Rating: 
Summary: Why the Hatred?
Review: "Nothing more than a joke" "A Complete Outrage" "Absurd" "Religious Idiots" "Creationist Propoganda"These comments by some reviewers surprise me. Why all the hatred and derision? If this author's view of the origins of the canyon are wrong/false, then why do those who disagree with him get so upset? Wouldn't the author's error be evident?
Rating:
Summary: Why the Hatred?
Review: "Nothing more than a joke" "A Complete Outrage" "Absurd" "Religious Idiots" "Creationist Propoganda" These comments by some reviewers surprise me. Why all the hatred and derision? If this author's view of the origins of the canyon are wrong/false, then why do those who disagree with him get so upset? Wouldn't the author's error be evident?
Rating: 
Summary: A Theological View
Review: According to Vail the time span recorded in the Grand Canyon is only 6,000 years and its rocks are a record of the Biblical 6 days of creation and Noah's flood. Vail has given us a book that is based on absolute dependence on a group of sacred writings as infallible - rather than to geological science. Extraordinary interpretations require extraordinary evidence, and in this regard this book is an extraordinary failure. For example,Vail asserts,"... in the creationist's view, the carving of the Canyon would have taken place when the sedimentary layers were still soft, allowing the catastrophic erosion process to quickly and easily cut through the layers."Today, the Canyon walls stand up to 1600 m high in a series of cliffs and benches. The benches form where softer rocks, such as the Bright Angel Shale, occur.The cliffs are formed of harder,more resistant rocks such as the Redwall Limestone.Given that these rocks formed from muds-clay-rich in the case of the shales, and calcium carbonate-rich in the case of the limestones-the onus is on Vail to demonstrate that weak, plastic muds could stand in such enormous cliffs while being catastrophically eroded. It would require a another whole book to discuss all the absurdities propounded by the authors of this book. However, the chapter on fossils offers several particularly egregious examples. Vail illustrates excellent examples of trace fossils (he calls them "fossilized worm tubes") in the Bright Angel Shale.These are the products of marine animals that were filter feeders and deposit feeders living in the mud of a Cambrian sea, just as their modern counterparts do today. Many other horizons within the rocks of the Grand Canyon are replete with such examples of trace fossils and bioturbation, indicating that these fauna lived and died in place, in the sediments in which we now find their traces, rather than being transported there by catastrophic flooding. This book is an example of a new, slick strategy by Biblical literalists to proselytize using a beautifully illustrated, multiauthored book about a world-famous, spectacular locality.
Rating:
Summary: A Wondrous and Awesome Work!
Review: An astoundingly beautiful and creative work in it's breadth,
beauty and truthfulness. Do not let this one pass you by.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: Bought this book after I heard of the National Park issue. The book presents a good deal of evidence to Disprove the evolution theory. The pictures of the land formation( or rock formation ) and the fossil remains very much prove that the Canyon was a result of major natural changes (like the great flood ) and not millions of years.
Rating:
Summary: This book is NOT science
Review: Catastrophism is a geological viewpoint that died in the real world some time ago. His book may be an alternate viewpoint, but science it is not. Science is gathering empirical evidence and documenting what you find. It is not starting with a biblical idea and trying to support it with unfound suppositions. There is a reason you will NEVER find this book in an accredited university's geology curriculum. When it comes down to whether I trust this guy's religious views or the study of geology professors throughout the world over the last several centuries, I choose the people who actually know what they are talking about!
Rating:
Summary: Grand Canyon is the result of catastrophic processes.
Review: Could the Grand Canyon have been formed through the action of astronomical quantities of water? The authors of this book have dished out some rather weighty evidence which deserves to be understood rather than censored. Did you know that on the north side of Mount St. Helens there is a particularly deep canyon which was carved out within just nine hours on March 19, 1982? The horizontal layering effect which occured there is much the same as what is seen at the Grand Canyon, and this in itself is strong evidence supporting the idea that catastrophic processes can stack together horizontal sedimentary layers. There is conclusive evidence that every layer at the Grand Canyon was formed under water, and this shows that a multi-phase Flood could well have been the responsible agent for what we now know to be the Grand Canyon. If you've not heard this side of the story before, you should definitely invest in this intriguing book which provides a large amount of evidence demonstrating that the Grand Canyon is the product of catastrophic processes within a relatively short period of time. We all have the same data to look at-- and what a view it is! The interpretation of that data brings one to an understanding of what was behind the building up of the geological column. Could it be that the present-day geologists' interpretation that "the present is the key to the past" might be missing something quite significant? At least consider looking at ALL the evidence before writing off the ideas of those who hold a different view.
Rating:
Summary: Too true to be broadly welcomed
Review: Describing the tremendous evidence from within the Grand Canyon for its own development via catastrophic change, (i.e. a global flood) this well-done book angers worshippers and defenders of evolutionary, uniformitarian dogma. They have reacted to the point of mounting a serious attempt to ban this title from sale at the Grand Canyon. This says much about the real strength of their own ideas, when they cannot endure side-by-side comparison. Read it for yourself. (I hear the flatearth crowd is still pretty annoyed with Magellan, too.)
Rating:
Summary: Grand Canyon: A Diifferent View
Review: Fortunately I didn't purchase this book, just borrowed it. The photographs are stunning, but much like the literal view from the Bible, this book is all image and no real stubstance. It reminded me of a lady in Dinosaur National Park's enclosed dinosaur gravesite telling her baffled daughter, "See what the Devil does to confuse man." Science does make belief sometimes very trying.
The difference here is that scientists are never always certain just what they will discover and they are willing if not eager for other scientists to refute their finds. This is how you eventually arrive at the truth. In contrast, the contributors to this book already know the answer, it is indisputable, and they plunge forward with weak and irrelevant data in their feeble attempt to prove and propagate these myths.
Great book for creationists though. It will help them feel much more secure in their collective ignorance.
Rating:
Summary: Another Christian Perspective
Review: Grand Canyon, A Different View by Tom Vail is for the most part a rehash of what Creation Scientists have been saying for the last 40 years or so. There is nothing new here, no new evidence is offered for their position. The book is just a compilation of brief paragraphs selected from a number of contributors tied together with text by Mr. Vail.
This book, and the Creation Science movement, accuses professional science with starting from a theory - evolution - and making the facts fit the theory. This is just blatant projection. The Creation Science movement is the the one who start with a theory - a young earth - and make the facts of nature fit their theory. When these facts don't fit, they either ignore them or present to naive readers facts that are blatantly false. Snelling, for example, is quoted as saying, "..most rock layers in many sequences show no evidence of erosion between the deposition of each layer, signifying continuous deposition of these whole sequences." Modern science starts with evidence -- facts -- and draws the conclusion of an old earth from these facts. Any introductory geology textbook that discusses Grand Canyon points to the evidence of numerous unconformities between layers as indicators of massive erosion between deposition of sedimentary layers. The tendency of this book, and Creation Science, to present false evidence to support their theories has led some critics to characterize young-earth proponents as "lying for Jesus."
What Creation Science fails to grasp is that it is their "interpretation" of Genesis that is an issue. Nowhere in Genesis, or anywhere else in the Bible for that matter, does it say when God created the earth. Nor does it say in which hour of the day God created this or that, suggesting that hours are involved. But Creation Science people insist on a 24-hour day, about 5,000 years ago. And what did God do on the eighth day. Did He resume creation? No. Creation is finished. So on the seventh and each subsequent day to the present He is resting from creating. If the seventh day involves a long time period, why not also the first through sixth. There are a number of committed evangelical scientists (Hugh Ross or the Intelligent Design movement) who see no conflict between the Genesis account and an old earth.
This book, and the Creation Science movement, argue that the rock layers of Grand Canyon were deposited in a single depositional event in the course of a brief span of time (days). They try to illustrate this by taking a tall large cyllinder containing water and sand, gravel, and rocks, shaking it up, and waiting about a minute as the matter settles to the bottom. Gary Parker, one of the contributors to this book, says, "See, you have layers. And long did it take." But they layers consist of heavy rocks on the bottom, gravel in between, and sand on top. Now shake up the cyllinder and get the layers to reverse themselves - sand on the bottom, gravel in the middle and rocks on top. It can't be done. But that is exactly what we have in Grand Canyon. Less dense rocks are often in layers near the bottom, with more dense rocks on top. The only way this could happen is if long periods of time passed which allowed the lower layers to harden and thus be able to support the heavier, more dense rocks on top.
Some have criticisized this book as being "religion" and not "science". But franctly it fails on both accounts. It is not only bad science but bad religion. They fail to adequaly interpret Genesis and read into the account a number of their presuppositions. And they, in turn, call other Christians who do not share their theological viewpoint as being "evolutionists." But it is possible, and many do, to believe in an old earth, the Genesis account, and deny evolution.
The greatest contribution to Grand Canyon, A Different View comes from its spectacular photography by Charley Heavenrich making this a great coffee-table book. The "About The Author and Photographer" on the last page of the book points out, interestingly, that Mr. Heavenrich does not share the creationist point of view.
|
