Fundamentalists re-create Eden, with dinosaurs

AMERICAN scientists are outraged over plans for a multi-million-dollar museum dedicated to telling the nation's schoolchildren that God made the world in seven days and that Darwin is a fraud.

The backers of the $14 million (£10 million) Creation Museum and Family Centre, which is to open in 2004 close to the Ohio River in Kentucky, boast that the structure will act as an antidote to the "brainwashing" taught in science museums worldwide.

Exhibits will include re-creations of the Garden of Eden and Noah's Ark. A giant double helix of DNA will be suspended in the middle of the hall in order to argue that living creatures are so complex that they could not have evolved by random mutation.

Real fossils will be used to demonstrate how scientific methods such as carbon dating can be wildly inaccurate, and life-sized dinosaurs will illustrate the belief that they lived alongside Adam and Eve in a period before the Fall, when animals, man and dinosaurs cohabited, free from violence.

Ken Ham, whose Answers in Genesis ministry is behind the project, said that the museum was a long overdue offensive against the scientific establishment.

"This is a cultural war," he said. "They need to know we're coming. We're not doing this to say: 'Here's the evidence for and against, now you decide.' We admit our bias right from the start.

"The Bible is not a science textbook. But where it touches on science, we can trust it. This is the truth."

The only other museum in America dedicated to "creationism" - the theory that the Bible's Genesis story is both literal and accurate - is at the Institute for Creation Research near San Diego in California.

It covers 3,500 sq ft and will be dwarfed by Mr Ham's Creation Museum, which will include a 50,000 sq ft exhibition hall and 47 acres of outdoor trails and displays. Some exhibits have already been purchased, including the DNA and dinosaur models, in addition to a walk-through replica of a human cell.

Answers in Genesis already puts out a faith-based family magazine, a technical journal detailing the "science of creation", a daily radio programme that is broadcast on 400 stations across the United States, and pamphlets distributed worldwide on subjects such as "Where Did the Races Come From?".

A recent survey in the magazine Scientific American reported that 45 per cent of Americans believe that God created life some time in the past 10,000 years, despite the vast majority of scientists maintaining that life in its simplest form first appeared 3.9 billion years ago and has been evolving ever since.

Eugenie Scott, the director of the National Centre for Science Education, said that the new creationist museum was a sermon disguised as scientific study intended to hoodwink the public. "The authoritarian presentation of this information is likely to confuse people into thinking that these are scientifically valid views," she said.

"Science is not a democratic process. Once an idea is proved wrong, you don't continue to present it. The idea that everything on Earth appeared all at once 10,000 years ago has been disproved."

In recent years Christian fundamentalists have been accused of targeting small towns and placing supporters onto the local boards of education in a campaign for more teaching time to be spent on creationism. Two years ago the Kansas Board of Education reversed a decision to ban mentions of Darwin in schools after a public revolt voted a number of its members out.

To the outrage of the state's scientific community, Ohio is proposing a similar initiative to forbid teaching of scientific evolution. Similar propositions are also to be debated soon in New York State and Massachusetts.

We've found coprolites (dinosaur poop) from both types of critters. From skin impressions, and one "mummifed" duckbill, we know that some had feathers, some had scales, and the winged reptiles - pterosaurs - mostly had fur. With our knowledge of the biology of living critters and with the help of modern computers, we've been able to reconstruct their movements; for instance, a recent reconstruction showed the T. Rex lacked the muscle mass to run.

As to T-Rex, there was a thread here which pretty much blew that supposition out of the water for one thing we do not have the vaguest idea of the size of their muscles, for another some of the fastest animals have very skinny legs. It is interesting that in spite of these great differences evo paleontologists throw all dinosaurs into the same classification. Truth of the matter is that we know very little about extinct creatures but phony scientists keep putting the many varied species into a procrustrean bed of their own making.

There is a third version, which someone much smarter than us posited (Aristotle) - the prime mover, the one who started it all, us Christians call him God.

You've got a scoop if Aristotle was a monotheist, much less a Christian. You want the St. Thomas Acquinas distillation of Aristotle, titled Interesting Ideas I Stole From the Pagans Without Getting Burned at the Stake.

Acquinas interpreted the works of Aristotle, and had to walk a fine line when deciphering a materialistic philosophy based on reason, into terms acceptable to a culture founded in spiritualistic theology based on revelation, and governed by a church which fervidly enforced religious dogma. Acquinas so brilliantly accomplished this synthesis of antithetical views that he was not only Sainted, but his doctrines later became the official doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church; yet his preservation of the essence of naturalistic reasoning, contained in Aristotle's works, was effective enough to lead to the revitalization of reason over dogma which contributed greatly to the fruition of scientific inquiry engendered in the subsequent Renaissance and Enlightenment eras.

History of Naturalistic Ethics.

If you'd actually read the T-Rex thread, you'd know that the computer models of T-Rex running, like they had it do in the movie Jurrasic Park, indicated the critter would have to have leg muscles equal to about 84 percent of its body mass -- which is precisely what I intimated in the post above. Scientists are forever refining their theories in the light of new evidence. This is a strength of science. You, on the other hand, dismiss any new evidence out of hand if it disagrees with your particular world view. You are not unlike the Pharisees in the gospel of John who refused to accept the evidence of the blind man made able to see because it flew in the face of their Moses-based world view. They tossed the man out of the synagogue; you toss the evidence out of the window.

But I agreed not from some superstitious conjecture, but because of the well-known observation-based conservation law of physics, which says that matter cannot be created or (d?)restroyed, only changed in form.

So here's what I can conclude from this...Something has always existed and the question is WHAT...I certainly agree with the law of physics, but it perplexes me that since we both can not observe or proove WHAT existed, since it has never been observed or prooved, only documented by superstitous conjecture, your BELIEVE is that it is something other than what you believe to be superstitious conjecture, eventhough you have to make the same form of superstitious conjucture about WHAT existed just as anyone else.

(Am I good at run-on sentences or What!!?)

But I don't see any evidence for supernatural elements or any point in throwing them in.

But that is just irrational in my view, here's why. You have all these differnt explanations, not just from the supernatural, but from SCIENCE. I love science because is does have to follow the strict guidelines to follow a proof, however when it can't be proved or observed the stated hypothesis has no more of a plausible opinion than anything else. All of it becomes either FAITH or CONJECTURE. And the arguments of Supernatural and Evolution both have to rely on FAITH at some point, and you just can not deny this. You can only go so far with both before you have to guess in this realm, do you agree?

And the arguments of Supernatural and Evolution both have to rely on FAITH at some point, and you just can not deny this.

Did you know that most of the world thinks that "evolution" is a theory about change in living populations over time? Only in these kind of discussions does "evolution" mean modern geology, the Big Bang, astronomy, stuff that only overlaps here and there with biology.

There figure to be limits to what we will ever know from science about things like the origin of the universe. That doesn't take faith to realize.

It takes faith to think you know more than you do. It takes faith to think that all the evidence you have is wrong and people are crazy to follow the evidence.

From these discussions, I get the impression that faith gives you something akin to psychiatric delusions. I'm not real big on faith. The evidence I see daily of its effects does not speak well of it.

... t perplexes me that since we both can not observe or proove WHAT existed, since it has never been observed or prooved, only documented by superstitous conjecture, your BELIEVE is that it is something other than what you believe to be superstitious conjecture, even though you have to make the same form of superstitious conjucture about WHAT existed just as anyone else.

I make no superstitious conjecture. None at all. I reach what seem to be logically valid conclusions, based on demonstrable principles of physics. Unlike theologians, my conclusions aren't fixed for all eternity; they are subject to revision when new information indicates the need for revisions. As I said, because of the apparent nature of the big bang, there is no evidence of conditions during the prior state of affairs, and I won't speculate as to what such conditions may have been -- but I do maintain (because of the conservation laws) that there was a universe of matter/energy then, as there is now. I can't go any farther than that. And I know that many physicists disagree with me about the existence of a "prior universe." I may very well be wrong. Such is life.

Swamis, gurus, and other assorted con-men may rush in at this point, seeking to profit from the absence of evidence, as their pronouncements about "outside of time and space" are beyond testing and falsification.

"There is a third version, which someone much smarter than us posited (Aristotle) - the prime mover, the one who started it all, us Christians call him God. -me-

You've got a scoop if Aristotle was a monotheist, much less a Christian.

This is the sort of irrelevant nonsense which you call a refutation. It does not matter whether Aristotle was a politheist, a monotheist or a raving atheist. His theory presented a third version of the origins of the universe. He called it the prime mover. Whatever his theology might have been, it fits well with the Christian belief that God was the Creator of all things. His philosophy has withstood 2,000 years of philosophic examination.

This is the sort of irrelevant nonsense which you call a refutation....

Don't be too shocked; I looked Repo's "refutation of the entire argument against punc-eek contained in my little 'God hates idiots' post yesterday and all I saw was a one-sentence description of punc-eek for dummies. Figures...

Gee. I don't understand why "scientists" get all in a huff. If it's as ridiculous as they claim, and their proof is as strong as they claim, just let it be and it will fall apart on its own. I don't see them making a big stink when someone denies the moon landing, or similar silliness. But, when it comes to evolution, they go nuts if anyone questions it. Why? Perhaps, they can't prove their "facts."

Whatever his [Aristotle's] theology might have been, it fits well with the Christian belief that God was the Creator of all things. His philosophy has withstood 2,000 years of philosophic examination.

Many of Aristotle's ideas were deemed to be verging on subversive at the time. He argued strongly that there was a divine being, what he described as a Prime Mover, who was responsible for the unity and purposefulness of nature. In Aristotle's view, God was perfect, and therefore the aspiration of all things in the world was to perfection, since all beings desired to share such perfection.But, he added that there were many Prime Movers in the Universe, and that the Prime Mover was not very suitable for religious purposes.
FROM HERE.

You'd better stay away from Aristotle.

Frankly I could care less about your statements on Aristotle. If you wished to give a philosophical refutation of it, that would be something worth discussing. However, that is not what you are trying to do. You are trying to impugn the theory by attacking the man. As I have already said, it does not matter what his personal beliefs were, it is his theory of the prime mover that matters. It has lasted two thousand years of philosophical examination.

all I saw was a one-sentence description of punc-eek for dummies. Figures... "

>Aah, punk-eek, one of my favorite evo theories. The one where all the species were hiding out in Hawaii so that no one could tell they were evolving. It is such a farse that it really is a disproof of evolution.

As I said, because of the apparent nature of the big bang, there is no evidence of conditions during the prior state of affairs,

No evidence means that all else is conjecture and there is no way to say that one conjecture is more valid scientifically since neither can bring forth evidence in its support. Your "refutation" is therefore total nonsense.

but isn't it a tad rediculous for scientists to be outraged by a creationist museum?

When you put it that way you got my attention. Why are they so outraged?

Are they that insecure with their belief system they cant stand the thought of someone challenging it?

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