The Fred and Wilma Flintstone Museum


Ken Ham’s fabulous fake museum is going to open soon, on May 28. There are grounds for concern here.

But Eugenie Scott, a former University of Kentucky anthropologist who is director of the California-based National Center for Science Education, said the information provided in the museum “is not even close to standard science.”

Scott visited the museum recently as part of a British Broadcasting Corp. radio program. Although she didn’t get a tour, she saw enough to know that the museum will be professionally done. And, she says, that’s worrisome.

“There are going to be students coming into the classroom and saying, ‘I just went to this fancy museum and everything you’re telling me is rubbish,'” Scott said.

The Discovery Institute, despite its ability to generate PR, has always been a third-rate stalking horse for the real Godzilla of creationism, Answers in Genesis. The Intelligent Design creationists are an arrogant, stupid minority; the real face of creationism in America is evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity, a mainstream belief, and its adherence to biblical literalism. It’s everywhere. It doesn’t need to send out press releases to promote itself; it’s thriving in churches in every town in the country every Sunday.

Scott is right to be worried. This one museum is going to have a bigger budget than the NCSE, and it’s a load of shit in a slick package. It’s going to impress some people — stupid, shallow people, but there’s no shortage of them in the US, and there especially seems to be a surplus in the media, which will happily eat this crap with a glossy veneer and regurgitate it for the public.

For example, look at this contrast:

Daniel Phelps of Lexington, president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society, says the museum will embarrass the state because of the “pseudoscientific-nutty things” it espouses, and because it portrays evolution as the path to ruin.

But the Rev. Bill Henard, senior pastor of Lexington’s Porter Memorial Baptist Church, said that Sunday school classes and other groups from his church are likely to visit.

“I think people will enjoy … being able to see a different side from what some scientific findings have shown,” he said.

It’s not at all difficult to find people who will cheerfully enjoy lies — just open the doors and look inside a church.

Comments

  1. says

    Flintstones? Why can’t they take a modern, high-tech, pro-science approach and build a Jetsons Museum?

    Excerpt from my page

    http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/tv.html#TV-J

    The Jetsons, 23 Sep 1962-8 Sep 1963, animated,
    24 original episodes, 41 new episodes in 1985
    The Jetsons

    Produced by the same folks who brought you TV’s “The Flintstones”,
    this was a satire on 1960’s suburban American culture, with “cognitive estrangement” (to use critic Darko Suvin’s term) of a
    science-fictional nature by casting the series in the 21st century.
    The eponymous George Jetson worked for Spacely Sprockets, Inc. in an alienating job (although he was occasionally promoted to Vice
    President, it never lasted) for an overbearing boss.

    He lived in Skypad Apartments, which had variable altitude
    achieved with hydraulic lifts, with his unambitious housewife Jane,
    their children, and the semi-talking dog Astro (who later had his own
    adventures with Scooby-Doo). Despite atomic flying cars, commuting, parking, and speeding tickets were a problem. Despite robots and automated household gadgets, home-making was a drag. Despite videophones, nobody had anything interesting to communicate, and
    despite interplanetary colonization, teenage girls still cared for
    nothing but media icons, dance crazes, and dating.

    The dark underside of suburban culture — divorce, drugs, gangs,
    suicide, and political homogenization — never appeared. The satire
    lacked the sharper edge of Mad Magazine, but sometimes the limits of
    Capitalism and Consumerism were skewered anyway.

    George Jetson (voice) — George O’Hanlon
    Jane Jetson (voice) — Penny Singleton
    Judy Jetson (voice) — Janet Waldo
    Elroy Jetson (voice) — Daws Butler
    Astro (voice) — Don Messick
    Cosmo G. Spacely (voice) — Mel Blanc
    miscellaneous (voices) — Herschel Bernardi, Mel Blanc, Howard McNear,
    Howard Morris, Frank Nelson
    Producers: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.
    See also: Astro and the Space Mutts, a canine spin-off
    that appeared in Space Stars.

  2. Steve_C says

    They want to slap stickers on biology books… can we slap a big sign on the outside of the museum that states:

    “What you are about to see in not based on any science but completely on the biblical mythology of christians and fictional stories that don’t even appear in the bible.”

    Dinosaurs on the frickin’ ark. Uhg.

  3. caerbannog says

    And over at Retrospectacle is a post entitled, “Why Don’t You See More Profs in Church?”.

    I don’t have a clue as to what the answer to that question might be…. ;)

  4. jeff says

    I sincerely hope scientists will take every opportunity to ridicule this in the media as much as they can.

  5. Deepsix says

    I agree that fundamentalism is the real problem. I live in rural Tennessee. Fundamentalism doesn’t get any more extreme than here.
    I find it interesting that many believe that fundamentalists are in the minority. Not in the south. There is no other kind of religion here.

  6. Carlie says

    I want a big billboard just outside the museum property that lists several things that could have been done with the $27 million it took to build. So many uninsured children’s health care covered, so many anti-malaria pills in the third world, so many water purifiers for villages, so many lunches in school, so many police officers, and so on…

  7. Madam Pomfrey says

    It’s like death and taxes…you just *know* they’re going to trot out the old postmodern canard about “different sides” and “other ways of knowing.” After all, one can’t limit oneself to the narrow, dogmatic view of the Jedi…

  8. Alex says

    “Dinosaurs on the frickin’ ark. Uhg.”

    Yeah, but can you prove that there weren’t dinosaurs on the ark – hmmmmm?

  9. Umilik says

    I think this is a great idea. In a couple of hundred years this will have become a real museum documenting the idiocy and lunacy that still existed in this part of the world in the early 21st century. Our more enlightened descendants will marvel in utter amazement.

  10. Rey Fox says

    “is not even close to standard science.”

    Sheesh, why mince words, Eugenie? It’s not even close to Science, period. The lack of clear and complete denunciations is what allows this crap to persist.

    I was having trouble staying awake this morning, but now that I’ve had my blood angried up, I’m doing better, so thank you, PZ. Having the site crash while I was trying to post this comment for the first time was also a nice touch.

  11. Christian Burnham says

    (I should point out this is NOT a satirical post!)
    This museum will portray large fanged dinosaurs as vegetarians.

    Here’s the reasoning:

    1) Dinosaurs were part of the garden of Eden
    2) There was no death before the Fall.
    3) Thus, animals didn’t prey on each-other for food.
    4) Thus, all animals were created as vegetarians. This includes dinosaurs.

  12. Diogenes says

    I live down the road from this loonybin. I would love to go to just laugh hysterically at the shitferbrains gawking at its exhibits but would never contribute to either its finances or attendence count (which likely will be reported with similar honesty to their science anyway but still). Maybe I can go down and hang out in the parking lot pretending to take a survey. Spammers would probably pay a mint for contact info on people that gullible.

  13. ice weasel says

    Wow, now here’s a new position for me, I’ll play the optimist.

    I don’t think this multi-million charade is going to convince who wasn’t already buying into the crap. This place may be slick and staffed with the best disneyfied. biblically literal docents around but it’s still preaching to the converted.

    I don’t think there are a lot people that are looking for more evidence on this issue. It’s more one of buying into, dodging or outright rejecting a belief system.

    Come on, dinosaurs on noah’s ark? Hell, noah’s ark?

    Please.

  14. Arun Butcher says

    From the article linked:
    “The museum has a planetarium. But its programs, unlike those at other planetariums, will say that the light from the stars we see did not take millions of years to get here.”

    Sooooooooo, um, how long did it take for the light to get here? I mean, it seems effing silly to have a planetarium if you’re forced to make that ridiculous clai– oh, wait. Never mind.

  15. says

    This museum probably won’t sway anyone who wouldn’t have been swung by some other means. It might make it marginally easy for parents to indoctrinate their children, but I doubt it will do much else.

  16. says

    As of 2:00 p.m., two-thirds said that they would not visit the “museum.”

    Funny that Bill Maher interviewed Ken Ham, Ham did not know who Maher was.

  17. says

    The Creation Museum will indeed mislead many and reinforce the superstitious beliefs of its true-believer visitors. One potentially effective remedy is to make sure that valid information is at everyone’s fingertips in order to counter the Creation Museum’s propaganda. Google bomb, anyone?

    I think it’s time for everyone to write blog posts and web pages that link “Creation Museum” with “false science” and suggest pertinent resources at NCSE or talk.origins. I’ve written about the Creation Museum before and I’ll do my own small part by working up another post this week. The more creative among us will make sure the citations and references proliferate.

    And “false science” is only a suggestion. I’ll happily go along with anything pithier and more viral for the mind.

  18. MR says

    Won’t someone pleease think of the children?

    Seriously, think about them. This is the kind of candy-coated jackassery that underpins vapid beliefs. Children are highly inquisitive and voracious devourers of knowledge. Of course it is ridiculous, unless you lack the foundational knowledge or training in logical thought to notice. When kids are taught this as the norm, say through Sunday school field trips, it’s no wonder they grow up logically impaired. DI’s got nothing on the Disnification of idiocy. The more cuddly and child friendly lunacy gets, the more adult lunatics we will get.

  19. Steve_C says

    I can’t even prove there wasn’t an ark. Uhg.

    Yeah, man rode on domesticated Raptors and Triceratops while farming too.

  20. says

    This will have no effect on the number of fundies in the country, or their impact. The believers will flock to it, we’ll laugh at, and nothing will change.

    Let the fundies have their little parallel universe where Noah loaded the dinos onto the ark 2 X 2. Who really cares? If public schools start scheduling field trips there it’s a different issue. Although a high school biology class going there to mock it really wouldn’t be a bad thing…

  21. Adnan Y. says

    You are simply not going to believe AiG’s explanation for why those pre-Fall, vegetarian T. rexs had such big teeth!

    *Takes a link at said link*

    Are. You. Kidding. Me?!

  22. Ben Ackerman says

    When kids are taught this as the norm, say through Sunday school field trips, it’s no wonder they grow up logically impaired. DI’s got nothing on the Disnification of idiocy. The more cuddly and child friendly lunacy gets, the more adult lunatics we will get.

    That’s the part that just makes me sick to my stomache. It’s really aimed at lying to five year olds. They could never compete with the dinosaur. Any little kid who loved dinosaurs would question immediately Noah’s ark, etc. Now they have some slick BS to brainwash their kids with. Deep down those morons MUST know they are completely full of it. And that makes them angry… so angry that they’d perpetuate this colossal hoax on their own children… It’s really is a sad twisted form of child abuse.

  23. 386sx says

    Are. You. Kidding. Me?!

    Good point. Everybody knows “God” gave them big teeth because he wanted them to be carnivores. Giving them big teeth for coconuts would be way too silly.

  24. The Physicist says

    It doesn’t need to send out press releases to promote itself; it’s thriving in churches in every town in the country every Sunday.

    It’s certianly taught in the Catholic Church. I is one of them, but not the 8,000 year old stuff.

  25. says

    I get a kick from Creationist’s “evidence” that dinoaurs are often fossilized with their necks bent upwards, because they were frantically getting the last few breaths, nostrils above water, as the sea level rose during the Great Flood.

    Worth noting that Giants survived until the David-Goliath bracket of the Greater Jerusalem NCAA finals because of one ginat who hid on top of the roof of the Ark. That’s from Hebrew apocrypha.

    I’m not entirely clear on the phylogenetic relationship between dinosaurs, the Whale that swallowed Jonah, giants, and the Behemoth,

    See also:

    http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/thisthat.html#bambi

    The apocryphal “Book of Enoch” gives a lengthy list of fallen Angels (all now considered Devils), and this list includes the gods of the tribes
    surrounding the Hebrews, such as Astaroth, Baal, and Moloch, all of whom were similarly demonized.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia comments:

    The species, for instance, called in Hebrew re’em, very probably the aurochs, or wild ox, totally disappeared about the time of the Babylonian captivity; the wild ass, the lion, and a few others long ago became extinct in Palestine; other species are now so scarce that they could hardly afford a familiar subject for illustration. The variety of animals spoken of in the Bible is remarkable; the ostrich, for instance, a denizen of the torrid regions, and the camel, of the waterless districts around Palestine, are mentioned side by side with the roebuck and deer of the woody summits of Lebanon. This variety, greater probably in Palestine than in any other country in the same latitude, should be attributed to the great extremes of elevation and temperature in this small country. Furthermore, that the Palestinian fauna is not now as rich as it used to be during the Biblical times, must not be wondered at; the land, now bare, was then well wooded, especially on the hills east of the Jordan; hence the changes. Although no regular classification is to be sought for in the Bible, it is easy to see, however, that the animal creation is there practically divided into four classes, according to the four different modes of locomotion; among the animals, some walk, others fly, many are essentially swimmers, several crawl on the ground. This classification, more empiric than logical, would not by any means satisfy a modern scientist; it must be known, however, if we wish fairly to understand the language of the Scriptures on the matters connected therewith. The first class, the behemôth, or beasts, in the Biblical parlance, includes all quadrupeds living on the earth, with the exception of the amphibia and such small animals as moles, mice, and the like. Beasts are divided into cattle, or domesticated (behemoth in the strict sense), and beasts of the field, i. e. wild animals. The fowls, which constitute the second class, include not only the birds, but also “all things that fly”, even if they “go upon four feet”, as the different kinds of locusts. Of the many “living beings that swim in the water” no particular species is mentioned; the “great whales” are set apart in that class, while the rest are divided according as they have, or have not, fins and scales (Leviticus 11:9, 10). The reptiles, or “creeping things”, form the fourth class. References to this class are relatively few; however, it should be noticed that the “creeping things” include not only the reptiles properly so called, but also all short-legged animals or insects which seem to crawl rather than to walk, such as moles, lizards, etc. From a religious viewpoint, all these animals are divided into two classes, clean and unclean, according as they can, or cannot, be eaten.

  26. says

    COD – high school biology classes, what a fantastic idea. No one can throw the snark like bright high schoolers.

  27. Merkin J. Pus-Tart says

    Some years ago we had satellite TV and I used to watch the Creation Network, which would show Ken Ham. I will never forget seeing one time Ham lecturing a group of school children (none of them appeared to be older than middle school). After he was through, he actually stated, “There, I think I have thoroughly indoctrinated you.” I wish I had this on tape!

  28. Leon says

    This thread’s content is good and the title is a classic, but PZ, I think you might be going a little over the top with your descriptions of the potential visitors to this little insane asylum. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like it would be enough to label them gullible or ignorant, without ramping it all the way up to stupid and shallow. Not that I think highly of people who are swayed by this kind of tripe, but I think it may be counterproductive to insult those marginally in the middle who might be swayed one way or another.

    Noah’s Ark. Garden of Eden. Now both have dinosaurs? What’s next, velociraptors were responsible for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah?

  29. says

    Forgot to conclude with the key question for timetraveling Jews: are dinosaurs kosher?

    When I asked that of my friend Isaac Asimov, himself very expert in time travel, zoology, and Judaism, he gave me one of his longest silent stares ever. Fortunately, he then laughed.

    You know that Isaac’s nickname in Sherlock Holmes fandom was: “the remarkable worm unknown to science.”

  30. Art says

    $20 a head – that’ll get you admission to most of the attractions at the Cincinnati Museum Center (including the Omnimax theater), and it gets you into the Cincinnati Zoo. That’s info that should go on a billboard at the AiG “exit”. (Of course, most of the gamblers who see this are going to wonder – why?)

  31. Millimeter Wave says

    You are simply not going to believe AiG’s explanation for why those pre-Fall, vegetarian T. rexs had such big teeth!

    Indeed. I’m not going to believe it. The scary part is trying to imagine all the people who will, in fact, actually believe it. I have to say that is a big stretch for my imagination.

    One thing I’ve never seen addressed about the whole “vegetarian carnivore” argument is exactly when this transition is supposed to have taken place, and what prompted it. Must have been some considerable time after the pairs of each “kind” of animal disembarked from the ark for many of them to have survived…

  32. Kseniya says

    I’m loving Carlie’s idea (#8). Hugely.

    And this, from the link posted above:

    The belief system becomes the basis to understand the world. Random facts and data are collected and made to fit into this belief system or discarded.

    Yes, yes.

    Exhibit A: How beautifully the banana was “designed” for edibility by us human beings. This is proof of God’s existence! [Note: This conclusion conveniently ignores the implications of how beautifully designed the banana was for edibility by all the other primates, too.]

    Exhibit B: T-rex teeth. Errm… uhhh… lessee… long, sharp, serrated, flesh-tearing spiky things could also be used for… uh… Coconuts! That’s it! Meat-free coconuts! Proof that Genesis is literally true!

    Call me faithless if you will, but I think T-rex teeth aren’t well-suited to opening coconuts. A set of teeth more like large and essentially flat cracking-grinding molars would be better, no?

    Not to mention that T-rex teeth, though conceivably useful (if not optimal) for opening a coconut, would be utterly useless for actually eating one. But maybe that’s what the smaller primates were designed for: to clamber up those big T-rex bodies to willingly feed the giant reptiles coconut by hand. This is Eden we’re talking about, after all.

    Too bad the big scaly dudes wouldn’t fit on the ark. Were they intentionally excluded? Had they sinned? Or did God just give crappy blueprints to Noah? Or maybe there was a cubits-to-hands conversion error, or maybe God was talking Sumarian cubits and Noah (naturally) assumed Babylonian cubits? Or maybe God just decided that dinosaurs were no longer useful or necessary. Mysterious are his ways.

    Again, I display hubris simply by asking such questions. Shun the unbeliever. Shuuuuuunnnnnnuh.

  33. Will Von Wizzlepig says

    Speaking of seeing “a different side from what some scientific findings have shown”, maybe they could add some other alternative explanations besides just evolution.

    An informational, do-it-yourself handout on the health benefits of bloodletting, maybe.

    Or a slide-show about how cuddly and safe nuclear radiation is.

    A diorama depicting how the earth actually IS flat, AND the center of the universe.

    A break-away, “how-it-works” view of a television set which clearly illustrates how the television presents you the picture on the screen because god wants it to.

    And of course, there’d be a stand with grape Kool-Aid for everyone at the end of the museum tour.

  34. One Eyed Jack says

    I’m torn between visiting the museum for a wonderful laugh and the fact that I would be donating to their cause. It would be great fun to discuss the “science” of the exhibits with the other visitors, but I can’t bring myself to donate anything to the AiG idiots.

    Perhaps AiG has an outreach program for us poor, deluded Evilutionists, providing free admition so we may learn what real science is.

    OEJ

  35. Sarcastro says

    “I believe that Wilma just might be the most attractive woman ever.”

    “Wilma Flinstone?”

    “Yea.”

    “What about Betty?”

    “Betty Rubble? Well, I’d go with Betty… but I’d be thinking of Wilma.”

    “Man we are crazy. What the hell are we talking about!?”

    “Yea. We both know she’d never leave Fred.”

  36. says

    Corey, you’re so brainwashed by the so-called “science” espoused by those immoral atheists, you can’t recognize that the flood waters carried the T. Rex bodies to North America and deposited them there when the waters receeded. All dinosaurs are from the Middle East. Along with all other animals. And plants. And anyone trying to tell you otherwise is just meddling with God’s Perfect Creation!

    Oh, man, I feel dirty now.

  37. Timcol says

    We need to somehow let Jon Stewart know about the museum and ask him to send some of his intrepid reporters to Kentucky (perhaps the Senior Creationist Field Correspondent) – sounds like enough material to keep them busy for weeks…

  38. Leukocyte says

    In response the “The Physicist,” I’m pretty sure that the Catholic church officially endorses evolution. In fact, a Catholic priest at the college I graduated from wrote a book on the subject around the beginning of the 20th Century. I’ve also heard that a Catholic first postulated the “Big Bang” theory. I would think that whatever Catholicism you are learning is that of a fringe group, and not official teaching.

  39. CalGeorge says

    The only solution:

    Buy up the lot across the street and build a bigger museum – worth 54 million – dedicated to the FSM (and science).

    Make sure it has lots of flashhy lights and call it Land of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Better yet, get that rich Sponge Bob guy to build a museum to science.

    Kids will get to the traffic light in front of the museums, look right, see the boring creationist museum, look left, see a museum featuring a giant FMS (or Sponge Bob), and scream (pointing to the FSM (or Sponge Bob)): MOM, DAD, I WANT TO GO THERE!!!

    End of dumbshit creationist museum.

    Cheapo solution: outside the museum, sell bubblegum packs that include trading cards that make make fun of the museum and its dumb founder.

  40. Randy! says

    My daughter gave Ken Ham’s Dinosaurs of Eden to her 10th grade Biology teacher as a gag gift at the end of the year. That book is seriously funny. Shows the coconut cracking T-Rex, Triceratops as a beast-of-burden and many other great drawings.

    He got a kick out of it and she inscribed her appreciation of “learnin’ her good sciencey-stuff” that year.

    I recommend finding a copy at your local Christian bookstore to get a look-see as it’s tragically funny. That is, if any of you heathens can walk into a Christian Bookstore or Grand Canyon gift shop without turning into a pillar of salt. I’ve never been to one, so I wouldn’t know what happens.

  41. CS Lewis Jr. says

    You are simply not going to believe AiG’s explanation for why those pre-Fall, vegetarian T. rexs had such big teeth!

    Coconuts.

    Dude. That is awesome. That may well be the single most ludicrous thing I have ever heard. That is so idiotic it is sublime. I could hit myself over the head with the Stupid Hammer for the rest of my life and not match that. I am in awe.

    I thought Satan sending the dinosaurs to fight the Angels who were protecting the Ark during the flood was good, but this one image of a Tyrannosaur delicately cracking a coconut is now my official Postcard From Moron America. The global economy is going to eat us alive.

  42. mothra says

    Just for the fun of it: There was no death ‘before the fall’ in the garden of Eden. Wonderful beasts like T. rex ate coconuts. Coconuts are embryonic plants. Therefore neither plants nor embryos are alive. Abortion should then be no problem for fundies, protoctestins live in a nether world, and of course by default this makes proselytes of creationism slime moulds.

  43. dave says

    You are simply not going to believe AiG’s explanation for why those pre-Fall, vegetarian T. rexs had such big teeth!
    Coconuts.

    How do you know they weren’t meant for lawyers? (jurassic park).

    What about pre-Fall sharks? Maybe their teeth were for breaking open oysters.

  44. says

    How do you know they weren’t meant for lawyers? (jurassic park).

    Nope. There couldn’t be any attorneys before the Fall. Even Ham couldn’t imagine a lawyer who wasn’t an obligate flesh-eater.

  45. says

    I clicked the link and read about this, and checked out the other links from Kentucky.com, and I can’t start laughing. My kids found me laughing at the computer with tears rolling down my cheeks, and asked me what was wrong. Now they can’t stop laughing either. Oh, I SO want to go now…

    ok, I JUST got myself under some semblance of control when I read Randy!’s comment and clicked that link. I hope my daughter isn’t reading this because I’m SERIOUSLY thinking of ordering that book for her hubby (yeah, the one that works at the National History Museum and The Page Museum) I’d love to see the look on his face when he opens that up

  46. says

    Does the “god loves us so much he gave us bananas” video mention that table bananas don’t reproduce naturally because they’re sterile triploids that were domesticated almost 10,000 years ago by the head-hunting denizens of New Guinea?

  47. says

    Who’s the patron saint of dinosaurs anyway?
    That would be St. Velociraptor of the Catholic Order of the Cretaceous. Famous for instituting the Mesozoic Mass & rumored to be a member of the Opus Dino.

  48. Steve_C says

    I lost my pet Brachiosaurus. Do I pray to St. Velociraptor or St. Anthony to find him?

    His name is Mahnek.

  49. says

    Scienceblog ROAD TRIP! Camping at the nearby park, meet and greet, grilling out, making fun of fundies, maybe a group rate?

    See you all there!

  50. says

    What bothers me most, as an agitator against such nonsense- and as one who lives but ten miles away from the abomination, is the museum’s cadre of security guards, complete with trained Belgian Malinois(not sure how to make that plural). Add to that, their pending plea to Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s office for police powers on the premises and I’m left contemplating some sort of trebuchet and paint-filled balloons…

  51. Wobert says

    I thought they would have had trained dinosaurs for security as in guard dinosaurs, or atleast security people riding them.

    Wwwwwwiiiiiilllllllmmmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaa

  52. Emily says

    “$20 a head – that’ll get you admission to most of the attractions at the Cincinnati Museum Center (including the Omnimax theater), and it gets you into the Cincinnati Zoo. That’s info that should go on a billboard at the AiG “exit”. (Of course, most of the gamblers who see this are going to wonder – why?)”

    Exactly what I wanted to post! I would love to see the area museums — CMC, Indianapolis, whatever *real* museums are in Kentucky — all put on programs about evolution to combat this lunacy. I’m not going to hold my breath, but I’ll continue to ask loudly and frequently for more evolution programs at my own institution, or at least permission to run one myself.

  53. says

    The T. Rex eating coconuts is only one of a series of ridiculous arguments from biblical literalists. I’m getting a chuckle just trying to picture the T. Rex holding the coconut with his short little arms and trying to get his mouth far enough away to actually bite it. On one site alone, I found that animals from every continent were floated over the sea and land to Noah by God, they went into magical hibernation for the duration of the trip, which is why they didn’t need care and didn’t eat each other, that the dinosaurs came on the ark in the form of eggs, and that the ark was bigger than we think because a cubit was the length of Noah’s forearm, and people were actually giants in those days. It’s twu, it’s twuuu!

  54. Carlie says

    I’m getting a chuckle just trying to picture the T. Rex holding the coconut with his short little arms and trying to get his mouth far enough away to actually bite it.

    Heh. That reminds me of what appears to be the funniest 5 seconds of a T-Rex onscreen ever, the promo for the new Disney movie in which the T-Rex can’t get at the kid wedged in a corner and complains “I have a great big head, and little arms!” while flapping them around.

  55. Will E. says

    If T. Rex was eating coconuts with those teeth, what the hell was Carcharodon megalodon eating?

  56. BP says

    Let’s agree not to call this a museum.

    I suggest “The Ham House” as it is after all Ken Ham’s twisted view of the world outside his head.

  57. says

    I know these guys aren’t worth taking seriously, but of course the stomach contents of carnivorous dinosaurs have been found:

    In one specimen, the Museum scientists found that the carnivorous dinosaur’s last meal was a primitive crocodile, not a dinosaur of any kind, let alone a Coelophysis; in the second specimen, the new analysis shows that the remains identified as a last meal actually are located outside the larger animal’s ribcage and are possibly too large to have been eaten whole.

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061002082945.htm

    Not a problem, of course, if your “science” involves reading the Bible, or putting the label “design” on organs, organisms, and organelles.

    Glen D
    http://tinyurl.com/35s39o

  58. Leon says

    Let’s agree not to call this a museum.

    I suggest “The Ham House” as it is after all Ken Ham’s twisted view of the world outside his head.

    Or how about “The Pork Barrel”? You know…ham…pork…um…ok, I’ll sit down now.

  59. says

    Not to mention that T-rex teeth, though conceivably useful (if not optimal) for opening a coconut, would be utterly useless for actually eating one. But maybe that’s what the smaller primates were designed for: to clamber up those big T-rex bodies to willingly feed the giant reptiles coconut by hand. This is Eden we’re talking about, after all.

    Weeelllll… this does sort of happen even today if you count the symbiotes in Cnidarians. There’s probably other examples, but in essence, IIRC, do not some/most/all cnidarians keep alive symbiotic algae inside them which do, in turn, produce nutrients for the tentacly part of the critter?

  60. Jimi Haumann says

    We Europeans are surly having a good laugh aswell, though some of us fear that this thing will spread and poision our sience education..

    I must admit that I am a tad worried about this “Museum” as it could turn out to be a cornor stone in the debate between evolution and creation or as I heard a few people state “Be the final nail in the coffin of Evolution”