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Texas Creationist Museum Facing Extinction
gattaca writes "A small Texas museum that teaches creationism is counting on the auction of a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off extinction. The founder and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, which rejects evolution and claims that man and dinosaurs coexisted, said it will close unless the Volkswagen-sized skull finds a generous bidder. 'If it sells, well, then we can come another day,' Joe Taylor said. 'This is very important to our continuing.'" Meanwhile, the much larger Creation Museum in Kentucky that we discussed and toured when it opened last year seems to be thriving.
Believe whatever you want while within your church. Just keep it out of the science classroom.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
I'm a Christian of the preterist nature. I believe in evolutionary forces as part of God's creation. I don't believe in a 6000-year old Earth (neither do most Jews who hold the Old Testament in a different way than many Christians do). I also think the debate of evolution versus creationism is really repugnant and a waste of time when there are so many other things we can be spending our time on (we meaning "us Christians.")
I can't even begin to count the billions of hours wasted by Christians in living life in ways completely counter to what our God teaches us. Look at the battle over the 10 Commandments, laws of the Israelites' God that have been countermanded by Christ's teaching to a much more simpler set of rules (completely love God first, completely love others second). And yet, when we dig deeper into the "Why" of modern Christian thought, we come up against the same problem that I see in those who are pro-government: we need "leaders" and we need "rules" and we need "penalties" to keep us in line.
What has happened to the powerful individual in today's society? Evolution versus creationism is a debate that strikes at the heart of my question: why is it that we need "teacher-leaders" to stick to a specific standard, rather than what the individual kid in a unique place in their specific city/society needs to be taught? I can't even understand why science is taught to ALL children, along with higher level maths, when the kids today can barely count, let alone read or speak properly. I had a 20-something in my town use a calculator at a checkout line 2 weeks ago when I gave her $21.01 for a $6.06 charge. Unbelievable.
Creationism and evolution are both articles of faith, and really have no purpose for MOST students. Then again, I truly believe that even High School is worthless for 70% of society considering what it is churning out.
While there's a kernel of fundamentalism in the UK, I'm afraid this particularly virulent, anti-science, Know-Nothingist, inerrantist version of Christianity is an American invention.
I sometimes wonder about the wisdom of giving free publicity to organizations like these. From my standpoint they represent an institutionalized mental illness- that of denying reality. Denying reality is certainly akin to "doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result".
I do understand the religious issues that fuel these kinds of organizations. But it has always seemed to me that since "truth" is central to any religious belief, that an attempt to derail truth through ignorance or outright deception was a horrible "sin".
With the way organizations like this adhere to biblical writing, one might be able to accuse them of having a book as "god" rather than the apparently supernatural "God of the Gaps" most people seem to engage in their spirituality.
The inerrancy of God seems plausible to me. The in inerrancy of a book seems like sheer insanity.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
First of all, we are talking scientific theory vs. layman's theory.
What a non-scientist calls a "theory", a scientist calls a hypothesis, and isn't remotely worth of theory status.
1) Evolution is a scientific theory. To achieve theory status in science, you typically have to test something rigorously and show it to hold up well. The theory of evolution has mathematical/statistical models defining it, explains evidence found on earth very well, and can be tested.
2) A law is achieved by one of two methods: a theory that is not disproved (or even seriously challenged) for a ridiculously long time can achieve "law" status in the books. Alternatively if it can be rigorously proven that no other explanation is possible, the process might be sped up a bit.
3) Creationalism, as the ministers at the church I went to when I was younger suggested, DOES NOT conflict with evolution. The former is the who and why, the latter is the how.
May I ask how your pastor described a theory and went over it?
Also, may I ask how creationalism can be mathematically and statistically defined, as well as tested? For all I've seen in this argument, I've yet to see a good mathematical or statistical model for creationalism, or an accurate test.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Um, isn't the Vatican in Europe? There might be a few people there who believe.
today is spelling optional day.
Actually, I think a better argument is the predictiveness argument: Science is about learning to understand and predict the world around us, so we can make it better. (Of course 'better' has a host of different meanings, but regardless of which we choose, we need to be able to understand and predict, so we can choose the results of our actions.)
Evolution makes predictions that are accurate enough to be useful, regardless of whether is it aboslutely true or not. (For the record: It's as true as anything we've ever come up with.)
Creationism makes no predictions. In fact, it prevents them: Why did this happen? God did it. Will it happen again? If God wants it to. Will it stop? If God gets bored. Can we influence it? If God decides to be influenced, yes. In the end, 'God' is unknowable and unexplainable, so by saying God did it we have stopped all thought, inquiry, or prediction on the topic.
Which is probably why it is attractive to some people: They don't want to think.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Sexuality. Other religions.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
that wouldn't be anti evolutionists that would be people who are creationalists. It is possible to be both anti evo and anti creation.
"Creationism does not. It is not verifiable (no, your 'Good Book' doesn't count). It is not falsifiable (we can't prove that without it, there would be no man). And it is not repeatable. (We can't just make a man in a lab from dirt.)"
I have to chime in on this. These same points would also seem to apply to evolution.
specifically:
verifiable - Design and evolution are 2 conclusions both reached from varying interpretations
repeatable - You can't evolve man in a lab either.
falsifiable - based on number 2 it will always be a matter of probability whether man evolved.
Most Catholics that I know actually believe in evolution. In general, those that take the bible literally are those that tend to believe in Creationism. Catholics tend not to have a literal interpretation of the bible.
Biology and it's whole sub-genere called 'medicine' come to mind...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Words, eh! Who'd have though they could have more than one meaning:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=theory
Evolution would be under definition #1, whereas creationism comes under definition #7.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?
Logic?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Evolution is a silly idea propped up by priests of science with big names and bigger egos. You don't belive it, fine, you're "unscientific", a "moron", and "just plain wrong".
Creationism is a silly extension beyond what the Bible says. You don't believe it, fine, you're "anti-God", a "moron", and "just plain wrong".
Every single Bible says God created the heavens, the earth, every and every thing else (have fun proving/disproving that this is actually what happened), but nowhere does it indicate what time table is to be used, just "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Period. It may have been one minute or 70 quadrillion eons before the next sentence.
Both camps are exercises in futility, extremism, and name-calling.
I can see why people would reject evolution. For one thing, as was pointed out by an earlier articled linked to by slashdot, it's counterintuitive. It is not consistent with our every day experience, or at least not with aspects of our experience that we recognize as having those qualities. Secondly, it can be very hard to keep up with. There are aspects of evolution that are rock solid. They're facts about things observed in the laboratory. Then there are things that are highly plausible, such as that we got here through this mechanism. But when you start making claims about specific things that "must" have occurred, you're on damn shaky ground. When humans left Africa, or IF they did, has been revised more times than I can count. When we and chimps branched from our common ancestor keeps getting revised. Now, that's all well and good, except for the fact that any time the layman comes into contact with these theories, they're STATED AS FACT. Ever watch the Discovery channel? Ever notice how none of the dinosaurs have feathers? And yet no mention is made of the fact that we now know that they do and that the original notion that they were scaly was based on assumption (we didn't have good evidence either way). Let me reiterate: Scientists tend to make bold fact-like statements about science that should never be stated that way, because they just fucking don't know! It's no wonder people think scientists are arrogant. They make bold statements and think they're right. Then they change their minds and think they're right. Scientists are never wrong! Isn't that convenient. Perhaps it's not fair to say, but the fact is that evidence supporting specifics of evolutionary theory are trivial compared to the kind of certainty we have about things like physics, chemistry, and biology of living organisms. Yet those, as with any science, are inherently uncertain. Evolutionary biologists need to get off their high horse and admit that they're stabbing in the dark.
That being said, what I cannot understand is why you would want to invoke a much more ridiculous hypothesis like creationism. It's not even a hypothesis. It's not science. It's not falsifiable. Ok, so it's certain and unchanging. I can understand that. But there's no objective evidence for it. Or at least, the evidence there is does not point in the direction of creation than any other alternative, so choosing creationism is arbitrary. So, when it comes down to it, many people probably choose creationism for two reasons: (1) tradition, and (2) because the scientists leave them feeling like a chump who trusted them, just to be betrayed when the scientist changed his mind (while being completely apologetic about having been wrong).
See, scientists are role models. Yes, I realize that they're just presenting the hypothesis that best fits the evidence (sometimes; sometimes they have personal or political agendas), but they need to be damn careful about how they present their theory and explain better their uncertainties and alternative explanations.
Oh, and the scientists who try to use evolution to disprove God are just as screwed up as the creationists who try to use God to prove evolution. God and evolution are not mutually exclusive.
Bronze age fairy tales vs a mountain of verifiable facts that also are the basic foundation of genetic research.
What possible prediction can anyone make from Creationism?
Evolution predicts that since all living things on the planet share DNA, then medical research using animals should produce useful medical procedures for humans.
When you cut someone open, it's not full of clay.
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
It means scientific theory, not something ai thought about while have a few bears with my buddies.
Evolution is real, it makes predictions, is falsifiable.
There are warehouses of evidence.
Plus, your pasture should probably actually study the history of the Bible. It becomes very obvious, even at a cursory glance, that Genesis isn't a literal book; Which would explain why Genesis I and II contridict each other about creation.
Gravity is also a Scientific Theory.
Evolution isn't an attack on religion, it's just another piece of evidence that the Genesis creation stories are a fable. Also, getting hung up on the creation stories MISSES THE POINT.
I suggest you read your Bible, cover to cover. Take some notes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Anyone who believes that a first-century illiterate Jewish peasant from backwater Galilee is the "son" of an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent divine being can believe anything
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
As a Christian, I have toi say that the parent comment is the best modded comment I've seen today. Science and religion ask completely different questions. Science asks "how", religion asks "why".For the religious to try to undermine a useful scientific theory with an untestable "theory" like "creationism" is to show an appalling lack of faith in the God they claim to worship.
My take on it? Creationism per se is bunk, and evolution is the best theory I've seen to explein how God went about growing this wonderous universe.
Yes, I know it's heresy to admit being a Christian at slashdot, where athiesm is the site relgion and its proponents will stone with mod points anyone who dares believe that God exists, so mod me down. Arguing the existance of God with an athiest is like arguing the existance of red with a blind man.
You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest. "All we are is dust in the wind" - Kansas.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
There's no mystery about it, it's simply brainwashing from a very early age. The whole family is structured around their religion as a way of having an identity, community, history, comradeship, understanding, networking whatever. There's really nothing sinister going on.
Sure they may seem deluded and misguided by people who aren't a part of their scene, but that's really not their problem.
If someone ever got in my face about religion, which has never happened (and I know some hard core religious people) I'd tell them to pick on someone else.
Well said. If you're not pro evolution you're instantly "one of them. You're either for us or against us!" This mentality shows why some evolutionists and some creationists are more similar than they are willing to admit.
The fact that you yourself are ostensibly unable to comprehend the idea of "faith", which underpins all religions, doesn't mean that anyone who holds religious beliefs is "uneducated" or "right on the bottom". In fact, I'm sure there are a lot of people who are much more intelligent than you are, who much more thoroughly understand evolutionary theory than you do, and who are much more generally enlightened and educated than you, but who still hold religious views which might properly be called "creationist" views.
There's a lot of this sort of bigotry--apparently rooted in insecurity--on Slashdot. In the end, though, you end up looking more like an ignorant, black-or-white thinker than the people who you intend to mock, but whose views to choose to caricature rather than actually understand. That's not to say that there aren't some hard-core "creationists" who are irrational, but they are certainly a minority amid a sea of people who are more-or-less intelligent than you but who believe in God, and you don't allow for that at all. That's why you sound like an idiot to me.
Indeed. If you ever have the perverse pleasure of debating with a creationist, the first thing you need to discover is what it is exactly that he/she understands by the term "evolution". If you're scientifically literate at all, I can guarantee you that 99% of the time you'll be amazed and discouraged by what you're dealing with. These are people who are not necessarily stupid, but rather something worse than that: willfully and intransigently ignorant. It can be like arguing with a toddler.
Typically, they think that "evolution" means that a monkey got pregnant one day and out popped a human baby. They think that a theory in science (as in "just a theory") is an idle speculation that just shot out of some scientist's ass and beat out competing theories in a popularity contest. Their faith requires them to believe without question what they are taught by their parents and religious authorities, and so the notions of reason and sceptical inquiry carry zero weight with them.
There's a multitude of them, they're refractory to reason, and they vote. They are also easily manipulated by unscrupulous politicians who don't give squat about their beliefs but are willing to pander to them to enhance their own power.
This circus is going to go on for a long, long time.
Right, and is there anyone in the Vatican who actually believes that?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So you believe in fate, predisposition and a clockwork universe? To me, that's a far more disturbing world than the one with the bearded old guy in the sky occasionally raining down fire and brimstone.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Actually, interesting that you bring up gravity. Last time I checked, we *still* have no clue what the heck gravity is. How it acts at such great distances and such. We can describe it mathematically (G m1 m2 / d^2), but we don't really know the reason for it. Why is it that this works? How can it act apparently instantly across great distances that even photons can't reach as quickly?
Perhaps your smart-ass answer isn't far off - it's God's will. Whatever it is, we do not thoroughly understand it. All we can do is take advantage of it (through mathematics).
Actually, there's no first-person accounts of Jesus actually having existed at all. So the whole thing is really not worth discussing, since the guy was probably a literary invention.
I would also suggest that the argument analogy you presented is inaccurate and misleading, as most analogies often are. Such topics cannot be summed up or dumbed down in such simplistic manners. Case in point, the popular "let me explain this as a car" analogy given so often on Slashdot. Your analogy presents a pre-determined supposition that God does indeed exist, which is the point of the argument in the first place, yes? You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest. "All we are is dust in the wind" - Kansas. I'm not sure what to make of this. Are you implying that atheism is a state at which humans arrive at, being theistic at first? I would propose that humans come out of the womb atheistic and them develop theism at a later date. This can probably be proven by the fact that there are plenty of religions out there that do not advocate "God" in a Christian fashion, or are monotheistic, or something completely different. Unless you're one of the "all paths lead to God" people, of course...
Science asks "why" questions as well, and answers them based on the evidence gathered from research on "how" and "when" questions. This is the difference between ultimate and proximate questions. Although natural selection answers the "how" question of evolution (making Darwin very popular), selfish gene theory answers the "why" question of evolution (making Dawkins very popular, never mind his recent militant anti-religion stuff).
Also note that the selfish gene theory poses a "why" question as well: why do organisms bother with sex when asexual reproduction seems to better propagate such selfish genes? The best answer to that question, so far, is the Red Queen theory; organisms have sex in order to switch up their offspring's genes so that the parasites that adapted to the parents' will not immediately infect and kill any such offspring.
This is why most scientists are secular, most of the "why" questions of the universe can be answered with empirical evidence almost as effectively as are "how" questions.
Arguing the existence of God with an atheist is more like arguing the existence of Zeus with a Christian. Religious people tend to think the myths they were brought up with as children are fact, and the ones they were introduced to later in life are fiction.
There is nothing daring about believing in anything; there is, however, something daring about believing in nothing.
It sounds like you don't have any grasp of the history of human knowledge. It is true that during the middle ages few people in Europe were educated enough to know facts and theories established since the ancient times, but you should know that at least the age of the Earth was never considered to be as little as 10000 years. Aristoteles, the main authority during the ancient times, even went as far as to say that the age of the Earth is infinite - and nobody really questioned him. Compared to the human lifespan, I would say 4.5b years is pretty much infinity. You might be suprised to learn that the ancient Greeks not only knew that the Earth, sun and planets are spheres, but they even knew their diameters (the earth acurately, the moon and sun not very) and distances (again not acurately), thanks to the work of people like Eratosthenes and Aristarchus. Granted, this knowledge was lost for many years for the general public, but it was accessible to scholars.
The official doctrine of the Catholic Church rejects young-earth creationism, considering the seven-day creation period in the Bible as well as the entire Eden story to be allegory. They even grudgingly accept evolution, though they do try to work "Intelligent Design" into the cracks. The Young-Earth creationists are Evangelical Protestant types, most of whom consider Catholics to be just short of Satanists, mostly for the Pope thing (idolatry I guess) but probably also because of the occasional iota of common sense they exhibit that assaults the absolute literal interpretation of the Bible.
Mind you, the current Pope probably is a literalist right out of the Middle Ages (the office he headed up before becoming Pope was formerly known as The Inquisition) but he couldn't issue an encyclical that countermanded the current doctrine and get away with it. Papal power isn't what it used to be; there's infallability and there's infallability, capische? (better for this one perhaps, verstehen?).
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Europe had something called the Enlightenment in the late 18th century, but it seems somehow North America missed that party.
René Seindal
So, purely by reasoning, regardless of the truth of evolution, and regardless of arguing over open or closed systems, the argument from the second law of thermodynamics is self-contradicting, as either our facts are wrong (there is no order), or the SLoT itself is wrong (at least for this part of the universe).
1 Corinthians 6:9 New International Version (NIV) Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders. And the old testament puts homosexual activity in with sacrificing your children to Baal. I'd say thats pretty bad.
So I put it to Slashdot - Can anyone name a closed system? Something that has no outside inputs or outputs.
I am not stubborn. I am right!
While I can definitely appreciate your conciliatory approach, it does seem apparent that you're mischaracterizing all three to make them seem the same.
First, let's get this out of the way: the whole point of Creationism/ID is to put the Christian God in the (science) classroom. While the theoretical underpinnings are vague, not falsifiable and largely refuted, the motivations and the religious backgrounds of their founders and supports are absolutely not.
Rejection of evolution is a problem on multiple levels. It has massive amounts of independently verifiable emperical evidence to back it up. It is the basis of modern biology and medicine. You can not ignore this. In a sense, we're talking about rejection of reality. But then again, this is not surprising, since the common element of ALL religions is the rejection of the ultimate harsh reality: death.
What kind of philosophical problems would you run into? That it's hard to comprehend the vast complexity of nature? While it may seem like a simple solution to shift the problem to some vague supernatural entity, this is merely a matter of shifting the problem to a domain where you don't have to think about it. However hard it may be, it's infinitely easier to try to tackle the complexities of measurable reality than trying to figure out a tricky entity that by its very nature refuses to even prove something as simple as its own existence!
Sure, the collective of all living beings may form an intelligence in itself and you may call that an intelligent designer. There have been many fascinating stories about scientists studying the physics of some weird effect of insects for example. But this is not a kind of design that Creationism/ID proposes at all.
see a Text Widget
It is not for the atheist to prove the non existance of anything.
I am not saying that the atheist has to prove anything. All religions are a matter of personal conscience and if someone is an atheist, while I may not share their faith, I am not going to demand that they prove it is 'correct' or stop believing any more than I would go up to a Hindu, Jew etc and demand that they prove that they are 'correct'.
To prove non-existance of anything is an impossible task and is therefore an unreasonable request.
Sorry, but from a scientific point of view this is completely incorrect. The best example of this is the ether. This was the mysterious non-interacting medium that, in the late 1800's was used to explain the propagation of light. At the time it was the simplest explanation for how light propagated through a vacuum. All other waves had some existing medium to propagate through and so, the easiest solution, was to presume that light too had such a medium. Michelson-Morley proved the non-existence of the ether by studying the motion of the Earth through the supposed ether.
This example shows two things. First that it is indeed possible to prove that something does not exist. The second is that Occam's razor does not always give the correct answer: it might be a very good guide but it is by no means always right.
By the same token I have no proof that there aren't 8 dimensions in our universe so I shouldn't not believe that either?
It is very interesting that you should choose this example because there are serious scientific theories that suggest there may well be more than 3+1 dimensions in the Universe. If you talk to a scientist then the response you will generally get is that we don't have any evidence of 4+ space-like dimensions yet but there might be that many, we just don't know. You will generally not hear anyone categorically state that these theories are wrong and that there must only be 3+1 dimensions. They might have a personal belief about whether the theory is right or not but the scientific point of view is that it is unproven. The same holds for your more outlandish examples (except, sadly, for Father Christmas since you can show that it is impossible for him to perform his task in the manner attributed within the laws of physics) - and may be the flying spaghetti monster too but I have no idea what that is.
So for an atheist to go around saying categorically that God does not exist, unless they have some proof that they have not disclosed to the rest of us, they are making a leap of faith...and faith is something that suggests a religion. That leap may be based on rationality and they may have logical arguments to back it up but, as shown in the ether example, rationality and logical argument are great guides most of the time but are by no means infallible. Hence my contention that if you really want to get at the truth the first thing you have to be willing to do is admit that you might be wrong.