Evolutionists all aflutter about Creation Museum
May 31st, 2007The new Creation Museum built by Answers in Genesis opened this week with much fanfare — and protests by those who disagree with what the museum is promoting.
I’m fascinated by the amount of vehement opposition to this museum. Of course most scientists disagree with it. But why are they going to such great lengths to protest? If someone opened a museum touting the truth of aliens living among us, I’d disagree with their conclusions, but I wouldn’t feel the need to stage a protest. If I were firmly convinced that my position is the correct one, I wouldn’t feel threatened by someone promoting an opposing viewpoint.
The answer, of course, is that for evolutionists, this museum is doing more than offering a scientific theory with which they disagree. It is providing scientific evidence that their very worldview of naturalism is based on a faulty premise. For so many scientists, evolution is much more than science. It’s their religion. And they know that Ken Ham’s Creation Museum provides compelling evidence that their religion is a false one.
As Chuck Colson writes in “How Now Shall We Live”:
“The truth is that much of Darwinism is not science but naturalistic philosophy masquerading as science. So an honest debate between Darwinism and Christianity is not fact versus faith but philosophy versus philosophy, worldview versus worldview.
We must be clear about what is at stake here. As long as Darwinism reigns in our schools and elite culture, the Christian worldview will be considered the madwoman in the attic — irrational and unbelievable. That’s why we can no longer allow naturalists to treat science as a sanctuary where their personal philosophy reigns free from challenge.”
Ken Ham has taken Colson’s challenge seriously, and evolutionists are scared to death by it. They know how feeble their belief system is, and the extent of their protests only betrays that weakness. Methinks they protest a bit too much.
If the evolutionists want to put a stop to this kind of nonesense, why don’t they just open a museum housing all those transitional species? Surely there must be millions of them in the fossil record.
Once again the proponents of tolerance prove themselves to be the most intolerant people of all. How many “science” museums have been promoting evolution for years and years in this country. Yet one creation museum opens up and that sends people into an uproar.
One of the updates I received from Answers in Genesis a few months ago actually talked about how someone had tried to take legal action to prevent the museum from being built in the first place.
I think you are right Tim. The debate over Creationism v. Darwinism maks the real debate over 2 competing worldviews. There are massive political implications over who wins this debate. That’s why you see such vehement protest over something like a creation museum. If we are who the Bible says we are then it effects how we view our place in the world and our mission and service to our fellow human beings. If we view ourselves as nothing more than accidentally made animals then that will have huge implications for how we live out our lives as well.
On another note, how can educators be surprised when kids have so little respect for their own lives and the lives of others when they are taught that they are nothing more than accidental beings with no divine future or purpose. Darminism is a bankrupt worldview that destroys our kids and their futures. While I don’t agree with everything the creation museum stands for, I do agree that we cannot allow a soul-destroying worldview to win out in our society.
Joel is right that materialism — the belief and presumption that the material universe is all that there is, which undergirds Darwinism as a cult if not Darwin’s original observations — is morally bankrupt, but it’s also logically incoherent and therefore untenable.
The materialist will proclaim his theory that there is meaning or order to the universe, and that all human thought is the result of nothing more than a chain of cause-and-effect, physics and chemistry and biology. Your thoughts are the inevitable byproducts of an irrational universe.
But, implicitly if not explicitly, the materialist keeps in his pocket an exception: himself, his own thoughts, his own theory. His theory, he believes, is a rational and logical inference from the data at hand: his materialism which cuts away at the possibility of any human reason never seems to reach his own thoughts.
In brief, he presents an argument that all arguments are untrustworthy, and he does not (and indeed cannot) give any reason why his argument is an exception.
There are good reasons to protest. First, the “science” used by the museum and by creationists is highly suspect and has not been subjected to rigorous debate. Indeed, it fills its many gaps in reason with biblical passages. While this may be acceptable in terms of faith, it is not acceptable in terms of science.
If creationists are going to attempt to use science to prove genesis, they can’t then decide to only use it when it best suits them. Otherwise the argument is intellectually dishonest.
Educators protest this sort of thing because it leaves their students unwilling to ask hard questions. If it is the will of the christian community to raise ignorant children, that is their business, but you can hardly expect career educators to stand by and watch children’s minds whitewashed with the kind of false science the creation museum provides.
Also, i think if the church can afford to build such audatious projects, it’s time they start paying taxes. This is not a project with the intent of feeding the poor…it is propaganda. Pay Up!
When MSNBC hosted the GOP debate a few weeks ago, there was an open question, “Do any of you believe in evolution?” The very act of asking someone if they “believe” betrays the fact that it is not science. A conscientious scientist will at least concede that evolution is based on “a preponderance of evidence” rather than the scientific method, but that is the very way we came up with spontaneous generation and alchemy.
Global warming is developing into the same thing.
Then why do Christians always protest planned parenthoods and Strip bars if they are so sound in their convictions?
Nice try.
I don’t think Christians should protest at abortion clinics or strip bars.
Nice try.
If you’d like to know the reason that people are protesting this museum, here it is: Many scientists are also educators. Educators often have a hard time watching adults lie to children.
That’s it in a nutshell. When one says, “I believe the world is 6000 years old because the Bible says so.” I will not argue with them. When one says, “I believe the world is 6000 years old because science says so.” I will call that person a liar.
As I think Bubba was alluding to, the very concept of ‘reason’ cannot exist in the world of the materialist. Can you see ‘reason’ or touch it? If nothing exists but the material world then there is no such thing as ‘reason’ (or love, or honor, or a whole host of other things are are ‘real’ but not material)
For a materialist to appeal to ‘reason’ is to be out of sync with what he claims to believe.
“Educators often have a hard time watching adults lie to children.”
That is rich. And vice versa.
As for the ’science’ being suspect, what would you call the theory of evolution? Evolution is an anachronism, akin to the idea of the world being flat.
While it is quite evident that evolution (or adaptation) has occurred on a micro level, it is large leap of faith to suggest a macro level evolution (species to a new species). As Larry has pointed out, science DEMANDS solid evidence of transitional species. The fossil record seems to be grossly silent or at the best unverifiably sporadic when it comes to these creatures.
But the greater problem that materialist faces is proving scientifically that the universe is infinite. Is there are way to measure this directly or indirectly? Seems to conflict with the scientific method, huh? If the universe is finite, how did this stuff get here?
It is time that Christians start asking the tough questions back and not allowing materialists to get away with the “well, if you were as smart as me you would understand” responses. There is a reason why 90% of the world believes in a higher power. Materialists need to come to grips with the fact that they are just not very convincing when it comes to the questions of God’s existence. Not that He needs to prove Himself to anyone.
Oh please factician! “Educators” lie to kids all the time:
‘Homosexuality is natural and normal’
‘Condoms promote safe sex’
‘The US was not founded by Christians’
‘Truth is relative’
‘Islam is a religion of peace’
‘The baby in your womb is not a human being’
Shall I go on? Evolution is just one of MANY ways that educators lie to their students.
The people at AIG do not say, by the way, that science ‘proves’ that the earth is young. The question of origins is not a question to which the scientific method can be applied. What they DO say is that there is ample evidence to support their position, in many cases much more ample than the evidence used by evolutionists. In this then you are correct, if a person says science ‘proves’ a young earth, you could call them a liar, just as you could call a person who says science proves an old earth a liar. Both would be true statements.
In response to Mason, the church did not build this museum. A private organization did.
It’s so sad that we’ve had evolution in our textbooks for years where countless millions of kids have been exposed to its philosophy under the guise of science, but then we hear cries of brainwashing raised in response to this museum’s opening.
It is called a “Creation Museum.” I don’t think they’re trying to hide what they’re all about. And as far as I know parents are able to choose whether or not they take their children to this museum.
Science is a methodology, who is to say that science is the only method to prove one way or another? Science is an attempt to explain the best way possible. Nothing more nothing less. Who care I attempt to get work done very day. I use the messy desk method in my attempt to be productive. Its better than everyone else’s so go fly a kite.
BTW, the Bible does not say the earth is 6,000 years old. That figure comes from some guy who was trying to count backwards. It’s suspect at best.
In the long run I’m sympathetic to but not a proponent of the creation museum. Trying to prove creation or God or Christ through any kind of human demonstration is just foolishness. It’s a matter of faith (as scripture testifies and God dictates.) Too bad the evolutionists won’t admit the same.
Larry understands me perfectly when he writes, “For a materialist to appeal to ‘reason’ is to be out of sync with what he claims to believe.”
The materialist looks at a human-as-subject as nothing more than a (very) complex chemical reaction, and, presuming reductionism, tries to reduce literally everything about humanity to physical, chemical reactions. He says, there is no mind (much less a soul), there is only the brain, an organ that isn’t very much different than the liver — and is certainly no more special or more likely to perceive transcendent truths and to be rational.
But in trying to argue that the human-as-subject is purely material and therefore wholly irrational, he assumes that the human-as-scientist is himself rational, or at least rational enough to draw trustworthy conclusions about the universe around him.
To quote Buckley’s “This I Believe” essay from NPR:
I’ve always liked the exchange featuring the excited young Darwinian at the end of the 19th century. He said grandly to the elderly scholar, “How is it possible to believe in God?” The imperishable answer was, “I find it easier to believe in God than to believe that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop.”
He writes further:
The skeptics get away with fixing the odds against the believer, mostly by pointing to phenomena which are only explainable — you see? — by the belief that there was a cause for them, always deducible. But how can one deduce the cause of Hamlet? Or of St. Matthew’s Passion? What is the cause of inspiration?
The materialist answers that inspiration is an illusion, but if he upholds reason and rationality and blessed science, what he really means is this: Shakespeare’s inspiration was an illusion, as was Matthew’s, but mine is very real and very trustworthy.
Is there anyone more arrogant than a materialist who reduces the entire universe to an irrational soup of chemistry but leaves himself an island of transcendence?
What does Daniel say about this Tim? His Polar Bear Penguin analogy really hit home for me!
And round and round we go…
Factician, it might be wise to inspect AiG’s premise before making one up and giving them credit for it.
“Educators often have a hard time watching adults lie to children.”
This line is all time top 10 funniest line if the implications (as pointed out by Zoner) weren’t so serious…
The reason that most rational people oppose this fairy tale is because it is a first step in cramming their creationist views into science class.
Ham, who has constantly been caught lying about evolution, knows that his position is baseless yet he tries to give it validity by cloaking it in pseudo-science.
Corinthian,
Can’t you just be tolerant? What’s the harm in everybody accepting that everybody does not share the same view?
j razz
Actually, a fairy tale is believing that somehow we all evolved from some muck that just happened to form the right mix to create life. All science has confirmed there is no living organism without a parent organism.
The odds are more than 10 to the 67th to 1 against even a small protein forming by time and chance, in an ideal mixture of chemicals, in an ideal atmosphere, and given up to 100 billion years (an age 10 to 20 times greater than the supposed age of the Earth). Mathematicians generally agree that, statistically, any odds beyond 1 in 10 to the 50th (1:1050) have a zero probability of ever happening (”and even that gives it the benefit of the doubt!”).
So what’s more scientific?
Zoner’s comments take us to one of the great leaps of faith made by those who hold to evolution. They take something that is a complete impossibility and then argue that it could happen given enough time.
Aside from it being a straightforward reading of Genesis, that’s one of the reasons Ham’s ministry emphasizes so strongly six literal days of creation and a young earth. If you take away the billions and billions of years, evolutionists don’t have enough time for their fairy tale to take place.
I’m curious. In what ways has Ham been caught lying about evolution?