Posted on 03/09/2002 4:05:28 PM PST by Pokey78
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.
Maybe I can get enough donations to put together a plan for a Church of Last Thursday science museum.
For the lurkers:
We're bogged down on a point of minutiae here, a spot of ground medved considers particularly defensible, the supposed lack of thermal equilibrium of Venus.
To get away from this one tree in the forest and see the larger problems with Velikovskian Catastrophism, try the Catastrophism FAQs, frequently starring Ted Holden as "Dr. Insanity."
Are they that insecure with their belief system they cant stand the thought of someone challenging it?
Actually I'm not enraged at all. And as a Christian, I'm very secure in my belief system.
I just want to know if they'll be selling Chicago style hot dogs at their food courts.
Genesis clearly says God created it all, but doesn't say when.
As J. Vernon McGee said, "He did however, put lots of rocks around, if you want to try to come up with a date."
Whatever your date, it can fit with Genesis.
AMPU
...And I reach the same logically valid conclusions, the difference is I do not rule out a futherance of these SAME principles which futher demonstrate the validity of certain written historical text. (Some text may validate the priciples) In other words, I'm not close minded to possibilites which SEEM to have never been discredited and futher strengthen the principles and laws of physics as can be observed this day.
I did not know this, but I take your point well. What bothers me most I guess in these discussion is the outright dismissal of the purely scientific point of view and the evidences which accomadates such views. It frustrastes me even more when I see highly intellegent people outright dismiss evidences of a written text which has yet to be found unreliable and has only ever lead to a credence to VERIFY such evidentuary claims.
There is no difference when it comes to FAITH. It is at the point in which from the observable evidence a hypothesisize(sp?)has to be made. It takes an educated guess, but to believe in your THEORY you MUST have FAITH.
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.
Would you please be more specific so I may understand exactly what you mean. I know of some MAD EVOLUTIONARY SCIENTIST (As well as Faith Healers) who have had Phychiatric Delusions and have plenty of faith in their hypothesis!
sirchtruth: Would you please be more specific so I may understand exactly what you mean.
Nothing personal. I haven't talked to you much. I meant:
1) The people who cannot see the evidence they just demanded be presented,
2) The people who cannot remember what you spent ten posts telling them yesterday,
3) The people who can and do spin any evidence as "proof of creation," but still demand evidence for evolution,
4) The people (Let's call them "broomstick demanders," as in "Bring me the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the South-South-South-West-West!") who simply raise the bar or make yet another demand when you give them exactly what they said would be convincing evidence.
5) The people who hide behind jaw-dropping illogic,
6) The people who argue semantic distinctions as real,
7) The people who argue from convenience or adverse consequences when discussing historical matters,
8) The people (call them "Holy Warriors") who cannot concede even the most obvious error because it would be showing weakness to the dreaded enemy, the Satan-worshipping Evo. (There's a current case running around who is the poster boy for this problem, but he isn't the first or the second.)
Those are the details, but what I notice in general is that no evidence or argument ever budges a creationist. Which is funny, because the case is beyond open-and-shut that some kind of evolutionary process happens. You can quibble about gaps and this mechanism versus that one, but the idea that it didn't happen at all is beyond absurd.
But when you buy the delusion, you can claim the evidence is faked. Piltdown Man was a fraud, after all. You have the right to bait your opponent. He's a tool of Satan, after all. The Ten Commandments are just the rules for conduct toward the Chosen Tribe, you can do anything to the Heathen. After all, the Heathen is out to get you. It's war, man!
...and actually Immanuel Kant wrecked David Hume pretty thoroughly so Aristotle is still valid. However, if you want to back up your statement with more than a "because I say so" and show us how Hume "wrecked" Aristotle, I am willing to play.
Your statement is very false Vade, as usual with your links which supposedly "refute" what your opponents post, do not. They are just a bluff made in the hope that no one will follow your link and see the truth. Here is what you said about Medved's points in post#203 in the link:
Your long excursi on albedo and temperature balance are just distractions. If Venus is a planet, not a comet, if Velikovsky's version of events is an impossibility based on ignorance and refuted by the evidence, it's not worth trying to follow your tap-dance on those topics.
Your supposed refutation was a complete refusal to debate the point!
It sure does Vade! And if you cannot give proof of evolution then you must admit that evolution is a matter of faith, not of science (and please spare us the excuse that there is no such thing as proof - that would only prove my point).
BTW - also spare us the excuse that proof has been given, if you make the claim, you should be willing to give your proof.
BTW - also please spare us your link-o-mania, just show us right here where all can see - you do know how to cut and paste don't you?
BTW - also please refrain from insults and ad-hominems, that would only prove my statement is correct plus it would reflect badly upon your character.
My, my, Vade, so much rhetoric and so few facts! Why don't you take up my challenge in the post above and prove all your opponents to be wrong?
Not where the prime mover/first cause argument was concerned. Kant objected to the first cause argument for his own reasons - according to Kant, causality was itself a projection of mind on to the world of things. Causality, so far as we know, only applies to the world of sensory experience, Kant would say, so there is no reason to think that causality applies to things beyond that, especially not to something that is supposed to transcend it completely, like God. And Kant did that very intentionally - he wanted to place God beyond the reaches of reason altogether, which necessarily meant denying the "rational" arguments of Aristotle and Aquinas.
So, if that's being rescued by Kant, I'd hate to see what happens when he sets out to destroy a thing ;)
Maybe you want to re-read Critique of Pure Reason, and while you're at it, you can check out Hume's Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion.
A very one sided statement on your part. Kant showed that you could neither prove nor disprove the existence of God through reason. That demolishes the materialistic arguments against the existence of God. It also does not refute the arguments of Aristotle and Aquinas, it just says they are not conclusive.
IOW, they don't prove what they set out to prove, as far as Kant is concerned - he really didn't save them from Hume at all, so much as just saying they were going about it all wrong anyway.
Anyway, I've never been enamored of Kant much, myself. I'm more of a strict rationalist - what a surprise, huh? ;)
OTOH, if more people took a Kantian view of God, there'd be much less conflict between science and religion to begin with. A God that immunizes himself from reason in the first place has little to fear from logic and reason ;)
You are really good at misrepresentation. It is evolutionists that are trying to prove God does not exist through science, and have been doing so for some 150 years. Christians are just trying to disprove that lie. Kant's criticism just showed that you cannot prove or disprove the existence of God through philosophy, it did not disprove the truth of either Aristotle or Aquinas. However, he did disprove Hume's materialistic view of the world very decisively and that is why you do not wish to expose Hume's statements to examination.
The point is irrelevant to the dead horse of medvedian Velikovskian catastrophism, rather the way a tonsillectomy, whether successful or not, is irrelevant to a dead patient.
"He's dead, Jim!" -- Bones McCoy
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