Thoughts - Maybe I need a section for religious controvosy also

[jack]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/02/weden02.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/01/02/ixworld.html

"The centrepiece of the museum is a series of huge model dinosaurs, built by the former head of design at Universal Studios, which are portrayed as existing alongside man, contrary to received scientific opinion that they lived millions of years apart."

"Mr Ham is particularly proud of a planned reconstruction of the interior of Noah's Ark. 'You will hear the water lapping, feel the Ark rocking and perhaps even hear people outside screaming,' he said. More controversial exhibits deal with diseases and famine, which are portrayed not as random disasters, but as the result of mankind's sin."

"Elsewhere, animated figures will be used to recreate the Garden of Eden, while in another room, visitors will see a tyrannosaurus rex pursuing Adam and Eve after their fall from grace. "That's the real terror that Adam's sin unleashed," visitors will be warned."

However, I would like to commend the article's author, who seems to well avoid breaking impartiality by, for instance, describing what received scientific knowledge says, and what Ham interprets the bible as saying, without saying either is true.

Comments

[fanf]

Why would it be breaking impartiality to state that the museum is full of lies?

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

I've recently realised that fundie/rest-of-world interactions remind me of certain Monty Python sketches. You know the sort, where one of the characters holds a position that is clearly absurd, but they defend it with great vigour and imagination and a million and one excuses. Like the Dead Parrot sketch, or the Black Knight bit in the Holy Grail.

[mr-ricarno.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I think it's time for me to dissociate from the fundamentalists.

I think the author may not have been concerned about breaking impartiality, rather they are worried that they'll get death threats from someone in the religious right, as happened recently with BBC executives in the Jerry Springer controversy.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Awww, thank you Becky. *hugs*

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I think it's time for me to dissociate from the fundamentalists.

:) Fair choice.

Though I suppose I do have friends to whom this wouldn't seem extreme.

I think the author may not have been concerned about breaking impartiality, rather they are worried that they'll get death threats from someone in the religious right, as happened recently with BBC executives in the Jerry Springer controversy.

Entirely possibly. But it's still a nice job.

And anyway, I don't think the sorts of people inclined to death threats notice that sort of thing -- writing 'received scientific wisdom says' or 'accepted theological beliefs say' just sounds like endorsment, so you get no less persecution than if you'd said "It is true that". Not everyone believes that received scientific wisdom says that the earth is 6000 years old, but enough do.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, that's what impartiallity is, isn't it? One has to aknowledge popular but stupid points of view. To some people, many of my beliefs are stupid, but it makes life easier for everyone if they acnoweldge what they are.

So, hopefully, we compromise: people don't say "vegetarianism is stupid" but "most people think vegetarianism is stupid" and I don't say "the earth is 1x10¹⁰ years old" (except in company where it's understood) but "we've found trees older than 6000 years, and as for mountains..."

Or something.

[fanf]

Impartiality should be tempered by the fact that some points of view deserve more respect than others.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

True. And I yearn to agree. Especially since acnowledging that a belief is widespread makes it acceptable in a way that if it were new it wouldn't be. But wehn I do, I feel I'm just ignoring it and pretending that it will go away, when it won't soon.

[fanf]

If you can't bear to deprive them of the oxygen of publicity, taunt them.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

LOL. Great.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think the creationalist museum must be commended for being quite so forward and radical in their beliefs. I mean, they're saying that dinosaurs, which after all are not mentioned in the bible at all, were genuinely around in the garden of Eden, and the fossils arn't just lies put there by the devil to decieve us.

I hope they don't manage to alianate all the scientists *and* all the fundamentalists :-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I believe some people say some words in the bible commonly translated as 'great beasts' or 'leviathans' refer to things that left bones that people dubbed dinosaurs. And didn they actually say that about fossils? I'm not *surprised* they did[1] but didn't see it myself.

The most extreme sorts of fundamentalist seem unalienable, since God being more important than logic, there seems to be no stigma[2] attached to holding two contradictory beliefs.

[1] As people do. Despite the theological quandries that the devil is traditionally described as offering temptation only, being consigned to hell.

[2] pi