Religion

icymist

(15,888 posts) Fri Dec 18, 2015, 10:57 PM Dec 2015

Nina Paley visits The Creation Museum in Kentucky. With photographs!

Moishe ‘n’ me

Human skeletons read the bible, unlike ape skeletons.

The Creation Museum in Kentucky is really a marvelous testament to what money can buy. A temple of Mammon, if you will. Designers and craftspeople work for money, not ideology, and the money here paid for some good ones. It reminded me a lot of Las Vegas that way.

You won’t learn much about the Bible here, since creationists really pick and choose. From an Old Testament perspective the whole place is outrageously idolatrous, violating the Second Commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under the earth…” —Exodus 20:4-6 (KJV)

Finally, the Creation Museum is a magnificent monument to the limits of human psychology. Here it’s especially easy to see the extraordinary lengths humans go to to make some kind of PALATABLE sense of the world. I vastly prefer science to biblical authority, but even the best method of inquiry gets mashed through our squishy, emotional, fallible, fragile human minds. It’s easy to make fun of creationists, but we all have similar longings to understand the world, and there’s only so much cognitive discomfort we can handle before we just project on reality as we see fit.

http://blog.ninapaley.com/2015/07/24/a-day-at-the-creation-museum/#more-4104

Lots more photographs at the link!

17 replies

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Nina Paley visits The Creation Museum in Kentucky. With photographs! (Original Post) icymist Dec 2015 OP

OMG! nt longship Dec 2015 #1

LMAO! Dinosaurs on the Ark: beam me up scottie Dec 2015 #2

Just saw that. Poor Dinos! icymist Dec 2015 #3

PZ Myers riding the Dino at the Creation Museum: beam me up scottie Dec 2015 #4

LOL! icymist Dec 2015 #5

Why would anyone pay good money to waste time there? struggle4progress Dec 2015 #6

Religion? nt uriel1972 Dec 2015 #7

Oh, that's your excuse for Nina & PZ? struggle4progress Dec 2015 #8

We don't need to make excuses for PZ. Act_of_Reparation Dec 2015 #13

A: The conflicted feeling I have is, there is a scientific term which I really like struggle4progress Dec 2015 #15

What's your point? Act_of_Reparation Dec 2015 #16

shifting goalposts?... uriel1972 Dec 2015 #14

Because mocking their "theories" is one way to debunk them. beam me up scottie Dec 2015 #9

Aw, that's just a few Cretinists... onager Dec 2015 #11

Looks like they're having a blast Lordquinton Dec 2015 #10

Whoops! The Museum got caught cooking its books. onager Dec 2015 #12

You mean engaging and disproving their ideas Lordquinton Dec 2015 #17

longship

(40,416 posts)

1. OMG! nt

Reply to icymist (Original post)

Fri Dec 18, 2015, 11:09 PM

Dec 2015

beam me up scottie

(57,349 posts)

2. LMAO! Dinosaurs on the Ark:

Reply to icymist (Original post)

Sat Dec 19, 2015, 06:17 AM

Dec 2015

icymist

(15,888 posts)

3. Just saw that. Poor Dinos!

Reply to beam me up scottie (Reply #2)

Sat Dec 19, 2015, 07:56 AM

Dec 2015

See?!

beam me up scottie

(57,349 posts)

4. PZ Myers riding the Dino at the Creation Museum:

Reply to icymist (Reply #3)

Sat Dec 19, 2015, 07:57 AM

Dec 2015

icymist

(15,888 posts)

5. LOL!

Reply to beam me up scottie (Reply #4)

Sat Dec 19, 2015, 07:59 AM

Dec 2015

Wow! at that. Wow!

struggle4progress

(118,295 posts)

6. Why would anyone pay good money to waste time there?

Reply to icymist (Original post)

Tue Dec 22, 2015, 01:30 AM

Dec 2015

uriel1972

(4,261 posts)

7. Religion? nt

Reply to struggle4progress (Reply #6)

Tue Dec 22, 2015, 03:30 AM

Dec 2015

struggle4progress

(118,295 posts)

8. Oh, that's your excuse for Nina & PZ?

Reply to uriel1972 (Reply #7)

Tue Dec 22, 2015, 06:03 AM

Dec 2015

Act_of_Reparation

(9,116 posts)

13. We don't need to make excuses for PZ.

Reply to struggle4progress (Reply #8)

Tue Dec 22, 2015, 10:16 AM

Dec 2015

He has stated quite clearly, for anyone interested enough to actually read his post on the Creation Museum, how he feels about it.

He (Ken Ham) demands that you respect his ideas, and he certainly does hold his faith dear. His whole premise in his theme park is to amplify uncertainty about science, to insist that scientists must be more humble, while asserting absolute certainty about the existence of his god, and that his belief is the sole explanation for all natural phenomena.

Don’t give it to him. All his carnival act deserves is profound disrespect and ridicule. Go to his “museum” as you would to a cheap freak show, and laugh, laugh, laugh…and go home to publicly mock and heap scorn upon it.

Irreverence is our answer, not dumb humble deference.

struggle4progress

(118,295 posts)

15. A: The conflicted feeling I have is, there is a scientific term which I really like

Reply to Act_of_Reparation (Reply #13)

Tue Dec 22, 2015, 02:54 PM

Dec 2015

that is “not even wrong,” and these are ideas that are so far off the mark they’re not even worth discussing. I’m worried about participating or giving oxygen to ideas that are not even wrong lest I lend them a credibility as something that’s debatable ...
'Mythbusters' co-host: Creation Museum 'not even wrong'
Chris Varias
10:02 p.m. EST November 20, 2015

Act_of_Reparation

(9,116 posts)

16. What's your point?

Reply to struggle4progress (Reply #15)

Tue Dec 22, 2015, 03:33 PM

Dec 2015

You asked what reason an atheist like PZ Myers would have to visit the Creation Museum, and I provided a quote directly from him explaining precisely that. If you find fault in his justification, you should probably take it up with PZ.

That said, I would expect PZ to reply thusly: the scientific community ignored creationists like Ham for decades, believing there wasn't any need to engage them because the evidence spoke for itself. Look how well that turned out.

uriel1972

(4,261 posts)

14. shifting goalposts?...

Reply to struggle4progress (Reply #8)

Tue Dec 22, 2015, 10:50 AM

Dec 2015

You asked why ANYONE. Why PZ and Nina are there is pretty clear.

beam me up scottie

(57,349 posts)

9. Because mocking their "theories" is one way to debunk them.

Reply to struggle4progress (Reply #6)

Tue Dec 22, 2015, 06:33 AM

Dec 2015

In case you hadn't noticed these religious zealots are also rewriting textbooks and pushing their propaganda in other venues.

Anyone who wants to expose their lunacy in a humourous manner gets kudos from me.

Why are you wasting time criticizing them?

onager

(9,356 posts)

11. Aw, that's just a few Cretinists...

Reply to beam me up scottie (Reply #9)

Tue Dec 22, 2015, 09:20 AM

Dec 2015

Except it isn't. From Jan. 2014. Check out the animated map in the article:

Map: Publicly Funded Schools That Are Allowed to Teach Creationism.

Thousands of schools in states across the country can use taxpayer money to cast doubt on basic science.

A large, publicly funded charter school system in Texas is teaching creationism to its students, Zack Kopplin recently reported in Slate. Creationist teachers don’t even need to be sneaky about it—the Texas state science education standards, as well as recent laws in Louisiana and Tennessee, permit public school teachers to teach “alternatives” to evolution. Meanwhile, in Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, taxpayer money is funding creationist private schools through state tuition voucher or scholarship programs.

As the map below illustrates, creationism in schools isn’t restricted to schoolhouses in remote villages where the separation of church and state is considered less sacred. If you live in any of these states, there’s a good chance your tax money is helping to convince some hapless students that evolution (the basis of all modern biological science, supported by everything we know about geology, genetics, paleontology, and other fields) is some sort of highly contested scientific hypothesis as credible as “God did it.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/creationism_in_public_schools_mapped_where_tax_money_supports_alternatives.html

Lordquinton

(7,886 posts)

10. Looks like they're having a blast

Reply to struggle4progress (Reply #6)

Tue Dec 22, 2015, 06:37 AM

Dec 2015

onager

(9,356 posts)

12. Whoops! The Museum got caught cooking its books.

Reply to icymist (Original post)

Tue Dec 22, 2015, 10:11 AM

Dec 2015

To feed at the public funding trough, the Creation Museum came up with projected attendance figures in the millions.

According to the objective Hunden Report, those projections were way off. And no wonder:

More importantly, the group hired by Answers in Genesis to project attendance, America’s Research Group, has several conflicts of interest. The president of America’s Research Group is Britt Beemer, who is also a co-author with Ken Ham on the book "Already Gone."

Interesting note from the report:

It should be noted that the large drop in attendance at the Creation Museum occurred after the February 4, 2014, debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye.

https://kysecularsociety.org/2015/01/hunden-report-reveals-ark-encounter-inflated-projections-sharp-decline-in-creation-museum-attendance-in-2014/

Lordquinton

(7,886 posts)

17. You mean engaging and disproving their ideas

Reply to onager (Reply #12)

Tue Dec 22, 2015, 03:34 PM

Dec 2015

Actually causes them to go away?

This whole ignoring tactic, or "don't feed the trolls" method doesn't work. Why do all the science people, who know how vaccines work, think that if you ignore a problem it will just go away? It's fed into the crazys minds too, that if they can somehow get a debate or any kind of reaction it will make them.

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