Del Tackett: The Truth Problem?

That title comes from a post by “A concerned Christian” on The Truth Project, launched by Del Tackett, in 2004.  Now, a new movie is out by Del Tackett, called "Is Genesis History?"  Clarke Morledge, on the blog Veracity, has this to say: 

According to the promotional material, Is Genesis History? seeks to provide a new look at the evidence supporting Creation and the Flood. But it is important to realize that Del Tackett is putting forward one particular view as to what this means, namely a Young Earth, of no more than about 6,000 years old, and a global Flood in Noah’s day, covering the entire planet.

In the byline for the film, Tackett notes that there are “two competing views… one compelling truth.” The problem here is that Tackett is oversimplifying what is indeed the case among evangelical Christians, just from viewing the film highlight clips on the movie’s YouTube channel. There are actually more than “two” views to consider. For Tackett, the one view he advocates for rejects the concept of “deep time,” the modern scientific consensus of a 4.5 billion year old earth, that helps to explain the origin of our planet and its universe, within the scientific disciplines of geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and others, as taught in every American public school and public science museum.

For Tackett, this “deep time” paradigm strikes disaster at the very heart of a Biblical worldview, and specifically the meaning of the cosmic Fall, as taught in the Book of Genesis. There are many skeptical, non-Christian scientists and thinkers who would agree, thereby rejecting the Bible. However, there are also a number of other Christian pastors, Bible teachers, theologians, and believing evangelical scientists who find no difficulty reconciling the concept of “deep time,” with an authoritative, inerrant view of the Bible and its teachings. [emphasis his]

I have already noted, in another context, the fact that, in the trailer, Steve Austin, a young earth creationist, when speaking about the Grand Canyon, states that geologists are “backing away” from the idea that it was created millions of years ago. This immediately set off alarm bells, since it has no basis in truth, whatsoever. One model suggests that the canyon began forming when the Colorado Plateau began uplifting around 3-4 million years ago.  Another model suggests a date of 5-6 million years ago for the main canyon but that older canyons in the system may have been carved as early as 50-60 million years ago.  There are no models that posit a canyon creation 6,000 years ago.

Other problems exist with the idea that the canyon was formed recently.  On the shelf, in the gift store at the Grand Canyon, sits a book called Grand Canyon: A Different View, written by young earth creationist Tom Vail. Here is what geologist David Montgomery has to say about it:

Digging deeper into the book, I read that the canyon was carved when the sediment that formed the rocks now exposed in its walls was still soft. I was puzzled that the authors did not try to explain how a mile-high stack of saturated sediment remained standing without slumping into the growing chasm—or how all the loose sand and clay later turned into solid rock. The book simply stated that, according to the Bible, Noah's flood formed the Grand Canyon and all the rocks through which its cut in under a year. There was no explanation for the multiple alternating layers of different rock types, the erosional gaps in the rock sequence that spoke of ages of lost time, or the remarkable order to the various fossils in the canyon walls. The story was nothing like tale I read in the rocks I had spent the day hiking past.

Steve Austin, if you will recall, did the bogus study on potassium/argon dating of Mount St. Helens lava flows. This man's credibility is wanting.

The trailer for Is Genesis History? makes it pretty clear that the film recycles much of the science that was in the Truth Project.  Consequently, I am not holding up much hope that modern science will be given a fair shake.  Sadly, this is part and parcel with young earth creationism.Todd Wood's clarion call for better science in support of young earth creationism is going unheeded and unheard by people like Del Tackett and Ken Ham.  As long as this is the case, the faithful, who know little hard science, will lap this up, but nobody in the scientific community is going to take them seriously and they will turn new people who are interested in science away from God.  That is sad. 

New Book Attacks Creationist Explanation of the Grand Canyon

A new book edited by Carol Hill (who has written some very good articles for the ASA journal Perspectives on the Christian Faith, here and here) and others, in the words of the Arizona Daily Sun “Takes Aim at Grand Canyon Creationism.” Emery Cowen writes:

When it comes to relaying the history of the Grand Canyon, a new book co-authored by longtime Flagstaff resident Wayne Ranney takes a different approach to one of the world's most famous geologic features.

What sets the book apart is how it places religion front and center in its discussion of the canyon’s geology. In 240 photo-rich, textbook-style pages “The Grand Canyon Monument to an Ancient Earth: Can Noah’s Flood Explain the Grand Canyon?” highlights the stark divide that continues to exist between some religious views of the canyon’s formation and the prevailing science about its more than 6 million-year-old evolutionary history.

The book does what geologists have failed to do for decades, said Ranney, a former geology professor who has written several books on Grand Canyon. It directly confronts a sector of Christian believers, called Young Earth Creationists, who maintain that the Grand Canyon’s layers were created in one year during Noah's flood and that the event happened along a timeline of Earth’s history that goes back just 6,000 to 10,000 years.

Page after page of the book is dedicated to explaining those beliefs and then showing how the canyon’s geology conflicts with and debunks them.

Lets leave aside the author's notion that this book provides a “different approach” to the formation of the canyon, since The Tusayan National Geographic Bookstore has one (count 'em, One) book espousing the creationist perspective, called The Grand Canyon, A Different View, edited by Tom Vail, while every other book takes the mainstream science approach to the formation of the canyon.

This new work is a welcome book to combat the nonsense of Tom Vail.  When I was at the Tusayan Bookstore a few years ago, I waded through the book—which has to be seen to be believed—and realized that the devotion to the young earth model causes people to concoct absolutely unbelievable geologic scenarios that simply do not stand up to any sort of scrutiny. As Geologist David Montgomery writes:

Digging deeper into the book, I read that the canyon itself was carved when the sediment that formed the rocks now exposed in its walls was still soft. I was puzzled that the authors did not try to explain how a mile-high stack of saturated sediment remained standing without slumping into the growing chasm—or how all the loose sand and clay later turned into solid rock. The book simply stated that, according to the Bible, Noah’s Flood formed the Grand Canyon and all the rocks through which it’s cut in under a year. There was no explanation for the multiple alternating layers of different rock types, the erosional gaps in the rock sequence that spoke of ages of lost time, or the remarkable order to the various fossils in the canyon walls. The story was nothing like the tale I read in the rocks I had spent the day hiking past.

That is one of so many problems with the creationist view (for example, why did the walls of the canyon not collapse, since they were composed of mud and clay and less than a year old?) that it is difficult to take it seriously.

Given that Vail's book was placed in the Science section of the Grand Canyon Bookstore, we can only hope that this one will be placed right next to it.

P.S. anyone with an interest in this area of geology should pick up David Montgomery's The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood, from which I quoted above. It is a great read.

Creationism in the Grand Canyon

Steven Newton wrote a piece for HuffPo a week or so back on Creationism in the Grand Canyon.  He notes:

Creationists often imply that to accept science (especially evolution) is to reject God. In line with this spurious way of thinking, they argue that having National Park Service rangers give talks to visitors about the Grand Canyon in terms of millions of years is an infringement of religious rights. Not being allowed to have bronze plaques on the South Rim quoting biblical verses is viewed an assault on their liberty. In a strange twist, the park association bookstores are forced to carry Tom Vail's creationist coffee-table book about the Grand Canyon, over the objections of many scientific groups.

This is an odd position for creationists to take, given that Vail's book expressly argues that modern science can explain that the canyon was produced in a calendar year, world-wide flood.  Why wouldn't creationists simply argue that mainstream science presents an alternative geologic view?  Nothing like painting a bull's-eye on your forehead.  This is the first of Newton's proposed five-part series. 

The Grand Canyon and Young Earth Creationism

At the Grand Canyon it was my sworn duty to go to the bookstore at the Welcome Center and look up Tom Vail's The Grand Canyon: A Different View. At $17.99, it was not my sworn duty to pick up a copy of it. I did leaf through it, though. It is more of an anthology than anything else, having different entries by a veritable cavalcade of Young Earth Creationists. Almost at random, I opened to a page that had several different arguments, two of which were prominent: in recent years many geologists have begun rejecting uniformitarian arguments and accepting catastrophic explanations for geological formations and that there are no transitional fossils.

I was struck by the casualness with which these outright fabrications were put to paper. There was, of course, no support for either position listed, despite the fact that the book, itself, was surrounded by no fewer than thirty books arguing that, yes, there are transitional fossils and, no, mainstream geologists are not embracing catastrophic explanations for the formation of the canyon.

The book exists in its own little island, the only one of its kind on any of the book shelves in the bookstore. That it is there at all is remarkable, given the controversy surrounding it. One can only hope it has little influence on those that enter the park.