So God's Word says that you can't discriminate on the basis of language, culture, gender, or skin tone -- but apparently you can discriminate on the basis of religious belief, sexual orientation, marital status...
Exodus 21:20-21 -- (Yahweh speaking directly to Moses) “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property."
Omnipotent beings always get their way, and omniscient beings always know what they'll get. Apparently this is a tacit admission that god wanted to damn the vast majority of his most favored creation to an eternity of suffering.
We were unimpressed with the anti-gay message. This room comes just after the Templeton area -- these are meant to be the consequences of disbelief in God.
Funny that they're happy to promote their homophobia (as it is part of the infallible word of god, and mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments), but that they aren't so quick to promote their endorsement of chattel slavery (since it, too, is part of the infallible word of god, and mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments).
This is all they say about why we should believe that the Bible is true. They're preaching to the choir on this topic, and they figured they'll keep the sermon short.
There are presumably only two types of people who visit this 'museum': those who already agree with its claims, and those who already disagree with its claims. It doesn't seem like anybody goes there to actually *learn* anything, but either to enjoy the company of allies or to mock the stupidity of one's foes.
If you click on "Get Original Uploaded Photo" and zoom in you can read all the text.
The "Same Universe" head at the top is amusing -- were the museum designers worried that we would think that Human Reason and God's Word are talking about two different universes? (They're certainly giving two different accounts of the nature of our universe, but the universe they're talking about is our universe.) Perhaps the museum designers are trying to make a sophisticated point about Russell's theory of reference.
Did you know that Ken Ham's second-in-command is Jason Lisle, Ph.D. (Astrophysics), and that Lisle received his doctorate from none other than our very own CU-Boulder?
I wonder if they know that Descartes endorsed the ontological argument for the existence of God, used the existence of God as a foundation for his epistemology, and was a Christian?
Heh. I would be unsurprised at any apparent ignorance on their part, but to be fair I suspect they'd say that irrespective of the fact that Descartes may have been a Christian (these sorts are particular as to just who gets to be a True Christian™), he erred by starting with himself rather than starting with god.
This contrast between Human Reason and God's Word occurs multiple times in the museum, and it shocked me every time I saw it. Wouldn't they want God's Word to be _consilient_ with human reason? I would have thought they would have used a phrase like "Secular Science" or "Atheistic Reason".
I agree that it seems like a mistake on their part. Usually they're careful to say things like 'properly applied human reason would draw conclusions consistent with scripture...' -- I know they often stress the fact that they use a "different starting point," but they seem to have missed an opportunity to clarify.
Adam really screwed a lot of things up. Did God know that Adam was going to do this? The answer will come later.
Here and elsewhere in the museum, they make themselves sound open-minded by considering various hypotheses: God could have done it this way, or he could have done it that way. From their perspective they are being open-minded, but if you're not a Creationist the debates are (as they say) of purely academic interest.
Translation: We don't pretend to know how it happened, we just pretend to know that god did it, and we assert that if you don't agree with us, you're wrong.
The folks who put together the museum are Young-Earth Creationists, and The Flood is a big focus of the whole museum. The Flood explanation is perhaps prima facie plausible as an explanation of fossils and canyons, and that explanation was pushed hard through the course of the museum. But what about all the other evidence for the universe being billions of years old, like the astronomical evidence, carbon dating, etc? This sort of evidence was barely addressed.
With regard to the canyon issue (which the museum focussed on, but which I didn't take any pictures of), why would it take a flood to produce canyons? Why couldn't God have just formed the Earth that way to begin with?
Canyons as twisted as the Grand Canyon would not have been formed by flood runoff as these kooks claim -- fast-moving water does not take the time to turn, but simply erodes straight paths. A quick search of Google images for flood damage will make this readily apparent.
With slow-moving water, however, the erosion process takes much longer, so the water will take the path of least resistance, including filling depressions and making meandering and/or sharp turns. Granted, it would take a slow-moving river such as the Colorado a really long time to make the Grand Canyon, but (spoiler alert) geology tells us the earth is plenty old enough for this to occur.
Please wait...
