Paleontologists visiting the Creation Museum at the conclusion of a convention got more than they bargained for when they found their life’s work under attack.
After having a few laughs and taking some pictures, most were surprised and offended to see the way in which evolution was being ridiculed by the museum, which some call a “creationist Disneyland”.
“It’s sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn’t it?” Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology and evolution at University of California, Berkeley, told the AFP news agency. “Like Sunday school with statues… this is a special brand of religion here. I don’t think even most mainstream Christians would believe in this interpretation of Earth’s history.”
Some 715,000 patrons have visited the $27 million museum since it opened in mid-2007 to “bring the pages of the Bible to life.” The 70,000 square-foot facility presents a literal interpretation of the Bible, and suggests that disbelief of this view leads to moral relativism and the breakdown of social values.
University of Akron paleontology professor Lisa Park was moved to tears as she walked down a hallway displaying flashing images of war, famine and natural disasters that the museum blames on belief in evolution.
“I think it’s very bad science and even worse theology — and the theology is far more offensive to me,” Park told the AFP news agency.
[…]
Howard University anatomy professor Daryl Domning shook his head several times throughout his tour of the museum. “This bothers me as a scientist and as a Christian, because it’s just as much a distortion and misrepresentation of Christianity as it is of science,” he told the AFP. “It’s not your old-time religion by any means.”
Here’s a more in-depth report on the visit, plus an interesting fact (if you can use that word about the museum) one gets from the displays.
And that’s going to end up as the curriculum in schools if Sarah Palin becomes President (here Alfredone… more pictures to make your woody happy).
http://tinyurl.com/just-so-that-you-know
Haa, Haaaah!!
Jerry lipps: being a paleontologist knows that evolution has no science.
Where are all those (billions) of transitional fossils?
True science proves more of creation than the (theory) junk science that the bible is accurate.
And junk science says man evolved from non living rocks.
Evolution has (no) science.
#3 – Tech_1
Here… educate yourself.
#1–Jag==two good links to start the day with–thanks.
Language, and the ideas it permits, certainly is a tricky thing. “Freethinkers are Satans Slaves.” Quite a nice sounding ring to that. Meanwhile submission to God’s authority is what????????
I can feel the bile raising up inside me==luckily, the religious divide is mostly irrelvant to all we good people. Imagine if we were all rural and poor with nothing else to distract us?
Horrors.
The objective is to tell them what they want to hear.
If it keeps their fantasy out of schools, I’m OK with it.
Americans occasionally go from the ridiculous to the sublime but they also seem to quite regularly attain a uniquely sublime ridiculousness — and they’re proud of it!
Personally, I think it’s in very bad taste to stare at these side show freaks.
#5 – bobbo, awe struck by Palinism
Glad you liked them.
Imagine if we were all rural and poor with nothing else to distract us?
Or retired, like my fundamentalist neighbor. Him and his wife lives of his pension and their lives circle around the Pentecostal church. I feel sorry for their daughter… sweet girl, but dumb as a rock (and yes, it’s all the parents fault).
You have a 1 in 10 million chance of winning the lottery, yet many more than 10 million people play. Religion is no different.
As for this carnival of idiocy and hate, it’s just a bad Planet of the Apes sequel.
#8–Jag==is there an “Educated Big Brother” program in your area? If not you could start one. Just take out lots of life insurance.
I can’t get the image of the old lady scientist crying as she goes through this abomination to human dignity.
Quite a gap. Young earth idiots having the same reaction as a scientist at the stupidity shown by the other side. Too bad the scientists have proof while the idiots only have faith.
Woot, woot!!!!
The more I see this subject come up in blogs and elsewhere the more I realize just how effective the nutball side of the Christian right has been at corrupting the fundamental ideas and processes of science.
Myspace and Facebook? whatever. But when a significant percentage of our country is as ignorant as Tech_1, we have a serious science literacy problem.
How will we ever compete on the world stage with millions of citizens who not only don’t understand the scientific method, they refute it as crap.
Maybe they’ll be the ones driving the Waste Management trucks and digging ditches while the rest of us will be discovering new things.
“late Dr. Arthur E. Wilder-Smith”===late===LATE!!!!!
You would defame the dead in order to deny what your own eyes can see?
Hah, hah.
Dolts.
It’s Alfred the Sailor Man putting out a spinnaker and taking a different tack.
re: Wilder-Smith
From Wikipedia:
In 1965 he visited and promoted the false claims that dinosaur and human footprints existed at Paluxy River in Dinosaur Valley State Park. The footprints were shown to be not of human origin, and some specimens were shown to be doctored and carved.
According to the National Center for Science Education, Wilder-Smith’s work “The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution” contains a variety of falsehoods and errors. Kenneth Christiansen, Professor of Biology at Grinnell College, reviewed the book stating “the most fundamental flaw of the book is an apparent confusion or ignorance (it is hard to tell) concerning our present understanding of the evolutionary process.” He further noted that Wilder-Smith’s work disregarded basic literature in the field discussed.
The phrase ‘confusion or ignorance’ seems to fit well here.
Swing and…a miss!
Scientists (atheists) continue to misrepresent Christianity then poke fun at it, that is not really fair and proves that they don’t seek the truth.
They can’t account for morality or the existence of logical absolutes. http://tinyurl.com/d5qjs7
I haven’t seen this museum and can’t comment on it. The Bible represents Christ not some cheesy museum.
I, begrudgingly, went to this “museum”. It sits on a beautiful property and the building is modest. I walked inside and saw a T-Rex with a saddle on him and being guided around by a human. Most museums I have been in have exhibits with artifacts, this place was all propaganda exhibits.
There I go asking Christians for proof to their claims.
Here’s a list of books written by AE Wilder Smith. Looks like he went quite nuts early in his career. I wonder if he went to college to disprove science rather than learn it?
Ah well, every whack idea has a group supporting it. Its science itself that OVER TIME shows the proof, with all the bumps and false starts along the way, still the only engine of proof we have. Yea, verily. Just waiting for the rupture.
Wilder-Smith had a degree in chemistry. That doesn’t make him an expert in evolution any more than my degree in English does.
Even if evolution is totally wrong, that isn’t any evidence that creationism is right.
Most of the people who defend every word of the Bible are virtually ignorant of the process by which the Church chose its contents. So it should be no great surprise that such gullible people easily believe misrepresentations of scientific theories, especially when uttered by an authority figure. In the isolated and protected environment of a Sunday morning church service, lies can easily roll off the pastor’s lips and go unchallenged by the congregation.
One of their recent lies is that top scientists are abandoning evolutionary theory in droves as they finally realize the mistake of believing this “junk science.”
Alfred, you prove my point.
It’s a myth that scientists are switching to creationism. I’ve seen it repeated by Christians as fact, it’s on bunches of websites, but as usual, there is no evidence.
Alfred: reading it, saying it, and repeating it doesn’t make it true.
#13
I suppose, when a person is breathtakingly stupid, it is not surprising such a person can be proud to be being breathtakingly stupid.
Pride is a sin, isn’t it? On the other hand, stupidity is not a sin. I guess nobodaddy missed that one.
#22…to your first point
19 jccalhoun
“…that isn’t any evidence that creationism is right.”
That’s why they have “faith”, isn’t it? No need to have facts.
No need to have facts is entirely correct.
It’s sad that people are being brought up in ways that make this something they would pay to go to. Yikes.
Parents of these people should be charged with child abuse and the owner of this idiotic scam should be outed as one preying on them only for money.
I’m sure Alfred would be very much at home there as delusions are very much a part of his everyday life.
#24 Named
Nail, head, hit.
I have no problems with people of honest faith. I have no need of it but it positively enriches many people’s lives.
Bible science, and the politics therein, is a crock of mule crap.
Uncle Dave,
Not only are you a dip you’re a moron. The museum offers a different conclusion to that which the paleontologist might come to and they use the bible to guide them. That no different that all the Demoncrats saying that they will lower health care costs, eliminate services and yet improve health care, which by their diffinition is simply killing everyone they have scientifically decided their time come. I can prove just in the same way that the only good Demoncrat is a Dead Commie.
Just in case you missed my meaning f*!? you.
Whatever……….
Traaxx
27 Traaxx,
You ALMOST outdid AlfredENewman. Keep trying.
23 Olo Baggins of Bywater said,
#22…to your first point
LOL and crying at the same time.
J/P=?
#23
Thanks for the link.
I’m sure Jay borrowed that idea from the Canadian Rick Mercer, who sometimes Talks to Americans!
#27
If I was Uncle Dave, I’d be damned proud you said that to me.
Just for clarification and my own peace of mind, you are blogging from the inside of a locked, well-guarded institution, right?