Posted on 01/02/2005 12:20:11 PM PST by PatrickHenry
With its towering dinosaurs and a model of the Grand Canyon, America's newest tourist attraction might look like the ideal destination for fans of the film Jurassic Park.
The new multi-million-dollar Museum of Creation, which will open this spring in Kentucky, will, however, be aimed not at film buffs, but at the growing ranks of fundamentalist Christians in the United States.
It aims to promote the view that man was created in his present shape by God, as the Bible states, rather than by a Darwinian process of evolution, as scientists insist.
The centrepiece of the museum is a series of huge model dinosaurs, built by the former head of design at Universal Studios, which are portrayed as existing alongside man, contrary to received scientific opinion that they lived millions of years apart.
Other exhibits include images of Adam and Eve, a model of Noah's Ark and a planetarium demonstrating how God made the Earth in six days.
The museum, which has cost a mighty $25 million (£13 million) will be the world's first significant natural history collection devoted to creationist theory. It has been set up by Ken Ham, an Australian evangelist, who runs Answers in Genesis, one of America's most prominent creationist organisations. He said that his aim was to use tourism, and the theme park's striking exhibits, to convert more people to the view that the world and its creatures, including dinosaurs, were created by God 6,000 years ago.
"We want people to be confronted by the dinosaurs," said Mr Ham. "It's going to be a first class experience. Visitors are going to be hit by the professionalism of this place. It is not going to be done in an amateurish way. We are making a statement."
The museum's main building was completed recently, and work on the entrance exhibit starts this week. The first phase of the museum, which lies on a 47-acre site 10 miles from Cincinatti on the border of Kentucky and Ohio, will open in the spring.
Market research companies hired by the museum are predicting at least 300,000 visitors in the first year, who will pay $10 (£5.80) each.
Among the projects still to be finished is a reconstruction of the Grand Canyon, purportedly formed by the swirling waters of the Great Flood – where visitors will "gape" at the bones of dinosaurs that "hint of a terrible catastrophe", according to the museum's publicity.
Mr Ham is particularly proud of a planned reconstruction of the interior of Noah's Ark. "You will hear the water lapping, feel the Ark rocking and perhaps even hear people outside screaming," he said.
More controversial exhibits deal with diseases and famine, which are portrayed not as random disasters, but as the result of mankind's sin. Mr Ham's Answers in Genesis movement blames the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, in which two teenagers killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves, on evolutionist teaching, claiming that the perpetrators believed in Darwin's survival of the fittest.
Other exhibits in the museum will blame homosexuals for Aids. In a "Bible Authority Room" visitors are warned: "Everyone who rejects his history – including six-day creation and Noah's flood – is `wilfully' ignorant.''
Elsewhere, animated figures will be used to recreate the Garden of Eden, while in another room, visitors will see a tyrannosaurus rex pursuing Adam and Eve after their fall from grace. "That's the real terror that Adam's sin unleashed," visitors will be warned.
A display showing ancient Babylon will deal with the Tower of Babel and "unravel the origin of so-called races'', while the final section will show the life of Christ, as an animated angel proclaims the coming of the Saviour and a 3D depiction of the crucifixion.
In keeping with modern museum trends, there will also be a cafe with a terrace to "breathe in the fresh air of God's creation'', and a shop "crammed'' with creationist souvenirs, including T-shirts and books such as A is for Adam and Dinky Dinosaur: Creation Days.
The museum's opening will reinforce the burgeoning creationist movement and evangelical Christianity in the US, which gained further strength with the re-election of President Bush in November.
Followers of creationism have been pushing for their theories to be reintegrated into American schoolroom teaching ever since the celebrated 1925 "Scopes Monkey Trial", when US courts upheld the right of a teacher to use textbooks that included evolutionary theory.
In 1987, the US Supreme Court reinforced that position by banning the teaching of creationism in public schools on the grounds of laws that separate state and Church.
Since then, however, many schools – particularly in America's religious Deep South – have got around the ban by teaching the theory of "intelligent design", which claims that evolutionary ideas alone still leave large gaps in understanding.
"Since President Bush's re-election we have been getting more membership applications than we can handle,'' said Mr Ham, who expects not just the devout, but also the curious, to flock through the turnstiles. "The evolutionary elite will be getting a wake-up call."
Certainly, if carnivorous dinosaurs lived elsewhere. However most large dinosaurs were veggie-tarians.
You raise some interesing questions, but there may be very simple answers that might explain them. We simply don't know. However, I would ask whether it might be possible God caused the the animals to go into hibernation during this time.
As far as those poor platypuses can swim, I find the verse talking about Peleg interesting. It says "in those days the earth was divided." Could this be a clue that the continental drift happened after the flood?
I don't know, but I think there are intriguing plausible explanation that we simply don't have enough data for an informed opinion. Until then, I will accept what the Bible has to say about the subject and can't wait to find out!
As far as I am aware no-one has proposed any other scientific theory apart from ToE that explains the observations of the fossil record, DNA diversity, geographical location of species, homologies etc etc etc. What competing theory are you referring to? How exactly is it phrased? What predictions does it make? How could it be falsified? Describe the competing theory(s?) and we can all examine it(them).
WHERE?
Perhaps in your paranoid imagination?
Never heard of him. Don't know him and don't want to hear more about him.
I've never heard of this "Antony Flew" nor have I ever posted anything about this individual - especially since I have NEVER heard of this person before in my life ... so your ridiculous accusation remains just that...
That would be expected with evolution. All relationships are a matter of degree.
As soon as someone proposes an alternative theory that explains the current observations, makes predictions, and is falsifiable we'll look at it with great interest. No-one has come up with one yet, though. Nothing is being "disallowed" because no alternative scientific theory has been proposed.
Please can you state the "theory of intelligent design". Explain what predictions it makes and how it fits with current observations (eg the 30 diffferent types of observation in Theobald's article). Please explain how it might be falsified.
Are they quantifiable?
2. How do the mechanisms of evolution overcome the second law [term used cautiously and advisedly] of thermodynamics or the principle of entropy?
There's nothing to overcome; this is a non-problem often raised by Creationists. All objects are subject to the second law. For living things, it only means that they do not extract all the energy out of their "food." (And that they cannot live on heat contrary to General Sternwood's comment on new-born spiders.)
3. If advocates of the theory of evolution are willing to concede that this theory is subject to challenge and refutation like any other scientific theory, why are they so vociferous in disallowing any competing theory to be put forward?
There are no competing theories at the current time. Were one to come along, it would be examined. Creationism is not a theory even in its ID guise or its Last Thursdayism guise or any of its other versions.
4. If advocates of the theory of evolution are not willing to admit that the theory is subject to challenge and refutation, then why do they not maintain that it is a religious belief and take it out of the realm of science?
Vide Supra.
I've heard Ken Ham. What he says makes sense. You can download his sermons free on http://www.sermonaudio.com. They are great.
If you look at the savage intent of dinosaurs in the art of survival...man never stood a chance until the vast numbers of dinos died off. The human race had a chance to build and grow at that point...and mental evolution (my preferred term for it) started to occur. Man learned to adapt and survive, and to travel vast stretches of territory. This whole terms of evolution and creation fail to address 1000s of variables in society, culture and the earth itself.
A common objection. However, the principle involved is the effect of selection. We may select for a good guard dog, while nature, in the wild, may select for some other factors. The point is that selection -- for whatever factor -- will result in genetic variation in the group so selected.
As a case in point consider Newton’s theories. These were so well formulated and successfully predicted/explained such a large portion of observed natural phenomena for hundreds of years that many called them “laws.” Nonetheless, these theories were challenged and successfully supplanted by Einstein and others on the bases of observed discrepancies in a minute portion of data. Subsequently, even Einstein’s theories have been successfully challenged and modified. Consequently, unless you can hold that the theory of macro-evolution is more solidly grounded than either Newton’s or Einstein’s (both of which were defendable with objective experimentation) ...
Lotta problems here. First, demonstrations of Newton's laws about motion and gravitation can indeed be experimentally demonstrated to your heart's content. Evolution is one of a group of disciplines known as "historical sciences" (which include astronomy, geology, anthropology, paleontology, climatology, archaeology, and cosmology). We can't re-create the universe, or even the solar system. But we can, and do, examine presently-existing evidence to figure out the past.
Laws and theories aren't the same thing. Laws are descriptive; theories are explanatory. One never becomes the other.
... I submit that the theory of macro-evolution is not fact but remains subject to challenge and supplantation by other theories.
Well certainly. As with all theories. But this hasn't happened.
My quarrel with your assertion is not with any observed fact. Rather, my quarrel is with your absolute insistence that any theory (specifically, the theory of macro-evolution) can exclusively establish the “how” a fact came to be, especially in the absence of irrefutable, reproducible, conclusive, experimental data.
Ah ... understanding comes to me. You are arguing against something neither I nor anyone else is advocating. The theory of evolution gives a very plausable account of how things happened. It's consistent with all the evidence. There is no contradicting evidence. So it's a very strongly held theory. But like all theories, it can be superseded by a better theory which better accounts for the evidence. There is no other theory around which is even a contender.
In the field of logic “sufficiency” of explanation is not “exclusivity” of other “sufficient” explanations. As long as any other theory also has “sufficiency” then the explanations remain competing.
True. But there are no other scientific explanations that are in the game. Do you understand why ID isn't science?
Irreducible Complexity Demystified. Major debunking of ID.
The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of "Irreducible Complexity," Kenneth R. Miller. Critique of Behe.
AAAS Board Resolution on Intelligent Design Theory. WhyID isn't science.
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHA! Challenge all you want.
If you want to dispute it, all you have to do is state an alternative scientific theory. But, of course, you must demonstrate that said theory fulfills the minimal scientific requirements of predictive ability & falsifiability, and explains the preponderance of the evidence without contradiction or appeals to the supernatural.
Oops, I shoulda read ahead 'cause I see y'all done ripped him a new one on the obvious points.
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