Texas Creationist Museum Facing Extinction 824
gattaca writes "A small Texas museum that teaches creationism is counting on the auction of a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off extinction. The founder and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, which rejects evolution and claims that man and dinosaurs coexisted, said it will close unless the Volkswagen-sized skull finds a generous bidder. 'If it sells, well, then we can come another day,' Joe Taylor said. 'This is very important to our continuing.'" Meanwhile, the much larger Creation Museum in Kentucky that we discussed and toured when it opened last year seems to be thriving.
Creationism in Europe? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:3, Interesting)
The KY Creation museum (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Market Speaks! (Score:2, Interesting)
How do you deal with the problem of original sin? I see the problem as thus: If evolution is true, there was no literal Adam. If there was no Adam, there was no "fall". If there was no fall, what do we require Jesus to "save" us from?
I (as an ex-Christian) deal with this by saying Christianity is not real. I had a long talk with my father (a conservative evangelical minister) over Christmas, and he feels that evolution would completely undermine his faith so he deals with it by saying evolution is not real.
I am quite curious how you feel about this issue. I rewrote this post about 4 times but couldn't find words that I was confident implied I'm not looking for a fight, so I'm resorting to this disclaimer. You'll get nothing but polite and (hopefully) well-thought out responses from me. I look forward to your answer!
Difficult Decision (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you:
a) Purchase the mastodon skull to preserve an excellent fossil and put it on display for educational value, including its true age?
b) Allow this absurdity and insult to rational intelligence that is a Creation Museum die?
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:1, Interesting)
You can stick your nose as high into the air as you like, that smell is you.
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:3, Interesting)
While certainly true, it's equally true that the British (in particular, and Europeans in general) are not immune to a widespread acceptance of stupidity [bbc.co.uk] that appears to be a problem that is uniquely "common" to their society. I think we are in danger of viewing this problem too narrowly and thus asserting some sort of absurd cultural superiority. My hypothesis is simply that stupid people are drawn to stupidity. This fact, it seems to me, isn't culturally unique. And so cultural differences manifest themselves in different ways [bbc.co.uk] in different places [skepdic.com].
In my view, all of these varieties of stupid are simply symptoms of the same fundamental flaw in human reasoning when viewed through the cultural of the person in question. So, more to the point, it needs to be examined why people, in general, believe stupid things. Pretending this is a uniquely American concoction hides, in my view, the underlying problem and distracts from the primary issue.
Re:The Market Speaks! (Score:3, Interesting)
The whole point of the idea of the Fall is that once you achieve knowledge, then you are responsible for yourself and will need to work out a way to survive and eventually be embraced by the grace of God. Before achieving God-like status by means of knowloedge, man was not responsible for himself, had no free will and was taken care of by God. After that, he had to adapt his ways of life quite a bit
Finally, what if Adam were not a literal human being but just a "token" for humankind? That wouldn't be unusual at all.
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:4, Interesting)
One view supports evolution. The other does not. However both are Creationist views.
Re:The Market Speaks! (Score:4, Interesting)
The way I look at it, the "fall" was not a one-time event that blighted the rest of us. It was, and is, and will continue to be, an over-and-over event that blights each of us individually. "Adam" is not an historical figure, but an allegorical one, a representative of our human nature.
We are human, and fallible. Not one of us makes it through life (or probably even through the day) without making some serious error of judgment that wounds another person, whether deliberately or thoughtlessly. Those errors are the things we need to atone for: our deliberately hurtful deeds, our thoughtlessness. No one is immune from this; it is a necessary consequence of our free will.
And in most cases, I think we cannot really make up for the wrong we have done. The errors create wounds that are beyond our power to heal. Yet in a just universe, evil requires an expiation.
As I see it, Christ's death provided that expiation. The salvation of Jesus is offered freely, as a pure gift -- nothing expected of us in return, except to say, "I accept." Without that acceptance, the expiation for the evil I have done then falls on myself.
(DISCLAIMER: Please understand, it's not my intent to proselytize or start a debate. I only expressed my view because the parent asked for an answer. I'm not saying that this is THE answer. I'm saying that this is AN answer, and one that I can live with. If your life, logic, and understanding have led you to a different conclusion about the world -- a different relationship with God, a different God or set of Gods, or no God at all -- and so long as you are harming no others, I won't presume to say that your view should be the same as mine. Go in peace.)
Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:5, Interesting)
At some point, we may become so advanced, technologically, that there is nothing curently living which is beyond our ability to recreate in a laboratory setting. How would one determine what occurs naturally and what was created? There will be lots of legal issues related to "accident of nature" or "industrial accident" related to when created things go bad, and how to prove they were created versus just having occurred by themselves.
To some extent, this is us "playing God" with nature. Somewhere down the road, a wholly "created" being will gain consciousness, evolve some (if left alone long enough), then wonder where he came from. Then they will have the same argument we are having now.
I'm no fan of ID as having "scientific" merit. But it does have philosophical merit. And some of the thought experiments make my head hurt.
(Posting Anon, because I don't like to discuss my personal politics or religion in public.)
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:3, Interesting)
As an American living in California I'd like to go on record and say that I've only met these "fundies" when I was visiting the 'Southern' states. Though I've been told they exists in some large numbers in the mid-western states as well. In the north-eastern and western United States (where the bulk of the population lives) you don't seem to see a lot of them.
I felt that needed to be said for all the people who don't actually live in the US. I don't want you thinking the entire country is religious zealots.
Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope, no problems with any of those. There's nothing factual, based solely on empirical evidence in any of these fields that conclusively proves macro-evolution. Micro-evolution is undeniable -- species are constantly changing. But the jump from a new breed of dog to man evolving from a single-celled organism is just a bit too much for me, given any time frame. There's no interemediary reliable fossil record, even though we've gone through enough rock to have seen that by now (geology), no proof that just because there are (as far as we can tell, and the evidence makes sense) old stars that this somehow proves the evolution of life (cosmology), no empirical proof that carbon dating is even accurate, let alone that this only proves that some creatures are very old if it is accurate, not that they evolved (carbon dating), and I'm missing what in physics conclusively proves evolution.
Creationism and evolution both require faith. I realize that makes you uncomfortable, but perhaps when we can both realize the severe limitations of our knowledge and stop accepting assumptions as fact, we can discover the truth together. This is what science is about, isn't it?
Regarding sexuality and other religions, I do have a problem with ideas that are wrong, as everyone does. That does not stop me from loving people, and listening to and learning from them.
prediction: modded down: -1 disagree
Both are right....it is the time that is the wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a lot of good information at Talk origins. [talkorigins.org] In summary, it says "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease." (Which, I believe, is what you are referencing.) It goes on to say "However, they neglect the fact that life is not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things."
Ed
Re:Evolution is a theory too (Score:3, Interesting)
So then he's sending me to hell simply because he wants to send me to hell? Nothing for me to do about it, eh?
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:2, Interesting)
What I'm worried about is that people who do believe that may already be in the White House, and may soon be. In particular, people like Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee.
Honestly, if an MP (member of parliament) said evolution was a hoax in the UK, they'd be laughed out of Parliament for not having a basic grasp of GCSE science. But in the States - great! Fantastic! Let him in!
The same applies to gun control, abortion and global warming. The USA seems to have a weird perception of the world, probably from its strange Puritan origins. Over in Europe, people are far more moderate. True, you'll find the odd small community of Daily Mail readers [uncyclopedia.org] who think that the BBC is run by hippies, Gordon Brown is allowing 400 million asylum seekers (who are, by the way, all murderers and paedophiles) into the UK every day, motorists are being persecuted and that all children are hoodie-wearing, brick-throwing yobs. However, in the UK we certainly don't pelt stones and housebricks on anyone who appears to be gay [youtube.com].
So, in short, in Europe people generally don't believe in creationism outright. Some believe that the Creation was simply a metaphor for evolution. Others might believe in creationism, but respectfully disagree with evolutionists. Thank God there are no museums like this Texas one in London - I'd consider emigrating to Alpha Centauri if there was one.
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:2, Interesting)
The creationism displays really didn't have much supporting them, not a lot of evidence or exhibits, more like a continuing diarams. But I guess a lot of reputable museums are similar (not a lot of detailed paperwork on exhibit at the art museum to prove that Picasso really was the painter, you just take for granted that someone in the basement did the research). There wasn't even that much proselytizing, more like preaching to the converted.
Re:Creationism in Europe? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Insecure much? (Score:3, Interesting)
But there's almost nothing that can be literately speaking there. And speaking figuratively, pi=3 for certain values of pi.
(the meaning can be changed entirely, or even reversed given enough 'interpretation'.)
The bible is supposed to be understood but it doesn't mean that people understand it.
And great most of people believe they do, while they don't. Likely including you.
If there ever was a greater truth to the Bible (which I doubt), it's been long lost to the ages, in translations, in political plots changing its content, in including apocrypha or banning parts of Bible into them, and today the Bible simply can't be understood, because it's a mess. It's a corrupted media, damaged data and there's no checksum to see what is right and what is broken.
Some use the Bible as a tool, to do good or evil by guiding or controlling people, while distancing themselves from their interpretations. Some believe their own interpretations, and accept them without criticism, with possibly catastrophic consequences. Some fish out pieces of wisdom that are still left there. But the Bible is NOT anything more than a book and believing anything else is dangerous. It leads people to believe they found some truths while they didn't. It can be useful when used with a lot of criticism, but it must be taken with a grain of salt, always.
picked up a pice of paper from the table and a glass fell to the floor.
The science won't assume anything except these events coincided in time: there's an unsupported hypothesis they were related. Then you can apply known knowledge or research, why. Resistance of paper, yes. And force - and what's the origin of the force? You. So you knocked it to the floor. No Ockham Razor because all data is known, confirmed.
But "God causing something" is you pulling the paper and then blaming breaking the glass on me. The glass broke because of me, because I printed the paper. It was about a push-pull data transfer system project. But you read 'receiver pulls the message' and interpreted you're the receiver, and the paper is the message. And I broke the glass by printing the instruction and leaving it under the glass, right?
That's what interpreting the Bible and following the interpretations directly does. Ockham Razor says: Literal interpretation is true. And if for a fact you know literal interpretation is false, and there's no key to decipher it into literal interpretation unambiguously, the info can't be trusted.
Science says you broke the glass. My printout is not to be blamed.