Ken Ham's Creationism Museum has attracted so much media attention and packed so many preview sessions that Ham is convinced that nearly half a million people a year will come to Kentucky to see his Biblically correct version of history.
The $27 million project, which also includes a planetarium, a special-effects theater, nature trails and a small lake, is privately funded by people who believe the Bible's first book, Genesis, is literally true.
For them, a museum showing Christian schoolchildren and skeptics alike how the earth, animals, dinosaurs and humans were created in a six-day period about 6,000 years ago -- not over millions of years, as evolutionary science says -- is long overdue.
I am interested to know how they explain how god created light on the first day and waited until the fourth day to create the entire solar system, including the sun, which provides most of our light -- essentially re-creating light for a second time.
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Look, for goodness sake - Genesis is written from the point of view of a human observer, so although the heavens (sun and moon) were created 'in the beginning' it took time for their light to penetrate through the mist to Earth's surface (day 1), and you couldn't make out the appearance of a disk through the murk until day 4. You know, it all makes perfect sense.
Lucky you for having got this far through life without being trapped in a corner by an earnest fundamentalist.
My biggest question, is did Fred, Barney Betty and Wilma make it on to the Ark? Wat about Bam-Bam and Pebbles? Will Ham's Museum give them proper coverage?
i'm hoping this will do more to educate the public about the absurdities of creationism. i want to go and blog about it, how bout you?
if i manage to go to that neck of the woods, i'd go and blog about it, depending upon how much money i have (something tells me this will be expensive, and they won't let you in for free if you can quote bible verses).
GrrlScientist - I'm happy to chip in a bit for the entrance fee. The entertainment will be worth it and I then won't have to go there myself. It's either your neurons or mine.
Perhaps Seed could pay for a SciBlings outing?
Bob
P.S. Perhaps God invented the electric light bulb before the sun. Never thought of that, did you?
You ignore this overwhelming bit of evidence for human/dinosaur coexistance:
http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=898
I subscribe to a museum listserv, and this is one of the few topics guaranteed to start an impassioned flame war. Normally, it's a pretty tame listserv ("We are in the process of developing an exhibit of wedding dresses. Does anyone have any good leads on inexpensive, archivally safe dress forms? We are also open to mannequins if they are the right price.") But whenever I log on to that account and see 70 messages in my inbox, I know that someone has brought up the topic of creationism in museums.
I'm very torn about this new one. On one hand, I do think it's an abomination. The general public, myself included, is confused enough about science, and every study done for decades shows that the pubic really, really trusts their museums. I don't know if anyone's ever studied this, but I can tell you anecdotally that most people don't distinguish between a professionally run museum and a museum that is basically someone's personal collection open to the public.
At the same time, though, real science museums have been plagued by these ultra-right Bible-thumpers in recent years. At the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, they surrounded a docent and fired questions at her for twenty minutes straight. After that incident, the staff has worked to develop procedures for dealing with these folks in a firm but respectful manner. There is also an outfit called "BC Tours" (because they're "biblically correct") that take groups into the more self-directed natural history museums and offer their own tour. These people seem to feed on persecution and exclusion. They like to claim that they have to go to such extreme lengths because they feel their views aren't represented. Maybe now that they are, they'll leave the rest of us alone.
In general, though, I oppose new museums. The ones that exist are all in a fierce fight for survival. Why subdivide an already small pie even further?
I was in the American Museum of Natural History (one of the coolest places in the world) in NYC a few years ago. There was a man describing the exhibits to a group of mostly teenagers.
I thought it was one of the guided tours the museum offers. I listened in for a second an the man said that there have been tests of DNA of neanderthals, and the DNA was the same as the DNA of modern people.
This seemed odd so I listened more. He went to say that the dates for cave paintings must be way too old because the paint on his house started to peel just after as few years. Then I thought whoa, what is he saying.
I looked around at the kids he was talking to and many of them had t-shirts with evangelical christian type slogans. The lectures he was giving where to dismiss science in favor of creationism. I chuckled to myself and walked away.
I had heard all of this before. Many members of my family are young earth creationists. And they say I'm the crazy one ;)
"Many members of my family are young earth creationists. And they say I'm the crazy one ;)"
The scary thing is that we may become a minority in this country--the crazy ones who believe in science over the literal word of the bible.