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 Ken Ham's Flying Circus update.
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filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 05/22/2005 :  13:50:30  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message
It looks like it'll be another 2 years before we can observe the Creation Museum in all of it's fictional glory.
quote:
PETERSBURG, Ky. (AP) - Ken Ham has spent 11 years working on a museum that poses the big question - when and how did life begin? Ham hopes to soon offer an answer to that question in his still-unfinished Creation Museum in northern Kentucky.

The $25 million monument to creationism offers Ham's view that God created the world in six, 24-hour days on a planet just 6,000 years old. The largest museum of its kind in the world, it hopes to draw 600,000 people from the Midwest and beyond in its first year.

Ham, 53, isn't bothered that his literal interpretation of the Bible runs counter to accepted scientific theory, which says Earth and its life forms evolved over billions of years.

Ham said the museum is a way of reaching more people along with the Answers in Genesis Web site, which claims to get 10 million page views per month and his "Answers ... with Ken Ham" radio show, carried by more than 725 stations worldwide.


A busy man, our Kenny, and I think his 'museum' is going to be a rousing success. How can it miss when it has this pious huckster reccommending it?
quote:
"When that museum is finished, it's going to be Cincinnati's No. 1 tourist attraction," says the Rev. Jerry Falwell, nationally known Baptist evangelist and chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. "It's going to be a mini-Disney World."


Of course, there are dissenters and other spoil-sports, filled with sour grapes, every man-jack/jill of them:
quote:
Many mainstream scientists worry that creationist theology masquerading as science will have an adverse effect on the public's science literacy.

"It's a giant step backward in science education," says Carolyn Chambers, chair of the biology department at Xavier University, which is operated by the Jesuit order of the Catholic church.

Glenn Storrs, curator of vertebrate paleontology for the Cincinnati Museum Center, leads dinosaur excavations in Montana each summer. He said the theory of dinosaurs and man coexisting is a "non-issue."

"And so, I believe, is the age of the Earth," Storrs said. "It's very clear the Earth is much older than 6,000 years."

The Rev. Mendle Adams, pastor of St. Peter's United Church of Christ in Pleasant Ridge, takes issue with Ham's views - and the man himself.

"He takes extraordinary liberties with Scripture and theology to prove his point," Adams said. "The bottom line is, he is anti-gay, and he uses that card all the time."


The problem with the dissent is that they don't shout loud enough to be heard. When they should be blowing the doors off Ham's house of hokum, with racous gales of disrespectful laughter, they make calm statements that, however factual and accurate, are simply not listened to. It is not enough to be correct; they must also speak at least as stridently as the Creationists. Only in that way might thoughtless sufferers of intellectual myopia begin to pay attention. Reason, logic, and hard evidence certainly aren't working.
quote:
"He is promoting the religion and science of 350 years ago," says Plimer. "He's a far better communicator than most mainstream scientists."

Despite his communication skills, Ham admits he doesn't always make a good first impression. But, that doesn't stop him from trying to spread his beliefs.

"He'd be speaking 20 hours a day if his body would let him," said Mike Zovath, vice president of museum operations.

Ham's wife of 32 years agrees. "He finds it difficult talking about things apart from the ministry," Mally Ham says. "He doesn't shut off."

Ham said he has no choice but to speak out about what he believes.

"The Lord gave me a fire in my bones," Ham says. "The Lord has put this burden in my heart: 'You've got to get this information out.'"


I, my camera and my notebook, will visit this midway freakshow when it's completed. I've no doubt that it will be a very interesting, attractive, and smoothly presented package. Vastly more absorbing and entertaining than some stogey, old Natural History exibits.



"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

Dude
SFN Die Hard

USA
6891 Posts

Posted - 05/22/2005 :  14:25:30   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Dude a Private Message
quote:
I, my camera and my notebook, will visit this midway freakshow when it's completed. I've no doubt that it will be a very interesting, attractive, and smoothly presented package. Vastly more absorbing and entertaining than some stogey, old Natural History exibits.



We should organize an SFN group tour.


Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson

"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin

Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth
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filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 05/23/2005 :  02:27:26   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Dude

quote:
I, my camera and my notebook, will visit this midway freakshow when it's completed. I've no doubt that it will be a very interesting, attractive, and smoothly presented package. Vastly more absorbing and entertaining than some stogey, old Natural History exibits.



We should organize an SFN group tour.



Yes, it would certainly be fun...

But where to start? Whilst looking for something else, I'm damned if I didn't come across another one, one I hadn't heard of.
quote:
Would you Adam 'n' Eve it ... dinosaurs in Eden

Paul Harris in Eureka Springs, Arkansas
Sunday May 22, 2005
The Observer

The razor-toothed Tyrannosaurus rex, jaws agape, loomed ominously over the gentle Thescelosaurus, looking for plants to eat. Admiring the museum diorama were old and young visitors, listening on headphones to a stentorian voice describing the primeval scene.
But the Museum of Earth History is a museum with a controversial difference. To one side, peering through the bushes, are Adam and Eve. The display is not an image of the Cretaceous. It is Paradise. 'They lived together without fear, for there was no death yet,' the voice intoned about Man and Dinosaur.

Nestling deep in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas, in the heart of America's Bible Belt, this is the first dinosaur museum to take a creationist perspective. Already thousands of people have flocked to its top-quality exhibits which mix high science with fundamentalist theology that few serious scientists accept.


I find it a distressing state of affairs that so many (45%) people are unwilling to examine the evidence. It's rather like believing that if they don't see it, it's not there. All you have to do is become or remain intellectually blind and the uncomfortable facts will cease to exist. And they are gleefully aided in this stupidity by Ham and Hovind (who also has a dino park of sorts), and others of the ilk.

To belabor the obvious, forty five percent, give or take a couple, is a large chunk of the population of the US. It is impossible to write them off as not having much influence on science because that percentage contains persons that, for good or ill, do have influence, and a considerable amount of it. The moronic Bush, for example.

And of all these Bible-mongers seem to have a money tree, or an orchard of them, growing in the back yard.

So I wonder; whereaway from here? Dembski got properly burned in KS, but that school board will, I'm convinced, bring his blithering into the classroom. Ham's project is still two years out, but it's already being vigorously shilled. Hovind's hole-in-the-wall, with laminated Chick tracts in the heads, at last report, prospers. As does this Arkansas one, if the article is accurate. And they are increasing their numbers like bacteria in a culture.
quote:
Even as America's scientists make advances in palaeontology, astronomy and physics that appear to disprove creationism, Gallup surveys have shown that about 45 per cent of Americans believe the Earth was created by God within the past 10,000 years. It is not just creationism either. Last week NBC's Dateline current affairs programme, equivalent to the BBC's Newsnight, investigated miracles. It concluded some could be real. It is hard to imagine Jeremy Paxman taking this stance.

That wellspring of popular belief, and the political clout that comes with it, is the inspiration behind the museum. It is not interested in debating with mainstream science. It simply wants to represent the view of a significant slice of America. 'We want people to see that finally they have something that addresses their beliefs, to show that we do have a voice,' said Thomas Sharp, business director of Creation Truth, the religious group that co-founded the museum.

No expense was spared. The fossil casts, which range from a Triceratops skull to an 18ft-long Albertosaurus (a relative to T. rex), could easily grace London's Natural History Museum. Plans for a much bigger museum in Dallas are advanced. 'We would love to open in the United Kingdom if the right partner showed up,' Sharp said.


Dude, perhaps our group tour will have to stand in line with grade school field trips.


"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

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filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 05/23/2005 :  11:26:44   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message
And yet more tripe from AiG:
quote:

If dinosaurs could talk …

This animated T. rex will appear in the museum lobby, side-by-side with children.
by Michael Matthews, Creation Museum scriptwriter

If only dinosaurs could speak.

Held hostage for nearly two-hundred years by the enemies of God, several dinosaurs are now free to set the record straight. No more lies. No more false testimony. No more propaganda.

Combining the “magic” of modern technology and the truth of God's Word, AiG's Creation Museum has discovered the secret to bringing dinosaurs “back to life.” A sauropod, a T. rex, a dinosaur raptor, a triceratops—these are just a few of the dinosaurs that you'll meet in the completed museum.

Their “sworn testimony” will astound the world.

The truth-telling begins in the lobby, where guests come face to face with a pair of young T. rex dinosaurs, living alongside Adam's children.

The first room in the Creation Museum will show paleontologists digging up a dinosaur raptor.

Animated young T. rexes in the lobby: “Of course we lived at the same time as humans! God made dinosaurs on the same day as Adam. And later we drank from the same waters as Adam's children.”

Yeesh!


"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

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R.Wreck
SFN Regular

USA
1191 Posts

Posted - 05/23/2005 :  14:40:23   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send R.Wreck a Private Message
The stunning ignorance of these buffoons is itself their best argument against evolution. There just doesn't seem to be much advancement happening over in the shallow end of the gene pool.

The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley

The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion
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tkster
Skeptic Friend

USA
193 Posts

Posted - 05/24/2005 :  11:58:48   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send tkster a Private Message
quote:
"It's going to be a mini-Disney World."


No, it's not. Although there is a lot of interest in science, there's not that much. Kids are much more interested in having fun, than learning about when Dinos lived. Sure, it will effect the people who already agree with this view, but have little or no impact on those who study.

Besides, it doesn't matter how young you get kids to believe in this nonsense, they are going to college someday and college is what really challenges you. I didn't make it through college as a Christian, and I seriously doubt these kids will. Last time I checked the statistics pointed to around 75% of Christian kids growing up in Christian homes lost their faith the first year of college.

All that stuff AiG is doing is believable when you're five, much like Santa or the Tooth Fairy, but as these kids get older, they'll realize the problems. At this point in time, I'm not worried what AiG is doing or what they think they'll accomplish.

tk
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 05/24/2005 :  13:08:07   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by tkster

quote:
"It's going to be a mini-Disney World."
No, it's not.
Yes, it is. It is going to be precisely like Disney World, "a world of magic," using high-tech gizmos to bring that "enchantment" to life. The parallels are astounding and obvious.

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
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