“Snelling, who lives in Kentucky, agrees with the official Answers in Genesis position — that Genesis is literally true, right down to the six-day creation and Noah somehow fathering the ancestors of all human beings alive today.”
All Andrew Snelling wants to do is collect some rocks from Grand Canyon in order to help prove Arizona’s most-famous landmark was created in a few days by God.
National Park Service officials won’t let him, denying his 2013 research application following scathing criticisms of his beliefs by several scientists.
Now, the Scottsdale-based Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal-help organization, is suing in federal court on behalf of Snelling, claiming his constitutional rights are being violated.
In the federal complaint filed on Tuesday, ADF uses several key e-mails by scientists who put their feelings in writing to demonstrate the bias Snelling says he encountered.
“It is difficult to review such an outlandish proposal,” Ron Blakely of Northern Arizona University told NPS officials in 2014, when he was asked for his opinion about Snelling’s proposal.
Gary McCaleb, ADF senior counsel, told Phoenix New Times that Snelling “has been stonewalled for three years. Something’s fundamentally wrong when a government stops a good scientist from doing good research.”
Whether it’s actually “good” research is debatable, of course. But it’s unclear why government officials care what Snelling concludes about a relatively small collection of Grand Canyon rocks.
Since 2007, Snelling has worked for Answers in Genesis, a Kentucky-based Christian nonprofit run by its founder and CEO, Ken Ham.
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