Ham's Creation Museum

[Mallon]

Well, Ham's Creation Museum is open this weekend.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/arts/24crea.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

What are people's thoughts on this?

 

[shernren]

Well I've said this often enough and I'll say this again. The Creation Museum is a huge waste of money. If they were sincere about actually doing science (instead of souping up creationism by giving it an already-peeling layer of scientism), this money would have gone to fund research groups, or to resettle allegedly persecuted scientists in new creationist facilities, or something else better. No other science in the history of science has ever tried, or had, to convince the public before it convinced the scientific community.

The perverse thing is that creation science is trying so hard to pretend to be science without actually being science.

 

[Dannager]

Most museums are created to show the public the fruits of field research and experimentation.

Welcome to the first museum in the history of existence to attempt to get by without either.

 

[laptoppop]

There are natural history museums all over the place with various evolution exhibits. I have no problem with an alternative voice. They have chosen to spend their money in the way they believe will obey and honor God the most for the most # of people -- not just the hard core science community. I can understand this -- and they don't answer to me anyway.

 

[Mallon]

Most of the reviews I've read report that the museum has lots in the way of dioramas, but little in terms of actual fossils/relics. I wonder: do they even have research collections as do most legit museums?
Gotta love the 'raptors, fresh out of Jurassic Park. But they're missing their feathers!

 

[Jase]

There are natural history museums all over the place with various evolution exhibits. I have no problem with an alternative voice. They have chosen to spend their money in the way they believe will obey and honor God the most for the most # of people -- not just the hard core science community. I can understand this -- and they don't answer to me anyway.

How is deceiving people honoring God? The U.S. already has a pathetic science education record as it is ( or any education record for that matter). Are we really honoring God by purposely trying to encourage people to not use their God given intelligence?

 

[laptoppop]

How is deceiving people honoring God? The U.S. already has a pathetic science education record as it is ( or any education record for that matter). Are we really honoring God by purposely trying to encourage people to not use their God given intelligence?

Obviously - they (as I) believe they are CORRECTING deception, not committing it.

 

[Jase]

Obviously - they (as I) believe they are CORRECTING deception, not committing it.

Correcting deception with little to no fossils and no actual scientific exhibits? It's sad because so many American's will be gullible enough to believe those exhibits are actually legitimate, and have scientific backing, despite them never even being under scientific scrutiny. When most American's don't even know what our 3 branches of government are, or can't even name 3 members of the Supreme Court, it's pretty easy to sucker them into believing dinosaurs and man walked together.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think God would be too honored by us acting like his creation is one giant joke that never actually happened, and not bothering to use our intelligence and reason.

 

[Dannager]

Obviously - they (as I) believe they are CORRECTING deception, not committing it.

One would imagine that, if they truly believed that, they'd start by amassing a few lines of valid evidence to support their position so that they might actually get some people to pay attention to them. The whole school-boards and political-offices tactic they've been doing for a few years now makes them look irreverent and petty, especially when they get smacked back into place in the end.

 

[Galle]

Obviously - they (as I) believe they are CORRECTING deception, not committing it.

I'd be surprised if they even avoid attacking a strawman version of evolution. And it's not as though they can point to honest ignorance in this case--in this day and age, you could hardly count the resources from which they could learn about evolution. Furthermore, Ham, having made himself a public figure in this area, has been personally corrected any number of times on a variety of topics.

Ham knows exactly what he's doing, and he certainly has no intention of correcting anything ever.

 

[juvenissun]

Well I've said this often enough and I'll say this again. The Creation Museum is a huge waste of money. If they were sincere about actually doing science (instead of souping up creationism by giving it an already-peeling layer of scientism), this money would have gone to fund research groups, or to resettle allegedly persecuted scientists in new creationist facilities, or something else better. No other science in the history of science has ever tried, or had, to convince the public before it convinced the scientific community.

The perverse thing is that creation science is trying so hard to pretend to be science without actually being science.

This is an excellent way to convince the general public on the issue of Creation. I wish there could be 1000 of them all over the world.

The same amount of money if given by NSF to any "scientist" would probably sink into the ocean without even giving a burp.

 

[shernren]

There are natural history museums all over the place with various evolution exhibits. I have no problem with an alternative voice. They have chosen to spend their money in the way they believe will obey and honor God the most for the most # of people -- not just the hard core science community. I can understand this -- and they don't answer to me anyway.

Quite frankly, the entire museum endeavor looks more and more like a simple money-making operation to me the more I think about it. Who is going to spend money to go to the museum anyway? Will tour operators start including it on their itinerary? Will it turn into a worldwide sensation? Will it draw people from all over the planet?

The only homage this shrine will gather is from those who are already diehard fans. The only people this museum can possibly reach is the choir.

Think about it. There are three groups of people in the world: those who are firmly for creationism, those who are on the fence, and those who are against it.

Those who are firmly for creationism don't need the museum. However, upon going to the museum, they will get such a high that you will be able to sell them anything in the souvenir shop, from the $5 Truth Fish decal to the $5,000 plexiglass Truth Fish sculpture with lights and inbuilt prayer readings.
Those who are on the fence aren't going to go all the way to Kentucky to be convinced, especially those who stay outside the US. The Internet has far more potential for witness at a fraction of the cost to both AiG and the fence-sitter.
Those who are firmly against creationism aren't going to be swayed by cute animatronics, funky noises and pretty pictures. They probably won't even come, unless they're there to heckle or to dissuade the believers.

So the museum
will only get money from supporters,
won't be visited much by fence-sitters,
and won't do anything for skeptics.

What is AiG's deal here? Is it really about reaching people? How many people are a museum going to reach that a bustling website can't? If creationism on the web won't reach me, what good will creationism do for me when it's a thousand-dollar plane ticket and a ten-dollar entrance tariff away? Why not tracts? Or strategic placement of books in bookstores? Or why not (shock! gasp! horror!) actually fund some real scientific research?

A $27million Creation Museum won't reach anyone. 270 peer-reviewed scientific papers supporting creationism would overturn the world. AiG has got it all wrong. Aren't any creationists going to show them the error of their ways?

 

[shernren]

This is an excellent way to convince the general public on the issue of Creation. I wish there could be 1000 of them all over the world.

The same amount of money if given by NSF to any "scientist" would probably sink into the ocean without even giving a burp.

Actually, no. You can check how NSF funding is given out here:

http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/afSe...mount=&AwardInstrument=&Search=Search#results

This particular page shows grants given under the "evolution of developmental mechanisms" area of NSF. Note how the typical grants given are under $200,000. There is exactly one grant to the tune of $1.1 million; no other grant even goes above a million. I would be surpriesd if the entire set of 114 grants added up to anywhere near $50 million.

You can do a lot with $27 million. For example, you could hire a team of geologists and programmers to write up that elusive "global flood model" that laptoppop keeps complaining creationists don't have. It's not that hard. I'm currently running BOINC on my computer and one of the programs is designed to take my computer time and simulate the entire earth's climate in terms of rain, clouds, pressure, and temperature, from 1920 to 2020, in half-hour increments (i.e. about 13 million steps of processing) - and the researchers get to use my computer time essentially for free! $27 million would probably allow distributed computing programs to be written to simulate the flood a thousand times over - and you'd still have enough left over for a more friendly dissemination method, like say a traveling Creation Roadshow ala Questacon or something.

That's another thing I've just thought of. Museums are really only good for captive audiences (i.e. tourists) and for milking money - I'd say this of conventional museums too. Traveling science roadshows are far more effective for reaching the general populace, especially in other countries (since the US seems to be half creationist anyway). Why didn't AiG consider that option? I'll freely acknowledge that I'm being very cynical when my answer is: there isn't enough room on the truck for the $5,000 plexiglass Truth Fish sculpture and a roadshow wouldn't go to communities that could afford it anyway. But don't you at least wonder? Couldn't AiG have made far better use of their money that way? If they thought people need to touch and see stuff to be convinced, then they shouldn't have tethered their museum down!

 

[crawfish]

*sigh*. One more embarrassment to live down.

 

[Mallon]

I wish I could have a conversation with Ken Ham about the "science" behind herbivory and T. rex. It would be awfully hard to eat plants when your teeth don't align.

 

[grimbly]

Lawrence Krauss has a pretty good handle on the whole sorry mess...

An interesting cultural experiment is taking place in Petersburg Kentucky, near the Ohio border. The experiment will shed light on the following question: How much money and glitz does it take to institutionalize a scientific lie?
Great media fanfare is already beginning to surround the official opening later this month of the $27 Million Creation Museum, close to the Cincinnati airport. Designed to oddly resemble natural history museums throughout the world, this will be a supernatural history museum, denying most, if not all, of natural history on this planet as centuries of careful study and experimentation have revealed it.

from http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070519/EDIT02/705190341/1090

sad really

 

[Assyrian]

Isn't there something disturbingly familiar about a man called Ham calling everybody in to look at Noah...

 

[shernren]

/(._.)\

 

[juvenissun]

Actually, no. You can check how NSF funding is given out here:

http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/afSe...mount=&AwardInstrument=&Search=Search#results

This particular page shows grants given under the "evolution of developmental mechanisms" area of NSF. Note how the typical grants given are under $200,000. There is exactly one grant to the tune of $1.1 million; no other grant even goes above a million. I would be surpriesd if the entire set of 114 grants added up to anywhere near $50 million.

You can do a lot with $27 million. For example, you could hire a team of geologists and programmers to write up that elusive "global flood model" that laptoppop keeps complaining creationists don't have. It's not that hard. I'm currently running BOINC on my computer and one of the programs is designed to take my computer time and simulate the entire earth's climate in terms of rain, clouds, pressure, and temperature, from 1920 to 2020, in half-hour increments (i.e. about 13 million steps of processing) - and the researchers get to use my computer time essentially for free! $27 million would probably allow distributed computing programs to be written to simulate the flood a thousand times over - and you'd still have enough left over for a more friendly dissemination method, like say a traveling Creation Roadshow ala Questacon or something.

That's another thing I've just thought of. Museums are really only good for captive audiences (i.e. tourists) and for milking money - I'd say this of conventional museums too. Traveling science roadshows are far more effective for reaching the general populace, especially in other countries (since the US seems to be half creationist anyway). Why didn't AiG consider that option? I'll freely acknowledge that I'm being very cynical when my answer is: there isn't enough room on the truck for the $5,000 plexiglass Truth Fish sculpture and a roadshow wouldn't go to communities that could afford it anyway. But don't you at least wonder? Couldn't AiG have made far better use of their money that way? If they thought people need to touch and see stuff to be convinced, then they shouldn't have tethered their museum down!

1. Think about the "annual" budget of NSF and compare it to a 27-million one time expense. The museum is going to be there for at least the next 50 years.

2. Remember this money was NOT there. It was contributed by public. In other words, the museum is there today means the public want it. My church people said that they "can't wait" to visit it.

All we should do is to praise, not to criticize.

 

[Jase]

1. Think about the "annual" budget of NSF and compare it to a 27-million one time expense. The museum is going to be there for at least the next 50 years.

2. Remember this money was NOT there. It was contributed by public. In other words, the museum is there today means the public want it. My church people said that they "can't wait" to visit it.

All we should do is to praise, not to criticize.

Do you think Jesus would support spending 27 million dollars on a joke museum with no actual real world evidence which will only further entrench people in their ignorance, or would that money be better spent on say feeding the poor and hungry, curing diseases, building houses for the homeless?

I don't recall God ever commanding us to build over-priced buildings with no actual value to them over helping those less fortunate.