From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phillip M. Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: I visited the ICR in person
Reply-To: hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: DESY ZEUS Central Data Acquisition
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 01:17:13 GMT

In article <37430@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>, slinke@sdcc3.ucsd.edu (Steven Linke)
writes:

|>Creationist Religions
|>---------------------
|>The plaque states that there are only three "real" creationist
|>religions:
|>  1. Orthodox Judaism
|>  2. Orthodox Islam
|>  3. Biblical Christianity
|>It adds: "`Liberal' branches accept `theistic evolution.'"

Plus Zorastatharianism, bet they don't even beleive that the religion existed!

What by the way is "biblical Christianity" ? Is this a separate religion
from other types of Christianity or do they assert that a belief in the
bible is necessary to be a Christian?

The problem with this sort of view is that it requires all sorts of
notions about the nature of time and history which I don't accept. I
view the literal works of the Bible as alegorical references to truths
that exist independently of the Universe. Unless you admit something of
the sort no religion can make sense since it would constrain God to a
literal, knowable truth leaving no room for mystery. Without mystery
there is no free will, merely a mechanistic progression of the heavens.


|>Evolutionary Religions
|>----------------------
|>Examples listed: "Atheism, Humanism, New Age-ism, Occultism,
|>Liberalism, Marxism, Fascism."  [The fact that these are
|>"evolutionary religions" is yet another repeated theme of the
|>museum.]

What about Hindus, Budists and Toaists?

Note that none of the "Evolutionary religions" happens to be a religion.
Also Liberalism happens to have been shapped in the main by Christian
values and in worldwide terms the vast majority of Christians hold
"liberal" views. It is only the distorted political language of the US
where it to use a political philosophy as a dirty word suffices to damn
it.

The cultural imperialism here (Ie every culture except that of the good
ol' USA is damned by God) isn't a side order, it's the whole dish.

|>Creation of Functional Maturity
|>-------------------------------
|>This plaque described how fruit trees were created mature and
|>able to produce fruit (so they presumably already contained
|>rings), and how Adam was created as a full-grown man.  It
|>concludes that, "...If one denies the true revealed history of
|>the world, and attempts to date the object or the world, this
|>functional maturity could be mistaken for age."

More exhibition of the problems of creation "science" than anything else.

|>Another display reads: "The universal Second Law is the
|>scientific reflection of God's curse on His created world because
|>of sin.  There is no known exception.  All processes (whether
|>operating on open or closed systems) tend to go in the direction
|>of increasing entropy (or `disorder').  This tendency can be
|>reversed only by the application of outside, specially
|>programmed, energy or information.  This tendency directly
|>precludes any natural evolution toward higher order.

"tendency" turned into dogma. Theromdynamics is a mathematical theory,
why don't they produce the maths to support their claim? The argument so
far goes, there are more cars produced in the USA than India, therfore
no Indian produced cars exist.

|>The Rosetta Stone
|>-----------------
|>A mock-up of the Rosetta Stone was also in the room.  The plaque
|>next to it read: "Rosetta stone from near Rashid (Rosetta), Delta
|>Egypt; 196 B.C....This inscribed stone slab was discovered in
|>1799 by..."  Nowhere did the plaque indicate that this wasn't the
|>ACTUAL stone.  In fact, from the language it seemed that I was
|>standing before the real thing.  The museum had become quite
|>busy, and as I wrote the above quote some people walked by and
|>marveled that the ICR museum had this artifact.  I was amused,
|>but broke their hearts when I tapped on the hollow cardboard
|>"stone" and indicated that it was just a photograph.
 
Nope we have the original in the British Museum and the creationists
ain't going to get their hands on it! Rosseta Stone mock ups are quite
common, the Gutenberg museum in Maintz has quite a nice one in real
marble, cardboard is the tacky end of the spectrum. Its a bloody great
boulder actualy rather than a nice neat tablet you could stick under
your arm and read on the bus.


|>"Evolutionism--that is, the denial of a transcendent personal God
|>as Creator of all things--can be traced back to ancient Sumeria,
|>which probably means to Nimrod...This system of pantheism ("all-
|>god") became equivalent to polytheism ("many gods"), involving
|>astrology, spiritism, and idolatry.  Atheistic evolution soon
|>followed, and dominates much of American academia today..."

When refering to other religions the ignorance of the creationist
viewpoint is most clearly expressed. The "Idolatory" of many
pre-monatheistic religions is in fact almost indistinguishable from the
use of shrines in catholacism. The excuse there is that the figure is
not an idol but a representation used as an aid to meditation, to be
treated with reverence but... here the excuses come out.

Note how a scientific theory is now transformed into an "ism". This is a
familiar tactic used by the likes of Hitler, Mcarthy etc, that guy is an
X-ist, he is bad therfore all X-ists are bad. More of this sort of thing
appears later on.


|>Friedrich Nietzche: "He was strongly influenced by Darwin's
|>theory, especially its racist implications."
|> 
|>Karl Marx: "...he wanted to dedicate his book DAS KAPITAL to
|>Charles Darwin, who had given him what he thought was the
|>scientific foundation for Communism."
 
There is in fact quite a bit of truth in this part. Nietzche did in fact
advance a moral theory based on evolution, Marx used evolution as part
of his theory that predicted the overthrow of capitalism by revolution,
he was inaccurate in his prediction (he predicted that Russia would not
revolt and Europe would) but he is a damn sight better on this score
than the creationists who make no predicitons. In fact Marx can be
forgiven since his prediction changed the system it concerned, because
people realised that the alternative to social reform was a bloody
revolution reform took place.

|>At this point, one of the museum patrons commented on the picture
|>of Karl Marx, "Evolutionism is practically synonymous with
|>Communism."  To which his wife responded, "This museum is a good
|>place to send school children to get good information."

Yes and when the kids find out that they were lied to about evolution
they will realise how they were lied to about everything else and become
little commisars.


Phill Hallam-Baker
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,talk.origins