I had not thought that you were misrepresenting anything; I was just curious about the discrepancies.
As to the issue of carrying the booklet, I’m not sure I have a strong opinion. I figure any shop (even government shops) can sell what they wish. On the other hand, they might want to put silly stuff over in fiction. If Fort Apache (currently privately owned) was a National Park site, I would think they’d carry the John Ford film of the same name in the shop, but I would not expect it to be in the history section.
As to other government outlets: if the Library of Congress runs a bookstore, they should carry anything they choose, (Anarchist’s Cookbook, anyone?) but they should still refrain from putting fiction in with non-fiction.
Why not? The other viewpoint, even if it does get more respect from the scientific community, is getting promoted via a government agency. The YEC’ers are paying the bills to run the government agency just like those who wrote the books of the opposing viewpoint. Let them have books from all viewpoints and let us decide. What is so wrong with that? Sure this book may contain material defined as “religious”. So what! So long as the government doesn’t state that it fully supports this book and its stances over everything else I don’t see it as anywhere close to being an establishment of religion on anyone. Have a disclaimer on the wall that says the positions and opinions in the books are not necessarily the position of the U.S. government if that makes the thin-skinned among us sleep a little better at night. There are tax-paying people out there who believe that the more respected books are bunk and that this book is right. I say their voice deserves to be heard just as much as the other side.
I don’t think the Establishment Clause is as important, in this case, as reality. Once the book was moved into “Inspirational” (as noted in an earlier post), I don’t have a problem with it being sold in the government bookstore. However, from a reality viewpoint, it is not true and scientific truth is not up fore a popular vote. The government should not be in the business of promoting falsehoods (yeah, I know, too late), so there is no purpose served by putting false claims in among geology, regardless how much its proponents pay in taxes. Would you put The Turner Diaries in with sociology or anthropology texts simply because the author was rich?
<Sigh> I start to worry about my fellow liberals when they start advocating book bannings.
I’m with Toby-T on this. Much as I would love to see bookstores and gift shops adopt an educational mission, it just ain’t so, regardless of the mission of the sponsoring organization. I’ve seen all kinds of ridiculous crap passed off as “educational” in museum and park bookstores, both government and private. (I used to get my dad to buy me tons of it as a kid!) I seriously doubt any gift shop in the country is able to do more than the most cursory vetting for educational and scientific merit in the books and products it sells. It just isn’t practical–the resources it would require would be substantial.
As long as that’s the case, it would be improper to remove this book because the bad science it spouts (unlike the bad science you will no doubt find in many of the other books and toys sold in this, or any other, shop) happens to be based on religion. Granted, this book apparently garnered complaints, which prompted an investigation, and so the people in charge could have decided that the science in the book, having been brought to their attention by the public, is so heinous as to warrent removal, but even that would raise questions as to motive. It would be dangerously close to government interference in religion.
So they made the right decision: they moved it from the Geology section (where it was no doubt innocently placed as a result of the publisher’s classification) to the Inspirational section where it belongs. All perfectly resonable and prudent. Hooray for government bureaucrats! They finally did something right! (And people still bitch about it.)
In a related story, I understand that Dinosaur National Monument is changing its name to “Mythological Beasty that Never Existed Because the World is only 6007 Years Old National Monument”.
Yes, and when we disagree with allowing teachers to lead kids in prayer, we’re censoring the rights of students to practice their religion.
There’s an important subtlety there that you’re missing, and in missing it, you’re making a scurrilous accusation against me.
I’ve seen all kinds of ridiculous crap passed off as “educational” in museum and park bookstores, both government and private.
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Examples, please? Assuming it’s science as blatantly incompetent or deceitful as that of YEC, I’ll call for it not to be disseminated through a government educational institution, either. And I’ll maintain that that’s not the same thing as censorship.
Toby, I have a hard time imagining a government bookstore that has no educational mission. As tomnedebb said above, I’ve got no problem with such works being sold via a Library-of-Congress type store, though.
Just as I don’t NASA’s bookstore to sell When Worlds Collide, I don’t want this store to sell idiot science.
Well, YEC is in a class by itself! But that’s irrelevant. I’m not going to go patrol giftshops looking for junk science to provide a cite. You want this book banned from such shops, it is incumbant on you to demonstrate (a) that there is a standard of educational or scientific merit attatched to items in these shops, and (b) this book fails to meet that standard. (I include (b) only because it would be trivially easy to write such a “standard” that didn’t actually exclude anything. Given any meaningful form of (a), I’ll concede (b).)
Now granted, there are excelent gift shops out there. The Smithsonian shops generally have wonderful high-quality items (I haven’t been to Air and Space recently, though. Do astronauts still eat freeze-dried ice cream? I love that stuff. ) But I seriously doubt that you can demonstrate (a) for the Park Service shops or the vast majority of similar shops. (I’m curious, BTW, why you exclude “Library-of Congress type store[s].” Doesn’t the LOC have an educational mission? [They also happen to have a very nice gift shop, for that matter.])
If you think that there should be some standard for what these shops sell, that’s fine. But that’s a different thread. If you start that thread, and show some favorable cost-benefit analysis for implimenting such a standard (a tricky thing given the resources it would require–many, many man-hours by employees with college degrees, for a start), I’ll agree with you.
But if there isn’t a standard in place and universally enforced now, you can’t demand that this book be banned. If you can’t or won’t or just forgot to get rid of all the other bad science books, singling this one out is arbitrary and easily interprited as a decision about religion not science. These decisions have to be made according to general standards and policies, not ad hoc decisions based on what a specific official or citizen finds offensive (however well reasoned and correct that official or citizen happens to be). Such ad hoc decisions are how censorship happens in this country.
Toby, I have a hard time imagining a government bookstore that has no educational mission. As tomnedebb said above, I’ve got no problem with such works being sold via a Library-of-Congress type store, though.
Just as I don’t NASA’s bookstore to sell When Worlds Collide, I don’t want this store to sell idiot science.
Nonsense. I am arguing that there should be such a standard, as is obvious from what I’ve posted. If you can show me that such a standard doesn’t exist, then I’ll extend my argument–but from my experience in Park bookstores, I don’t ever recall seeing a book that falsely claimed to represent science. You, on the other hand, said “I’ve seen all kinds of ridiculous crap passed off as “educational” in museum and park bookstores, both government and private.”
If you were just blowing smoke, let us know; otherwise, I’ll ask you to support your own claim with some examples. Your claim runs counter to my experience, but I am incapable of proving a negative, specifically, that there AREN’T “all kinds of” unscientific crap in park bookstores.
I’ve never looked for a book that falsely claimed to represent science in a Park Service bookstore, nor can I specifically remember seeing one. I’m not even sure what it means to “falsely claim to represent science.” What I have seen in many museum and similar gift shops are tons of toys such as blatantly fanciful depictions of dinosaurs, planets, and–yes–even UFOs, all claiming to be somehow educational. These items, it seems to me, should be far easier to eliminate on a prima facie basis than a book, which must be read to be evaluated. Have I seen these specifically in official US Park Service shops? In all honesty, I don’t remember. You are claiming that their is or should be a standard in Park Service shops that excludes such a book. I take that to be the positive claim that needs defence, but I admit that I don’t have any specific evidence to refute it beyond the trivial and anecdotal. Provide more than a flat assertion that the Park Service has or should have such a standard, and I’ll either agree or find and present refuting evidence.
It seems to me this is where your debate with Toby ended up. You think the Park Service shops do and should have educational standards; Toby and I think they don’t and that while it would be nice if they did, it may not actually be practical or worth the cost. My additional point, however, is this: Even if they should have such a standard, it would be wrong to remove the book if no such standard is actually in place. Arguing that they either do or should have such a standard is not enough. Whether they should is quite irrelevant, in fact. If no such standard is actually in place (or was when the book was on the shelf), then inventing one ad hoc is wrong no matter how bad the book may be, or even how much worse than every other book they sell it may be.
First, according to the full Park Service mission, the PS does have an educational mission. The shops, as part of this, surely share in this mission. If you and Toby doubt it, you’re factually incorrect.
Is the mission impractical or not worth the cost? I fail to see this. Surely keeping blatantly incorrect books that masquerade as science out of the bookstores is not impractical: I’ve ordered books for a bookstore before, and not ordering a book is real easy, super practical. Not worth the cost? The cost is tied to the amount of profit from the book, and given that the more copies the book is selling the more the bookstore is failing to fulfill the PS’s educational mission, I’m just not moved by this argument. The only cost is lost profit, and I think we all agree that profit isn’t the point of that bookstore. So those points are non-starters.
That just doesn’t make sense. I’m not calling for removing the book without putting the standard in place; is that not obvious? But the standard is already in place: the PS is supposed to be educational, and by virtue of offering books that claim to be science, falsely, they’re failing at their mission. It’s hardly an ad-hoc standard to ask them to not undercut their mission.
I don’t dispute that the PS has an educational goal. The question is how the PS and its regulations see the gift shop as fitting into that role. Is it simply to raise money and promote interest? Should a school library stock that book? (I say yes, if it meets other standards.) And if you’ve bought for a bookstore, isn’t it the case that publishes often sell books in packages, such that it may not be easy to pick and choose which books get ordered? It’s not like anyone in the store has time to read and evaluate every book anyway.
In short, a mission is not a standard, nor is it a policy. I support you in seeking to raise the educational standards of Park Service gift shops. I hope you succeed. I hope we can raise the educational standards of public schools, for that matter, especially in science. The book had already been ordered, and was already on the shelves. Until you succeed in implimenting higher standards for scientific merit in PS giftshops, moving the book to the Inspirational section was the best decision that could be made.
If they’ll just not reorder it, I won’t insist on their removing every copy from the shelf RIGHT NOW–although I’d prefer that, I can see the (purely pecuniary) reasons not to do so. I do wonder, though, whether they’d move When Worlds Collide to the “Inspirational” section as well.
They don’t say it was formed by rain. They say it was formed by violent tectonic upheaval caused by the hydraulic forces of tsunamis. How 'bout let’s not expose ourselves to the charge that we don’t understand their arguments?
You waited this nearly four weeks to post this *non sequitur?
You are aware, of course, that the al Aqsa mosque was not begun until 705, 635 years after the destruction of the Temple? It is not as though the Caliph al-Walid went out and knocked down the Jewish Temple in order to build the mosque. Would it be appropriate to force the Turks to restore every ancient mosque to the Christian churches from which they were converted? How about compelling the Spaniards to restore every converted church back to the mosques that were originally built? At least the Caliph used land that had been sacred, but which had been profaned for over half a millennium, to build another sacred building.
Getting back to your synagogue and seeing a swastika painted on your door is preferable to having a mosque built on what has been the most holy site for Jews for millennia. Funny how its okay with you to dis Christianity but oh boy, don’t dare put a dig in on Islam.
comparing the building of a mosque 635 years after the destruction of the Temple to covering up some bible verses in a National Park with verses from the Qur’an.
Now you’re trying to drag in some nastiness about swastikas defacing a synagogue–a point that has not been part of this discussion, at all.
Had the Caliph erected a mosque on Temple Mount in 72 or 134 (had there been an Islam at that time) I could see your “riposte” as a mildly heavy handed reply to Alde’s clumsy attempt to mock U.S. SOCAS. Trying to portray the raising of a mosque on the site of the Temple (which was done to honor those traditions Islam inherited from Judaism), simply looks like you woke up with a bad case of indigestion and historical ignorance.
I’ve quite often of defended both Christianity and Judaism when they have actually been attacked. Perhaps a certain need to denigrate Islam colors your perception of my posts on those subjects?
) But I seriously doubt that you can demonstrate (a) for the Park Service shops or the vast majority of similar shops. (I’m curious, BTW, why you exclude “Library-of Congress type store[s].” Doesn’t the LOC have an educational mission? [They also happen to have a very nice gift shop, for that matter.])