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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.
I've been thinking a lot about this ever since I first heard about the Creation Museum, and I find myself powerfully troubled and conflicted -- not over its content, which I know exactly where I stand on -- but over my intense desire to decry this "museum" as an utter abomination. I have always tried to endorse tolerance and understanding, and I've always let people believe whatever they want.
But I have a big, big problem when it comes to the public actions of those believers. How many thousands of children and impressionable adults will never even have the chance to learn basic tenets of logic, reason and science after being indoctrinated by a "museum" like this and the cooing, gentle voice of its proponents, telling children stories about dinosaurs living next to adam and eve and jesus?
I don't know what to do. I fully believe in Voltaire's classic quotation on freedom of speech and belief. But in this instance, I find myself thoroughly unwilling to defend the "Creation Museum's" right to make up whatever crazy "facts" they want. It's the first time I find myself wanting to "think of the children" who may very well grow up into the willfully ignorant bible beaters that are founding this "museum."
And yet there I am, suddenly the intolerant monster I have never been able to stand. Yet I tremble to imagine a future dark ages in America, where real science -- the search for the evidence of the reality of the universe -- is stoned in the streets and systematically rubbed out.
Please: before you mod me into oblivion, I want to hear everyone's thoughts on this subject.
Limina.Log
Speaking as a Frenchman, that such a museum has been conceived and built is mind-boggling, in a bad way. It reflects poorly on the american educational system. It shows how far fundamentalists can go to counter Reason in a way that hasn't been seen in France for centuries.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
... That I went to a strict Catholic school, had Jesuits as science teachers, and Creation was relegated to Religion hour? In class, it was Darwin or bust, the Earth was some 5 billions years old, and nobody questioned evolution. Ever. And those who taught were priests.
I once asked my biology teacher (Jesuit) about the Bible's recount of the Creation. Answer: "The Bible was written by men, and inspired by God. Do you think He could have gone to some Bronze Age guys and told them about atoms, mass-energy equivalence, aminoacids and DNA? That was Abraham and company He was talking to, not Mr Spock."
You folks need some of these Jesuits types, methinks.
Just because someone hurt your feelings by attacking your precious religion, you don't need to come around appealing to people's emotions by crying that someone is "attacking your freedom". How lame is that?
I don't smack people around for believing in god, and I don't smack them around for smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day. I do, however, think both are without reason and terribly stupid things to do. I will probably spend the rest of my days criticizing both behaviors (my freedom, as it were), and doubt I will ever be bothered in the least about you crying into your pillow at night.
Religions promote falsehoods in that they foster environments of non-scientific thought, or more precisely, they foster lack of thought. This lack of thought is the antithesis of all human progress as we know it and we'd probably still sitting in our own shit if it prevailed. The same science that invented everything around you is the same science that shows the earth to be 4b years old, the universe to be upwards of 13+b years old, and so on. The foundations of the medicine you and your children take, the cancer treatments your mother takes, the emergency treatment given to your father when he got into an accident when he was 17, are of the science that show the bible to be wrong on many accounts.
Of course, the worst part is that now many people are starting to move from "literal" interpretations of the bible to more "story" based, or metaphorically based. This is the only thing that _could_ happen when underlying texts of a religion start failing, because had it not happened the religion would have vanished. (Sort of like the anthropic principle for religions?).