Earlier, I was mildly perturbed that Canada was leading my country in the cheesy science “museum” race; this is, of course, a race to the bottom. Scott Hatfield has come to my rescue, though, and sent in some photos of Carl Baugh’s double-wide “Creation Evidence Museum” which is surely one of the tackiest examples of creationist silliness in the country—although, when you get right down to it, Ham’s opulent exhibit is just this same thing with buckets of money thrown at it.

You also might be able to find a picture of Scott in here if you’ve been wondering what he looks like. Hint: he’s not the guy in the purple robes in the last picture.

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Ha ha, pathetic Canadians.

They’ve put up their own creation “museum”—just look at it. It’s feeble. It’s like someone took a cheap suburban ranch-style home and put a sign on it and started charging admission to come take a look at their knick-knack shelf. Ha!

We’re #1! Our brand new American creation “museum” is a hundred times larger, a hundred times more expensive, shinier, fancier, a thousand times … the attendance, … even … more … stupidity, with …

…

Awww, crap. The Canadians outdid us again.

We’re seeing a lot of news about Ken Ham’s creationist lie, this so-called “museum” he has built out in Kentucky. What we’re not seeing from our media is any scrutiny of the finances behind the construction, or behind the evangelical boiler room called “Answers in Genesis”. Has any editor or reporter considered the possibility that there might be something juicier behind the story than “Preacher pretends church is a museum”? Is anyone—dare I say it—investigating this organization?

Their finances are a matter of public record. Everyone talks about how the museum cost $27 million to build, but the fact that their board of directors is sucking down over a million in salaries, benefits, and expenses is ignored. This is a profitable racket they’re running; I don’t think they’ve taken vows of poverty.

Other tidbits would include the seedy and rather acrimonious schism between Ham’s group here in America and the parent sister organization in Australia. Ham really is a kind of underhanded scoundrel and control freak, in addition to being a dishonest creationist fraud.

Anyway, if you want a good angle, stop treating this as a matter of a religious organization making a brave effort against the forces of godless science. It’s not. It’s an exceptionally lucrative business organization profiting off the ignorance of large numbers of people making a major push to increase their influence and income.

Wilkins reveals that our good ol’ US military is planning to use a major fossil site as a bombing range. This is a brilliant move by the evangelicals who are exercising greater and greater dominance of the armed forces. The obvious result is that rare, one-of-a-kind fossils will be pulverized and lost forever—a direct and positive result.

Realistically, though, the bombs won’t destroy that many fossils. The real gain will come when persistent, pesky evolutionists insist on some future date on trying to find the heretical material testimonies against our Lord and Savior, and discover instead the surprising joys of unexploded munitions. Not only will they be unable to corrupt our children’s minds with their “facts” and “evidence” and “logic”, but they themselves will briefly learn the truth of our loving God and Creator in the instant before He flings them down into a fiery pit for an eternity of torment.

And, best of all, the atheistical Darwinists, knowing that their immortal souls face damnation and therefore cling in their cowardly fashion to life on this tainted, sin-filled, evil world, will be reluctant to even explore land that has been sown with the sacred deadly armaments of God’s Own Army. Win win win!

I think we need to take an extra step and sprinkle anthrax over every fossil bed we can find. Hey, you know what, this solves the problem of evil, too! God made those horrible, dangerous, death-dealing organisms so good Christians can use them to slaughter the heathen!

(Sorry, I’ve been reading too much Answers in Genesis in the last few days.)

I knew the internet would come through with just the right clip and the relevant extracted words, so I wouldn’t have to sit through the wretched miasma of the whole O’Reilly Factor to see Krauss vs. Ham, and here it is.

Jason has a transcript, if you’d prefer to read text rather than watch some guys talk.

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The delusional creationists are everywhere, and the funny thing is how many of them consider themselves brilliant, well-informed, and objective, when what you discover on examining their claims is that they are foolish, ignorant, and blinded by religious bias — and obviously, they don’t even know it. Take, for instance, this high school teacher who issued a debate challenge.

Ritter, 59, has taught chemistry and physics at Annville-Cleona High School since 1997.

Ritter says he has no religious motivations, and he was not arguing for intelligent design or creationism.

He said he was barely aware of the controversy about evolution and intelligent design in the Dover Area School District until the issue went before a federal judge in late 2005.

Hooray for high school science teachers, they can be terrific. Unfortunately, this one who has no religious motivations and doesn’t argue for ID creationism or plain old creationism, was arguing against evolution, calling it “bad science.” As for his lack of awareness of the Dover controversy…he’s from central Pennsylvania, about an hour’s drive from Dover. Shouldn’t that self-announcement of utter obliviousness be an immediate warning that either he’s rather unqualified to be discussing the issue, and/or he’s hiding his actual motivation?

I vote for both—he’s hiding his beliefs. Later in the article, he mentions a few of his reasons.

While he said he has no religious motivations, one of his criticisms of evolution is that it promotes atheism.

“When evolutionists say that a creator cannot exist, they are saying God cannot exist,” Ritter said.

I’m also voting for “obliviousness,” since you have to be a complete fool to trot those old claims out as arguments against evolution, while simultaneously trying to pretend you’re completely open on the question of religion. Oh, well, the good news is that he only teaches physics, so he doesn’t have much opportunity to mislead his students about biology. I hope.

(via Spanish Inquisitor, unexpectedly)

DefCon Blog has their own “Creation Museum” page, and amusingly, they hired a pilot to buzz the opening ceremonies with a banner that read “DefCon says thou shalt not lie”. You can also download a short 4-page pdf by Lawrence Krauss that debunks the whole young earth nonsense — very handy!