Sunday, October 21, 2007

Creation Museum in the Wisconsin Dells?!?

Unbelievable. First, creationists build a multi-million dollar museum in northern Kentucky. Now, some guy named Bill Mielke is making designs on opening one in the tourist haven of the Wisconsin Dells -- right in the middle of gorgeous rock formations far older than his measly 6,000-year world view permits.

It makes me wonder, it really does. Bass-ackward museums are nothing new. Many a road tourist has been taken aback by museums dedicated to the denial of the Nazi holocaust, or the preservation of the legacy of Senator Joseph McCarthey. Ostensibly, the purpose of such museums is to inform the public. To "get the word out" as it were. But upon reflection, I'm convinced that's not the real purpose. The real purpose is to bolster confidence in their own position.
Consider the people who tend to visit such museums. The vast majority of them are not curiosity seekers with an open mind. No, most of them are dyed-in-the-wool cronies who already accept the bogus museum's premise. Most of the visitors at the Kentucky-Fried Creationist Museum, for example, will be fellow creationists. They will gladly pay the money for admission -- not because they want to be convinced, but because they want to have their existing opinions reinforced. Is it really a museum, therefore? Or is it just another ongoing creation seminar with permanent displays? Clearly, it's the latter.
Yet there does seem to be a certain legitimacy behind having a museum completely dedicated to one's position. Many, many people will say to themselves, "Well, there must be something to it. People wouldn't build an entire museum if it were all a bunch of crap, now would they?" Ah, but they would indeed! History has shown us plenty of examples where people have built spectacular structures dedicated to crap. For instance, few buildings are as lush or beautiful as the Mormon Tabernacle. It is a spectacular piece of archetecture, gorgeous in its structure, towering in its majesty, and fantastically expensive! The Mormon faith is one of the biggest and most obvious frauds ever concocted. Yet there it sits! An entire temple built upon the dream of a bad liar. Again, few palatial estates are so impressive as the one enjoyed by Hollywood elites belonging to the cult of Scientology. Yet its many acres of well-tended gardens is an ever lasting tribute to the crap imagined by a phenomenally bad science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard. What about the phenomenon of crowds flocking to see "weeping statues" of Jesus or Mary? What about the museum of UFO encounters in downtown Roswell, New Mexico? For those who think that people wouldn't build an entire museum if it were all a bunch of crap, guess again! People would indeed build a museum -- and do so much more besides -- all for the sake of a lie. They've done it before. They'll do it again. Creationists may feel pretty good that they finally have an impressively sized museum all their own, but they'd be wise not to get too damned smug about it!
And now someone wants to build another one in the Wisconsin Dells. Well, here's my advice to Mr. Bill Mielke: Dude, you say you're building it to convince us; those of us who accept evolution. But it's not about us. It's about you! It's about making you feel more secure in your faith. If you really believed, if you truly had faith, no amount of scientific evidence to the contrary could shake you. Instead, you are shaken by the contrary evidence, so much so that you try to hide it, convince yourself that it isn't really there, and desire to build museums which feature what you think is supporting evidence. But by doing that, you've given the game away. You've admitted that physical evidence is a better than spiritual evidence for building a world-view. But, of course, you don't have physical evidence. If you did, you wouldn't need faith anymore! So keep your faith, and stop fooling yourself that its based on physical evidence, because it's not. Society already has too many people trying to sell snake oil without you adding to the overload of flim-flam.
Someone should make a museum about that!
Eric