Swords Against Boredom

Here’s a museum I won’t be visiting:

PETERSBURG, Ky. (AP) — Like most natural history museums, this one has exhibits showing dinosaurs roaming the Earth. Except here, the giant reptiles share the forest with Adam and Eve.

That, of course, is contradicted by science, but that’s the point of the $25 million Creation Museum rising fast in rural Kentucky, a few miles from Cincinnati.

Its inspiration is the Bible — the literal interpretation that contends God created the heavens and the Earth and everything in them just a few thousand years ago.

“If the Bible is the word of God, and its history really is true, that’s our presupposition or axiom, and we are starting there,” museum founder Ken Ham said during recent tour of the sleek and modern facility, which is due to open next year.

Ham, an Australian native who started the Christian publishing company Answers in Genesis in the late 1970s, said the goal of his privately funded museum is to change minds and rebut the scientific point of view.

“We’re going to show you that we can make sense of the different people groups, we can make sense of fossils, we can make sense of what you see in the world,” he said.

Visitors to the museum will be able to watch the story of creation unfold in a 180-seat special-effects theater, see a 40-foot-tall recreation of a section of Noah’s Ark and stare into the jaws of robotic dinosaurs.

“It’s education, but it’s also doing it in an entertaining way,” Ham said.

Scientists say fossils and sophisticated nuclear dating technology show that the Earth is more than 4 billion years old, the first dinosaurs appeared around 200 million years ago, and they died out well before the first human ancestors arose a few million years ago.

“Genesis is not science,” said Mary Dawson, curator emeritus of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. “Genesis is a tale that was handed down for generations by people who really knew nothing about science, who knew nothing about natural history, and certainly knew nothing about what fossils were.”

Ham said he believes most fossils are the result of the Great Flood described in Genesis.

Mark Looy, a vice president at Answers in Genesis, said the museum has received at least $21 million in private donations. He said two anonymous donors have given $1 million, and he expects the museum to be debt-free when it opens next May.

John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, an organization that promotes creationism, said the museum will affirm the doubts many people have about science, namely the notion that man evolved from lower forms of life.

“Americans just aren’t gullible enough to believe that they came from a fish,” he said.

I’m not sure why people try so hard to reconcile Genesis with science. To me, religion is a faith thing — not a science thing. If faith tells someone there’s a God in Heaven looking out for us, why the need to make science back that up? Isn’t the faith alone enough?

When people start ripping up science to make it fit a Bible they insist must be literally true … I just don’t get it.

If a Christian tells me he has faith in God, there’s no argument from me. But when a Christian wants to warp science … well, I think there are better uses for a brain. And I think in a world where we have nuclear arms, the capability of cloning, debates over stem-cell research, global warming, increasing technology, etc., anything that furthers the scientific illiteracy of this country is just plain bad. How can we possibly elect leaders capable of dealing with this nation’s problems if we don’t understand basic science ourselves?

Honestly, part of me would like to check this museum out. I think it would be a hoot. I have a lot of pointed questions I’d love to ask the curators. But I don’t want to give them my money.

And I think the donors could have taken that $25 million and actually helped a lot of people, instead of spreading bad “science.”

– Steve

P.S. — I’ve shut down comments on this thread, not to silence anyone, but simply because the topic is more or less exhausted and I’m exhausted from replying to it all the time. Is was a lively discussion, and far more than I expected. Thanks for your contributions, everyone.

P.P.S. — With the passage of time and the emergence of other things to talk about, etc., I’ve decided to re-open this topic to comments. So if anyone has any points they’d hope to expand upon, or questions to ask, go ahead. Just keep it civil, ya’ll.

I read recently that there likely isn’t a single atom in your entire body that was there 10 years ago.

The statement wasn’t made in a scientific book or article, and didn’t cite an authority, so I don’t know if it’s accurate or not. But I do know we slough off skin, and lose and gain atoms all the time through breathing, eating, etc. I’m going to try to find out the physics behind this, but I can buy the concept that over time we replace all our atoms.

Isn’t that weird and amazing? I mean, it’s possible that a handful of atoms that used to be part of me are now a part of my dog. And perhaps I’m part beagle. We’re closer than I thought!

And it is odd, too, to think that our soulful, mindful data remains more or less intact despite the apparent constant ripping apart and reassembly of our bodily hard drive. It makes a pretty good case for the existance of a soul that is separate from the physical body. It’s at the very least good circumstancial evidence.

Maybe it’s true: Every day, you are a whole new you.

I dunno. Life’s weird.

– Steve

I just read a chuckler of a fantasy story called The Teeth of the Matter, by my friend Tom Williams. It’s in an ezine called “Dragons, Knights, and Angels,” where he’ll be published again soon, before too long. Pay attention when you read it; the wordplay comes fast and furious.

– Steve

– Steve

This just in from the ever-changing world of small press heroic fantasy publishing, announced at SFReader.com:

Pitch-Black Books is pleased to announce a new sponsor for our popular website Flashing Swords E-zine.

Carnifex Press will officially become a co-sponsor of Flashing Swords E-zine beginning with issue #7. This means even more great sword and sorcery fiction free of charge for our readers! Carnifex will not be taking submissions for Flashing Swords E-zine. However, high-quality stories selected for Carnifex Press’ “Clash of Steel” series will be considered for electronic publication at Flashing Swords E-zine.

The co-sponsoship of Flashing Swords E-zine will allow this rapidly expanding and ever-more-visited destination for sword and sorcery fiction to step into full stride as we perpare to post issue #7!

Pitch-Black LLC and Carnifex Press have big plans in the works for writers and fans of heroic fantasy fiction. Remember, we count on your support to keep the content at Flashing Swords E-zine free of charge.

Please consider making a donation to the site via one of the handy pay-pal buttons you’ll find there or consider purchasing one of Pitch-Black’s popular and critically acclaimed heroic fantasy fiction trade-paperback anthologies Lords of Swords or Sages and Swords.

If you don’t want to spend money to help with the pay-rate drive then help us spread the word about Flashing Swords E-zine. Right now, the site needs incoming links, it needs to be blogged about and reviewed. There is a ton of high-quality content there that is free of charge but it will only remain free of charge so long as we have support. So please help us out by giving us a shout-out or three.

This is interesting to me as a writer who has sold work to both Pitch-Black and Carnifex. The team-up indicates both companies are serious about what they are doing and pooling talents and energy. That’s a good thing.

The announcement also mentioned that Flashing Swords is doubling its maximum pay rate for writers. That won’t make any short fiction writers rich, but it is a serious indication of commitment to what these guys are doing.

One other thing: I have a couple of stories accepted already at Flashing Swords, but not yet published. Those may end up in Flashing Swords, or in some other venture from Pitch-Black. Details on the status of those tales are expected soon, and I’ll let you know when I know …

If you love fantasy fiction, especially of the sword-and-sorcery variety, these companies are bringing it. Check them out. I don’t know when the next issue of Flashing Swords will be out, but there is a lot of cool stuff on its archive to keep you busy until it appears.

– Steve

I changed the look of this blog to make it a bit easier on the eyes. WordPress blogs make that process fairly simple, so I indulged myself. My brother Clark helped set all this up for me on his Web space, so he did the actual installation of the new theme. The theme is called “Light 1.0.”

If you are inclined, please let me know what browser you’re using and how the blog looks on your end.

A couple of added features: A navigation bar at the top, with a tab for links. They are the same links as in the sidebar, but I thought this would keep people from having to scroll down for the links. The calendar is functional, too. Just click on a date and you’ll get all the posts from that date.

– Steve

You know, the Tour de France is steeped in tradition. But there is one tradition race officials may want to go ahead and change. Instead of giving the winner a yellow jersey, perhaps it’s time to make the jersey red, white and blue!

Congratulations to Floyd Landis of Team Phonak. He won the Tour after an awesome performance in Stage 17. An American has topped the Tour field for eight years in a row now. We all know who won the previous seven.

“It’s an American Tour … It’s an American Tour … we come into your town, we’ll mow your riders down, it’s an American To-ooo-ooour!” (With apologies to Grand Funk Railroad.)

– Steve