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.

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.

You're contradicting yourself within the space of a single sentence. If Aristotle and Aquinas thought they could prove the existence of God using reason, and along comes Kant who says, no, you can't prove the existence of God using reason, what would you call that? A refutation? A contradiction? It is definitely not a confirmation or support for Aquinas in any way, which is what you originally implied about Kant.

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.

Anyone is free to examine the writings of Hume to see if what I say is in accord with what he wrote. I am fairly confident that I have faithfully represented Hume and Kant here, but if anyone wishes to see for themselves what Hume had to say, here is an online version of Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion". And this is an online version of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason". I think that most people will discover that this idea that Kant "disproved" Hume is very much your opinion, rather than a matter of logical certainty.

And lastly...

It is evolutionists that are trying to prove God does not exist through science, and have been doing so for some 150 years.

Evolution and faith are not incompatible. A religion that deals with the spiritual and the transcendant, rather than making factual pronouncements about the material world, has nothing to fear from science and reason. I really think you'd be best off by going back and re-reading Kant.

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?

This is your answer to my 231, which might have been written in response to your 234 except the timing is wrong.

I'm not aware of any evidence for evolution which I have not run by you at some time or other. You're either very deluded, very dishonest, or both. It almost has to be both, really. For the purposes of assessing your credibility, I don't have to care which it is. Nevertheless, you're fun to analyze. You need to explain yourself.

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.

I agree with you to an extent, Evolution could have happened in some form, although I see no solid evidences, taken in a whole, point to it's occurance. Evolution may have happened, A creator may have created, but since we both do not have absoulute concrete evidence of either, neither CREATIONIST OR EVOLUTIONIST should close their eyes, only have their Faith.

I am sure you are aware that there are plenty of people who believe in God, and God used Evolution to create or rather to engineer the species.

I personally happen to throw nothing out at this point because the evidences are so sparse, and the agreement between reputable scientists is nothing less than a tangled web of contradictory mish mash. (eg:intermediate species in the fossile record.)

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.

Some kind? I have never seen an open-and-shut case for any kind of evolution (one species converts completely or even intermediatly to another.) I have seen Mutation. Maybe we need to define terms or I need to understand what you mean determines Evolution.

But when you buy the delusion, you can claim the evidence is faked.

Why is it a delusion if someone is confident in their conviction? It's a totally different aspect if we could absolutely see Evolution in process, but we don't and never have...so for you to claim some are delusional because they don't buy a theory is absurd. Futhermore, does it not make Evolutionist "DELUSIONAL" to beleive whole-heartedly in what even they will claim is a THEORY. Totally disregarding a written text that has shown nothing short of miraculous signs in itself leads credance to absurdity. (Any Takers?)

You have actually seen and read an original version of Genesis? Please send me and every Biblical scholar around the world a copy!!! Oldcats

Have you ever heard of a Strong's Concordance, mister "biblical scholar"?

Are you one of those college-educated "biblical scholars" that say the bible is a total myth?

Why is it a delusion if someone is confident in their conviction?

Necessary but not sufficient. You have to not only be confident, but proof against even an overwhelming preponderance of evidence when it contradicts your delusion.

It's a totally different aspect if we could absolutely see Evolution in process, but we don't and never have...

Some observed instances of speciation.
A few more instances.

. . . so for you to claim some are delusional because they don't buy a theory is absurd. Futhermore, does it not make Evolutionist "DELUSIONAL" to beleive whole-heartedly in what even they will claim is a THEORY.

Evolution is a fact and a theory.

Totally disregarding a written text that has shown nothing short of miraculous signs in itself leads credance to absurdity. (Any Takers?)

I'm only disregarding it as a science book. The earth isn't young, etc. etc. Unless you're still a Young-Earth Creationist, that game ended there so I don't really see where evolution is such a big deal.

All I'm really saying is that religion doesn't belong in science class. (And no, evolution/science isn't a religion.)

Yes the ceationism debate is secondary to the great issues of conservatism vs big gov collectivism etc.; however, the creationists tend to get all consevatives painted with the same brush, lending credence to charge of ignorance and closedmindedness. In other word, they give conservatism a bad name. And the greater attention they garner, the more damage they do.

I suppose you're right. Which means that the issue is rightly discussed here on this site. Sigh.

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