Kennie's Ark Park about to Open, Sorry Kentucky! I feel your pain!

Yes, I haven't talked about it much, mainly because there isn't much to say.  Little kennie ham, with the help of a newly elected Republican Kentucky Governor, have once again made fools of the people of Kentucky and is opening an exhibit to showcase his narrow theological views and potentially leaving the people of Kentucky to pay for it . . . especially if his highly suspect attendance projections come in more like the reality of his other abortion, the Creation 'Museum'.  And all the time, he can discriminate against many of Kentucky's citizens as potential employees, while the taxpayers get to help pay for the privilege!

Cincinnati.com ran this "Who pays for the new ark? Taxpayers help" and even the Boston Globe ran "Kentucky’s ark defies science but evokes a version of Christianity" it probably will piss little kennie off.  But then when anyone says absolutely ANYTHING he disagrees with, tends to piss him off.

I spoke too soon, he has already commented on the Cincinnati.com's article with "A Cincinnati Enquirer Ark Hit Piece".  I'm not going to quote it, you probably already know what it says, more and more defensiveness and unsupported comments about his motivations, as if the money means nothing to him.  He calls most of the press coverage and 'positive and balanced' and yet I have Google Alerts on both 'Ark Encounters' and 'Answers in Genesis' and something like 90% of the articles I have seen was more neutral and simply announcing it was coming and some of the details already known and well publicized by kennie and his Hamian publicity machine.  Although, maybe innocuous reporting is something kennie would consider positive?  Who knows!

Will I visit the Ark Park?  No!  I've already been to his other 'Monument to Scientific Ignorance', aka the Creation Pseudo-Museum, and have no intention of lining kennie's pockets with any more of my money.  If I want to go zip-lining, there are a great many other places for me to go, there are also many real museums within easy driving distance, especially the Cincinnati Museum Center, with its Children's Museum, History Museum, Museum of Natural History and Science, to name a few of the attractions there.  Indianapolis and Columbus also have some great museums, many of which I have visited at least once in the 20+ years I have lived here.  Wandering around a wooden structure based on a fairy tale that not only claims that an imaginary world-wide flood, but that humans and dinosaurs lived together -- which is contrary to every piece of paleontologist evidence -- is not for me.  I doubt I could contain my laughter with a second trip into kennie's delusions.

I am looking forward to one thing.  In 2010 the Sydney Morning Herald reported on the 'Worlds Most Craptastic Tourist Attractions'.  Kennie's so-called-museum made the cut.  I am looking forward to them running a new article and am curious where the ark park will fall on the list and wonder what word they will use this time to describe these 'attractions', I really did love 'Craptastic', didn't you?

Is Creationism Harmful to Children

I have said on a couple of occasions that I don't consider Creationism Child Abuse, an example is my post "Is Creationism a form of Child Abuse?"  I still stand by that, but an article about the Ark Park certainly made me think. Recently the Boston Globe paid a visit to little kennie ham's ark ministry, the article is "Noah’s Ark, dinosaurs, and a theme park".  It's loaded with the usual contrasts between what kennie and his 'Hamians' say and what the real world says.  I did enjoy a couple of small points, for example:

". . . the Ark Encounter will host between 1.4 million and 2.2 million visitors in its first year . . ." 

Why I find this enjoyable is simple.  Since the announcement of the ark park the visitor estimate has been bounced all over the place.  Now, logically, and this was true for kennie's Creation 'Museum', the first few years usually the highest attendance.  After that it tends to slowly, or in some cases not so slowly, reduce down.  In fact in recent years the Creation 'Museum' is said to be in financial difficulties due to low attendance. (Kentucky’s ‘Creation Museum’ in Financial Trouble Due to Declining Attendance (VIDEO)).  So since the most recent estimates from kennie say about 1.2 million annually, other estimates, from people without a vested interest in the ark park (Hunden Strategic Partners in Chicago), said:

"estimated in the first year the park would receive roughly 325,000, with a peak attendance in the third year around 425,000, declining to 275,000 after that." (Source)

Which is roughly in the neighborhood of the Creation 'Museum' which took one month shy of three years to reach 1 million visitors.  I wish I knew what kennie's original estimates for his 'museum' were, I wonder if those estimates were as inflated as his ones for the ark ministry seem to be.  Another interesting point is:

"Science educators likely see that low and steadily decreasing number [of Creationists who follow little kennie's line] as good news. Ham isn’t so happy with this trend, which he blames on “evolutionary indoctrination through the public education system, secular museums, and much of the media.”
Ham sees AiG’s role as stopping the downward spiral. He wants to show people that all of the seeming impossibilities of Scripture can be scientifically reconciled with a little creativity." 

"With a little creativity" is such a fascinating phrase.  On the one hand you have what kennie and his followers calls the ultimate authority, and yet he needs to use creativity to get people to accept his version.  Do those two seem diametrically opposed to you?  They do so to me.  Which is why I do not consider kennie to be a Biblical Literalist, but a Biblical Revisionist.  He cherry pics from the Bible stories he likes and then he embellishes them to the point of unrecognizability.  For example, here is a photo from my visit to the Creation 'Museum':

Little kennie, in a effort to justify his position that humans and dinosaurs co-existed had to explain what dinosaurs ate.  So this little gem, they were all vegetarians.  Of course there is no evidence to support any of this, but kennie can't leave a question unanswered.  A couple other favorites is his rationalization of where Cain's wife came from and how animals were geographically dispersed after the ark landed.  Here is the explanation why Cain was able to marry his sister:

 All the Bible says about Cain's wife is a mention of the Land of Nod, east of Eden.  Little kennie took it from there and concocted this explanation.  As for biological geodiversity, that is how similar organisms exist in many part of the world, he dreamed up log rafts:

Doesn't he have a great imagination?  See why I refer to him as a Biblical Revisionist more than a Literalist?  He's not interested in what the Bible says, he's much more interested in what he claims it says.

OK, back to the Globe article.  This is the part that had me thinking about whether or not Creationism is harmful to kids:

"But is creationism is harmful to children? Compared to the risk of anti-vaccination pseudoscience in causing physical harm, the answer is no. More worrisome is the harm to children’s intellectual growth. Everyone at AiG was incredibly kind and seemed well-meaning, and the same goes for many creationists — but even people with the best intentions can end up, well, harming children who are paying attention.
Pete Enns, biblical scholar and author of “The Evolution of Adam,” sees creationism as harmful because it sets children up either to experience a crisis of faith or to become unflinchingly rigid about their own faith and closed off to their own human development. Both are tragic, he says."

There are more ways to harm children than what is considered abuse.  I had discussed how Creationism is a poor basis for many careers.  I mean aside from places like little kennie's Answers in Genesis (AiG) or the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), how many places are willing to hire an astrophysicist who insists the speed of light is a variable so we really have no way of knowing how far something is from Earth.  The article mentioned that little kennie likes to bring up the fact he has hired some people who hold PhD's, but in reality, how much actual scientific knowledge have those PhD's managed to pass on?  Has anyone seen a single actual scientific paper referenced from places like AiG and ICR!  As the writer said:

"People at my evangelical church used to talk the same way [as kennie and his pet PhD's] about celebrities who became born again — as if people of such caliber somehow legitimized everything we believed."

I know there will always be some who get their education and then turn on the subject to support their religious beliefs, but they will never be in the majority or even mainstream within those fields. The fact they have a degree in no way legitimizes their belief set.

What I hadn't considered was the inevitable reaction once they start learning the reality of the world around them.  They might have some sort of crisis in faith, or they might become so rigid they become a caricature of a theist, like little kennie.  I'm not sure I agree with the article that the crisis in faith is a tragedy for most folks.  I think whether or not it is a tragedy depends on the person more than anything else.  As we mature we discover many things that were told to us by authority figures that were later found to be untrue.  From childish things like the truth about Santa or even how your life will go.  Think about what you were told as a child about how your life was going to go?  Even as a teenager in HS or an adult in college.  How has that all worked out?

If you are like most people, things haven't followed any pre-explained path.  I never expected to serve 20 years in the AF, get into IT, or end up living in Ohio.  What I am trying to say is that you LIVE your life, you deal with things as they change, no matter what they are.  What was it John Lennon said, "Life is what happens while you are making other plans."  If a 'crisis' in your faith cripples you, then my only suggestion is don't subject any other child to the beliefs that hurt you!  But in all honesty, you have to get over it eventually.  I'm not sure you can consider discovering the faith you were raised in wasn't what you were taught it was as a reason for PTSD, but even that degree of a problem can be overcome.

As for the other reaction, the significant rigidity that can result.  I can't consider them tragic figures.  But I do feel a level of pity for the people they come into contact with or, God forbid :-), any children they might become responsible for.  But they do have to freedom to shut down the functioning parts of their brain.  My only objection is that they do not have the right to force me to belief as they do.  Which is why I object to pretty much everything little kennie does.  As I have said before, his idea of religious freedom is to let him believe as he wishes and let him force everyone else to believe as he does as well.  That's not religious freedom, that's more a form of religious tyranny. 

You really should consider how long various religions have had control over people's lives and how all that turned out.  Look at history . . . not the history kennie and any of his pet 'creation historians' try and sell you in the Creation 'Museum' Gift Shop, but actual history.  Religious tyranny is not some panacea that will solve all the world's problems! 

So there we have it, yes, creationism can be harmful to both adults and children, but how harmful is really up to the individual.  Without a doubt it damages potential career paths, at least until the individual overcomes their belief system, like the many theists who made incredible scientific advances.  Theists are capable of great things, but they simply have further to go because of that extra hurdle they have to overcome.  Little kennie sees that hurdle as an absolute limit, luckily most folks don't accept that.

Want to make a Paleontologist laugh and cry? Send them to Ken Ham's Folly!

Caught the post "Paleontologists brought to tears, laughter by Creation Museum".  I'm not planning on saying much, I had my own taste of the Creation 'Museum' back on 2009 and posted here,  here, here, and here where it was discussed as one of the most 'craptastic' tourist attractions in the US. But here are a few of my favorite quotes from this article:

"It's sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn't it?" said Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology and evolution at University of California, Berkeley"

"I think it's very bad science and even worse theology -- and the theology is far more offensive to me," said [Lisa] Park, a professor of paleontology who is an elder in the Presbyterian Church."

"This bothers me as a scientist and as a Christian, because it's just as much a distortion and misrepresentation of Christianity as it is of science," said Daryl Domning, professor of anatomy at Howard University

 Please enjoy it!

Is Creationism a form of Child Abuse?

By itself that's too vague a question to seriously address, but something like that never stops davey klinghoffer, one of the mouthpieces for the Discovery Institute.  You can read his post, but I'm not sure you really need to.  ('Lawrence Krauss, Influential Physicist and Atheist, on "Creationism" as "Child Abuse')  Now before getting into it, I do have a question that klingy will never answer.  Why is he, in his role as DI cheerleader, addressing an question involving Creationism?

Does that make you think?  I mean after years of trying to distance themselves from Creationism, they can't seem to shake that particular connection.  I'm glad they keep going back to their roots, because it makes their attempts at disassociation transparent.  No one ever bought that Intelligent Design wasn't, and isn't, Creationism.  So does this, and other posts, reveal a change in policy of the DI?  I doubt it, but I do so enjoy reminding them about this dichotomy.

OK, back to the central issue.  Is Creationism a form of Child Abuse?  While Lawrence Krauss toned it down by calling it a mild form of abuse, I'm having trouble comparing Creationism to any other form of recognized child abuse, mild or not.  I don't really think I am in agreement with klingy all that much.  His defense of Creationism isn't based on innate honesty about child abuse, his is more a knee-jerk reaction to anything that smacks of criticism of his religious beliefs.  I can't reconcile Creationism with abuse.  I do have issues with some of the other things klingy said, and we will get to them shortly.  But first I want to discuss the impact of Creationism when taught to children.

What it does do is fail to adequately prepare children for higher education and. in my opinion, the real world.  Creationism, particularly the Evangelical version, is not a good basis for a science education, which ties into so many potential careers.  Look at the kids taught Creationism by John Freshwater in Mt Vernon OH.  In subsequent classes one of the constant issues was teachers having to re-teach that part of the curriculum because of Freshwater.  Is that fair to those children?  Teachers have a responsibility and when you teach a non-scientific subject as if it was science, you are doing a disservice to those students.  To me it would be the same as teaching Astrology or Alchemy.

Another example, a few years ago the University of California won a lawsuit brought about by a group of Christian schools and several specific students.  The gist was those schools used textbooks that declared the Bible infallible and rejected evolution.  The ruling didn't call out the fact they taught Creationism, but the fact that they failed to teach a number important scientific topics.  While the plaintiffs claimed religious persecution, the focus was on what they failed to do.

I recall walking through the Creation Museum a few years back and listening to parents reading the various placards and 'explaining' the exhibits to their kids.  What I felt more than anything was pity for when those kids start hearing actual science. Improperly preparing our children is unfair, but I can't quantify it as abuse. 

Now, back to klingy's comments.  Here is one of the things he said that cracked me up:

"In the controversy over academic freedom -- that is, whether laws should permit public school teachers to share relevant mainstream science with students even if it's critical of Darwinism -- it is precisely the folks wrongly dismissed as "creationists" who would maximize the flow of scientific information, while Darwin defenders like Krauss withhold knowledge from young people."

Davey, you are wrong!  Current laws permit, and encourage, teachers to share mainstream science with students.  The thing klingy can't seem to remember is that Creationism, and it's little brother Intelligent Design, are not mainstream science, they aren't even science.  They are religious propositions.

Davey's claim that Creationism is simply something that is 'critical of Darwinism' is nothing more than a smokescreen.  Since his religion is unacceptable in science class, claiming that is simply being withheld because it's critical to current science is a tactic, a dodge.  The reason Creationism, in all it's forms, doesn't belong in science class is because it's not science.  There is no evidence supporting any of it.  There have been scientific theories that raised issues with Evolution that have been taught in science class.  But these were legitimate scientific theories, not religious ideas dressed in an ill-fitting lab coat.

OK, one final note.  I've said it before and I do believe it.  There are quite a few age-restricted activities like driving, voting, joining the military . . . to name a few.  I firmly believe children should not be exposed to religion until they are old enough to understand it.  I know that won't be a popular concept among theists, but it's the only one that makes sense to me.

Like anything else, you can find extreme examples, like someone refusing medical care to a child because of their own personal religious beliefs.  But the abuse is in the action, regardless of the rationale.  But even saying that, I can't call Creationism/ID 'child abuse'.  Unscientific, yes, Unsupported by evidence, certainly, but not child abuse.