Letters to the Editor
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Southwest, dear.
The rights of idiots to spend millions for a museum dedicated to kitsch and ignorance and promotion of superstition and literal thinking will not be abridged by ridicule of this propapanda effort.
In fact, ridiculing stupidity is not the same as trying to silence it it. Free speech includes ridicule. Laughing at the foolishness of others is my right as an American! How come you people project your own political strategy on to others? What is abstinance education if not a effort to pretend that other options don't exist, and silencing those who wish to promote sane alternatives?
Promoting Biblical literalism in a attempt to discourage critical thinking skills is fine with me. It is an excellent way to isolate those who should not have a say in how this country is run. Too bad for you, these useful idiots outliving their uselessness. When one has 29% of the coutnry behind him, it would see you might want to cultivate less hilarious allies!
Have a nice Rapture!
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@slackie and fran
Slackie writes: "I guess that's the appeal of orthodoxy ...."
What's interesting to me is that American-style fundamentalism has very little to do with what was Christian orthodoxy for most of history and what still is orthodoxy for most of the world's Christians. There's very little tendancy toward literalistic readings of Genesis until about the 16th century. There is, of course, practically no Jewish tradition of reading the creation story literally, and the wiser Christians have kept that in mind.
Even in the most deeply Protestant cultures, which are intellectually friendly to biblical literalism, there's very little that compares to American-style fundamentalism. I think there's just something oddly entrepreneurial in our national character that leads us to invent wacky new religions (Mormonism, Scientology, the "spiritualism" of your local crystal-therapy/green tea enema/aromayoga center) or zany variations on existing religions (Branch Davidians, "Foursquare" churches, Jews for Jesus, &c.) Meaning no unkindness to the many goodhearted people who hold those beliefs, or to the young-Earth fundamentalists, either, there always seems to me to be a faint echo of P.T. Barnum in their congregations.
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Is admission free?
If so, I soooooooo want to go see this place. It sounds hilarious!
I wonder how long the full-of-love-in-their-hearts Crucifictionists would allow a heathen such as myself to remain in their little Temple of Dumb, gut-laughing at their utter imbecility. Something tells me not very long.
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4-Anonymous
Agree with your theory in principal, but think you may have it backwards...the deeply held belief is in the angry God and it consistently displaces the more rational reasoning/ideas that comes from adult learning and experience.
This is why religion gets them young, so the seed can be planted in the young mind and buried under years of indoctrination, deep into the subconscious.
People want to reject it, but it comes from the subconscious after indoctrination is complete, therefore it asserts itself insidiously against all reason and in surprising ways.
This is the same reason Bush got elected twice...once in the booth and about to pull that lever, the angry God, complete with belly full of fear, did the pulling.
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Graven Images
Pseudo-science aside, IF THERE IS A GOD, isn't this museum, from its silky-haired Adam & Eve to that upstanding Christian, Buddy Davis' lifelike dinosaurs, nothing more than a colossal parade of graven images?
And doesn't it fly in the face of, and maybe defeat the whole purpose of - FAITH - , to errect and charge admission to such a monument that would attempt or claim to - PROVE - creation?
AND IT'S EVEN OPEN ON THE SABBATH!!!!
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To RealName
I actually don't think "dumb" is self-correcting. My 17-year-old son has reminded me before in conversations about evolution that the goal is reproduction, not long life. That's why cancers and other diseases are not so easily wiped out. One can reproduce and then die immediately of cancer or stupidity; his traits now live on.
There are WAY too many idiots out there for anyone to make a coherent argument about intelligence being a selected trait for survival. Would that it were so.
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This place exists because of the responses seen here.
Yes, the museum is silly and sad and frustrating and it's a lot more fun (and easier too) to poke holes in its approach and laugh at its absurdities than to analyze the possibility that it's the very polarization of viewpoints shown in these letters that makes the museum's existence even possible.
When evolutionary theory became synonymous with declarations that there is no God, people with religious beliefs had nowhere to turn other than creationism (or worse, "Intelligent Design"). Those of you who dismiss anyone who believes in God (any God) as "stupid" are being pretty narrow-minded yourselves. Are you really so arrogant to believe that Humans, as much as we have left to learn about the world, the universe and ourselves, have the final answer on something as un-provable as the existence of God? You can not prove that something does not exist - this is another basic tenent of science. God and Evolution are not in conflict. They are not mutually exclusive. One can believe there is a moral authority giving mankind an innate understanding of right and wrong and have no problems resolving this with an easy acceptance of the truths of science, so long as you have not been forced into an artificial either-or choice by hysterics on both sides. The letter writer that stated that the museum is necessary because of the need for a moral compass clearly believes she has to make that choice. The museum has nothing to do with moral compasses, or right vs. wrong. It panders to the fear that science is out to kill God. This straw-man was created by unscrupulous "religious" leaders seeking to control people and convince them to donate money to causes like this one, but they have an unintended ally in extremist Atheists and the type of sarcastic and disdainful responses of the majority of the 100+ letters written here. Honestly - if a person with a belief in God were shown your responses as the arguments for Evolution, do you think you would tempt them to listen? Your voices of derision are so loud they drown out the reason of science. Also, I hate to break it to you, but Strong Atheism is no less a belief system than any other religion in the world - it is a fixed belief in something that can never be proven.
There is a wonderful book, written by geneticist Francis Collins, who headed the Human Genome Project. It's called The Language of God and is a beautifully written explanation of the potential for a truce between God and science. If you really want to have a discourse and a chance to change people's minds, the first thing you have to do is get them to listen - which you won't do by telling them how stupid you think they are.