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From
LiveScience:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The museum exhibits are taken from the Old Testament, but the special effects are pure Hollywood: a state-of-the-art planetarium, animatronics and a massive model of Noah's Ark, all intended to explain the origins of the universe from a biblical viewpoint.
The Creation Museum, which teaches life's beginnings through a literal interpretation of the Bible, is claiming attendance figures that would make it an unexpectedly strong draw less than a year and a half after it debuted. More than a half-million people have toured the Kentucky attraction since its May 2007 opening, museum officials said.
For creationists — Christians who believe the Bible's first chapter of Genesis is the literal telling of the universe's start — the museum is a godsend. Many have returned with family and friends, some from faraway states arguing it's one of the few with a Christian worldview.
(read full article)
This is a profoundly disturbing trend. The effect on this country's global political influence, economic viability, and national security is threatened by the collective dumbing-down effect of such self-delusionary belief systems. External threats notwithstanding, our greatest challenge most probably comes from the inside, from institutionalized promotion of ignorance, intellectual terrorists that threaten the very fabric of American life.
From Scientific American: (cross-posted on Just Whacked)“Should I be worried about the Crips and the Bloods up here?” These were the first words out of the mouth of Ben Stein as he entered my office at Skeptic magazine, located in the racially mixed neighborhood of Altadena, Calif. I cringed and hoped that the two African-American women in my employ were out of earshot of what was perhaps merely Stein’s ham-handed attempt at humor before he began interviewing me for what I was told was a film on the intersection of science and religion entitled Crossroads.
That is not what the interview was about. And neither is the film, now called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The subtitle exposes its motif—intelligent design has been expelled from classrooms and culture, and Ben Stein sees a sinister conspiracy at work. This supercilious financial columnist and ersatz actor and game show host proceeded to grill me on whether or not I think someone should be fired for expressing dissenting views. My answer: it depends. Who is being fired for what, when and where? People are usually fired for reasons having to do with budgetary constraints, incompetence or failure to fulfill the terms of a contract. If you are hired to teach biology according to the curriculum standards of your school district but instead spend the semester telling students that science has no definitive explanation for DNA, wings, eyes, brains and that mystery of mysteries—bacteria flagella—then, yes, you should be fired posthaste. But I know of no instance in which this has happened, and the film’s examples of such alleged abuses have reasonable explanations detailed at www.expelledexposed.com, where Eugenie Scott and her tireless crew at the National Center for Science Education have tracked down the specifics of each case.
(read full article)
A battle rages on between the proponents of what has come to be called Creationism, essentially an attempt at literal interpretation of the fanciful biblical story of how everything came to exist in general, and in particular, where we humans came from; and adherents to scientific explanations of the origins of the universe in general, with particular emphasis on the evolutionary process that Charles Darwin is credited with first observing and describing, explaining the origins of our and other species residing on our little planet.
At times in the past and in recent years as well, this battle has become rather emotional with both “sides” hastening to “prove” their assertions, engaging in public “debates”.
It would be very amusing to watch this play out but for the dreadful implications.
Reality is whatever it is regardless of whether or not it pleases us; regardless of whether or not we recognize it or are ignorant of it.
In this “debate”, the “creationists” argue vehemently and try to muster public opinion as though consensus could somehow determine what is true. They proceed on the absurd assumption that if the other “side” looses, then their fanciful explanation must be correct. They employ all the cheap tactics ever tried on the high-school debate team but have no meaningful substance to their argument as it is based not on fossilized bones and geologic analysis, but on what amounts to a fossilized opinion in the form of ancient writings, and semantic “analysis” thereof. Consensus is a straw man – a distraction from the real issues. It’s not even remotely relevant to the subject of the discussion.
If genuine evidence were ever to surface that suggested the current theories of evolution are off the mark or even completely wrong, this would force the reevaluation of those ideas in light of that new evidence. If the evidence itself suggested a specific other explanation, that then would become the subject of the ongoing investigative quest to learn what processes are really responsible for making things as we find them. Such evidence, however, would say absolutely nothing about the creation story unless that evidence specifically and verifiably supported that explanation.
In other words, even if current theories of evolution somehow collapsed despite mountains of supporting evidence, there would still be no evidence to support the creation story. We’d be left with a blank slate and basically have to start over looking for a genuine explanation for the process.
Creationism vs. Evolution is a false choice, a false battle, and a tremendous waste of our collective intellect.
