Talk:Creation Museum Visitor's Guide

Editors

Who's interested in helping with this project? Need loooooots of people...

1. αmεσg
2. --PalMD^-Goatspeed! 22:00, 5 July 2007 (CDT) I'll prob find some time
3. Etaroced 22:06, 5 July 2007 (CDT)
4. Linus^{(plot evil tech)} 22:09, 5 July 2007 (CDT). I must admit I don't see why it matters even if Isaac Newton was a creationist.
5. _liessmoke^mirrors 04:45, 6 July 2007 (CDT)
6. Bob_M (talk) 08:01, 6 July 2007 (CDT). Ok. I'll play. But how are we proceeding with this?
7. GdlessLiberal 11:21, 6 July 2007 (CDT). I'll soon be visiting the Museum, as I live nearby. I'll probably cry knowing that I'm giving these fools twenty dollars, but it's more entertaining than anything else I can get for twenty bucks.
8. human^{be in} 18:06, 9 July 2007 (CDT) but echoing BobM, why is it the RW: space? It should be in main. It shouldn't be too hard to get the gist going, describing the "museum" and its founder and their goals. Let's just move it to "main" and start writing! human^{be in} 18:06, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Plan

What we want are some well-written & succinct articles that work against creationism, but are not heavy-handed enough to scare a believer away. We want to be persuasive & sound likable. Also we need to find what arguments would be most pertinent to the Museum, so we need to (ugh) research the Museum. I think a good starting point, for example, would be an article about how you don't need to be a literalist to be a good Christian. Stuff like that. Because our audience will be mostly skeptical. Savvy?αmεσg 08:39, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

Mmmm. I take your point entirely - but I'm not really sure that I can be that subtle. I personally think that all this supernatural stuff is nonsense - I think I might find that suggesting that some levels of fantasy are more acceptable than others a little difficult. :-( --Bob_M (talk) 09:10, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

Write what you want; then we'll go from there. Goatspeed.-αmεσg 10:06, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

I can help with subtlety.--PalMD^-Goatspeed! 10:09, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

Ames, you said we should research the museum. I'll do what I can to convince my mom to actually take me there. GdlessLiberal 11:38, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

Yes, maybe you should. The link to the museum doesn't actually seem to to take you to any interesting stuff. Unless my link clicking skills are playing up again.--Bob_M (talk) 13:32, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

What would be awesome is if we could get some pictures that you would give to us under GNU FDL cause I am not sure if we have any fair use on existing photos. Etaroced 13:35, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

GL, great idea! Take photos & scan docs so we can "work" on them.-αmεσg 13:37, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

One of the wordpress bloggers made a trip there...i remember reading and looking at pics...no, wait, I think it was from the blogspace pharyngula is on. Check it out.--PalMD^-Goatspeed! 13:39, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

I can probably go there before school starts back up in August. I'll definitely bring a camera, unless they're loony enough to not allow photography. GdlessLiberal 14:01, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

Some reading

These are blogs written by scientist and skeptics that have visited the museum a good place to start reading:

• Pandas Thumb
• Jason Rosenhouse has a multi-part blog entry: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
• Tara Smith at Aetiology
• The Austringer
• And for a really um, special review try here.

Etaroced 10:15, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

Isaac Newton as creationist

There's not much to refute on that particular point, really. Certainly Newton was a creationist, which I guess was the logical thing to believe in considering what they knew at the time. Perhaps it is of more interest to look at what kind of a creator he believed in - an essentially impersonal one, who had created the universe as a clockmaker would build a clock, and then left it to run entirely by itself according to a set of given rules. Somehow I suspect that corresponds pretty badly to the kind of creator which Creation Museum or AiG envisions. --AKjeldsen^Godspeed! 19:11, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

The thing is he was probably not a Biblical literalist. They didn't really...exist until the 1800s. So he probably did not believe in 7 exact days. I'd be willing to bet on it. We need to find something to that effect...-αmεσ (!) 19:17, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

Indeed, quite the contrary; I believe he had some rather interesting interpretations of the Bible. Shouldn't be a problem finding sources, he wrote extensively on theological subjects. --AKjeldsen^Godspeed! 19:21, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

Really? See, this is why you're the medieval historian. I was just guessing. Can you point me towards a primary source?-αmεσ (!) 19:22, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

I'd really suggest starting with the Newton Project at Sussex U, they have tons of materials available online. I'll warn you that Newton and religion is not exactly an easy subject, though. ;-) --AKjeldsen^Godspeed! 19:40, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

If I remember correctly he spent the last half of life work on alchemy and other associated stuff. So I'm not sure that we'd want to defend everything he said anyway. --Bob_M (talk) 05:59, 7 July 2007 (CDT)

Actually, I think he worked on both physical science, theology, alchemy and a lot of other things throughout his life, and it is doubtful whether he saw much difference between them. In any case, I'd say that understanding and explanation is preferable to defending. --AKjeldsen^Godspeed! 05:24, 8 July 2007 (CDT)

Needed sections

I haven't been able to contribute much to this yet - lot of law school stuff to do tomorrow :-( - but can anyone think of sections we need for a good "guide," having not yet seen the actual museum? I was thinking....

1. Introduction, as stated on project page, "Can I be a good Christian..."
2. The Difference between Faith and Science
3. What Is the Scientific Method?
4. Does That Leave Room for Faith?
5. Creationism is not a Science
6. Brief primer on science (I don't know what should go here, given limited space).

-αmεσ (!) 01:09, 8 July 2007 (CDT)

Geological refutation

Not sure if anyone here has seen this yet but this video is a rather nice refutation of Ken Ham's rather expensive brain wrong. It focuses on the geology of the area around the museum. Rather clever I thought. _liessmoke^mirrors 17:56, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

A digital walkthrough:

Here's a digital walkthough of the Creation Museum. No charge![9] ŠтΈṜȳŁЁ^and...? 09:49, 11 July 2007 (CDT)

Redo!

Now that I have time to do it, I want to actually do this. I've set up an outline and I'll start writing sections. I could really use help brainstorming, and I think we should try to pitch it to a wider audience.-αmεσ (!) 16:24, 29 August 2007 (CDT)

Hi Amis. I know that you're trying to be fair and everything. And I suspect that you may me expecting this objection. :-) But I've got a problem with your audience selection. On the project page you say: But, unfortunately, strong atheism isn't going to be the most persuasive to our target audience. So I'm going to try to strike a moderate, "religion and science, can't we all just get along?" approach... at the risk of pissing you people off. .......Now, exactly who is our "target audience"? YEC's? People who are undecided? People looking for a rational refutation of the museum? And we must also ask what our objective is.Is it to persuade people that evolution and the bible are compatible? Or is it to give rational refutations to the museum? I suspect (If you will pardon my reading your mind) that you would say that our target is YEC's and our objective is to persuade them that evolution and the bible are compatible; whereas I would say that our targets are people who are interested but want to see a sparkling refutation. Now if we go your way I think we run into two problems. 1. It would be deceitful for someone like me to write or be involved in persuading people to believe something in which I do not personally believe - even more so if I were to do so with the possible ulterior motive or persuading them to believe something more radical later. 2. If a skeptic comes to RW and finds the article on the Museum is promoting a version of Christianity, or Islam, or Hinduism they will most certainly be turned off for ever. Simply pulling our punches on the issue would have a negative effect on these potential readers. Unfortunately I don't have a positive suggestion but I felt these points should be clearly raised at the outset.--Bob^{Do you agree?} 11:52, 2 September 2007 (CDT)

It probably won't come as a surprise that I support where Ames wants to go with this. However, Bob raises a good point in that we generally have a problem with defining our target audiences. That's only natural, since we come from a variety of backgrounds and naturally have different opinions about where we want to see this thing go, but it's something that needs to be worked out eventually.

It probably also won't come as a surprise that I think the best way of dealing with at least this particular article is to adopt the - wait for it - approach of Non-Overlapping Magisteria: Use science to refute their scientific claims, while discussing the theological aspects from a theological angle. I'll join in the mind-reading and guess that Ames already had something like this in mind when suggesting the current structure. --AKjeldsen^Godspeed! 17:24, 2 September 2007 (CDT)

I'll get back to you guys, but right now I'm tired, sorry :-P. Important question though.-αmεσ (!) 23:35, 2 September 2007 (CDT)

AKJ actually hit the nail on the head. I feel you can participate, even if you don't agree with the overarching theme, because you can write the science sections from a hard-advocacy tone, pulling no punches, because the YEC science is just so unforgivably bad. I'll pull punches on the tone on the intro sections (which will really be the only theological sections) because I think our audience is not YECs, and not ourselves, and not the undecideds. In fact, I don't know who it is. But I think coloring this refutation as moderate will make the Creation Museum look all the more silly. Alternately, could you write a paragraph about the science/religion debate from the atheist perspective? I hate to sound like Aschlafly, but I'm curious to see what you think'd prefer, and then we'll include it. So stop reading and go write your book. GODSPEED!-αmεσ (!) 12:18, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Did I overdo the folksiness?Wazza 01:12, 4 May 2008 (EDT)

I doubt it, feel free to add things. This article needs a drastic rewrite since right now the whole intro is a sort of essay-ish thing. Let's get on board and make this good, however the torpedoes from apologists may sting ;) human 02:02, 4 May 2008 (EDT)

Outside the tent :-)

I think that I’ll have to be outside the tent on this one – at least for a while. My reasons are:

• I don’t think this project should be stalled while I raise innumerable philosophical issues about its direction.

• It looks like the idea is to go NOMA on this. I personally think that NOMA is somewhat intellectually dishonest – for the reasons I gave at the NOMA debate page. Furthermore I don’t want to support using NOMA here as I don't want to be part of setting such a precedent for potential later debates on the site.

• I see a conflict in NOMA in an article of this type (and in RW in general) anyway. In this article we will be criticizing creationism – which is essentially a religious belief. We will be using science and logic to criticize that belief. My question for NOMAists is this: Is it fair to use science and logic to criticize the beliefs of others while presumably claiming that your own (better? more rational?) beliefs are protected by NOMA?

To be honest, I suspect that many of these initial deliberations will go by the board when the project kicks off and will turn out to be irrelevant, but I don’t really want to sign up to something I might regret later. Furthermore science/pseudoscience is attracting more of my time than creationism at this time anyway. But, good luck with the endeavour, I’m not walking away – just not signing up.--Bob^{bing up and down} 06:53, 5 September 2007 (CDT)

Yes, I didn't know that that's what it's called, but I guess I was trying to use "non overlapping magisteria," or whatever. If you don't contribute to that, though, can you contribute to the parts of the article dedicated to bashing pseudoscience?-αmεσ (!) 12:08, 8 September 2007 (CDT)

So remember how I live like an hour away from this thing?

Well, spring break is coming up soon, and a bunch of my atheist friends and I (and our fundy friend who has already been and says it's "not that bad") plan on heading to the Creation Museum next Tuesday Friday. Thought I'd let you guys know, since I signed up for this and then quit and all. More soon. Г☭длессЛиберал 20:55, 2 April 2008 (EDT)

OMG GL. Could you please do me a favor and take photos & notes and such? I would like to do this article/project someday.-αmεσ (tinker) 21:01, 2 April 2008 (EDT)

Yep. I'm working on getting a camera. It's going to be so much fun... Г☭длессЛиберал 21:03, 2 April 2008 (EDT)

You should try to ruin kids' dreams while you're there.-αmεσ (tinker) 21:04, 2 April 2008 (EDT)

You know my aspirations so well. I was just getting ready to say hello on your talk page, but I suppose this works just as well: Hey Ames! Г☭длессЛиберал 21:06, 2 April 2008 (EDT)

Haha hey GL! Glad to see you drop back by. I'm so jealous. I really want to see it. If you take a look here you can see that some people take it seriously... which is simply AMAZING.-αmεσ (tinker) 21:07, 2 April 2008 (EDT)

I hope they're there when I go. Г☭длессЛиберал 21:14, 2 April 2008 (EDT)

Schedule conflict... but it is still on! Г☭длессЛиберал 22:54, 6 April 2008 (EDT)

We eagerly await your complete report! human 23:24, 6 April 2008 (EDT)

Disaster

Sorry, I am deleting most of the text in this "article", which reads more like an "Ed Poor Writing Plan" waiting to be filled in by religionist apologists who also dig science. Since there has been no such content forthcoming, let's just write an RW article and get it over with. There have been some great rips on this piece of trash I've seen on Utube, where are links?

If anyone thinks that somehow we are going to pull a NOMA on this pile of steaming turds, they need to double the layers of foil in their hats... the Creation Museum is not some gentle Jesus trip into the desert, it's a pile of well-financed trash that is attempting to help destroy the US as a "western democracy". Anyone who doesn't see that is not part of this mission.

PS, "religion" is not singular. It's plural. There are scores, if not hundreds, of religions on this planet. There is, however, only one "science"... human 02:22, 4 May 2008 (EDT)

Liberal Christians

The article was clearly aimed at persuading fundy Christians to become liberal Christians. I feel a bit uncomfortable about altering it as liberal Christians are much less a problem than fundies. Despite this the article didn't fit our website. We're freethinkers. We don't, "Trust in God's honesty" unless someone can give scientific evidence that an honest God exists. Does anybody know website where the original article Creation Museum Visitor's Guide (section) would fit? I've revderted my edits. I see what you are getting at. Proxima Centauri 06:26, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

I agree with the two posts above - it would seem to be slightly absurd for to us to argue for a "moderate Christian" stance towards the creation museum.--Bob^{bing up} 16:34, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

While concurring with Bob's sentiments, I do believe that perhaps not all of us here subscribe to the freethinker agenda. Also, as someone who is involved with safety as in integral part of my work, I would like make a comparison with the safety pyramid where (roughly) for every fatality there are 10 serious injuries then 100 minor injuries and 1000 near-misses. To reduce the number of fatalities you attack the base of the pyramid - reduce the number of near-misses. I believe the same holds true for religious fundamentalism, it is the number of decent but god-fearing folk at the bottom who support the loonies at the top. Genghis^{You have the right to be offended; and I have the right to offend you.} 16:55, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

Part of what I was whining about was that we don't even really have any kind of article. We don't describe it, we barely mock it, what we have is an outline of sorts that someone put together ages ago, with that "moderate" perspective. Trouble is, like a movie or book, you have to have been there to do much of the work necessary. RW field trip, anyone? A busful for the Museum, with a side of Expelled? And, yes, the CM could be attacked from a moderate Christian position perfectly well. But we don't even have that. So that's why I started just hacking away at it and hoping somehow it would get better. Trouble is, I haven't been there, and probably won't ever go. Can we at least find a good chunk of their website to side-by-side, or at least quote and argue with? human 17:12, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

I tried to find something "meaty" which they had put up a while ago but couldn't find anything. There is stuff which other people say about them - but what we need is original source material. Which I guess means somebody actually going there - it's a tad far for me I'm afraid. :-( --Bob^{bing up} 05:28, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

Dang. It would be too far for me if it were only a half hour up the road. Still six thousand years away, by my reckoning. Hopefully something will turn up. Do we even have a link to that awesome utube thing (was it on utube?) where a couple of panda's thumb type people visited it "undercover"? human 12:50, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

Are we ever going to do anything with this?

Should we just decide that this idea was misconceived and get rid of it? It's got various problems:

• It tries to be sort of NOMAish persuasive.
• It's woefully incomplete with gaps and suggestions from waaaaaaaay back.
• Unless somebody actually goes there we're never going to be able to write the thing anyway.--Bob^{Not Jim} 21:17, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I dunno, parts of it are ok. Maybe we should just clean out the outlinish to-do listy bits? One day surely we'll all go there and come back and make a masterpiece of this. Too bad the scientists who went there a month or two ago didn't come here and do it up for us :( I know we have a PZ riding a dinosaur photo here, with permission, we sorta missed our chance to work on this when that story was "fresh". ħuman 21:23, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Of course, we also have Cretin Museum.... merge, perhaps? ħuman 21:27, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Well the "Tilting at windmills" is a bit poetic, and I'd say the "eternally opposed" bit would be more appropriate in an essay. Which doesn't really leave very much.--Bob^{Not Jim} 21:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm happy with the breed of NOMA that this is espousing - this shouldn't be a needless cynical attack on religion for the sake of it, it should be something that both "sides" if you will can be happy with, namely that you don't need all this psuedoscientific BS to like God and believe the Bible, hence we can play the NOMA card regardless of whether individuals like it or not. However, because no one on RW has been there, we can't exactly go point-for-point in the way that this should work. It can either get mothballed or remain "under construction" until we happen to get someone who's interested in the creation museum. I don't think a merge or delete is a good option, however. ^pathetic 22:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, at the moment, - with the exception of the "Mt. St. Helens" stuff - none of the article is actually about the creation museum. Even the introduction is wrong as the article doesn't do what it says it's going to do.--Bob^{Not Jim} 05:48, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we need a "mothballed, best intentions" template for such languishing projects? ħuman 06:27, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, or either add a comment to the introduction. Do we have any other projects in this state? I can't think of any.--Bob^{Not Jim} 08:37, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

A comment in the intro might be enough. I'll slur one in if I can make up the words... ħuman 08:55, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I've cut the "writing plan" stuff. If we actually write it that will build itself.--Bob^{Not Jim} 09:33, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Anyone actually been there? I know if I ever find myself in that part of the world, I intend to go, but that could be a while. - π 00:27, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd go, but I hope to never find myself in that part of the world... ħuman 03:43, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Delete

If we are never actually going to write a guide we should eliminate this and put whatever is useful in Creation Museum.

Take it no-one's been? If not - merge & DELETE! Scream!! (talk) 06:58, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, someone actually needs to go and record the experience. Pimobile (talk) 08:21, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes - but we've been trying to get somebody to do that since this thing was created in 2007. Furthermore its NOMA-centric accommodationist angle doesn't really fit with the rest of the wiki..--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 12:04, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

OK - I've removed all the rambling stuff along with the delete tag and reduced it to a stub stating that we are waiting for something to happen.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 17:30, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

... Yep. Evil fascist^{oh noez} 22:40, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion

Since this page is all about separating the spin from the truth, may I make a suggestion? I haven't been there and have very little interest in patronising such an establishment, but I can venture a guess how much is true. Therefore I propose the following text be added to the end of this article:

The following is a list of truthful content contained within the "museum". The remainder of the content is spin and dissemblement.'

Nothing else, just that. Or maybe a tumbleweed if we think people won't get the idea without it.86.15.236.184 (talk) 09:05, 9 September 2012 (UTC)