Kent Hovind, the minister who opened the park in 2001, said his aim was to spread the message of creationism through a fixture of mainstream America — the theme park — instead of pleading its case at academic conferences and in courtrooms.
Well I guess this is what they mean with God closes a door he opens window.
Also from the article Mr. Hovind, a former public school science teacher with his own ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, and a hectic lecture schedule, said he had opened Dinosaur Adventure Land to counter all the science centers and natural history museums that explain the evolution of life with Darwinian theory. There are dinosaur bone replicas, with accompanying explanations that God made dinosaurs on Day 6 of the creation as described in Genesis, 6,000 years ago. Among the products the park gift shop peddles are T-shirts with a small fish labeled “Darwin” getting gobbled by a bigger fish labeled “Truth.”
Co-opting the Darwin fish, which co-opted the Jesus fish. Will this madness never end!
But of course Dinosaur Adventure Land had it’s own website.
Dinosaur Adventure Land, couldn’t you think of any thing else to do with your money?
Yeah, I saw this in the morning. If Emily had been fully awake, I’d have gone Lewis Black on this stupid, stupid story. But then I read the second page. It brightened the morning to hear that the guy is going to get nailed for tax fraud. I didn’t know what to make of this, though:
[quote]
Somewhat more creationist in approach is the Nerve-Wracking Ball: a bowling ball on a rope, dangling from a tall tree branch. A child stands before the ball, and then a park guide gives it a shove from a specific angle, so that it comes careering back at the child’s face only to stop just in front of it. The child wins if he does not flinch, proving he has “faith in God’s laws” — in this case, that a swinging object will never come back higher than the point from which it took off.
That’s pretty twisted. I’m not sure what faith and god have to do with physics, but it’s not exactly the most confusing part of the story I guess…
No membership is needed if you go through Google News (notice the last part of the URL). This is a nifty work-around for people who are loath to register at websites for whatever reason.
You just know that someday, some kid’s going to lean in too far or the park employee’s going to get the angle wrong. This is an emergency room visit waiting to happen.
Interestingly, in Carl Sagan’s Contact, Palmer Joss, a Christian, has Ellie, an atheist, stand in front of a pendulum like the one described above (not a bowling ball, of course) and she flinches. He does this to illustrate that no matter how intellectually confident she is in the reliability of nature’s – not God’s – laws, her instincts made her flinch.
Heh I debated starting a pit thread on this myself.
The really creepy thing is how they focus on belief in god over everything else. The bowling ball thing is just flat wrong. Not only is it possibly traumatizing both mentally and physically but then it turns around and teaches the wrong lesson. Trust in God not trust in science (science stops the ball from hitting you want to test god throw the ball directly at their heads). Just shows how warped the perception of these people is.
What’s wrong about the bowling ball thing is that the article describes it being done all wrong. The whole point of that little example is that you release the ball from a point very near, but not exactly at, your nose. Actually pushing it, at whatever angle, defeats the whole purpose of the demonstration.
Damn, those people are stunningly ignorant. This passage had me puzzling over what the fuck they’re talking about:
I guess erosion is only possible if the water is pressurized and shot up from below… or something… my brain hurts from trying to pretend I’m stupid enough to understand this shit.
Guh? I mean, it’s obviously difficult to SHOW evolution taking place; that’s one reason why many people disbelieve. But this argument is plainly ridiculous - it can be disproved with 5 minutes, a tub of sand, a slight slope, and a tap, can’t it? Am I missing something?
Don’t forget, we also shoot abortion doctors in the back here.
You can barely walk two blocks without being accosted by some smug student from Pensacola Christian College who demands to know if you’re saved.
Once I bothered to answer with, “I don’t know. Are you?”
“Of course I’m saved,” the student said.
“How can you be so sure? I thought judgement was up to God.”
Ya know, I half expected a description of an Animatronics Satan shoveling dirt over plastic dinosaur bones that he had placed in the ground to fool scientists into believing that the Earth is millions of years old and was once inhabited by giant critters…
Seriously, though, the Earth is 6,000 years old, but mankind has been around for 100,000 years, we’ve been farming for 30,000 years, building cities for 10,000 years (give or take)
THE MIND BOGGLES< AND MY COMPUTER IS SO baffled by this that my caps lock keeps locking up on me
I love the “rides” section. Disneyland must be quite nervous. We have some swings, some rope to climb, and a slide. Oh, and there is a spinny thing followed by a balance beam. I think the advice that accompanies the spinny thing really says it all…
I would respectfully suggest that it is the time for the minister to take a little quiet time.
