There’s a Darwin museum in Moscow (opened before the communist revolution, actually) and a group of Russian Orthodox creationists protested outside of it recently, handing out fliers that were every bit as ridiculous as the ones the creationists hand out in this country.
Russian Orthodox religious activists festooned a Moscow museum named for Charles Darwin with banners and leaflets denouncing evolution theory in a display of disdain for secular education…
Footage released by Orthodox activist group Bozhaya Volya, or God’s Will, showed activists unfurling a banner reading “God created the world” on the building’s facade while others threw leaflets bearing creationist slogans into the lobby of a popular destination for school trips and family outings in the capital.
“God created kittens!” read one leaflet visible in the video, which also featured activists holding banners disparaging the theory of evolution as a “pseudo-scientific myth” and singing religious songs.
“Checkmate atheists! In the year 7522 since the creation of the world, creationists have seized the Darwin museum,” a member of the group which advocates “the revival and development of Russia as an Orthodox Empire” said on Twitter.
7522? Bishop Ussher to the white courtesy phone.
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d.c.wilson
March 22, 2013 at 1:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Damn, first Trofim Lysenko and now orthodox creationists. Russian biology can never catch a break.
Draken
March 22, 2013 at 1:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Unfortunately, fanatic religion is a virus and it seems like the former East Bloc countries have not built up enough resistance to it. It’s going to take them the next few decades to find out.
matty1
March 22, 2013 at 1:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Katherine Lorraine, Tortue du Désert avec un Coupe-Boulon
March 22, 2013 at 1:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wait.
God created kittens? I’m so there!
The Lorax
March 22, 2013 at 2:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
No Katherine, stay with us… we have ponies. muahahaha~
Brain Hertz
March 22, 2013 at 2:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sitting here trying to picture the scene, and for some reason I just can’t get out of my head the image of one of them yelling “I demand that I am Vroomfondel” while throwing leaflets at random passers-by.
Trebuchet
March 22, 2013 at 2:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
God created kittens….but Satan turns them into cats!
cry4turtles
March 22, 2013 at 2:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ponies trump kittens any day!
Reginald Selkirk
March 22, 2013 at 3:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Here’s a cat riding a pony. Neither the cat nor the pony would discuss their thoughts concerning evolution vs. creationism.
timgueguen
March 22, 2013 at 4:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s possible they got their ideas from US creationists. On the other hand US fundies aren’t likely to be much bigger fans of the Orthodox Church than they are Catholics, and unlike the Catholic Church in the US there’s not much point in making nice on certain shared issues.
peterh
March 22, 2013 at 5:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
See elsewhere in these blogs that the Eastern Orthodox Christians are not True Christians™ at all. Their calculation of Easter is bollixed.
gopiballava
March 22, 2013 at 6:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They desecrated the museum and covered it with their own materials? I assume they’ll be prosecuted just as vigorously as Pussy Riot. Right?
Childermass
March 22, 2013 at 9:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
State Darwin Museum surviving in Moscow since 1907. I’m impressed. How many institutions in Moscow survived the 1917 revolutions, Stalin, and the fall of communism?
Ichthyic
March 22, 2013 at 10:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I thought cats made kittens.
next you’ll be telling me chickens don’t lay eggs.
andrew
March 22, 2013 at 11:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Silly, Ed! Bishop Ussher was a heretical Catholic who will be roasting in hell while God rewards the true, Orthodox church in the afterlife.
Stacy
March 23, 2013 at 2:30 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Not a bad seat for a first timer, considering his feet can’t reach the stirrups.
HERETIC!
Richard Bartholomew
March 23, 2013 at 11:48 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I found the video, and a bit of background.
Richard Bartholomew
March 23, 2013 at 11:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sorry. botched the link: http://barthsnotes.com/2013/03/23/russian-creationists-protest-at-charles-darwin-museum/
lpetrich
March 23, 2013 at 2:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The difference is which early version of the Old Testament that they use, the Septuagint or the Masoretic text. The early begots are somewhat longer in the Septuagint than in the Masoretic version, and Septuagint-based creation dates are around 5500 BCE as opposed to Masoretic-based ones of around 4000 BCE. Archbishop Ussher used a Masoretic-based date. Those Russian Orthodox fundies are clearly using a Septuagint-based one.
Dating creation – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
» Russian Creationists Protest at Charles Darwin Museum Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion
March 23, 2013 at 11:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
[...] (H/T Ed Brayton) [...]