Creation Museum

Yet another brilliant invention of the USA.  Here is the official website :http://www.creationmuseum.org/ and here is an unbiased article by the NY times: http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/arts/24crea.html

I will let people familiar with modern science and common sense draw their own conclusions.

NEW Scientist also had an article on it - and definitely took the science in it to severe task! Dodgy science at best, and at worst deliberately incorrect.

I discovered it through my local paper, which had a neutral article, but a rather scathing summation by a scientist.  The most the owner could combat with was "Look at the flowers and insects, could that have been evolution?" and I wanted to scream out "WHAT about the flowers and insects??!???"

NEW Scientist also had an article on it - and definitely took the science in it to severe task! Dodgy science at best, and at worst deliberately incorrect.

I love the irony of what is called "Intelligent Design"

America's turning into a theocracy. VERY ugly. One of many reasons why I'm jumping ship in the United Snakes.

Try finding the documentary "FLOCK OF DODOS" about this whole, sad, sordid, backward creationism revival that is making inroads (I read that over 50% of Americans deny evolution as reality).

I think I'll throw Frank Zappa's "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing" on winamp. It'll make the pain subside.

Intelligent design Oh, come one. Yes, it's silly and unscientific and makes people with half a brain laugh but I find it harmless. As for the intelligent part..well...the duck-billed platypus, flightless birds, the fact that we have both wisdomsteeth and an appendix, both of which are useless and those small, white, yapping French pseudo-dogs are all proof that the designer, whoever that was, was clearly playing with half a deck and stoned.
But, alas, it probably won't stay harmless. Someone will do or say something and someone else will get really miffed and shout something else and then the  will hit the  . I just hope they keep it in America.

The religious right in America are its Taliban. They've done fucked up my country (and continue to fuck it up) something fierce, and pretty much own the republican party. Frightening. If I believed in a god, I'd definitely agree with your statement about it being a stoned God, Eric. The fact groups like the "Moral Majority" and the Taliban, etc. exist would go hand in hand with the wisdom teeth and duck-billed platypus.


Poor platypus. It deserves better company.

There is something called "The Moral Majority"? Please, do tell what loony behaviour they support. As for the stoned god hypothesis, it continues. Once, I got rather drunk and decided to make spaghetti carbonara. I passed out in the livingroom. The next day I tried to remember what I had been doing in the kitchen while staring at the under-cooked pasta floating around in raw egg, cream, cheese and bacon. I was too hung over to deal with it and it only got more disgusting. See, if there is a god, the world is his drunken attempts at spaghetti carbonara.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_majority

The name is gone but the figures continue. Folks like Pat Robertson, the recently-late Jerry Fallwell, Billy Graham, etc. Evangelists (mostly tele-evangelists) ull the reigns for the largest political party in America, now.

http://zena.secureforum.com/znet/ZMag/articles/july95diamond.htm

http://www.theocracywatch.org/

So, the "Moral Majority" simply changed its name and address.

They are not funny loonies!!! They are preachy, stuck-up and puritanical and seem to be stuck in some sort of idealised 1950's mental state. Now, I hope America is making sure they stay where they are. We have Cruiseism and that is more than enough.

I hope America is making sure they stay where they are.

I'm afraid not.  Our leadership is in their pocket, and they feel they have a mandate from God to convert the rest of us. 

MOP is on target.  The Christian right is the enemy of all rational thinking, open-minded human beings.  They are a huge influence in the States, and in American foreign policy. 

I am not an athiest.  My spiritual beliefs are my own business, but logic dictates to me that evolution was definately a part of any creation theory.  I believe that there is more to the world than what science can explain, but I also believe that science is the basis for all we know.  Otherwise, I would still believe in Santa Clause, fairy tales, and the witch who lived down by the river that kept me and my friends from trying to challenge the treacherous current when I was a kid.

There is something called "The Moral Majority"?

I used to have a favorite button, may still somewhere in my daughter's basement, that read "The Moral Majority is neither."

As for the stoned god hypothesis, it continues. Once, I got rather drunk and ...

Probably the best paper I did in college was along those lines for a comparative religions course.

Philosophers have, over the centuries, produced several alleged proofs of the existence of God. Here's a simplified version of Bishop Berkeley's proof.

He argued the nothing can exist without an observer, the line about a tree that falls in an empty forest making no sound is one of his. But if you look away from a tree, then look back, it is still there. Therefore it must be continually observed. Hence there is a universal observer, an ominiscient God.

Back in the day, the Proceedings of the Royal Society were not entirely stodgy.
They actually published limericks:

A Cambridge student said "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
To find that a tree
Just ceases to be
When no-one's about in the quad."

Dear sir, Your astonishment's odd
I'm always about in the quad
And that's why the tree
Continues to be
As observed by, yours faithfully, God

But what if it works both ways? If events cannot exist without observers, can observers exist without events?

If God cannot exist without something to observe, then the thing observed has to be complex. The only way to avoid going mad from sensory deprivation is to hallucinate up an entire universe. He even has to give parts of it free will, to avoid being utterly bored.

This leads you more-or-less directly to Shiva in his Nataraja (Lord of Dance) role, creating a universe out of rhythm. The statues always have two hands at the same height; one holds the fire of destruction, the other the drum of creation. In the beginning was the word ...

I used to have a favorite button, may still somewhere in my daughter's basement, that read "The Moral Majority is neither."

Awesome.

The Christian right is the enemy of all rational thinking, open-minded human beings.  They are a huge influence in the States, and in American foreign policy.

America is a melting pot and the scum rises to the top. The "top" was reached when Ronald Reagan took his first oath of officce in Washington, for his first, horrendous term as pressident. It was all downhill from there.

It is not without irony that Reagan seems downright moderate juxtaposed to the pitbulls who put the Bush JR. camp in office.

Beware of the Heritage foundation, founded by the late, not-so-great Jerry Fallwell:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heritage_Foundation

So goes the Heritage Junta, so goes the Nation.

As Jello Baifra once sang, "You call yourselves the moral majority - we call ourselves the people of the real world"

It's neigh f'n impossible to criticize the religious right in the United Snakes these days because doing so has been spun as some kind of mythical conspiracy that you're against an individual's right to practice their respective faith(s) and against god, and thus a terrorist against the nation.

This is the Dante-like first circle in the rings of theological discourse in the United Snakes these days. Each of the rings takes you deeper into the abyss of brainwashing, thuggery and crypto-fascist fanaticism; Jihadism, I dare say. Just because car bombs aren't being used and heads are not literally rolling in cement shitboxes and being broadcast on the internet doesn't make theo-terrorism any different if it's Christ or Allah they hide behind: theocratic tyranny is theocratic tyranny. One is just Pat Boone-like Stepford pretty and the other is down-and-dirty third world: it's still the same b. s. at its core, imo, and it's irrevocably fucked the United States up.

So, if you speak out against the RELIGIOUS RIGHT (note, it's not "religion," or "religious people," or, "the religious," but simply the terrorist flavor called "religious right," being singled out) it now comes off as if you are a threat to the state.

This is the dynamic one has to contend with in the United States in 2007.

When over half of the population refute scientific fact (r. e. evolution): it's time to pull a Kenny Rodgers and know when to fold'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.

I didn't include the link, not sure if it would work for those in China, but this sums it up:
"The American public often imagines that evolution is on shakier ground than it really is because of the vociferous arguments by creationists that are simple and easy to grasp whereas scientists are reluctant to enter into debates with people they consider non-scientists. They are a lot like astronomers who just sigh when you ask them about astrology. It takes a considerable amount of serious study to understand how evolution works, and "equal time" gives an unfair advantage to arguments that scientists consider deeply flawed, though easy to understand. Public schools, afraid of controversy, mostly avoid teaching about modern evolutionary theory; so the general public does not have the knowledge it needs to understand even the basics. The result is that the U.S. is the only Western industrialized nation in which the majority of the population rejects a belief in evolution"