Should I go to the Creation Museum?
March 26th, 2008 by Dan KlarmannI will be in the Cincinnati area this weekend for fun and business. My only dilemma is to decide whether to spend the time and money to actually visit this edifice of counterknowledge?
I’ve written about this place on D.I. since before it was completed. (List of mentions of it on our own blog). Plenty of other bloggers have been there and reported on it with pictures and video. The hotel we are staying in is so close that they keep a block of rooms and a special discount rate for visitors to the museum.
Do I want to give these people my money, and tacit support, just to have better credentials to refute their claims? Do I want to miss out on some hours of dancing (and/or selling) in order to do this?
March 27th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
That’s my same dilemma: I’d like to see it just so I can say — and speak from the first hand experience of said — but I don’t want to contribute to their coffers.
If there’s a way to “visit” as a colleague of a sister institution or some sort of other “meeting of the minds” courtesy maybe…
March 28th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Okay, I’m on my way without email or internet for 3 days. I expect that I won’t spend the time to visit this icon of American Philosophy on this trip, although I might drive past.
Here’s a good incisive look at it From a Chicago Tribune contributor
You can still respond and let me know what you’d'a done.
March 28th, 2008 at 11:31 am
I would have gone. Out of curiosity, but that’s me. And I find criticism of any subject acquires a stronger stance if you have experienced it first hand.
March 28th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
“it” = the subject
March 28th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
I wouldn’t spend my money on such a fraud, either out of curiosity or out of a belief that one cannot critique a fraud unless one experiences it. I don’t need to visit Iraq or spend time in the White House to know that Bush should be impeached and Cheney should be jailed, and I don’t need to visit a creationism “museum” to know it’s a crock of horse dung.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Armchair critic.
March 31st, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I’ve pondered this too. I live in Columbus OH, probably not two hours away from the museum. Knowing this has clawed at my conscience. On one hand there exists a strong mirthful desire to look, laugh and blog about it, on the other hand I don’t want to support the cause. The scales have tipped for me, I think- many, many blogs out there have posted comprehensive reviews and walk-thrus of the museum, many with oodles of pictures. So giving the museum the price of a ticket seems unjustified- nothing I write about the exhibit could surpass or improve upon the already stunning job others have done.
However, I have heard that Cincinnati has another phony creationist exhibit, one where children dress up as cowboys and shoot dinosaurs (just like the real cowboys did). If I track down that exhibit I just might have to investigate.
March 31st, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I didn’t end up going. Our hotel was awash with bus loads of teens in matching fluorescent Jesus shirts, though. There didn’t seem to be time to even do a drive-by, because 15 minutes out of the way is 15 minutes less dancing, eating, schmoozing, flirting, or conversing with like-minded people from other places.
At the dance weekend, we were awash in other sorts of zanies. Like this cheerful fellow and his familiar shirt.
(My phone is a barely adequate snapshot camera).
The caption reads “Touched by his Noodly Appendage” in reference to Spaghediesm. Pastafarianism arose in response to the Kansas Intelligent Design incursion in 2005.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Erika, I posted something about that cowboys and dinosaurs park here in my original post about them putting up this museum. There is a link to a more detailed article.
It’s west of Akron.
April 4th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Thanks Dan. I’m very embarrassed to have forgotten that you mentioned the park in the first place! Can I just pretend that it made for an excellent example of the fallibility of human memory, and duck, red-faced, under my desk?