Five Before Chaos

Regular readers here are probably aware of the Creation Museum in Kentucky, started by nutball Ken Ham of “Answers in Genesis” fame. Basically, it looks like a typical science museum… until you notice that there’s exhibits featuring humans riding dinosaurs and such. Its role is to basically promote young-earth creationism, a Biblical literalist approach to the origins of the world, namely that it happened about 5-10 thousand years ago. Yeah, really stupid, I know.

Anyways, I found two articles about a group of scientists who actually went to visit… and were stunned at the depth and breadth of stupidity on display:

“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.”

Another article (with some fantastic comments) also captures the scientists sentiments perfectly:

“It’s sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn’t it?” said Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology and evolution at University of California, Berkeley.

“Like Sunday school with statues… this is a special brand of religion here. I don’t think even most mainstream Christians would believe in this interpretation of Earth’s history.”

Although “mainstream Christians” still believe some pretty nutty things, they don’t rise to the level of the insanity Ham is propagating.

One can seriously hope that the political tides are turning in this country. Of course, it’s never going to be as far or as fast as some of us (such as myself) would like it, but it’s a start. Yet unfortunately, this country has a really nasty anti-intellectual streak, and nine times out of ten, with it goes the term “Christian Fundamentalist”. And as I’ve told you ad nauseum, when the historical or scientific record doesn’t fit in with these peoples’ worldview, well, they make one up, and one way this manifests itself is with the proliferation of “creationist” museums. These museums are pretty fancy, big-money type deals, and if one were to just take a quick peek at them, thye look like many other science museums. Problem is, the exhibits teach a strict Biblical creationist notion… the earth is only 6,000 years old, the dinosaurs peacefully coexisted with man, Noah actually loaded two of each animal on to the ark, you get the point.

Anyways, to give you a better idea of how ridiculous these things are, there’s an excellent op-ed piece in the Kentucky Courier Journal (all the more noteworthy, because this is in the heart of the Bible Belt):

These kids are learning that despite a fossil record that clearly shows a progression of simple life forms becoming more complex life forms over billions of years (the first bacteria are believed to have established themselves approximately 3.8 billion years ago), they are taught that the first man was made from clay and that the first woman was made from the man’s rib. Instead of learning that the process of natural selection, over 3,800 millions of years, has changed populations of organisms into the approximately 10 million species (conservative estimate) that inhabit the Earth today, they are taught the “poof” theory of creationism.

It seems fraudulent to me that the hard work and knowledge of generations of truth-seeking scientists from Galileo to Sagan, from Darwin to Dawkins, is now being hijacked and twisted to teach our children that the sciences of paleontology, evolutionary biology, astronomy, geology, physics, etc., are not to be trusted, and that unquestioning faith in ancient texts is the only way to know truth. The Christian community, especially, needs to speak out against this injustice, and speak out loudly.

It is indeed scary that this is what constitutes “scientific education” for many homeshoolers, as the article points out. I’m not opposed to homeschooling by any means, but it does stress the importance of setting some sort of standards and accountability for them, which thankfully, we have in Vermont (much to the chagrin of Charity, who makes the false analogy that likens that accountability as being no different than the VT State Police accessing your prescription records). Thankfully, we don’t have the sheer amount of anti-science God-induced idiocy up here in the Green Mountain state, other than in isolated pockets.

But nevertheless, these kinds of things are very troubling, and will continue to make us the laughingstock of the civilized world. And also make us less competitive in terms of science on the world stage.