If this is supposed to be an educational institution and not a religious institution, does that mean that it leaves Ken open to lawsuits because of selling false information:
scam -noun 1. a confidence game or other fraudulent scheme, esp. for making a quick profit; swindle. -verb (used with object) 2. to cheat or defraud with a scam.
con -adjective 1. involving abuse of confidence: a con trick. -verb (used with object) 2. to swindle; trick: That crook conned me out of all my savings. 3. to persuade by deception, cajolery, etc. -noun 4. a confidence game or swindle. 5. a lie, exaggeration, or glib self-serving talk: He had a dozen different cons for getting out of paying traffic tickets.
fraud -noun 1. deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage. 2. a particular instance of such deceit or trickery: mail fraud; election frauds. 3. any deception, trickery, or humbug: That diet book is a fraud and a waste of time. 4. a person who makes deceitful pretenses; sham; poseur.
Of course the response will be that carbon dating is flawed,
If they use carbon dating it WILL be flawed: that's only good to 50,000 years so the best you would get is +50,000 years. They will use some other radiometric dating method (or two for good measure).
What they have is a number of intentional missuses of radiometric testing where they know (because science has documented cases where yoy get anomalous dates) they get "wrong" dates.
What they are completely unable to deal with is the vast numbers of dates that correlate and consistently show an old age.
You need to close down the Constitution first in order to allow for this to happen. Are you sure that's what you want to do -- toss the Constitution into the recycle/trash bin?
That depends Buz. IF they are pretending to be an educational museum that presents facts to the population in exchange for hard currency and are in fact showing lies, misrepresentations, falsehoods, and such, then they can be (and should be) prosecuted for fraud.
IF on the other hand they hide behind religion they MAY have some protection.
My guess is that they will hide and run and duck as much as possible because they ARE being fraudulent.
This is a solicitation no better than many old-time florida real-estate scams:
quote:7. How can people give to help with the operating costs as the museum prepares to open May 28? In addition to outright gifts of cash, supporters can consider donations of appreciated securities, appreciated real estate, and also gifts that return income (e.g., charitable gift annuities, trust remainder bequests, etc.).
Thousands of us consider stuff in your kind of museum to be unproven and false.
Feel free to dispute it in the scientific papers. What you consider it to be has no bearing on what it is: you need to make a case not a complaint.
So how much presented in museums must be considered empirically factual to avoid prosecution iyo?
There should be no material that has been previously shown to be fraudulent, false, misrepresentations of reality. (exception would be displays about frauds -- and how they had been uncovered).
Paluxy human footprints is a false, not a different interpretation of evidence. Presenting humans as living at the same time as (non-avian) dinosaurs is false. Presenting the earth as less than 4.5 billion years is false. Collecting money in exchange for false information is fraud.
Re: The bogus buck stops with the scientific community.
That's all you have? That hoary old story? Do we really need to revisit one more time that it was science that uncovered and exposed the fraud, and that NO museum uses it as a case FOR evolution (as much as creationists fraudulently try to portray it)?
As opposed to current fraud used by creationists. Doesn't matter what Ken Ham claims to believe: falsehood is falsehood. The age of the earth is a FACT and the earth IS old.
What is this? "Look - Piltdown - therefore fraud is okay"?
Re: The bogus buck stops with the scientific community.
Here is an example of a bonafide proven lie and it was not perpetrated on the kiddies by a Christian Biblicalist creationist for the three decades of it's scientific display and use.
It was not perpetuated by scientists either.
But without even going into any inaccuracies in this claim, what I am actually asking for is exactly the same standard being applied to creationists: that when fraud and misrepresentations are uncovered that the displays be revised to correct the errors.
Understaning the world and interpretation of evidence has a lot to do with one's backgound including education, upbringing, area/method of study, intelligence, access to research, ability to understand, willingness to observe all possibilities, et al. Without people like Ham and others all the people would have is what has been programmed into their thinking at school and the secularist museums.
Without people like Ken Ham brainwashing kids with false arguements about evolution and the age of the earth maybe people could -- just maybe -- decide things for themselves based on real information and logical evaluation of the facts instead of taking pap-packaged shinola as reality.
The evidence is that man of all cultures has had a religious bent since records have been kept. Imo, that is idicative that there is a spiritual dimension in the universe and that venues of observing alternatives to secularism are good for study and observation of what exists.
Then lets NOT lie about what is real and valid in this world and use that as a basis to see what we can unwrap about the spirit world eh? This evidence that you speak of is also not specific to any one religion nor is there much congruence between them, so what is real about the spirit world cannot be judged by any ONE of them eh?
As per topic, I don't agree with some of Ham's stuff, including young earth and young universe, imo an alternative kind of museum is good to observe. Likely there is some things in Ham's place that will allow for folks to observe where Ham's kind come from and why they interpret the evidence differently than secularists.
Trying to have it both ways Buz? Seems like you are vacillating here: you agree that the earth is old, but you want it to be okay for Ken Ham and his ilk to portray a false impression of the age of the earth to people.
I still ask: when is it time to stop lying to the kids about things like the age of the earth?
If alternative thought were outlawed as was the case last century in the secularist communist block nations, freedom to investigate and discuss all the possibilities would not be possible.
Places in the world where alternative thought is most likely to be outlawed are the dictatorships - whether communist (in name) or theocracies (in fact). In the free world there is no need to outlaw alternative thought -- in fact alternative thought is NOT outlawed and is HIGHLY respected and encouraged in science -- provided it is an alternative and not fraudulent misrepresentation or denial of facts: then science is very harsh, not just on creationists but on other scientists. It needs to be a true alternative, and denial is not an alternative explanation, it is a failure of explanation.
We do not need to discuss whether the earth is flat or whether the sun orbits the earth. We do not need to discuss the fact that gravity operates not just on earth but on the moon and the other planets, that the motions of the stars is dependent on gravity.
The first standard of evidence is to stop lying about the evidence eh?
Let the parents decide what they want the kiddies to see and what they don't.
Is it okay for parents to lie to their kids? Is it okay for parents to withhold the truth about the age of the earth from their kids? Is it okay for ignorant parents to prevent their children from learning more about the world than they did? Is that good parenting or is it child abuse?
looks like it doesn't have any factual information at all ... and the most time consuming part would be
quote:SFX Theater
Hold onto your seat! Take a journey through time that you’ve never experienced before! Biblical history comes alive, as God’s Word”beginning in Genesis”explains the universe we see today.
Razd, me friend, you and Jar sure do like to use that nasty word, "lie," when it comes to debate. It appears that since your arguments are weak, you think this handy little nasty meanspirited word will somehow lend credence to your weak arguments.
No, I like to use the word "lie" when it is a fact in the matter. Calling a spade a spade. Don Batten lies about dendrochronology and Ken Ham lies about the age of the earth. If my argument is weak how come you can't refute it? There is no way to sugar coat it: the earth is old and telling people it is young is a lie. Collecting money to tell them in a manner that would lead gullible people to think there was some validity to the claim is fraud.
The standard of evidence is this:
multiple different methods all point to the earth being old.
multiple different methods date specific parts of the earth to the same ages.
multiple methods validate the ages derived.
the ages correlate with the layers of sediment and
there can be evidence of young parts of the earth in an old earth reality, but there cannot be evidence of old parts of the earth in a young earth reality.
The evidence that Ken Ham presents is incomplete, misrepresentative and misleading and it does not deal with the overwhelming mountains of evidence for an old earth. It can't deal with it, so it must ignore it, and this is the lie of omission.
Like Don Batten not telling how he determined that up to 6 false rings occurred in one sample of one kind of tree, in order to claim that dendrochronology is unreliable because it cannot determine (with a microscope) when false tree rings exist. Notice the Catch-22 of his lie: either he is lying about not being able to determine false tree rings or he is lying about the false tree rings in his sample. This is one way to know someone is lying -- when they contradict themselves.
Now when it comes to Ken Ham, we have the standard "Dawkins possibilities" for bearing false witness:
stupidity
ignorance
maliciousness or
insanity
I think we can rule out stupidity and uneducated ignorance, the idea that he has never encountered the concept of an old earth or the evidence for it, and that if told would say "I did not know that" -- so that leaves us either maliciousness or insanity.
Willfull ignorance is insanity, being at least the level of delusion:
Malicious would include the charges of lying and fraud. It is possible to be both malicious and insane. Personally I think the "Cult of Ignorance" (to use Jar's favorite phrase) induces a level of insanity, just as any cult does on it's members, by forcing them to chose between reality and the mythos of the cult beliefs.
kalimero Message 78 covers the facts of the issue regarding fraud pretty well. The intent of the museum is to separate gullible people from their money while coddling to their belief structures and giving false reassurances based on falsehoods.
Ken Ham lies about the age of the earth, he lies about evolution, and he lies about the co-existence of man and dinosaurs. He sells these lies to gullible people in order to make a profit. That there are a lot of gullible people in America makes it easy for him to do so, but it does not make it right.
So, Buz, old friend: when is a good time to stop telling lies to children?
Science stopped using "Piltdown Man" as soon as the fraud was uncovered -- uncovered by doubting scientist, the accumulating evidence that contradicted it, and the eventual confessions of the perpetrators. When will creationists stop using their frauds?
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