In order to prove the historical accuracy of the biblical Flood story, a geologist is currently suing the National Park Service for the right to remove 60 half-pound rocks from the Grand Canyon National Park.

His formal request was denied last July and, now, Dr. Andrew Snelling is being represented by the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom. Senior counsel Gary McCaleb told the New York Times that the proposal was denied not “on the quality of the proposal” but on “what [Snelling] might do with [the data].”

Snelling is what is known as a young-earth creationist, someone who, following the biblical book of Genesis and the biblical timeline of events, holds the position that the earth is only a few thousand years old. His motivation is to demonstrate the biblical Flood story happened , and happened just as the Bible says it did. His research, if it panned out, would have the additional bonus of grounding the scientific evidence for the flood in the United States. And for fundamentalist Americans the only thing better than a Bible story is an American Bible story.