The now world famous Creation Museum is about 15 minutes from Kagin Manor. I feel as though I have been placed in a missionary field to help save thinking people, and especially children, from this amazing attempt to return to the Dark Ages.
You can learn about it here:
http://creationmuseum.org/
It is run by an outfit called Answers in Genesis. You can learn about it here:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/
At the oxymoronic Creation Museum, thousands of innocent people, including many children, are actually taught to believe that the Earth is only 6,000, or so, years old. Their slogan is “Prepare to Believe.” Note that it is not, “Prepare to Learn.” This is not a church. This is a money making theme park that is helping to make us an ignorant people.
Since the opening day of the Creation Museum, that I met with an organized protest, I have encouraged people to go see this dog and pony show. In the proper frame of looking at things, this operation is truly hysterically funny. They even have a model dinosaur, complete with saddle, for children to ride. Maybe Jesus road into Jerusalem on one.
Here is a wonderful web site documenting and discussing our protest on the opening day:
http://www.edwinkagin.com/RALLY_4_REASON/rally4reason.html
Everyone involved in freethought, or who has any interest whatsoever in saving our future through reason, not superstition, should visit the Creation Museum.
You need to see it, and encourage others to see it, because it is, in its panoramas of Bronze Age creation myths, far worse than you think. You really need to see what a true threat this operation creates to the continuing process of the human race.
An even greater danger underpins the mythical systems of religions. This is the belief that science, evidence, and proof are meaningless when confronted by faith. If the question is between science and religious teachings, science loses. Such is the argument of Answers in Genesis, made manifest in its Creation Museum. If the data do not support the belief, discard the data. Simple.
Creationism, aka Intelligent Design, is offered by its evangelists as an alternative to the Fact of Evolution. Creationism is not an alternative to evolution. The only alternative to Evolution is ignorance.
Please do not whine that you don’t want to give these people money. Of course you don’t. Neither do I. But this is a false analysis. Education is costly. If you want to know what they are doing, and expose their dangers to others, you need to spend a bit of money to do so. For the amount of useful information you can obtain by a visit to the Creation Museum, it is wonderfully inexpensive.
Visitors to the fancy fool’s vision of history have frequently frequented Kagin Manor. There are two guest rooms, the Bates Motel Room and the End of the Hall Room. Comfort cat available. If you are interested in a visit, and if your manners be sound, and you can survive the spoon count upon departure, feel free to request accommodations. References required. Fundies are everywhere.
Edwin
Copyright 2012 by Edwin Kagin.
I know this option will not be possible for everyone, but I and a couple of friends managed to visit without handing over any cash. On Christmas Eve, the Creation Museum is free to visit (or has been in years past). To me, this institution is one that would be hilarious if it weren’t so appalling.
And even the Creation Museum isn’t conservative enough for some folks. At a display talking about how the Flood provided all the material for all of our current fossil fuels, I heard a woman telling her little girl that really God simply created all the oil and coal during Creation and that the whole process of something becoming fuel wasn’t necessary.
This is a quote from the Creation Museum web page “Enjoy the wonders of God’s Creation as you uncover what natural selection can and cannot do. In this special exhibit, examine an aquarium that resembles a real cave. This cave aquarium features live blind cavefish, showing how natural selection allows organisms to possess characteristics most favorable for a given environment—but it is not an example of evolution in the molecules-to-man sense. You’ll also uncover the truth about antibiotic resistant bacteria.”
So, they seem to accept natural selection but simply refuse to believe everything that follows from it. They simply state an outrageous lie: that this example of evolution by natural selection is not evolution by natural selection.
How difficult it must be to live with a mind that works this way. How to such people actually function?
RAG
I think you will find that they differentiate between what they pretend are separate concepts, micro- and macro-evolution. Dog was created, cat was created etc. but Poodle/German Shepherd and Manx/Siamese evolved from the created stock.
Can’t really be any other way can it? – given that the earth is only just over six thousand years old.
We should trickle in one at a time, join the tour groups, and raise our hands to ask questions. Record the questions and answers, and give them to the next person to walk in, so that person can ask better questions and follow-up questions, or point out the logical fallacies. If the questions were ignored, discuss methods of getting around it. Allow the method to evolve with each successive tour. Focus on getting other members of the tour group to pay attention to you or ask similar questions.
Repeat until the tour guides break down with frustration.
My guess is that you were the sort of kid that used to scream his fucking ass off in front of the grocery store door because his mom wouldn’t let him ride the mechanical horse.
Why are you so obsessed with the dinosaur?
My guess is you were the sort of teenager who thought lacking any enthusiasm was cool. When do you plan on getting interesting?
He who can blogs. He who cannot comments.
No one’s obsessed with the dinosaur- we’re obsessed with teaching children the reality of how the world works. Why aren’t you?
If you happen to be in Canada you can check out our very own Creation Science Museum in Alberta:
http://www.bvcsm.com/
We have some crazy here too.
usingreason: Thank you for making my afternoon a bit worse. I usually have a little smug Canadian-ness to shield me from the worst of the wingnuttery – “Hey, look what’s happening in the U.S., at least it’s not that bad up here”. Of course, my smugness is not justified. 20 minutes on the Big Valley Science Creation Musuem site cured me of most of my unjustified Canadian superiority complex.
Twenty minutes in a row? You’re a better person than I am; anything past 5 is praiseworthy.
It is a hoot! I think everyone should go. It is very entertaining and informative, that is for sure!
Yes, the Creation Museum is a horrible place, and truly a “must-see” for anyone seeking to understand why fundamentalism is a threat to our society. If you haven’t seen it- you don’t have a clue.
Edwin doesn’t bite- although he may nibble your ears. This would be a good trip for anyone in the free-thought movement, alone or in small groups. I went with PZ Myers, and was totally dumbfounded.
I’d like to visit a place that had “panoramas of Bronze Age creation myths”; such a place, however, would not have dinosaurs (nineteenth century) in them, nor would they be based on any of the creation stories (Iron Age) found in the Bible. The flood story, of course, has Bronze Age roots, but the Noah story has we have it belongs to the Persian period, and even the older of the two versions from which it was compiled is not likely to predate the tenth century BCE.
Lorax
I was going to say something to you but somehow got distracted and came back and wrote to Edwin but never changed the reply.
I don’t know if I like you very much or not from what I read, but I do love the way you think.
Take your thinking beyond the Creation Museum. It has little influence on christianity or conservatism and serves as but a soft target for athiest gunslinging.
Actually, it does have one other rewarding feature–there’s this triceretops with a saddle that Secular Senior Citizens (SSC) seem to love riding. I understand the “museum” staff has had to pull them off a time or two.
Bollocks.
The creation museum represents precisely what American Christian conservatives want children to learn as science in school. Young Earth creationism is particularly prevalent in conservative denominations, and represents the views of about 44% of the US population.
This is pointless.
For both of us.
There is every point in it. The creation museum has massive funding behind it, and represents the views of a fairly large chunk of the US population.
If you follow science news at all, you know that this large chunk repeatedly tries to legislate their views into the classroom – be it in school boards or state legislatures. It is one of the reasons state rights is such a horrible idea (Well, that and the fact that states rights are inherently hostile to individual rights, particularly if the individual is black, female or atheist.)
The majority of American high school biology teachers don’t teach evolution properly (as in, as per the syllabus) because they don’t want parents on their cases over it and they can’t guarantee that their superiors will have their backs for doing their jobs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08creationism.html?_r=1
The article says that teachers should be better trained that won’t help. The problem isn’t the teachers it is the parents who believe in creationism, and thus don’t want their kids learning evolution.
And this sort of fight has consequences beyond evolution. Why do you think it is the red states that tend to be poorest, despite over a century of “reconstruction”? Why do you think the US has been the main stumbling block to doing anything about climate change?
Many Americans have become habituated to the idea that you can ignore what scientists have to say on their fields of study if you don’t like the way they say it – and the consequences not just for those Americans but for the world are dire.
You know those churches that hunt witches in Kenya? A lot of them were started in America. It is simply one step further than creationism, it is what the creationist churches are trying to push America towards.
And those churches are conservative. They are the conservative mainstream. The guys who sound reasonable but want lower taxes and all of that? They are on the fringes.
Also worth pointing out that the Creation Museum is getting a very sizable chunk of taxpayer money for tourism promotion.
So yeah, this kind of matters for more than “easy potshots”. At least for me, since I live in Kentucky.
5000 whining atheists vs the Great Prophet
clubconspiracy.com/forum/showthread.php?p=81388
If you feel dirty after visiting you can hop on I71 for a few hours up to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where you can see some cool actual science. Yes it also has a dinosaur to ride, though without a comfortable saddle.
Dave M*bus is trolling again.
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