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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.
I have a question that has always troubled me regarding evolution vs. intelligent design. Is there any meaningful way, or even a need, to differentiate "created" things from "naturally occurring" things? Homo Sapiens may have "evolved" over millions of years, but there are objects on this earth (now even "living" objects) which are 100% the "creation" of us as a species, which would be very difficult to explain from an evolutionary standpoint.
At some point, we may become so advanced, technologically, that there is nothing curently living which is beyond our ability to recreate in a laboratory setting. How would one determine what occurs naturally and what was created? There will be lots of legal issues related to "accident of nature" or "industrial accident" related to when created things go bad, and how to prove they were created versus just having occurred by themselves.
To some extent, this is us "playing God" with nature. Somewhere down the road, a wholly "created" being will gain consciousness, evolve some (if left alone long enough), then wonder where he came from. Then they will have the same argument we are having now.
I'm no fan of ID as having "scientific" merit. But it does have philosophical merit. And some of the thought experiments make my head hurt.
(Posting Anon, because I don't like to discuss my personal politics or religion in public.)