO mention whatsoever of Noah or any biblical event. The bookstore may sell that book - but the park service is hiding nothing. See for yourself at www.nps.gov. This is shabby reporting. Sorry peeps.

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It might be a good idea to make, oh, just the slightest effort to check your facts before spouting off.

I visited the National Parks website (that's official, you know), and followed a sequence of links right to pages which (oh, my, what a surprise!) gave the age of the earth as 4.6 billion years old, and that of the oldest rock in the canyon as 1.6 billion years old.

Hardly seems like a creationist plot (or to follow the creationist plot - whichever you prefer), does it? But, hey, without getting their noses out of joint about such non-plots, what would Christian haters do for enjoyment?

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You know what? If it's not the creationists offended about something someone said publicly, it's the evolutionists, or some religious or political group. The fact is, you can say NOTHING publicly without pissing a lot of people off. It's called beliefs, which can't be changed by any kind of bullying (creationists doing the bullying in this case), or ridicule (progressives toward just about anyone who isn't as enlightened as they are).

So, since it can't be changed, why pop a gasket about it all the time? There are REAL issues out there, which I have to give AlterNet their props for covering so faithfully, but the religion/belief/opinion "issues" are just pointless.

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Kids, the books that make up the bible are simply attempts to record in writing lost knowledge an ancient civilization once had before it collapsed somehow, ya know... the folks who really built the pyramids and such around 10,000 years ago. [probably killed themselves off with biological warfare the way we are about to do, and it only takes a few years for all our metal monstrosities to rust to dust so no arguments about there being no evidence of such a civilization... where are all the ships built during the last few centuries?]
The books cobbled together to make that bible describe to uneducated goat herders how not to have sex with their family or their goats to continue the species and that long ago folks knew about the Oort cloud and the vast shell of water ice that surrounds our solar system in the form of comets and icy bodies like Pluto. Up until around 4 billion years ago these bodies crashed into the molten earth in numbers enough to put oceans of water into the atmosphere and on the planet as it cooled hence, the heavens did indeed open to rain water on the planet and the water trapped beneath the crust bubbled back up to fill the holes. Seems shepherds don't quite grasp the idea of a timeline of billions of years so they made up something they could get behind like men living hundreds of years and surviving floods and such. These days we have Superman and the Santa Claus.
Every wacky story in Genesis and the books of the bible are just fairy tales dumbed down to the level of cavemen so they can sort of understand the oral history that survived from whatever lost civilization's knowledge there was. Its all a matter of interpretation of the bible and other bedtime stories. Wanna hear the lost history behind Adam and Eve? Keep da faith and da non-faith kiddies.
Angsto the Clown

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Yup. A horrible failing, and one that doesn't fit in well with today's more "enlightened" approach to the world and life in general.

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What?! Bush has appointed himself Ayatollah now? Or, is it Ayatollah Cheney?

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where is Richard Dawkins when we need him?

I saw him on South Park the other night, whoopin' it up with Mrs. Garrison in the monkey show.

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" And with banners flying and drums beating we march steadily backwards..." Clarence Darrow, Scopes monkey trial

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my boyfriend read this story aloud to me and i thought my head was going to explode. i was livid at this obvious violation of church infecting the state until i found out that the National Park Service had this to say: "Geologic formations such as gneiss and schist found at the bottom of the Canyon date back 1,800 million years."

what a relief, but now instead i am angry at the article.

update or revise your shizit, alternet.

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Nobody is as outraged as I am at the way this administration has attempted to join church and state interests. However, this story is at factually incorrect. According to the National Park Service's web page, "the Canyon itself is a fairly young feature. The oldest rocks at the canyon bottom are close to 2 billion years old. The Canyon itself—an erosional feature—has formed only in the past five or six million years (6,000,000). Geologically speaking, Grand Canyon is very young."

See for yourself at:
http://www2.nature.nps.gov/geology/parks/grca/

My fellow liberals, atheists, and rationalists, please remember that if we are not careful with the facts, we will be untrustworthy in the eyes of the people, and they will continue to listen to W. and his minions.

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I didn't have any trouble finding non-whacko information about the canyon.

http://www.nps.gov/grca/faqs.htm#old

How old is the Canyon?

That's a tricky question. Although rocks exposed in the walls of the canyon are geologically quite old, the Canyon itself is a fairly young feature. The oldest rocks at the canyon bottom are close to 2000 million years old. The Canyon itself - an erosional feature - has formed only in the past five or six million years. Geologically speaking, Grand Canyon is very young.

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I can think of no better way to bring the Christain Fundementalist ideology to its knees than for them to continue to espouse these absurd beliefs. Is Richard Dawkins in this loop .... he sure ought to be.

Would someone do a story on the 3000 year old dinosaur bone in Liberty U .... just another nail in the neocon Christian fundementalist coffin .... hey George "bring em on"

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I was among many who were duped by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility that the Grand Canyon National Park were pressured into not saying the Grand Canyon's geological age and that a book they sell supports Noah's Flood behind creating the Grand Canyon.

Skeptic magazine was also duped, but did a powerful follow-up on the story here.

There is no official policy to not discuss the geological age. And the book, for that matter, is sold in the "Inspiration" section of the bookstore, not under "Science".

Stewart N. Thorpe

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Alternet posters will believe anything if it fits their paradigm. Truly, the most easily manipulated fools......fortunately, they don't run the country.

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