Last June, we goaded science-fiction author, blogger, and professional wise-ass John Scalzi into promising to visit Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum” (actually we bought his attendance by sending him money, which he turned around and donated to Americans United for Separation of Church and State).
Well, Scalzi finally makes good on his promise. It was worth it. There’s both an essay and a photo tour. He was amused by it all.
Indeed, it’s over the top enough that I never could actually get angry with the place. Not that I was planning to; I admit to dreading coming to the place, but that’s primarily because I thought it would bore and annoy me, not make me angry. In fact, I was never bored, and was genuinely annoyed only by the “paleontologist” at the start of the walk-through. The rest of the time I enjoyed it as I suspect anyone who is not some stripe of creationist could enjoy it: As camp. At some point — specifically the part where the Scopes Monkey Trial was presented as the end of decent Christian civilization as we know it — I just started chuckling my way through. By the time I got to the Dinosaur Den, with its placards full of patent misinformation about how soft tissue fossilization strongly suggested a massive, worldwide flood, I was a little loopy. It was just so ridiculous.
There’s some understanding for why the silly place is popular (apparently, attendance is quite good), and a recognition that it’s all one big, ridiculous joke.
If the US population eventually comes to its senses about this issue then the creation museum will serve a useful purpose in showing people what ridiculous fairytales people used to believe in years past. Think of it like a museum to Norse mythology or a Disney-style fairytale amusement park rather than a competitor to science and it makes much more sense.
My dad was one of the protesters when the joint opened. He’s a memeber of the Kentucky Atheist Assn. -or whatever they call it. They had far more people turn out than anyone could have imagined and just like everyother gathering of atheists, they were all suprised they weren’t the only ones.
What I liked about the museum is that at one point they have (or had) a display showing how all living species today are descended, with modifications, from a much smaller set of common ancestors that were on board the Ark. In other words, Noah proves that Darwin was right about the origin of species, after all!
You can’t buy that kind of endorsement of evolutionary theory.
As ridiculous as this attraction is, I don’t understand why it doesn’t anger Scalzi the way it angers me. I see the river of morons flowing through that place as a genuine threat to the future of my country and that of my children. He laughs it off like a Trekkie convention. That said, mockery is probably a more effective way to fight creationism than an indignant rant.
I more or less agree with Charley on this one. As ridiculous as this whole “museum” is, we have to realize that many people are taking it seriously, and are telling their children to take it seriously. Museums are a major way that people, particurally young people, get some basic information about the natural world.
This should spark the same level of outrage that creationist literature arguing for young earth geology being sold at the Grand Canyon did. Keep in mind that the Grand Canyon’s bookstore wasn’t selling that book as another piece of mythology about the place, but as an actual theory about the formation of the canyon.
And to reiterate, you and most of us may not be taking this museum’s content seriously; many other people are.
I think PZ hit it on the head. It doesn’t matter what the organizers’ real beliefs or opinions are, they are providing an entertainment to the public that makes MONEY. I bet they don’t give a crap how accurate it is, they are laughing all the way to the bank.
When are these fundies going to realize they are being exploited for commercial gain?
I think PZ hit it on the head. It doesn’t matter what the organizers’ real beliefs or opinions are, they are providing an entertainment to the public that makes MONEY. I bet they don’t give a crap how accurate it is, they are laughing all the way to the bank.
When are these fundies going to realize they are being exploited for commercial gain?
Every time I see photos, I just can’t get over the sheer amount of money put into something so foolish.
I loved the photo tour. Between Scalzi’s captions and the commenters, it was kinda like a collaborative episode of MST3K.
I’d find the creation museum just funny and not anger-inducing if creationists in the most powerful country on the planet were a tiny minority who were nuts but powerless. Would that it were so.
I counted 48 horseshits.
To be clear, the “horseshit” I’ve been speaking of is not Christianity, it’s creationism, which to my mind is a teleological quirk substantially unrelated to the grace one can achieve through Jesus Christ.
Gah! Don’t go soft of us, John!
Brian, as far as I know, it isn’t was selling, it is is selling. I think it’s still on the shelves.
It’s hard to find the balance. It’s good to get outraged about the fact that people really believe it, but then again I think there’s a place for condescending dismissal, too. A lot of people will assume if you’re angry then there’s some “there” there to get angry about, but if you laugh it off as inconsequential it takes a lot of power away from it, people don’t know quite how to react, and there’s nothing like public humiliation to make a waffler quickly drop a bad idea.
Horseshit :D Methinks I shall have to go out and buy one of this fella’s books.
I could have been one of these people, and I’m not.
I’m not quite sure how I escaped exactly, or why I was able to question dogma while so young. But there’s no way I cannot get angry at this place.
Creationism is not so much about the past, as about controlling people’s futures. And I would have had no future had I swallowed the crap that the kids around me swallowed. I realized that in my early teens and I realized it alone. It set me apart to attempt to become what I knew I could be, because it contradicted what people “knew” I was.
Citizens of the United States have the freedom to search for information and they look for lies. Citizens of the United States have the wealth to pursue advanced educations, but they waste it on crap. We have the freedom to travel to other countries, and largely don’t. We have the time to develop a nuanced view of the world, but seek to confirm stereotypes. Our freedoms atrophied long before G.W. Bush came along, because we’d rather entertain ourselves to death, and call it “knowledge.”
Life is a comedy to those that laugh, and a tragedy to those that cry. It may be that Scalzi is just dealing with that which he cannot change.
“genuine threat to the future of my country.” That is true. These are Xian Dominionists who seek to take control of the USA. They controlled the government up until 2006. There is a real possibility that the USA could follow Tynbee’s rule and commit suicide. Or the current backlash could drive them back into their swamps. I’m just hoping it all hangs together for my projected lifespan.
Ugh, Creationists of the completely-deny-reality school of religion. The place doesn’t make me angry so much as it turns my stomach. That they teach children these things is horrible.
Since moving to America in 1987, Australian Ken Ham –president and founder of Answers in Genesis-U.S. and the highly acclaimed Creation Museum…
Honest, I’ve got someone named Ham working on my house, & on my daughter’s house, at the moment. And he’s got relations in Australia. It’s not a common name, so I wondered if he might be related to Ken Ham.
I refrained from asking, just in case he is related, & this creationism crap runs in the Ham family blood. I’ll try to broach it with him when he’s just about finished.
“As ridiculous as this attraction is, I don’t understand why it doesn’t anger Scalzi the way it angers me. I see the river of morons flowing through that place as a genuine threat to the future of my country and that of my children.”
This assumes that everyone but John Scalzi is attending out of sincere belief and leaves in full agreement, in the unlikely event that they didn’t enter in full agreement in the first place. This is like saying everyone who reads a Jack Chick tract converts and says the magic words on the last page.
I think it’s more likely that a fair percentage of visitors are just attending for the spectacle. It is, after all, a new, presumptively family-safe, big-budget, non-toy-related production in the vicinity of Cincinnati, and those just don’t come along every day.
A good number of visitors are as likely to be turned off by the crazy rationalizations. Just think how many bright kids are going to to (quietly) call bullshit on the coconut-eating t-rex theory.
A fair number of visitors are like John, and just attending for the freak show.
The people who are true believers and are visiting as a pilgrimage of sorts can be ignored, because the museum makes no difference either way.
All told, I bet the net effect on visitors will be negative, through Ham’s sheer overreach.
That said, the real damage is that Ham is likely to get quite a lot of cash which can fund other, more surreptitious, Creationism-promoting ventures.
I think this museum will give Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens another good rebuttal when they bring up how crazy YEC is and get criticized for talking about an aspect of christianity that no one really believes. The more successful the museum- the harder it will be for “mainstream” christians to deny that there are hoards of christians who believe this horseshit.
I would love to visit the museum – unfortunately it is in Kentucky, and I’m in California, so it won’t happen soon.
But what I would like, even more, is to wander through the Creationist Museum on a scientific guided tour, explaining exactly why at each exhibit, it is flawed. I’m sure some explanations would not take very long, so it would be a perfect opportunity to speak about the real science at that point.
When I do finally go and visit, I can’t drag people like PZ along with me. (I don’t know if I could afford the mandatory ‘dreaded overlord’ speaking fees.)
So how about a modest suggestion? (And please excuse if it has been suggested before.)
A bunch of smart science popularizers and professors could get together and create a “walking tour” Podcast that can be heard by a visitor to the Museum?
Perhaps the Podcast could be one person interviewing various specialists to coincide with each point on the tour? Or perhaps each station of the tour could be explained by a different specialist?
I this this would be an interesting way to spend very little in terms of production money and time, and turn that $25 million dollars into a tool for science.
I also think that if it were freely available online, and well known, this Podcast would force Ken Ham and associates to ‘update’ parts of the museum in order to counter podcast arguments – which might be amusing since the podcast could in turn be updated so easily, resulting in a ‘dialog’ between the two.
Darn it. Excuse the rampant punctuation. I hate it when commas and question marks get away from me.
Josh:
Yeah, I think that you’re right. Thanks for reminding me…and don’t remind me ;)
Huh? One comma is missing. The rest is perfect.
Huh? One comma is missing. The rest is perfect.
What I found disturbing was the size of the crowd in the photos. The place is obviously attracting visitors and, much as I’d like to believe otherwise, not all of them are going there to laugh at it.
I wouldn’t mind taking the same approach as Scalzi, out right amusement and laughter…but in a group of about 50 or so, we could go through, laugh ourselves silly, have loud and obnoxious conversations about how wrong and stupid it is. No anger, just laughter, YECs take themselves so seriously and anger gives them something to fight back at. Call it the atheist version of freaking the mundanes. The only thing wrong would be having to pay for tickets…wonder if instead we could do the same with school buses full of children, encourage them all to find it silly…hmm. Tickets would be cheaper, the noise louder, and the effect more helpful over all.
Somebody explain why the Lord put those teeth into tyrannosaurs to bust open coconuts. I know I should be mad, but that was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. And, the funniest part was that tickets cost $19.95.
You know, for the pricetag they put on constructing that place, even after buying Jurassic Park production models of “velociraptors” and licensing “Walking with Dinosaur” footage and building elaborate dioramas of Adam and Eve, you think they would have been able to hire a competent exhibit designer.
I mean, geeze, the state of that museum, information and agenda side, is laughable! The exhibit design is piss-poor, and poorly executed, not to mention completely nonsensical and seemingly random at times. And don’t even get me started on the scripts (the plaques and signs). Not only is the graphic design atrocious, the text is woefully inadequate by any metric. It reads like they simply took snippets from YEC ranting emails, complete with rampant parentheses, unfinished and unsupported thoughts, unexplained connections, and the occasional font change, and had them printed up nice and large (although, font sizes seem oddly small on some signs…)
Any competent curator or exhibit designer would be embarrassed by the end-product, regardless of the actual “information” the museum tries to portray.
That’s actually a bloody good idea.
I too visited in the spirit of making fun of the whole thing.
At the start I laughed my way through. Then as I stopped paying attention to the exhibits and started paying attention to the patrons, I got very sad.
The place was chock full of kids. I can’t imagine those poor kids will ever get anything close to a fair shot at a decent education. And that saddens me.
Excellent point.
Thanks, David – you’re too kind.
Thanks Martin. I got the idea from a long ago tour of Carlsbad Caverns, which used a similar method of self-guided tours assisted by ultra-short range radio transmitter stations.
I’d envision the Podcast to start at the entrance, and direct the lister to follow Podcast directions of which way to go next to find the next lecture location.
Perhaps I’m dreaming, but I think it would be neat for a visiting supporter of science to suddenly realize that most of those in the crowd are listening to the guided tour.
THAT would be worth a laugh.
Kristine, Post #15:
I like very much your post, in particular the last paragraph.
Nice.