Ship of Fools - Chapter 18
On the Origin of Canyons
[Start at the beginning of the novel: Prologue.]
[Go to the Table of Contents.]
Welcome back to Ship of Fools, my satire about a science journalist trying to make sense of conspiracy theorists, flat-earthers, moon-landing deniers, New Agers, and more.
Having rescued Reverend Lee from the Nazis, Slim and Shorty take him on a circuitous route back to town.
AFTER an hour of hard riding, the cowpokes and their shackled companion dismounted, giving the reverend a break from the jostling.
“Here, Rev, let’s get those cuffs off ya,” Slim said, hefting a grapefruit-sized chunk of sandstone.
“How’d you get snarled up with them militia-shits, anyway?” Shorty asked as Slim went to work, the reverend’s hands splayed out behind him on the slickrock where he sat.
Rev. Lee, blushing at the profanity and pausing at every blow of the rock against metal, attempted an answer. “I was in Lee’s Ferry…”
“Very fitting,” said Shorty.
“Indeed…and preparing for my ministry’s annual trip down the Grand Canyon, when they nabbed me.”
“Right. But why’d they take a dislikin’ to you in the first place?”
“Ah, yes. They object to my belief that God loves all his children equally, and want me to start preaching the blood libel against the Jews, along with other white supremacist blasphemy. They had a statement for me to read on a live feed. I refused, of course. So they brought me out here for what they called ‘persuasion’.”
“Sounds like they were gonna make you into one o’ them Christian martyrs.”
“The martyrs of the gospels provide us with great inspiration for our own trials. I would no more give up my belief that Jesus loves all people equally than I would deny the truth of God’s six-day act of Creation, as recorded in Genesis, which they also wanted me to recant.”
“Really?” Slim asked between blows with the rock, which kept breaking into smaller and smaller pieces.
“Yes, it’s the reason for our annual trip, which has become quite popular. I call it, ‘Grand Creation: Biblical Cosmology as Viewed from a Raft on the Colorado’.”
Shorty got a twinkle in his eye. “Slim, you’re not havin’ much luck with that there sandstone. Too bad there ain’t some nice hard granite around here. I wonder why that is? It sure woulda been handy for the Rev here if God had seen fit to put some grano-diorite in these here canyons and mesas.”
Not taking the bait, Reverend Lee asked, “Could you try shooting the handcuffs off?”
Shorty gave him an affronted look. “This ain’t the movies, Rev. Even if no one caught a ricochet, we’d have the department of Occupational Health and Safety after us in no time. Slim and I may differ in our views, but we both like to steer clear o’ the administrative state.”
Slim got up and walked over to his horse. “Maybe that pair o’ pliers I got in my saddlebags will help.”
“Probly shoulda thought o’ that before,” Shorty chided.
At last the shackles were parted and they rode on, the reverend now in greater comfort. They took the rest of the day to circle the head of the canyon from which they’d emerged, navigate two lesser draws, then descend into a fourth, where they made camp near a little spring.
Around the campfire, after a dinner of beans, bacon, and skillet cornbread, Shorty returned to their former topic. “I’m still a mite confused, Reverend. What kinda problem did those Nazis have with you teaching Creationism?”
“It conflicts with their belief in eugenics, of course. You can’t have a master race without Evolution and Darwinism. No, God created us all in his image and loves all his children equally.”
Slim cleared his throat and Shorty looked abashed.
“What?” asked the reverend. “Did I say something to disturb you?”
“Not the bit about all people bein’ born equal,” Shorty hastened to clarify. “It’s just a tad bit uncomfortable, having anything in common with those lowlifes, whose existence ain’t a great argument in favor of your beliefs.”
“Just more evidence of man’s fall from grace, I’m afraid. In fact, while I was lying there in the sand, unable to sleep due to the handcuffs and their carousing, I couldn’t help over-hearing the strangest thing. One or two of their number believe that active eugenics experiments are being carried out in Antarctica by German Nazis who fled there after World War II. And even more outlandish, that these Nazis are receiving help from space aliens in both life-extension and genetic engineering. They believe and hope that Hitler survives down there. The next great step in the evolution of mankind, they called it."
"You don’t say,” said Shorty. “And the rest of ’em believed it?”
“No, I’d say they were highly skeptical. The notion almost requires a corollary belief in the Earth being flat, with the base existing beyond the edge of the known planet and what they call the Ice Wall — otherwise how could such a base be kept secret?”
“People will believe the darnedest things,” put in Slim.
“It’s not as if my fellow believers are immune to the outlandish. Some believe the human genome was created perfect with Adam and Eve, but after the fall, reproduction inevitably introduced mutations that damaged the gene pool.”
“So they’ll believe in Devolution, but not Evolution?”
“That’s right. Sadly, many of the faithful are susceptible to blasphemies offensive to God’s glorious Creation.”
“But you’re all flat-out wrong about how natural selection works,” Slim protested. “Human beings have only been around for a couple hunnerd thousand years, not near long enough for anything but superficial changes like skin color to take hold. And even those are in gradations based on geography, with no clear lines between races.”
“Slim,” Shorty asked, “are you sayin’ race is nothin’ but a social construct?”
“I’m sayin’ some things are cut ’n dried and some things ain’t, is what I’m sayin’. Besides, I thought these Nazis weren’t so much Christians as Odinists.”
“Not to say Onanists, though probably that too,” Shorty added helpfully.
The reverend’s head swiveled back and forth during this exchange like he was at Wimbledon. “You mean you’re Darwinists yourselves?”
“Hard not to be,” said Slim, “livin’ out here where the evidence is so plain to see.”
“Slim used to wrangle mules in the Grand Canyon, y’see,” said Shorty. “Took a trip down through the eons every couple o’ days.”
“That’s right. It became awful hard to believe it was all created in a week.”
“Well of course it wasn’t created in a week,” said the reverend.
“You don’t believe that yourself?”
“Of course not. A lot of the Earth’s impressive geological features were a result of the Great Flood, and the draining of the waters that occurred after, none more so than the Grand Canyon.”
“Well, Slim,” Shorty said with a grin, “seems the Rev here has a different story about how things came to be, almost as if you and he are livin’ in two distinct realities.”
“Now you’re just usin’ words wrong, Shorty,” Slim replied, the Reverend gazing at them both, mystified. “Living in a different reality is one thing, and being just plain wrong is a whole ’nother one.”
“And I’m the one who’s ‘plain wrong’, am I?” the reverend asked without rancor.
“Beggin’ your pardon Rev. Lee, but I’ve seen a lot o’ floods, and danged if I’ve ever seen one that left things as organized in tidy layers as that canyon.”
“That’s because you’ve never seen a worldwide flood. First the sediments were scoured out in the great deluge. Then, as the turbulence lessened, the sediments settled out in different strata based on weight and buoyancy of the different materials. That created the impressive layers we see today. Finally, according to the most popular theory, the receding flood waters carved the canyon. Others believe the flood waters were held back by a gigantic dam, which burst sometime later, giving the sediments more time to solidify.”
Slim shook his head. “And what about the fossils showin’ evolution over time?”
“Again, evolutionists confuse sorting based on time for sorting based on size and weight. As the different animal bodies settled during the flood, the larger ones, having more buoyancy, took longer to sink, leaving the smaller, less buoyant ones to fall to the bottom. And so we see a gradual increase in size and complexity of fossils as we go up through the strata.”
“The Rev’s got some good points, Slim.”
“Except for the lizard tracks.”
“Of course, no student of Grand Canyon geology can be unaware of the famous lizard tracks in the Coconino Sandstone. But if betting were not a sin, I’d wager they prove something different than you believe they do.”
“How’s that?”
“You assume those tracks mean there is a layer of windblown sediments that became the Coconino Sandstone, sandwiched between all the other flood sediments.”
“Sure.”
“Which would pretty much blow my theory out of the water, as it were.”
“Well put.”
“But those prints actually show that they were made in a wet environment. Have you ever seen clearly outlined lizard toe prints in a sand dune?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“That’s because they start out as mere smudges with a tail drag in between, and then are quickly blown away. But these prints show the lizard was moving across wet sand, or even a submerged sandbar, as it fled the floodwaters.”
“But you just said the sediments settled out after the flood had covered everything!”
“I admit, there might be a few gaps and bits out of order in the chronology — just as there are gaps in the fossil record on which Darwinists rely.”
“I don’t know,” said Slim. “Every mud flat I ever seen quivered like a bowl full o’ jelly, and where water carved through it, the banks wouldn’t hold. But now you’re askin’ me to believe those flood sediments were soft enough for the retreating floodwater to carve down five thousand feet in half a year, but still stable enough to keep standing. My gut just tells me that’s wrong.”
“But gut feelings are hardly a sound basis for science, wouldn’t you agree?”
Shorty clapped his hands together. “If this don’t just tickle me pink. Here we got two competin’ stories, people on both sides lookin’ for patterns based on their preconceived notions, as people are wont to do, and fittin’ them together, gaps and all. And so much of it depends on the storyteller weavin’ a convincing tale.”
Slim sighed. “I sure wish I had one o’ them PhDs from up in Provo or Boulder here to explain it better than I can.”
“Slim, are you sure you’re feelin’ all right?” Shorty teased. “Appealin’ to authority like that — it’s beneath a self-reliant individualist such as yourself.” He ducked as an unidentified missile whizzed past his head from across the fire.
“I admit it, I’m nothin’ but a cowpoke who knows just enough science to get in trouble.”
“Relax, pardner,” Shorty said. “Science is on your side, and you know I believe it to be the most rigorous of all the possible socially constructed realities. It’s just that this parlay was too entertaining to pass up.”
The reverend looked at them. “You both seem like good men, and you’ve done me a brotherly, Christian service. In fact, our meeting is a welcome antidote to my rather unirenic feelings toward all non-believers since those scoundrels kidnapped me. It’s a reminder that there is good in humanity, regardless of faith. But I suggest we leave the debate aside and get some, as you say in these parts, shut-eye.”
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter, please give it a like, a share, a restack, or a comment. And if you really enjoyed it, I hope you’ll buy me a coffee or upgrade to a paid subscription.
Who do you think won this debate? (Is there any winning it?) Was I fair to both sides? It’s not the last time Reverend Paul will have to defend his beliefs.
Next up: Flat Earth Interlude II.