Grand Opening: The Creation Museum!

How, how, how is it even possible that we are having this discussion in the year 2007? We are moving ever deeper into the 21st century and yet some people, a lot of people actually, refuse to let go of the good old days, the days before Darwin, before the enlightenment, before science made it possible to stop using the Book of Genesis to explain the existence of the universe. You know, those happy times we call the Dark Ages.

Yesterday, May 28th, the Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. The museum was founded on the principle that the universe was created by god in 6 days, as written in Genesis, approximately 6,000 years ago.

My brother equated this to believing in the Tooth Fairy. Pretty much, but I digress...

Most unbelievably, the museum asserts that dinosaurs and humans coinhabited the earth. They even have animatronic models to prove it! Check out this video, featuring Ken Ham, whose ministry, Answers in Genesis, was the driving force behind the museum's construction.




Dinosaurs! This is all so easy to ridicule, and it deserves to be ridiculed, but that's not the point this time, even if it definitely should and probably will be the point by the time I'm done writing this. Nor is it my purpose here to argue in favor of science. To my mind there is nothing to argue. Science is science and the bible is a collection of myths. I believe that people have the right to believe whatever they want, and I would fight to protect that right. I also think that if people want to throw their money away on a museum that propogates nonsense, there's not much anyone can do about it. But it is creepy, isn't it? And when creationists try to force a creationist belief system (or intelligent design or whatever b.s. name they're calling it today to trick us) into a science class in a public school system, that's when I draw the line on creepiness. Science class is for science. Beliefs are for church. Unless your theory stands up to the rigors of the scientific method, keep it out of the schoolroom.

State and federal legislatures have an obligation to maintain a separation of church and state, and that includes keeping religion out of public schools. I sure as hell don't want my hypothetical children attending a school where they learn that the Flintstones were historically and scientifically accurate.

I would also like to point out that not much intelligent design went into that one kid's hairstyle.

nwb