Brownshirt guards prevent free-wheeling discussion at the Creation Museum
It’s almost unbelievable. I suppose that too many thinking people were wandering in and criticizing the faux-science exhibits at the “evolution science” museum in Kentucky. Apparently, Ken Ham and his Creation Museum team simply can’t stand it when people talk real science in their “museum.” They’ll shut you up and kick you out. PZ Myers gives a detailed description of his visit, and it’s well worth reading the entire thing.
Image by John Scalzi at Flickr (creative commons)
It’s pretty amazing that a “museum” would so unabashedly attempt to stifle all thinking. Myers almost can’t believe his own eyes and ears. Stifling thinking? But that’s how it is in most fundamentalist churches too. Fall in line or else. Pretend you know things you don’t really know. Pretend that you don’t know things that you do know. This is the foundation for an incredibly screwed up community, and the fundamentalists want to export it to the public schools too.
Now Ken Ham is sending his guys out to the parking lot to take photos of the bumper stickers of the visiting atheists. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/creepy_ol_ken_ham.php
I just spoke to a friend who last week went to the Creation Museum with two other of his friends, all in their early fifties. Like many empirical types, they just wanted to see the place with their own eyes. After they paid their admission and were walking in with the large crowd of mostly families, security guards pulled them aside and told them they wanted to take their photographs. What for? They smiled and said the museum just liked to have pictures of all the various “types” of folks who visit. The friends went along with it, although they knew something was up as the guards didn’t make the same request of any of the family types sweeping in. Instead of a friendly snapshot, though, all three were photographed mug-shot style, one close-up face shot and then one from the side! They weren’t harassed again, but certainly felt as though they couldn’t appear to even be amused by anything in the museum or they would be tossed out. They spent the next two hours being horrified by one inane exhibit after another, and he said when they left they actually felt numb from it all.
I wonder why no one in the media is monitoring how the Creation Museum treats its visitors and reveal these chilling tactics.
Thanks for this website. I surfed here and I’ve been reading everything.
Steve: Those of us who are evidence-based make life so difficult for the others!