"Sarah Berel-Harrop" <sec@hal-pc.org> wrote in message news:4006aede$0$41127$a726171b@news.hal-pc.org...

> here is an update posted yesterday on the AIG website:

And here is my letter:

Dear Ms. Mainella:

Young-Earth Creationist ministry Answers in Genesis has spearheaded an appeal that you stop "book banning" and "censorship" by requiring that the book, _Grand Canyon, a Different View_ be stocked in the science section of the Grand Canyon National Parks' stores. This conflates two unrelated issues.

The book does not represent the views of mainstream scientists. In fact, Young Earth Creationism grossly misrepresents scientific facts in order to support their conclusions. As such, it does not belong in the science section of any library or bookstore. World Net Daily reported yesterday that a Park Service spokesperson, David Barna, states that the Park Service stocks books relating Native American tales regarding the geological formations in the Grand Canyon. Grand Canyon, a Different View, should be stocked in the same place that the Native American books are stocked. Both books relate religious explanations for the formation of the Grand Canyon - one, a Noachian worldwide flood and the other, Native American explanations.

To preferentially characterize one religious explanation as science indeed does treat them unequally and tends toward providing a governmental aegis to a particular religious view. This consideration is in addition to the improper classification of a profoundly anti-science book - in that Young Earth Creationist accounts rely on the misrepresentation of scientific data - as a science book. The best solution is to carry this book, and to shelve it with all the other books relating religious explanations for the formation of the Grand Canyon.

To carry a book, properly classified, does not constitute censorship. On the contrary, the view is expressed - the book is on the shelves! For AIG to consider such an action as book-banning, and to foment political action aimed at the Park Service as book-banning, is just another example of the tactics of misrepresentation so common among YEC's. Please do not give in to YEC pressure.

Sincerely,

Sarah Berel-Harrop
Houston, Texas.

-- Time to resign from the human race, Wipe those tears from your lovely face. Baby, wave to the man in the old red caboose, Before all hell breaks loose. (Kinky Friedman)