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Creationism Museum To Open Next Summer
Aloriel writes to point out a story in the Guardian (UK) about the opening next year of
the first Creationism museum in Kentucky, just over the Ohio border. From the article: "The Creation Museum — motto: 'Prepare to Believe!' — will be the first institution in the world whose contents, with the exception of a few turtles swimming in an artificial pond, are entirely fake. It is dedicated to the proposition that the account of the creation of the world in the Book of Genesis is completely correct... The museum is costing $25 million and all but $3 million has already been raised from private donations." A lot of that money is going into the animatronic dinosaurs, which are pictured as coexisting with modern humans before the Fall. According to the article, up to 50 million Americans believe this. The museum has a Web presence in the Answersingenesis.org site.
Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history
... two thousand years of Christian fulminating against the Jews."
RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF. - In recent months, a spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as "End of Faith" author Sam Harris puts it, "the most potent source of human conflict, past and present."
Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries."
In his bestseller "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins contends that most of the world's recent conflicts - in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in
Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka - show the vitality of religion's murderous impulse.
The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials. How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, fewer than 25. Yet the event still haunts the liberal imagination.
It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.
These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.
Moreover, many of the conflicts that are counted as "religious wars" were not fought over religion. They were mainly fought over rival claims to territory and power. Can the wars between England and France be called religious wars because the English were Protestants and the French were Catholics? Hardly.
The same is true today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its core, a religious one. It arises out of a dispute over self-determination and land. Hamas and the extreme orthodox parties in
Israel may advance theological claims - "God gave us this land" and so forth - but the conflict would remain essentially the same even without these religious motives. Ethnic rivalry, not religion, is the source of the tension in Northern Ireland and the Balkans.
p>Yet today's atheists insist on making religion the culprit. Consider Mr. Harris's analysis of the conflict in Sri Lanka. "While the motivations of the Tamil Tigers are not explicitly religious," he informs us, "they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of life and death." In other words, while the Tigers see themselves as combatants in a secular political struggle, Harris detects a religious motive because these people happen to be Hindu and surely there must be some underlying religious craziness that explains their fanaticism.
Harris can go on forever in this vein. Seeking to exonerate secularism and atheism from the horrors perpetrated in their name, he argues that Stalinism and Maoism were in reality "little more than a political religion." As for Nazism, "while the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominantly secular way, it was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity." Indeed, "The holocaust marked the culmination of
One finds the same inanities in Mr. Dawkins's work. Don't be fooled by this rhetorical legerdemain. Dawkins and Harris cannot explain why, if Nazism was directly desce
Hmmm? There's nothing in the article to indicate that the balance is being picked up by taxpayers. I think a more likely scenario is that they're still working on finding another $3M in donations.
The real question is, if Jesus were to drop on by, would he approve of $25M being spent on religious idolism? Or would he have prefered that money spent maybe saving the lives of a few thousand people in a third-world country? But consistency has never been one of organizaed religion's strong points.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
How about this: Learn Hebrew then read the original Jewish passages instead of the mistranslated out-of-context crap. Even the most orthodox Jew, with very few exceptions, will tell you that EVEN THEY KNOW IT'S METAPHOR, and it's THEIR CULTURAL DOCUMENTS. It figures that Christianity, a religion designed by committee, would hijack the original purpose for their own use, and it still continues to this very day.
I'd like to appologize on behalf of the state of Kentucky.
Not all of us are ignorant, inbred rednecks.
Thank you for the troll moderation, it validates Joe.
KFG
Jesus said we should be kind to one another and forgive and not judge. If theis message makes someone a better person, couldn't you say that person was saved by Jesus?
Is it wrong to appreciate life in all its forms? Is it wrong to think that life is something special in the Universe? "God loves you" is just another way of saying that.
I used to be an atheist. But the problem with atheism is that it limits you. Science can answer the "How?" questions but not the "Why?" questions. Why are we here? Big bang, evolution, yada yada yada. That tells us how, but not why.
This museum devoted to creationism causes me to recall a bit of insight by Karl Marx. He once said, "Religion
The opium that is creationism is some damned powerful stuff.
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I am reposting the above as some moron has moderated it as a troll which it blatently is not.
This is proof to me that there are alot of very small minded nitwits out there who moderate down posts just because they don't aggree with the point being made. This is not what the moderation system is for, hence it does not have an option "-1 Disagree". So please stop using it as if it does.
Oh and by the way, anyone stupid enough to believe in creationism over evolution must have skipped too many science classes in school.
I dont read
The whole creationist notion is based on the premise of biblical inerrancy.
... the list goes on and on.. it goes without saying god says believers have an obligation to murder non-believers, as well as innocent children, and take/rape the virgin women for their pleasure.
I submit to those that want to believe the earth is 6000 years old and man walked around with dinosaurs, fine, do that. But if you're going to take the bible literally, don't be a hypocrite, don't just believe the creation story in genesis, you have to believe in the rest of the old and new testament. This means:
* Working on the sabbath is punishable by death
* Disobedient children are to be publicly executed by stoning
* Owning slaves is perfectly acceptable
* Eating pork, shrimp, crawfish, lobster is punishable by death
* Poligamy is perfectly acceptable
* Women are considered property, and need be submissive to all men; they are not allowed to speak in church, nor should they wear makeup or jewelry
* To get to heaven you should become a Eunich, sell all your possessions, and hate everyone in your family
All the above ideas are very specifically outlined. They are not more taken out of context and improperly interpreted than the creation story. And Jesus himself in the new testament reaffirms that the old testament laws still apply.