The Creation Museum

I've been gathering links lately and am posting them all today to celebrate the Grand Opening of this facility.

We might as well start with The Carnival, which groups lots of links in one magnificent blog post. It's the mother of all resources on this subject.

These I came across independently of the carnival:

This review includes homeschooling in the commentary. I hate it when they do that!

Religion Clause has a link to and commentary on The Chronicle of Higher Education's look at this museum.

The Cincinnati.com Enquirer asks the question, "How much money and glitz does it take to institutionalize a scientific lie?"

The New York Times did a review.

EvolutionBlog has a link to and commentary on the New York Times article as does Wired.com.

The Denialism blog links to and comments on the LATimes story.

Street Prophets has titled their post "Welcome to Bedrock".

The thinkevolution blog calls it an "unnatural history museum".

You can read the short Reuters news story at Scientific American's site, where they also say, "New Creation Museum Mostly Illustrates that Creationists Have Lots of Cash".

Yummyummy has a link to this little 2 1/2 minute CNN video:

Slate.com's article, titled "Meet the Flintstones," spends much of its time reviewing coverage elsewhere, and they have links.

There's been some attention paid at Dark Christianity's LiveJournal.

BoingBoing has links.

Christdot mentions the museum opening but doesn't have much to say.

Galactic Interactions builds their commentary around the Bible and Math.

The Carnival of the Godless includes a post on the subject.

Greg Laden's blog includes a look at the cultural context out of which this museum has come and concludes by saying,

It is important to preserve this period of American history, or more exactly, the history of our (perhaps unique, or at least extreme) American propensity to believe the strangest things, to have the strangest practices. There are museums and institutes dedicated to alien abduction, to the study of bigfoot, to the yoyo and the hula-hoop, to white supremacy, to pin-ball, and to Cadillac convertibles. The creation museum will fit in nicely with this panoply of the irrelevant, the parade of oddities, this historical warehouse of the weird.

Long live the creation museum.

Defcon has a "Fight back against ignorance" petition you can sign. They explain their efforts here and cover Ken Ham's response here.

Dispatches From the Culture Wars has a link to this comment.

CBN has a friendly take. Their video can be viewed at youtube.

Ken Ham has a blog, and he claims there that the opening of his museum is "not just a historic event in America, but a historic event in Christendom".

AnswersInGenesis has a tour online.

News articles abound:

The Christian Post: "Creation Museum Revives Christian Debates Over Earth's Evolution"

The Washington Post: "A Monument To Creation -Kentucky Museum Discounts Centuries of Research, Critics Say"

USA Today has the Associated Press story.

Alternet has the Christian Science Monitor reporter's story.

etc.

google it for much more.

Ken Ham answers the question "Did God create in 6 literal days?":


Update:

Galactic Interactions has a new post: "May 28 : a Dark Day for Science and for Christianity as the "Creation Museum" Opens".
I have a deep sympathy with him as he shares with us how it feels to be a Christian in the face of this:

It bothers me, seriously, as a Christian.

First, there's the fact that these jokers loudly proclaim themselves as Christians, and not only that, but as somehow the "true" Christians. It seems that they've defined the purest Christians as the most ignorant ones, the ones who believe that thinking critically is a sin, the ones who believe that the Bible must be interpreted literally even where it makes no sense because, even though they claim that we are somehow "different" from the animals because we can cogitate, we're not really supposed to cogitate.

It's embarrassing. It's deeply embarrassing.

He has a lot more to say on the subject, and it's good to hear a scientist say it.

He closes with this:

Christians, wake up. Decry this ignorance, for that is what it is. Take back the name of your faith, and call out these ignorant creationists for what they are. Don't let them claim that any sort of Biblical literalism is at all holy or pure or a evidence of strong faith in the face of a cultural assault. Paint it for what it is; willful ignorance, held to and promoted, an embarrassing excuse for a religious tradition, an embarrassing excuse for human activity.

Words are not able to express how strong my horror and anger at the opening of this museum is.

There's a photo tour here via digg.

Another update:

Religion News Blog carries a story on the museum opening.


Friendly Atheist has a report on his day at the museum. He describes his interactions with interviewers and others who were there. This is "part 1", so there'll be more.

Evolutionblog has a transcript of the Ken Ham/Lawrence Krauss debate on Fox's O'Reilly Factor last night. I didn't see it, being much too busy eating barbeque and visiting with family at the time. He quotes Ham as saying,

What we're trying to accomplish is this: you know, through this nation whole generations of young people are being taught in the public schools there's no God, life evolved by natural processes, they're really just animals in the fight for survival, and that very much determines their morality, how they view themselves, their purpose and meaning in life, and so on. And what we wanted to do, was to give them information that's been censored from the culture

Here's a youtube video of the action:


The Pew Forum has an excerpt from and a link to a Washington Post story.

Yet another update:

Pharyngula is encouraging reports to look into the museum's finances.

And still more:

Dispatches from the Culture Wars rebuts the argument promoted in the planetarium of the Creation Museum.

Evolving Thoughts doesn't address the museum, but I thought the post dealt nicely with what is involved in trying to interpret the creation story literally.

Pharyngula reviews Salon's report, and here's the Salon article. DarkChristian at LJ has comments about Salon's article that reference the Pharyngula post.

More updating:

StreetProphets has an update. Their article has links from both sides, "a sampling of some of the reactions to the Creation Museum".