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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. '"
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
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.
#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.
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.