Hey, let's play make believe.

Forget about whether or not "images" of homosexuals have been removed from sight of professional zealots who managed (apparently) to make the government censor Lincoln Memorial displays.

Let's talk about total fiction being taught as truth.

George Washington and the cherry tree, move over.

This is better:

This fall the Park Service approved a creationist text, Grand Canyon: A Different View, for sale in park bookstores and museums. The book, written by Tom Vail, claims that the Grand Canyon is really only a few thousand years old, developing on a biblical rather than an evolutionary time scale. "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," Vail writes in the introduction to 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 about a few thousand years old." One of the contributors to the book is creation "scientist" Gary Parker, who observes, "Where did the Grand Canyon itself come from? The Flood may have stacked the rock like a giant layer cake, but what cut the cake? One thing is sure: the Colorado River did not do it." Earlier this year the Bush administration prevented park rangers from publishing a rebuttal to the book for use by interpretive staff and seasonal employees who are often confronted during tours by creationist zealots.

And no park ranger at any of our national seashores better tell me otherwise.

You know, when I said the lunatics are running the asylum I wasn't kidding!

These people are crazier than I thought.

UPDATE: Perhaps I was being a bit hard on the flat earthers there. Maybe I should apologize. After all, famed South African statesman Paul Kruger (known affectionately as "Oom Paul") not only believed as fact that the earth was flat, but he enlisted prominent Boer scholars to supply scientific proof:

It sounds odd to hear scholars and statesmen say the world is flat; but it is a fact that three Boers favoured by the opinion of President Kruger prepared a work to support that contention. While I was at Durban they came from Pretoria to obtain data from me, and they seemed annoyed when I told them that they could not prove it by my experience. With the advice to call up some ghost of the dark ages for research, I went ashore, and left these three wise men poring over the Spray's track on a chart of the world, which, however, proved nothing to them, for it was on Mercator's projection, and behold, it was "flat." The next morning I met one of the party in a clergyman's garb, carrying a large Bible, not different from the one I had read. He tackled me, saying, "If you respect the Word of God, you must admit that the world is flat." "If the Word of God stands on a flat world " I began. "What!" cried he, losing himself in a passion, and making as if he would run me through with an assagai. "What!" he shouted in astonishment and rage, while I jumped aside to dodge the imaginary weapon. Had this good but misguided fanatic been armed with a real weapon, the crew of the Spray would have died a martyr there and then. The next day, seeing him across the street, I bowed and made curves with my hands. He responded with a level, swimming movement of his hands, meaning "the world is flat." A pamphlet by these Transvaal geographers, made up of arguments from sources high and low to prove their theory, was mailed to me before I sailed from Africa on my last stretch around the globe.

While I feebly portray the ignorance of these learned men, I have great admiration for their physical manhood. Much that I saw first and last of the Transvaal and the Boers was admirable. It is well known that they are the hardest of fighters, and as generous to the fallen as they are brave before the foe. Real stubborn bigotry with them is only found among old fogies, and will die a natural death, and that, too, perhaps long before we ourselves are entirely free from bigotry.

But there is such a thing as science, and you know, when there is an overwhelming consensus about pretty basic things, to force the government to subsidize what amounts to fringe nonsense (no matter how sincerely it is believed), strikes me as frivolous.

I shudder to think that they might be handing out security clearances to people who "think" that way.

(And, of course, whose security clearances would be denied at the same time?)

By the way, the heretical idea of a spherical earth is a classical value!

That idea became heretical, of course, in the superstitious Middle Ages -- a time period these "young earth society" types want to revive. I say, if we have to roll back the clock, why not roll it back to a period when saner heads prevailed?

UPDATE: Almost missed something. (I guess this post is still "evolving.") The "young earther" Tom Vail (whose highly questionable book is being distributed by the United States government) seems to confuse "evolutionary" time with geologic time. Geologic time refers to the age of rocks (and the earth) -- the age of which predates life (and of course evolution). I suspect it suits his agenda to link geologic time with evolutionary theory, so he engages in misleading rhetoric.

Maybe Dr. Vail should take up snake oil sales....

(Don't know whether the guy's a doc or not, but hey! His book's been endorsed by lots of "doctors"!)

NOTE: Bear in mind that I am not an atheist. However, I think atheists should get down on their knees and thank God for guys like Vail, because they do a much better job of turning people off to religion.