They’re everywhere. I’ve been to the overhyped lie in Kentucky, and also to cheap sheds in Missouri and Pennsylvania and Utah and Washington, where deluded Elmer Gantry wannabes stack up a few fossils and make up Bible stories about their provenance and history. The latest to get written up in a newspaper is Glendive Dinosaur & Fossil Museum in Montana. I’ve never been there. It’s completely unsurprising, though — it’s the same crap I’ve seen dozens of times before.
It’s got the collection of fossils, misused and misappropriated, with little plaques citing Bible verses and dishonestly declaring that their ceratopsian is only 4,000 years old.
It’s got a team of Bible-thumping, Jebus-loving hucksters all declaring the priority of their antique god-book over all the evidence they’re obscuring in their shack.
They’ve got their recycled drivel. It’s all about interpretation, you say this bone is 70 million years old, I say it’s 4000 years old. It’s just opinion, but I’ve got God on my side, so I’m right.
They also are oblivious to the fact that they’re promoting a peculiar interpretation of the Bible. This 6,000 year old Earth nonsense was not popular or common until the 1960s. Their revered ancient traditions are about as authentic as yuppies doing yoga.
There’s the same pseudoscience and lies.
The Bible also accounts for the size of the specimen in the collection, Canen said. Yes, the science points to more oxygen in the atmosphere then, but think of Methuselah, whom the Bible pegs at 969 years old when he died. If people lived 10 times longer than they do now, apply that factor of 10 to animals.
OK, motherfucker, then do it. Try breathing an atmosphere with higher pressure and higher oxygen concentration, so you too can live to be almost a thousand years old. Carl Baugh was going to do it, until the doctors explained to him that oxygen is corrosive and at higher concentrations the treatment would kill him. They aren’t just making up facts about prehistory, they’ve also got their own false version of physiology.
If you can trust any historical document, you can trust the Bible,Canen said.
Were the authors of the Bible there, at the creation event they describe? Then no, you apply the same tools to evaluate the veracity of your Bible that we apply to any historical document, and while the Bible might be a part of our understanding of the social, political, and religious thought of 1500-2000 years ago, it has nothing to contribute to our knowledge of the Mesozoic. Or science in general.
Goddamn but I despise these assholes.
There’s also another Noah’s Ark “replica”. Fuck. The inanity grows.
Oh, but my favourite quote from that Montana Mess:
This still leaves me sputtering. I don’t understand how anyone could believe such a thing and not drop dead of irony shock. I’m pretty sure that if the bible was ever considered ‘cutting edge’, it was one hell of a long time ago.
Oh gods, I remember that mess! The guy kept trying to build it “true”, but it wouldn’t work. Modern methods had to be used to make the damn thing float.
That’s a bit of truth, but it’s one that will be ignored, as people ooh and aah, and say “look, it’s true!” Fuck.
One of the major supporters of this “museum” is Greg Gianforte, a Republican tech multii millionaire who running for Governor of Montana. It will say a lot about my beloved state if its people elect a man with his worldview as governor.
I wonder what Augustine, probably the most important Christian after Jesus (as the person venerated by them) & Paul (the person who started the conversion of the Roman empire to Christianity), would have to say about this reality denial.
His attitude about the Bible vs Reality is best summed like this:
“If what the Bible says does not match reality do not deny reality since the only thing you achieve is making a mockery of Christianity.”
What Would Jack Horner Do? Probably shit a brick.
What is it with musea? Why don’t these clowns also make movies? They couldn’t be worse than JP3, and might be a lot funnier.
Conservative Christians seem to be a self-selected highly gullible group, ripe for plucking by assorted scam artists.
consider years was a misinterpretation of the Hebrew symbol for month.
(960 (lunar-months) * 28 (days/lunar-month) ) / 365 (days/year) ~= 73 yrs
bingo. estimated average lifetime of adults. (as said in rhyme: ‘three score and ten …”)
I bet this is my own “post hoc” fabrication, but seems reasonable, eh?
Oh, that ark – this is when you first blogged about it: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/30/the-barnum-principle/
There seems to have been some of this kind of thinking about 2000 years ago, at least according to some of the things I’ve read. One account suggests that the chronology of the OT was specifically set out to corresponding to map the rededication of the temple by John Hyrcanus so it corresponded to some point in the Anno Mundi.
That later part is certainly the important point, particularly given that these ancient people were adept at propaganda to promote their ideology.
Who Cares @ #3
And yet, there were already “Christians” around the Roman empire when this “Paul” character presumably started his mission, at least as suggested by that inerrant book of the Bible known as “Acts.”
Per capita, I think Canada has more than the US. I’ve got a list of the museums on my new site in support of my research project on creationism. http://contemporarycreationism.com There are also plans for a big one near Boise Idaho, some 350,000 sq ft (i.e., 5x the size of K. Ham’s) and a creation theme park in Switzerland.
If anyone knows of any I’ve missed, I’d be appreciate a note about it.
Once again, I ask how many of these dipshits actually have any education or experience in paleontology. Creationists embody the Dunning-Kruger effect, claiming to be “cutting edge” scientists in spite of not actually doing any sort of experiments or other research.
I think it’s fair to say that prior to the enlightenment Bible believers casually assumed that Genesis 1-11 was historical, and that the universe was young. Ussher estimated the age of the earth as ~5,700 years old in the 17th Century; Jose ben Halafta estimated it at ~3,800 years old in the second century BCE, and plenty of people in between came up with similar results. I think the early audience would actually have understood that it [i]was[/i] mythical, but would not necessarily have clearly distinguished between myth and history. I.e., they likely thought that these things once happened while simultaneously realizing that such things no longer happened in their own day.
Anyway, the difference is that prior to the 19th century they had no noteworthy competing viewpoint. Ussher and his predecessors had no strong, empirical reasons for believing in an old earth, and fiddling with biblical chronologies seemed as good an approach as any. Augustine could with a straight face assume and old earth and condemn Christians who reject empirical facts.
After the 19th century there emerged a (false) dichotomy between the Bible as history and the growing empirical evidence for an old earth. (I say false because they are excluding the possibility that [parts of] the Bible are mythical, that the chronology is incomplete, etc.) They could no longer casually assume it was historical; they had to outright deny that the increasingly well supported picture of earth’s antiquity was false. That’s a significant shift. And in the US, a pile of other baggage, especially political, became associated with this question. So just as he says, young-earth creationism as we understand it is a 1960’s phenomenon.
tl;dr: It’s one thing if I believe that there are wolves in the unexplored woods behind my house. It’s another thing entirely if I continue to believe it after the woods are cut down and a housing development takes its place.
I think the problem with creation museums is they’re all trying for the same niche market. They all seem to be stuck on the Jewish creation myth when there are so many more rich and colourful mythologies out there, all with creation myths. How about a Dreamtime Museum? Or one that depicts the world coming about via the Frost Giant Ymir and the great cow Adhumla (with scale model of the World Tree your kids can climb on!). Or a Finnish creation museum depicting the primal waters, cosmic eggs, and the first ever occurrence of a knee-jerk reaction? Think outside the box, my science-denying friends!
Also, had I millions to waste, I would love to annoy Ken Ham by establishing a competing-mythology creation museum within hailing distance of his Pile O’ Ark.
Buzzwords to suck in the rubes:
So were paleolithic stone tools, in their day.
@slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)):
The words more “month” and “year” are distinct, and there isn’t much of a reason to think that anyone was counting ages in months and then switching to years.
Given that most of what the antediluvian (and postdiluvian) patriarchs were doing was confabulated, there’s no real reason to think that their ages weren’t confabulated as well.
And if you’re going to think of reasons for them to have done so, well, getting confused about months and years doesn’t seem that likely. There may have been influence from ancient king-lists that listed rulers living for tens of thousands of years. I think there was speculation that some of those ruler’s reigns might have involved a confusion of months for years, but it couldn’t have been all of them.
@A Masked Avenger:
There’s no reason to think that Augustine accepted an old earth, and good reason to think he didn’t. His statement in The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim) says nothing specific about the age of the Earth, and in The City of God (Book XII), Ch 10. he states clearly that: “They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed. ” See also similar statements in other places in City of God bk 12, which discusses similar cosmological points.
@Jim Linville
I am sure Alberta has more “museums” than the US per capita. I’m not so sure about the rest of the nation. I wish you well on your project.
@whirlwitch
I like that idea – visit once, see all the ways earth/life/people came to be!
@Lofty
Some paleolithic tools had crushing and grinding surfaces. So, it was not just cutting edges!
slithey tove @ #6 (talking about the age of Methuselah)
My Sunday School teacher used that escape route when I expressed doubt regarding the age of Methuselah.
But only a few weeks earlier (when I doubted that Creation had occurred in six days) she explained that, “In those times a day lasted a thousand years.”
I was too young to do the arithmetic, but I knew that she was telling fibs.
Meant to say young earth. He assumed a young earth, but also criticized Christians for opposing the facts of science.
(Note the my statement makes no sense as written: with “old” in it, there’s no contrast.)
This 6,000 year old Earth nonsense was not popular or common until the 1960s.
Except among those who took the Jewish calendar (nominally beginning at The Beginning) seriously.
Now that’s insensitive. Paper cuts are no laughing matter. ;/
Paul’s innovation was going for systematic conversion of Gentiles, notably by removing the obligation to be circumcised and follow Jewish dietary laws, so it’s quite reasonable to say he began the conversion of the Roman Empire.
I used to live just a block away from the Museum of the Rockies. Good place. Skip this one and go there instead.
“Cutting edge” means they have mastered the hammerstone and have separated a flake of flint.
Seconding #22.
+slithey tove That works pretty well up to the Flood (in fact, of those who die from natural causes it yields lifespans of 65-80, with 80-year-old Methuselah plausibly ancient for the time), it doesn’t explain the 100-600 range ages after the Flood, which smoothly ‘join up’ mythical lifespans with what might be historical kings. Also, it would mean the pre-Flood patriarchs became fathers as early as age five, which seems unlikely. Now, the Sumerian King List also depicts a similar smooth transition, from early pre-Flood kings who allegedly reigned for 30,000 years, to more recent monarchs with reigns ranging from one year to 56 years; now, creationists clearly don’t want to acknowledge the King List as accurate, but tend to argue that it reflects a distorted memory of lifespans declining after a catastrophic event (and apply the same to other myths like the Jainist saints and their multi-million-year lifespans).
In ‘Did Adam Really Live 930 Years’ (http://www.kolbecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Genetic-Entropy-Recorded-in-the-Bible.pdf), John Sanford argues that because a decay curve (actually a power law – https://eyeonicr.wordpress.com/2014/07/14/confounding-the-patriarchs/) can be matched to the post-Flood biblical lifespans, it must be accurate as this was beyond the capacity of the writers to fabricate. However, the King List also depicts a very similar hockey-stick if plotted by generation, and when given an actual time-axis based on years from Adam the Biblical curve goes away. In fact, any fictitious list depicting declining lifespans will produce a line suggestive of a decay curve when plotted by generation, as the lower the lifespan becomes the more gradual the slope with a fixed x-axis!
More damningly, the ages of the Biblical patriarchs show clear signs of fabrication. From Adam to Noah, 6 have ages which are factors of 5, three have ages which are factors of 5 with the addition of 7, and Mehuselah’s age is a fact of 5 with the addition of 14. In the Septuagint all subsequent post-Flood patriarchs up to Abraham have ages which are factors of 5, or factors of 5 with the addition of 14. Three patriarchs then appear to be ‘fudged’ in the Masoretic text to be a factor of 5 (but not the same factor of 5) with the addition of three, breaking up long chains of ages ending in 5 or 0. I’ve heard a couple of evangelical responses:
1.) The ages are rounded to the nearest 5. Well, except for the ones that have 7 or 14 added. This presents an issue for the apologist as he must now explain why an inerrant book mixes rounded and exact lifespans.
2.) Any number over 27 can be calculated as some sum of 5 and 7, so the pattern is only apparent. True, but what is striking is that it is always a multiple of 5, often on its own, but occasionally with 7 or 14 added. That seems statistically unlikely, and indeed when you run it against the King’s List, a random sequence of numbers arranged in descending order, JRR Tolkien’s Kings of Numenor (an example of a literary list of kings with declining reigns) and the US Presidents, none match the pattern.
3.) The Masoretic Text is the original reading. Superstitious scribes then changed the outliers to be multiples of 5 or a multiple of 5 + 7 in the Septuagint. This sounds plausible until you look at the ages of fatherhood and realise they are also multiples of 5 or multiples of 5+7, with the notable exception of Eber, who is also an outlier in both the Septuagint and Samaritan texts.