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]
Your dear Mr. Brown references Ann Gibbons for this statement. Let's see what Ms. Gibbons also says about man originating from apes ...
Ann Gibbons and Elizabeth Culotta
Wind back the clock 5 million to 23 million years to the Miocene, and parts of Eurasia and Africa would seem like the planet of the apes. "If you could have walked from Spain to China 10 million years ago, you'd have seen an amazing diversity of apes," says University of Texas paleoanthropologist John Kappelman, who estimates that no less than 30 different types of early apes lived during the Miocene. But after this spectacular flowering, nearly all these apes became extinct, with only one lineage surviving to give rise to modern apes and humans. Although there have been plenty of candidates for this distinction, including chimpanzee-sized apes from Europe called Oreopithecus and Dryopithecus, anthropologists have had only fragmentary fossils to tell them which one.
Now, thanks to new fossil finds, two African species are seeking prime ancestral spots on the modern ape family tree. New "apelike" arm and ankle bones from one candidate, Kenyapithecus, indicate that this 14-million-year-old primate was "the best, most likely ancestor of humans, chimps, and gorillas," say paleoanthropologists Monte McCrossin and Brenda Benefit of Southern Illinois University. And another team has proposed a larger tree dweller called Morotopithecus as an even earlier ancestor. In a report on page 401 , Northern Illinois University anthropologist Daniel Gebo and his colleagues identify modern features of this ape's back and shoulder, and date the fossils at 20.6 million years old. That would push the emergence of a modern ape-like body plan back by 5 million years and force researchers to "rethink all of the relationships of apes in the Miocene," says University of Missouri paleoanthropologist Carol Ward.
Kenyapithecus has been a contender for human ancestry ever since the 1960s, thanks to face bones and teeth that set it apart from other Miocene apes. But other parts of Kenyapithecus's skeleton turned out to look more primitive, and it was pushed to an outlying branch of the ape family tree--outside the African ape group, which includes modern gorillas, chimps, and humans (see diagram). Now, however, McCrossin and Benefit claim that new fossils found last summer on Maboko Island in Kenya's Lake Victoria bring Kenyapithecus back in the African ape family.
If you insist that everything must have a time, place and initiator then, unless your God is outside the laws of Physics, he/she/it too needs to have a beginning. If you claim that your God is outside the laws of physics because he/she/it created those laws, those laws which you demand for everything other than God, then anything else said to originate those laws is also outside them. Simply put, if you created those laws they did not exist before you created them so do not apply to you.
Any justification you can make for God to be outside the requirements of the universe can be made for the origin of the universe itself. That singularity, or whatever it was, was not contained in the universe, was not subject to the same laws as our current universe, and was outside of time.
"And from rocks came life!
Crappy straw man. Life is not something mystical and magical, it is the interaction of chemical processes which in combination function in a specific way. No one said that life came from 'rocks' but from far simpler molecules. Complex molecules are found in space, they are not unusual.
"And from single cell life came Man!
Yes indeed, as did all other animals and plants. However, current organisms are the result of a trial and error regulated build up from simple beginnings.
Do you have a problem with trial and error, or complexity coming from simplicity?
"You talk about fairy tales!
Yes I have heard yours many times.
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.
Now this is compelling science isn't it.
>>I never said that radiocarbon dating is wrong, but that it is only accurate up to 3,500 years. If you are getting any higher numbers, it is because your evolutionary assumptions are wrong.<<
What about all these other methods that yield answers greater than 6000 years?
argon-argon (Ar-Ar)
fission track dating
helium (He-He)
iodine-xenon (I-Xe)
lanthanum-barium (La-Ba)
lead-lead (Pb-Pb)
lutetium-hafnium (Lu-Hf)
neon-neon (Ne-Ne)
optically stimulated luminescence dating
potassium-argon (K-Ar)
rhenium-osmium (Re-Os)
rubidium-strontium (Rb-Sr)
samarium-neodymium (Sm-Nd)
uranium-lead (U-Pb)
uranium-lead-helium (U-Pb-He)
uranium-thorium (U-Th)
uranium-uranium (U-U)
Hey!!! I resemble that remark!
My deepest apologies, your highness. :-)
I think I only subconsciously knew you posted this thread. When I needed a name for an analogy about curses, your screen name popped into my head. That's funny. The brain is sure a cool machine.
His explanation is "magic." It's hard to argue with him, I guess.
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."
He gets his science edumacation from the Bible, and calling people names is a pretty common thing in that R-rated book (Jesus called his beloved mother "woman"-- my Mom would slap my face!-- and called his enemies fools and vipers).
He does seem to get most of his 'facts' from the creationists' websites.
Don't they all?
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."
"He gets his science edumacation from the Bible, and calling people names is a pretty common thing in that R-rated book (Jesus called his beloved mother "woman"-- my Mom would slap my face!-- and called his enemies fools and vipers)."
And apparently doesn't see the irony in using a quote from a questionable source to show his own wisdom.
UWO researcher finds what may be oldest fossil on Earth Tue, May 29, 2007 By JOHN MINER, SUN MEDIA A team led by a University of Western Ontario scientist has discovered direct evidence there was life on Earth 3.35 billion years ago UWO geologist Neil Banerjee and his team found fossilized tunnels of microbes in ancient rock from Australia. The find was dated by scientists at the University of Alberta using a newly developed laser-dating method. “This is very strong evidence,” Banerjee said. The discovery pushes the fossil evidence of life back to the early period of the Earth’s development. Scientist believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old. With the discovery of the early fossil remains, scientists may be able to pinpoint where to look for life on Mars, said Banerjee.
LOL!
We have been down this road before.
As before, the dating is based on those pre-assumptions.
Looking for life on Mars!
Oh brother!
All dating by Evolutionist are based on assumptions of what is being dated.
If you insist that everything must have a time, place and initiator then, unless your God is outside the laws of Physics, he/she/it too needs to have a beginning. If you claim that your God is outside the laws of physics because he/she/it created those laws, those laws which you demand for everything other than God, then anything else said to originate those laws is also outside them. Simply put, if you created those laws they did not exist before you created them so do not apply to you.
Since it is impossible for something to come out of nothing, either God is impossible or Evolution is.
We acknowledge that we have to start with God as our axiom based on faith.
The hyprocrisy comes from the Evolutionists who claim they have 'science' as their guide, when they know that they must believe in the impossible, life coming from non-life.
So in truth, both systems are faith based system.
The only issue is which seems more reasonible and likely.
Any justification you can make for God to be outside the requirements of the universe can be made for the origin of the universe itself. That singularity, or whatever it was, was not contained in the universe, was not subject to the same laws as our current universe, and was outside of time.
So, now you are making the Universe 'god' and a different Universe.
It still doesn't explain where this 'different' Universe came from.
"And from rocks came life! Crappy straw man. Life is not something mystical and magical, it is the interaction of chemical processes which in combination function in a specific way. No one said that life came from 'rocks' but from far simpler molecules. Complex molecules are found in space, they are not unusual.
You can spin it anyway you want, but you have life coming from non-life.
And where did these chemicals come from?
Poof-like magic they were there and they just happen to combine to form some kind of life and that just happened to survive to form a more sophisciated kind of life and before you know you have mankind (give or take a few billion years).
Yea, that is real science there!
"And from single cell life came Man! Yes indeed, as did all other animals and plants. However, current organisms are the result of a trial and error regulated build up from simple beginnings. Do you have a problem with trial and error, or complexity coming from simplicity? "You talk about fairy tales! Yes I have heard yours many times.
Well, you have heard because it is true.
Yes, I have a large problem with living cells going from the simple to the complex by 'evolution'.
It doesn't happen that way and evolution has never shown anything to do so.
What does occur is adaptation of the species, but not the changing of the species into another species, becoming a more complex and different species.
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.
Now this is compelling science isn't it
As compelling as your pseudo science, which has to start with a different Universe operating under different laws and then move from non-life to life and simple life to complex life.
Man, you talk about having a faith!
Christ called those people names who deserved it, since they were deceiving the people, just like evolutionists are.
As for Mary, Christ did not call her 'mother' because He had begun His earthly ministry and had left those old relationships behind.
Ofcourse, a little Bible would clear up alot of your confusion.
And apparently doesn't see the irony in using a quote from a questionable source to show his own wisdom.
Nothing questionable about the Bible, it will be here long after every Evolutionist has bowed his knee to the Lord Jesus Christ and acknowledege Him as their Creator (Phil.2).
Unless ofcourse 'a alternative Universe with different laws' was responsible for this one.
Either God is impossible or Evolution is, which do you believe?
There is another verse that states, 'who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever (Rom.1:25)
As usual you missed the point of the article.
As usual you missed the point of the article.
And your evidence of this is If everything needs to have a creator, whether intelligent or not, then God also needs a creator. If God is outside time and outside the current requirement for a cause then what general laws above and beyond those of the universe limits the existence of an uncaused cause to just one being or thing? You are simply making the conjecture that since everything in the universe must have a creator, and in fact that single thought gives you comfort in proving to yourself that a God exists, then the origin of the universe must have an uncreated creator, otherwise known as the one and only 'Uncaused Cause'. However, for some reason, you ignore the physics which lead scientists to believe that the universe may not have needed a cause itself, because the current laws of cause and effect, as well as time, were not in effect until after that origin. The start of the universe is outside of time and space and does not need to be caused any more than, as you conjecture, your God does. The need for cause and effect is a result of the universe, not the other way around. The universe can be said to be our uncaused cause. What criteria should we be using to decide between two (or more) potential uncaused causes? Is there some reason we should believe that God is the uncaused cause over any other?
No reason at all.
But you have to have faith as the root for your system, not observation and experimentation (science).
You make the Universe your god and it doesn't explain how order exists in the Universe, nor where man came from.
I believe in a living God that created order and man in His image and likeness.
Both of us have to start with a given, something is the cause and believe that it exists and that resulted in what we have around us today.
The only question is which view is more reasonable and rational, not which one is more 'scientific'
For the lurkers, the tree dating is also based on conjecture and assumptions.
If the Flood was real then it would affect dating.
So the evolutionists have to disregard that issue and assume their own long date paradigm.
As for your ad hominem against Dr. Brown, that is typical evolutionist methodology.
Brown isn't the only Creationist who states this.
But the idea put forth by Evolutionist that our current Universe is based on an 'alternative Universe' is suppose to be 'good science'!
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