Night at the Museum: Fact Checkers Sleeping On the Job?

Peace of Christ, everyone!

Is Creation Science as a whole intentionally deceptive? I recall my first and only visit to The Creation Museum, though I’ll admit that I don’t remember much from it; that’s a bad sign coming from me, who somehow has enjoyed museums since as long as I can remember, learning more from the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure lecture my friend gave to me on the car ride there than The Creation Museum itself. What few displays I can still recall seemed so unprofessional and detrimental to their cause, that there is no possible way that they weren’t at the very least tongue-in-cheek! There are notable contenders for this: Masoretic Moses, Narmer’s Sauropods, Technically Evolution… but the best example of this was if I remember correctly, a comparative anatomy display featuring a man and an ape’s skeletons where the accompanying video admitted that humans and apes were extremely genetically similar! Just a passing comment remarking how the supposed presuppositions made by evolutionists was actually scientific fact, and then it was back to the highly speculative pseudohistory they’re trying to sell, where man and dinosaur walked together like in Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal, as if nothing had happened at all! Don’t act like I didn’t just see that!

I’ve been an avid reader of Joel Duff’s Naturalis Historia, and I happened to stumble upon a particularly enlightening post comparing the dinosaur talks of doctor Jack Horner and paid actor speaker Bryan Osbourne. Of course there’s no way one could compare the two talks academically, but what was interesting to Dr. Duff was how Dr. Horner engaged with his audience and emphasized the beauty of these ancient creatures, whereas Osbourne considered dinosaurs to be a problem to be solved in the narrative he was trying to sell, directing kids and parents alike to go buy some books that probably won’t address their questions; how do I sell dinosaurs to these people?

Am I too conspiratory in my thinking, or is there truth to this?
Pax,
Charles

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Yo again Charles. It’s strong delusion. Nobody’s conspiring. America went past its elastic limit with the Louisiana Purchase and the Second Great Awakening that accompanied it. There’s no coming back from that.

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Welcome Charles. Thanks for posting. I have friends who have been to the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter, and still struggle with how to respond to them. Most enjoyed it and were impressed with the exhibits, Ark, more so than the museum. Of course, they, without exception, were YEC adherents before going, so there is a component of confirmation bias. If you hold to YEC, those attractions are really a form of apologetics where you are trying to find justification for the views you hold, and are not there to convince anyone who does not already believe that interpretation and have that worldview.
I have asked them at times how they were able to integrate the views expressed there with what we observe in nature, with no good answers other than “That’s the way God did it.” I have gotten to the point of just staying silent, or saying I’m glad they enjoyed it, as it seems mean-spirited to do otherwise. Only when pressed with obvious false statements that in themselves are hurtful and misrepresent others unfairly will I confront those statements. Which sometimes happens, but fairly rarely. Any thoughts on how we should approach the issue, as I am still learning?

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I think you miss the point if I understand you correctly, Charles. In human design you see tires on cars, trucks, tractors, airplanes and even rockets moving them to the launchpad. For similar function you have similar designs. When you look at the structure and function between man and ape, they are nearly identical, so you would expect the genome to be very similar. It could have absolutely nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with design.

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Hi Mr. McCurdy!

I don’t have much experience with this kind of dialogue either. The best advice I can give is to just be honest with your friends and, bit by bit, show an alternate way of looking at things.

Pax,
Charles

Hi Thomas!

That’s what I had been thinking for a while as well, but isn’t it strange that neither humans nor chimps are capable of making their own vitamin c due to gene deletion, which occurs in the same spots in both species?

Pax,
Charles

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Right, in human design. And yet when you look at nature you see different designs being used for the same function. Bats fly quite well using their modified hands as opposed to birds who fly using their modified arms. Any idea how many different designs there are for eyes? It is more than one.

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And likewise the very large number of ERV’s shared between us and a chimp.

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And what about human chromosome #2?

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Depending on how you define “eye” (i.e. does only photoreception count), there are somewhere between about 15 and 50 different exact designs.

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To address the opening question, many of the big names folks definitely know that they are promoting untrue claims in certain cases, but it is very difficult to sort out what is deliberate deception and what involves varying degrees of delusion or gullibility.

But I Tim. 1 does not commend presuming to teach that which one neither knows nor understands. Upholding the command not to lie requires us to diligently test and seek the truth rather than uncritically pass along the things that sound like they support what I want to be true.

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Hi David!

Man, that’s a shame. I desperately wanted to give, say, the guys at AiG, the benefit of the doubt, but I fear that can’t be done. After looking into one of the biggest Creationist names out there, Dr. Andrew Snelling, I found that he had published papers both for Creationism and mainstream geology simultaneously! " This has all been a trick…you have been trolled."

Pax,
Charles

Tying in a previous thread, it can be spectacular to read the abstracts of the reliable publications cited by an article from such sources to see how many they blatantly misrepresented.

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Old guy here…

For forty years I have pondered the creation issue.

When recursing through the “why” of the insistence for YEC, all threads seem to come down to the doctrines of original sin and universal depravity. Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 link all mankind’s sin and death to Adam’s sin - and thus the need for Christ’s atonement. In the minds of the YEC camp, denying the reality Genesis 3 (and by extension 1 & 2) wreaks havoc on foundational Christian theology.

For me, even ignoring the evolution and earth age controversies, a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation account is erroneous prima facia. The literal interpretation describes a geocentric universe where an implicitly flat earth is covered by a solid dome or vault. Above that vault is a body of water, and embedded in that vault - not above or below, but IN - are the sun, moon, and stars, thus below the upper body of water. That is what the literal interpretation says.

At the same time, every year that goes by, results in scientific discovery that life is even more complex and sophisticated than we previously thought. How many billions of years would it now take to evolve such complexity from scratch?

So what I am left with is unknowns, but an abiding faith that God exists and Jesus is my savior. Along the way I have come to new understanding of the Genesis creation account, Romans 5, and 1 Corinthians 15.

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