Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Creationistas running amok

I thought I will keep news of the creation museum in the comments section of this blog where Tree alluded to some of the whimsical aspects of this museum, but some of the stuff in the news recently really got to me so much that I had to post some of it here….



Some introduction first: Designed by a former Universal Studios exhibit director Patrick Marsh, this state-of-the-art 60,000 square foot museum called the creation museum (in Petersburg, Kentucky) purports to bring the pages of the Bible to life. It touts that the universe is about 6000 years old and God went ahead and created the whole thing in about 6 days. That is all ok (religious license), but what is galling is the fact that it purports to use scientific evidence to prove the above two assertions (and many others)...

Just how they use the scientific evidence is indeed fascinating - if you care to read on...

Patrick Marsh, used to work at Universal Studios in Los Angeles and then in Japan before he saw the light, opened his soul to Jesus, and was born anew. "The Bible is the only thing that gives you the full picture," he says. "Other religions don't have that, and, as for scientists, so much of what they believe is pretty fuzzy about life and its origins”

How do they explain dinosaurs? Since there are undoubtedly dinosaur bones and since, according to the Creationists, the world is only 6,000 years old – (a calculation devised by the 17th-century Bishop Ussher, counting back through the Bible to the creation, a formula more or less accepted by the museum) - dinosaurs have been shoehorned in along with the Babylonians, Egyptians and the other ancient civilizations. Patrick also said: "We do believe there were dinosaurs on the ark. They could have been small when they came on".

OK, please explain the Grand canyon: No problem: The canyon was created in a couple of months by the deluge that resulted from Noah's Flood.

What about the fossils then? Patrick Marsh had this piece of illuminating advice where he not only takes science and whacks it on its butt but also manages to give New Yorkers a sideswipe along the way: “There are no such things as fossils. Humans are basically as you see them today. Those skeletons they've found, what's the word? ... they could have been deformed, diseased or something. I've seen people like that running round the streets of New York."

Final footnote:
It also seems that they have a lot of promotional video and instructional material that you can use to study the story of Adam and the garden of Eden and the romps within. Turns out that one of the men picked by the Creation Museum to play Adam leads quite a different life outside the Garden of Eden - he is a porn star!! Eric Linden owns a pornographic web site called "Bedroom Acrobat." Of course, as soon as they learnt of the dreadful transgressions committed the videos were pulled out...


Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the Bible or the ideas expressed (in fact some of the Hindu religious texts contain some equally outlandish ideas), but when money is used to subvert science and the minds of gullible museum goers (children especially), it irks me to no end.

5 comments:

Tree said...

ha! First of all, I love the tags you have for this post. Secondly, great post!
It cost $29 million to build the museum. What a sad waste of money.

Tree said...

By the way, isn't it just amazing how European and white Adam and Eve were??

Steppen Wolf said...

Tree,
Actually I think the internalization is complete - I did even not realize that they were white...

Sean Hennessey said...

they actually look persian to me..


but good god that museum is whacked.

Anonymous said...

This kind of unscientific, creationist nonsense really pisses me off. I really don't care what those hicks in Kentucky believe but trying to teach it as the scientific truth is what gets my goat. Fortunately, the rise of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris is an indication that rational, people have had enough.