Cincinnati Zoo selling 'Combo tickets' with Creation museum (Motto: "Prepare to Believe!")

from Scienceblog.com:

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.

I believe the Cincinnati Zoo has betrayed its mission and its trust in a disgraceful way, by aligning themselves with a creationist institution that is a laughing stock to the rest of the world, and a mark of shame to the United States. I urge everyone to contact the zoo; write to their education and marketing and public relations departments in particular and point out the conflict between what they are doing and what their goal as an educational and research institution ought to be.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/11/shame_on_the_cincinnati_zoo.php

He has said the deal has already been revoked!

did that Zoo not just take itself out of the running to participate in public education by partnering with a purely religious organization? It would be almost like building a temple at the entrance and forcing anyone entering to follow the "stations of the cross" wouldn't it?

"The Lindner Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife (CREW) was founded in 1986 to strengthen the tradition. "

since the Linder Center was not the issue, rather if you had read the entire thing you would have seen it is instead the "Creation Museum" (link: http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/museum/) that is the issue.

If not, I bet the History and Science Museum in Louisville Kentucky would have been glad to partner with them.

I often lament to my boys that there is nothing quite like it here in AZ.....

I'm writing a nice, nasty letter to the zoo right now. Pushing religious beliefs as "science" is deplorable! Darwin is rolling over in his grave.

I say take as much of the Creationists' money as they will part with.

Thank you for contacting the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. The combo package with the Creation Museum has been canceled.

Thanks, Kathy

:evilgrin:

reading "Prepare To Believe!" around the necks of all the chimps. That's just degrading, and I can't believe they were even considering it.