Ham-fisted science

Sorry for not blogging for a while - I've been away on business with only limited connectivity (how is that even possible these days?!).

Anyway, I wanted to weigh in on the whole Creation museum issue. For those of you who've been living under a rock recently, the Creation Museum in Kentucky is designed to show the literal biblical view of creation. It's great if you think the Flintstones is a documentary.

Lawrence Krauss, the noted theoretical physicist, debated the museum's founder, Ken Ham last night on Fox. Here's the clip:



Krauss has also posted an article that lays out the facts about the age of the Earth, and let me tell you, it doesn't add up to 6000 years.

The media has, surprisingly given the museum pretty much a free pass. I won't bother to go into details here (you know who you are, and I'm looking at you, NY Times). At least the LA Times has done a much better job of reporting on the Yabba-dabba science.

The museum, a 60,000-square-foot menace to 21st century scientific advancement, is the handiwork of Answers in Genesis, a leader in the "young Earth" movement. Young Earthers believe the world is about 6,000 years old, as opposed to the 4.5 billion years estimated by the world's credible scientific community. This would be risible if anti-evolution forces were confined to a lunatic fringe, but they are not. Witness the recent revelation that three of the Republican candidates for president do not believe in evolution. Three men seeking to lead the last superpower on Earth reject the scientific consensus on cosmology, thermonuclear dynamics, geology and biology, believing instead that Bamm-Bamm and Dino played together.

If you want a (very) detailed rebuttal, Pharyngula has a creation carnival that's a must read.

Here's the deal. $27 million was pumped into this travesty of science. That's $27 million that could have gone into helping the cause of science education in this country, or providing clean drinking water for the poor in Africa for example - that would be a much more Christian activity.

Good science education is under attack from all sides, and as a start, let's use the opening of this "educational" "museum" to go to our local school boards and make sure good educational standards for science are enshrined in their teaching guidelines. And look out for those Flintstones documentaries!