It's high time that scientists and the educated organize against attempts by the dogmatically ignorant to undermine education in America. AiG's deceptive junk-tank monument to stupidity, aka the Creation Museum, has squandered $27 million in order to promote their LIES against scientific fact.
YECs appear not to be a particularly bright group, so it seems unlikely that many budding geniuses are being misled into ignorance. However, this is no reason not to decry the damage done to average children by causing deliberate confusion about science and reality.
The Founding Fathers were wise to separate Religion and the State, though not necessarily for prescient reasons. Whether or not they foresaw the likelihood that organized stupidity would attempt to undermine education, the Constitution should be used to protect education from superstition and ignorance. The mere fact of "scientists'" having signed a document against Darwinism demonstrates the desecration of science, critical thinking, and logic wrought by religious dogmatists. Polls indicate that far too high a percentage of Americans are so ignorant of the facts on which scientific theories are based that they hold a strict creationist view of origins.
Modern politicians, concerned more for their political ambitions than for truth, are all too aware of the vocal agitators who sway religious dogmatists on voting day, so they abrogate their responsibility to uphold the Constitution. To make matters worse, the most stupid president ever not-to-actually-be-elected resorts to claims of communication with God. It's intriguing to ponder how America came to be a nation that largely reviles knowledge while protecting organized stupidity. America has not come very far since 1925!
Statement of Concern
"We, the undersigned scientists at universities and colleges in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, are concerned about scientifically inaccurate materials at the Answers in Genesis museum. Students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level. These students will need remedial instruction in the nature of science, as well as in the specific areas of science misrepresented by Answers in Genesis."
National Center for Science Education petition: http://www.sciohost.org/states
"One of the petitions, started by the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, a Washington, D.C., group that focuses on church and state issues, says the museum is part of a "campaign by the religious right to inject creationist teachings into science education."'
Campaign to Defend the Constitution: http://www.defconamerica.org/
Elsewhere: Gallup Poll on Evolution, which reveals that the overwhelming majority of religious fundamentalists are ignorant of the fact of biological evolution : comment on Pharyngula : Religion—our maelstrom of ignorance: "Maybe we need to start picketing fundamentalist churches. Maybe it's about time that we recognize religious miseducation as child abuse."
Furor over Stupidity
Myths Revered and Myths Exposed
Two very different museum exhibits have hit the news recently (5/26/07).First the bad news: "Creation Museum juxtaposes dinosaurs, Noah's Ark"
This monument to stupidity in Petersburg, Kentucky was erected under the direction of Ken Ham. He's the expatriate Queenslander who founded the oxymoronically-titled Answers in Genesis ministry. Ham's "non-profit" organization came up with $27 million to build a 60,000-square-foot museum devoted to biblical literacy and creation mythology.
Says Ham, "The Bible doesn't talk about fossils, but it gives you a basis for understanding why there are fossils around the world."Understanding? Ham is not interested in understanding, Ham is interested in promoting nonsensical insistence that Genesis is not allegorical. Of course the Bible doesn't mention fossils – the ancient tribesmen of Israel who invented the Genesis-creation-myth knew nothing of fossils.
"Christians across this nation see this place as a rallying point," Ham said. They "recognize that we live in a culture that no longer believes the Bible is true."
Misleading! Only some Christians are so deluded that they believe that the Bible is literal, though I suppose that religious dogmatists are spread across America. The museum is actually a rallying point only for those Christians who are so ignorant as to insist upon Special Creation. The only good news is Ham's admission that most of the "culture" no longer takes the Bible literally.
Ham said the museum received three gifts topping $1 million, which only goes to demonstrate that the deluded may become rich. On the other hand, perhaps chimpanzees have funded this inanity in order to divorce themselves from the deluded amongst their cousins.
Ham has filled the museum not with dioramas but with lie-oramas, displays that lie about paleontology. The dinosaurs disappeared some 65 million years ago, when the only evidence of mammalian ancestors comprised tiny insectivores. Hominids did not evolve until the Miocene.
Why dinosaurs in such an exhibit? Children love dinosaurs, and if you wish to inculcate creation myths into another generation you must con the kiddies.
To demonstrate that two can play at the game of deceptive imagery, I have created the Ham-headed-dinosaur to illustrate "Different Views of Dinosaurs".
Some good news is that Ham's lie-oramas have excited well-deserved criticism and that protests are planned.
The other exhibit deals with the phenomenon of myth building in a realistic way:
Dragons and other mythic creatures featured in NYC museum exhibit
"What's going on? Has one of the pre-eminent science museums in the world made a find that would show these creatures are real? No, no, the exhibit actually looks at how people have come up with all kinds of myths and stories to account for things they didn't understand.
The exhibit shows how cultures around the world came up with such strange, mysterious creatures. Dragons, for instance, can be found both in the East and West, although they're considerably more benevolent in Chinese culture than they are in Europe. "
That's more like it – display that consititutes an acknowledment that ignorance promoted fantasy.
More mutterings about the stupidity that is creationism:
ɷ Creationism only flourishes amidst Ignorance
ɷ un-designed intelligences
ɷ Judge Jones Rules
ɷ The Wedge Document
Pseudoscience Chicanery
Pseudoscience masquerades as science, usually to promote some commercial scam or to promote religious beliefs for which there is not, nor ever will be, supportive evidence.
The subject matter of pseudoscientific claims ranges from astrology and the occult to anti-science, religiously motivated falsehoods.
By my definition, to lay claim to being legitimately within the sphere of scientific knowledge, the claim must:
A) For physical evidence that is not subject to experimental verification: exist as tangible evidence that is uncovered under controlled conditions and is interpreted in accordance with current knowledge – for example, a paleontological fossil, an anthropological artefact, an archeological find. That same fossil, artefact, or ruin cannot be considered to fall within the realm of science when it has been unearthed without any attention to its context, or experimental verification of its associations and age.
B) For experimentally generated empirical data: the scientific method can be applied to physical data that is experimentally testable, repeatable, and, ideally, falsifiable. The experimental data must be logically interpreted in accordance with current knowledge.
Talking or writing about science is not science. Criticizing or critiquing science is not science. Elaborating mumbo-jumbo about supposed medical treatments without clinical testing is not science. Concocting falsehoods designed to protect unjustified belief in disproved Special Creation is definitely not science.
In order to ignorantly support illogical, indoctrinated religious mythology, creationists deny scientific knowledge, attack a straw man version of science, and falsify science as lie-oramas in the Fiction Lie-See-Um, or tout Misleading Pseudoscience for Dummies on junk tanks. " Creationism has been discredited, however, by indisputable physical evidence – carbon dating, for example."[SW]
External : Science Week editorials : Creationism vs. Sanity : SCIENCE POLICY: ON THE TEACHING OF PSEUDOSCIENCE :
YEC Yack
Rather than merely editorialize the fact that creationists hold unfounded opinions and make illogical arguments, here are comments on some snippets of their views:
C1: "I would like to meet the "scientist" that can PROVE that evolution is true and not a theory."
Of course this writer would not really like to meet any such scientist because creationists display absolutely no desire to understand reality.
Symptomatic of their black-and-white thinking, creationists love to make challenges demanding proof. Biological evolution is a demonstrable fact upon which theories of evolution are based. The evidence for biological evolution has been pronounced as "overwhelming" by credible experts in the field. Facts can be empirically demonstrated, but no scientific theory, or any other inference based on induction can be proven, though hypotheses and theories and claimed-to-be-facts can be disproven. The writer goes on:
C1: "That of course is impossible since no one was living millions and billions of years ago, and I mean NO ONE and NOTHING."
This is patently untrue! There is abundant evidence that life existed on this planet several billion years ago.
C1: "There are plenty of Creation Scientists that can show proof as to why the earth can only be 6000 years old(give or take a couple of hundred years)."
There are NO creation scientists because creationisms is religion and not science, so "creation scientist" is an oxymoron. The statement is completely untrue. Falsifying details and publishing unfounded attacks on scientific facts does not constitute science. No matter what an individual's educational background, fallacious argumentum ad verecundiam pronouncements that run counter to the facts and to the knowledge of credible experts in a field are without any value as science.
The mythical YEC figure of 6,000 years is based on Bishop Usher's Bible-based estimate. Science has categorically demonstrated that the Bible is incorrect in its depiction of dates–in effect, disproven.
C1: "Carbon dating and other dating methods that the scientific community has relied on for so long now are proving to be very inacurate and more and more evidence keeps popping up to prove thousands of years instead of millions or even billions of years."
No scientist claims that carbon dating can be applied to dates earlier than 70,000 years ago. Other radioactive isotopes with longer half-lives are employed in obtaining the older estimates, which are always reported with the range of error indicated. Creationists are typically woefully ignorant of actual science, preferring as they do to parrot the pseudoscientific falsifications on junk tanks such as AiG. The planet is approximately 4.7 billion years old, no matter how many times ill-informed and biased YECs claim that Usher's date is accurate.
C1: "When is the "scientific" community going to take its head out of their "evolutionary ooz" and realize that CREATION IS SCIENCE!"
Shouting does not help this writer's ridiculous argument. Science is based on application of empirical scientific methodology, creationism is religion based on an ill-founded assumption of Biblical literacy. Creationists have attempted to hijack science in order to strengthen their received, preconceived notions of Biblical inerrancy. They will never succeed in convincing any but the already-deluded because scientific methods have disproven the Biblical statements that relate to scientific areas. The Bible is an allegorical creation myth followed by pseudohistorical moral fable.
C1: "God was the originator of science and created everything we see, and plenty of things that we don't even know exist yet."
Creationists seem to believe that whatever nonsense they make up about their supposed God will hold true simply because they say so. Such thinking is totally in keeping with the emotionality, obstinate ignorance, and illogic of their arguments. If God originated science, then the Bible is the received Misleading Pseudoscience for Dummies text, and God scores a Z- in science.
C1: "I can't imagine holding onto the idea that we evolved from some "ooz" of some of some sort and that's all we are, an accident, and there is no purpose to our lives. I think that's very sad."
That says it all. The writer, for highly emotional reasons of his or her own cannot imagine how life could have arisen from chemicals and then evolved. This is a failure of comprehension, a failure of logic, and deliberate ignorance of established facts. A sense of purpose is a psychological phenomenon. If the writer cannot sense some purpose to his or her life without being the product of Special Creation, then that, in addition to manifest and obstinate ignorance about reality, is very sad indeed.
Here's another creationist stating YEC beliefs:
C2: "YEC does not say that God created all animal life, for example, in the state it is in today. YEC does not deny that some biological evolution occurs. YEC believes that change does occur (what they believe actually requires it) but YEC believes that change can only happen within a created kind."
Because there is so much evidence for continuing biological evolution (covered by the creationist buzzword microevolution) creationists see nothing to be gained in denying that, for example, bacteria can acquire antibiotic resistance. Creationists do not perceive currently occurring genetic change as a threat because they are obsessed with denying the distant past (biopoiesis and macroevolution) in order create that gap into which they insert the man-invented notion of Special Creation.
The reference to design pays homage to intelligent [sick] design theory, which is merely creationism in disguise.
C2: "Naturalistic secular science begins and ends with the unfounded assumption that the material is all that exists, that God does not exist, etc., etc."
Of course science studies the natural world – scientific method can only be applied to the physical, observable, tangible, and measurable. However, that is the only thing in which C2 is correct. It is not necessarily an unfounded assumption to believe that the material is all that exists, even though scientists concede the physical may not inhere all of existence. Only the material is accessible to the scientific method. The question of existence beyond the physical belongs to speculative philosophy and theology. Science is religion-neutral and does not assume that God does not exist. Scientists may privately believe that there is no deity, particularly in view of the fact that science provides far better explanations than "God brought it about by a miracle." However, scientific method can only be religion neutral. C2 is merely using the creationist buzzword "secular" to attempt to place all scientists in the infidel camp in an association fallacy.
C2: "(Creationism) is not about religion; it is about the Truth."
This is an utter falsehood. Of course creationism is about religion. Creationists and others of religious persuasion make a claim of "Truth" for their beliefs, but they have no good evidential, logical foundation for doing so. This is the reason that the terms "faith" and "belief" are more accurately applied to religious beliefs.
C2: ". . . God, who Jesus is, life after death, but those are all tied to this issue."
If creationism is about God and Jesus, then C2 has just revealed him or herself to have lied when saying that creationism is not religion.
C2: "True, one can be a Christian and not believe in a six day creation, but such a person is not really being consistent in their beliefs. If Genesis is open to such liberal interpretation as some give it, then why not do the same to the resurrection account of Jesus? If there was no literal Adam and Eve that literally disobeyed God (sinned), then there is no need for a Savior."
Yup. This is the underlying reason for dogmatic insistence on Biblical literalism, these black-and-white thinkers are aware that their rigid beliefs will not allow for any latitude. It's no accident that Genesis depicts knowledge as the enemy. Knowledge does not make us sinners, but religious beliefs cannot survive full critical scrutiny.
"Genesis is foundational to the Christian faith, and it is true."
Genesis is an allegorical creation myth that is clung to by particularly reality-ignorant Christians. Genesis is disproven.
"The Bible says that those that do not want to see the Truth will be blinded to it."
Since the Bible was written by men this statement remains accurate concerning the human foible of denial. The fact is that the actual truth is not what creationists credulously take to be "the Truth".
C2: "Those that want to cling to the religion of evolution will always find a way to make it seem right in their eyes."
Poor, fuddled C2 is totally muddled as to what is science and what is religion. Biological evolution is a fact, the modern synthesis of evolution represents the best current scientific explanation of the observable facts. Evolution is not religion in C2's earlier definition, where it is labelled as secular science.
Creationists are typically so illogical that they do not even realize that they are making self-contradictory statements in an attempt to justify emotional beliefs. I suspect that because these individuals desperately want and need to believe that they are the salvation-selected products of Special Creation they become easy prey for any falsehood or illogical argument that appears to support their indoctrinated beliefs. (Let's be honest and call a stupid argument a stupid argument.) The stupid arguments work to support creationists' emotional beliefs, so creationists ignorantly fail to detect the illogic.
The sentence would have been accurate if it had been written as, "Those that want to cling to the religion of creationism will always find a way to make it seem right in their eyes."
No matter how passionately an illogical ignorant argument is made, that argument remains utterly without validity. YEC vehemence is really tantamount to bragging about exhibiting stupidity. It is not surprising that many Christians hold YECs in contempt.
I believe that YEC and ID appeal to those who have a cognitive disorder in that they have not attained an internal desire for logic. Further, most creationists of my acquaintance also appear to lack mastery of many operations of logic.
Piaget's "genetic epistemological" research into the developmental acquisition of cognitive schemas did not proceed beyond the achievement of formal operations by about age eleven. However, beyond the logical schema acquired in childhood, not all individuals attain the full repetoir of logical operations necessary for critical thinking. The worldviews of many adults exhibit considerable philosophical tension, and many adults display internally inconsistent, illogical, emotional reasoning fraught with many of the errors found in fallacious arguments. Religious beliefs, in general, force illogical inconsistencies into the thinking process.
Creationists' arguments on religion are highly emotional, their arguments concerning science are falsehoods, their arguments about morality are rigid and bigoted, their views on politics are usually greed-motivated, hubris-filled, and doggedly unperceptive.