The Creation Museum, I'm not kidding folks.

SpeedoGuy

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Most people visiting museums don't read the propaganda, anyway, they just dash through pushing the buttons on the "interactive" exhibits, and if nothing starts moving, they dash on to the next one.

S'truth. To many, a museum exhibit just isn't interesting if it isn't accompanied by some sort of flashing lights and sound effects.

I've got a few co-workers who take this place pretty seriously:

Welcome - Institute for Creation Research
 

madame_zora

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I wonder how the Museum will work the placoderm Dunkelosteus (ex-Dinichthys) into its conceptual framework.

Ohio is particularly noteworthy for upper Devonian shales chock-full of fossils of this monster. In fact that's about all I can remember about Ohio. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has a particularly large specimen. I've been meaning to get out there to see it, but haven't managed yet.


As much as I bitch about this place, I keep coming back for some reason. It used to be that the cost of living and crime rates were low, while it was very easy to find work. It's been that way most of my life, we call it "a nice place to raise a family". Despite my sneering, I've come to take that as a given about the place I call home. I know a LOT of Ohioans, especially natives, have felt this way. We've been blindsided by suddenly becomming very violent, and poor. It's all new and we're not adjusting well.

As far as museums go, we have a rather nice Museum Center at Union Terminal. My mother worked there as the accountant back in the late 60s/70s when it was the Science Center. Ohio appears to be on the edge of a glacier, and fossil-hunting here is a part of most schoolkid's experience at some point. There's a huge Indian burial mound called Serpent Mound, and remnants of "frontier life" such as they were are to be found still, complete with a still struggling-to-hold-on Native American population, oddly enough. We have a nice change of seasons, probably only second to Kentucky. The shale tells a lot of tales, but I'm really not expecting this to be much of a problem for an establishment that is THIS capable of ignoring much more compelling scientific evidence.

We've got our pastoral beauty, but this really is an area of basically simple folk. I live here, I know who my neighbors are. This museum is a bigger problem than someone from another area of the country would probably understand. Most of you just think it's funny- but a lot of people here think this is REAL.
 

kalipygian

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Yes, and it's a two part mistake on my part. What I should have said is that it's not exclusive to the Bible, nor originated by Jesus. I can't remember now where the earliest appearance of it was, and I'm sorry my statement was misleading, if not outright false.


As for the museum, it opens tomorrow and I think I'm going to go and take some surveys. If I get it together tonight, I might have some interesting (or at least funny) results to report tomorrow night.

Who wants to take bets on how many museum-goers will be able to properly identify Jesus' religion?

edit- I watched a debate this morning between an astrophysicist, a geologist and a theologian this morning about the museum, which I what got me started on this. The first was the only one of the three supporting it, the theologian was actually the one who made the most sound and credible arguments against it. He is a professor of theology at Xavier U- I was glad to see such a man teaching about scripture as it was written, not to be used for whatever whim comes along.

The fucking astrophysicist actually said that Jesus quoted from the Bible, and the theologian had to correct him saying that Jesus couldn't have done so. He referred to the Torah, according to the writers of the Gospels, but there's no actual proof that Jesus could even read and write (although it's my personal opinion that he could).

If I was in your hood, I would make a 'Jesus was a Darwinian' sign, and join you.:biggrin1:

(and I doubt you will meet a single person who has even heard of the council of Nicea, they will probably get pissed if you ask)
 

B_spiker067

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I too read this on /.

Am commenting on here because /. commentary is just plain noise and the editorial prerogatives are practiced by assholes.


Ask a literal believer this:

"You believe God is ALL powerful right?"

"Okay, why then does God have to take a six day period to create everything? Not only that he has to do it in a contemplative fashion and actually has to rest on the seventh day!

If he is all powerful how come everything was not created instantaneously; where are creatures great and small actually appeared out of thin nothingness in mid stride?"

Then tell them a reasonable facsimile of a Christian (uhmmm, me) thinks they are all ignorant assholes as I do disbelievers :eek:).

I suffer from 'everybody is a dumbass except me syndrome', it seems pretty rampant in these parts.
 

B_NineInchCock_160IQ

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This is kind of old news. I've actually attended an Answers in Genesis seminar before to hear Ken Ham speak, and they've been working on the museum for a long time.

I also don't believe that accepting Genesis as literal truth is anywhere near as bad as denying the Holocaust. Nobody has ever observed or lived through the process of macroevolution, we are only able to speculate on what happened. If you are already a believer, and not a student of biology or geology, Ham's elaborate rationalizing can be fairly convincing.
 

B_NineInchCock_160IQ

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I too read this on /.

Am commenting on here because /. commentary is just plain noise and the editorial prerogatives are practiced by assholes.


Ask a literal believer this:

"You believe God is ALL powerful right?"

"Okay, why then does God have to take a six day period to create everything? Not only that he has to do it in a contemplative fashion and actually has to rest on the seventh day!

If he is all powerful how come everything was not created instantaneously; where are creatures great and small actually appeared out of thin nothingness in mid stride?"

Then tell them a reasonable facsimile of a Christian (uhmmm, me) thinks they are all ignorant assholes as I do disbelievers :eek:).

I suffer from 'everybody is a dumbass except me syndrome', it seems pretty rampant in these parts.

This is really easy to answer. God took six days to create everything and rested on the seventh to create a model for human behavior. Humans were supposed to work for six days and then rest on the seventh, the sabbath. Whether you believe that God deliberately took six literal earth days to do this just to prove a point, or you believe that the "six days" related in Genesis are just a metaphor so that the creation story could be better understood, doesn't really matter. The answer is still the same. You gotta come up with something much better than that if you're going to try and shake someone from their faith. Try again. or leave the deprogramming to someone more qualified.
 

B_spiker067

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This is really easy to answer. God took six days to create everything and rested on the seventh to create a model for human behavior. Humans were supposed to work for six days and then rest on the seventh, the sabbath. Whether you believe that God deliberately took six literal earth days to do this just to prove a point, or you believe that the "six days" related in Genesis are just a metaphor so that the creation story could be better understood, doesn't really matter. The answer is still the same. You gotta come up with something much better than that if you're going to try and shake someone from their faith. Try again. or leave the deprogramming to someone more qualified.

For the record I realized the metaphor was also intended to provide the model for human behavior.

The deprogramming part is about getting someone to think why things were/are characterized a certain way in the Bible (including the contemplative aspect of God in the story). And I'm not interested in total deprogramming, faith has its virtues.
 

B_big dirigible

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Lordpendragon

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when or where did I say anything about facts?

Truth then.

I don't have any problems with whatever people want to believe with regard to spirituality. But when people want to fly in the face of physical scientific facts in order to prop up a theory, allegoric or otherwise (I wish they would make their mind up) written a very long time ago without the benefit of subsequent scientific investigation, then excuse me, I will call BULLSHIT.
 

Ethyl

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Truth then.

I don't have any problems with whatever people want to believe with regard to spirituality. But when people want to fly in the face of physical scientific facts in order to prop up a theory, allegoric or otherwise (I wish they would make their mind up) written a very long time ago without the benefit of subsequent scientific investigation, then excuse me, I will call BULLSHIT.

And I think we all should. It amazes me how victorian some still are in their ideas about science. Too many think it's a conspiracy to lead others away from their faith, when if anything, it should bolster their faith.
 

Full_Phil

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Does the adjoining campground to this place have any resemblance to the Garden of Eden? Can some of our larger members take turns being the serpent?
 

B_NineInchCock_160IQ

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Some of the posts in this thread are fuel for Ham and his followers. They point out the rabid scorn that supporters of evolution- an untestable theory- have for anyone who believes anything different, and use this to demonstrate that, while it is true their scientists starts with certain assumptions and biases, creationism deniers also start with certain assumptions and biases that are every bit as strong.

Frothing at the mouth about "truth," "facts," and "crazy religious fanatics" does nothing at all to make your position stronger and in fact strengthens Ham's arguments.
 

Lordpendragon

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Who is talking about evolution? Not me.

I am trying to get my head round the fact that light has not always travelled at the same speed to the point that what would look like 14,000,000,000,000 years is actually 6,000.

The high ground Nic, is held by those with an open mind, not those scurrying around trying to make the world and universe fit their dogma. A dogma, frankly, that is irrelevant to anything anyway.
 

B_Kshelby67

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that dinosaurs and man once co-existed; and that dozens of creatures - including T. rex - were passengers on Noah's Ark.

WOW. Seriously? No. Seriously? Am I reading that right? TRex on Noah's Ark? dinoarc.jpg


here is my reenactment of trex on the arc. I have no hand eye coordination, so it looks like a 5 year old drew it.
 

Freddie53

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I will hit the high points here. To go into a real deep discussion would require several posts and lose everyone.

POINT ONE: There are actually two creation stories in the Bible.

There are two Biblical stories of creation in Genesis. The Six Day Creation story and the Adam and Eve story. They come from different Hebrew traditions and when the Torah was canonized and standardized, both stories were included in what we now know as the Torah. One story came from the southern tribes and the other story came from the northern tribes of Hebrews. I don't remember now which. I studied this years ago.

Both stories were there for a purpose. The Creation story's purpose was to tell that God created things in an orderly way. He rested on the seventh which means that the next week God was back to creating. The Creation Story was quite bold at the time as the Hebrews were requiring even the slaves to have one day of rest per week, a concept unheard of in ancient times.

The Adam and Eve story has a point too, in it. God is perfect and created people perfect and capable of having a complete relationship with God and it is people who choose to break that relationship and the rest of the Bible are stories about God reaching down to restore that relationship and man looking to God to restore that relationship. And in the end, in Revelation, the last book in the Bible, God wins beating out the devil and the world lives forever in perfect peace and the Creation is finally finished in full complete glory with streets of gold, no crying, no sorrows etc.

To get lost in literalism throughout the Bible is to completely lose out on the meaning of this fantastic story. As a epic, written by who knows how many authors, it is a best seller. Parts of it are x-rated. Man understands God as perfect. Man understands God as being a complete asshole at times. Man understands some things to be evil in some places and in other places those same things are noble. But it is always written from man's point of view as it is man that is writing it.

Studied as an epic like the ancient Greek epics, much more is understood about man and his relationship to a God that this particular group of people believed to be real. Even for atheists who read it as an epic, it tells so much about human behavior and relationships. It truly is a remarkable book.

I will digress for a moment to say though that the literalists cheapen the book. They take away the tension throughout the story. Basically they destroy the historical perspective. To get a real understanding of the culture of that day and how people came to believe what they did and why, the Bible can give great insights to living to both the religious and the non religious.

POINT TWO: The breakdown of the actual story and what the story really says to non-literalists.

I will quote from a modern text, "The International Version" and provide editorial comment.

Genesis 1:1-2 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

The first sentence is a simple statement that God created the heavens and the earth. When the next few verses are read and I will point that out as we go along, it is obvious to me that the creation of the heavens and the earth happened BEFORE the six day Creation story. The Creation story is dealing with the development of the earth which as the story goes along is in almost the exact order that science has the development of the earth from its infancy.

Summation of this paragraph: The universe was here billions or trillions, who knows, before this creation story of the development of the earth begins.

Genesis 1:3-5 "And God said, "Let there be light." and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day' and the darkness he called "night" And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day."

When the solar system developed earth formed as a planet and began the orbit and revolution cycles. I don't think there is a scientist who would disagree that this was a very early on development in earth history. But that word "day" It is the same Hebrew word that means a period of time. The Bible later says that a thousand earth days are like one day to God. On this first "day" there wasn't really an earth as we know it so....how long is a day? To non literalists a day is a period of time. Each day in the creation story could have been billions of years. And the "days" didn't have to have equal value in earth time.

I will stop here for now. I will continue the non literalists view point of creation later as we get this digested.

Conclusion of this post:
One:The creation stories have a purpose showing the order of creation and to tell the ancient Hebrews that God had a hand in the creation.

Two: The set up for what was then the revolutionary concept that people should have one day of rest for each week.

Three: The Bible can be interpreted to say that "days" are not 24 hour periods of time.

Four: Literalists take away from the meaning of the Bible, not add power to the Bible as they believe they are doing. Literalism makes the Bible become shallow. Non literalism gives life and depth to the story of man and his understood relationship to a God that man believes exists.