Posted on 05/26/2007 9:24:34 AM PDT by Sleeping Beauty
Some Scientists Worry That Sophisticated Center Will Distort Children's Views of Science
According to an ABC News poll, 60 percent of Americans believe God created the world in six days. In Petersburg, Ky., this weekend, a creation museum is opening that depicts a story far from what you may have learned in science class.
Exhibits at almost every natural history museum teach that dinosaurs are millions of years old, and that they died out long before human beings existed. But at the Creation Museum, they say God created dinosaurs and humans at the same time.
The Creation Museum, designed by the same man behind some of the attractions at Universal Studios in Florida, is a $27 million, high-tech sensory experience with animatronic dinosaurs and a movie theater with seats that shake.
The museum is intended to convince visitors that evolution is wrong and that the biblical story of life on earth from Adam and Eve to Noah's ark is scientifically verifiable.
The museum depicts Adam living with animals, including a dinosaur.
Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis, the group that is funding the museum, says that only "secular scientists" would maintain that the first humans never lived with dinosaurs.
"[Scientists] can say that, but what's their evidence?" Ham says, insisting that "All land animals were made on day six."
Mainstream scientists worry that because the museum is so technically sophisticated, it could be effective in giving children a distorted view of science.
"That they'll show up in classrooms and say, 'Gee, Mrs. Brown, I went to this spiffy museum last summer and they say that everything you're teaching me is a lie,'" said Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education.
Ham believes that's what should happen.
"And I say, great. Amen. That's what this place is all about," he said. "It's meant to challenge people."
The stakes are high. The museum argues that evolution jeopardizes people's belief in the Bible and leads to social ills like pornography and abortion.
"In an evolutionary world view, why should you have things like absolute morality? Why would it be wrong to kill someone?" said Jason Lisle, of Answers in Genesis. "I'm not saying that evolutionists aren't moral. I'm saying they have no reason to be moral."
[more at the link]
Good question.
And?
And where did the Universe come from?
What do you believe?
The big dinosaur in the sky that gave birth to the god of humans also gave birth to the original creation, of course.
Of course it doesn't. AIG is VERY misleading (lying?)
You keep evading the question.
A big part of believing in religions in the first place is trying to get everything to wrap up nicely and tied with a bow, ignoring everything that doesn’t at all make sense about your belief (and there’s plenty). My wife is the same way. She loves the idea that God is some safety net for her 24/7 (like a drug addict) and she thinks that not believing in Genesis literally would cause the whole house of cards to crumble (like being forced to go cold turkey and going through withdrawal). It’s willful ignorance because they don’t like the alternative.
You also cite the reservoir effect as if that's something that is a serious problem for archaeologists. The reservoir effect is old news, I deal with that all the time. I have even done numerous comparisons of charcoal vs. shell to see what the extent of the reservoir effect is in the areas in which I work.
Your cut-and-paste also cites the problem of the reservoir effect when dealing with human bone, as fish in the diet can throw the age off. Actually sea mammals can be worse than fish. That's why when I radiocarbon date human bone I obtain the 13C and 15N stable isotope readings so that the percent of marine organisms in the diet can be ascertained and accounted for.
You are way out of your depth here. You seem to believe that radiocarbon dating is wrong (for religious reasons I presume) and you are surfing the net for anything that might help your position -- without understanding much about the subject at all.
Not very impressive. If you wish to convince anyone that the radiocarbon method is inaccurate, you have to really study and understand it first.
Est autem fides sperandorum substantia rerum argumentum non parentum
“A masterful demonstration of the fallacy of radioactive dating assumptions and techniques with citations of almost 500 articles by evolutionists. A solid refutation of the belief that radiometric dating proves the Earth is old.”
Your link gives nothing to refute radioactive dating.
Isn’t it lovely when John Woodmorappe quotes Illinois high school science teacher Jan Peczkis?
Coyoteman,
As I read the many who are wrangling with you on this creation vs. evolution issue, I find most of them are saying what I would say anyway. I think we can largely say it all hinges on what “experts” and “scientists” we decide we want to believe.
For example, the radiometric and radiocarbon dating. There is a great debate as to its accuracy. You trust those who say it’s accurate. I trust those who say it’s not. I’ve certainly never done any experiments about it myself. I lack the ability and the equipment.
Of course I must be willing to look at your links, but I will willingly confess I lack the scientific knowledge to interpret all the data. That’s why I lean on the high school level knowledge I do have, along with better educated minds than mine who put forth their findings AND their interpretations of them.
It’s the interpretations of the data that we disagree on.
For example, you say, “It is interpreted differently by those who can’t accept what the data are saying for religious reasons.” I could say the same about those who hold on doggedly to evolutionary theory! See, the knife cuts both ways.
I see evolutionary theory as “trying to put a square peg in a round hole.” Desperate to deny that God is their Creator and Sustainer, and that we are wholly dependent on and subservient to Him, mankind invents fantastic theories which make us autonomous, self-reliant, the way we want to be. Certainly there is data that can fit into the theory of evolution, as long as you interpret it with an evolutionary presupposition.
Your statement about penguins and your aching back are prognostications, of course, and no one on this thread will live long enough to see if it’s true. My opinion is, the penguins will still be the same. I don’t believe our ancestors crawled on all fours, so we have backaches now, any more than I believe occasional headaches mean we used to have helmets grafted on which we’ve since shed.
So you and I can acknowledge backaches, and headaches, and differently shaped skulls, and dino fossils, and yet come to radically different conclusions.
As you say, “Better be careful, as the creationist sources have a nasty habit of misrepresenting science to make it come out the way they want. They will omit inconvenient facts, distort what they can omit, and overall do the type of science one would expect from comic books.” Well, I might say the evolutionist sources do the same thing. Remember Piltdown Man and Lucy, etc. etc. etc.? Quite disingenous. And I’ve had plenty of evolutionary theory in comic book/picture book format. One of my fave books as a child had tremendous dino drawings, no men around of course, telling me repeatedly “. . . many million years ago. . .”
You mention you are the field of archeology. Does the fact that all archeological discoveries so far have coincided with Biblical detail affect your opinion of the veracity of the Bible at all? I am an enthusiastic reader of Biblical Archeological Review.
Bottom line, when all charts are read and experiments concluded, I can not believe that the indescribable design elements I see displayed in everything from a simple cell to the human eye are all the products of millions of years of mutation and genetic selection. That notion is, to me, preposterous. I have read, for instance, in regard to the human eye, that there would need to be over ten million successful, positive mutations in order to get near it.
And that’s just an eyeball of one species.
Piltdown man was a fraud committed by a religious person and widely doubted by the scientific community. When scientific methods improved, the 'Man' was pulled out of storage and determined by the scientific methods you disdain to be a fraud.
No dispute in the scientific community that it shows the earth much older than 6,000 years. Here you are fighting not only the evolutionists but the geologists and physicists. Are you willing to throw away all of science?
NO archeological discovery has supported the biblical detail of the "great flood".
Uh, how's that going?
I also read BAR on occasion, and have a large collection of back issues.
Perhaps the largest archaeologically testable prediction made by the bible has not been supported by archaeology -- a global flood at about 4350 years ago.
From just my own work: there are a number of sites which I have tested which contain Native American cultures spanning this time period. My dating is based largely on radiocarbon, but that actually has been shown to be pretty accurate. You may choose not to accept the evidence, but both dating of historical materials (for example, materials of a known age from ancient Egypt) and of tree-rings (which can be counted individually) shows the method works.
Anyway, if you are arguing from faith and belief, rather than from scientific data, there is nothing that could convince you otherwise, so I will bid you good day.
I can't say the same thing for science textbooks...Difference is authorship.
Just for the fun of it, check out Job 33-41, or one of my favorites, Genesis 1:9-10 and then Google "isostasy"...you mind find it quite interesting.
Really? Let's look at the story of Noah and his ark. Science teaches us about the water cycle. We don't manufacture water and we don't get it from outer spaces. What we have in the oceans and rivers and lakes and under the ground is pretty much what we've got. The water cycle is the process of evaporation and condensation and precipitation and depends on what we've got available. Now Genesis teaches us that it rained for over 40 days and night, raising the level of the oceans thousands of feet until the mountains were covered. Where did that water come from and where did it go? According to science it would be impossible.
Difference is authorship.
And purpose?
The mountains were very likely nowhere near as high as they are today. In fact, most of the mountains were most likely created after the Flood, as the water was receding. Dr John Baumgardner, Los Alamos Labs, New Mexico, created a program called TERRA with a grant from NASA. With his computer modeling, he demonstrates the plate tectonic processes involved in the formation of terrain as we see it today. It is considered one of the four top computer models in the world today, and demonstrates this entire process of mountain formation and the formation of the continents as we know them today.
CATASTROPHIC PLATE TECTONICS: A GLOBAL FLOOD MODEL OF EARTH HISTORY
More references are available.
How could mountains be created by flood waters receding? Receding from what point? How does that push up land into mountains almost 30,000 feet high?
But regardless, there were mountains of some kind. Be they 5,000 feet high or 10,000 feet high that's still thousands of feet of water that had to come somewhere. Where did it come from and where did it go to?
And what about fresh water and salt water? The Earth's waters are 97% salt. Undrinkable. Catastrophic to farm land. If the flood covered the entire globe to a depth of hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of feet then that means the tiny proportion of fresh water was basically swallowed up in a sea of saltwater. So without any fresh water again what did Noah drink? Without any land uncontaminated by saline how did anything grow?
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