Proverbs 11:29

Creationists confound me. It's not that I have anything against people teaching the biblical story of creation. If anything, I think there's an innate beauty in the stories, and their simplicity lends themselves to an easy understanding of the world for those that aren't ready for more, i.e. children. However, I think there is something wrong with the system when there are still adults today that believe that dinosaurs, much like unicorns and leprechauns and dragons, are creatures of fantasy.

Over three years ago, the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park tried to block the sale of a creationist book that claimed the Canyon was made in a few thousand years, as opposed to the millions of years that a great many forms of evidence suggest. The National Park Service, a federal organization, intervened and in order to quell any objections, they said that there would be a review of the issue. Three years later, this book is still being offered for sale alongside books explaining the age of the Canyon using evidence from the world around us.

Just to shed some light on this hypocrisy, the current policy of the NPS says: “The interpretive and educational treatment used to explain the natural processes and history of the Earth must be based on the best scientific evidence available, as found in scholarly sources that have stood the test of scientific peer review and criticism [and] Interpretive and educational programs must refrain from appearing to endorse religious beliefs explaining natural processes.”

The age of the Grand Canyon has been estimated using a variety of methods, all of them continually making observations, creating hypotheses from these observations, testing these hypotheses, and making more observations while an explanation that makes sense is formulated. This process is known as the scientific method, and when a method like this leads humanity to great advances in medicine, physics, and technology, I tend to believe in its results.

These days, a person can walk around town with protection from measles, mumps, and rubella while listening to their iPod and talking on their cell phone. How does this person remain oblivious to the scientific methods that were used to develop all these technologies, while adamantly refusing to believe something as relatively simple as the age of the Grand Canyon? When people reject millions of years of geological history by fiat, they might as well reject all the technologies that make our world what it is today.

Personally, I feel like a person can listen to the biblical story of creation, interpret it metaphorically, and still get all the value that both religion and science have to offer on this issue.