Hooary! Another Creation Museum!
Intelligent Design Proponent Optimistic About Current Worldview Shift
By Jim Brown
August 23, 2005(AgapePress) – The head of a biblical creationism museum sees a major worldview shift on the academic level from neo-Darwinism to intelligent design.
If by “academic,” you mean “a handful of creationist cranks,” sure.
After all, just because one crazy cardiologist vouches for the mystical healing powers of sacred tap water, that doesn’t mean the medical establishment is going to start prescribing Celestial Drops for canker sores.
The debate over evolution vs. intelligent design is as hot as it has ever been, and one creation scientist believes now is the perfect time for Christians to enlighten the culture about their belief in God’s creative work recorded in the Book of Genesis.
I’m sure that’ll be a terrific success. “See, in the beginning, the only two people on Earth were Adam and Eve. After God banished them from Eden, they had a bunch of children, who eventually had sex with each other and had children of their own…”
Dr. Thomas Sharp, founder of both the Oklahoma-based Creation Truth Foundation and the Arkansas-based Museum of Earth History, cautions that all intelligent design theorists are not biblical.
Note to Intelligent Design folks: y’all may be wacky, but you’ll never be able to out-crazy the Young Earth Creationists.
“The biblical view is that we don’t hesitate to identify who the intelligence is,” he explains. “[But] the unfortunate problem with intelligent design across the board is that it’s not all biblical.”
Still, intelligent design provides an “incredible support base for the biblical view,” he explains, “because obviously the wisdom and super-intelligence of the Almighty God was the logos, or the concept, behind the creation of life and everything in the universe.”
“I use Ancient Greek words so people won’t think I’m anoitos, or retarded.”
At any rate, I decided to check out “Dr.” Sharp’s Museum of Earth History to see if it was wingnuttier than Ken Ham’s Creation Museum. (Long story short: it’s not, but it’s still pretty funny.)
First, let’s read this special message from “Dr.” Sharp about the museum’s goals:
As I contemplate the wonderful opportunity before me to tell the Biblical story of the creation, the Fall and the Flood in the Museum of Earth History, I understand I am experiencing a life-long dream.
Sounds more like a life-long acid trip to me:
“Kure kure kure! Science is a pack of left-wing lies!”
Early in my educational experience I came face-to-face with the reality that evolutionary conclusions were devastating the faith of millions of Christian young people.
In other words, if you don’t believe that God created the world 6,000 years ago, that Noah brought dinosaurs with him on the ark, or that we’re all directly descended from Adam and Eve (and are therefore inbred), then you can’t possibly be a Christian.
The so-called scientific presentation of life?s origins from a purely naturalistic point of view has thoroughly disconnected the Genesis narrative as the legitimate record of earth history. In so doing, the entire Biblical revelation became discredited and disconnected from all reality.
Gee, I wonder why that is… maybe because the Biblical account of world history is disconnected from reality?
Thus we are experiencing a devastating departure from the Biblical view of life, especially among America’s Christian youth. Why is this so?
Because they’re not a bunch of mindless idiots?
Because Jesus, Himself, said, in John 5:45-47, “I will not accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you?Moses in whom you trust. For if you had believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote of Me. But if you can’t believe his writings, you will not believe My words.” There you have it!
Yes, there you have it! If you pick up a science textbook, Jesus will hate you!
Jesus said, in effect, if you can’t believe Genesis, you couldn’t believe Me. This is what has happened over the past one hundred-fifty years or so.
Jesus also said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” In effect, that means George W. Bush is going to hell.
Secular scientists have alleged that the Biblical record of earth history can no longer be trusted. Thus Genesis, the foundation of the entire Bible, was disconnected from real history on the basis of evolutionary geology and paleontology. Accordingly, everything established on the truthfulness of the Genesis narrative of origins, the Fall and the Flood became discredited as well, including the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The good “doctor” never explains how the theory of plate tectonics disproves the existence of Jesus, but I’ll cut him some slack since logical coherence doesn’t seem to be his strong suit.
It is our desire to provide in this exciting Museum of Earth History an authentic, entertaining and educational learning environment that can aid parents, teachers and churches in the Biblical training of their youth. In response to the words of Jesus to Nicodemus, we seek to strengthen the believer’s trust in the Biblical account of earth history, so they will not hesitate to trust the Passion of Christ for their destiny.
So if you want to gain your children’s trust, you should do it the same way George W. Bush convinced America to invade Iraq: through lying.
OK, let’s take a look at some of the museum’s exhibits, starting with “The Garden of Eden”:
A large, panoramic still life display featuring a representation of how Eden might have looked. This exhibit includes a 20 foot waterfall and lush vegetation, with a full size skeleton of a Thescelosaurus and a skeletal skull replica of Stan, the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Adam must’ve had a great sense of humor if he saw a giant fucking lizard carnivore and decided to call it “Stan.”
Left: Adam & Eve (who, despite living in a tropical climate, look like Western Europeans) frolic in the Garden of Eden. Note the carefully-positioned plants covering their nasties. Right: A depiction of the world’s first roadkill.
Here’s our next exhibit:
The Curse
Perhaps the most dramatic of the exhibits, this display presents a vivid pictorial rendition of the effects of the Fall of man upon the earth. Included in the display are full size skeletons of an Albertosaurus and a Pachycephalosaurus. Also included is the skull of a Triceratops. Flying overhead, next to a three dimensional ash cloud from a volcano, are a Pteranodon Longiceps with a 24 foot wing span, and a smaller Pteranodon Sternburgi.
Above: After the Fall of Man, God sent Adam and Eve to Mordor East of Eden.
Here’s my personal favorite:
The Ice Age
The Ice Age was an expected result of the Post-Flood era. Included in this display is a panorama depicting an encroaching glacier, three full-sized Dromaeosaur skeletons, a Giant Bison skull and a Woolly Mammoth skull.
I’d point out that the last Ice Age ended over 10,000 years ago, but when you’re talking about a museum whose exhibits depict people living side-by-side with animals that have been extinct for 65 million years, it just seems like nitpicking.
Above: Dinosaurs perish in the cold of the last Ice Age.
Tour of Babel
This exhibit represents the very important time of the dividing of the nations, not too long after the Flood. Because of the sin of the people, God confounded their languages, which resulted in the dispersal of the different tribes and peoples across the world.
Wow! This proves that secular linguists are lying when they say the English language “evolved” from Latin and Germanic languages. In reality, it was intelligently designed thousands of years ago and spoken by Jesus Himself! Think about it- does “Blessed are the peacemakers” sound like Aramaic to you?
Wow! If “Dr.” Sharp were a candy bar, his ingredients panel would say “100% nuts.” What a nutbar!
About that Tower of Babel stuff… since God decided that we shouldn’t all speak the same language, isn’t the level of desire some people in America for making English the One True Language, a bit, er, hm, unbibical and anti-God?
Might one say that Dr. Sharp isn’t exactly, um, sharp?
I can’t wait for someone to claim he has been “nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in Science”
oh you kids have to go over to the Howler to see Bob pop a vein about Larry King (and evolution) last night- his prose is delightfully acidic on this matter.
http://dailyhowler.com/
Also, Lawyers, Guns and Money saw the debacle as well
http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2005/08/walking-mile-in-pz-myers-shoes.html
He’s crap with science, but franky he’s no better with scripture. Jesus was saying we have to believe in God-Lizards or we’re going to Hell, but that some of Moses’ writings were prophetic and about Jesus in particular. The Creationists are twisting Jesus’ words to prop up their bullshit.
“was NOT saying” Stupid brain.
And “frankly”. Dagnabbit! And I also forgot to mention the good doctor apparently has a PhD in the “philosophy of religion and science” from a seminary.
Jesus said, in effect, if you can’t believe Genesis, you couldn’t believe Me.
WHA? If we’re going to play that game, Jesus also said that I don’t have to eat my peas and can ice cream for dessert. It’s in the Bible.
Maybe he was talking about some guy named Jesus (the common Spanish name) and that “Me” is suppsed to be lower case “me”, and that guy’s just stating a fact. See, if you don’t believe Genesis, you’re certainly not going to believe the stuff he’s spouting about creation. Makes MUCH more sense.
But, good “Dr.”, what about the fact that Moses didn’t write Genesis? The fact that Genesis is a combination of 4 different verbal traditions combined into part of the Torah? That’s why there are two different creation stories in the first chapter:
1.) The idea man and woman were created equally is presented first, most likely an earlier story.
2.)the whole rib snatching idea came later from Priestly traditions, (that were more male centered) and was inserted in after the first traditional story was presented.
See, that right there? That’s called scholarship. And logic. And critical thinking, and a whole bunch of other complicated words that do not apply to fake internet doctors.
(And I would have said oral traditions, but…well..you know. Yosef.)
Because, it’s not like anybody has tried jamming that incoherent pile of shite down our collective throats before now. Oh, wait…
Um…the Ice Age came “post Flood”? If that were the case, don’t you think there would be some reference in the Bible to “And then it got really fucking cold and the oceans froze and ain’t Gawd wunnerful?”
You’d think.
If any deity actually exists, someone will *promise* me that these fucked-up creation museums do not have actual prehistoric fossils in their little Faux-Science Fair Play Dioramas but instead just poorly cured plaster. Selling Sue was blasphemy (in the non-Biblical, but truly divine, sense) enough, but the notion that these anti-science morons have actual bits of fossilized dinosaurs or megafauna is *profoundly* perverse.
Personally, I can’t bear to click through and find out. Forget Baby Jesus, it’d be enough to make the cold impersonal universe cry.
http://www.drinkatwork.com/2005/08/more-you-know.html
Uh-uh, we aren’t either all inbred moronic descendents of Adam’n’Eve! ‘Cause there were all them whachacallem Nephilim, what were giants and sons of God, and they done fooled around some with the ladies waaaaay back then, see… so some’s us is God’s great-great-great-whatever grandchildren. So there thhhbbbbpppptttt!
Quiet, you! You’re just jealous that you don’t live within 40 miles of Sue, like I do, and that you didn’t get to watch them actually extracting her remains from the rock matrix, like I did. And that you’re not about the same distance from Rockford, where they’ve just unveiled a juvenile T-rex (whose nickname escapes me) that I’m making plans to scope out soon. Though I have to admit that I’m not terribly fond of the pose the put Sue in-it’s kinda tentative. The baby Rex is in a much more aggressive pose. As is the reposed Rex at the American museum in NYC, which I haven’t seen since the ’80s when it was in the upright, man-like “godzilla” pose. So I gotta get out there some day as well.
Marq: Yes, yes I am jealous. *sigh*
All theories are based on faith. There is no such thing as objective or pure science. So one cannot promote the theory of evolution as being scientifically superior in any way to the theory of intelligent design. Furthermore secular humanism is, by all intents and purposes, a religion–one that is increasingly being shoved down our throats by folks who pretend they are free from religious bias.
Ah, Dr. BLT. By doing that classic 180? projection, you only brand yourself a wingnut. The basic difference between an actual science and a religious scheme in disguise, such as ID, is that the science can, potentially, be disproven by newly introduced evidence. The ID cannot be disproved or proved… by design. Thus, it is revealed as thinly-veiled religious dogma.
Oh, and D. Sidhe, one of the most fun things at the Sue exhibit at the Field Museum is a cast of one set of her arm bones that are “touchable.” For such an enormous creature-they look microscopic on the full skeleton-her “dainty” arm bones are almost exactly the size of mine, from shoulder-to-wrist (the hand is, of course, very different). One wonders if they served any useful function, or if they were mere vestigial leftovers.
Yep, all theories sure are based on faith.
So when all the hurricane survivors on the Gulf coast start getting sick from spending a week in standing, stagnant water filled with bodies, we won’t bother to send them any penicillin. We’ll just pray for them.
After all, both germ theory and prayer theory are based on faith.
Dr. PB&J sez:
>> All theories are based on faith.
Damn. What a moronic statement. Don’t they teach kids ANYTHING in Ph.D. school these days??? As Marq points out, a valid scientific theory is one that can be tested and potentially disproved. This is not rocket science, doctor. In fact, it’s high school science. But maybe you were out sick that day.
And as for the premise that all theories are created equal — um… Yeah. Sure. I got a theory for ya: You, doctor, are not a human being. You are a little fuzzy ball of belly-button lint.
That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it.
I Am just amazed that Yecs have so many followers, wow guess that says something for how dumb we are lmao I am dead serious people need an education and teachin untrue bs isnt the way to help. The Yecs claim that science methods flawed.
No crap it is called Standard Deviation, and that is usually asociated with Human error. But just teach your children right and maybe the world will be ok. For the most part the these people that belive this yec crap dont have much education to fall back on and that is ok becuase the world needs workers not thinkers.
Well if you want to find the truth however yuo will need to start reading books, plural that is non fiction ones like math, chemistry,physics,biology,geology,after which you can go out and do a little field geology and see for yourself . one cool spot that encompasses 35 million years of North American evolotion is the badlands of South Dakota (http://www.nps.gov/badl/) there you will find no evidence of a global flood however you will see that the Native American Indian Has been on this continent for over 12,000 years Twice as long as the Earth supposedly existed. you will also see how vulcanism and plate tectonics works as well as see species of animals go extinct and others EVOLVE into new ones (like the modern Horse)I my self have been there 12 times.but the world is full of places like that.
however the ruling bodies of the past didnt want thinkers thay wanted doers. what better way then to threaten you with eternal damnation if you question the leaders rofl oh by the way please give 10% of what you make hehehe (umm I guess That guy could do math)