Creationists. What. The. Fuck? I thought Intelligent Designers were ridiculous but they’re not so daft after all.
A new $27 million museum propounding Creationist views opened in Kentucky. Replete with animatronic dinosaurs, a buff looking Adam and Eve and a special effects theatre with rumbling seats, rising mists and sea breezes the museum declares that it “brings the pages of the Bible to life, casting its characters and animals in dynamic form, and placing them in familiar settings. Adam and Eve live in the Garden of Eden. Children play and dinosaurs roam near Eden’s rivers. The serpent coils cunningly in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” (Creation Museum brochure p. 3)
“Two animatronic, brown-complexioned children, demurely dressed in Hiawatha-like buckskin, gravely flutter with movement. Behind them lurk two small Tyrannosaurus Rexes.”
Yes that’s right. Dinosaurs playing with children. Because, apparently, before the fall of man all creatures were very friendly and were all herbivores. Only by our sin was the evil predatorial nature of the dinosaurs revealed. When told the dinosaurs would have had very sharp teeth director of Answers in Genesis the owners of the new museum, Ken Ham replied, “So do bears… but they eat nuts and berries! Remember, before the sin of Adam, the world was perfect. All creatures were vegetarian.”
I saw an interview on Sunday morning with a visitor to the Museum who thought it likely that our ancestors kept dinosaurs as pets.
WHAT…
THE…
FUCK ?
According to the Creationist…. “religion”… the Earth is just 6000 years old. God created man as he is now and evolution did not happen. It does not, in fact, exist. It’s pseudo-science. The fossil record was laid down during the flood which Noah waited out aboard his Ark, on which he had pairs of dinosaurs, though to save on space Noah only took “teenage” dinosaurs. It was the same flood that carved out the Grand Canyon.
This is an odd blend of faith and what can only loosely be termed as science in a Disneyesque wrapper. Designed to attract children withs it fairground style and models. It would be merely funny; just another American display of Religious idiocy if it wasn’t for the fact that a massive number of Americans believe it.
In a recent poll 48% of Americans reject the theory of Evolution and 34% of college graduates accept the Bibles account of creation as fact. Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.
The thing I find most bizarre in this poll is the attitude to atheists. The poll shows the public’s tolerance of atheists has increased in recent years. Nearly half (47 percent) of the respondents felt the country is more accepting of atheists today that it used to be and slightly more (49 percent) reported personally knowing an atheist.
I am amazed that personally knowing an atheist is something to remark upon. It makes me imagine small enclaves of non-believers huddled inside darkened rooms lest the religious find them.
Even more worryingly is the fact that out of the 10 Republican candidates running for the 2008 presidential nomination 3 do not believe in evolution.
What has happened to America? Never the sanest place on Earth it seems to be getting crazier. How long can a land of gun-toting religious lunatics last as the self-appointed leader of the free world? Not long I would hope, though it seems, waiting in line to be the next wannabe Empire is China and how much of an improvement would that be. The only light at the end of a very dark tunnel is that very soon George W. Bush will be leaving the White House. Bush himself said, “On the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth.”
Presumably the US will have learned their lesson and will elect someone of at least average intelligence. I don’t think the next President will be an atheist however.
This blurb from the Creation Museum brochure (download it from here) sums it all up for me.:
“The Bible speaks for itself at the creation museum. We’ve just paved the way to a greater understanding of the tenets of creation and redemption. Our exhibit halls are gilded with truth, our gardens teem with the visible signs of life. We invite you to visit the creation museum. Your life may change forever.”
“Gilded with truth” indeed. Scrape the surface of that thin veneer of fact and what would you find? Nothing but lies to entice children into their folly. Isn’t that what the serpent did with his words that were “gilded with truth”?
And what was is that pesky list of ten things not to do?… The Commandments, thats it. And the eighth one of those?
Something to do with not lying I think.