The Creation Museum Responds to Earlier Post about SSA Visit

Last week I related the experience of a pastor who had visited the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, with the Secular Student Alliance (SSA).  Wearing the same badge as the SSA group and touring with them, he described how he felt rejected by several of the Christians in attendance.

Mark Looy, CCO of the Creation Museum, who was also present that day, thought the pastor’s views were too one-sided and responded with his own observations, which I am posting below.

We were amazed at how tolerant our 2,000 museum guests were of the rude behavior of dozens of atheists who toured our museum. (YouTube features some of that bad behavior.) At the same time, most of the 285 atheists were, thankfully, not disruptive. Yes, some of our guests were very unhappy with the behavior on display (when you pay admission to what is known as a family friendly place, you don’t expect to experience loud, boorish behavior, see offensive clothing, etc.), and so I did see some angry stares that signaled unhappiness that a visit was being disrupted. But I point out that the overwhelming majority of the 2,000 people took it all in stride (I walked through the museum several times to ask atheists to keep their voices down and to see how our other guests were reacting).I would guess (and after talking to museum staff) that the few angry stares came from a very tiny percentage of the 2,000 people there that day, hardly enough to indict the entire crowd.

Furthermore, I am proud of our staff’s behavior in trying to keep the disturbances to a minimum and in showing restraint. (Only one atheist was escorted out after being told not to film a private conversation – one that involved children.) We put on extra security personnel that day so that there would be a high-deterrent presence — that was because atheist bloggers were declaring ahead of time that they would be disruptive during their visit, from engaging in lesbian kissing to approaching our guests to question them about their Christian faith.

Our staff’s exemplary behavior was recognized by the tour organizer, who, despite her differences with us, wrote the following on a website:

“Now, I was absolutely blown away by how accommodating and friendly the Creation Museum staff were.They knew we were coming; they knew exactly who we were. And there had been a little bit of tension about the purpose of our visit before we went.But after we got there, the staff were just phenomenally polite and kind and helpful, and the security guards were very polite and helpful to us. We were expecting more tension, so to have everything so polite and so smooth was absolutely great. As an organizer, that was the biggest thing for me: just how well their staff handled our group.”–Lyz Liddell, SSA

Philosophy Word of the Day – Jürgen Habermas (1929- )

Image via Wikipedia

German philosopher. As a prominent member of the Frankfurt school, Habermas engages in critical study of the historical origins of human knowledge in many disciplines. His Theorie und Praxis: Sozial-Philosophische Studien (Theory and Practice) (1963) {at Amazon.com} and Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus (Legitimation Crisis) (1973) {at Amazon.com} examine the social conditions under which the uninhibited dialogue of an “ethics of discourse” is possible in the public literary sphere, serving the basic human needs to gain control over the natural world, to explore the character of interpersonal relationships, and to escape the domination of social power-structures. In Erkentniss und Interesse (Knowledge and Human Interests) (1968) {at Amazon.com} Habermas again emphasized the implications of social context for the development of epistemology. Habermas is also the author of Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (The Theory of Communicative Action) (1981) {at Amazon.com} and Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (Philosophical Discourse on Modernity) (1985) {at Amazon.com}, where he criticizes the more radical views of Foucault and Lyotard.

(Via Philosophical Dictionary)

Some recent statements by Habermas are fascinating, as related here.

A professed secularist who has spent nearly half a century arguing against religiously informed moral argument, [Habermas] made some arresting statements in his 2004 essay, “A Time of Transitions.”

“Christianity, and nothing else,” he wrote, “is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of western civilization.  To this day, we have no other options [to Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source.  Everything else is postmodern chatter.”

Apologetics 315 in Reasonable Faith Newsletter

Dr. William Lane Craig just posted his September newsletter at his Reasonable Faith website and gives a shout out to my recent interviewee, Brian, of Apologetics 315.

Podcasts

Did you see that our podcast “Reasonable Faith” was just ranked by the popular Apologetics315 blog as the #1 apologetics podcast available? (See it here:
http://apologetics315.blogspot.com/2007/10/16-best-apologetics-podcasts.html
.) Thanks to Kevin Harris for his great work! The same blogsite also listed our “Defenders” podcast at #11, for which I’m grateful.

Philip Pullman to Publish “The Scoundrel Christ”

Cover via Amazon

As if we didn’t have enough of these already . . .

He enraged America’s religious right with his portrayal of God as a senile old man in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and now Philip Pullman is set to court more Christian controversy – this time with a novel about “the Scoundrel Christ”.

The book will provide a new account of the life of Jesus, challenging the gospels and arguing that the version in the New Testament was shaped by the apostle Paul. “By the time the gospels were being written, Paul had already begun to transform the story of Jesus into something altogether new and extraordinary, and some of his version influenced what the gospel writers put in theirs,” said Pullman, who last year pronounced himself delighted that the His Dark Materials trilogy was one of the most “challenged” series in America’s libraries, boasting the most requests for removal from the shelves because of its “religious viewpoint”.

“Paul was a literary and imaginative genius of the first order who has probably had more influence on the history of the world than any other human being, Jesus certainly included. I believe this is a pity,” said Pullman. “The story I tell comes out of the tension within the dual nature of Jesus Christ, but what I do with it is my responsibility alone. Parts of it read like a novel, parts like a history, and parts like a fairy tale; I wanted it to be like that because it is, among other things, a story about how stories become stories.”

(Via The Guardian)