Zif, you know I love you, but you gotta stop copying content from other blogs and websites and putting it on the Sift without credit.

Your description is almost identical to this blog post i found on the front page of Reddit.com
http://friendlyatheist.com/2008/03/23/how-to-ruin-a-trip-to-the-museum/

I found it via Digg and then took the description from the Friendly Atheist site which I noted in the description. I accidentally didn't put the "(From the Friendly Atheist)" at the bottom of the description though and I didn't link back to the site so I apologize for that and have corrected it.

I always try to credit the source when I get something.

yeah, no worries Zif, sorry if that came out with a bad tone, I probably only noticed it because I got caught making the same rookie mistake after pasting a photo onto my blog.
http://www.internetresearchleague.com/?p=32

No worries Fedquip, it was my fault for not proof-reading close enough and not linking back like I should have.

*liesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

This is sad.

Adding video to channels (Lies) - requested by JAPR.

Aarrrgggghh, I want to kill those two in a mighty suicide conflagration! .. but, I am already in my pajamas.

I noticed your choice in channels. Shouldn't those two be merged?

Intellectual terrorists...

At least they're screwing the kids up enough we can easily spot them in a crowd.

I would LOVE to be there during one of those tours. I would embarrass them so badly.

hooray for brainw.. err... homeschooling!

Science can and must change as better evidence presents itself. That's why science is a better tool for fact finding: it utilizes observable, measurable evidence, the exact opposite of the definition of faith.

Religion only changes when...wait for it...science makes a fact ubiquitous, such as the Earth revolving around the sun. Did you know that the Vatican never officially conceded that the Earth is not stationary until 1992, when Pope John Paul II "expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

What's happening now is religion is making an attempt to change science using only religious data, however ill-equipped it may be to alter a field of study in which observable, measurable evidence is its mainstay. Faith is a poor surrogate for science. Science, on the other hand, was never interested in replacing faith, rather to establish fact. Science could give a toss about religion. But religion seems awfully concerned about science. Interesting.

"It's a great fairytale but not great science" Funny you would say that

To me that's almost a form of child abuse.

To me, that's definitely a form of child abuse.

This shit makes me want to cromit (that's cry vomiting for the uninitiated). The greatest nation in the history of the planet, eh? Ok, back to poking out my eyeballs with my silver cross.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! These people make me so damn angry.

They absolutely ARE abusing those children, using completely nonsensical 'logic' to 'prove' their way of thinking. The things that they spout are such garbage:

* To ignore radioactive decay is a case of 'ooh, we don't want to face that actual proof of age of things'. And to just LIE to the kids that they only know the layer's age by the fossil, and the fossil by the layer... ARGH, stop LYING to the kids. How can they not be faced with the EVIDENCE and in good faith (he he) continue to preach what anyone of a modicum of intelligence can see is untrue.

* A huge animal, like the T-Rex, existing on fruit... COME ON!

* To dismiss displays as 'artwork, not science'. You know, unlike the bible, which is full of SCIENCE, and not at all a work of fiction and art.

* That HORRENDOUS crap they try and pull of saying that Evolution is faith just like their Creationism is faith is just plain wrong. Evolution is taking EVIDENCE and OBSERVATIONS and coming to the CONCLUSION that evolution works, Creationism is taking the words of ONE BOOK and treating it as fact. COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

* "How do you know?": Um, well because they show the reasons, the evidence, the facts. The question has to be asked them has to be "How do YOU know?"

* "Why are human and dinosaur remains not found in the same sedimentary layer?" I love his response to this... HE CAN'T! HE CAN'T EXPLAIN it because his ridiculous world view doesn't support it, whereas evolution DOES.


And then to back up ANYTHING they say?

* The bible says it.

So, while scientists have OBSERVED, MEASURED, PROVED many times over what we teach and show in museums, they have ONLY the bible and the completely misguided notion that it was EVER supposed to be taken LITERALLY.

(I would love for those who wrote it to come back to life today and look incredulously at people like this and say "You... you mean you believe that there really was a Noah? You believe it was REAL? Oh my... my that's hilarious... hey Jobe... Jobe, come here, you have to hear this!")

I'm always amazed how religous people dont know the difference between god and jesus

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARTRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHH very sad ...but if there whernt any horribly ignorant evil people ...i wouldnt seem so cool

Wait, did he just say that Jesus designed everything? I thought that was God . . . . .

Depending on your specific brand of Christianity, Jesus and God may be one and the same.

what a load of rubbish these people are spewing.

LOL. Nuff said. There kids, they don't care what you tell em.

"we believe that Jesus was our designer and our creator of everything that was ever made."

Wow, the BC Tour Guides speak like 3rd graders. I was expecting him to say this next: "...in the whole wide world!"

>> ^K0MMIE:
I would LOVE to be there during one of those tours. I would embarrass them so badly.


You embarrass all of us badly.

Creationists at Bob Jones University have found the "Evolution Gene," the set of amino acids which lead to erroneous belief in evolution, as opposed to the creation of the earth and everything in it, by The Lord Jesus Christ, Our Savior.
Evolutionists defend evolution as a lifestyle choice, not a product of science.

The "dating of fossils." - While I found the fact that they ignored the Carbon-14 dating to be deeply entertaining, I stopped and said, "Did that guy just ridicule circular reasoning? I can't recall Christians ever using circular reasoning . . ."

*Mindrot

Oh and shiiteloads of *irony.

I love it! Who says that America isn't doing enough to help developing nations. This isn't the abuse of children, this is trying to level the playing field with the kids that have NO schools.

I want to puke.

"they are, what's called, 'young earth creationists'"

They are, what's called, mentally retarded

BC does not mean Biblically Correct. It means British Columbia. Everyone knows the best pot is here in B.C. and that's definitely what these boobs are smokin'.

I can't wait until indoctrination is made a crime, and people like those tour guides and all the ignorant parents in the video are locked up in little cells to rot.

My question is why can't the museum throw the shit head tour guides out. If I took and atheist group to a creationist museum and rambled on about how ignorant the jesus freaks were I'd get arrested.

My question is why can't the museum throw the shit head tour guides out.

Because you just shouldn't. Your whole post is about intolerance. Just because we disagree with what they are saying doesn't mean they don't have a right to go through the museum and discuss their warped views with people. It's a free country.

Start moving down the road of throwing them out of the museum because you don't like what they say, and what next?

If the reverse happens in the creationist museum then that just goes to show how seriously fearful they really are of the truth.

You shouldn't silence people like this with force, just reasonable debate.

^ and if that fails, forced evolution by means of radioactive induced cellular degeneration. I kid, I kid!

I hate to point out that pretty much every post here except for spoco2's is both angry and hostile. Don't you still have a right in America (I'm assuming most of you are Americans) to teach your children what you believe?

>> ^Morganth:
I hate to point out that pretty much every post here except for spoco2's is both angry and hostile. Don't you still have a right in America (I'm assuming most of you are Americans) to teach your children what you believe?


I think what really irks people though is that aside from things like 'belief' whereby you are merely passing on a world view, even though it can be different to yours (belief in a god, capitalism is king, socialism is the root of all evil etc.), this is taking that a step further.

They completely disregard the hundreds of years of empirical measurement, scientific process, and just plain reasoning and say "Nope, some book says this, we're going to ASSUME it's meant to be taken 100% literally, and say all that hard work and evidence are lies".

And rather than just believing that themselves, they FORCE those LIES on small children, crushing their powers of critical thought.

It's really painful to watch, painful to see them in a place of such knowledge and yet see them (literally) turn their back on science.

I sympathize with those who get angry, I really do, because the more of these people there are, the more kids that are brought up this way, the worse the world will be as people are taught to blindly accept things and not critically observe and question.

>> ^mizaru:
hooray for brainw.. err... homeschooling!


OH you did NOT say that! Don't get me started. I homeschool my children and I do not brainwash them not to think and only accept what they are told.

I am so tired of these Fundie retards making homeschooling as a lifestyle look like ignorant paranoid smothering.

The only folks that get press are nuts like this. There are THOUSANDS of parents homeschooling their children that teach a secular education.

This video makes me so freaking angry.

Well, the video doesn't, those dickheads giving the tour does.

from -5:24 to -5:16 is what set me off. I may be a nerd, but I was excited for my first trip to the Museum to see dinosaur fossils, and hearing those kids with that unenthusiastic "No.." coupled by the kid sitting there actually looking up at the exhibit getting his head filled with bullshit.. I mean, if I was told that everything I'd read about or learned about dinosaurs was fake, and that it's all wrong because the bible says so, I wouldn't be the dreamer I am today...Which may explain why i'm currently unemployed..

But It's just wrong to fill a childs head with false information, when the proof is sitting three feet to your right, mounted on a wall.

After that tour you have mentally taken 3 steps back. Let's hope those fragile minds start thinking for themself!

BRAINWASHING!

It kind of feels like we could go in several directions with this.

On the one hand the two men are clearly making things up as they go along, not bothering to talk with any person of science. Therefore, they never learn how the science works that produced the exhibits in the museum, and as such it all seems unfathomable to them. Also, it might be the reason leading them to misread the bible as a factual document of accurate historical events. Because after all, if the scientific explanation seems strange and farfetched, be it because of a severe lack of understanding about how science works or because of being brought up in a community that shuns the scientific method as inaccurate and downright false, wouldn't it be natural for people to instead look for answers in areas they perceive as more reliable (such as the bible in the case of these people)?

On the other hand, as I understand it a museum is a place of learning. If these people are oblivious to the real science behind the exhibits, they shouldn't be lynched for trying to correct what they see as wrong but instead be educated so that they too can understand why they are in error.
"They have no clue about how accurate it is" is what the curator said when he learns the two guides don't think carbon dating can show how old fossils are. And maybe it's their fault for not reading the plaque explaining the process, but in reality the hardest thing to do is to change a made-up mind. Regardless if it's accurate or not, if someone has made up their mind that they're right, you will need much more than a plaque to convince them.
Also (and this is just my personal experience), confrontationalism never works when trying to change someone's mind. If anything it only steels their resolve and unconsciously sets up an "us vs. them" situation, where anything and everything you say is treated not only with a healthy dose of skepticism, but with a huge chunk of mistrust aswell. This is where alot of teachers go wrong, and it could very well be why these two adult men try and teach children ignorance (I'm NOT saying that the bible is ignorance, I'm saying that teaching children that the earth is 6000 years old is spreading ignorance).

Sorry to bitch but fossils are not dated by carbon dating. Carbon dating only dates back accurately to 60,000 years or so. Fossils are dated using isotopes with much longer half-lives. Like K-Ar dating.

This is infuriating!

But don't worry there is something much stronger than religion that will set those kids on the right path: TV!

>> ^spoco2:
My question is why can't the museum throw the shit head tour guides out.
Because you just shouldn't. Your whole post is about intolerance. Just because we disagree with what they are saying doesn't mean they don't have a right to go through the museum and discuss their warped views with people. It's a free country.
Start moving down the road of throwing them out of the museum because you don't like what they say, and what next?
If the reverse happens in the creationist museum then that just goes to show how seriously fearful they really are of the truth.
You shouldn't silence people like this with force, just reasonable debate.


I just had a little fantasy of a group of science students taking a field trip to a church... The teacher points to paintings and talks about historical inaccuracy... Talks about the books being manipulated and translated multiple times... And finishes it off with getting the kids to all agree how crazy religion is and mocks the people on their own turf.

Imagine the crazyness that would follow! There's a good reason science is considered a religion. There's also a good reason why religion shouldn't be discussed with people outside it.

Quit your whining. It is so obvious they are right. Just get a grip and accept it.

>> ^DeviusQC:
This is infuriating!
But don't worry there is something much stronger than religion that will set those kids on the right path: TV!


I heard creationists don't have TVs, or as they call them, devil-boxes.

the first couple minutes made me feel so sick that I couldn't continue.

These children will be excellent workers in my factory and office buildings. They will keep their damn mouths shut and do the work. Whatever I tell them to do. God bless them!

*eia

hahaha

Adding video to channels (Eia) - requested by oohahh.

UGH.
Let me preface this by saying I am Christian. That is probably already known to most of you.

What pisses me off is when we (Christians) are all slumped into one group with morons like this.

I most certainly believe that the Earth is billions of years old. You'd really have to be stupid to think otherwise. How can you so easily dismiss hard evidence and proof?
Another thing that pisses me off is saying that "evolution = origin of life"

No, it most certainly does not. It means that life has (GASP!) evolved. Creationism and evolution are not mutually exclusive. It is indeed possible to believe that life was created (though not only 6,000 years ago. Need proof? Look at McCain. If that's not evidence of an Earth older than 6,000 years I don't know what is.) and that it has since evolved. That doesn't necessarily mean that humans evolved from monkeys, but that some life has evolved.

Anywho, these people are idiots.

>> ^MarineGunrock:
That doesn't necessarily mean that humans evolved from monkeys, but that some life has evolved.

That humans evolved from "monkeys", or more specifically great apes (not the contemporary ones, but their and our ancestors) is in fact supported by just as much and good "hard evidence" (whatever that's supposed to mean) than the age of the earth/universe. Anyone who doubts one but not the other shows they do not understand how science gets its results and that they simply have been brainwashed to believe in science's contemporary understanding of our world (minus the "evolution from monkey" bit, probably since they were members of a monotheistic religion since their birth or baptize, whichever).

>> ^MarineGunrock:
Anywho, these people are idiots.

No, they're criminals. The line between brainwashing and education is very, very fine and they've crossed it by leaps and bounds. "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap [backwards] for humanity."

You're working on a separate level of evolution. Yours indicates that humans evolved from primates. The other simply says evolution exists.

This really bothers me. It's not just sad -- it's bold-faced lying to the children they're supposed to be educating (and apparently themselves as well). That's inexcusable.

My children will be home-schooled by my wife and I, for at least their first few years; we are both Christians. We plan to home school because neither of us had great experiences in the public education system, and we think we could do a better job. Our kids will be taught that evolution is scientific fact, not a religion, and that science is not an enemy to be feared or dismissed. I love science and the pursuit of truth, and I want to instill that into my kids.

P.S. For those who are genuinely against homeschooling, I suggest doing a modest amount of research on the subject.

I understand that this bothers everyone, but I hate media like this. I understand that everyone feels it breeds ignorance and you may be right in some ways. The problem I have though is that it's essentially attacking someone's religious beliefs and I feel that's wrong. I don't mind discussing Scientology because we don't talk about Xenu, we talk about abductions, etc. These people seem to be trying to defend their beliefs to their children and I think they have every right to do so. We can think they are as wrong as we want to, but an atheist would be just as animate to defend evolution to his children if they were brought up in a creationist society.

Don't worry, I'm not a crazy creationist infiltrating the ranks. I think STRONG Christians tend to be the nicest people I have met that have a difficult time fitting into society because they tend to have trouble separating church from state/business/community/whatever.

Actually, we do discuss Xenu. I sure make fun of Scientologists for their belief.

Why? Because the founder of their church admits to have created the whole thing.
No one can prove that someone created Christianity.

Xenu, on the other hand, just makes me laugh. The whole concept just SCREAMS 1950s sci-fi.

Found this quote today and I think it fits rather nicely:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/quote_of_the_week.php

This whole 'internets' thing is witchcraft and should be burnt.

>> ^shatterdrose:
Wait, did he just say that Jesus designed everything? I thought that was God . . . . .


Thank you.

And that whole bit about T-rex fasting and praying... WTF?? His arms are too small! He can't pray!

I am from Denver and I absolutely love this museum. When I was growing up it was one of my favorite places to go, and now whenever I'm back in town I make it a point to visit and stroll through "Prehistoric Journey" (what's featured with the dinosaurs) and the wildlife halls. Anyway, I thought this quote from Consilience written by Edward O. Wilson is appropriate:

"Perhaps God did create all organisms, including human beings, in finished form, in one stroke, and maybe it all happened several thousand years ago. But if that is true, He also salted the earth with false evidence in such endless and exquisite detail, and so thoroughly from pole to pole, as to make us conclude first that life evolved, and second that the process took billions of years. Surely Scripture tells us He would not do that. The Prime Mover of the Old and New Testaments is variously loving, magisterial, denying, thunderously angry, and mysterious, but never tricky."

I'd like to share an 8 year old's observation with you.

My son loves history. We started a year ago with ancient history. We use "The Story of the World" by Susan Wise Bauer.

There was chapter on Egyptian myths. It explained why ancient Egyptians told fables to children as a way of explaining why things work they way they do in the natural world. The example given was the fable of Isis' tears over Osiris drowning in the Nile and that was the reason the Nile floods every year.

Not long after we read that story, my son spent some time w/ a Christian grandparent. He asked me later about the Bible. So I told him the "Creation Story", "Adam and Eve" and "Noah and the Ark" story. After thinking about it a moment he said this to me:

"Oh I get it. This is another one of those make believe stories mommies told the kids to explain how things work."

Now if an 8 year old can have insight, then why can't these adults??

>> ^swampgirl:
Now if an 8 year old can have insight, then why can't these adults??


Great comment swampgirl!

someone should label this with "brainwashing" =S

>> ^swampgirl Now if an 8 year old can have insight, then why can't these adults??

Insight is a sign of intelligence, for which the people in this video can only ascribe to something greater than themselves. How dare the Ape question that which names itself I AM THAT I AM

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Monday, March 24th, 2008 10:52am PDT - promote requested by Fletch.