John Scalzi lives right near the Creation “Museum,” and he refuses to go. Good for him, I say — we’re going to have to start starving Ken Ham soon. On the other hand, if anyone could mock Ham’s Folly effectively, it’s Scalzi … it’s also so much fun to torment him. So his readers are teaming up to compel him to go.
Here’s the deal: Scalzi has a price. If people send him at least $250, which he will turn around and donate to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, he’ll suffer through the cheesy dinosaurs and silly lies, and also write an amusingly snarky summary of the visit. If he gets a thousand dollars or more, he’ll reward everyone a bonus prize or two.
This is brilliant. Rather than sending a scientist to that joke of an exhibit, send a comedian. Laughing at these clowns is the best way to expose them. So go ahead, get on over there and chip in a few bucks, and let’s get an appropriate commentator to review the show.
I just sent him $25.00. :)
Why not send the crew that brings us The Family Guy?
i’d not be surprised to see the creation museum show up on the family guy at some point.
Scroll down for mockery of Ken Ham.
http://thestubborncurmudgeon.blogspot.com
Unfortunately the fundamentalist Creationists just creeped into Canada recently. They opened up a small Creation science museum in Drumheller, Alberta, site of the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology, one of the most respected museums and collection of fossils in the world. Check out the story at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070606.CREATIONISM06/TPStory/?query=creation+science
I shamelessly stole this idea from Mr Scalzi’s comments section.
LOLtRex
Ridicule can work wonders!
Here’s another LOLtRex – I don’t know who made it.
I always hate to be the last guy in the room with a clue, so could somebody point me at something of Scalzi’s that would explain to me why I would want to give him money to trashtalk a creationist museum? Never heard of the guy, and as far as I can see so far (having read half-a-dozen blog entries) he’s just a dude with a reasonable command of English grammar and style and a particularly unfortunate geographical circumstance. Somebody needs to pull the trigger on this thing for me.
K. Signal Eingang. John Scalzi is a professional writer and blogger (his site, the Whatever, gets something like 24k+ hits a day. He is best known for his SciFi, but he writes professionally on a number of subjects. You can count on him to be fair, reasonable, and pretty dammed funny went it suits him.
His wikipedia entry is fairly accurate (according to Scalzi himself, he even occasionally refers people to it).
Whether or not you donate to the cause is certainly up to you, of course, and Scalzi would be the first to tell you that.
As much fun as it is to mock young earth creationists (and it is a lot of fun), I’m starting to worry a little that we are generating too much publicity for them. I’m thinking that Ham will probably take negative coverage over none at all. Then again, I do think that not speaking out against this absurdity is undesirable as well.
Not that I had any money, but… ridicule works. You know how the KKK was removed from the mainstream, right? I think I’ve read it here on Pharyngula.
Not that I had any money, but… ridicule works. You know how the KKK was removed from the mainstream, right? I think I’ve read it here on Pharyngula.
Whoa – right after I saw the first loltrex I thought “What it should say is…” and then saw exactly that on the second by Mondado. I shall go hang my head in shame now that I am so familiar with the lol meme that I could do that.
I have another ideia: why don’t you send a darwinist to the Museum, and show the Creationists, in a testable falsifiable way, how the unguided and undirected forces of nature have the ability to create life out of nothing?
Why would one send a “darwinist” for that?
Mats: well, we would do, but he might have difficulty getting his supporting props – THE ENTIRE GEOLOGICAL RECORD OF THE EARTH, AND THE DNA AND MORPHOLOGY OF EVERY LIVING ORGANISM – through the door with him. So we tend to write “books” about it instead.
I have another ideia: why don’t you send a darwinist to the Museum, and show the Creationists, in a testable falsifiable way, how the unguided and undirected forces of nature have the ability to create life out of nothing?
Oh how cute. Argument from ignorance meekly disguised.
Not quite there yet chat, but a “darwinist” (lame word) could go and show how we got from Ardipithecus ramidus to Homo sapiens or from Hyracotherium to Equus