Pam Spaulding reports that Ken Ham's clown palace of a 'museum' will be opening in April. I am so tempted to make a road trip this summer to see it and mock it…but no, I don't really want to put one penny in his coffers. I did think this was funny, though:
According to Ham, the museum is already receiving worldwide attention. "The international press are getting very, very interested in this," he says, "and it's going to be not just a national event here in America. It's going to be an international event when it opens in April 2007."
I'm sure it is getting lots of international attention. It's a colossal joke and an embarrassment to this country.
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That would be pretty funny if it opened on April first, but I'm afraid the irony would be lost on Ham because he isn't used to American traditions like April Fools Day. For instance, on April 1 1957 the BBC news program Panorama did a famous joke story about a fictional "spaghetti harvest" in Switzerland. Although everyone eventually came to the realization that it was some sort of a joke, nobody was sure just exactly what kind of a joke it was supposed to be. (Nobody except for the Americans of course.)
Baylor University's Inherently Unofficial Atheists and Agnostics Association (or "BUIUAAARGH, I'm At Baylor!" for short) is planning a roadtrip to a creationist museum in Dallas in the near future. However, our group hasn't even considered the whole "giving them money" aspect of the trip.
We will have to think of some other way to get in without giving any money. If only we had the name of some religious school attached to our name that we could milk for budget passes, or something...
I'm sure that if you went as "journalists" they'd give you a free pass.
Cody, isn't Baylor a Baptist school? Just sayin'.
"Creationist museum in Dallas?" Do you mean in Glen Rose, or is there some clown college in Dallas with a creationist museum, of which I am totally unaware?
By the way, Chuck Finsley, formerly at the Dallas Museum of Natural History, did some pioneering work in getting amateurs to dig fossils and do the assembly work -- mastodons, etc., etc. We have a tradition here in North Texas of regular folks doing real scientific work that makes the knees of creationists knock. While you're up here, why not look in on the real stuff? Call Louis Jacobs at SMU and let him know you're coming. Check out the geology department at TCU -- and see the science museums in both Dallas and Fort Worth.
There is real science almost everywhere these days.
Cody, first off, my condolences. I thought it kind of sucked to be an atheist at Texas A&M back in my day, but Baylor?? **shudder** "Young branch davidians in training", as my A&M buddy Terry dubbed them once. Everybody in Texas knows Baylor's a Baptist institution. I guess you could go under cover and pretend to be Campus Crusade for Christ or Intervarsity members...but you'll probably still have to pay to get in.
For a more uplifting experience, I think Dallas has a pretty kick-ass science museum last I checked. I also recommend the Houston Museum of Natural Science (www.hmns.org), though obviously that's a bit of a long trek from Waco.
My ex-wife is a raging fundie and fanatical anti-evolution nut. One of the MANY reasons she's my EX. (she was vaguely agnostic when we hooked up, but drifted back to the fundamentalist ways of her childhood, while I remained a resolute atheist). I for one wouldn't set foot in such a "museum"...If I'm going to spend my hard earned money, it's going to HMNS, or Museum of Fine Arts Houston, or...
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Spkng f stlkng, r y stll stlkng Jhn Hndrkr f Pwr Ln?
Think I know who I'll be interviewing on that day.
Somewhere, somehow, I hear the screams of an angel getting his wings plucked out.
"The international press are getting very, very interested in this," he says.
Google news search: ken ham creation museum
Result:
Same story, published in 3 places:
USA Religious News, MN
WDC Media News, CA
Agape Press, MS
Waterloo Record, Canada (yes, international interest!)
The University of Alabama Crimson White, AL (a critical piece written by a philosophy major)
Ham sent out a fundraising letter last week that bragged about how opposition to his Creation Museum was backfiring with publicity and increased contributions (but he still has to beg for more, I noticed). I posted the test of his letter in Greenbacks and Ham. Enjoy, if you're so minded.
If I hear about it Down here I'll let you all know. I'm guessing I won't be saying much.
What...? I guess someone told you that just after March 31st. Or are you just trying to perpetuate the American stereotype?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_fool%27s_day
The spaghetti tree thing is here.
Bob
I can only imagine the wonderous travel package that Jason already has lined to visit. Maybe he has a two day pass already reserved and a rental car with a preadhered cheesy Calvin and the cross sticker in the back window and a stupid fish on the trunk. We can only hope.
we drove by it some months back. I decided that if it were open I would go, if only to make certain that my in-laws who live an hour away realize what an atrocity the place is. sometimes you have to pay a price for GREAT material.
I hear Ken Ham's dinosaurs with saddles are getting more buzz in Australia than Steve Irwin's Crocoseum.
Waterloo Record, Canada (yes, international interest!)
Also, the local alternative weekly (also in Canada) mentioned it... in the column usually reserved for tales of penis mishaps and Darwin Award nominees.
This place is a couple of hours from me. Like Cody, I'd hate encourage this kind of ignorance by giving them money, but like Pinko Punko said, sometimes you have to pay for great material.
Maybe I can get my humanist group to go to it as a group. That would be pretty interesting.
It would be cool to see in the odd spot, but I haven't heard anything about it in the local papers/tv :( (In Victoria) Maybe there's some press in Queensland about it, they're a little backwards up there.
Irwin's still all over the news. Which is almost as annoying as he was.
Huh? Brits don't know about April Fool's Day? It's an exclusively American Tradition?
April Fool's Day has been observed in Britain since the 18th Century, it didn't reach America until the mid-19th Century.
I have no diect evidence, but I suspect that the British exported April Fool's day to Australia at least as effectively as they did to America.
The Spaghetti tree was widely acknowledged as an April Fool's trick, and everyone accepted it as such, without needing those sophisticalted Americans to explain it to us...
My guess would be that admission would be "free", but donations would be "strongly encouraged." Ham is in trouble with the law, and this would be a way to subvert the tax man. So, you may not have to pay for the material. Perhaps.
April fools: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_fools
It has been suggested that Europe derived its April-fooling from the French [2]. France was one of the first nations to make January 1 officially New Year's Day (which it already was popularly), by decree of Charles IX. This was in 1564, even before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar (See Julian start of the year). Thus the New Year's gifts and visits of felicitation which had been the feature of the 1st of April became associated with the first day of January, and those who disliked or did not hear about the change were fair game for those wits who amused themselves by sending mock presents and paying calls of pretended ceremony on the 1st of April. French and Dutch references from 1508 and 1539 respectively describe April Fool's Day jokes and the custom of making them on the first of April.
Yeah, american tradition... :P
Americans invented EVERYTHING - didn't you know that? Sheesh.
My mother says the Chinese invented everything from peanuts to MSG.
The real obscenity here is the amount of good that could be done with $27 million. I wish I knew exactly how many vaccinations that would pay for, how many people-days of treatment for AIDS/HIV, how much clean water, how much research into treating cystic fibrosis. If Jesus really said some of the things his PR staff claims he said, and if he were alive, I bet he'd kick Ham right in the nuts.