John Peters comments below:

you are totally blinded by the rightwing propaganda. This president is a miserable failure who has not only failed in the war on terror he has increased the likihood of another attack inside our borders.

We are the most hated country in the world and this putz who plays at being president will likely destroy the economy of this country before he is through..

The dollar has never been weaker .. our trade deficit has never been higher and the national debt is at record levels and climbing.. .The only answer seems to be raise interest rates and reduce more taxes for the rich and gut social securty a recipe for disaster..

The walls between church and state are slowly being torn down [actually, these Christians want to build the wall! - FK] and they are selling books in the National Park bookstore at the Grand Canyon saying that the Canyon was formed from Noah’s flood.. The only people that can’t see this president as an abomination and the bleak future we have ahead of us while this putz is president wear blinders and go baaaah..

GOD SAVE AMERICA from BUSH and WHACKS LIKE YOU!!

[sic, sic, etc.]

Love the all-caps, John, thanks. I also love the book-burning twist — more evidence that true leftists are actually just hemp-wearing fascists.

I hadn’t heard about the Grand Canyon debate before. I suppose a news roundup is in order…

WaPo:

Visitors to the information plaza at Grand Canyon National Park are told how the Colorado River carved the great chasm over millennia through the rocks of the Colorado Plateau. But nestled among the hiking guides and souvenirs sold at the plaza bookstore is a book that tells a very different story of how the canyon came to be.

A federal review of whether the book — which asserts that the canyon was created in a matter of days as a result of the same flood that had threatened to sink Noah and his ark — should be sold at the park has been delayed for months as officials wrestle with the issue of separation of church and state.

“Grand Canyon: A Different View,” compiled by Colorado River guide Tom Vail, includes essays by creationists who maintain that the canyon’s sedimentary strata were formed by deposits from Noah’s flood and that the canyon’s age should be based on a biblical rather than an evolutionary timeline — making it just thousands of years old, not the 6 million years that geologists say.

…

Meanwhile, the book has been moved from the natural science section to the inspirational section in the store.

The bookstore is run by a nonprofit group, but park officials approve which books can be sold there. Several others have been rejected in past months for including outdated or inaccurate information. Members of the scientific community are questioning why Vail’s book was approved.

NYTIMES Correction: “An article in Science Times on Tuesday about a debate over the sale of a book offering a creationist view of the formation of Grand Canyon in bookstores at the national park referred incorrectly to a letter written by the presidents of seven scientific organizations to the park superintendent. The letter asked that the book be clearly separated from materials offering scientific information about Grand Canyon geology, not that it be removed from the stores. As the article reported, only the main store is large enough to have separate sections; there, the operators say, the book is shelved with “inspirational” materials rather than scientific ones.”

TIME: “The creationists have demonstrated again that they are scientifically illiterate, and out of step with the 21st century.”

Beliefnet:

Answers in Genesis, a ministry whose president wrote an essay in the book, is urging its supporters to ask park service officials to permit “Grand Canyon: A Different View” to remain on the shelves of the park’s three bookstores.

…The book, compiled by Tom Vail, features colorful photographs of the canyon and essays reflecting a creationist’s view of its development. “For years, as a Colorado River guide I told people how the Grand Canyon was formed over the evolutionary time scale of millions of years,” writes Vail on the Web site of his Phoenix-based Canyon Ministries about the book. “Then I met the Lord. Now, I have ‘a different view’ of the canyon, which, according to a biblical time scale, can’t possibly be more than a few thousand years old.”

I blame scientists; after all, they are the ones forcing the flood issue! Again!

Here’s something to read if you’re a science junkie looking for a Christian perspective: Does God Exist?

If you’re interested in the Flood book, or if you just want to annoy John Peters, buy it here (Fishkite gets a bonus if you do).