Creationist museum - what do you think?

[Peace]

I think the Creationist Museum is a great idea!

It would be great if we had one in Britain - I'd be there!

I'm a Creationist and I think that even if people don't believe what I do, they should take into consideration that the 'Big Bang' and Evolution are just THEORIES which haven't been proven and should accept that there are other views.

[zharca]

Originally Posted by Peace

I think the Creationist Museum is a great idea!

.....................the 'Big Bang' and Evolution are just THEORIES which haven't been proven..............................

Sorry, but that's just plain wrong.
A lot of people get confused about what a theory is, because it's a word used in common language, like "just a theory".

But in SCIENCE, which is what we're talking about here, a theory is an idea that has been subjected to rigourous and repeated testing by accepted scientific method and has been shown to stand up as true. If scientific tests were to come along that totally disagreed with the theory, it could be toppled or amended or qualified but, until then, it stands as truth. If it's contentious and "unproven", it's called a hypothesis.

[stripee]

The heading "Prepare to Believe". "The Creation Museum presents a “walk through history.” Designed by a former Universal Studios exhibit director, this state-of-the-art 60,000 square foot museum brings the pages of the Bible to life."
Quote from Creationist web page.

It shouldn't be confused with science. It is religious belief and if taught in schools would be best discussed in Religious Education classes.

[paulchandler6]

I cant go along with the creationist view.
Just wonder how one would equate the youngest Dinosaur bones and oldest Human bones being carbon dated and still be millions of years difference in age?

Paul

[Tormentil]

Originally Posted by Ukwildlifeo

... these people think richard dawkins is satan himself!

Don't know about that, but he's certainly the best ventriloquist in the world.

[zharca]

Originally Posted by paulchandler6

I cant go along with the creationist view.
Just wonder how one would equate the youngest Dinosaur bones and oldest Human bones being carbon dated and still be millions of years difference in age?

Paul

Easy, because:
- chemistry is wrong
- physics is wrong
- cosmology is wrong
- geology is wrong
- biology is wrong
- zoology is wrong
= creationism

The poblem I have with the creationist view is that they start out by thinking that using science to understand how the univers works must exclude belief in a god.

I don't see that the two are mutually exclusive, in fact if you want to believe, or even just play a game, there's bits of science that I reckon reveal:
- God is slightly left handed
- He likes to play with numbers, especially prime ones
- He leaves quirkly little anomolies in the laws of the universe lying around*, just so things work properly
- He likes cats


* like this one.
Q: Why, of all liquids, is it only water that starts to expand as it gets near to the point where it becomes solid. Everything else, even mercury, behaves itself and gets denser. Weird.
A: Because, if it didn't, life wouldn't work. Once a pond/ocean started to freeze, it would freeze from the bottom up, never thaw again and everything would die. Twiddle chemistry a bit to make ice form a crust and the world works. Sorted.

[Adam Cheeseman]

Originally Posted by Ukwildlifeo

Ive heard it described as a 'poor mans disneyland' Theres a model showing children playing with a T Rex youngster - i spose its of the seconds before it disembowels them lol. Then again there is a theory that is told as the truth in the musuem, in regards to all animals being vegetarian - T Rex used its big teeth to...wait for it.....crack open coconuts! I dont mean to ridicule other peoples beliefs but thats not even creationism, its just really, really, really bad science. I just feel sorry for the poor kids being brainwashed in these places!

And as stu says lets keep things light hearted!

If they've got dinosaurs there then they must be stretching their rules a bit as according to strict theologians the world is about only 6,000 years old, hence dinosaurs and everything up to and including the last ice age couldn't have existed. Then again I did hear that one explanation for fossils was that they were put there to keep mankind amused.

Cheers,

Adam

[Chiltern Chris]

Originally Posted by zharca

Q: Why, of all liquids, is it only water that starts to expand as it gets near to the point where it becomes solid. Everything else, even mercury, behaves itself and gets denser. Weird.
A: Because, if it didn't, life wouldn't work. Once a pond/ocean started to freeze, it would freeze from the bottom up, never thaw again and everything would die. Twiddle chemistry a bit to make ice form a crust and the world works. Sorted.

If you are scratching your head about why all the fiddly bits of physics, like the density of water at freezing point being daft or why gravity and the nuclear forces are just right for us wee mortals to survive, enabling us to ask these questions in the first place, why not try - The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life? by Paul Davies.

This contains the latest scientific thoughts on life, the universe and everything and although the answer isn’t 42 I’m sure that if Douglas Adams was still with us he’d approve of the findings, just as Richard Dawkins does. Although you can’t prove a negative (which is what Creationism relies on as the basis for their anti-science), the conclusion is that divine intervention is as likely as Dawkins becoming the next Pope. (Although we did beat the Wallabies and the Sri Lankans , so I’m having to question my atheism! – maybe Alonso will admit that Hamilton deserves the F1 title, Scotland will get through to Euro 2008 and I’ll suddenly realise that darts and synchronised swimming are real sports – sorry, some things are just too unlikely).

Chris

[Paul mabbott]

Yes, as well as their contempt for geology, physics, chemistry and biology, they can't add up. It's typical though of how these irrational beliefs send people to farcical places. One argument they use against the age of fossils is that radio-carbon dating is "imprecise". Well yes, I would accept a little measurement error of a hundred years, maybe a thousand years but twenty million is a tad unlikely.

Although we mock, we should remember that the religious did this sort of thing in the past with regard to astronomy: for a long time people had made accurate observations of movements of planets &c but where these conflicted with the view of Holy Mother Church, they had to find an explanation - not the simple one that the teachers had got the idea basically wrong. They ended up with more and more intricate, inexplicable, contradictory and ludicrous theories ... until the church relented but let us not forget that there are some fundamentalists of more than one religion who don't accept that the earth is round, that it travels round the sun, that planets are different from stars .... And don't forget that many of these people are in positions of power in the USA. And don't forget that people were executed for taking a rational position about astronomy (e.g. Bruno, Giordano - Hutchinson encyclopedia article about Bruno, Giordano And believe me, these people would have no regrets about putting us up against a wall

Bruno, Giordano - Hutchinson encyclopedia article about Bruno, Giordano

Originally Posted by Adam Cheeseman

If they've got dinosaurs there then they must be stretching their rules a bit as according to strict theologians the world is about only 6,000 years old, hence dinosaurs and everything up to and including the last ice age couldn't have existed. Then again I did hear that one explanation for fossils was that they were put there to keep mankind amused.

Cheers,

Adam

[zharca]

Thanks Chris, I‘ll look up the Paul Davies book.

The real problem I see with being a creationist is that you have to reject everything, not just evolution. For carbon dating to be wrong, you have to deny physical chemistry and atomic theory, so the devil makes your watch glow and all those x-ray pictures are faked.

I can sympathise with someone who wants to side with Newton, Keppler, Herschel, Rutherford and, yes, Darwin and Huxley in thinking that the laws they had uncovered were so elegant and logical that there must be a will behind them but to believe creationism means you end up with a comedy god knocking up the world in six days flat. Maybe like this:



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
God: “What on earth is that thing.”
Worker angel: “It’s the great sea serpent. See, theres’s a docket here: ‘great sea serpent, one off’.”
“But that’s horrible, it’s got humps. It looks a mess, it’s a monster. What did you make it from?”
“Camels mostly, you said there were too many camels and they would look daft in Slough, so we recycled some.”
“That explains all those spare leg bones you hid in the rocks. Where did all the other heads go? That’s disgusting. Camels aren’t Lego. Anyway, I’m not having people seeing that, so take your Look Mess Monster, paint it black and stick it in a lake somewhere. And tell it not to come out. Ever.”

“And what about this lot? I distinctly said I wanted lots o’ pussies. What do you make? Octopuss’s. Well, I’m not having them on the sofa, they’ll have to live in the woods.”
“They’ll scare the squirrels”
“Then put them in the sea or something, I don’t care.”

“And them trees is rubbish. I don’t reckon those leaves will last six months without falling off.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Adam Cheeseman]

I’ll suddenly realise that darts and synchronised swimming are real sports – sorry, some things are just too unlikely).

Chris[/quote]

Don't dis' the darts Without it we wouldn't have won at Agincourt et al.

Cheers,

Adam

[Chiltern Chris]

Mmmm ….. Agincourt, I think that was the battle fought just 5419 years after the earth was formed or do creationists think that a battle fought in 1415 means it happened at quarter past two? After all there have been lots of battles and not really much time to fit them all in between now and 4004BC, not if we’re expected to fit in all of pre history as well.

Anyway, it’s funny you mention Agincourt considering what’s happening tomorrow evening on another more petit battlefield in France. If we lose, maybe we should challenge them to a game of darts?

Cheers, Chris