So I was reading this news article last week that said a new museum was opening in Kentucky that espouses the belief that there were dinosaurs on Noah's Ark. Who are these people?? I wondered.Opponents argue that children who see the exhibits will be confused when they learn in school that the universe is 14 billion years old rather than 6,000.
"Teachers don't deserve a student coming into class saying 'Gee Mrs. Brown, I went to this fancy museum and it said you're teaching me a lie,'" Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, told reporters before the museum opened.
You can see how that might be a problem, however:
A Gallup poll last year showed almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.
Three of 10 Republican presidential candidates said in a recent debate that they did not believe in evolution.
Alrighty then. Those darn yanks - they'll buy anything.
Oh, but wait a minute. One of my blog readers, Raj, (hi Raj!) has informed me that there's a similar museum opening up in the bible belt north of Calgary (Stockwell Day's old stomping grounds).
BIG VALLEY - Alberta will soon have a museum filled with "scientific evidence" that the flood in the Book of Genesis and other biblical events actually happened, and that people walked the Earth at the same time as dinosaurs.
[IIRC, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was squished to death by a brontosaurus toe on his way to work one day. Or maybe he just died naturally. I can't remember... -catnip]
Canada's first creationist museum will open June 5 in Big Valley as "a scientific and biblically based alternative to the evolutionary view of Earth history" put forward by the Royal Tyrrell Museum [no dinosaurs stomping on people there. -catnip] 60 kilometres to the south, said Harry Nibourg, founder of the Big Valley Creation Science Museum.
[...]
Nibourg, a 46-year-old oilfield service worker, has been planning, building and preparing the museum for four years.
He put his own money and sweat into the facility, building it himself with no public funding, although he did get a few private donations.
"We're not trying to push an agenda," he said Wednesday. "We just think that people should see both sides of everything."
No siree...no agenda there.
I find this display quite intriguing:
One video shows a bacterium and describes how it travels by rapidly moving its tail -- suggesting that even the most primitive creatures must have been intelligently designed. Children can push a button and activate a giant bacterium.
I don't know about you but I've always wondered what it would be like to "activate a giant bacterium", so that's a big draw for me! They even have a handy video about how to do it on their site. How exciting!
On the other hand, this may just be too traumatic for me to deal with:
Well-lit cases display fossilized plants from species that still exist, to show that fossils aren't necessarily very old.
Making the same point is a teddy bear treated with mineralized water to make it appear fossilized.
That's cruelty to teddy bears. How dare they?!
"We don't refer to creationism -- we don't refute it or support it."
Hello? It's called "Big Valley Creation Science Museum."
'Nuff said.
If you can't make it out to Alberta this summer for what really should be your next travel destination, you can always visit the museum's site so you too can be
And remember, "7/7/7, begins at 11 am!"
(That scares me for some reason.)
No comments:
Post a Comment