Pharyngula

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | August 11, 2009 5:08 PM

Oh boy. The only way to know the bible is true....

That's right. Accept Jesus.

Well I'm sold.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 11, 2009 5:18 PM

Even when they fake science, it's all Bible-thumping and preaching.

We wonder why they can't think? They've been taught every trick to avoid it.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p

Posted by: Gyeong Hwa Pak | August 11, 2009 5:32 PM

Isn't it funny how creationist use the guise of "science" to hide their own ethno-centric view? Any other relgion could easily use "God's word" to try proving evolution wrong. But of course, it's not the word of their God; the words of barbarians could never be true.

Why can't they accept that the Carebears created us all. lol
See I did the thinking for them!

Posted by: Troy | August 11, 2009 5:33 PM

So many children there misinformed...so sad.

Posted by: SEF | August 11, 2009 5:37 PM

The recovering Catholic (at the start of the first video) still seems rather twitchy. Withdrawal symptoms? ;-)

Posted by: Chip | August 11, 2009 5:46 PM

Noah was over 900 years old
YODA was also over 900 years old...stay with me
So if I accept Yoda does that mean Star wars is really true?
No wait Yoda didnt die and come back...Obie Wan did though!
So if I accept Obie Wan does that mean Star Wars is right?
I am a StarWarinan!
OH L. Ron you made it look so easy...
Nice videos!...wish I could have gone too
next time

Posted by: darkshrowds.wordpress.com | August 11, 2009 5:54 PM

This is perfect. Gotta love the humor during work.

#10 - I believe we all concur that it would be improved with that kind of display. We should send him the assistance in making one.

#7 - That is what hits you when you go through the museum, that kids are being taught this as true and not as a joke when you are walking through it.

And for more humor, feel free to go here: http://tinyurl.com/mo5wdt

I just finished calculating how fast the plates had to move in creation science.

Joe Melfi

Posted by: Robert Madewell | August 11, 2009 6:08 PM

I loved Arkansas Traveler in the first video (6:07-6:50)!

Posted by: MikeM | August 11, 2009 6:20 PM

I once heard a YEC say -- and I couldn't believe my ears were hearing it -- that the continents actually WERE one big continent, even though the earth was less than 10,000 years old.

All the continents, you see, split apart after the flood waters from Noah's Flood subsided. It only took a few years to go from one huge continent to what you see today.

Can you imagine the earthquakes? I sorta think someone would have written that one down.

Posted by: Dan MalcDuff | August 11, 2009 6:40 PM

Lots more photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/danmacduff
I think the link works now. If not, just cut and paste the url into your browser's address bar.

Posted by: Serafina | August 11, 2009 6:56 PM

"ALL reasoning is circular!"

I think that sums up the cognitive dissonance right there.

Posted by: Qwerty | August 11, 2009 6:59 PM

I heard from one person on the video that there was more security than the last time she visited. One wonders if, faced with an onslaught of atheists, they hired more security guards to protect the insecurities of the "true believers?"

I did get to hear my question had I attended: Where exactly did all that water for the flood come from and where did it all go?

Posted by: 386sx | August 11, 2009 7:08 PM

I'm having difficulty hearing what some people are saying in those videos; there's an annoying hum whenever anyone speaks.

I hear it too. (~141 Hz)

Posted by: James Fieldstone | August 11, 2009 7:15 PM

There was at least one agnostic there.

Perhaps there is still hope!

Posted by: Kim Beach | August 11, 2009 7:22 PM

I think someone broke into Madame Tussaud's, ripped off the Captain Jean-Luc Picard wax statues, put some scrolls and beards on them, and slapped them in the Creation Museum

Posted by: Brock | August 11, 2009 7:34 PM

According to Lisle, the Bible makes reason itself possible?

Huh. So... ancient Egyptians and Greeks built pyramids and temples, built up logical systems, and predicted celestial events *without* reasoning? Wow. Must've been some potent heathen magic then.

Anyway, nice video, definitely saves me the trouble of going there. Though I would have preferred to hear the ambient crowd instead of corny music tracks.

Posted by: Skeptics Among Us | August 11, 2009 7:45 PM

#16 & #25

I'm having difficulty hearing what some people are saying in those videos; there's an annoying hum whenever anyone speaks.

There were a lot of times we were filming around other electronics (cell phones, security radios, other cameras, animatronics, etc). These items cause interference during recording, resulting in some garbled audio.

Posted by: Primewonk | August 11, 2009 7:52 PM

That annoying hum -

It's the creationist equivalent of Cosmic Background Radiation. It is the leftover oscillation of all the water molecules as they magically left Earth after the flood.

You can't get rid of it. It's built in to the very fabric of the universe (as it exists inside the Flintstone's museum).

Posted by: LuchinG | August 11, 2009 8:22 PM

"You´ll know it if you accept Jesus Christ as your saviour"

¿Does that guy think a believer can not be a evolucionist? ¿In what bubble does he lives in?

Posted by: MTran | August 11, 2009 8:25 PM

OT but more on the real world consequences of being a religious moron:

John Yettaw is the bizarre fellow who swam to Aung San Suu Kyi's home, where he delivered religious Mormon texts. He thought he was on a mission from God to "save" Suu Kyi.

"Now the American may be the most unpopular man in Myanmar for inadvertently extending her house arrest."

Yettaw himself was sentenced to 7 years hard labor.

Posted by: Pierre Cloutier | August 11, 2009 8:37 PM

You know what. When some of my Fundamentalist friends wonder, why I, a believer in God etc., etc., like to hang around with Atheists and other "ungodly" people and why I have such contempt for Fundementalism, (such that I refuse to discuss Religion with Fundamentalists, even my friends), I'll just point out the "Creation Museum" and change the topic.

I didn't think I could loathe Fundementalism more. It appears I was wrong.

Posted by: Laurie | August 11, 2009 8:47 PM

This series was so charming.

And awwww, the "Now's your chance to hug an atheist" shirt was adorable -- the perfect note to strike in a visit to the Creation museum.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the interaction between Wm Bowman and the little old lady (Museum Patron Sandy). She actually did a good job defending her point of view (mainly because they were discussing it within its own terms). I think Bowman was letting her get away with murder because she was so cute and little.

Lisle's willful stupidity was a bit less charming, because he ought to know better.

Posted by: Laurie | August 11, 2009 9:07 PM

The discussion of "circular reasoning" on the video reminded me of an incident when I was little, when my father explained the fallacy of "circular reasoning" as we were watching an evangelist preaching on TV. I remember being shocked that a grown man didn't seem to understand the concept, which seemed simple and sensible enough for even a 7-year old like me to grasp once it was explained. I also remember feeling very sorry for the poor televangelist and the people listening to him.

My father and I never got along at all, and we never agreed on much. But I am grateful that he gave me those early lessons on critical thinking.

Posted by: Jim Lippard | August 11, 2009 9:16 PM

Lisle's an advocate of presuppositionalism, so he's arguing that the existence of God is a necessary precondition for knowledge that must be presupposed in order to have reason and knowledge at all. It's OK to appeal to the authority of God, the author of the Bible, since he's infallible, and appeals to infallible authority are OK. But even if you grant the existence of God, that doesn't yield a conclusion in favor of the Bible, since an examination of the Bible on its own terms shows it to be inconsistent all over the place.

It's a bogus epistemology. I don't think you find many Christian philosophers who think it works.

Posted by: 386sx | August 11, 2009 9:23 PM

Good luck telling Mr. Lisle the Bible is inconsistent all over the place. (Even if it weren't inconsistent, it would still be bogus though.)

Posted by: CalGeorge | August 11, 2009 9:49 PM

2nd video:

"My reason for accepting the Bible is that it makes reason possible."

So now everyone who rejects the Bible is irrational?

Posted by: spontorder | August 11, 2009 10:01 PM

Well I guess that clarifies why they wanted your photo -- so they can add you to the wall of mans' reason. Of course I don't think it will harm you much after all you will only be referred to as 'an atheist professor from Minnesota'.

A

Posted by: Kseniya | August 11, 2009 10:30 PM

"My reason for accepting the Bible is that it makes reason possible."

Hooboy.

Posted by: No BS | August 11, 2009 10:37 PM

Atheist chicks are hot.

Brains, cute, and an oh so tart taste of rebellion.

And the guys... sometimes I wish I was gay.

As for Lisle... That guy reminds me of a table lamp that's plugged into itself. Portable, but not very bright.

Posted by: No BS | August 11, 2009 10:43 PM

Posted by: Sanction

"Damn. This is another situation where I wish that I were not deaf, if only to experience the inanity with the rest of you."

At the risk of being something or other... Have you tried speech recognition software? You talk it types? Just feed the dialog into it... should work.

Posted by: AnneH | August 11, 2009 10:45 PM

William's discussion with museum patron Sandy reminded me of another reason why I became an atheist - the notion that a loving deity set his beloved children up for failure.

The bible says that god created us as flawed and sinful so we would need him to save us.

That doesn't sound like a loving creator to me. It sounds very manipulative and passive-aggressive. I decided that I didn't need a god that got his jollies from jerking my chain and threatening to allow me to be tortured for eternity.

Posted by: salon_1928 | August 11, 2009 10:54 PM

What a nice bunch of bright, young people - I want to go back to school...

Posted by: No BS | August 11, 2009 11:01 PM

"- the notion that a loving deity set his beloved children up for failure."

I'm tellin' ya... the abrahamic god is an alcoholic. It's the only thing that can explain the irrational mood swings.

"OK you li'le fuckersh... I'm gonna giya free will. Butcha better loff me. Or i'm gonna fuck yoush up. Sent ya ta hell 'ab bern ya ferever. C'mon ya cuties... say yer loff me. I MADE YA ME-DAMMIT! Shay yer love me. I luvs ya Look i'm gonna kill Jesus if ya don't zay yer love me"

Posted by: Laura | August 11, 2009 11:17 PM

#61 - Well said. It always comes down to the creator being the exact opposite of what these sheep try and make him out to be. How about having a little faith in humanity instead of pretending god will fix everything? Sigh.

Great job on the videos. It would have been nice to be there, just to meet all the people who know how to think for themselves! :)

Posted by: Dax | August 11, 2009 11:56 PM

Boy
You guys have all the fun.
I had to spend the whole day at the Royal Tyrell museum in Drumheller Alberta on Monday. Not one leather saddle in the whole place.Lots and lots of kids and parents and they didn't even throw the 40yr old wearing the "I'm Horney" t-shirt out.Evidently I went to the wrong evolution museum.
Seriously it was so encouraging to see so many kids with their parents explaining the exhibits and how life actually evolved.

Posted by: hje | August 12, 2009 12:04 AM

Re: Panels. --> Descartes said ... God said ...

To be consistent, they should add a final panel for Pop-eye: "I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam." It would be an approximately equivalent non sequitur.

Posted by: Adam | August 12, 2009 12:23 AM

Has anyone else noticed on the NCSE website a link that recommends helping the NCSE "by buying from our wish list at Amazon?" It's on the right "In the Spotlight", and it flashes through about 4 different options. When you go to their wish list it is 95% pro-creationism books... I'm confused.

Posted by: Urmensch | August 12, 2009 12:34 AM

Actually it all brings back a question I used to ask when I was young, which was if God, being omniscient, knew that destroying the world with a flood wasn't going to work and he was going to have to send his son to die to redeem the sins of mankind then why did he bother with the whole flood thing anyway?
It was something I could never understand. On the one hand we were to believe he was all-knowing, but on the other he seemed to acted all surprised and outraged at what people got up to.

And then he did all this horrible shit that he knew wasn't going to work anyway.

It all seemed so pointless.

I remember agonising over whether he was either a sadist who just got his kicks out of it all, playing with us like a cruel kid pulling the wings off flies, or he was actually well meaning but totally inept.

It was such a relief when I just stopped trying to reconcile it all and dumped the lot.

Posted by: Joshua Fisher | August 12, 2009 1:10 AM

I'm sure I would have to be as nice as the young fella in the videos "engaging" with creationists if I were there. (And if those interactions were an attempt at imitating the Dawkins-like confrontations with creationists videos [which I presume they were], that guy did a really nice job.)

But it seems like a waste of time to me to talk to a creationist about appeals to authority and circular logic when the problem is that said creationist starts with a conclusion and pieces together how to get there (trying to dodge science along the way) after the fact.

Creationism is not an *explanation*, it's a conclusion. Evolution/natural selection is not a conclusion, it's an explanation.

So when Ham proclaims that creationists and scientists have the same facts but two different conclusions, he's lying in at least two ways, but one way stands out: the facts that science relies on LEAD to conclusions; the facts that creationism relies on ARE conclusions.

Posted by: Richard | August 12, 2009 1:54 AM

So how many of your group converted?

Posted by: ihedenius | August 12, 2009 3:27 AM

Posted by: Adam | August 12, 2009 12:23 AM

Has anyone else noticed on the NCSE website a link that recommends helping the NCSE "by buying from our wish list at Amazon?" It's on the right "In the Spotlight", and it flashes through about 4 different options. When you go to their wish list it is 95% pro-creationism books... I'm confused.
>>

You're not alone. Is NCSE hacked or what ...?
That is an ugly list of books.

Posted by: redkamel | August 12, 2009 4:25 AM

now I want to go to the Creation Museum!

I always make the campus converters go away with the following:

If I am in a hurry:" Could God make a burrito so hot he couldn't eat it?"

If I have lots of time: "Satan's goal is to make us go to Hell. And he can spread lies on Earth, but God only can send the Bible. So why would I hear that Satan will only punish me if I follow his ways? Shouldn't he reward me, or at least lie that he will reward me? For example, by changing the bible sometime in the last 3000 years, and saying I will "go to heaven" if I follow it? Remember, he WANTS me to do certain things, so how better than to trick millions of people? The keepers of the Bible weren't perfect you know. So this whole Bible thing actually sounds more like a plan by Satan to get me to do his bidding by repressing all my desires and following all these rules that God never really made or intended me to follow. Boy, I hope you aren't going to hell."

The second one really pretzels their mind.

Also try "Did Jesus swapped places with Judas before the crucifixtion? Since Judas is burning in hell forever as a traitor, while Jesus got his own dang religion, it sounds like the guy burning in hell forever, with a ruined reputation, really took one for the team while the guy who died on the cross got the sweet deal and all the press...and Jesus would have to know it was going to happen that way. But if the guy on the cross was Judas, well, I am sure he felt pretty guilty anyhow and that was probably a good enough punishment for him from Jesus's point of view."

Posted by: Gregory Greenwood | August 12, 2009 6:39 AM

How about a little test?

I used the theme music from a cartoon show dating from my childhood to compose this creation museum themed ditty. Can anyone name the show?

They're Looy and the Ham
They're Looy and the Ham
One is a fundie, the other's insane!
To prove their xian worth,
They'll overthrow the Earth!
They're Looy, they're Looy and the Ham, Ham, Ham, Ham, Ham!

Here's a modified version of the show's catchphrase as an extra clue;

Looy; "What are we going to do tonight, Ham?"

Ham; "The same thing we do every night, Looy. Try to take over the world!"

In the words of the great Rolf Harris, can you guess what it is yet?

Posted by: Felix | August 12, 2009 8:25 AM

George @85
it's Pinky and the Brain. Too easy.

Posted by: Brian Jordan | August 12, 2009 10:46 AM

#81: There are some real nasties on that list, aren't there? Along with an exhortation to buy them and have them sent direct to the NCSE too!

It MUST be some kind of hack - unless they're trying to syphon off a cut from books the fundies would buy anyway?

Posted by: Gregory Greenwood | August 12, 2009 11:00 AM

Felix @ 87 and Simon Scott @ 88;

We have winners! Yup its Pinky and the Brain. Pinky in particular reminds me of the fundie mindset (or lack thereof).

Incidentally Felix, my name is Gregory not George. I would make dire threats as to what I will do if you get my name wrong again, but I am afraid of how Gotrek might react . . . (lets see if anyone can get that reference).

Posted by: Glenn Branch | August 12, 2009 11:37 AM

@73,81,91: PZ @89 is exactly right. NCSE maintains a quite extensive library of creationist books, pamphlets, videos, etc. for the purposes of scholarly and activist research. Information about NCSE's archives is available here, and the catalogue is available at LibraryThing here. No endorsement of creationist material, either in the library or on NCSE's wishlist, is intended or should be inferred.

@85: Poit!

Posted by: GregB | August 12, 2009 12:11 PM

You´ll know it if you accept Jesus Christ as your saviour

So you're telling me that I will know it's true if I first accept that it's true? Once again the Christian is completly ignorant of the concept of logical fallacies.

How, exactly would I distinguish this as being different from brainwashing?

Scientist have no explaination of the variety of finches

Wait a minute, can the people who designed the Creationist Museum really be completly ignorant of the whole basis of Darwin's research? I mean, how can they build an anti-evolution museum and not know that it was the variety of finches that caused Darwin to ponder the idea of evolution and that evolution gies an answer to the variety of finches?

That's truely bizzare.

Posted by: DobyGS | August 12, 2009 12:44 PM

The video was great, but I still have concerns that this little field trip raised money for the Creation Museum. It looked like great fun, but going to the museum will not make these people go away.

Posted by: MichaelP | August 12, 2009 1:08 PM

OMG I'm famous! I saw the back of my head while I was standing in line in the first video! Woo!

Seriously, though - these videos pretty well capture the essence of the trip to a tee. Very well done, I must say.

Thankfully, I didn't bring any of the stupid back home with me. Just a button and a picture of myself with PZ. =)

Posted by: jwc | August 12, 2009 6:13 PM

Cute atheist girls ITT. Niiice.

Posted by: Chas | August 12, 2009 11:07 PM

I have to admit it struck me that the uniforms for the security staff looked a lot more like state police uniforms (especially with the hat) than museum security uniforms I have seen in other institutions.

Posted by: Charlie Foxtrot | August 14, 2009 12:39 AM

re #85-
Ham: Are you thinking what I'm thinking Looy?...
Looy: Sure! But where are we going to get three hominid skulls, a snake and two dancing bears at this time of night?

Posted by: daveau | August 16, 2009 9:23 AM

"For the first 2 centuries of my life, I knew Adam." - Noah

So, you've completely forgotten him now? Or did you "know" him in the biblical sense? I did not recall that people lived a lot longer in the days before medicine.

The music in this is remiscent of "Yakety Sax", aka the Benny Hill Show theme. I propose "Yakety Sax" be the official theme song for all videos of the Creation Museum. Which does a slight disservice to Mr Hill, as he was actually witty.

(OK, so I don't watch the videos until the weekend, since I have no audio at work. Plus this is a half hour long; even I can't pretend to be working for that long...)

Posted by: Eamon Knight | August 26, 2009 9:13 PM

This was taken by that guy with the humungous video cam, I assume? Too bad they didn't include the hand-in-lens shot from the Derek Rodgers incident.

But, golly: there's a decent shot of my wife, with me mostly hidden behind her (which is probably the preferable way round to do that I guess....).

And: Lyz L. talking about "how we can work with these people"? I'm trying to imagine many issues where secularists and AiG's brand of extremist would be on the same side (hell, even average mainstream religion and AiG ain't real friendly with each other), such that "work together" would even be relevant! Keeping Muslims from infiltrating Sharia into the family law system (like was tried a few years back in Ontario) maybe, but not much else -- and I can't help thinking that even there the motivations would be too different.

Yeah, we have to share the same planet -- but I think we have too divergent views of what we want it to be like.

Posted by: Frizz59 | October 11, 2009 9:58 PM

After watching this video and reading some of the posts. I want to say I am surprised by the level of Brainwashing, the public schools and colleges have done to this generation! But I am not I hear them daily and see the results of their Godless view on T.V. music and in public daily.
That these people have been convinced that once there was NOTHING, then Something came from Nothing, that something exploded without a cause, formed into the amazing universe we see. Then all those inanimate particles produced life,
information, laws of physics, thought, and an orderly world and universe governed by those laws all by Random chance (Which itself suggest order's opposite) All without any thinking process involved. Dinosaurs evolved from this process grew to huge sizes and varities, were destroyed ( by an asteroid?) The a second evolutionary process began again and this time wonder of wonders, random chance produced a more intelligent species and a delicately balanced environment for them to live in. Wow! What Faith you have!

Posted by: Frizz59 | October 11, 2009 11:20 PM

After watching this video and reading some of the posts. I want to say I am surprised by the level of Brainwashing, the public schools and colleges have done to this generation! But I am not I hear them daily and see the results of their Godless view on T.V. music and in public daily.
That these people have been convinced that once there was NOTHING, then Something came from Nothing, that something exploded without a cause, formed into the amazing universe we see. Then all those inanimate particles produced life,
information, laws of physics, thought, and an orderly world and universe governed by those laws all by Random chance (Which itself suggest order's opposite) All without any thinking process involved. Dinosaurs evolved from this process grew to huge sizes and varities, were destroyed ( by an asteroid?) The a second evolutionary process began again and this time wonder of wonders, random chance produced a more intelligent species and a delicately balanced environment for them to live in. Wow! What Faith you have!