The Interior Department is facing a lawsuit from a Christian geologist who claims he was not allowed to collect rocks from Grand Canyon National Park because of his creationist beliefs.
In the suit filed earlier this month, the Australian geologist, Andrew Snelling, says that religious discrimination was behind the National Park Service's (NRS's) decision to deny him a permit to gather samples from four locations in the park.
Snelling had hoped to gather the rocks to support the creationist belief that a global flood about 4,300 years ago was responsible for rock layers and fossil deposits around the world.
NPS's actions "demonstrate animus towards the religious viewpoints of Dr. Snelling," the complaint alleges, "and violate Dr. Snelling's free exercise rights by imposing inappropriate and unnecessary religious tests to his access to the park."
The lawsuit was filed May 9 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. NPS has yet to respond to the allegations.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday May 28 2017, @09:30PM
No, it's not a "hate crime" to refuse a proposed scientific study that is unscientific, as determined by peer review. He needs to justify that his study has the potential for scientific merit, whether he's credentialed or not. I would ask the same of any scientist applying to do similar studies. I have absolutely no problem with any person who adheres to any faith doing scientific research. When such beliefs, however, contradict the foundations of the entire scientific discipline which he claims to be part of AND are a central issue in a proposed study, that's a problem -- even then, though, it's up to his peer scientists to determine the validity of such research. They determined this was not a productive scientific study.
As I already noted in another post here, I don't necessarily have a problem with him gathering materials from a public site if he admits the true purpose of his study, i.e., to manufacture evidence that will go to support a predetermined religious theory. If he applies for a grant under "religious studies" or perhaps permission to gather materials for "creative fictional writing," maybe we give him the okay.
But that would require him to be honest about what he's actually doing here: "I propose to remove samples from the Grand Canyon to prove the Bible is the literal word of God." Instead, he wants to pretend to be an objective scientist, who might actually disprove his theory -- except his own public biography openly admits that he's already predetermined what the evidence MUST conclude. That's not science.