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Creationism Museum Opening in Kentucky
Noel Linback writes "A new creationism-espousing museum is opening in the state of Kentucky. According to a New York Times article the museum depicts humans and dinosaurs living together in traditional 'diorama' style exhibit. 'Whether you are willing to grant the premises of this museum almost becomes irrelevant as you are drawn into its mixture of spectacle and narrative. Its 60,000 square feet of exhibits are often stunningly designed by Patrick Marsh, who, like the entire museum staff, declares adherence to the ministry's views; he evidently also knows the lure of secular sensations, since he designed the Jaws and King Kong attractions at Universal Studios in Florida. For the skeptic the wonder is at a strange universe shaped by elaborate arguments, strong convictions and intermittent invocations of scientific principle. For the believer, it seems, this museum provides a kind of relief: Finally the world is being shown as it really is, without the distortions of secularism and natural selection. '"
"It's a great place for children who are in public school and haven't really decided what to believe yet."
Who ya gonna believe! GOD or some hairy liberal professor!
Welcome to the 21st Century, America!
you had me at #!
Ken Ham (President of Answers in Genesis, sponsor of the museum) would be amusing to watch if he wasn't so scary. There was a segment in the documentary "Friends of God" which showed Ken speaking to a group of children about dinosaurs and evolution. His logical argument to the children was that since scientists weren't around 4,000 years ago but god was then we have to believe god and not the scientists.
"Intelligent Design" groups have been running tours through legitimate museums, providing their own narrative in order to dispute the information provided by the museum displays. Maybe after this museum opens some atheist tour group so do the same thing...take tours through Ken's "museum" and provide scientific narrative to dispute his biblical nonsense.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
The best way to protest this is to get a couple thousand people to show up there and laugh for 5 minutes on queue. I recall a similar protest was done in India some years ago and it is brilliant.
Just laugh as hard as you can at them for 5 minutes. Rinse. Repeat.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
It always amazes how these people underestimate the scale and beauty of "god"'s creation by so many orders of magnitude. Apparently their god would not have been subtle enough to make life which could adapt to a changing world? There is nothing in any science which confirms or denies god's existence. Imagine if they had won over the astronomers, we would have been stuck with a tiny god who could only manage one little planet, and one star. Now we know about the vast beauty of the stars and galaxies spread across the sky. Surely if you are going to believe in a creator, this sort of knowledge can only increase your respect for it? There I go again, trying to apply reason to religion. But why doesn't it ever work?
Home fucking is killing prostitution.
Very well said. Furthermore, the arguments presented in the Bible are not logical arguments, which would lose their force if combined with shoddy reasoning. The Bible is a series of stories that advocate particular moral choices, and seek to make those moral choices attractive. If you find those moral choices attractive, it doesn't matter that the imperative to do them doesn't come coherently from the text, because the imperative to do them comes from yourself, and the Bible is only a way to encourage yourself to follow them, inspiration rather than command. Some may find the Bible inspiring enough to change their actions and principles to coincide with it, but they're not being convinced by any sort of logic--they're being convinced by the emotional attractiveness of the Bible's principles. That's what religion is--a set of explanations of the world and moral principles that derive their force by making us feel good when we follow them. It's not necessary to accept every part of your chosen religion to get the benefit of it--you just have to like it enough to be inspired to act accordingly. Clearly the Creationist Museum operators have taken a very different part of Christianity to heart than Conigs has.
...is a recognition from both sides that evolution is not in opposition to the bible or Christianity. Many (most?) Christians know this already, but there are a few (like the folks that made this museum) who haven't figured it out yet. There are also many non-Christian evolutionists who think that evolution is counter to Christianity. I was raised a Christian, though I am no longer one, but I don't see that evolution contradicts the bible.
The bible is full of events natural events that science has gone on to explain but which we don't fret about. Every time someone falls to the ground they were being pulled by a magical force which science later called "gravity". Does knowing the way in which gravity works, and the ability to predict its effects contradict the bible? No: people assume that God created gravity and that is the method by which he keeps people stuck to the Earth and the planets and stars in rotation. What about disease? When it was discovered that bacteria and viruses cause disease, and that we could control the effects to a large degree, was the bible's absence in describing the physical mechanism of disease a sudden point of contention? No.
So why is it that natural selection, an obvious, elegant, and indeed predictive theory (see drug resistant pests) seen as something else? Why can't natural selection be the mechanism by which God brought forth first the plants, then the animals, and then man, as described in Genisis?
He does not need to be a "God of the Gaps" filling in only that which we don't know. He can be God the architect, designer of all that which we do know, and also that which we have yet to discover.
Personally, I don't believe in God, but most of my family does. I am continually surprised that they struggle so hard with evolution.
Cheers.
#1.
No, DNA mutations have been observed. Most of these mutations have NO adaptation value AT THE POINT IN TIME THAT THEY OCCURRED. Changes to the environment AFTER those mutations caused them to become advantageous.
#2.
Yes, it has. The easiest example is a colony of fruit flies. Split them into two sub-colonies and within a dozen generations they will no longer be able to inter-breed between the colonies. They have become two different species.
Your fish/frog example is flawed because there is no reason to believe that one those different animals could achieve gestation within each other. Modern fish came from animals that were ALMOST identical to modern fish. Modern frogs came from animals that were ALMOST identical to modern frogs.
#3.
And yet the evidence seems to support that theory.
And not only that, but the theory of evolution is the basis of our entire medical science now. And that seems to work, also.
The question of creationism has always puzzled me. When I was younger I believed in it whole heartedly. Now that I'm older I have had to rethink my beliefs which I think everyone should do regardless of what you believe, you should always re-evaluate everything. But I don't think that the percentage of people that believe in Creationism are going to be compelled by a museum. I mean personal beliefs usually have some kind of variation between others (different religions and your own ideas), but I guess if you're in an organized religion they might be quite similar. I just don't think you can have a museum on Creationism, I think peoples efforts would be better spent on a museum of Religion. This would be more beneficial to everyone knowing the history of theirs and others beliefs. Knowing what is actually true about someone else's religion could help them to understand others as well.
What I purpose is a place where you can go and be educated on every belief. I myself think that atheism requires just as much faith as a person who believes in god. Who are you to know for a fact that something intelligent didn't create everything, something had to come from somewhere no one knows so why it is that it has to be nothing. Frankly I haven't seen much come from nothing I haven't seen any proof of that so I don't know why people think that it takes less faith to believe that there is no god than it does to believe that there is. Frankly you will never convince someone who has a strong faith to switch in either direction. That is why I think that it fits in as well, I'm sure that there are a lot of people on Slashdot that will disagree with me. I've met quite a few in my travels and at work when the subject comes up. But I think that we can all agree that people generally need to make the decision themselves, be it one way or another.
Back on topic I think it would be better to give a whole history of different beliefs such as Greek/roman gods, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Atheism, and much much more. I think it would be more educational for people and help them with clarity on their own beliefs. I guess when I was younger I was exposed to all the differing views on everything so that I could make a more educated guess at the time in what I believe. Not that it would help much because I always wonder as I think most of you must.
Of course this is all just my opinion, I'm pretty sure someone will disagree or say it wouldn't work or that it's no different than what is proposed. I just think it would be a good idea in my own head.
It's pretty well established that the large flying dinosaurs were long extinct before the dawn of human beings; remember it took a long time since the extinction of dinosaurs before anything even remotely resembling homonids started appearing.
What's more likely is that tales of dragons grew out of another animal--namely pre-existing reptiles, snakes and crocodilians. All primates have an innate, instinctual fear of snakes--in fact it's been argued that primate eyes evolved the way they did because of snakes. (Do a google search on "primate evolution snakes"--there's some interesting stuff to be read) As for fear of the crocodilians, that's a no-brainer--they're big, hungry, and can tear off your leg. While I don't know about western dragons, I read an article several years ago that argued quite well that stories of Chinese dragons grew out of crocodiles.
But it makes sense--you want to think up a scary animal, make a big honking version of an animal that people are already instinctually afraid of--snakes. And make 'em fly too for good measure.
A good book by Richard Dawkins who wrote 'The Selfish Gene'. Here's a summary:
.. no, that's holy? . .. We are used to not challenging religious ideas but it's very interesting how
Richard Dawkins on why religion sticks: "There is no such thing as a Muslim Child. There is a child of Muslim Parents. There is no such thing as a Christian Child. There is a child of Christian Parents.
My specific hypothesis is about children. More than any other species, we survive by the accumulated experience of previous
generations, and that experience needs to be passed on to children for their protection and well-being. Theoretically, children might learn from personal experience not to go too near a cliff edge, not to eat untried red berries, not to swim in crocodile-infested waters. But, to say the least, there will be a selective advantage to child brains that possess the rule of thumb: believe, without question, whatever your grown-ups tell you. Obey your parents; obey the tribal elders, especially when they adopt a solemn, minatory tone. Trust your elders without question. This is a generally valuable rule for a child. But, as with the moths, it can go wrong.
Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them.
Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses.
Sociologists studying British children have found that only about one in twelve break away from their parents' religious beliefs."
Remember the old consistency thing. People are loathe to change their mind:
"It would be a severe disadvantage, for example, when hunting or making tools, to keep changing one's mind, so under some circumstances, it is better to persist in an irrational belief than to vacillate, even if new evidence or ratiocination favors a change."
Douglas Adams: "Religion . . . has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'I respect that'.
Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows - but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe .
much of a furore Richard creates when he does it!
Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be."
Andrew Mueller: "Pledging yourself to any particular religion 'is no more or less weird than choosing to believe that the world is rhombus-shaped, and borne through the cosmos in the pincers of two enormous green lobsters called Esmerelda and Keith'."
Sam Harris: "We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them 'religious'; otherwise, they are likely to be called 'mad', 'psychotic' or 'delusional' . . . Clearly there is sanity in numbers."
Richard Dawkins: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodth
This was probably the best answer for the problem to date. Thank you.
So God wants us to choose. Him or not him. Freely. There is no force involved, he wants us to choose his path, of course, but he would rather see us choose the wrong path than force us on the right one.
Could someone please tell the fundamentalists?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.