6-10-07 - A comment posted on Crooks and Liars about the following article on the dinosaurs-and-people-living-together Creation museum, from folks who get their Answers in Genesis.

Day At The Museum

By: Nicole Belle on Sunday, June 10th, 2007

Click on thumbnail to enlarge Adam and Eve

BlueGrassRoots made the trip to the $27 million dollar institute of non-learning, the Answers in Genesis Creation museum, so you don’t have to.

Early in the museum, the visitor is given advice on the proper mind frame to have for your visit: “Don’t think, just listen and believe”. [..] Human Reason is the enemy and God’s Word is the hero. Descartes represents Human Reason, saying “I think, therefore I am”. But God tells us there no need to waste your beautiful mind, for God says “I am that I am”.

So logic, reason and science are Bad; blind faith is Good.

And you wonder why our jobs are being outsourced…

UPDATE: Maybe making casting decisions on faith doesn’t work out so well.  It’s a slippery slope; start researching the actors you use for your Creation videos and pretty soon, you’re learning and stuff.  ((shudder)) Can’t have that, can we,  Mr. Ham?

DC's Comment:

The problem with so many of these Creationist and Intelligent Design people is that they try to apply words about the nature of the absolute, "I am that I am," to the relative - "I think therefore I am." They confuse phenomenon and noumenon. In crude terms it would be like trying to apply the science of heaven to the sphere of earth.

The great Christian mystic Dionysius the Areopagite called the worst form of misunderstanding describing the highest in terms of the lowest (or vice-versa - describing the relative in terms of the absolute). Along the same lines, the Buddhist ancestor Nagarjuna said that it would be better never to have heard of emptiness than to emphasize it to the exclusion of form.

As far as evolution goes, there need be no big disagreement between religion and science, even between theists and atheists, or humanists and followers of some non-theistic way like Buddhism or Taoism, if the applicable level of discussion is kept in mind. Evolution is just observed phenomenon. What does it matter what's observed?

Literalism is a common religious disease - taking myths, parables, and metaphors as literally true is like thinking Mother Goose stories are literally true. It's action-figure worship, idol gossip. It doesn't matter unless these confused buffoons try to control science, education, government, and our lives. Oh gee, I guess it matters.|