An Atheist Visits the Creation Museum in Kentucky And Tells All

Yesterday I walked through Ken Ham's Creation Museum in Kentucky. Without a doubt he is fitting the data into the grid of the Bible. I saw a 5 minute video where he takes the literal view that the earth existed before the stars. That is an extreme case of what I see other Christian apologists doing. It's the same thing though. They say whatever it takes to maintain their faith. Just like Ham fits the data into the grid of Genesis so do they with regard to the Bible as a whole. Ham would at least be honest about what he's doing. Others don't, or more likely, they are too blinded by faith to know they're doing the same thing. All it takes to believe is to ignore the objective facts, the facts of science. The power of the delusion is that strong. It requires Christians to deny science in favor of what some pre-scientific people wrote in an ancient set of canonized books, even though they accept the results of science in every other area except when it conflicts with their pre-scientific book!



Young Earth Creationism is Still Alive (but so is the Flat Earth Society)!

I watched in stunning amazement the Six Days of Creation Theater movie where they actually depict an earth before the creation of the billions of galaxies in the universe on the fourth day of creation, about 6,000 years ago. Yes you read that right, 6,000 years ago! First they showed a picture of the earth before the universe, like this one without any stars, the sun or the moon:


Then on the fourth day they show a picture of the universe after God created the sun moon and stars, something like this:


Afterward I went to the Stargazer's Planetarium where they depicted the amazing size of the universe itself. Here's the description:
Our universe is truly an amazing thing. The vastness of space boggles the mind, and the beauty and diversity we find there demands a Creator. Take an awe-inspiring tour through our own solar system plus nebulae, galaxies, and more with this just-released new version of Created Cosmos—the popular creation-based planetarium program from the Creation Museum...with a new full-length commentary by Created Cosmos author Dr. Jason Lisle. 22 minutes. LINK
It was somewhat along the same lines as this video (although with commentary):



In the creation museum's version a "light year" was defined as a particular distance. Rather than telling viewers that a light year represents the distance it takes for light to travel one year, they said it was approximately 6 trillion miles. This was an interesting use of language. We were also told that light may have traveled faster in the past than in the present, thus accounting for the appearance of the age of the universe, which science tells us is roughly 13.7 billion years. If this isn't trying to fit the facts into the grid of a "literal" view of the Bible I don't know what is. It presumes the past was different than the present state of things, without any evidence for it.

I told three separate workers at the museum that I was a skeptic. I asked them why they would ever believe in the ancient writings of pre-scientific people over science. One said because he believes it's God's word, the other said because there is objective evidence for it [*cough*], while the last one said she has faith. *Sheesh*

Dragon Legends as Evidence that Dinosaurs Lived Among Us?

Since there is no actual archaeological evidence that dinosaurs lived among us they concoct it from the may legends of mythical beast stories that have been told around the world. I found this to be amazing as well. Mythical tales are now considered evidence over real evidence, the evidence of science itself! Here's their claim:
A dazzling new exhibit will soon descend upon the Creation Museum. Dragon Legends will bring visitors face to face with fantastic tales of dragons from all over the world.

Regale yourself with delightful artwork and other beautiful adornments as you stroll beneath extraordinary Chinese dragons in the museum's portico. Learn about fabulous encounters with these incredible beasts from China to Africa, Europe to the Americas, and Australia to the Middle East. Discover what ancient historians have written about these creatures, and examine armaments that may have been used by valiant dragon slayers.

Why are there so many dragon legends from cultures around the globe? Why do descriptions of these magnificent animals often sound similar to what we call dinosaurs? How could our ancestors carve, paint, or write about these creatures if they have truly been extinct for millions of years?

Evolutionists struggle to explain the intriguing evidence that people lived at the same time as dinosaurs. God's Word indicates that dinosaurs and man were created on the same day, so biblical creationists are not surprised to uncover clues that ancient man had indeed seen these beasts.

Were dinosaurs dragons? Find out at the Creation Museum's new Dragon Legends exhibit, and prepare to believe. LINK.

Here are some pictures I took showing where they are headed with this:


My personal favorite Cowboys and Dragons! ;-)



The Contrast is Between God's Word and Human Reason.

We have different starting points, different assumptions, that's all!


Notice they disparage human reason. It's bad to trust it, you see, just like it's bad to trust science. What is the alternative? Really? It takes human reason to know which books should be included in the canonical Bible, how to translate them, what these texts mean, and how to make them fit with the evidence around us. Christians themselves disagree with this process all along the way. They must do so based on reason.

What does faith offer us by contrast? Faith is an irrational leap over the probabilities. It's a cognitive bias leading believers to overestimate the confirming evidence and to discount the disconfirming evidence. Faith is a parasite on the mysterious. With faith anything can be believed or denied. Dr. Stephen Law said it well: “Anything based on faith, no matter how ludicrous, can be made to be consistent with the available evidence, given a little patience and ingenuity.” [Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole (p. 75)].

In one part of the museum there is a section depicting the evils that result when people reject creationism and embrace evolution instead. Pictures of crime, drugs, sex, unwanted pregnancies, and rock & roll abound, you see. That's what happened in our society. We went to hell in a hand-basket because we accepted evolution. There are videos aimed at the young who see firsthand what they could be like if they didn't believe. Maintain your belief despite the evidence or you will wind up just like these others. Noticeably absent in this museum was any depiction of hell. Since they believe in the "literal" interpretation of the Bible it also depicts hell as located in the belly of the earth. Hmmm, selective "literalism" right? Nonetheless, crime, drugs and other ills of our society have a multifaceted number of causes. Ignored in this section of the museum are the many harms that faith produces.

Dr. Crawley's Insectorium

The highlight for me was Dr. Crawley's Insectorium. What a wonderful collection of insects there are to be seen! God loves beetles you know:



"Everything in the museum leads up to the bookstore."

This is what one of the workers told me. As we peruse it we find ignorance on top of ignorance. It gives a person the feeling that with so many books defending the indefensible that every reasonable person should believe the same intellectual rubbish as one finds in the museum itself.



I used to believe and defend the indefensible just like Christian apologists do (although I was only briefly an uninformed young earth creationist in my early years). All it takes is one false presupposition, that the Bible as we have it is God's word. From there the rest is a foregone conclusion. Just force the data to fit. Almost anything can be believed or denied based on that kind of faith. My recent book, The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True,should disabuse Christian apologists of that presupposition. Read it for yourself and then see what you would come up with, okay? G.K.Chesterton recommended that approach for the most part. It offers the only reliable method for knowing which faith is true, if there is one.

New Testament scholar Rudolph Bultmann tells it like it is when calling the stories in the Bible “myths.” He gets his point across by exaggerating his case somewhat:
The cosmology of the New Testament is essentially mythical in character. The world is viewed as a three-storied structure, with the earth in the center, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath. Heaven is the abode of God and of celestial beings—angels. The underworld is hell, the place of torment. Man is not in control of his life. Evil spirits may take possession of him. Satan may inspire him with evil thoughts. It is simply the cosmology of a pre-scientific age. To modern man . . . the mythical view of the world is obsolete. It is no longer possible for anyone seriously to hold the New Testament view of the world. We no longer believe in the three-storied universe. No one who is old enough to think for himself supposes that God lives in a local heaven. There is no longer any heaven in the traditional sense. The same applies to hell in the sense of a mythical underworld beneath our feet. And if this is so . . . we can no longer look for the return of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven. It is impossible to use the electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the N.T. world of spirits and miracles. The same objections apply to the doctrine of the atonement. How can the guilt of one man be expiated by the death of another who is sinless? [Rudolph Bultmann, Kerygma & Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), pp. 1–7.]



Here's a video of other atheists visiting the museum:




[Edit on August 14, 2013: Ken Ham responded to this post of mine. For my response click here.]

[Additional Edit: My Further Response to Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis.]

1 comments:

Unknown said...

I am on a handheld with Chrome and clicking "read more" returns me to this page. Is it by Design, I.e. Was Created this way? Or a glitch by one of them Darwinian ape descendants? :-)