Scientists tour the Creationism Museum

Tony sez, "Recently, a group of paleontologists were in town for the North American Paleontological Convention at the University of Cincinnati, and decided to take a field trip to the Creation Museum just across the river, in Kentucky. My aunt went to cover it for AFP, and I had the doubly good fortune of living just a stone's throw away, so I tagged along to see what these guys were up to. It was an eyeful, to say the least. Gorgeous facilities with amazingly engaging displays and animatronics, and at least a few hundred cubic cubits of bad science and misinformation. One young lady stood, furious, and grumbled, 'It's bullshit. Bullshit pretending to be science.' Anyone who finds themselves in the Cincinnati area with a few bucks, hours, and brain cells to burn should check it out, and see what the scientific community is up against in terms of informing the public."

Arnie Miller, a palentologist at the University of Cincinnati who was chairman of the convention, said he hoped the tour would introduce the scientists to "the lay of the land" and show them firsthand what's being put forth in a place that has elicited vehement criticism from the scientific community...
"And there was a feeling of unhappiness, too, about the extent to which mainstream scientists and evolutionists are demonized -- that if you don't accept the Answers in Genesis vision of the history of Earth and life, you're contributing to the ills of society and of the church."
Daryl Domning, professor of anatomy at Howard University, held his chin and shook his head at several points during the tour. "This bothers me as a scientist and as a Christian, because it's just as much a distortion and misrepresentation of Christianity as it is of science," he said.

(Thanks, Tony!)

(Image: (AFP/File/Jeff Haynes)

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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hokano

OK. A witch, a heathen, and a member of a class of people whose lives are forfeit walk into a bar.

Witch: “I’ll have a henbane. Double, double.”

Heathen: “I don’t believe in this sort of indulgence.”

Member of a class of people whose lives are forfeit: [Said something, but who the hell cares.]
Telephoneface

Spokepeople for both ‘religion’ and ‘science’ are fond of saying they have all the answers (or in science’s case, that they are “really close to it”) and yet if either one really presented a good case we might be like, “ok that’s makes sense, debate over”.

Thinking the devil created dinosaur bones may be drop-dead idiocy but much more recently scientific belief in Laplace’s Determinism was just as dogmatic.

The important thing to keep in mind is that in both science and Christianity there are vast bodies of work that get edited down into the ‘official explanations’ for mainly political reasons. Just as there is literature purposely omitted from the ‘official’ Bible, there is scientific research similarly lost to the ages.
Anonymous

Is this the same place that Bill Maher visited in Religulous, where the curator was bragging about his animatronic children and animatronic dinosaurs playing side-by-side?
Anonymous

We were traveling near here and were very tempted to go, but really didn’t want to give them the money. We did go to Big Bone Lick State Park nearby… first to get the juvenilley funny T-shirt, but also because it is the “Birthplace of American Vertebrate Paleontology”
Tdawwg

Oh, and the Bible is a “historical” document, in the sense that its truth claims are open to historical investigation and that it was produced by human actors operating within a specific culture at a specific time: it can be used as evidence for interpreting those cultures. It’s an eminently historical document: otherwise, it would be the divinely-inspired outside-of-history document that its adherents often claim it is. It’s not a history book, if that’s what you meant: that is, it’s not an accurate history book in the sense that most modern-day scholarly history is accurate.
noen

“Religion’s just another hypothesis, after all”

No it isn’t. Hypothesis doesn’t mean “guess”. Maybe you could explain to me what this “God hypothesis” is? I suspect any such hypothesis you could give me would be unfalsifiable and therefore worthless and NOT a hypothesis.

“but it’s just another model for making our world intelligible. It’s science, in another word.”

I don’t accept the post-modern construction that science is just another world view that is on all fours with any other. Religion is mystification, something that science is not and if a scientist does it he is doing bad science.

“But as to the telelogical or theological “why,” science doesn’t have much to say”

That much is true, science doesn’t have a lot to say about ultimate ends, but it does seem to be getting there in cosmology. Discovering that we truly live in a multiverse, confirming string theory, fully explaining the big bang and the inflationary period, all these would go a long way to providing a teleology or ultimate end.

The Bible is “not an accurate history book in the sense that most modern-day scholarly history is accurate.”

Yes, of course that’s what I meant and that’s what most Christians believe. It’s almost wholly false.
teufelsdroch

@56 “The “God hypothesis” is not a scientific hypothesis because gods or spirits are defined as existing beyond any possible natural mechanism. A true scientific hypothesis is not a question, it is a statement in the form of: IF X THEN Y.”

Science is not limited to the ‘scientific method’. The scientific method is science as interpreted by an unqualified high school teacher.

Piss on the scientific method. I don’t know anybody who made a major discovery through anything but a process of well-documented mistakes.

If I knew enough about a subject to make a well-defined hypothesis before I began, there wouldn’t be any point in beginning. That’s discovery. Find something no one in the world knows even to ask about? Bingo. Job security.

The important thing is: science welcomes people to the search for truth. Scientists respect new ideas by taking them seriously. And, science is improved, generation after generation, by people who don’t know what they’re doing is ‘wrong’.
Anonymous

I thought this was such a powerful and poingnant quote:

“This bothers me as a scientist and as a Christian, because it’s just as much a distortion and misrepresentation of Christianity as it is of science,” he said.
Anonymous

And when they have to take an airplane, fundamentalists trust science.

Ah! it’s a strange, strange world!
Takuan

meme-war.
Darren Garrison

“No it isn’t. Hypothesis doesn’t mean “guess”.”

Actually, it does. You are confusing “hypothesis” and “theory”.
nexon

It’s always the wrong argument.

It’s not “Creation vs Evolution”: if the universe is 6,000 years old, or 12 billion years old does not alter the fact that Evolution is an on-going process, the “change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next”.

“Creation” is kind of a vague term anyway. Isn’t the Big Bang a “creation” event?

If the argument is “young earth vs old earth” then it’s clear that 6,000 years isn’t enough time for evoulution to produce much diversity from a common ancestor. Evolution would still be an observable fact, just acting over a shorter period.

So really, it’s “Creation of an old universe, that contains evolution” vs “Creation of a young universe that contains evoultion”
Telephoneface

Oh, and the Bible is a “historical” document

The sad thing is, the ‘Bible’ as its known today is a severely edited and Constantine-approved (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea) version of whatever Jesus’s real legacy was. The dogmatism that is peddled for Real Christianity these days has more in common with the political motivations of Roman Emperors than we realize.

Apart from that, the creation of orthodoxy for the most part put an end on open interperetations of Christs’ legacy that had been going on in a number of different forms for hundreds of year. Without the creation of this dogmatic orthodoxy, perhaps Christianity would have naturally evolved into something far more open-minded and compatible with science than what we see today.
Anonymous

Heard at a stand-up show many years ago:

They want to teach Creationism next to Bioligy in school? Fine, let them: God created everything in 7 days. Test on Friday. Okay… now, onto Biology…
Tony Moore

@#17, the full sentence states that my aunt was covering it for the AFP, which i was constituting as the first part of my good fortune, the second being that i lived close enough to tag along.

If i ever go back, i will do everything in my power to take the barbarian warrior photo for which the internet so yearns. Just gotta work out the logistics of sneaking a battleaxe and horned helmet into the place. I think i can make this happen.

-T
Jason Rizos

One thing all this comments/links have taught me: The perpetual advancement of science, let alone the perpetual acceleration of the advancement of science, is not something to be taken for granted. We don’t have to nuclear-war our way back to the stone age (or like Noen suggests, early 19th century) like Einstein suggested, we can legislate our way there if we try hard enough!
noen

“You are confusing “hypothesis” and “theory”.”

No I am not.

Hypothesis:
1. A statement which proposes a natural mechanism for a phenomenon, where the mechanism is amenable to test, provides explanatory and predictive power, and is conditionally held on review of further observations and experiment. [den., science] 2. A guess.

The first is the scientific definition and the second the common one. The “God hypothesis” is not a scientific hypothesis because gods or spirits are defined as existing beyond any possible natural mechanism. A true scientific hypothesis is not a question, it is a statement in the form of: IF X THEN Y. Common parlance would call the former statement a theory, which it is not.
dougrogers

The Big Bang is a theory proposed by a Vatican Catholic priest/astronomer interpreting the evidence we had at the time.
gnarlgnash

Here’s an article from a few months back about a visit to the Creation Museum that deals with a number of these issues, as part of a larger discussion of anti-rationalism. It’s by Joseph Clarke, an architecture critic.

(Tangentially related: an article Clarke wrote more recently about the relationship between megachurch architecture and the modern office building. Disclosure: I edit the magazine, Triple Canopy, for which these were written. But they’re two of the best pieces we’ve run.)
noen

@ #50 Tdawwg

“That’s too Whiggish for my blood, Noen: science is a narrative, an incredibly useful narrative, but a narrative nevertheless.

“Your take on postmodernism is a bad one: we’d be as likely to stress science’s usefulness and pragmatic value as much as its fictiveness, its institutional histories and worldviews, its rhetorics and metanarratives, etc. Whatever.”

“Science” is a bit more than a narrative. It is an activity, a constant state of engagement with the world. The narrative is constructed later and then presented in textbooks. Sometimes people take that narrative a bit too seriously and begin to mystify or reify their idea of “science” and try to elevate it to some privileged ontological status. (Hence, my disagreement with certain New Atheists) That is rightly criticized (by me in the past) as scientism. But I do object to equating the activity of science with non-scientific narratives. What they do is something different, they “mystify” as Einstein in the quote provided by teufelsdroch (thank you for the correction btw) also mystifies science.

This is what do do, we take in data, information, and we perceive a pattern. Sometimes though we perceive a presence behind the data. Einstein felt he could perceive the presence of a god at work behind the mathematical laws of the world. He was mistaken of course as Bohr pointed out, but what he did was no different than what countless others have done. They perceive the world and then they perceive something at work behind the world. This is mystification. It isn’t “bad” per se but it should not be mistaken for the Real.

“Your take on postmodernism is a bad one” — I’m always open to being corrected. My understanding is that PoMo is dead (and good riddance). It’s sort of an open field right now.

empirechick

“sigh… evolution vs. creation – this has never been an issue for me, because Sister Mary Terrance explained it in 6th grade science class: why can’t BOTH be true?”

They certainly can both be true. I’ve no problem with that, as long as you get the science right. The problem is that many don’t get the science right and yet their theology depends on their subsequent misunderstanding. Like the erroneous belief that the historical Jews were ever enslaved by the Egyptians.

“Her explanation:
Yes, the Bible says God created the earth in 7 days, but who’s to say they were 24-hour days as we understand them? God has exisited for all eternity – to him, billions of years are like single days.

“I’m sure Noen is going to jump all over this one, but it works for me.”

And that’s your right, but you are wrong if you believe that the sequence of creation depicted in Genesis even remotely resembles an accurate history of how life developed on Earth or how the cosmos developed.The Bible is not a historical document at all. The history of the middle east is wrong, the history of life is wrong, the history of the universe is wrong. These tales contained within the Bible have no historical or scientific validity whatsoever. But as myths, sure, they contain profound insights into what it means to be a human being and how, perhaps, we should live our lives.

I’m sorry if you feel I am “jumping all over you”. I don’t feel as though I am. It isn’t personal, it’s just the internet.

wizardofplum
“…where can I see a”transitional fossil”?You say they exist,so show me!I can’t show you “His Nibs”,does He qualify as a transitional fossil?Help me here.”

Glad to be of service: Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ
ambiguous

One nation. indivisible

Fixed that for you Marcel. The “under god” bit was not in the original pledge.
Tony Moore

Speaking of cherry-picking evidence, the Museum’s Darwin room is especially fun.

It purports that Natural Selection and Evolution are totally divorced concepts. It states that natural selection over time can allow one species to diversify and create many types of sub-species, but denies the ability to chase that train of logic back millions of years saying that all forms of dog, cat, horse, etc, are merely diversified from the single species Noah carried on his Ark. And being as the whole creation/flood/Earth-being-only-6000-years-old premise is foundational to their reasoning, there ARE NO MILLIONS of years back through which one could trace these transformations. That, and they deny that the fossil record contains and transitional forms. So clearly, Natural Selection cannot be denied, because we can see it at work before our very eyes, but trying to follow the premise back any further than 6000 years is folly!

-T
GregLondon

OK, some odd little tidbits have crept into this thread and turned the conversation askew. So, some nudges back towards the correct direction.

First, science is first and foremost based on observation and repeatability. Science does not rule out an intelligent agent intervening on a wholly materialistic world. But it doesn’t start by assuming it either. A simple example is someone is found dead and taken to a medical examiner for an autopsy. Approaching the autopsy scientifically, one does not start out with a hypothesis of cause of death being a murderer using poison until there is some physical evidence to support it.

Scientifically, one would start out firmly in the area of “I don’t know” why the person died, and start collecting physical evidence from there. As physical evidence accumulates, various bits that were marked “I don’t know” become “I know”. I know the blood alcohal level was 0.8 and I know the person has a bullet wound.

You might hypothesize that the person committed suicide. You might also hypothesize that the person was murdered by another person.

But you cannot hypothesize that God struck him down dead.

That’s not a hypothesis. That’s a belief. It has zero evidence to support it. It will never have any physical evidence to support it. The physical evidence may end up pointing to they man committing suicide, but there is no way you can then prove that God manifested a gun at the side of his head and pulled the trigger. Just because the victim was a child-murdering, father-raping, bastard, does not prove that God decided to lay his vengeance upon thee.

Anytime someone looks at the physical evidence, throws up their arms, and says “God did it”, they’re not offering a hypothesis. They’re offering a belief. That science cannot explain something does not mean that we can then scientifically go off and embrace some metaphysical causation.

One must always respect the concept of “not knowing”. And one cannot use “not knowing” as an opportunity to insert some manifestly unknowable supernatural cause into the equation and still claim to be scientific.

Scientifically, everything starts out in the realm of unknown. The only things we can put into the “known” box are things that we can explain based on repeatable processes and observable processes. God is neither repeatable nor observable in the laboratories.

What seems to happen is that the folks who cannot grasp the notion that there may be things that fall squarely in the scientific region of “unknown”, these people instead look at the world as if everything is known, and if someone doesn’t know it, then god knows it. They cannot hold onto the distinction of “not knowing”. They treat it like a vaccuum that sucks in some explanation, any explanation, rather than keeping it in the “I don’t know” realm.
Frank W

Wholly batshit crazy as these people are, they can still relate to someone who believes in science.
It’s the ones who can’t believe in anything at all that scare them shitless.
GregLondon

science never answers why things happen.

You’re using very confusing language to make the distinction here.

Science explains why things cause things to do other things. Add a match to gasoline and boom. Shine white light through a prism and you get a rainbow.

What science does not explain is why you should get out of bed in the morning. Why you should get married or keep dating other people. WHy you should quit your job and change careers.

Science doesn’t explain why in terms of WHY we do something in the subjective experience of life.

It can explain neuroscience and all that, but it can’t explain why you should choose to get married and have kids.
GregLondon

Einstein: “God doesn’t place dice with the universe.”

This was Einstein’s explanation as to why quantum physics was wrong. Einstein believed in a clockwork universe and felt that the idea of subatomic particles operating at a completely random fasion was absurd. He spent the later years of his life trying to come up with a clockwork explanation for the things that quantum physics was seeing. He failed.

This quote more than any other is used by theists to “prove” that Einstein believed in God, ignoring the context in which it was said.

It also ignores the responses that some of Einstein’s contemporaries told Einstein to his face:

Neils Bohr: Stop telling God what to do with his dice.

Enrico Fermi: Albert! Stop telling God what to do.

And the same folks who love to quote Einstein’s bit about dice will assert him as proof of the legitimacy fo God, but will ignore Einstein’s other opinions completely. Einstein was a pacifist and a socialist.

And they also ignore Einstein’s other quotes about God:

In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”[63] In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that “My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.”[64] Einstein also stated: “I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth.”
Jason Rizos

I was just thinking the other day…what if the scientific community just conceded evolution? For the sake of argument. What if one day we just said, “Fine, fine. You can have creationism. We abolish Darwin from the canon. Evolution is wrong, the Earth is 6K years old. Now shaddap about it.”

I think it goes without saying that the Christian Fundamentalists would not at last be at peace with science. Hypothetically speaking, where do you suppose the Fundies go next to wage their next strike in the War on Science? Geocentrism? Flat Earth?
monitorhead

wow this ranks up there with a friend of mine (well more like aquiantance now) that was gung ho about going to some creation excavation in Texas. Which i think is now called creation evidence museum? strange stuff.
Antinous / Moderator

a witch, a heathen, and a member of a class of people whose lives are forfeit

…walk into a bar?
phisrow

@Jason Rizos: Evolution gets most of the attention; but they are already at war with other areas of science. Young Earthers, in particular, pretty much have to deny all aspects of geology beyond simple rock collecting, and all the physics needed for radioisotope dating.

For whatever reason, hating on relativity is pretty popular as well. In some cases, this is because they mistake “relativity” for “relativism”. In others, there is more than a bit of the old concern about jew physics.

The big one, and frankly, the one I’m surprised doesn’t attract more fire now, is neuroscience/psychology/psychiatry. Brain research hasn’t exactly expanded the space left for “soul” and other godbot favorites.

More generally, while some hardcore theists fall into the newtonian “laws of nature are god’s laws” school, a fair few believe in more or less constant divine action in the world. For them, any system of science predicated on observation of physical law is going to be ultimately unacceptable.
phisrow

For instance: “Folks, moral relativism is a big reason for the political support of types of relativity. It’s obviously relevant to this article, and the above criticism only reinforces the need to include a reference. We can debate how to say it, but censorship is not an option here. Go to Wikipedia for that.–Aschlafly 01:31, 5 April 2007 (EDT) ”

From The Conservapedia talk page for “Theory of Relativity”.(For those not familiar with this fine institution, it is Andrew Schafly’s bizzairo world version of wikipedia. Slightly to the left of metapedia and stormfront, far to the right of pretty much anything else.)
irrationalpoop

I have not, nor would I ever sneak into a movie.

The one time I stole an item, I fessed up and gave it back.

I would never steal a loaf of bread, even to feed my starving kids.

But this, friends, I would sneak into as often as possible just to subvert. They’d never have a dime from me.
mdh

Science is not (in the long run) a matter of belief, whose goalposts are moved to meet the whims of a fragile ego.
grimc

I understand there’s a dinosaur with a saddle near the lobby. If anybody in the area were to sit on it, dressed like Conan and waving a toy axe like a Frazetta painting, you would have the eternal gratitude of millions.
subheight640

They don’t attack psychology because, really, does anybody really know anything about psychology?? It’s too abstract, and doesn’t have enough hard evidence, to be a threat. Same with neuroscience; that field doesn’t have any hard evidence or extraordinary claims.

How the hell can young earther’s hate on relativity??? Relativity is used every day for GPS position calculation and spacecraft trajectory design and prediction. The theory has been “proven” to be “relatively” accurate :)
Anonymous

@ #6

I think Conan would win the internets.

~ c
benher

But they’re not at war with science – at least not with the things science has wrought. It’s that cherry-picking attitude that always burns me up.

Rules for a potential war between creationists and scientists should stipulate that each side be allowed to utilize the fruits of their endeavors over the centuries:
Bio-weapons, a-bombs, etc. for us and genitalia-covering fig leaves for them.
Shelby Davis

@SUBHEIGHT640:

Oh, trust me, psychology gets its fair share of attack. I got my share of flak when I announced I would be studying brains when I went to college, a statement that tended to cause friends and relatives to assume I would forever after be expounding on phalli and/or condoning the unregenerate behaviour of deviants and bratty children.

So in a sense, I agree with you: psychology-as-science is hardly attacked because psychology-as-science is almost unknown.
Tdawwg

That’s too Whiggish for my blood, Noen: science is a narrative, an incredibly useful narrative, but a narrative nevertheless.

Your take on postmodernism is a bad one: we’d be as likely to stress science’s usefulness and pragmatic value as much as its fictiveness, its institutional histories and worldviews, its rhetorics and metanarratives, etc. Whatever.
teufelsdroch

Noen @30 “Nope, sorry but the newtonian “laws of nature are god’s laws” school does not include Einstein or really any scientist today.”

Well, it includes me.

Einstein leaned toward deism:
“But, on the other hand, every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe â€” spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.”

Honestly, your comments seem wholly unlike the conversations I’ve had with fellow scientists about this. I think the consensus I’ve gathered is that BOTH sides of the creation/evolution debate are beneath them.

Scientists value originality and thoughtfulness. They derive their inspiration from highly varied and uniquely personal wells. Many have a lot of time to listen to thoughtful people who are concerned with doing good in the world.

The problem is how religion is treated in America. Evangelism, fundamentalism, and social activism characterize religion in this country. The reaction against these is equally warped.

But that’s not true everywhere. I think Pope John Paul got religion’s relation to science pretty much spot on.
Marchhare

FWIW, what the young-earthers believe is that no species has ancestors of another species. There is intra-species evolution.

This is why they’re obsessed with denying the existence of transitional fossils.
futbol789

This reminds me of the presidential campaign last year. Do you remember when McCain was making a fuss over how Obama earmarked money for a planetarium projector? I always thought that was wierd, but then I saw this Passage in Heinlein’s 1984 novel ‘Job: A comedy of errors’ (not meant to rehash campaign issues, it just jogged my memory at the time)
Â
The main character of the story is a rev. in his own world (he’s stuck sliding from world to world and culture to culture) and he’s relating some of his fundraising and lobbying exploits…
———————
“Another matter was a pet project of my own: the frustrating of astronomers.Â Few laymen realize what mischief astronomers are up to.Â I first noticed it when I was still in engineering school and took a course in descriptive astronomy under the requirements for breadth in each student’s program.Â Give an astronomer a bigger telescope and turn him loose, leave him unsupervised, and the first thing he does is to come down pestiferous half-baked guesses denying the ancient truths of Genesis.Â
Â
There is only one way to deal with this sort of nonsense: Hit them in the pocketbook! Redefine “educational” to exclude those colossal white elephants, astronomical observatories.Â Make the Naval Observatory the only one tax free, reduce its staff, and limit their activity to navigation.Â Some of the most blasphemous and subversive theories have come from tenured civil servants there who don’t have enough legitimate work to keep them busy.Â
Â
Self-styled “scientists” are usually up to no good, but astronomers are the worst of the lot.”
Takuan

I sincerely hope these amusement parks for the ignorant pay taxes.
doktorpaine

@benher: I agree completely. The creationists get to use the weapons that God created for them (i.e. rocks), and we get the ones science created.

Really, though, the very existence of such a museum makes me angry. Not because it’s a museum promoting Christian belief – I may be agnostic/skeptical/Zen, but I believe that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. So long as they don’t try to push those beliefs on others, which brings me to my point: What really bothers me are the outright lies and total anti-scientific misinformation that this place is blithely pushing forward.

But oh well. Free speech &c. I still think they should be forced to have some kind of disclaimer. “Warning: The material contained herein has no scientific basis whatsoever.” Though considering the crowd that one could expect to go there, that would probably be perfectly fine with most of their customers.
Marcel

#45 Ambiguous

One nation. indivisible

Fixed that for you Marcel. The “under god” bit was not in the original pledge.

You might have fixed it for me, but not for you. I do not come from a country that asks people to pledge allegiance to their flag, or God.
Tony Moore

@#74

i can say “Amen” to that, sir.
i’m a Kentuckian, born and raised, as is my aunt who wrote the AFP article, and the thought of this place’s undermining of basic scientific principle had me in arms enough to send this article in in the first place.

-T
Telephoneface

Evangelism, fundamentalism, and social activism characterize religion

I think this is a good point, and I would say the reason these groups are so outspoken and politically active is that they feel the gaps between science and religion closing and they take this as cue for a power struggle. Einstein famously said (or was famously misquoted) “God does not play dice” and the 20/21C ideas of the Big Bang and especially quantum dynamics and multidimensional m-theories express a confirmation from science that there is a hidden side to reality that could have a very real physical influence on the universe we live in. The Uncertainty Principle and certain elements of Fluid Dynamics also point to very real limits of classical scientific observation.

Hinduism for one has been quick to embrace these theories and their analogs in millenia-old Vedic texts. Of course ‘Hinduism’ seems to be a western term blanketing a wide variety of traditions and religious dialogs rather than a single orthodox set of religious beliefs a la Christianity.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  a single orthodox set of religious beliefs a la Christianity.
  
  Mormons? Catholics? Snake-handlers? Hitler’s Positive Christianity? Revolutionary Christianity in Latin America?
Anonymous

Every time I see this nonsense, I’m actually glad of my Catholic upbringing. Unlike many other Christian denominations, the Vatican accepts evolution as a valid scientific theory and description of the biological world. We were taught that Genesis is a creation myth like any other. (Just, you know… better.) The result on public education in Alberta: The Catholic kids learn about evolution pretty rigorously, while the kids in public school often don’t learn about it until university, if at all.

So to ye Albertan skeptic parents: go get the kid baptized; it can’t hurt, and you get a much better science education for your tax dollars. Besides which, mandatory religion class is the best way to make a really committed atheist.
Tony Moore

@#54, not that Christianity itself is all that uniform or homogenized as far as belief systems go…

-T
Darren Garrison

“No I am not.”

Yes, you are.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=off&num=100&q=hypothesis+%22educated+guess%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&fp=3nqBDGAi0gc

http://www.scientificmethod.com/bklet/i_07.htm

“The “God hypothesis” is not a scientific hypothesis because gods or spirits are defined as existing beyond any possible natural mechanism. A true scientific hypothesis is not a question, it is a statement in the form of: IF X THEN Y.”

A hypothesis is indeed phrased as a statement, not a question. The rest of “the scientific method” is then used in an attempt to prove or disprove that hypothesis. “God did it” is a testable hypothesis IF you clearly define “god” and how to prove or disprove the activities of said god or gods. The problem comes in when you are using a definition of a god that is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and that might have created the universe with the illusion of age for whatever reason. If the rest of the steps of the scientific method are used honestly, well framed god hypothesisisii can be tested. The problem comes from religious groups defining a priori that nothing that contradicts the bible can be true and rejecting the whole of the scientific method.

http://www.icr.org/tenets/

http://www.answersingenesis.org/about/faith

http://www.reasons.org/about-us/our-beliefs?main

http://www.creationresearch.org/stmnt_of_belief.htm
Bugs

For any Brits tempted to laugh at the Americans, we have at least one creationist attraction of our own: Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm. It pitches itself to local schools etc. as an ordinary zoo / open farm, stressing its integration into the national curriculum for school trips. But if you follow the small link to “creation research”, you’re suddenly in a completely different world, where it proudly claims to be dedicated to teaching kids that evolution is a lie. I haven’t been myself, but have been told that signs and info boards around the park consistently attack evolution through strawman arguments, aimed at the children. Some of the primary school teachers I’ve met are scarily bad at science and probably couldn’t explain to their class why the signs in the zoo are bullshit; the idea of school trips going to this place sickens and scares me.

@Jason Rizos and @benher:
They’re at war with all science. The entire point of the scientific method is that you can’t cherry-pick evidence. Once it’s established that the current interpretation of god’s word can over-rule evidence and logic, the entire game is over. When evidence is secondary to susperstition then, at best, we’d be back at alchemy.
empirechick

sigh… evolution vs. creation – this has never been an issue for me, because Sister Mary Terrance explained it in 6th grade science class: why can’t BOTH be true?

Her explanation:
Yes, the Bible says God created the earth in 7 days, but who’s to say they were 24-hour days as we understand them? God has exisited for all eternity – to him, billions of years are like single days.

I’m sure Noen is going to jump all over this one, but it works for me.
PaulR

Jason Rizos @ 1:
“Hypothetically speaking, where do you suppose the Fundies go next to wage their next strike in the War on Science?”

They’d claim that the mustard IS “less than all the seeds that be in the earth”. So much for the bagels from St-Viateur Bagels, with either poppy or sesame seed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9Xhq1Sj85s
(Me? It’s white, unless it’s with lox and cream cheese, then black is good.)
Mattz

Given the fact that I can pop down to my university’s labs and actually make evolution happen with bacteria (or if no one’s watching, I’m sure we’ve got some mice/rats that I can make a longer running project out of) in a petri dish in front of me, I really wish people would stop interpreting these books literally. Quod erat demonstrandum.
I have no problem with the idea of a God who was there, nudging the odds in favor of this single cell developing a mitochondria, these three ganging up together to eat these other cells who didn’t work together and so forth. It fits nicely with my world view (oh the irony!) of while, yes there maybe is something that could be defined as a God, he’s a distant gardener, carefully pruning away the bits that will ruin his chances at the village’s Best Garden competition, not the fallback father you turn to when life doesn’t work out the way you want or something scares you.
If He has a problem with this, I suggest he get out the cosmic pruning shears and take it up with me personally :)
Marcel

One nation, under God, indivisible
Richard Kirk

Tony sez: “I had the doubly good fortune of living just a stone’s throw away.”

Doubly good fortune? What was the other bit? Having a large garden full of stones, maybe?
Filekutter

Underlying their deceptively calm, calculated presentation is a foundation of intolerance and hate. You either agree with the conclusions exhibited or you are the enemy; a witch, a heathen, and a member of a class of people whose lives are forfeit. This is an extremely sneaky and highly dangerous tactic being used by fundamentalists of every religion around the world. After enough people are converted the gloves will come off, and the rhetoric will change to fear-mongering, and attacks on life-styles, and belief systems. These people are seeking control of whole societies and not to be considered quaint and fringe. Instead, look at how many are already represented in politics, and movements within social structures around the world, and the levels of violence and intimidation used without guilt or restraint.
hokano

I think evolution draws particular attention from theists because it negates one of the central psychological benefits of their belief system. That is, the belief that humans are a special creation of a god, separate from and superior to the rest of the natural world.

Theists are, like the rest of us, highly social primates with a keen awareness of where they fit in a hierarchy. It’s unsurprising that large numbers of them would be unwilling to give up a belief that they sit very near the top of the universal ladder. Even if all evidence indicates that that belief is a fallacy.
Anonymous

Expensive but peaceful displays of dinos with saddles.

I suppose if science wasn’t the target, the alternative would be a museum on why their flavor of christianity is superior to all other christianities, and all other beliefs.

That could cause violence and war.
flytch

science does NOT exclude god… in fact it proves there is a god to me… but these guys just say that god is dumb and has failed at “his” game many times… angry unhappy and down right childish god who only creates so he can play sim’s with man on a world scale…
it’s very sad, really…
Talia

Rather than funny I find this sort of thing absolutely horrifying and frightening. I would never give these “people” a single penny of my money.

#12 free speech is great but, for example, teaching the kind of poisonous lies this museum embraces to children is abhorrent and dangerous for the future of the country. Not to mention its a strike against logic and rationality (oh no, the horror of using one’s brain. THE HORROR!!).
Anonymous

I just wanted to say this silly little museum doesn’t reflect the views of everybody in Kentucky. We all don’t think that man rode a Triceratops and a Giant Hand created everything.
I’ve been there and they could have better used the space, like a park.
On a lighter note, my captcha says de-thinking
noen

“Condoning the unregenerate behaviour of deviants and bratty children.” is what this web site is all about.

Jason
“Hypothetically speaking, where do you suppose the Fundies go next to wage their next strike in the War on Science?”

No need to hypothesize , all we have to do is look at their published curricula in which every aspect of modern science and culture is attacked, including mathematics. Anthropology and sociology also are vehemently attacked. Basically, they would like to turn the clock back to the 19th century when all science and culture was absolute and glorified military and cultural imperialism.

But math? Many years ago I came across and Ph.D. thesis written by some idiot in a Bible College. It seemed to be written some a child, at least to me, but his main gripe was set theory. Because you see, set theory talks about infinite sets and how some are bigger than others and in general it reasons about them. That didn’t sit well with this author because it’s WRONG to reason about God.
noen

@ flytch
“science does NOT exclude god…”

Yes it does. When science is done correctly it excludes any and all considerations of the existence of gods, spirits, demons, ghosts or any other such entities. Science is the rejection of the spiritual as explanatory of the world around us. Science and faith can live happily side by side… just as long as the wall between them is high and strong.

It is possible to believe in a god, or to have some kind of faith and still do science or accept scientific truths. Only as long as your faith is vague and nonspecific though. As soon as your belief system says something concrete like “the world is 6000 years old” or “the Bible is a historical document” then you’re in trouble because science, which just means “knowledge”, says that both of those statements are wrong.
teufelsdroch

@3 “More generally, while some hardcore theists fall into the newtonian “laws of nature are god’s laws” school…”

Members of that school would include Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and Ben Franklin. Pretty damn good school.

@22 “Science is the rejection of the spiritual as explanatory of the world around us.”

You mean the natural world? Because science has nothing to say about the moral world, or about interactions between people.

More broadly, science never answers why things happen. It describes events and therefore allows you to make predictions of future events in the same context.

Religion is based on the notion that there are universally true, unchanging moral rules. It also attempts to ask why nature is like it is. Neither is within the scope of science.
buddy66

I thought God did all that heavy lifting in 6 days, and then he fucked off on the 7th. Seems like he’s been fucking off ever since, eh? (using my new Canadian voice) Maybe the effort killed him. Any of you Xians seen him lately?
Darren Garrison

#1 Jason Rizos: take a look at the Wedge Document:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
AirPillo

It’s not really about believing that things are exactly as Genesis says, as much as it’s about people not bloody understanding what the hell Genesis is. The hostile, science-hating creationists are people who completely ignore countless statements by Christ warning against literal, legalistic interpretations of scripture and believe Genesis is a literal, word-for-word, verbatim description of the exact nature of the creation of Earth and the universe and that disagreement with one single literal word of what it says is blasphemy.

The problem isn’t necessarily in their faith, it’s in their single-mindedness, dogma, and lack of biblical understanding.
Darren Garrison

More on Wedge:

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2006-02-01/news/discovery-s-creation/
buddy66

a witch, a heathen, and a member of a class of people whose lives are forfeit

…walk into a bar?

Made my day!
wizardofplum

#69 You have identified the enigma-where can I see a”transitional fossil”?You say they exist,so show me!I can’t show you “His Nibs”,does He qualify as a transitional fossil?Help me here.
mdh

Buddy, I figure it’s still the 7th day, so I take it easy.
noen

teufelsdroch
“Members of that school would include Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and Ben Franklin. Pretty damn good school.”

Nope, sorry but the newtonian “laws of nature are god’s laws” school does not include Einstein or really any scientist today. It is true that in the 19th century physics was thought to be “God’s own Laws” but we now know that is false. You can probably thank Ludwig Boltzmann for that.

“Because science has nothing to say about the moral world, or about interactions between people.”

Science has a lot to say about interactions between people and frankly I deny that any “moral world” exists. I draw a distinction between morality, rule or laws proscripted by your religion, and ethics, the philosophical principles of right and wrong that are accepted by an individual or a social group. There is some overlap because intelligent people over the centuries have thought about how people ought to behave and then sought to justify their ideas by making an appeal to their faith.

“More broadly, science never answers why things happen.”

It absolutely explains why things happen. If you want to know why certain chemicals combine in such and such a manner you ask a chemist, not a priest. If you want to know why people sometimes behave the way they do you ask psychologist or an anthropologist, not a priest. If you want to know why your machine doesn’t run you ask an engineer, not a priest. If you want to understand anything at all of the world ask a scientist, not a priest.

“Religion is based on the notion that there are universally true, unchanging moral rules.”

No, religion declares that moral laws are universally true because God says so. That is the only justification ever given for “God’s Laws”. If your religion says there are unchanging moral rules then that is false. All we need to do is to observe that many “moral” rules as practiced by humanity contradict each other. Even within the same religion what is considered “morally absolute based on God’s unchanging truth” has itself changed over time.

“It also attempts to ask why nature is like it is. Neither is within the scope of science.”

Why nature is the way it is is most certainly within the scope of scientific investigation. That’s what they’re doing at CERN these days. That’s what theoretical physicists and cosmologists do everyday. And while morality is not within the purview of science, religious laws never are, ethics very much is.
Tdawwg

Huh, Noen, I’d thought science was merely testing hypotheses for their relative value in interpreting visible phenomena. So “scientific” hypotheses don’t invalidate “religious” ones: they’re merely more practical, simpler, involve less the-universe-rides-on-the-back-of-a-giant-tortoise reasoning, etc. But the God hypothesis could could theoretically still be proven correct, however impossible: it’s just extremely unlikely, given our current hypotheses and theories about how the world works. There could be a huge sentient world-bearing tortoise hiding behind Einstein, Boltzmann et al., however the much data points in the opposite direction. So invalidate practically and pragmatically: but totally, no.

Religion’s just another hypothesis, after all: one that’s been given the millennial weight of tradition and that has the glitter of the numinous and all that, but it’s just another model for making our world intelligible. It’s science, in another word. The problem is that it’s laughably bad science when compared to that science currently privileged by centuries of empirical observation, hypothesis testing, etc. Religious folks who forget the anthropological-cultural origins of religion tend to miss this part, enamored as they are of the spiritual side: but it’s just another hypothesis, a quite beautiful and generally quite useless one.

I think Teufelsdroch was stating his or her questions in the absolute sense: science does tell us the “why” of things in the sense of “how,” the mechanics of the phenomenal world. But as to the telelogical or theological “why,” science doesn’t have much to say, except to perhaps suggest there isn’t much of a religious “why” at all, just materialism, atoms, matter, etc.