Of Poodles, Creationists, and Anthropological Tourism

Just when you think the wackos can't get any wackier, something comes along to smack you upside the head. Case in point, creationist complaints about about the American National Science Foundation engaging in, um, a little science:

Our tax dollars are “at work”!

Earlier this year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $2.5 million grant to the New York Hall of Science to develop a “Life changes” program in order to “prepare young children (ages 5–12) to understand the scientific basis of evolution.”

The grant application made it clear that this four-year research project will study those evolutionary concepts most likely to resonate with young children. (By the way, NSF’s annual budget is over $5.5 billion—virtually all of it comes from your tax dollars.)

Drawing upon educational development psychologists, biologists, and museum personnel, this research project will result in a 1,000-square-foot traveling exhibit. And it will have tie-ins to the University of California–Berkeley’s “Understanding Evolution” website (another NSF grant recipient—more of your tax dollars being spent).

This traveling “science” exhibit is designed to indoctrinate young children across America in a morally bankrupt faith-based belief system: the evolution of man from non-living matter! But that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Faithful, closed-minded scientists / earnest educators worldwide are preparing myriad such evolutionary indoctrination exhibits and programs to coincide with the 2009 celebration of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday (and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his infamous book, On the Origin of Species). And these exhibits seem to be particularly targeted at young children—they will ardently market the idea of evolution as if it were fact!

Remember folks, there's an evolutionary biologist lurking under every bed and behind every bush, waiting to prey on the innocent minds of our young people. Won't someone, oh someone please think of the children?

Meanwhile the fundamentalist organization issuing these jeremiads on evidence-based science has much bigger agenda: a "creationist" museum (surprisingly called The Creation Museum), purpose-built to expose the manifest errors of Darwin. The 50, 000 sq foot building, located in prime Bible-belt country in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio, "will counter evolutionary natural history museums that turn countless minds against Christ and Scripture." The museum will show us, interspersed with such displays as "Noah's Workshop" and demonstrations of Cain knocking Abel on the head, exactly how dinosaurs and humans co-existed. "Other surprises are just around the corner," reads the promotional website. "Adam and apes share the same birthday. The first man walked with dinosaurs and named them all! God’s Word is true, or evolution is true. No millions of years. There’s no room for compromise."

All this and dinosaurs too!

According to a Guardian article, it's the "weirdest museum on earth." And also some pretty weird attitudes, as if the creationist clap-trap wasn't enough. On the mention of the difficulties posed to creationism by those paleolithic remains of protohumans, this strangely unchristian answer is given: "There are no such things. Humans are basically as you see them today. Those skeletons they've found, what's the word? ... they could have been deformed, diseased or something. I've seen people like that running round the streets of New York." (One wonders what New Yorkers think about that. Not to mention the coded racism.) Or take the museum director's odd obsession with poodles: his office is stocked with the stuffed variety. "Poodles are degenerate mutants of dogs," he explains. "I say that in my lectures and people present them to me as gifts."

The Creation Museum is at great pains to point out it's within easy driving distance of us Canadians living in southern Ontario and Quebec: we're victims all, apparently, of Darwinist propaganda. But don't visit it for the worthless science. The Creation Museum suggests new possibilities for the jaded tourist, tired of the mere splendours of Versailles or Angor Wat. Rounded with visits, say, to Graceland, Disney World, Civil War battle sites and Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcating Network, with frequent stops at Waffle Houses along the interstate, such a road trip would provide priceless insights into American social anthropology. What more could you want?