For those of us who worry at every eruption of intentional ignorance, such as Ken Ham’s Creation Museum, the comments of BBC’s correspondent Justin Webb produce a little salve:
There is nothing remotely convincing about the Creation Museum and frankly if it poses the threat to American science that some American critics claim it does, that seems to me to be as much a commentary on the failings of the scientific establishment as it is on the creationists.
And a bit later:
At the Creation Museum, goggle-eyed children watch depictions of the Great Flood in which children and their mums and dads are consumed, because God is cross.
In a nation of kindly moderate people I am not sure this is the future.
I put my faith – in America.
Mencken’s hoax about bathtubs in the White House was innocent enough, but impossible to kill (yet). Ham’s hoax about science, at $27 million (U.S. reports) or $30 million, doesn’t have the grace of its perpetrator confessing the hoax and urging correction (yet).
Faith in America is reassuring, until one remembers P. T. Barnum’s faith that Americans include a “sucker born every minute,” and Tom Sawyer’s assessment of small town politics: ‘Ain’t we got every fool in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?’
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
wassup wit this cruel world today?
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It’s unfortunate that many Americans do not look at the museum as a hoax. That’s because there are still people who gave $ to Oral Roberts, Tammy Faye, Jimmy Swaggart and Pat Robertson. They don’t need a creation museum or miracles to believe in God. They do, however, need deprogrammers.
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Thanks for posting this Ed. Seeing the various pictures and videos from the museum, I couldn’t quite figure out what was so impressive; I remember seeing cheesy animatronic (“Dino-mation”) dinosaurs as a kid and it seems the AiG museum is a bit stuck in the early 90’s in that respect. It might be set up in a generally appealing way or have lots of “purdy pictures,” but I didn’t see much substance to any of it.
I think Webb does hit on an important larger point, however; it’s not enough to simply fight creationism. Part of the reason we’re in this mess (and why I’m constantly running into people who don’t have a clue about evolution) is because evolution is not being properly taught in public schools (or even, at least in my experience, some colleges), leaving people to pick whatever origin for life they like best. Hopefully things can change, but given that science doesn’t count when it comes to the “No Child Left Behind” nonsense, I’m not especially optimistic at the moment.
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