Author and blogger John Scalzi has posted an amusing report of his visit to the Creation Museum.
Some time ago he said that he’d visit the museum, which was built near his home, on the condition that his readers donated $250, with the added incentive that any extra money would be given to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. His readers came through and donated over $5000.
So he went, took a bunch of pictures, and posted a very thorough report.
An excerpt:
Here’s how to understand the Creation Museum:
Imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. And we’re not talking just your average load of horseshit; no, we’re talking colossal load of horsehit. An epic load of horseshit. The kind of load of horseshit that has accreted over decades and has developed its own sort of ecosystem, from the flyblown chunks at the perimeter, down into the heated and decomposing center, generating explosive levels of methane as bacteria feast merrily on vintage, liquified crap. This is a Herculean load of horseshit, friends, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of Augeas.
You can read his entire report here.
I was not pissing with you. I thought you were the tough guy!
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Anyway, regarding my theme park idea. I think that, as suggested by some one else (sorry forgot who) I think a franchise would be good. Like Six Flags (Six Noodles?). We need a first one and I nominate my home town of Portsmouth (on the site of Clarence Pier. There Isn’t a fundie epidemic here, in fact it’s quite a liberal place, but she is a bit of a shit hole on account of the government putting most of the redevelopment funds in to London!
I could give back to the community that has given me… well very little apart from some good nights out.
However as I will attempt to have this developed as a Cooperative (I like the Co-Op they do good deals on beer!) I will be trying to scam the rest of you into paying, so will go with the minority choice for a location.
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On another note: Yester day I was reminded why I should be proud to be British! As I withdrew some cash I looked at my £10 note to see Charles Darwin looking back at me!
Despite of Tony Blair’s’ city academes, which have allowed Evangelists to set up camp in schools and the damage Labour have done to education in my country, we are still a nation with intellect and wit.
FSM bless England!
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@Jenny
I’m sorry I dashed off like that! It was only now that I saw the continuation! My own continuation consisted of a seven hour rehearsal of Portugese Fado and Greek trasditional songs, finnishing at 1:00 in the morning! It’s been like that for a week now and the show opens tomorrow night!
I was really a bit upset with Pluto’s over-protective, almost territoral machinations. But hey I apologize to you if you lost sleep over this!
CC
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@ Captain Codpiece returns – I am the tough guy!
But I have a certain level of respect to the regulars I would hate to hurt your feelings. Being tough doesn’t mean being an arse hole.
Now lets storm the dock yard!
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Plymouth ho!
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Don’t take my lack of sleep too personally, CC – I actually still feel bad about getting into a fairly vigourous online debate with a 13 year old home schooled fundie who informed us his science books had ID as fact and then challenged a group comprising an archaeologist, a biologist, a physicist and two non-specialist but highly intelligent people who knew the biblical stuff to throw into the debate too, to “prove evolution”. The poor kid stood no chance, and it did turn into a bit of a massacre. This was 6 or 7 years ago!
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On a slightly different note – hope the rehearsal went well, and good luck tomorrow.
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I wonder if he’s still a fundie or if that got him thinking about the stuff he had been blindly following.
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What the fuck do you mean you were pissing with us????????
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I was feeling sooooooo fucking bad yesterday because….fuck!
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All I can say is it’s good to have a tough guy on your side, an arse hole on your side would make it dificult to go to the toilet! And anyone who can rhetorically debunk a 13 year old is OK in my book!
CC
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Anyhow, Captain, I am glad you are not mad at us…but let me tell you…good acting skills…
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Good luck on the play!
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PacificPam (Butterfly) Nov 22nd, 2007 at 4:20 pm
What the fuck do you mean you were pissing with us????????
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read my post of 32 minutes ago!
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Captain Codpiece returns Nov 22nd, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I was not pissing with you.
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I just got here…
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Sadly it didn’t have enough of the desired effect. Any time we mentionned one of the bits of evidence his “science” book hadn’t already explained away, his response was ‘I’m just a kid, I don’t know about that, it isn’t fair, you’ve all studied this’. For some reason he never made the connection that that was sort of the point, and made it look like we were all deliberately picking on the religious kid. Last time I heard, he’d gone no to bible college
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oops – gone on, not no.
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Let’s leave it at that! This thread is so totally excellent to get too cluttered with personal shit as well as the horse shit museum of complete and utter ignorance! If you haven’t already taken the photo tour on the blog then I highly recomnd it. It took me 15 minutes of belly laughing to get through it!
CC
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Pity, some kids might have been encouraged to try and learn something about the arguements you were using against him, I know I would, even though I was very religious when I was younger, never the frothing at the mouth, ‘if it’s not in the bible it’s a lie’ kind though, maybe that’s the difference.
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I’m taking it at the moment, CC. Doing it the slow way though as that way I get to enjoy the captions and the comments posted by other people who also see how silly it is.
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@Jenny
I can understand how kids can’t change their view point even in the face of overwhelming evidence. And the reason is explained in The God Deception. Evolution has made kids take at face value things that grown ups tell them. They do not question authority until later. 13 is just on the brink of this change so he might have felt the same feeling a schizophrenic feels when you show him the inside of the match box which he had claimed contained maybe a thought transmiter. It’s ironic that this line or reasoning as partial proof of evolution should make someone so convinced that there is no such thing!
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I took the tour and was completely shocked from what I saw…talking abuout how the dinosaurs dissappeared on the flood but they were also taken in the ark because they were small as sheeps…
That museum should be burnt! I feel insulted by the way they try to explain everything with their stupid bible!
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Unfortunately true, and because he was home schooled, getting no contradicting information from other grown-ups such as teachers, and I seem to recall most of the socialising he did was within the church group his parents were members of, he wasn’t being prompted to question that authority by learning in his day-to-day expeience that there were other views.
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So, Jennyanydots, did he cry?
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not unless he did it afterwards when he thought about all the stuff we’d said and decided that maybe we had a point after all. But given he decided to go to a fundamentalists training college at 18 I somehow doubt it was that life-changing
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…Dammit…should have made him cry…
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Well…maybe on some other time…
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But I didn’t want to make him cry. That would have been even more of a failure than not managing to make him think was.
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Can’t we storm an existing theme park, take the staff prisoner and hoist up a jolly FSM flag? That would be very pirate like! If we picked the Creation Museum then two birds with one stone! Then we can fuck with all the existing exhibits, to pariey them selves. If they don’t all ready.
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There’s still time, unfortunately he’s unlikely to meet anyone who’ll give him an alternate view of the world while learning to be a bible thumper, but at least he isn’t too old to learn to ask questions yet, although it’d probably take something pretty major to do that.
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Well, Jennyanydots, I think it would have been a succes because maybe he would have cried out of anger at his parents for teaching him all the lies and then he would have gone to some kickass college and study astrophysics!
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Ha!
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@Pluto – There is nothing interesting in Kentucky…don’t put the theme park there. Better in Australia…close to the kangaroos and the walabis…they are so cute.
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He was a nice enough kid, apart from the blind obedience to his parents’ faith part, and I suspect it would probably need to be something major in a bad kind of way, which I wouldn’t want him to have to go through. Unless he ends up marrying some scientist who manages to convince him otherwise.
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But would his parents allow him to marry a heathen without blind faith?
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Highly unlikely. Also, as above – his social life is completely centred on religion, so where’s he going to meet said heathen
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Mind you, it has certain possibilities for a conversion campaign. Teams of science students going door to door on a bible college campus…
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Jenny. It’s much more likely to have the right effect if he were to fall in love with some Hari Krishna girl who busts his balls about reincanation or Karma! This internal conflict what really gets the ball (or in this case balls) rolling. It’s probably better for this major thing to start a reaction to something rahter than for him just to be convinced by some scientist. I would imagine that’s why he didn’t catch on the first time. He needs a mind opener, not just a mind changer. Oops getting a bit ‘on the couch with Sigmund’ there…
CC
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Or perhaps a Pastafarian wench?
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CC – that’s pretty similar to what I had in mind, but I was hoping to bypass a step and just have him wanting to learn about the science stuff to understand what makes this hypothetical scientist-wife tick.
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I saw one of these programs about a god box town. They had this farther talking about his daughter and her fiancé. He decided that after they had been engaged for 3 years they could hold hands! But he said he was aware of were this kind of behaviour can lead. LOL. How do you think the poor boy will cope with his marriage night? Or maybe the dad will tell him he has to wait another 3 years after marriage before he can fuck his own wife! I wonder if they will use one of those sheets with a hole in it.
. The thing that got me the most was that a guy in the town hand made paddles to spank the kids with! Each one had “every time with love” written on it! There was a recommendation list of how many whacks the kid should get for what. Disobeying your parents and questioning gods will were both on the list!
So that poor kid you were trying to educate was probably beaten to shit by his parents when he asked questions after talking to you! Probably got extra for failing to convert you.
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I got t’ get me one o’ them paddles!
Aarrrrrr!
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Why do you need a special paddle? You’ve got a whole ship full of suitable objects. Just take up some of the wooden planks.
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“Remember that god loves you honey and wants you to love him too. He gave you free will so you can choose not to, however he will send you to a pit of eternal hell fire is you don’t. And if that’s not enough we will paddle your ass black and blue too!
But remember god loves you and so do we! Now bend over… Oh the lever straps me and mommy are wearing? They are ceremonial. And when my man thing goes all hard it’s to point the way to god and has nothing to do with any sort of perverse sexual pleasure I might get from hitting a defenceless child with a big piece of wood!”
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Oh – retrospective edit of my last point – and maybe cut them down to a slightly less scary size, before you do someone an injury.
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By the way, I’m still looking at those photos instead of doing some work, which could be a problem, but just had to add a link to this one, for the sign alone. http://www.flickr.com/photos/scalzi/1970012300/in/set-72157603091357751/ – just ignore me if you already saw it.
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lala!
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you there?
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Just finished them all. Can recommend the slow tour with all the comments, if you’ve got the time, but my brain hurts. Think I need a cup of tea. Well, only because I can’t drink something stronger when at work.
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bosses around
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http://www.naijarita.com/2006/god-blocking-tv-miracles
Thought this would go down well here.
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Hmm. I enjoyed the story, but made the mistake of reading the comments too. Those people get it evebn less than some of the hate mailers here.
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i was laughing so hard at the ‘adam’ picture, with his lamb loincloth and his penguin friend!!
i wonder what the prophet of their religion would say if he was still alive and he had found out that 27 million dollars had been spent on a pile of horseshit, instead of on, oh, say….umm….helping the destitue, needy and less fortunate? Nice to know which parts of their holy book they take seriously.
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