Creationism Museum To Open Next Summer

Aloriel writes to point out a story in the Guardian (UK) about the opening next year of the first Creationism museum in Kentucky, just over the Ohio border. From the article: "The Creation Museum — motto: 'Prepare to Believe!' — will be the first institution in the world whose contents, with the exception of a few turtles swimming in an artificial pond, are entirely fake. It is dedicated to the proposition that the account of the creation of the world in the Book of Genesis is completely correct... The museum is costing $25 million and all but $3 million has already been raised from private donations." A lot of that money is going into the animatronic dinosaurs, which are pictured as coexisting with modern humans before the Fall. According to the article, up to 50 million Americans believe this. The museum has a Web presence in the Answersingenesis.org site.

geographically challenged

[Anonymous Coward]

AU
EU
whatever

Re:I'd go

[Anonymous Coward]

Karl Marx was largely right. The only mistake is he goes against human nature.

Re:More Creation Museums, please

[mqduck]

Creationism purports to be some sort of Scientific view of the Earth's history.

No, you're thinking of Intelligent Design. Look at this website. It's pure "the Bible is under attack!"

Re:I'd go

[XorNand]

1/5? It's actually twice as worse [straightdope.com] as you think. 40% of Americans "flatly reject" evolution. Of 35 surveyed countries, only Turkey has a less enlightened populace.

Re:It's a metaphor, you dipshit

[yfarren]

Well, here is the thing.
I am an orthodox Jew. AND, incidentally, I speak fluent hebrew (my aramaic is passable). And well, I typicaly read Job at least once a year (In hebrew. With 1000+ years of various rabbinical commentary. That and ecclesiasties. On Shavout, if you must know). I would also like to say that I think creationism is fairly silly. Dangerous, sure. But, silly. I happen to think that MOST relegion is fairly silly (my own, included). There are lots of arguments you could use.

But just saying "eveyrone knows it's a metaphor, you dipshit" reduces your comment to. Well:

A. Wrong. Not everyone knows that. There is a lot of rabbinical debate. Some say it is a prophetic vision, others say it was actually God taking him around showing him these things. This debate appears all over in biblical commentary, esp. in regards to phatasmagorical prophetiky things. The only real thing that is constant in Rabbinical debate, is that there is a lot of it. And Pigs arent Kosher.

B. Ad Hominem. And who modded your silly ad hominem up, probably doesnt read hebrew, or know much about rabinical authority.

Look, I am a big fan of telling people "read it in the hebrew". If you had bothered to do that, you would see the passage he is talking about (Job 40:15) should almost certainly be translated (roughly) "here are the animals, that I made, along with you. Grass/Grain it Eats, just like cattle eat." Now, the interesting thing about this passage is the word (transliterated) "b-hay-mote". Hebrew, as lots of people will tell you, is written with consonants. So, the word is BHM#T (the # is something that normally represents an "Oh" or "oo" but can be a "V". A vav for those of you who know hebrew.) Under normal circumstances, you would just translate that as "animals". The problem with that translation, is that this chapter is God, showing Job all sorts of wonderous things of Creation. So why are some random animals so wonderous. That question is what leads to the discussion that the animals in question, are wonderous animals, and the trasliteration of a normal word "B-Hay-Mote" to behemoth. You really have to be reading the passage TRYING to force the word to mean "dinosaurs" for it to come close to that reading.

See, that would be a decent argument. "everyone knows its metaphor you dipshit" is just wrong, and personal.

Also, please dont give me ownership of the Old testament. I like to think my knowledge of it is better than most. But that doesnt mean I own it, any more that a classics professor owns "the Illiad". Other people can still come to these books, read them, and find what they may in them. Some of what they find might be because they want to see it. Sometimes a scholar of these books can show somone why a particular reading isnt likely. But Christians (though I think they are often wrong, because they rarely study the bible in any original source) are not to be dismissed out of hand because they are not "orthodox Jews". Further, why should an Orthodox Jew have any more claim to the bible then I Conservative, or reform Jew. They have the same traditional connection I do, they just choose to make a different reading.

In short, please mod parent down. He is an AC, doesnt really say anything constructive (or even correct), and belongs at 0 where he started.

That "all or nothing" attitude

[Opportunist]

I think the reason why creationism and other balony can grow in the US is a general "all or nothing" attitude in a lot of people there. I've noticed it in a few people while I was in the US, many of them have an approach to things that allows no middle way. Things are black or white, good or bad, there or not. Yes or no. Very binary.

Creationism and clinging to the bunk is a necessity for the religous zealots there. If God didn't create the world, he cannot exist. All or nothing. Either the Bible is 100% correct or God is gone. Now, that must not happen, of course, so Creationism MUST be correct.

Even the most zealous religious groups here in Europe take a rather moderate stance towards Creationism. God can exist without it, the Bible needn't be literal. "Created in seven days" is a metaphor for a creation in a "whole way", that's what the seven symbolizes. That can take millenia (hey, who are you to dictate to God how long one of his days is? Remember, he's beyond and above space and time). He also created the animals before man, so those dinos can exist way before man came to be. A millenia old earth? No problem, those "seven days" are a metaphor.

I've had lengthy talks with very devout theologists and without failure they all said that you cannot take the Bible literal. Doing so would most likely make you either crazy or turn from the faith, because you'd have to realize that it cannot be true if taken literal. You don't even want to count the translation mistakes (it was translated from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English... talk about bablefish) or the interpretations. And a lot of things changed meaning in the millenia since its creation, a lot of the figures and parallels used to describe things don't make sense anymore to a modern person. Do you REALLY want to try taking something like that literal?

The general belief here is (if you are so inclined to take it serious and believe in it) that God created the world in seven "steps", which is also in sync with the original text ("days" is only a way to translate it. The original text talked about "daily tasks", in today's commerce it would be translated as "man days"). And that's by far not the only translation mistake the various people who copied it made.

And you want to take one of those babelfishy documents literal? Must be nuts to do that.

Re:Karl Marx was right. (sigh)

[joshsnow]

Karl Marx was right. Was he? I thought time and trial had proven otherwise.

Re:Karl Marx was right. (sigh)

[aplusjimages]

I know a lot of Christians who seek to oppress their neighbors, as Christ didn't teach. You're lucky your experience has not been the same.

Christian fundamentalists? Not bloody likely

[dsanfte]

I need a stamp for threads like this that reads "TREATY OF TRIPOLI" in big, bold letters.

From Article 11 of the treaty, as approved by the Senate and signed by President John Adams in 1796:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli [wikipedia.org]

The founding fathers were Deists, not Christian fundamentalists.

Stop with the 6000 years already!

[gillbates]

Disclaimer: I do believe the Biblical account of creation. But these so called creationists do not follow the Bible!

Ok, so some creationists believe the earth is 6000 years old.

Strangely:

• There is no literal account of these 6000 years in the Bible. There is no timeline given between the creation of Man, and his Fall from grace. Even a literal interpretation of the creation story doesn't preclude the first Adam living for 50 million years before being kicked out of the garden. According to Christian theology, death entered the world with Adam's fall; presumably Adam was immortal before that.
• There are gaps in the genealogies which make it impossible to state the exact number of years between the Fall of Man and the birth of Christ. The 6000 year figure was produced by a heretic - the Catholic Church never officially published the 6000 year figure. Considering this was the church started by Christ, you'd think they would know.

Seven Days of Creation theory.

Um, no. God created the world in six days, and rested on the seventh. Look it up.

Sometimes I think atheists are secretly funding the creationists just to discredit Christianity. These folks (creationists) don't take the Bible as literal - if they did, they wouldn't believe such stupid nonsense.

Re:Literal, or not?

[T.E.D.]

To the best of my knowledge, scholars of the Hebrew language do not consider the text of Genesis chapter one to be poetry, but rather documentary.

That's wrong. Biblical scholars will tell you that part of Gen 1 was the old Hebrew creation myth, and another part was likely written during the exile in Babylon. That part of the story was likely meant to indirectly address their current condtion in exile from their land and in servitude in Babylon. Consider reading Misquoting Jesus [amazon.com] by biblical scholar Bart Ehrman.

On a more general note, this points out that, there are actually two different creation stories in Genesis 1. Two different stories. Different things happen in different order on different days in them. If you insist on reading the bible literally, with no creative interpretation, then one of the two is wrong. You aren't even out of the first chapter of the Bible yet, and you already can't be strictly literal.

Re:More Creation Museums, please

[Apocalypse111]

I vote we make a creation museum based off Norse myth.

Muspell
The first world to exist was Muspell, a place of light and heat whose flames are so hot that those who are not native to that land cannot endure it.

Surt sits at Muspell's border, guarding the land with a flaming sword. At the end of the world he will vanquish all the gods and burn the whole world with fire.

Ginnungagap and Niflheim
Beyond Muspell lay the great and yawning void named Ginnungagap, and beyond Ginnungagap lay the dark, cold realm of Niflheim.

Ice, frost, wind, rain and heavy cold emanated from Niflheim, meeting in Ginnungagap the soft air, heat, light, and soft air from Muspell.

Ymir
Where heat and cold met appeared thawing drops, and this running fluid grew into a giant frost ogre named Ymir.

Frost ogres
Ymir slept, falling into a sweat. Under his left arm there grew a man and a woman. And one of his legs begot a son with the other. This was the beginning of the frost ogres.

Audhumla
Thawing frost then became a cow called Audhumla. Four rivers of milk ran from her teats, and she fed Ymir.

Buri, Bor, and Bestla
The cow licked salty ice blocks. After one day of licking, she freed a man's hair from the ice. After two days, his head appeared. On the third day the whole man was there. His name was Buri, and he was tall, strong, and handsome.

Buri begot a son named Bor, and Bor married Bestla, the daughter of a giant.

The story continues with birth of Odin and some siblings, the slaying of Ymir, the creation of the earth, trees, mountains, dwarves, the sky, clouds, stars, the fortress Midgard, the creation of man as we know it from trees, the building of Asgard, and Odin having Thor and creating all other divine entities. It also tells of the rainbow bridge between heaven and earth that will only break under the strength of the sons of Muspell and of Yggdrasil, the ash tree where the gods hold their daily court and whose branches spread out over all of heaven and earth.


Personally, I find this fiction much more compelling than most other creation myths - it'd be much easier to pompously tout this epic as fact than the sillyness and/or drabness of most other creation myths.

Re:Literal, or not?

[seebs]

You say:

>To the best of my knowledge, scholars of the Hebrew language do not consider the text
>of Genesis chapter one to be poetry, but rather documentary. You can accuse it of being
>false, but it's unreasonable to say that it was not meant to be read literally.

You should read more actual scholarship. Genesis has been interpreted as non-literal and allegorical in substantial part for as long as we have written records. Augustine, who certainly wasn't basing his writings on any modern scientific knowledge, wrote at some length about Genesis (the document was on the "literal interpretation of Genesis") and argues that it is ridiculous to imagine that the "days" referred to are 24-hour days, that the "light" referred to is the kind of light we see by, and so on and so forth.

Interpreting these as allegories and metaphors, rather than as documentary accounts of factual events, is the historical tradition. Modern literalism is a modernist reaction to the Enlightenment.

Re:Karl Marx was right. (sigh)

[Darby]

Or perhaps SOME people DO realize that theft doesn't stop being theft if it's government doing it, and calling it "taxing the rich". And some of them do even have the moral fiber to stand against injustice, even if they benefit from it?

Except the people in question are the worst welfare leeches we have, so your "moral fiber" argument is worse than laughable.

Try it again when they give up their farm subsidies nad their utility subsidies and all their other entitlement programs and start pulling their own weight for once rather than leeching off of my productivity and then whining like little bitches about *exactly what they are doing*.

Sorry, but the completely contradictory and nonsensical nature of their various positions demonstrates their total lack of anything approaching morality. If not, why are they on the obviously wrong side of every moral issue?

Re:We need more truth, less humanistic claptrap!

[Darby]

Nazism was responsible (directly) for 11 million deaths, indirectly perhaps twice that. No religion has ever come close to that.

You need to move this one over to the religion column as Nazism was explicitly and aggressively Christian, not atheistic.

Re:Christian fundamentalists? Not bloody likely

[Loki_1929]

"The US HAS now entered into wars and acts of hostility against Mahometan nations"

Judging by what has transpired in Beirut, Kuwait City (1983), Madrid (1985), Berlin (1986), Lockerbie Scotland (1988), WTC (1993), Riyadh (1995), Dhahran (1996), Kenya and Tanzania (1998), Yemen (2000), Sept 11 (2001), Karachi (2002), Riyadh (2003, 2004), Jeddah (2004), and Amman (2005), I would say that the Mahometan peoples, many supported by Mahometan nations, have now entered into wars and acts of hostility against us.

Re:so close...

[Malakusen]

And yet so far. Your explanation seems reasonable, but is a bit off. God is not capricious.

Must not be reading the same bible...

My 20 month old son does not discern that touching a hot stove will burn him, but he does comprehend that he must not touch the stove. Adam and Eve knew what God said, and that breaking the rule was BAD. In fact, God told them, if you break this rule, you will die.

If he touches the hot stove, will you kick him out of the house and put him on the street? That's basically what the Biblical God did. Seriously, Adam and Eve ate some fricking fruit. And as a result, everything bad in the world that has happened since then happened. That's not a system structured by a rational being, and anybody who thinks that's rational is not themselves rational.

The hot oven argument, which I always hear (largely because it's in one of those ubiquitous books tossed around at Christian evangelism training courses), is completely invalid because the scale is completely different. Whole different ballpark, whole different team, whole different fricking league. If it proves anything, it proves what a monstrous and evil being the Christian God would be if, God forbid, he existed. If your kid touches a hot stove, you as a loving parent treat the burn and tell him that's why you don't touch a stove. And he will have learned from that mistake and won't ever do it again. If your kid was Adam and you were God, you'd boot him out onto the street and give him a terminal disease. That's not sanity. Oh sure, you can say that we can't understand the great big powerful God, that he's so much wiser then us, but to that I say first that if we're made in his image, we're capable of understanding him and that his actions should make sense to us, and seocndly if I'm going to worship something I don't understand, I'm no different then a caveman worshipping the sun. In fact, the caveman is a little smarter, because he can look up in the sky, see the sun, see it's light, feel it's warmth, and know that it's real and that it's doing something for him. Christianity is based on none of that.

Re:Christian fundamentalists? Not bloody likely

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't speak to Jay or Washington, but the quote from Madison is a well-known fraud. The "quote" is carefully picked out of Madison's actual statement:

        Because finally, 'the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise
        of his religion according to the dictates of conscience' is held by the
        same tenure with all his other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is
        equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less
        dear to us; if we consider the 'Declaration of those rights which pertain
        to the good people of Virginia, as the basis and foundation of government,'
        it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis.

Re:Reminds me of a couple of quotes from Ghandi:

[Stanistani]

Gandhi. --Please note position of the "h."

Article gets a (-1, Wrong)

[tfoss]

Screw that, we've got them beat in the greater San Diego area [icr.org]. Located in lovely Santee, CA (or Klantee, or Santucky depending on your preference...) A bunch of my grad school friends took a field-trip to the Institute for Creation Research [icr.org] and went on their museum tour. Apparently is quite well done, with out-of-context quotes of real peer-reviewed science papers, superb rhetorical slight-of-word, and a veneer of 'research.'

-Ted

Re:God *was* kind

[Malakusen]

Everything that happened in Eden occured within a closed system God designed and implemented. As such, any bugs in that system are his responsibility. If he couldn't abide having Adam and Eve around because they rebelled, that was God's choice. God made the decision that if Adam and Eve ate some fruit, they couldn't ever be with him unless they performed the right sacrifices or unless God's son died a horrific death. God designed the system, he wrote the book. if you turn the oven on and put a pot on one of the front burners and fill it with boiling water and have the handle facing out where a kid can grab it, it is not the kid's fault that he got boiling water on him, it's your fault.

I believe there may be a Supreme Being, but the "God" of Christianity seems like a fricking lunatic, an embodiment of the fears and flaws of his followers. A created universe makes a fair bit of sense. An eternal heaven and hell does not make sense. If you're determined to limit yourself by thinking of yourself as a dog compared to God, that's your fault, and honestly I think it makes you a smaller and more limited person for it. You're the sort of simple mortal that Q would love, because you're completely willing to bow down and worship a God you think is beyond your understanding. I'd rather keep looking and keep asking.

Re:The power of persuasion

[Taevin]

Good to know... I'd probably be attacked for laughing hysterically the entire time I was there, not that I'd be visiting anyway.

I highly recommend people read their "Get Answers" section. You'll either laugh or cry (perhaps both) at the incredible claims they make. A few choice selections ;)

On Dinosaurs: [answersingenesis.org]

According to evolutionists, the dinosaurs 'ruled the Earth' for 140 million years, dying out about 65 million years ago. However, scientists do not dig up anything labeled with those ages. They only uncover dead dinosaurs (i.e., their bones), and their bones do not have labels attached telling how old they are. The idea of millions of years of evolution is just the evolutionists' story about the past. No scientist was there to see the dinosaurs live through this supposed dinosaur age. In fact, there is no proof whatsoever that the world and its fossil layers are millions of years old. No scientist observed dinosaurs die. Scientists only find the bones in the here and now, and because many of them are evolutionists, they try to fit the story of the dinosaurs into their view.

On "Young Earth": [answersingenesis.org]

For those of you who have kept up with our lectures and our articles in Answers magazine, you will have heard or read quotes from many well-known and respected Christian leaders admitting that if you take Genesis in a straight-forward way, it clearly teaches six ordinary days of Creation. However, the reason they don't believe God created in six literal days is because they are convinced from so-called 'science' that the world is billions of years old. In other words, they are admitting that they start outside the Bible to (re)interpret the Words of Scripture.

At first I wasn't sure if the author of both of these articles (Ken Ham) was simply ignorant of the existance of half-life dating and other dating techniques. Then I saw that he simply dismisses science as "so-called 'science'." Good to see that he's putting those logical faculties he received from God to good use.

So read on if you dare, but be careful! It's full of mind bending spin... excuse me, corrections.

I want to make it VERY clear that we don't want to be known primarily as 'young-Earth creationists.' AiG's main thrust is NOT 'young Earth' as such; our emphasis is on Biblical authority. Believing in a relatively 'young Earth' (i.e., only a few thousands of years old, which we accept) is a consequence of accepting the authority of the Word of God as an infallible revelation from our omniscient Creator.

So... you don't want to be known as a young-Earther but acknowledge that you believe the Earth is young... riiiight.

Re:Atheism IS essentially like religion - Here's w

[tom's a-cold]

Bertrand Russell coined the term agnostic (in the context of religious belief) as a way of making it clear that his atheism included a willingness to consider evidence. But I just call myself an atheist for the reasons stated. I have no reason to believe in a deity. If such a reason presented itself, I'd rethink my beliefs. But for now, from my perspective, the evidence is no more compelling for YHWH than for the FSM.

Re:NO! Don't link.

[Copid]

I would very much like to agree with you on that, but as it stands, the poorly educated and disinterested people you refer to make up a huge percentage of voters and they vote for school board members in the districts where I would send my kids to school. Now, I find it a little creepy that people who can't get their heads around the basics of biology can be elected to positions of authority over nuclear arsenals, but I can live with it as it's not necessarily a direct qualification. I would rather not elect people who believe that the planet is flat and was created last Thursday selecting science books for our next generation of engineers and scientists.