This from the Telegraph's James Langton:
With its towering dinosaurs and a model of the Grand Canyon, America's newest tourist attraction might look like the ideal destination for fans of the film Jurassic Park. The new multi-million-dollar Museum of Creation, which will open this spring in Kentucky, will, however, be aimed not at film buffs, but at the growing ranks of fundamentalist Christians in the United States. It aims to promote the view that man was created in his present shape by God, as the Bible states, rather than by a Darwinian process of evolution, as scientists insist.The centrepiece of the museum is a series of huge model dinosaurs, built by the former head of design at Universal Studios, which are portrayed as existing alongside man, contrary to received scientific opinion that they lived millions of years apart.
Other exhibits include images of Adam and Eve, a model of Noah's Ark and a planetarium demonstrating how God made the Earth in six days.
The museum, which has cost a mighty $25 million (£13 million) will be the world's first significant natural history collection devoted to creationist theory. It has been set up by Ken Ham, an Australian evangelist, who runs Answers in Genesis, one of America's most prominent creationist organisations. He said that his aim was to use tourism, and the theme park's striking exhibits, to convert more people to the view that the world and its creatures, including dinosaurs, were created by God 6,000 years ago.
Carbon dating be damned, I guess the Flintstones were an accurate portrayal of man's early self. Wait! Does this mean Gazoo was real? Cool!
This is not the only museum of this type. You'll find them in Ohio, a few in California, Florida, Tennessee, Colorado, Georgia, Turkey, Germany, the UK, Washington, South Dakota and one in Texas of all places. Go figure...
10 comments:
I love Ken Ham. Seriously. He's the kind of guy whose name you can Google for hours of amusement. I got as far as 'The Teachings Of Ken Ham' before wishing Will Ferrell would just go on and make a movie with that title made me lose my concentration.
No one has rolled a tank across me in at least a week.
Even when I ask nicely.
So... do you think it's a good day to die, l'hiver?
Me with a literal biblicist! Can you see it? Me, arguing, siting science and rhetoric as the Ken Hume book toting, stripey shirted SUV driving Bible boy slowly sinks to the floor muttering, "Thou dost not compute, Thou dost not compute," before exploding into a tiny bang that 'creates' a tiny universe of dinosaurs with persecution complexes.
Did you hear about the tornado that ripped through a Detroit auto plant in 1935 and left behind a fully assembled, never before seen Buick Roadmaster? It is believed that the powerful winds of the storm randomly assembled auto parts until this new model of Buick stood shiny and perfect in the middle of the city. The incident is called the Origins of the Buick Roadmaster and it should be taught in school physics classes. Sure, nobody actually saw the car being assembled and nobody has proof of what happened, but what other theory fits???
Do you know how the Preamble to the US Constitution was written? Well, it seems that the young son of Gouverneur Morris dumped a box of letter blocks on the floor and they tumbled out perfectly spelling the Preamble.
Not buying any of this? Then why do you believe that something as infinitely complex as the universe -- as infinitely complex as just the speck of dust that is our corner of the universe -- could just randomly come together like a box of letter blocks dumped on the floor?
I detect inconsistencies in your thought processes. Seems to me it takes a lot less faith to believe the universe was created by God than it does to believe the universe was created by some random act of nature.
Granted, Ken Hamm is a crackpot, but there are plenty of non-fundamentalists who believe in intelligent design as oppossed to Darwinian Evolution, including Albert Einstein and Dr. Eugene Meyers who mapped the human genome. For some very smart people who believe this theory check out http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/people.htm
We live under a constitution shaped by Morris’ smart pen. But in more ways than this, we live in Gouverneur Morris’ America. The worldly patron Founder of cities, trade, materialism, wit, pleasure, and style, Morris stood athwart history and waved it in. He saw the pluralistic, commercial form our freedom would take, and he saw that it was good.
Readers weary of churchy, censorious New Englanders and stiff-backed Virginians infatuated with their humid plantations, towering abstractions, and lofty but compromised ideals will find Morris’ principled, jaunty cosmopolitanism a rush of fresh air.
I have no problem with the 'intelligent design' idea that some deity started the ball rolling - kicked off the big bang and made slimy things with legs crawl upon the shore. Hell, your guess is as good as mine. I don't go that way myself, but whatever.
But *this* version is creationism with a swankier title, nothing more. 'Intelligent design' in theory has nothing against evolution - part of the deal, I thought. It's creationism that just won't let it go. The world 6,000 years old? Dinosaurs living alongside man? I'm sorry, that's just fucking stupid.
Bill Hicks said it best: 'You know the world is 12,000 years old and dinosaurs existed, they existed in that time, you'd think it would have been mentioned in the fucking Bible at some point.
"And lo Jesus and the disciples walked to Nazareth. But the trail was blocked by a giant brontosaurus... with a splinter in his paw. And O the disciples did run a shriekin': 'What a big fucking lizard, Lord!' But Jesus was unafraid and he took the splinter from the brontosaurus's paw and the big lizard became his friend."'
And: "You ever noticed how people who believe in Creationism look really unevolved? 'I believe God created me in one day!' Yeah... looks liked He rushed it."
Jim asid: "It's not God I have a problem with. It's his groupies."
This is a great line.
There are two disturbing things here -- Christians and conversion. Why is it that so-called "Christians" are always coming up with new ways to interpret (or contradict) God's word -- and then crusading to convert everyone else to these new beliefs?
But John, dinosaur fossils were put there to test us. We are at the whims of a prankster God.
"Aaaaaargh, but it seemed so plausible..."
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