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Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:00 AM

Inside the Creation Museum

Adam and Eve frolic amid the dinosaurs in the new $27 million museum that demonstrates Darwin has nothing on the Book of Genesis.

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Wednesday, May 30, 2007 06:50 PM

Not what it seems

T.REX tissue, ok has anyone heard or seen of a T.Rex tissue-blood vessels

Yes, but the scientist who discovered them is having none of this young Earth nonsense:

http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2006/may/dinosaur.php

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 06:52 PM

Well I suppose it's easy to poke fun at anyone's creation myth

Didn't NYS schoolchildren have to learn about the Iroquois creation myth that involves a rather large turtle?

Luckily though that big expensive trip you just took to Australia with the Aborigines and such was for 'educational tourism' purposes. Hell those dudes have regular specials on the National Geographic Channel. Seems to me you should just leave people to their own myths. Even that merry old racist Joseph Campbell would agree.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 06:54 PM

By the way

If they knew not they were naked then why are they posed that way?

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 07:03 PM

The Frankenfaithful speak with forked tongues

Lordy. Putting the MENTAL in fundamentalist, these people are. Mr. Slack (love the name!) wrote...

It's also a well-oiled money-raising machine and opened the $27 million museum without a penny of debt to banks or lenders.

Well-oiled indeed -- snake oil, squeezed straight from Eden's Serpent himself.

Guess no camel going through the eye of a needle exhibit, eh? Will somebody please explain to the American fundamentalists that the concept of "Christian tycoons" is un-Christian?

Only in America can plutocratic "Christians" pretend to be the defenders of the faith, and not get laughed out of town. I think they're worshipping Mammon, instead of God, making a fortune peddling a false faith to the desperate and credulous.

Newsflash: if you're rich, you're not being a good Christian. Shouldn't even have to be said. Can you imagine how much more good $27 million could have done to help the poor and downtrodden? But noo, they build a fake museum for their Frankenfaith. WWJD? He'd NOT build a Creation Museum.

Crap like this is why fundamentalists invariably burn books and destroy knowledge and get all totalitarian -- these days, their worldview only holds up if all contrary information goes up in the bonfire of the vanities. This "nauseum" is just a preview of what they've got in mind, should they ever attain greater cultural prominence.

And yet we're to believe that 40% (or more?) of Americans are welcome to believe in this -- sounds like a failure of our education system, and/or too much homeschooling creating a parallel cultural world where science doesn't get properly taught.

Ah, well. It'll just mean other countries get more patents and innovations, while we shamble along, looking dumber than ever. Let's hope we get too stupid as a people to launch all the nuclear weapons we've got warehoused, in case some benighted fundamentalist wants to start a little DIY Armageddon.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 07:03 PM

This Is Not My Tribe

These people are Fundamentalists, but they claim to speak for the whole Christian tribe. They are irrational, dangerous Authoritarians, but they claim to speak for the whole American tribe.

If they take over, we will need to find a new place to pitch our tents.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 07:06 PM

A total embarrassment for the Cincinnati area

There've been lots of snide and sarcastic commentary already posted about this "museum" -- all well-deserved, of course -- but the bottom line is that this embarrassment has already gotten WAY too much attention across the country. (Shades of Ann Coulter, who might fade away to her own well-deserved oblivion if we'd just STOP paying attention to her!)

Living about a half-hour drive from this "museum", I actually had entertained the idea of visiting, just to roar with laughter at it. But I refuse to sacrifice my time or the gasoline that would require, let alone give them one red cent of my money.

I honestly could not care less if people want to believe that flying spaghetti monsters exist, or that little pixies live inside every computer, that the earth is flat and only 6,000 years old, or that dinosaurs co-existed with Adam & Eve in a literal Garden of Eden. But to have such utter bullshit trumpeted by credulous and oh-so-respectful national media, placing it on the same plane as the Smithsonian, the Field Museum, or Cincinnati's own Museum Center makes me want to vomit.

I honestly fear for this country, when monstrosities like this "museum" are embraced by a significant fraction of Americans.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 07:15 PM

@ anonymous

The adam and eve creation story is also the creation story of the Jews and Muslims, so yes, people here are mocking those as well. However, they aren't so much mocking the myth so much as mocking the notion that the myth is literally true, which is absolutely mockable. If someone created a museum about the Iroquois myth about turtles (or whatever), it probably wouldn't be as mockable because there wouldn't be an attempt to get others to believe in the literal truth of the myth, but simply to respect the values it teaches. Also, it is quite a different act to mock the powerful than to mock the marginalized - creationists are running the damn country right now.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 07:25 PM

equally ridiculous

But at the risk of asking an obvious question, would any of you offer the same level of ridicule for a similar museum created by Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Wiccan, or Shinto fanatics? You say you would. But of course you wouldn't. We all know it.

Find the Hindu, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Wiccan or Shinto (Shinto too!) who is attempting to pass off their religious myth as science -- a science that should be taught in schools -- and yes, you will get the same ridicule.

Strange how the right wing has no problem with the idea of making the next generation of Americans stupid and by extension the country weaker.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 07:30 PM

I'm so proud

Ah, MAN, after the Mapplethorpe Exhibit fiasco I spent a good 3-5 years cringing every time someone asked where I was from and I had to say "Cincinnati...yeah, yeah, I know...." I was finally over that, and now this. I meah, 2004 was bad too, but this is even closer to home! (Yes, I know it's not exactly in Cincy, but the connection has been made repeatedly.)

Really, I think a lot of people will in fact go for the kitsch factor, I don't think the country is as bad off as it sounds. While there are people who will say on a poll that we were put on Earth pretty much in this form (as opposed to evolving), I think a fraction of a percent actually believe the literal interpretation of the Bible. Unfortunately, those cranks make good copy, so they get an insane amount of press.

Sigh.

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