The Creation vs Evolution Controversy

In what started out as a travel article on Louisville, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio for the UK tabloid, The Mail, writer Chris Coplans ends with a ‘hit’ piece on the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum. Excerpted below are some of his comments on his visit to the Creation Museum.

On my way back to the airport in Kentucky I made one last stop at God’s answer to Disneyworld, the Creation Museum.

Worried about being stereotyped as Stone Age, Bible-bashing hillbillies, Kentuckians have been reluctant to embrace their newest attraction. Not so the thousands of biblical literalists who make a pilgrimage from all over America to visit God’s own theme park.

ThE state-of-the-art 70,000 sq ft museum is just one exit away from the airport and presents itself as a ‘walk through history’, although it struck me as a walk through fantasy land. For just under £13, you can learn how God made the universe in six days, where the dinosaurs lived on Noah’s Ark and, most bizarrely, how Darwin was responsible for the Holocaust.

I was greeted outside the main building by a large, apparently harmless dinosaur. It turns out the likes of Steven Spielberg and 99 per cent of scientists have been giving dinosaurs an undeservedly bad Press.

One exhibit shows a young child happily frolicking with a couple of peace-loving, vegan dinosaurs, even though they had been extinct for 60 million years before humans came along. The Creation Museum, like Hollywood, doesn’t let science get in the way of a good story.

The museum is packed with hordes of jumbo-sized evangelical Christians, waddling around with their offspring, apparently defying the deadly sin of gluttony. Had Noah let them aboard, their excess weight would have sunk the Ark.

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Palin’s creationism stance would impede progress
by Arthur Caplan
Philadelphia Inquirer, September 7, 2008
p. C6 (Editorial)

Teaching biblical inerrancy as science in the schools would endanger the ability of the U.S. to compete in the world of technological advances

There has been no end of reaction to Sen. John McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential pick. After the initial “Sarah who?” response from those in the other 49 states, some commentators have decided it was brilliant to place a dynamic young woman at McCain’s side.

Despite Palin’s boisterous coming-out speech at the Republican convention, I think McCain has actually thrown away any chance he had of being elected because the selection of Palin puts an issue on the table that McCain may find exceedingly uncomfortable to have to wrestle with over the next two months.

*Arthur Caplan is chairman of the medical-ethics department at the University of Pennsylvania.

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A few evolutionist bloggers have been chattering on about the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum’s Archaeopteryx reconstruction. Abyssal’s Web Log makes a number of interesting claims in a posting titled Creationist Museum Lies About Archaeopteryx. First, we’ll point out that there is no evidence that Abyssal was ever at the museum, and thus has not actually seen the Archaeopteryx reconstruction. How so? He states:

“The Creation Museum had a model of a life restoration of Archaeopteryx present in their Garden of Eden exhibit…”

The model is actually in the Dinosaur Den exhibit. There is no Archaeopteryx in the Garden of Eden exhibit. Both exhibit areas are some distance apart from each other. The Dinosaur Den exhibit opened July 4th — 5 weeks after the official Museum opening. Since Abyssal has not had the opportunity to actually see, up close and in person, AiG’s reconstruction, his other points are just typical pajama blogger off-the-cuff comments. But, it seems that Abyssal is just parroting accusations made by Chris over at Duae Quartunciae in Jurassic Pigeon at the Creation Museum!

Back on May 26, 2007, Chris wrote a short but rambling screed about the Creation Museum opening, in which he took exception to the Museum’s Archaeopteryx reconstruction. Of course, like Abyssal, Chris has not been to the Creation Museum. (He lives in Australia.) Chris dug up a March 28th blog posting by Ken Ham, in which Ken posted a picture of a Buddy Davis reconstruction. Hhhmm. March 28th? Is it possible that Chris saw a photo of a reconstruction still being worked on? For an exhibit not opened until a month after the Memorial Day 2007 Museum opening? Is it typical of evolutionists to pontificate about things they’ve never seen? Perhaps all of the above. We shall see…

Both Chris and Abyssal seemed to be obsessed with the idea that Buddy’s reconstruction is missing teeth and that he substituted a beak, rather than a reptile-like jaw. Remember, they’re both looking at a low resolution image of a photo looking up at the model and taken outdoors (notice the pine trees behind the model?) Take the image from Ken’s blog and load it into your favorite image editor. Magnify the image several times. Take a look at the mouth/beak/jaw area. Can you see the teeth?

In case your eyes aren’t any better than mine, click on the image below to see Buddy’s reconstruction as actually displayed at the Creation Museum:

Conspiracy theorists may claim AiG’s blog posting and the above image aren’t of the same reconstruction. Keep in mind the differences in angle, lighting, indoor vs outdoor setting, and the resolution. Look closely at the branch in both pictures. It’s the same branch, and the feet are in the same position — still taking into account camera angle differences. Below is a smaller-sized image of AiG’s March 2007 blog posting with another recent photo of their Archaeopteryx model:

Apparently these guys are not birders. They need to turn off the computer, buy a good pair of binoculars and a bird feeder, then sit out on the back porch. A few hours looking at real birds in the backyard might sober them up a bit!

Answers in Genesis’ new online technical journal, Answers Research Journal, went live this month. Drs Georgia Purdom and Joseph W. Francis report on the Microbe Forum held at Answers in Genesis headquarters on June 26–29, 2007. Dr Andrew Snelling, ARJ editor-in-chief, has an article on “Catastrophic Granite Formation: Rapid Melting of Source Rocks, and Rapid Magma Intrusion and Cooling”. And, Dr. Alan L. Gillen, from Liberty University, wrote on “Microbes and the Days of Creation”. All articles are available as .pdf downloads, while only two are currently available as .html documents. The purpose of ARJ:

Answers in Genesis is excited to announce the launch of its online technical journal, Answers Research Journal. ARJ is a professional, peer-reviewed technical journal for the publication of interdisciplinary scientific and other relevant research from the perspective of the recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework. All published papers may be freely copied, downloaded, quoted, and distributed for non-commercial and non-sale purposes …

Response to the January launch has been interesting to say the least. As of Jan. 26, running a search on Google for “Answers Research Journal” gives 170 results (minus duplicates). Buried in these results you will find two notices of ARJ on Nature.com, home of the prestigious British science magazine, Nature. The first mention was posted by a Nature Neuroscience associate editor, Noah Gray: CALL FOR CREATIONIST PAPERS: at the Answers Research Journal on Action Potential., the Nature Neuroscience blog The second mention is in the Nature News section and also appears in the January 28 print edition of Nature: Creationists launch ’science’ journal. One can only imagine the invectives Nature and these authors will get from evolutionists fuming over the free advertising given to Answers Research Journal!

Now, of course, we’d be remiss for not mentioning some of the dumber screeds from the pro-evolution blogging community. Top prize for Open Mouth, Insert Foot goes to Evelyn Is Not Real at Ray Bradbury’s Love-Camel blog for ‘Peer-Reviewed’ Christian Scientific Research Journal. In a rather brilliant piece of analysis, ‘Evelyn Is Not Real’ (ironically, this is the name of a song from a Louisville, KY band … just down the road from Answers in Genesis) is particularly bent out of shape over Alan Gillen’s use of the word ‘awesome’ in his ARJ article:

Being the curious, inquisitive scientist that I am, I mosied on over to the website and downloaded a free article. I really was somewhat curious to see how ’scientific’ it would be. I downloaded ‘Microbes and the Days of Creation.’

Interesting…

I would have to say that the paragraph entitled ‘The Master Craftsman’ takes the cake. I wonder if I could get away with using the word ‘awesome’ in my next discussion section of a manuscript?

Take an example from the paper:

“The Almighty did some of His most awesome work in the first six days of the planet’s existence.”-ARJ, 2007, p. 10.

So maybe I should try something like “The transcriptional E-box repressor, Snail, did some of its most awesome repression of E-cadherin in the earliest stages of cellular development.”

Well. That’s interesting. True scientists don’t use the word “awesome” in their publications. NOT! “Evelyn,” aka Michael Buckland from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, needs to improve his research skills before he completes his post-doctoral work. Mike, try running a search on the Nature website for “awesome”:

Search results for: awesome
Results 1 -10 of 194
You have searched for “awesome” - all of the words ,in Nature

Take out book reviews, news, and a few other categories, and there’s still quite a few papers using “awesome.”

Awesome!

Lawrence “It’s a lie!” Krauss and Chris Mooney, a Seed magazine correspondent and blogger, are publicly promoting a litmus test for the 2008 presidential candidates. [See also Krauss's Wall Street Journal opinion piece.] We’re quite sure a candidate’s view of evolution, creationism, and intelligent design will be one of the prime qualifying tests Krauss and the gang at Science Debate 2008 will be applying. If there’s any doubt one need only peruse the list of some of the supporters on the Science Debate 2008 website:

Niles Eldredge - Curator, Division of Paleontology, The American Museum of Natural History

John F. Haught - Senior Fellow, Science & Religion, Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University

Paul Kurtz - Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo; Chairman, Center for Inquiry

Lawrence M. Krauss - Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Director, Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics, Case Western Reserve

Kenneth R. Miller - Professor of Biology, Brown University; co-author of “Biology”

Randy Olson - Marine Ecologist, Filmmaker, “Flock of Dodos”

Kevin Padian - Professor and Curator Department of Integrative Biology and Museum of Paleontology University of California, Berkeley

John Rennie - Editor-In-Chief, Scientific American

Eugenie C. Scott - Executive Director, National Center for Science Education

All the above are well-known evolutionists with a long history of fighting creationists and intelligent design proponents.

CP

Make science part of the debate
by Lawrence Krauss and Chris Mooney
Los Angeles Times (California), page A31
December 12, 2007

Whether the issue is global warming, embryonic stem cell research, ballistic missile defense or the future of the world’s oceans, the same bass line thumps in the background: Sound political decision-making relies, more than ever before, on accurate scientific information.

As advances in science and technology continually transform our world, policymaking will inevitably depend more and more on accurate scientific and technical information. Which means that in order to be a successful world leader today, a politician must have an effective means of accessing and applying the latest science.

This fact — combined with the undisputed importance of scientific research and innovation to national prosperity and competitiveness — explains the recent emergence of a group called ScienceDebate2008. Under its auspices, scientists, university presidents, industry leaders, elected representatives and others have endorsed a call for the current U.S. presidential candidates to participate in a debate, or a series of debates, dedicated to issues in science and technology. More specifically, the candidates should answer questions about the environment, medicine and health, and science and technology policy.

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