Monday, October 6, 2014

Founders Of Idaho Creation Museum Urge Visitors To 'Think Critically' | Boise State Public Radio

"This stone right here, you can see there's a man on it riding on a triceratops dinosaur."
Stan Lutz, Co-Founder, Northwest Science Museum (Boise, Idaho)
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I have written before about this group of creationist ideologues. This is a group who, like Ken Ham, have no qualms stating, "No apparent, perceived, or claimed interpretation of evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record." So in claiming they are a "science museum" is an out right false hood.
Most scientists, textbooks, and natural history museums would tell you the Earth is several billion years old, that plant and animal species evolved over time, and that dinosaurs died out millions of years before our human ancestors appeared. You might even take that as a given. But a large segment of the population believe something else happened.
That's the funny thing about science, it is not based on "belief" but evidence. As I have stated before, science is not a democracy.

The ole tornado in the junkyard gambit, “If you can make up a system that says there is no god, that things just happen by chance, then we're not accountable to any higher being,” he said. “And so you can do what you want and have no consequence.”

A blatant mis-statement of what science tells us; a strawman argument in which the analogy works by random chance to a final product that is unlike the beginning product. Evolution on the other hand operates by a fixed law - natural selection - complex results that are built up gradually; it is a cumulative process minus a specific target (airplane).

But this is the most baffling of what the "museum" presents:
“I think everybody needs to see the evidence we will have in the museum,” he added. “One of the things we have here in this vision center is probably the most controversial stones in the world. Because they show man and dinosaurs interacting.”

In one of the glass cases, Stan Lutz, one of the other founders, pointed out a collection of “Ica stones,” which he said are ancient stones from Peru.

“This stone right here, you can see there's a man on it riding on a triceratops dinosaur,” he said.

Lutz pointed to a tan colored stone with a man on a lizard-like creature.

“We have rocks showing at least 14 species of dinosaur that are all accurately drawn,” he said.
First, Stan Lutz is the least qualified person to be presenting evidence:
Stan has been interested in reconciling the Bible with science for most of his life, and is in the process of developing a creation museum. Toward that end, he has assembled numerous artifacts, which he displays for interested groups upon request or when speaking on various topics of creation apologetics.

He formally studied creation science through Kent Hovind’s ministry and successfully finished the equivalent of 20 college credits of creation science 101, 102, 103, and 104.

In early 2005 and part of 2006 Stan worked for Joe Taylor at the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, in Crosbyton, Texas. During his time at Mt. Blanco, he led museum tours and partipated in two fossil digs that resulted in the excavation of parts of two mammoths. Mr. Lutz also assisted with the assembly of a Bison priscus skull from Alaska, a large Hadrosaur skull, and a Psittacosaurus skeleton. In addition, he helped finish the Lone Star Mastodon skull found in San Antonio, Texas, which is said to be one of the largest four-tusked mastodon skulls ever found.

Stan also spent time at Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas along the Paluxy River examining the dinosaur and human footprints found together. While at Glen Rose, Stan and Ian Juby filmed a dig with Carl Baugh where several new tracks were discovered.
For the rest, I'll just leave this here.


And this as well.
The farmer who gave Cabrera his first stone was subsequently arrested for selling the stones to tourists. In his defence, he said that he had not in fact found them in a cave, as he had told Dr Cabrera, but made them himself. Other local people continue to make these engraved stones. They are selling forged hoaxes – a Bad Archaeology double whammy! However, Cabrera countered this claim with the sheer numbers of stones. As well as the 20,000 or so in his collection and those sold to tourists, he said that locals have found about 50,000, while the cave contains another 100,000. This is too great a number to be the effort of a single poor farmer with little spare time to create so many hoaxes. Nevertheless, he maintained that he carved at least some of them. Neither he nor Dr Cabrera revealed the location of the cave that is supposed to contain the huge cache of stones.

It is possible that some of the stones are genuine examples of pre-Columbian Peruvian art, but at least some are forgeries. Many of the allegedly anomalous images are so highly stylised that it is difficult to see exactly what is being depicted. Some are so plainly bizarre that they can be discounted, as in the example showing a human riding on the shoulders of a pteranodon, a species of pterosaur that (should the bizarre act ever have occurred) could never have supported such a weight. Those that show dinosaurs, especially, show them as reconstructions popular in the early to mid twentieth century did: as lumbering beasts, dragging their tails along the ground. We now know that this was not how they walked, a clear demonstration (as if any were needed) that the stones are a twentieth-century product and not the creations of people who saw living dinosaurs.
Founders Of Idaho Creation Museum Urge Visitors To 'Think Critically' | Boise State Public Radio

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