Ken Ham's take on Fossil Butte

So yesterday the blogger over at The Dispersal of Darwin posted a link to this story on Facebook yesterday. When I saw where it linked I initially didn't think much of it but as I read through the article I wanted to address something. The link leads to Ken Ham being upset about the way that Fossil Butte National Monument (Wikipedia page) handles the age of the Earth.

First, Ken Ham can complain all he wants about this being "indoctrinating visiting families" but I am sorry Ken it isn't. Why do I say this? Well simple there has been no peer-reviewed published scientific paper that 1) disputes evolution, and 2) supports his particular view of a 6 day creation. All evidence right now points to an old Earth one that is ~4.6 billion years old, I am not saying that it may not be proved wrong in the future but it isn't really looking like it. What the NPS is doing is taking the current scientific understanding about the planet and presenting it in a unique way.

This brings me to my second and main point, this is a really cool way to try to teach people about this. As someone who has taught labs on historical geology I am always trying to find a way to help my students understand the age of the Earth. While this may not be useful to everyone to the people visiting Fossil Butte it will help them get a better understanding this great expanse of time. Humans are not good at understanding numbers that big because they really don't mean much to us but by having people drive through this whole length of time might give this huge numbers some meaning, you could do the same thing with other numbers that are really big like the debt etc.

I haven't been to Fossil Butte myself but Ken's post makes me want to visit it even more than before, hopefully someday.