The folks at BluegrassRoots.com took a trip up I-75 to visit the Yabba-Dabba-Doo Museum in Petersburg. The more I see, the less I would want to shell out almost $20 to visit the place. I’ll just stay home and watch The 10 Commandments.
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Creationism as a “theory” does not agree with the overwhelming evidence for a 13-billion-year-old universe and a 4.6-Byo Earth. That much is clear. It (and the new Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky.) also completely ignore centuries of careful Biblical scholarship and supporting archaelogical research. There are two main ways to read the Bible, especially the Old Testament (OT). (1) As a document transmitted from God directly to Moses and other writers, which is the traditional Jewish and Christian view. (2) As the synthesis of a variety of sources, written by a variety of authors, who may or may not been divinely inspired, which has been the interpretation of many Jewish and Christian scholars since the 17th century. [Islam, it should be noted, honors both the Old and New Testaments, but teaches that these scriptures have been corrupted. Only the Holy Quran as given to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) communicates Allah’s true Word.] Creationists are an extreme “camp” within category 1. They hold that every single word in Scripture is not just divinely transmitted but must also be taken literally. In particular, the first few chapters of Genesis, to creationists, are a word-for-word account of how God created the universe, the Earth and everything on it. They place special emphasis on the separate creation of humans (Adam and Eve), which they insist is evidence that humans are not animals like God’s other creations and could not possibly be descended from earlier primates. Possibly related posts:
Every once in a while, when I have time, I visit fellow bloggers’ sites for inspiration, fun and a little give-and-take. Over at Aetiology, Tara Smith’s remarks about the Creation Museum attracted a couple of creationists, whose comments were so annoying that I felt I had to respond.
Y’see, creation “science” just doesn’t run roughshod over accepted biological and evolutionary theory, it also attempts to rewrite the laws of physics to make them conform to a universe that’s only a few thousand years old. Worse yet, the kind of creationists who comment on science blogs seem to be abysmally ignorant of even basic physics, so it’s no wonder they cannot understand why creationism is just so wrong. [Note to students: If you ever get involved in debates about creationism, make sure you understand your physics first. Numbers don’t lie.] Then there are those who figure that throwing Bible verses at us non-creationists will convince us that we are wrong and they are right. They make no attempt to debate the issues; they figure Biblical injunctions are sufficient arguments. The trouble is, when you try to debate these people at a more logical level, the attempt usually fails. They are so devoted to creationism that they rarely look at the logical fallacies that undergird their belief system. Still, I try; it’s the teacher in me. Possibly related posts:
The comsummate anti-creationist, PZ Myers, has compiled 75 blogosphere reactions to the opening this weekend of the Creation Museum near Convington. More are on the way. Check it out. Martha Heil of the American Institute of Physics also has an early reaction to her CM visit. Possibly related posts:
The Bible says nothing about dinosaurs. To reconcile Scripture with the fossil evidence, creationists have to perform some fantastic mental and logical gymnastics to explain how Genesis somehow omits mention of such obviously big creatures. On Memorial Day, believers in these convoluted arguments will celebrate the opening of the Creation Museum in Boone County, near Covington, Ky. The Museum, a project of Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis, was built with $27 million in donations, so there are either a lot of very gullible donors or just a few very rich, gullible donors. Excuse me, I mean faithful donors. To counteract this monument to misguided generosity, a group calling itself Rally for Reason will hold a peaceful protest outside the museum’s gate beginning at 9 am that Monday. Although an atheist organization has spearheaded the rally, churchgoers will be there, too. If any of you out there will be in the area that day, I hope you will join in the protest. It’s a free country and creationists can believe whatever they like, even if it’s just plain wrong. The danger in this museum is that it gives the uninitiated the impression that creationism is somehow “science.” Creationism is religious thought, and the museum is really just a church in disguise. [If you doubt the Sunday-school nature of the Museum, check out this walk-through Possibly related posts:
I’ve been sitting on this post since before Christmas. Now that I have time (and a working blog again) it’s time to let it out. If you pay any attention at all to “New Age,” alternative religion, or whatever-you-call it pundits, you may have heard that, according to these experts, the world is due to come to an end sometime around Dec. 21, 2012. Why? Because the ancient Mayan calendar “runs out” on that date. Now Christians have been playing this game since Jesus came back to visit his disciples. The two big dates for them were the milennial endpoints, 1000 and 2000 CE. Given, as we are collectively, to loving big round numbers, early milennialists figured that at the thousand-year mark, Christ would return and the righteous would ascend to Heaven, as predicted in the New Testament. It didn’t happen, or if it did, our ancestors missed the call. It happened again in 1999. Big fuss. No Second Coming. (Hey guys! He did say that no one will know the time of His arrival. Stop trying to second guess the Man.) Yet the faithful keep hoping for His eventual return. Possibly related posts:
Douglas Adams, in his Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books, once suggested that falling was akin to an ingrained habit. If you could just forget about falling, you could defy gravity and fly. It works as a joke, but in real life gravity is pretty unforgiving. So you can imagine my surprise when I came across “gravity deniers” trolling at Tara Smith’s Aetiology blog. Tara was dumbfounded that anyone could deny the so-called “germ” theory of infectious disease, since there has been so much evidence since Louis Pasteur’s time that bacteria, viruses, and single-celled parasites cause a wide variety of illnesses. Yet, it seems, just as there are souls who deny the connection between HIV and AIDS or the validity of the theory of evolution, there are some who deny that “germs” cause disease. Woof. One of the commenters, jspreen, claimed that poverty caused disease, noting that poor people seem disproportionately more susceptible to infectious diseases than richer people. Someone else claimed that Pasteur had recanted his support of the germ theory on his deathbed. I commented that jspreen was confusing correlation with causation, and closed my comment with this snarky remark:
Little did I know that my snide remark would end up hijacking the thread. To wit, here is what a germ-denier named Wilhelm had to say: Possibly related posts:
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Popular cartoons and movies may say humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, but the idea is just plain wrong. The dinos were dead long before our hominid ancestors evolved. The fossil record leaves little room for argument.
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