A Field Trip To the Creation Museum

Lillith writes "The anti-evolution Creation Museum opened last weekend and Ars took a field trip there and took lots of pictures. 'There were posters explaining just how coal could be formed in a few weeks as opposed to over millions of years, and how rapidly the biblical flood would cover the earth, drowning all but a handful of living creatures. The flood plays a big part in the museum's attempt to explain away what we see as millions of years of natural processes. There was also an explanation as to why, with only one progenitor family, it wasn't considered incest for Adam and Eve's children to marry each other.' (Myself, I liked the picture of the velociraptor grazing peacefully next to Eve, who is wearing some kind of dirndl, in the Garden of Eden.)" The reporter posted more photos from the museum on Flickr.

Comments

Factually inacurate

[Scrameustache]

Eve was naked until she ate from the tree of knowledge, at which point she made herself a skirt with leaves.

They fail at bible accuracy, in a frikkin bible museum!

Re:Factually inacurate

[allthingscode]

Nope, according to the bible, which we have to take to mean exactly what it says (we are creationists):

Gen 3:7 - Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesi s+3

Re:Factually inacurate

[Hydrophobia]

It actually comes down to being about free will. The whole point of the story is to point out that humans are not fighting against good and evil, but either choosing God's path or not choosing our own path. It was suppossed to be a choice, and God does not punish us for not choosing him, its that without him we make decisions that hurt each other and ourselves. That's the actual theology of it, for any of you who are interested.

Re:Factually inacurate

[lawpoop]

I've read Genesis, thank you. Have you? I don't understand what you're trying to hint at.

So what about the second tree?

Gen 2:9 "And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

Gen 2:16-17 "And the LORD God commanded the man, 'You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.'"

Ok, so we have two trees in the middle of the Garden. God tells the man, they will die as a direct result of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, one of the two trees in the middle of the garden. So far, the second tree, the tree of life, is irrelevant.

Gen 3:1-6 "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'? The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' 'You will not surely die,' the serpent said to the woman. 'For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."

OK, now we have A&E eating from a tree in the middle of the Garden. It's not said directly that they ate from "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil", but we do have some clues. First, the serpent tells Eve if she eats from the tree they are talking about, they will "be like God, knowing good and evil." Okay, which tree gives knowledge of good and evil? Is it the Tree of Life, or the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?

Then God finds out what happens and flips his lid.

Gen 3:17 "To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
'Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.'"

Now God says that Adam ate from the tree which he commanded him not to. Which tree was that? In Gen 2:16, it says'you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'. So we can conclude that Adam ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Still, so far, the tree of life is irrelevant.

Then after God clothes them and kicks them out of the Garden, he says this:

( Gen. 3:22 ) "And the LORD God said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.' "

So God says that the man became like one of them ( Hey! Who are they, anyway? ), knowing the difference between good an evil. Was it because they ate from the Tree of Life, or the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? We still might not be 100% certain at this point. But then, God clears it all up for us: "He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." So God lets us know that Adam *hasn't* eaten from the Tree of Life. Furthermore, we know that he hasn't eaten from the Tree of Life, because if he had, he would be immortal. That's quite a bit different than what God said would happen about either trees in the center of the Garden. So Adam has only eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

So what's the hint about the second tree? Nobody eats from it. It's clearly not the tree God forbid Adam from eating. And, let's say for the sake of ar

WTF

[scottennis]

I went to the flickr gallery and was stunned and fascinated (shocked and awed?) at the exhibit which "explained" where Cain got his wife and why it was okay for him to marry (and have sex, although the "S" word is never used) his sister.

For your edification I copied out the central "argument" for you to mock (er, I mean discuss.)

"The farther back in history one goes (back towards the Fall of Adam), the less of a problem mutation in the human population would be.
At the time of Adam and Eve's children, there would have been very few mutations in the human genome--thus close relatives could marry, and provided it was one man for one woman (the biblical doctrine of marriage), there was nothing wrong with close relatives marrying in early biblical history."

B.S. (Bedevere Science) all. (SIR BEDEVERE: And that, my liege, is how we know the earth to be banana-shaped. ARTHUR: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.)

Re:In 5.. 4.. 3.. 2..

[IdleTime]

Well, the furthest objects we can observe are some 13 billion light years away. Creationists think the world was created 6000 years ago. In order for that to be true, the speed of light must have been much higher in order to observe something so far away. This indicates, as creationists often claim, that the speed of light is changing, i.e slowing down. What speed does electrons in a PC move at?

Re:Faith is a poison upon mankind.

[eln]

He didn't say Christian, he said Christian Science. Christian Science really does discourage the use of most modern medicine, including blood transfusions. They believe illness can be cured by prayer and growing closer to God, and intervening with conventional medicine will counteract or contradict that process.

Re:Problems

[UbuntuDupe]

If schools start mandatory field trips to the museum, we can talk.

Actually, this creation museum is ALREADY receiving TAXPAYER funding. It's COMPLETELY outrageous. The state and local government give them FREE police and fire protection, EXEMPTED it from paying its fair share of taxes (due to some BS "non-profit" status), provides it with FREE road maintenance for the surrounding area, REGISTERED it in public directories, and granted it a FREE permit to use the land.

Oh, sorry, I was just looking to rationalize my pre-existing bias that the government forces me to pay for anything I'm opposed to.

Re:Faith is a poison upon mankind.

[Scrameustache]

That being said, I like how the TFA author tried to imply an association between Creationism and anti-Semitism. I quit reading right there. Your snark aside, he didn't make that up.
Opened in 2001, Dinosaur Adventure Land sprung from Hovind's Creation Science Evangelism ministry, which began to evolve in the late '80s. CSE sells videos and audiotapes of Hovind's lectures and his debates with evolutionary scientists, along with books on "Evolution and the New World Order." (At least one of them, Fourth Reich of the Rich, alleges a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.)

Re:Faith is a poison upon mankind.

[ThrasherTT]

A "hypothesis" that cannot be proved wrong also cannot be proved correct, and therefore isn't a hypothesis. See Merriam-Webster, definition 2.

Re:Exclusiveness

[cerelib]

If I understood the article correctly, this museum was built by an Australian.

Re:Some Quick Thoughts....

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a biggie: God is supposed to be omnipotent and omnipresent. Everything is supposed to be a part of his divine plan. Everything.

That being the case, then Lucifer's revolt against God was planned. The fall was planned. We have a devil because God wanted one. Original sin was planned. All of the consequences humanity suffers because of that event were planned. Adam and Eve didn't fuck up. They were tempted, committed sin, and were punished all according to his plan.

The converse is that God had no knowledge of their imminent betrayal, and therefore is NOT infallible, and is capable of mistakes.

Lets not even get into the fact that Adam and Eve populating the earth is blantant incest. "Lets have kids! Now our kids will have kids! Hey I invented the Banjo Cletus! WOO!"