Zoo Teams Up With Creation Museum - Shame on the Cincinnati Zoo

From the article:
"The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and the Creation Museum have made a joint marketing agreement and are selling "combo tickets" to get into both attractions for one price.

The Cincinnati Zoo is promoting an anti-science, anti-education con job run by ignorant creationists.

Unbelievable.

Here's a little bit about the Cincinnati Zoo. I've highlighted a few key words and phrases.

Part of the public school system in Cincinnati since 1975, the Zoo hosts a four-year college prepatory program - Zoo Academy. The Cincinnati Zoo is proud to serve as the leading non-formal science educator in Southwest Ohio. Over 300,000 students participate in the Zoo's educational programs annually.

The Zoo has long been successful at captive breeding, starting with trumpeter swans and sea lions back in the 1880s. The Lindner Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife (CREW) was founded in 1986 to strengthen the tradition. The research conducted here has made the Cincinnati Zoo an international leader in the protection and propagation of endangered animals and plants around the world.

Rated by peer zoological parks as one of the best zoos in the nation, the Cincinnati Zoo continues to set the standard for conservation, education and preservation of wild animals and wild spaces. Over 1.2 million people visit the Zoo annually. The Zoo features more than 500 animal and 3,000 plant species, making it one of the largest Zoo collections in the country.

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/11/shame-on-the-ci.html

Why?

Is there an active skeptic's group in Cincinnati that can take on this case?

Wanna bet the person at the Zoo making the decision is a fundy Xian?

so that people who might have only bought museum tickets will learn something at the zoo, whereas people who would have only bought zoo tickets will be amused (or perhaps concerned) by the museum.

Still, it seems to legitimize nutjobbery, and I'd prefer they hadn't done this...

Some local nutjob wanted to erect at his own cost a Biblical account of creation at the zoo claiming he had the right to do so because there are Native American sayings on the fountain as well as a statue of the Hindu elephant god, Ganesha, near the elephants. The parks board was going to allow it (this was during our previous mayor's term - a republican of course), but there was a big enough outcry that they backed down. I personally called them several times, pretending to be a different person, demanding space in the zoo to present my beliefs which ranged from Aztec (the gods tilled the fields with their own blood creating man) to a religion mentioned in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book about an alien race who believed they were sneezed out of their creator, and they live in fear of the coming of the Great White Handkerchief.

TlalocW

Imagine them getting up in arms! B-)

know how stupid that is.

He's from my neck of the woods and is a higly intelligent zoologist. Despite his Southern roots, I can't imagine he'd support this sort of thing (translation: not everyone from the South is a religious loon).

Good news! Upon discovering this embarrassing news this morning, the Cincinnati Zoo has moved with commendable swiftness to remove the combo tickets offer from their website. The Creation Museum, however, has not done so just yet.

Apparently, the calls and emails worked.

and e-mail.

Thanks for the clarification.

as to the reasoning behind this decision. Hopefully more will come out explaining what's going on.

in the first place from the Zoo should really be called out
for stupidity.

get to fit on the ark.

Maybe the Creation Museum could build an "official size, official weight" ark, and populate it with all those pairs of animals. It would be a wonderful exhibit, just seeing how that all worked out. I mean, it happened like that in the Bible, so they ought to do it. I'd pay to visit such an exhibit, but I'd make sure I went the first week so I could actually see the animals before they either starved to death or ate each other.

:eyes:

And yes, i've been there. Many, many times. Mostly for work, but probably over 50 times.

There's something about that city that i just don't like.

The Professor