Bill Nye tours the Ark Encounter

[snooper2]

[exboyfil]

1. Local newspaper in Iowa running ads for bus trip

to the Ark and Creation "Museum" Around $700/person.

[democratisphere]

3. Does that include an all expense paid voyage with room, meals, amenities and gratuities on the ark?

It is difficult to argue or reason with ignorance.

[Turbineguy]

2. This is a bit like a steak recipe from a confirmed lifelong vegetarian.

(Not that I mind vegetarians!)

The Bible was written for the times and the understanding that people had then. The knowledge of the physical world and natural history was limited. But the understanding an knowledge of human nature and behavior was quite well developed.

Why use the Bible for its weakness instead of its strength?

[hatrack]

4. Why? Simple: it's not the late Bronze Age anymore . . .

Because this country is full of people who think we can run things a la 4,200 BC.

We can't.

It doesn't matter what their Magic Book tells them.

The Earth orbits the Sun; infectious disease is caused by viruses and bacteria, not demons; evolution and global warming are real; we are not the center of everything.

[MineralMan]

6. You know, that's not really the thing.

Yes, it was written at a time when human knowledge was very limited. That is no longer the case, but many people still claim that everything in the Bible is the God-given truth. So, there are plenty of people who think dinosaurs walked with humans and the Grand Canyon is a relic of the Great Flood.

So, we have museums like this one and the Creation Museum, where obvious untruths are taught as truth, simply because they align with an ancient text. It's not really the Bible that people are attacking. It is people who refuse to understand that we know more now than a bunch of desert nomads a few thousand years ago knew.

I've read the Bible several times. I'm an atheist. I find it interesting as a look into human nature and for some natural sorts of wisdom that it has in common with most old scriptures. It's not a science book, though, and people who treat it as if it were are foolish beyond description.

There are multiple ancient scriptures out there that attempt to explain the unexplainable to people who had no benefit of science and who lived long ago with almost no technology at all. The Bible's not unique in that. It's one of those. There are people who adhere to many of those old religious scriptures. But, most people have benefited from our knowledge of our world that has been gained over the years since those old texts were written.

Other people refuse to accept any alteration from the tales told in those old books and reject everything we've learned since. That's what people object to, you see, not the books. They are what they are.

[Turbineguy]

29. I tend to go with

Pascal's Wager on this one.

[PsychoBabble]

7. I wish many WOULD look at it this way ...

"Why use the Bible for its weakness instead of its strength?"

It is the forced application of limited/outdated knowledge to current life -- moving beyond the human condition, about which the Bible and other religious books have much of use to say -- to trying to counter science, and current knowledge that is the crux of the problem.

I can use a rock to pound a nail into a board ... or a hammer, or a nail gun. I might have personally legitimate reasons for using ANY of them, either practically or philosophically, but I don't try to act like the others don't exist.

[msanthrope]

11. Oh the poor Bible!!! Remember that blasphemy is a victimless crime. nt

[gratuitous]

18. Once upon a time . . .

Once upon a time we used to know how to handle the language of myth and legend. But that got to be too weird for some people, so they insisted that these stories had to be literally true. Even though the language of the stories themselves was a dead giveaway that the story was an allegory or a metaphor, some people couldn't quite grasp it.

Think of the character Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy, whose race takes everything literally. When someone declines to explain something to Drax because it would just go over his head, Drax objects, saying that his reflexes are terrific, and nothing would ever go over his head, because he would grab it first. These are the people who can't grasp an allegorical story meant to explain rainbows.

[Mariana]

20. I think a lot of people worship the book itself

and not the god described therein.

I have had a little success getting people to consider the possibility that every word shouldn't be taken literally with the following argument:

"Didn't Jesus teach ideas using parables? He made up stories to illustrate his points, yes? Well, if Jesus did that, why don't you think his dad could have done it too?"

Obviously, this doesn't work with people who believe the parables in the Gospels were true stories about things that actually happened.

[gratuitous]

22. You can imagine their shock when I tell them Jesus wasn't shadowed by four guys

No, Jesus wasn't followed around by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Makes their eyes spin in opposite directions. No, the gospels weren't written for at least 30 years, and as long as 70 years after the time of the crucifixion. Steam or smoke begins coming out of their ears. Your Wal-Mart Nativity scene has both shepherds and wise men, but those characters are from two different stories; according to the gospels themselves, the shepherds beat the wise guys by a couple of years. Top of the head blows off, followed by sputtering rage and imprecations of heresy.

[LexVegas]

5. Nye is a better man than me. He has patience that I cannot comprehend. nt

[Phentex]

13. Yep! And look how many times he was interrupted!

I guess this guy believes if you say something repeatedly, it becomes a fact.

[hunter]

17. Hah, you posted this as I was composing my reply.

My feelings exactly. You can't argue with that kind of fool.

[Kimchijeon]

8. I remember a WTF with Marc Maron where he went to the Creationist Museum

Hilarious shit for sure... just bonkers lol

thanks for posting this i gotta see this!

[Lotusflower70]

9. I absolutely love Bill Nye

I appreciate his patience and restraint. That Ken Ham is batshit. His understanding of the Bible is quite distorted actually. Those poor deluded young people.

[hatrack]

10. BTW, the county where the "Museum" is located is about to go bankrupt - Ark tax incentives

When Grant County, Kentucky decided to shell out as much as $18 million in tax incentives to creationist Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter museum, it made a bet that it was going to become a major tourist attraction.

Instead, as local news station WKYT reports, the Ark hasn’t brought in nearly as much money to the area’s economy as once projected, and the county itself is now “teetering on bankruptcy.”

“It’s been a great thing but it’s not brought us any money,” Grant County Judge-Executive Steve Wood said while taking a break during a recent budget meeting, according to WKYT. Grant County faces a major budget shortfall that Wood has said might have to be solved through a combination of a 2% payroll tax and job cuts to the county’s workers.

Ed. - emphasis added.

EDIT

The Ark Encounter, which opened in the summer of 2016, aims to offer a biblical re-interpretation of history in which human-like giants and dinosaurs existed together and regularly engaged in gladiator-style combat tournaments.

EDIT/END

Pardon me while I

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/county-that-shelled-out-tax-rebates-for-creationist-ken-hams-ark-museum-teetering-on-bankruptcy/

[Bayard]

12. Grant County

Grant County is south of Cincinnati. They'd probably done much better putting it further east.

I'm trying to wrap my head around giants battling with dinosaurs....... I don't remember anything about Adam and Eve being giants. Or that the Bible mentions dino's.

[Duppers]

27. I agree, farther east would have helped.

Every time I think of Cincinny, I think of this. Sorry.

Heywood Banks wrote and performed his novelty song "Big Butter Jesus" about the statue.

[miyazaki]

14. When's the auction start?

[hunter]

15. Nye's a braver man than I am.

I just want to smack people who are so damned pleased to celebrate their own profound ignorance. That's not any kind of faith, it's just stupidity.

Even if you are a religious person, why would you worship a god who is SO DAMNED FUCKING SMALL, CRUEL, AND PETTY??? Why would you choose to be a little man of clay on some mean-drunk deity's Dungeons and Dragons board?

Why wouldn't you celebrate the incredible complexity and diversity of life on earth, of all your recognized "Creation?"

Theodosius Dobzhansky, an evolutionary biologist and Eastern Orthodox Christian said, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution."

Once you see evolution in biology you can't unsee it, even in your own self; all those otherwise inexplicable engineering flaws of the human body.

I'm an amateur evolutionary biologist by some formal training and greater inclination. I was raised in an environment of religious insanity and conflicting faiths, but I guess I got lucky because it was also fiercely intellectual environment. Blathering idiocy, especially about science, was unacceptable.

Alas, there's no arguing with Creationists and I've done more than my fair share of it. Those Creationists stalking the public schools are the worst.

[dembotoz]

16. good theater useful to both sides

[NurseJackie]

19. It's like arguing with non-Democrats! Circular logic that gets nowhere! Arghhhh!

"God exists because the Bible says God exists—and, since God wrote the Bible, it must be true."

[Warren DeMontague]

21. Listening to Ken Ham makes my brain hurt

Remember when he trolled DU? Good times.

[Maru Kitteh]

24. How could I have missed that?

Must have been good times indeed.

[Warren DeMontague]

25. I was on MIRT, and I got to ban him.

it made my month!

[Maru Kitteh]

26. Oh man. I am SO jealous. That's a bit of warm sunshine

for a rainy day, for sure! Hitting the nuke button on that one must have been sooooo satisfying.

[Warren DeMontague]

28. we batted him around a bit, first, like a kitty with a chew toy

but really, as that Bill Nye video so effectively illustrates, it's just useless trying to debate creationists. It's like the definition of a pointless activity. Shit like "You can only prove 99.9999% of your assertion and I can prove 0%, ergo we're both operating entirely on faith" derpy derp derrrrrrp.

He showed up in response to people making fun of his book, which had this absolutely hysterical page in it:

(Deinonychus: "NO MEAT FOR ME, THESE LEMONS ARE GREAT, THANKS!&quot



But, I wrote a song about the experience, kind of more or less to the tune of "I'll be home for Christmas"

Thus proving why I'm not a songwriter.

I think I have a new Christmas song

I banned Ken Ham for Christmas
I sent him his MIRT PPR
I banned Ken Ham for Christmas
I banned him, he wont get too far

Our Christmas feast was lacking
Our Pizza was looking quite bare
It needed some old time troll whacking
Some christmas Ham for MIRT to share

He wanted to give us the good news
How dinos and man got along
But I banned Ken Ham for Christmas
I called his shit silly and wrong.

[Warren DeMontague]

23. Think "circus", and then make it float.. and hope nobody pulls the plug on you