I’m just going to pluck out a few of the funniest parts of an article about Florida’s latest creationist “museum”. It and the newer, bigger, even less contaminated by science museum outside Cincinnati have gotten a bunch of blog post activity, but the Ohio one just has a really lame website, and Noah’s Park has an article full o’laughs.

The author first describes it as

Noah’s Park, a Gospel fossil park emulating the blockbuster movie, “Jurassic Park,” is gearing up at the Middle Florida Baptist Assembly grounds . . .

Do you go to the museum, get locked in, then chased and killed by dinosaurs? That doesn’t sound like much of an enticement to go there, IMO. However, it would take care of two problems at once, because the people who would pay to get in might be better off. . .oh, no, I wouldn’t want anyone to be eaten up by dinosaurs, but locked away wouldn’t be all that bad.

The exhibits are provided by “self-taught creationist” Tom Baird. Reading his comments in the article, I’m guessing he’s taught himself grammar and vocabulary as well.

“To find a fossil, I’m finding, often times, especially if it’s a dinosaur fossil, a victim of God’s judgment,” Baird said. “And I may be the first one to ever see the remains since it was buried in the flood.”

“If you went to what they would call a normal museum they’d give you all their evolutionary dogma,” Baird said. “They don’t tell you that they’re giving you evolution and it’s not that I have … to say I’m a Bible-believing creationist; I just present the evidence.”

Noah’s Park is part of the 21st century answer to the world’s solutions, Baird said.

“The church has failed to see the importance of the history of the past,”

“I wanted to help the saints understand that the Word of God is reliable. In fact it is the only reliable historical document from the past and the most accurate because it is without the corruption of man…. Jesus saw the origins and the beginnings of all these things from where you’ve got to start if you’re going to form theories and try to understand what it’s all about.”

Taught himself science, too, I’d wager. And history.

If you’re anywhere near Lafayette County in Florida, run away. Very fast.

There are still questions about why Cho Sueng-Hui went on his rampage – he was clearly disturbed by something, having been recommended for counseling by a creative writing teacher who was concerned about the thoughts he was expressing in writing, and especially now that a written diatribe he wrote about what he was about to do has been found. That didn’t stop people like Ken Ham and Debbie Schlussel weighing in with their takes, one doing philosophical backflips and contortions to prove that it happened because we’re not all Christians, and one trying to cover her tracks after blatant assumptions that first the gunman was a Muslim, and then that he must have been an illegal immigrant. Well, if you go to the Reuters site (it pops up on my Yahoo homepage) A. Barton Hinkle from the Times-Dispatch urges us to keep faith in the loving kindness of the God that allows this to happen:

The puny human mind looks upward and begs for an answer that doesn’t come to the question, “Why?” If everything were explicable there would be no need for faith.

AND YET coincidence, it has been said, is God’s way of staying anonymous. By coincidence this past weekend was the occasion of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Where, one might ask, was God when the Nazi henchmen were gassing the Jews in Bergen-Belsen, in Treblinka, in Auschwitz? Some of those who answer that God was nowhere to be found end up like Itzhak Zuckerman, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, who said bitterly: “If you could lick my heart, it would poison you.”

Others have said that God was there there, in the gas chambers, cradling the dying. Evidence for the latter view comes from Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, where — as Devorah Ben-David, co-founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum, reminds us — liberators found a scrap of paper with a prayer on it:

“Lord, remember not only the men of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted upon us. Remember rather the fruits we have brought, thanks to this suffering: our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart that has grown out of this. And when they come to judgment, let all the fruits we have bourne be their forgiveness.”

Those most agonizingly seared by yesterday’s massacre at Virginia Tech may be, for now, inconsolable. Let us hope their hearts eventually heal, and that someday they find solace in the fruits of their suffering.

Uh, yeah. That is offensive on a number of levels. First of all, comparing this to the Holocaust – actually, comparing just about anything to that – is a diminution of a major historical event, as well as being completely off. This was not a genocide, not a war, not an effort to gain power by a man or his political party. At this point, we don’t even know the young man’s motivation, but I can guarantee you that even if a couple of his victims were picked out in particular, this was not in any way a systematic killing of an “inferior” group of people. The comparison of every person, group, or incident to Hitler or the Holocaust is becoming so common, it may happen someday that nobody knows what really happened, or why it was important. Second, to assume that god was somehow with these dead and dying students and will now begin to magically heal the people left behind is presumptuous, simplistic, and actually may go far in allowing this type of act to occur again and again.

By leaving it at the “god works in mysterious ways” level, nothing will change. Speculating why a loving god would let this happen overshadows the more important questions – why did THIS person snap, why did nobody see it coming, how did he get a gun so easily, how can people be notified of danger more quickly and effectively, and most importantly, what can we learn from this so that it never happens again? Let’s worry about the stuff that we can actually DO something about. Let’s worry about the “Whys” that will help us prevent this kind of act. Wondering about why one particular invisible, unperceivable being allowed a bad thing to happen when he’s supposed to be so good is futile. Pretending that he was comforting the dying even as he allowed them to die is self-delusional, and does nothing to “heal”. Telling people who are grieving that god killed their loved one because of someone else’s sin, or that god must have had a reason, or that god was there comforting them while they were dying, or that god will help the survivors heal is a bunch of meaningless platitudes. Some people, believing this way themselves, will think it’s OK, but for those who don’t think that life is all about rolling with god’s punches, it’s one more kick in the head on top of what they’ve already been hit with.

Investigators will eventually find the reasons for this shooting spree by studying evidence and tracing back paperwork and establishing facts. I can guarantee that not one thing they discover will point to god (or Muslims). It will show why a young man went to the extreme of killing and wounding so many people, and how he managed to get so far with it before it ended. If we’re smart, we won’t sit tight and pray that god doesn’t let it happen again, but take action and try to predict and prevent it before it does. I would wager that more than a few people touched by this incident will take more comfort from knowing that the information gathered and analyzed stopped another mass shooting from happening than any strangers’ prayers ever would.

Oh, boy. He didn’t go as far as endorsing Intelligent Design, but it sure did sound from his statement that he got all his information on evolutionary biology from Michael Behe. Now even the Catholic God gets to be “God of the Gaps”!

From the AP article:

In a new book, “Creation and Evolution,” published Wednesday in German, the pope praised progress gained by science, but cautioned that evolution raises philosophical questions science alone cannot answer.

“The question is not to either make a decision for a creationism that fundamentally excludes science, or for an evolutionary theory that covers over its own gaps and does not want to see the questions that reach beyond the methodological possibilities of natural science,” the pope said.

He stopped short of endorsing intelligent design, but said scientific and philosophical reason must work together in a way that does not exclude faith.

“I find it important to underline that the theory of evolution implies questions that must be assigned to philosophy and which themselves lead beyond the realms of science,” the pope was quoted as saying in the book, which records a meeting with fellow theologians the pope has known for years.

Um, Mr. Pope, sir, science doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about answering philosophical questions. Science is about evidence and facts and verification and progress. Philosophy is. . .well, philosophy. Once philosophy starts doing controlled-environment testing, double-blind studies, and using control groups and placebo groups, it’s not philosophy anymore. It’s science. Part of the appeal of philosophy is that it is speculation that can’t necessarily be proven. It can lead to deep thinking, lively arguments, and sometimes fisticuffs, but it can’t provide results or replicable proof.

Up until about 150 years ago, the biggest challenge to biblical philosophers came from other philosophers. The philosophers from other schools of religious and non-religious thought were not much of a threat, in that their proof was just as valid as biblical proof and therefore easily dismissed as misguided and/or uninformed. Evolution, however, being a science rather than a philosophy, comes with tens of thousands of fossils, 300-plus peer-reviewed papers a day, each backed with solid research and experimentation, DNA, gene mapping, medical research, new discoveries that start with evolution-based models. . .proof, essentially. (Well, proof for us laypeople. Scientists prefer “evidence” because “proof” means you’re finished. Scientists don’t like being finished.)

What the pope, along with rabid biblical creationists around the world (but mostly in America, unfortunately) have a problem with is that evolution (and all the supporting science they ignore) contradict the biblical creation myth, and they unfortunately then equate evolution with creation, which then leads to further misunderstanding of evolution. They also forget that evolution and its supporting science also contradict pretty much every other creation myth in the world, which is why their request for science to be more “open” to biblical ideas is unreasonable. If scientists had to consider coordinating their research with philosophy, we’d never get anything done. To be fair, before embarking on any testing, they’d have to be sure that it didn’t challenge not only the bible (in all its permutations) but the Hindu Vedas, the numerous American Indian beliefs still practiced today, the Norse eddas, and almost a thousand other extant philosophies.

Essentially, what the biblical creationists are asking for is special treatment by science, which, if you’re not a biblical creationist, is patently ridiculous. Inclusion of one philosophy in science is just as ridiculous as inclusion of all of them, and we’ve seen already what has happened when a philosophy ties everyone’s hands in the form of abortion laws, insurance coverage of treatments and medications specific to women, stem cell research, and funding for medical research of certain preventable diseases. We’ve also seen that very often, research in one area produces astonishing results that apply to far more than the subject being researched, or new treatments and technology that help with something entirely different, so we know that the restriction on testing and research based on one philosophy’s moral system impedes far more advances than in just that one issue.

It’s not the responsibility of science to avoid challenging philosophy of any kind. It’s not in the interest of science to speculate on something that can’t be verified. Science doesn’t care if its evidence proves or disproves biblical creation, reincarnation, panspermia, or the timecube. Well, maybe the timecube. Science is about advancement of knowledge, finding answers that can be verified and repeated, creating new techniques and understanding that can offer evidence and open even more areas of knowledge and understanding. If it proves something you believe already, then good for you. If it disproves it, then all the whining in the world isn’t going to change that.

And that is what Pope Benedict is doing – whining because science disproves something he believes. You know, he and every other literalist can go on believing what they want, and it’s no skin off anyone’s nose. It’s the insistence that everyone else make nice and go along with them, including scientists and educators, that’s the problem. It wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t so many people around the world who actually believe that the pope is the voice of god. I think American Catholics will be more likely to take this with a grain of salt, but it still will go a long way, worldwide, towards justifying ignorance.