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WHY CREATIONISM WILL NEVER WIN

 
 
rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Mon 1 Jun, 2009 08:30 am
@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
Roy Clarke said that?

In between banjo solo's.
0 Replies
 
rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Mon 1 Jun, 2009 08:56 am
Arthur C. Clarke wrote:
Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor " but they have few followers now.
Lightwizard
 
  1  
Reply Mon 1 Jun, 2009 10:48 am
@rosborne979,
Since we're quoting sci-fi authors (and scientists):

Isaac Asimov on Science and the Bible

Introduction: Paul Kurtz (born December 21, 1925) is founder and chairman of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism, the Center for Inquiry and Prometheus Books, the anti-Christian publishing house of the Humanist Society. He co-authored the Humanist Manifesto II, which calls for government enforced atheism and like the Humanist Society is socialist. He is a disgruntled former Marxist himself according to Wiki, but his work on the Humanist Manifesto II shows a clear Marxist' bias. See Humanist Manifestos and a Communism for the 21st Century and A Discussion on Multiculturalism and the Real Agenda.

Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 - April 6, 1992) has been one of the most notable science fiction writers. He has also headed the Humanist Society, an organization hostile to traditional religious values. While an atheist, Asimov himself wasn't hostile to religion.

This interview was from Free Inquiry -- Spring 1982

Paul Kurtz: In your view is the Bible widely known and intelligently read today?

Isaac Asimov: It is undoubtedly widely known. It is probably owned by more people than any other book. As to how widely it is read one cannot be certain. I suppose it is read very widely in the sense that people just look at the words and read it mechanically. How many people actually think about the words they read, I'm not at all certain. They can go to a house of worship and hear verses read without thinking about what the words mean. Undoubtedly millions of people do.

Kurtz: There used to be something called the Higher Biblical Criticism. What has happened to that?

Asimov: I am constantly hearing, from people who accept the Bible more or less literally, that the Higher Criticism has been outmoded and discredited, but I don't believe that at all. This is just something that people say who insist on clinging to the literal truth of the Bible. The Higher Criticism, which in the nineteenth century, for example, tried to show that the first few books of the Bible contained several strains that could be identified and separated. I think is as valid today as it ever was. Fundamentally, there is a J-document and a P-document in the early chapters of Genesis and an E-document later on. I have no doubt that as one continues to investigate these things one constantly learns and raises new questions.

Kurtz: But by and large the public does not know much about this skeptical, critical interpretation of the Bible. Would you say that is so?

Asimov: Yes. Just as by and large the public doesn't know about any of the disputes there have been about quantum theory. The public knows only what it reads in the newspapers and sees on television, and this is all extremely superficial.

Kurtz: One thing I am struck by is that today in America we don't have a free market of ideas in regard to religion and the Bible. You are an outstanding exception. You have taken the Bible seriously and have submitted it to critical analysis. Would you agree that, although free inquiry concerning the Bible goes on in scholarly journals, and perhaps in university classes and in some books, the public hears mostly pro-religious propaganda -- such as from the pulpits of the electronic church, from various religious publications, and from the daily press -- and very rarely any kind of questioning or probing of biblical claims?

Asimov: I imagine that the large majority of the population, in the United States at least, either accepts every word of the Bible as it is written or gives it very little thought and would be shocked to hear anyone doubt that the Bible is correct in every way. So when someone says something that sounds as though he assumes that the Bible was written by human beings -- fallible human beings who were wrong in this respect or that -- he can rely on being vilified by large numbers of people who are essentially ignorant of the facts, and not many people care to subject themselves to this.

Kurtz: Do you take the Bible primarily as a human document or do you think it was divinely inspired?

Asimov: The Bible is a human document. Much of it is great poetry, and much of it consists of the earliest reasonable history that survives. Samuel I and 2 antedate Herodotus by several centuries. A great deal of the Bible may contain successful ethical teachings, but the rest is at best allegory and at worst myth and legend. Frankly, I don't think that anything is divinely inspired. I think everything that human beings possess of intelligent origin is humanly inspired, with no exceptions.

Kurtz: Earlier you said that the Bible contained fallible writings. What would some of these be?

Asimov: In my opinion, the biblical account of the creation of the universe and of the earth and humanity is wrong in almost every respect. I believe that those cases where it can be argued that the Bible is not wrong are, if not trivial, then coincidental. And I think that the account of a worldwide flood, as opposed, say, to a flood limited to the Tigris-Euphrates region, is certainly wrong.

Kurtz: The creationists think there is evidence for the Noachian flood.

Asimov: The creationists think there is evidence for every word in the Bible. I think all of the accounts of human beings living before the flood, such as Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, are at best very dim memories of ancient Sumerian rulers; and even the stories about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob I rather think are vague legends.

Kurtz: Based on oral tradition?

Asimov: Yes, and with all the distortions that oral traditions sometimes undergo.

Kurtz: In your book In the Beginning, you say that creation is a myth. Why do you think it is scientifically false? What are some of the main points?

Asimov: Well, all of the scientific evidence we have seems to indicate that the universe is billions of years old. But there is no indication whatsoever of that in the Bible if it is interpreted literally rather than allegorically. Creationists insist on interpreting it literary. According to the information we have, the earth is billions of years younger than the universe.

Kurtz: It is four and a half billion years old.

Asimov: The earth is, and the universe is possibly fifteen billion years old. The universe may have existed ten billion years before the earth, but according to the biblical description of creation the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars were all created at the same time. As a matter of fact, according to the Bible, the earth itself existed from the beginning, whereas the stars, sun, and moon were created on the fourth day.

Kurtz: Yes, so they have it backward.

Asimov: They have that backward, and they have plant life being created before the sun. All the evidence we have indicates that this is not so. The Bible says that every plant, and every animal, was created after its own kind, which would indicate that species have been as they are now from the very beginning and have never changed. Despite what the creationists say, the fossil record, as well as very subtle biochemical evidence, geological evidence, and all sorts of other evidence, indicates that species have changed, that there has been a long evolutionary process that has lasted over three billion years.

Kurtz: It's not simply biology that they are questioning, but geology, astronomy, and the whole basis of the physical sciences.

Asimov: If we insist on the Bible's being literary true, then we must abandon the scientific method totally and completely. There's no way that we can at the same time try to discover the truth by means of observation and reason and also accept the Bible as true.

Kurtz: So what is at stake in this debate between evolution and creationism is not simply the principle of evolution in regard to living things but the whole status of the sciences themselves?

Asimov: That is what I believe. But I have letters from creationists who say that they don't deny the scientific method, that they are just trying to examine the inconsistencies in the evidence presented by the evolutionists. However, that is not what should be the chief job of the creationists. What they should do is present positive evidence in favor of creationism, which is something they never do. They confine themselves to pointing out inconsistencies in the evolutionary view, not hesitating to create those inconsistencies by distortion and, in my opinion, in some cases by outright fraud. Then they say that they have "proved" that evolutionary theory is false, and therefore creationism is correct.

Kurtz: Of course you don't deny that how evolution occurs is not fully or finally formulated.

Asimov: Certainly there are many arguments over the mechanism of evolution, but our knowledge about the evolutionary process is much greater than it was in Darwin's day. The present view of evolution is far more subtle and wide-ranging than Darwin's was or could have been. But it still is not firmly and finally settled. There remain many arguments over the exact mechanism of evolution, and furthermore there are many scientists who are dissatisfied with some aspects of evolution that most other scientists accept. There are always minority views among scientists in every respect, but virtually no scientist denies the fact of evolution. It is as though we were all arguing about just exactly what makes a car go even though nobody denies that cars go.

Kurtz: What about the metaphorical interpretations? When I was growing up, the general view was that we should accept creationism and that it is not incompatible with evolution but is to be interpreted metaphorically or allegorically in terms of stages.

Asimov: There is always that temptation. I am perfectly willing, for instance, to interpret the Bible allegorically and to speak of the days of creation as representing eons of indefinite length. Clarence Darrow badgered William Jennings Bryan into admitting that the days could have been very long. This horrified Bryan's followers, as it would horrify creationists today. You can say that the entire first chapter of Genesis is a magnificent poem representing a view of creation as transcending the silly humanoid gods of the Babylonians and presenting a great abstract deity who by his word alone brings the universe into existence. You can compare this with the Big Bang. You can say that God said "Let there be light" and then there was the Big Bang; and one could then follow with all sorts of parallels and similarities if one wished. I have no objection to that.

Kurtz: But aren't the stages wrong, even if it is interpreted metaphorically? You said earlier that, according to the Bible, God created the earth before the heavenly bodies.

Asimov: Yes. Some of the stages are wrong. But you could say that, when the Bible says "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," what was really meant was the universe. We could say that, at the time the first chapter of Genesis was written, when people spoke of the earth they meant everything there was. But as our vision and perspective expanded we saw that what was really meant was the universe. Thus, if necessary, we can modify the words. But the creationists won't do this; they insist on the literal interpretation of the creation story. When it says "earth" they want it to mean Earth; when it says on the first "day" they want it to mean a twenty-four-hour day.

Kurtz: When the Bible says, "And God made the firmament," what does it mean? Isn't that odd?

Asimov: Well, if you trace the word firmament back to its original meaning, it is a thin, beaten layer of metal. It is like the top you put on a platter in a restaurant. It is like the lid of a dish. The earth is a dish and the firmament comes down upon it on all sides. It is a material object that separates things. There are waters above the firmament and waters below. In fact, in the Book of Revelation, which was written about 100 C.E., centuries after Genesis was written, the writer describes the firmament as folding up like a scroll. It was still viewed as a thin metal plate. But we know as surely as we can know anything at all that there is no firmament up there -- there's no thin metal layer -- there's only an atmosphere, and beyond it a vacuum, an empty space, except where there are planets, stars, and other objects. The blueness of it is an illusion due to the scattering of light, and the blackness of night is due to the absence of any light that we can see, and so on.

Kurtz: In a metaphorical interpretation, how would you interpret "the waters above and the waters below"? Does that make any sense?

Asimov: Not to me. Obviously the people who first wrote about the waters above the firmament were thinking of rain. The rain supposedly came down through the windows in the firmament. There were little holes, as in a shower head, and the rain drizzled through. I don't blame them for not understanding. I don't criticize the ancients for not knowing what we know. It took centuries to work up this knowledge, and the ancients contributed their share. They were every bit as intelligent as we are and every bit as much seekers after the truth. I'm willing to admit that. But the fact is that they didn't know as much as we know now.

Kurtz: They were limited by the prevailing scientific and philosophical views of the day.

Asimov: And by the little that had been learned up to that time. So this seemed a logical explanation of the rain. They didn't know the nature of the evaporation from the ocean. They didn't understand what the clouds really were and that is why they spoke of the waters above the firmament and below, but there is no reason that we should speak of it that way.

Kurtz: If you take Genesis metaphorically, you can believe in the theory of evolution as the Big Bang and also that everything evolved, so this need not be a threat to science necessarily?

Asimov: No, if you are willing to say that the universe began fifteen billion years ago -- the exact number of billions of years is under dispute -- as a tiny object that expanded rapidly and dropped in temperature, and all the other things that scientists believe happened, then you can say that God created it, and the laws of nature that controlled it, and that he then sat back and watched it develop. I would be content to have people say that. Frankly, I don't believe it, but there's no way one can disprove it.

Kurtz: You don't believe it? You don't think there is sufficient evidence that there was a cosmic egg that shattered and that God created this cosmic egg?

Asimov: I believe there's enough evidence for us to think that a big bang took place. But there is no evidence whatsoever to suppose that a superhuman being said, "Let it be." However, neither is there any evidence against it; so, if a person feels comfortable believing that, I am willing to have him believe it.

Kurtz: As an article of faith?

Asimov: Yes, as an article of faith. I have articles of faith, too. I have an article of faith that says the universe makes sense. Now there's no way you can prove that the universe makes sense, but there's just no fun in living in the universe if it doesn't make sense.

Kurtz: The universe is intelligible because you can formulate hypotheses and make predictions and there are regularities.

Asimov: Yes, and my belief is that no matter how far we go we will always find that the universe makes sense. We will never get to the point where it suddenly stops making sense. But that is just an assumption on my part.

Kurtz: Religion then postulates and brings in God.

Asimov: Except it tends to retreat. At the very start you had rain gods and sun gods. You had a god for every single natural phenomenon. Nothing took place without some minor deity personally arranging it. In the Middle Ages some people thought the planets revolved around the earth because there were angels pushing them, because they didn't know about the Galilean notion that the planets didn't require a constant impetus to keep moving. Well, if people want to accept a God as initiating the big bang, let them. But the creationists wont do that.

Kurtz: Are you fearful that this development of a literal interpretation of the Bible is anti-science and can undermine rationality in this country and in the rest of the world?

Asimov: I don't believe it can actually stop sensible people from thinking sensibly, but it can create a situation whereby there are laws against allowing sensible people to think sensibly in the open. Right now the fight is over creation and evolution. In the long run, in any fight between evolutionists and creationists, evolution will win as long as human beings have sense. But there are laws now in Louisiana and Arkansas, and other legislatures are considering similar laws.

Kurtz: It was struck down in Arkansas.

Asimov: Fortunately! But wherever the law exists, school teachers must teach creationism if they mention evolution. This is a dreadful precedent. In the United States a state can say: "This is scientific. This is what you must teach in science." Whereas in many nations that have had an established church -- nations we may have looked upon as backward -- they nevertheless understood that within the subsystem of science it is science that decides what is scientific. It is scientists who make the decision. It is in the scientific marketplace that ideas win or lose. If they want to teach religion, they can teach it outside of science, and they can say that all of science is wicked and atheistic. But to force their way into science and to dictate what scientists must declare science to be destroys the meaning of all of science. It is an absolutely impossible situation and scientists should not permit it without a fight to the very end.

Kurtz: I fully share your concern. What about religion itself? Should religion be a subject for free inquiry? Should examination of the Bible be openly discussed in American society?

Asimov: I don't see why not. I think nothing is sacred, at least in a country that considers itself intellectually free. We can study the political process all we want. We can examine the reasoning behind communism, fascism, and Nazism. We can consider the Ku Klux Klan and what they believe. There is nothing that we should not be able to examine.

Kurtz: And your examination of the Bible indicates that it is contradicted in many places by modern science?

Asimov: Yes. Now this does not automatically mean that science is correct and the Bible is wrong, although I think it is. People should examine it. One thing we cannot do is to say without examination that the Bible is right.

Kurtz: Isaac, how would you describe your own position? Agnostic, atheist, rationalist, humanist?

Asimov: I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.

Kurtz: But the burden of proof is on the person who claims God exists. You don't believe in Santa Claus, but you can't disprove his existence. The burden of proof is upon those who maintain the claim.

Asimov: Yes. In any case, I am an atheist.

Kurtz: You have no doubt reflected a good deal on this. Can people live without the God myth, without religion? You don't need it presumably. Does man need it?

Asimov: Well, individual human beings may. There's a certain comfort, I suppose, in thinking that you will be with all of your loved ones again after death, that death is not the end, that you'll live again in some kind of never-never land with great happiness. Maybe some people even get a great deal of comfort out of knowing that all the people they they don't like are going to go straight to hell. These are all comforts. Personally, they don't comfort me. I'm not interested in having anyone suffer eternally in hell, because I don't believe that any crime is so nearly infinite in magnitude as to deserve infinite punishment. I feel that I couldn't bring myself to condemn anyone to eternal punishment. I am opposed to punishment.

Kurtz: The height of wickedness, is it not?

Asimov: Yes. I feel if I can't do it, then God, who presumably is a much more noble being than I am, could certainly not do it. Furthermore, I can't help but believe that eternal happiness would eventually be boring. I cannot grasp the notion of eternal anything. My own way of thinking is that after death there is nothingness. Nothingness is the only thing that I think is worth accepting.

Kurtz: Do you think that one can lead a moral life, that life is meaningful, and that one can be just and noble without a belief in God?

Asimov: Well, as easily as with a belief in God. I don't feel that people who believe in God will automatically be noble, but neither do I think they will automatically be wicked. I don't think those who don't believe in God will be automatically noble or automatically wicked either. I think this is a choice for every human being, and frankly I think that perhaps if you don't believe in God this puts a greater strain on you, in the sense that you have to live up to your own feelings of ethics. But, if you do believe in God, you also believe in forgiveness. There is no one to forgive me.

Kurtz: No escape hatch.

Asimov: That's right. If I do something wrong, I have to face myself and I may not be able to figure out a way of forgiving myself. But, if you believe in God, there are usually rituals whereby you may express contrition and be forgiven, and so on. So it seems to me that many people can feel free to sin and repent afterward. I don't. In my way of life, there may be repentance but it doesn't make up for the sin.

Kurtz: Of course a lot of people who are humanists say that, if ethics is based upon either fear of God or love of God and his punishment and reward, then one is not really ethical, that ethics must grow out of human experience.

Asimov: Well, I said the same thing in an argument about what I called the Reagan doctrine. Early in what I already consider his disastrous administration, Reagan said that one couldn't believe anything the Soviets said because they didn't believe in God. In my view, maybe you can't believe anything the Soviets say, but not for that reason. If you are ethical only because you believe in God, you are buying your ticket to heaven or trying to tear up your ticket to hell. In either case, you are just being a shrewd profiteer, nothing else. The idea of being ethical is to be ethical for no reason except that that is the way to be if you want the world to run smoothly. I think that people who say virtue is its own reward or honesty is the best policy have the right idea

Kurtz: Are you suggesting that morality is autonomous, that you learn by living and that one doesn't need an independent religious support for moral choice?

Asimov: Yes. If a group of people are living together in a community where there is a lot of lying and stealing going on, it is an unpleasant way to live. But if everyone tells the truth and is honest and thoughtful of his neighbor, it is a good way to live. You don't need to go any further than that.

Kurtz: Is there one value that you have always felt is the most important -- one moral principle?

Asimov: I am scrupulously honest, financially speaking, but I have never really had a serious temptation to be otherwise. I long for a temptation so that I can prove to myself that I am really scrupulously honest, you see.

Kurtz: I thought you were going to say that you were committed to truth and knowledge!

Asimov: When I think of being committed to truth and knowledge, that seems to be such a natural sort of thing. How can anyone be anything else? I give myself no credit for that. I don't see how it is possible to be tempted away from it, and if you can't be tempted away from it then there is no point in even considering it a virtue. It is like saying that it is a virtue to breathe. But when I think of truth, I wonder about telling those little social lies we tell for our own convenience, such as telling someone you have another appointment when you don't want to go out some evening. I don't have much occasion to do that, but I guess I am as prone to it as almost anyone is. Although I am apt to call someone up and say, "Gee, I meant to call you yesterday but I forgot." I probably shouldn't say that. I should say that I was busy all day long.

Kurtz: These are not great moral dilemmas. Have you never been tested or challenged morally? You are a man of great courage, but perhaps you are old enough that you don't have to worry.

Asimov: There's no such thing as not having to worry. I suppose that if people wanted to make a big fuss about my atheism it could conceivably reflect itself in the sales of my books so that my economic security would suffer. I figure, what the hell! There is a certain amount of insistence inside me to prevent me from bartering my feelings, opinions, or views for the sake of a few extra dollars.

Kurtz: So you have the courage of your convictions?

Asimov: I suppose so, or it may be just a desire to avoid the unpleasantness of shame! Unfortunately, many people define wickedness not according to what a person does but according to what a person believes. So an atheist who lives an upright and noble life, let us say, is nevertheless considered wicked. Indeed, a religious believer might argue that an upright and noble atheist is far more wicked than an atheist who happens to be a murderer or a crook.

Kurtz: Is this because the atheist lacks faith in God, and that is considered the ultimate "sin"?

Asimov: Yes. The atheist who is a murderer or a crook gives a bad example for atheism and persuades everyone else not to be atheistic. But a noble and upright atheist, so the believer fears, causes people to doubt the existence of God by the mere fact that a person who does not believe in God can still be upright and noble. Religious believers might argue that way, but I think that is a horrible perversion of thought and of morality.
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Mon 1 Jun, 2009 01:32 pm
That's serious trolling.
0 Replies
 
rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Mon 1 Jun, 2009 03:24 pm
@Lightwizard,
Lightwizard wrote:

Since we're quoting sci-fi authors (and scientists):

Isaac Asimov on Science and the Bible

Kurtz: So what is at stake in this debate between evolution and creationism is not simply the principle of evolution in regard to living things but the whole status of the sciences themselves?

Asimov: That is what I believe.

And that's the problem most people are hesitant to address.
Lightwizard
 
  1  
Reply Mon 1 Jun, 2009 04:48 pm
@rosborne979,
Nail on the head -- right? I think that for some people, science makes them depressed -- they need to either make a run to their church (which they are unlikely visiting every week) or the doctor for a prescription of meds. Of course, agriculture science is responsible for booze which can cause depression or even dementia and then one needs some meds -- that is, if they're still alive. Oh, damn, now I'm getting depressed. Sad Wink Laughing
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Mon 1 Jun, 2009 05:36 pm
@Lightwizard,
As well you might LW.

I would be depressed if I was in your position.

That's the main reason I'm not in your position. It is very, very depressing. It's like banging your head against the Himalayan mountain range.
Lightwizard
 
  1  
Reply Mon 1 Jun, 2009 06:03 pm
@spendius,
Instead, you're banging it against your toilet seat.
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Mon 1 Jun, 2009 06:09 pm
@Lightwizard,
It is a fairly even match though.
0 Replies
 
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Wed 1 Jul, 2009 09:40 pm
@Lightwizard,
Last week, there was an annual Paleontological Meeting .It was held in Cinncinnati Ohio this year. (Its an international org so it moves arou nd the world). The U of Cinncinnati hosted the meeting and, as a suggested field trip, they went to the CREATION MUSEUM in neighboring Kentucky. The article from the Tues NYT say it all.
Quote:
Paleontology and Creationism Meet but Don’t Mesh
By KENNETH CHANG
PETERSBURG, Ky. " Tamaki Sato was confused by the dinosaur exhibit. The placards described the various dinosaurs as originating from different geological periods " the stegosaurus from the Upper Jurassic, the heterodontosaurus from the Lower Jurassic, the velociraptor from the Upper Cretaceous " yet in each case, the date of demise was the same: around 2348 B.C.

“I was just curious why,” said Dr. Sato, a professor of geology from Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan.

For paleontologists like Dr. Sato, layers of bedrock represent an accumulation over hundreds of millions of years, and the Lower Jurassic is much older than the Upper Cretaceous.

But here in the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky, Earth and the universe are just over 6,000 years old, created in six days by God. The museum preaches, “Same facts, different conclusions” and is unequivocal in viewing paleontological and geological data in light of a literal reading of the Bible.

In the creationist interpretation, the layers were laid down in one event " the worldwide flood when God wiped the land clean except for the creatures on Noah’s ark " and these dinosaurs died in 2348 B.C., the year of the flood.

“That’s one thing I learned,” Dr. Sato said.

The worlds of academic paleontology and creationism rarely collide, but the former paid a visit to the latter last Wednesday. The University of Cincinnati was hosting the North American Paleontological Convention, where scientists presented their latest research at the frontiers of the ancient past. In a break from the lectures, about 70 of the attendees boarded school buses for a field trip to the Creation Museum, on the other side of the Ohio River.

“I’m very curious and fascinated,” Stefan Bengtson, a professor of paleozoology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, said before the visit, “because we have little of that kind of thing in Sweden.”

Arnold I. Miller, a professor of geology at the University of Cincinnati and head of the meeting’s organizing committee, suggested the trip. “Too often, academics tend to ignore what’s going on around them,” Dr. Miller said. “I feel at least it would be valuable for my colleagues to become aware not only of how creationists are portraying their own message, but how they’re portraying the paleontological message and the evolutionary message.”

Since the museum opened two years ago, 750,000 people have passed through its doors, but this was the first large group of paleontologists to drop by. The museum welcomed the atypical guests with the typical hospitality. “Praise God, we’re excited to have you here,” said Bonnie Mills, a guest service employee.

The scientists received the group admission rate, which included lunch.

Terry Mortenson, a lecturer and researcher for Answers in Genesis, the ministry that built and runs the Creation Museum, said he did not expect the visit to change many minds. “I’m sure for the most part they’ll be of a different view from what’s presented here,” Dr. Mortenson said. “We’ll just give the freedom to see what they want to see.”

Near the entrance to the exhibits is an animatronic display that includes a girl feeding a carrot to a squirrel as two dinosaurs stand nearby, a stark departure from natural history museums that say the first humans lived 65 million years after the last dinosaurs.

“I’m speechless,” said Derek E.G. Briggs, director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, who walked around with crossed arms and a grimace. “It’s rather scary.”

Dr. Mortenson and others at the museum say they look at the same rocks and fossils as the visiting scientists, but because of different starting assumptions they arrive at different answers. For example, they say the biblical flood set off huge turmoil inside the Earth that broke apart the continents and pushed them to their current locations, not that the continents have moved over a few billion years.

“Everyone has presuppositions what they will consider, what questions they will ask,” said Dr. Mortenson, who holds a doctorate in the history of geology from Coventry University in England. “The very first two rooms of our museum talk about this issue of starting points and assumptions. We will very strongly contest an evolutionist position that they are letting facts speak for themselves.”

The museum’s presentation appeals to visitors like Steven Leinberger and his wife, Deborah, who came with a group from the Church of the Lutheran Confession in Eau Claire, Wis. “This is what should be taught even in science,” Mr. Leinberger said.

The museum founders placed it in the Cincinnati area because it is within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the United States population. The area has also long attracted paleontologists with some of the most fossil-laden rocks in North America, where it is easy along some roadsides to pick up fossils dated to be hundreds of millions of years old. The rocks are so well known that they are called the Cincinnatian Series, representing the stretch of time from 451 million to 443 million years ago.

Many of the paleontologists thought the museum misrepresented and ridiculed them and their work and unfairly blamed them for the ills of society.

“I think they should rename the museum " not the Creation Museum, but the Confusion Museum,” said Lisa E. Park, a professor of paleontology at the University of Akron.

“Unfortunately, they do it knowingly,” Dr. Park said. “I was dismayed. As a Christian, I was dismayed.”

Dr. Bengtson noted that to explain how the few species aboard the ark could have diversified to the multitude of animals alive today in only a few thousand years, the museum said simply, “God provided organisms with special tools to change rapidly.”

“Thus in one sentence they admit that evolution is real,” Dr. Bengtson said, “and that they have to invoke magic to explain how it works.”

But even some who disagree with the information and message concede that the museum has an obvious appeal. “I hate that it exists,” said Jason D. Rosenhouse, a mathematician at James Madison University in Virginia and a blogger on evolution issues, “but given that it exists, you can have a good time here. They put on a very good show if you can handle the suspension of disbelief.”

By the end of the visit, among the dinosaurs, Dr. Briggs seemed amused. “I like the fact the dinosaurs were in the ark,” he said. (About 50 kinds of dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, the museum explains, but later went extinct for unknown reasons.)

The museum, he realized, probably changes few beliefs. “But you worry about the youngsters,” he said.

Dr. Sato likened the museum to an amusement park. “I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed Disneyland,” she said.

Did she enjoy Disneyland?

“Not very much,” she said.




So, the Creation MUseum has to invoke evolution to make its time line work AND to explain the cramped quarters on the "ARK". Somebody call gunga.
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 03:12 am
@farmerman,
No no effemm. You don't understand.

It's the 750,000 visitors you silly moo.

One might think that the paleontologists had become bored with their own gig though. It is well known that motion is a function of boredom in human beings. I hope the relevant taxpayers are aware that they are funding trips for their experts to exercise their booing reflex.

What did the paleontologists do in the evenings effemm?

Mr Briggs ought to know at his age that he should call the cops if he is scared. And saying that he's speechless is something of an amateur solecism.
0 Replies
 
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 04:09 am
@farmerman,
Quote:
Somebody call gunga.


Prefer the lightweights don't you effemm?
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 05:12 am
@farmerman,
That was pretty damned hilarious, Ginril . . . but i suspect that Gunga's dedication to cognitive dissonance will stand him in good stead on this occasion.
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 05:18 am
@rosborne979,
rosborne979 wrote:
Arthur C. Clarke wrote:
Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor " but they have few followers now.


I just noticed this. The fly in this ointment is that science had nothing to do with the disappearance of Zeus or Thor--and in fact, it is generally thought that Pythagoras was responsible for a resurgence in piety for the Greek pantheon. What put Zeus and Thor out of business was the arrival of another religion, Christianity, and not anything to do with science--Mr. Clarke's rather smug assertion notwithstanding. It is rather amusing to read some of the Icelandic sagas, in which Thor (apparently still holding sway in northern waters despite the fall off in subscription renewals) punishes those who have fallen away from his worship if they dare to put to sea. As all the sagas passed through the hands of dull-witted monks before a permanent record was made, you have the hilarious (OK, mildly amusing) spectacle of sagas which praise these men and women for their steadfast adherence to Christianity, while never denying that they suffer as they do because of a vengeful Thor.
0 Replies
 
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 05:33 am
@farmerman,
I dearly love how the CReation Museum makes believe that they respect science but continue in perping the fraud and deceit of their ways . They arent merely using the "Same facts and arriving at a different conclusion" quite the contrary. They are boogering up any facts that dont fit their belief and they require major belief suspension of most laws of science.

ALL the Continental Drift occured in the last , say 2500 years. Thats gotta be one of their biggest frauds. It suspends everything known about mechanics. It also suspends radio-chemistry. It suspends Thermodynamics. It suspends simple geography.

The CReationists REQUIRE that some form of "simplified evolution" (or as gunga and a few of the AIG types call"microevolution" occur so that their mythical ARK can reasonably contain all the species. The stated that Noah only took a peir of animals that represent a "kind" (a suitably ambiguous word for their non scientific minds). These "kinds" then left the ark and, in the next 2000years have differentiated themselves and have inserted themselves into all the corners of theearth (They must have been hanging on as the Continents, drifting apart at a rate of several miles an hour, were speeding their ways to ocupy their present configuration). The Museum teaches that "SOme kind of innate genetic differentiation had occured as manatees became whales or as a dog became a wolf or a fox or a cape hunting dog. Thats the silly and idiotic basis upon which their worldview is predicated.

If they would look at the genomics of what they praxh, they would have to explain the major genetic differences among the many animals of their "kinds". (Eg a whale differs in chromosomal gene count by 20+ major chromosomal alleles. (KInda hard to axcomplish that level of evolution and still call it "micro".

These guys need to be looked at in a clear high intensity light. They arent umasses, they are deceitful wringers of truth who ,by demanding control of their flock, will stoop to any level of lie or fraud to taxh their flocks. They just hope that their members dont get too smart for their own good.

We have a series of Creation and ID seminars coming to the Lancaster Mennonite Community this summer. These pseudo science teaching sessions are advertised heavily to the public, as if to appear that they want "OPEN DISCUSSIONS". MAye a few of us will attend a session or two.
One of the sessions will be the " Travesty of Dover-A chrsitian Perspective", "and THE SCIENCE behind CCReation SCience". Besides quakery, it appears that they are going for headlines as well.
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 06:02 am
Why would a manatee get on the Ark, just because of some silly flood? They don't think out the implications of what they claim, do they?
0 Replies
 
rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 06:03 am
@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
I dearly love how the CReation Museum makes believe that they respect science but continue in perping the fraud and deceit of their ways . They arent merely using the "Same facts and arriving at a different conclusion" quite the contrary. They are boogering up any facts that dont fit their belief and they require major belief suspension of most laws of science.

I noticed that as well. Their conclusions are actually in conflict with the facts. In order to hide this they have to disconnect the facts from each other and look at every piece of scientific knowledge in a vacuum, isolated by itself.

The strength of scientific conclusions don't come from any single piece of evidence, but from the cohesive nature of all the evidence and conclusions combined.

spendius
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 06:36 am
@rosborne979,
I wonder when ros will knock off addressing A2Kers as if they are a bunch of toddlers and he's the ******* matron. He must be very tiresome at close quarters.

Imagine living with no illusions. Good gracious.

I notice he has failed to address the scientific evidence of 750,000 entrance fees plus car park charges, lunches and assorted momentoes.

0 Replies
 
Lightwizard
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 08:04 am
@farmerman,
The venomous snakes which came aboard the ark were rendered harmless by god, presumably only for the time they were aboard. I doubt if that would work on gunga.

Observing religion twist scientific fact like a tailor measuring for an alteration of a suit and then purposefully making it fit like a clown outfit? That's more fun than Disneyland?

The attendance is roughly the same as that of the Smithsonian Institute of Natural History, if you ignore the Space Museum which, by showing how humankind has technologically evolved is certainly relevant. Seems like a comparison of notes.

The new NOVA/National Geographic PBS series is being repeated with episode one, "Ape Genius" (check you local guide -- it's also in hi-def).

It’s easy to feel empathy for the great apes: chimps, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas. They are our nearest relatives in the animal world. For decades we’ve known that some of them can use simple tools and even be trained to communicate with us in sign language. They have some of the largest brains in proportion to body size of any animals, but just how smart are these animals?

In co-production with National Geographic, NOVA explores the secret mental lives of apes and the crucial gap between ape intellects and our own. Every time we’ve defined a mental ability that we think is uniquely human"everything from culture to simple math"the great apes have it too. But now scientists are zeroing in on tantalizing hints of what that essential difference may be. Besides its hugely entertaining sequences of chimps staging pool parties and working vending machines, Ape Genius reveals a new and deeper understanding of our profound kinship with our primate relatives and exactly what it means to be human. -- PBS CD description

End of quote

It demonstrated that chimps have now be observed making tools and have cognitive ability on equal with young children (okay, in some cases, better than some adults). The monkeys also had the ability to go to and from the pub each day and type gibberish on a computer keyboard that only they understand, and that's after they've puked on it.
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 08:42 am
It is not just the great apes who display characteristics which we consider to be uniquely human. There is an octopus common to the Mediterranean which builds shelters on the sea floor--houses, if you will.

For more than 25 years, Irene Pepperberg worked with an African gray parrot whom she named Alex, and who developed a remarkable vocabulary--not in that he learned hundreds of words, which he did (his working vocabulary seemed to be between 150 and 200 words, but he could be "reminded" of words he had learned earlier but stopped using, and he would incorporate them again, for a while), but because he was able to identify objects he had never seen before by naming the color, a general description of shape, a description of texture, and a simplified description of the material from which the object was made (wood, plastic, metal, paper, etc.)

Humans have only scratched the surface of the information that dogs (and by analogy, a great many other animals) obtain by scent--it is a world of incredible complexity and probably beauty to which we are forever blind.

Most human arrogance concerning the excellence of our apprehension versus that of animals if a product of religious bigotry which asserts that "god" gave us dominion over the animals of this world.
 

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