Blog from the Capital

As I posted Tuesday, after recent elections replaced members that redefined science and inserted religious concerns into the science curriculum, the Kansas School Board did an about-face. Today, Reuters has more. Meanwhile last week's USAToday featured a column by Tom Krattenmaker entitled The Bible vs. Science that I've just now stumbled upon (via Jesus Politics).

Frustrated by the National Park Service's insistence that the visitors center continue to sell a book with a creationist account of the canyon's formation, a public employees group is accusing the service of invalidating science and promoting fundamentalist religion.

It's not as though the two sides are splitting hairs: Most scientists estimate the canyon's age at about 6 million years. Young-Earth creationists, who believe in the literal account of the world's creation laid out in the Bible's book of Genesis, contend it's closer to 4,500 years.

The protesting group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an alliance of scientists, land managers, environmental advocates and others, calls it distressing that the park service is not sticking to pure, mainstream geology in the information it dispenses at the Grand Canyon.