To continue my rants into the idiosyncrasies of religious belief, here’s a real treat.
Such is the slogan of the $27 million creation museum in Kentucky, which is something of an embarrassment for the US scientific community. It’s easy for atheists and non Bible Belt Christians to laugh, but the “museum’s” calculated merging of religion and science is dangerously misleading, and is aimed at brainwashing its younger visitors into believing that science is able to substantiate Christian doctrine. The fact that the museum was even built is testament to the influence of groups such as its parent, Answers in Genesis. And $27 million! Think of the good that a Christian organisation could have done! This religion constantly urges us to extend the hand of aid to our less fortunate brothers, but where is the charity in this monstrosity of a building? Its hand is busy misleading and brainwashing young minds into believing a hypothesis whose only evidence is located in an age-old, outdated book written by MEN. Since we fell from grace, aren’t all men faliable?
It’s a good job scientists aren’t religious fanatics; if they were, the museum would suffer from more than protesters with innocuous paper signs. I am no scientist, but I have great respect for its practices. Without science, man would still be in the dark ages, worshiping some animalistic deity. Scientific Method is the only way to provide proof of the origin of existence. Think how far we’ve come since Copernicus and Galileo. With knowledge comes power, but also understanding. Why did God order Eve and Adam not to eat of the Tree? Because it would give them the power of autonomy, the ability to make up their own minds. God is by nature a tyrant. Tyrants want to oppress those beneath them, and one way of doing so is to forbid all forms of knowledge that might help the oppressed to become free-thinking individuals.
Science is part of this knowledge. The evidence provided has helped throw off the shackles of religion until secularism is perfectably acceptabe and is the neutral standpoint to adopt.
The creation museum is cherry-picking its scientific elucidations in order to validate some of the Bible’s more unlikely “facts”. Take for instance the Grand Canyon, carved out by the Flood:
Or the strange application of Natural Selection:
Tennyson might be quite interested to see how his words have been put to use. (‘Nature, red with tooth and claw’, In Memoriam, 1850).
The museum even descends into attacking the Pill, which has freed thousands of women from the financial, physical and emotional burden of unwanted children:
The “evils” of the secular world include gay marriage, abortion and evolution taught in schools. To think of it! A substantiated, well researched argument that goes a long way to explaining how humanity came to be. Of course, it necessarily contradicts the existence of god, which is never a good thing for the religious authoritarians who have exercised the use and abuse of power for centuries.
There are some excellent reports about the museum, as well as a first hand account of an American’s visit, complete with photos! The BBC report inerviews the guy in charge, who actually believes that the Bible is the ‘be all and end all’ authority on life. As well as another who genuinely thinks that the first humans played alongside dinosaurs and treated velocorapters as pets. Where did we go wrong?
Ah yes. Of course.
Filed under: News, Opinions | Tagged: Atheism, God, News, Opinion, Religion
>>”And $27 million! Think of the good that a Christian organisation could have done!”
Scientists sink silly money into ridiculous things all the time. Someone set up a phone line where dog owners could phone up and have their dog bark into the phone so they could study whether or not dogs have regional accents. Had these researchers not heard of cancer, or AIDS?
I agree entirely with you on the issues of the pill, gay marriage, abortion, and evolution being taught in schools. On other points you’re taking a snippy tone that strays dangerously close to the kind of evangelical atheism I’ve always had a real problem with.
Hi Lucy. I enjoyed your post. And “cherry picking” elucidations to verify their argument…sounds like one of my essays…
It doesn’t sound like the dog thing was directly detrimental to anyone, whereas I think the museum with its kid-grabbing animatronics is deliberately misleading. It’s quite subtle the way in which they indoctrinate: thru fun and games which children are naturally drawn to. I agree with you, of course, about research into AIDS and cancer – far more commendable than dog experiements (I am a cat person anyway). There are idiots in every profession.
As for my tone, I thought it quite restrained! I assure you that I am far from evangelical (which is why I tend to reserve my infrequent rants for the internet where no one is forced to listen to me). But as I say, it occasionally becomes too much to cope with and I spew forth a tirade. Atheists should speak out for themselves, but shouldn’t form anything that resembles a religion, as it would seem a tad hypocritical. Atheism is not a religion. It’s a state of mind.
And Wil, I take that last bit as a compliment.
Excellent post, as usual…
In reference to Matt’s response….I think that it is the duty of atheists to kick up a fuss when something like this happens. The live and let live approach is fine when it’s just someone going to church, but when religious people are presenting scientific falsehoods as fact they are causing harm to the people who trust them. If we don’t condemn this kind of action then it will go untested and countless people will grow up with a very flawed understanding of the universe. Just because they aren’t killing anyone with this museum of ignorance doesn’t mean they aren’t causing considerable damage to society.
I think that the standard Christian response to ‘Men wrote the Bible and men are flawed so maybe the Bible is as well’ is something along the lines of ‘The men who wrote the Bible were inspired by God and so they wrote what God wanted them to write’….same goes for the editing of the Bible in the 4thC.
I think it’s very telling that many Christians (especially of the evangelical variety) are taught to be suspicious of science. It’s almost bred into them to reject anything that ’scientists’ (said in the same tone you would use when calling a Sun reporter a journalist) say… The very word ’science’ literally means ‘knowledge’, and if you are being told to steer clear of knowledge something is very suspect. In no other aspect of life is knowing nothing considered a good thing, why should it apply to things that contradict biblical teachings? This is presumably the question that has prompted this stain on the earth…
oh golly…i don’t mean to say your post sounds like one of my essays (your critical voice is far superior to mine Lucy) i mean cherry picking single points to make an argument sounds like one of my essays….dont you hate explaining jokes…especially when they were self deprecating ones…
Sorry if I came off a bit snippy myself. Your tone comes across as a little superior because you’re writing from what you consider to be a superior viewpoint – there’s nothing you can do about it and I shouldn’t chew you out for doing so.
What I was trying to say was something like this. This museum is teaching visitors a particular viewpoint, one that its founders believe to be true. It’s unfair to use words like ‘brainwashing’ with all the negative connotations that brings; they aren’t sitting in their boardroom asking each other “what can we make the gullible little children believe today,” I like to hope they’re acting with the best of intentions.
Museums that teach scientific fact are still institutions that teach visitors a particular viewpoint. To you and me, that fact has more validity, because we put a lot of stock in scientific method, proof and justification. To you and me, “an age-old, outdated book” isn’t a good enough source, but you have to accept that there are people that take the Bible as being just as valid as a mathematical proof. They’re allowed to think that – it’s one of the wonders of free speech.
It’s not like they’re deliberately falsifying proof to support their own hypotheses, either. Perhaps there was a flood that covered the planet, and perhaps the Grand Canyon is evidence of that. You don’t have to believe the flood was the will of the Creator to open yourself up to the possibility that it happened. With faith in God you can actually lick your elbow. That last bit isn’t true but I figure it doesn’t matter because nobody’s going to wade through the whole of this comment, they’re only going to skim the bits at the beginning and the end. And the natural selection thing looks, to me, like a considered effort to square current scientific understanding with Christian doctrine – something I would have thought you’d be all in favour of.
All I’m taking issue with is the ‘religious = bad’ conclusion you seem to have jumped to. The objectives of this museum are no different from those of the scientific community, the main difference being that you don’t agree with what they’re teaching. You’re confusing “all right-thinking people” with “all people who think like I do”. Without such a wide variety of opinions knocking about, we’d be a much less diverse and interesting society, and we’d have a lot less to debate about. We’d all have a better time of it if we all tried to see things from the other side’s point of view.
Some things you can do with $27 million:
Buy 48 million cans of Coca Cola
Build 135000 wells in poor regions of Africa
Give 130000 laptops to children in developing countries http://www.laptopfoundation.org/
Buy 2700 Cars
Give 540 families enough money for a year
Build 1 museum about creationism
Make your choice!
But anyway, I’m a proponent of “religion = bad”, though I’m liberal in the fact that I don’t mind people practicing it, as long as they don’t try to force people to believe fundamentalist dogma.
Even not using science, they’ve proved the Earth to be at LEAST 10,000 years old, which is 4,000 years older than this museum says!
Oh, and the Grand Canyon was formed because the Colorado River runs through it, and eroded it over millions of years.