Saturday, August 11, 2007 . 8/11/2007

This article is already quite a few months old, but I thought I'd post about it anyway.

This creationist "museum" is but one of the many ways that religion has gone too far. In this day and age, it is absolutely pathetic that such a view still even exists. We have (real) science, evidence, knowledge of at least some of the Bible's origins, and yet some still remain willfully ignorant.

Grand Canyon park guides will tell you that the canyon took more than a million years to form and cuts through rocks that span more than a billion years.

Not so, say "Young Earth" creationists. All those rocks were deposited by flood waters at the time of Noah.

Now, the Noah's Flood myth was most likely taken from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Furthermore, the idea that Noah built an ark to fit every kind of animal in the world is absurd. There are many problems, including the size of the thing.

According to the Bible, the Ark had dimensions of 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits tall (this converts to roughly 450 by 75 by 45 feet). This is over four times the size of any wooden ship built by any civilization that existed in the second millenium BC. Large wooden ships must withstand severe stresses on the open seas, and the technical methods to deal with these simply did not exist then. It was not until the year 1900, some 4,000 years after Noah and his Ark, that wooden ships were built that even remotely approached the Ark's purported size. These were nine-masted schooners 300 feet long (some 150 feet shorter than the Ark). They were so long that they visibly undulated with the waves, and required large diagonal steel braces to prevent them from breaking in half. Even with these reinforcements, the stresses caused gaps in the plankings, and they leaked continuously and had to be constantly bailed with a pump. They could only be used in coastal waters since they could not survive in the open sea. The unseaworthiness of such large wooden ships was the major reason why the world's navies turned to steel ships before the First World War. The Ark, remember, had to survive open seas during a catastrophic raging Flood [source].

Another problem is lack of evidence. For one thing, the supposed time the flood took place was around the time the pyramids of Ancient Egypt were being built. Also, there are no other historical records in any other place mentioning a great flood.

So, again, this myth was most likely based on Gilgamesh, which was most likely based on a small, local flood, where at the time the rest of the world was unknown.

.. Most geologists would say humans and dinosaurs were separated by more than 60 million years. And those dinosaurs have very sharp teeth!

"So do bears", says Ken, "but they eat nuts and berries! Remember, before the sin of Adam, the world was perfect. All creatures were vegetarian"..

At this point, it's pretty hard to believe that some people actually - well - believe things like this, or are merely seeking attention and ways to make some easy cash.

What I am most concerned about is children going to see this "museum". As we all know, children are very susceptible to believing anything they are told. I personally think that it should be illegal to open up such "museums", as they hold no scientific evidence and is about the same as teaching The Tortoise and the Hare as a true and literal account.

Labels: Religion

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