Anyway, according to reports the trip went down without any serious incidents, for example atheists being smitten down by God or believers being turned to Satan. Although apparently one member of the group was singled out and expelled from the building because he was wearing a tee shirt that said "There is probably no god …" etc. (the same slogan as the bus campaign); seems a little harsh to me but perhaps illustrates what this museum and the people behind it are really all about. Would it be reasonable to stage an exhibition of modern art and expect people not to visit, contradict and discuss its content in a civilised manner, of course not, clearly these people are all about telling people what to think and not how to think, a sinister and typically conservative Christian perspective.
Exhibits at the creation museum present a history time line of the world based upon literal interpretations of the Bible; they attempt to explain how we see the world today using the stories and anecdotes in scripture, for example dinosaurs are explained as living at the same time as Adam and Eve and that mankind populated the globe by walking across the floating trunks of trees felled in the Biblical flood and the grand canyon being formed in a few hours by that same global downpour. Now, if this museum was positioned as a Christian (Disney style) attraction as opposed to a scientific one then most real scientists would probably ignore it, however that isn't the case the people there and particularly Ken Ham who runs it are keen to assert that their view of the world as expressed in the museum is scientific!, hence the attention it gets from real scientists like Myers.
Ken and his buddies are very keen to acquire the benefits of calling their work science, i.e. respectability, authority, rigour etc. however they are not so keen to do the work required in order to validate their theories with real facts; they are also unwilling to accept critical scrutiny and as is the way of so many right wing bigots they cherry pick evidence and facts in order to support a prior held viewpoint as opposed to simply allowing the evidence of their own eyes to lead them to a conclusion. It will be fascinating to read the bitch slapping that these saps get as the spotlight of real enquiry is shone on their ignorant drivel over the coming weeks.
What Ken and crew also seem unwilling to accept, as is typical of their kind, is that simply presenting facts that fit with your theory is not sufficient to prove that theory; you also have to explain the facts that don't fit. Ken says that radiometric dating of rocks is inaccurate and wrong (by a factor of many 100s of millions apparently) however he has no explanation for why this is the case, he simply says it's wrong because it doesn't fit his theory.
Myers and people like him have the right approach IMO, put the leg work in, go visit these places read what they have to say and then rip it to shreds in the public forum, challenge them head on, and don't let the slippery creationists off the hook just because they hide behind the veil of "faith"; what these people are selling is snake oil, they need to be treated the same way societies have always treated hucksters and purveyors of fake miracle cures, i.e. tarred, feathered and thrown out of town!
18 comments:
Yay, Steve, you are such a rabble rouser. I think this place is likely to go into administration -- or maybe it's another creationist park -- this is the one in Florida?
I like the way that you don't let them slip away in your posts -- you keep hammering -- whereas I would just take the easy way out and not argue with them.
Keep up the good work.
E, no unfortunately not, this one is in Kentucky, the one in Florida was run by a tax avoiding criminal called Kent Hovind, he's now in jail hence the bankruptcy.
Did you know we have a creation museum here in the UK (Portsmouth), check it out it looks typically amateurish in comparison though.
Can you imagine what would have transpied if someone wore a shirt that said 'jesus loves me' on it to a natural history museum and they were chucked out? It would have been all over the news and people would have been appalled.
I hadn't heard about this Steve, so I was glad to find it here.
I did follow the link and saw that the person with the tee shirt wasn't expelled, but forced to put the shirt on inside out if they wanted to stay.
I did laugh at the idea that one couple who saw the atheist shirt said their holiday was ruined because of it. I imagine any one of us would have been devastated in a similar way if we had seen someone wearing a shirt saying 1+1=3.
"a sinister and typically conservative Christian perspective"
I sense a slight shift in tone - it's no longer that you're claiming they're necessarily wrong, rather that they are politically biased and therefore more likely to be wrong.
From my pov this is a more effective logical argument.
However I still think you are lacking a rational explanation for the existence of flawed religious beliefs and what they represent in reality (ie beyond simple psychology).
The idea that the world was created in 6,000bc is preposterous, but the literary evidence must be considered somewhat reliable because it has prevenance.
The timeline places the garden of eden during the neolithic agricultural revolution in the region where it occurred, so why is it impossible to accept that the mythological history does actually refer to a condensed version of the beginnings of human civilisation and the first named human beings.
I sometimes wonder about how the formation of complex society in our primate friends would transpire and what remnants would be left for following generations.
If there were a monkey-henge and a series of folk tales imparting the wisdom of generations, why wouldn't they be collated and admired and contiunued to be used as a primitive base for undertsanding?
Many modern moral disputes are a reflection of different interpretations of different sections in scripture, so although it can be difficult to draw any conclusions from them it is impossible to completely discount them.
The territorial disputes in the middle-east are an example of how the political situation can degrade if opinion is allowed to polarise, so I'm wary of anyone who completely rejects the possibility of reconciliation.
I recently reread the books of Kings and Chronicles in parallel with a modern historical commentary on the period - it's all politics and leaders and followers. The use of 'god' is always an appeal to authority, and in many ways is not so dissimilar to the market dogmas (or other types) some people feel bound to adhere to these days which created the market instability (rewarding executive failures with massive bonuses etc).
I'm constantly fascinated by the relationship between history and myth and how it grows up - because I think it explains why we vote for politicians who are so spectacularly bad!
Lisa, excellent points as usual;
Although I must say I don't know how you have the audacity to say 1+1=3 is definitely wrong; it seems overly strident and frankly aggressive, surely you agree that every viewpoint should be respected? After all, addition is one of life's great mysteries the sheer beauty and symmetry of the multiplication tables can only point to a supreme intelligent designer.
This atheistic, Marxist, materialistic stance that you take is incredibly arrogant, after all what if you're wrong?!?
:)
oo, I dunno, my basic mathematical theory say's it is possible to argue that 1+1=3 under some conditions, though not a+a=3a.
I digress.
Hi OP,
I think I am reflecting evidence of this “approach” in Christian conservatives (I have in mind the Pat Robinson kind) I would still say they are wrong in the scientific sense of the word; political absolutely! But only the smart ones, the believing masses aren’t political, they just believe what they are told and vote the way they are instructed IMO. This behaviour fits their brain-washing of course, knowledge comes from tradition and authority, so being a “drone” is probably quite acceptable and “rational” to them.
I’m not sure why the literary evidence needs to be considered, it depends what question you are asking I suppose, if you want to know what actually happened then provenance is meaningless when it comes to uncorroborated accounts like the Bible et al, they are still just stories. It would be trivial to take a random Harry Potter chapter and retro-fit an interpretation of it into an already hazy historical narrative quite easily, doesn’t make it any more true or likely though.
I think I do have a rational explanation for the myths, our need to see “causality” and the evolutionary advantages of that on the savannah during the Pleistocene. Religiosity is a misfiring of that hard wired response IMO; it’s stuck because there are social and cultural benefits to it that follows from a shared belief system (as well as concepts like nationality etc.), hence the stickiness.
If the beliefs of the people of the Middle East didn’t exist then the problem would not have occurred in the first place, I don’t think you can put it all down to “degradation”; I’m not sure how understanding the mythological BS helps find a solution, although I can see plenty of reasons why it gets in the way.
I agree with you some people (and I think it’s only some people) seem to need mythology to explain things, I see it everywhere in business, many is the time I have seen people relegated to the out-group by people in the in-group because they are simply not liked or don’t fit but the act is rationalised by inventing some mythology in a straw man fashion, like “oh yeah she had communication issues”; this kind of thing seems pervasive in all cultures (or at least the ones I’ve seen so far).
I heard a good quote today which is relevant here, “we’re not as stupid as we all are”.
So you don't agree that the Satan of the Septuagint refers to a general term aggressive foreign despot, such as Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenids or any of the other early invaders?
And therefore by contrast that the Abrahamic god refers to the best traditions and traits of a wise and successful domestic leader, exemplified by the good leaders, such as Solomon who belonged to the tribe claiming descent from Abraham?
In other words that classical religion wasn't much more than ancestor worship?
When I read my human history it always amazes me how the meaning is infused into events and how this ability has changed over time.
Livy for example was so successful at attributing character to individuals that the shadow of their personality hung over an age. This practise was so widespread that it has become difficult for later historians to separate the lifetime of a dominant character from the epoch they influenced. The historical figures from late antiquity are so familiar and tangible to us because the way they were recorded for posterity made them so human.
But things changed with the onset of the 'dark ages'. Leaders were no longer abd weren't described as archetypes.
The suggests an intellectual divergence occured between antiquity and modern times when individuals began to be able to distinguish between the actions and beliefs of an individual and ideology consequently grew as a separate doctrine - I'm suggesting christian theology was the first recognisably modern ideology because controversial issues were settled by enquiry and debate upon representation to councils (I'd add that had I been asked I would probably disputed many of the conclusions).
But I disagree that provenance is irrelevant because the multipicity of sources shows that what happened actually happened, and any stories about it are representations of fact (however inaccurately done). Harry Potter the Bible is not - HP does not pretend to be the story of real people and real people did not fight and die in their millions over it.
I mean I love a good violent film, but even the most exploitative snuff movie has nothing on the gore-fests in the bible!
I'm also more than slightly dubious about this statement "If the beliefs of the people of the Middle East didn’t exist then the problem would not have occurred in the first place"
Because all beliefs are based on facts (for better or worse) you are saying that you want to wish away history and all the imperfect learning that has gone with it!
It might be nice if... but it'll never happen, so why entertain the thought?
Mythology is vital, because how do you explain to someone who doesn't understand? Are you telling me you've never had problems explaining anything to your kids?
OP,
I think I would say I’m yet to be convinced; these are rationalisations from hindsight and from a position where we have pre-determined the outcome, for example would we still conclude something like that if the Abrahamic religions hadn’t turned out to be dominant?
Ancestor worship, certainly, such cults still exist today, but I’m looking for what causes the “religious” mode of thinking, not trying to explain the different manifestations of the 20,000+ recorded religions there have been. You are of course quite right in your characterisations, but I am more interested in the step before what you describe, the underlying cause, it’s like discussing the various different fashions throughout the ages, i.e. why did punks have spiky hair or why did Victorians have huge dresses etc., what interests me is why do we have fashion at all and what is the underlying evolutionary basis for it.
What multiplicity of sources? If you take the core characters like Jesus there are no contemporaneous sources whatsoever, same for Moses, the exodus, Herod killing the babies, the Roman Census etc. we only have accounts written at best decades afterwards and for the most part contradictory, at worse downright falsifiable. I think the Greeks had the march on the Christians and some of the Indus valley societies seemed more than coherent before that; you have to ask the question, if Christianity is “special” then why are there a billion Muslims?
The Harry potter point was more to do with the thought that any story can be “interpreted” to fit reality in hindsight, I'm not arguing parity for the importance of the works. Incidentally, we don’t actually know that the Bible is about real people either, certainly some of the background events happened, wars, conquests etc. but as for the actual characters I’m yet to see convincing evidence for any of them, Adam, Eve, Moses, Jesus, Noah, Isaac etc. a lot of them seem to have a basis in previous mythologies.
I agree about the violence, but then that’s one of the clinchers for me, i.e. why would the supreme creator of the universe be so concerned about the petty provincial disputes and preoccupations (like animals, sex, women, property, ritual etc) of a bunch of goat herders in Palestine, and how come there is nothing in the Bible that could not have been conceived by such people, and how come the Romans didn’t notice anything unusual until hundreds of years after the events, when even at the time they documented what they had for breakfast.
To be honest I’m not entirely sure about that comment either, but what I was driving at was the “God given” right that the Jews assume they have to that particular patch of real-estate; which is kind of the root cause of the modern problems, that is a religious belief. After WW2 the Jews were offered Portland USA and refused it, do you think we would have the same problems now if they hadn’t had that belief?
Yes I want to wish it away from the corpus of things we call “knowledge” and relegate it to the corpus of things we call cultural history, would that be unreasonable?
I see where you are coming from re. Mythology but I think this argument has lost its weight over time, mythology isn’t vital now, it is what gets invented when humans don’t know the answer to something, i.e. what causes illness?, it has no practical utility now other than as a psychological crutch (unless it is correct by coincidence); when I can’t explain something I say “I don’t know”, or maybe I guess based upon similar more sound knowledge, if I should know and the thing is actually knowable I go and find out, why do I need mythology?
going in reverse...
It's bad politics to simply say you don't know. You must either say you have an answer or that you know a way to find one out. If you look in a reference book it is never blank - it will either tell you or point you in the right direction.
I think we have to accept there is a hierarchy of methods of learning the most basic of which is random guessing, followed by trial and error etc.
The problem with cultural history is that it just isn't universal knowledge - it is specific to those people who own it and are defined by it. It's identity politics - for example nobody can tell someone who is jewish how they should react to learning about the holocaust, just as nobody can tell a woman how to feel at the prospect of pregnancy.
The Temple Mount is intrinsic to Jews because it is supposed to be the location where Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac and is where their tribe of nomads first made a permanent settlement. Jerusalem is the city which that settlement developed into. As a bit of a localist I can perfectly understand the rootedness felt to a particular location, but nevertheless it's a big jump from there to assuming exclusive rights.
Anyway using the definition of 'god' as a mythologised chain of ancestry the idea that a territory can be 'god-given' is common code for the right of occupation. The problem is that this is asserted so strongly because it is disputed so strongly. Imagine having twin offspring who contest their inheritance where there are no birth records and no will and neither is prepared to accept probate!
I'm really not sure what you mean by a 'religious mode of thinking'.
A dependant, subservient mode perhaps, but that only includes certain types of religious people.
I think trying to understand the past as a way to explain the future is a universal feeling. We can each look at different timescales or periods to try and glean different lessons and of interpret the facts in different ways, but perhaps the interest thing is that we can all make different interpretations but nobody can claim to have been there and seen it all.
To take your example of the punks I place them in the context of the time. It was largely a reaction against establishment dishonesty and hypocrisy within the wider cold war mentality. The variety of hairstyles expressed individuality and creativity to contrast with the hippies and stiffs. Similarly with other periods fashion is a mix of socio-economic and interpersonal factors which reflects wider trends and the political state of the time. Why do we need it? To confirm and define our humanity. The graeco-roman toga was not only a status symbol of the upper classes, but it was a means to display education and culture (stoics, epicureans etc had different ways of wearing it) thereby enabling then to differentiate themselves and their society.
OP, you are probably right about that, I realise that this viewpoint is somewhat naïve when you try to incorporate the reality of human politics; but I still hold that we (I mean humanity) should be able to agree that it is at least a reasonable goal to base our more important activities, such as making laws and dealing with other countries, peoples and systems on a rational and falsifiable foundation or at least favour it over a “faith” based one.
Yes there is a hierarchy of “knowing”, faith being at the very bottom IMO, at least if you make a wild guess you know it’s a wild guess, the problems associated with deluding yourself that you have absolute knowledge are avoided.
I know what you mean about history, it’s written by the victors etc., again my position is a somewhat naïve one in that regard, we can’t tell people what to feel but we can encourage empathy and we can relate similar experiences, we can also educate people that they are not special or unique, their treasured beliefs are not the real thing that defines them.
You present a difficult dilemma, I agree, even taking a simplistic view of the ethics involved you’d hope that a rational approach would give equal rights to the residents as well as the immigrants. Unfortunately that did not happen in this case and continues to prove impossible to attain. I tend to have more sympathy with the Arabs simply because I don’t think that the Jewish “logic” for wanting to be there is valid, put another way, our actual genetic similarities are greater than our cultural differences IMO, the point in time that was chosen to decide the historical inheritance is an arbitrary one if you take a scientific view.
On the issue of multiplicity of sources I was primarily talking about the whole old testament, rather than just the life of Jesus.
Everything from the pyramids and the amarna letters to the ruined cities going back to the time of Sargon and Tiglath-Pileser in Akkad and Sumer long before Canaan was settled feeds into our knowledge and comprehension.
Frankly the place where I'd start my reasearch is in the Vatican archives which include many original pieces stored since before the sack of Rome in the fifth century.
But while I accept Christianity is special, why should that demean any other period of religious upheaval?
I find it difficult not to fill in the blanks of human history because I can't accept there was ever a period when nothing happened and no human thought has any basis anywhere except in fact however distorted it may be - whatever shocking, hideous or disgusting thought you can have I'll bet you that it and worse has happened; whatever perverse, bizarre or idiotic thought someone has had it is a reflection of reality (eg James Whale's vision of Frankenstein was based on a friend he saw impaled on barbed wire at the western front a couple of decades earlier and the story translates into a visual essay on the ethics of technological warfare).
Ah, now I've mentioned today's dominant myth-making media... it'd take a brave man to challenge Disney & co's ability to appeal to the masses!
By “mode of thinking” I mean “ways of knowing”, revelation would be one way, guessing would be another, using the scientific method would be another and a whole host of different methods in between. Religion says that you can “know” things based upon revelation and interpretation (by selected people of course), I would also count authority and tradition as ways of knowing things promoted by religions (not all of them of course); this has been true for thousands of years; of course science has always been corrosive to this mode of thinking, ever since the Greeks religion has had to accommodate the bleeding obvious things discovered using reason that have contradicted revealed truths, now we see an accommodation of science (for example the RC church accepting evolution), but this does not mean they have rejected revelation as an equally valid way of knowing something.
We do use the past to explain the future, most of the time it is an unreliable guide, this goes back to this underlying trait that I think exists which is a need to find causality, we cannot *not* do this our brains are wired that way.
You still don’t answer the question, “why fashion”, how can what we see be deconstructed to the point where we have a physical reason (or reasons) for the phenomenon itself, saying that it’s a way to differentiate ourselves is of course true, but we are still left with why do we need to do that? The underlying reason I would be looking for would be something like sexual selection pressure, for example the need to differentiate our phenotype from all the other potential phenotypes that a suitable partner may choose; clearly this would also explain why animals that don’t participate in sexual reproduction do not have such behaviours or attributes.
I agree there are some amazing historical sources for all kinds of subsequent ideologies and schools of thought but I don’t think the old testament is what most Christians consider to be the foundational text for them, I often hear people counter the objection that the old testament is violent, and nasty by saying “ah but Christianity is really all about Jesus, who wiped the slate clean” etc. this is not true of course, but they think it is or perhaps interpret it that way.
I bet there are some real gems in the Vatican archive, I’d give a lot to spend a rainy afternoon picking through that lot! I can also only fantasise about what was in the library at Alexandria, bloody Christians censored that too!
Re. Disney absolutely, there are generations of people who think Disney created all those pilfered medieval stories; I think the only thing he actually came up with himself was that stupid mouse wasn’t it? :-)
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