A Project for an Atheist Visiting the Creation Museum?

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Guest Contributor

There are approximately 250 people joining the horde of atheists at the Creation Museum next week.

Perhaps one of them would like to create a Secular Audio Tour Guide of the museum?

Mark makes a fantastic suggestion:

From this trip, it should be possible to make a well documented guide that corresponds to a map of the museum. At each display, each sign, the announcer can explain why (or not) an exhibit is wrong, and how we know it is wrong. Perhaps an expert could be interviewed to explain the reasoning. Perhaps the explanation of each exhibit could be the voice of a different expert that attended this trip.

Once compiled, and added to a map of the museum, the MP3 would be made available for download to anyone who planned a future Creation Museum trip. A future secular visitor could accompany religious family on the trip, listen to real science, and still enjoy him or herself while friends and family praise the Lord.

Surely, enough people in the group have the scientific knowledge needed to pull this off. Others will have the tech savvy. Is anyone willing to offer help on this project?

(via The Calladus Blog)

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  • eL_sTiKo

    No doubt someone’s already said this, but doesn’t it seem like we’re contributing many an admission fee to the enemy? Funds they’ll use to further their nonsense?

    I am sleepy, and may be missing something here.

  • Stephan

    Of course we are giving money to them…and apparently we are expected to be so nice as to not openly disagree with them either.

  • MaryLynne

    Nah – From PZ’s comments he’s expecting disagreement and hard questions. He just doesn’t want anyone acting like an idiot to give them an excuse to throw them out and then publicize how evil we are. It don’t think that will stop them, but at least it will be clear we aren’t the provacatuers – um, people who started it.

    The $2500 isn’t enough to make or break them, but the newly energized and informed scoffing afterwards will be priceless.

  • Emily

    oooh, audio tour…good idea…

    Let’s make it happen, captain.

  • Autumnal Harvest

    IANAL, but I’m suspicious that a criticism of the museum that contained such a complete detailed copy of the contents of the museum could infringe on the museum’s intellectual property.

    Also, even if legal, I’m not sure this is really a great idea. It basically gives free publicity for the museum. Right now the probably the only people who go to the museum and get exposed to the bad arguments of the museum are creationist believers anyway. Are you really picturing those people deciding to search the web before their visit, downloading an MP3 of scientific arguments, and being convinced by them?

    Giving the arguments of the museum, and your counter-arguments, a wider audience, just helps them by giving their nonsense wider circulation; no matter how clear and convincing you think your arguments are, there are bound to be people who look at your mp3, and say “What an interesting scientific controversy. Maybe I’ll check out this museum and learn more.”

  • Eric

    Not saying this is a bad idea, but wow, I’ve gone and refuted creationist nonsense before. It can take a good paragraph to work through a sentence of their drivel. More if you need to explain it with less than technical terms. That’s how they do things, throw so much idiocy at “evolutionists” that we can’t refute all of it without becoming incredibly long winded in the process.

    Refuting their entire museum? That’s a series of novels.

  • http://www.atheistnexus.com/heathercrosby InsertCotku

    They opened that atrocity about six months after I moved out of Kentucky. (or at least that’s when I heard about it)

    I don’t even care about giving them my money, I just want to go to rant about it later. :D

  • http://www.kristenmary.com Kristen Mary

    I love the idea. I did also think about the money thing too. It is hard to financially support something you don’t believe in. Perhaps an equal donation to an Athiest charity to even it out?

  • http://lettherebereason.blogspot.com Michael

    Hemant, I’m very interested in helping with this.

    Unfortunately, I’m not a student or a member of the SSA, nor will I be able to attend the event. However, I’m an experienced web developer, and I’ve got an idea that could help.

    I’d be glad to (Completely free of charge) create a website where attendees will be able to go. I could set something up so that you can distribute a user-name and password to each attendee at the event.

    The website will be kind of like a wiki for the exhibits you see in the museum. Users will be able to enter their observations/comments on each exhibit. That way each person can provide their own evidence, or failing that; snarky comments.

    Once everyone is happy with the state of the text, users can volunteer to record narration for various exhibits.

    It’d be relatively fast to put it together, and I can host it on my own server for you.

    Send me an email and let me know what you think. Thanks.

  • http://www.calladus.com Calladus

    The nice thing about such a commentary is that it will allow the many atheists who want to see this train wreck of a museum to experience it vicariously. And you’ll have the chance to learn real science too.

    Creationists tour science museums with their own tour guides. I don’t see the problem with us doing the same.

    The audio description of the exhibits clearly falls under fair use. The MP3 should be given away freely. Attendees will be interviewed and will describe the exhibit and why it is wrong. I’m not a lawyer either, but I fail to see how copyright issues might be a problem here.

    “It’s too hard”, “It probably won’t work”. Stop thinking of reasons to not do this, and start thinking of reasons to do it.

    I’m in California and can’t make this trip.. but if someone gets the audio, I’ll help produce it.

  • cicely

    I know that some of us that aren’t going on the expedition are curious about that trainwreck. Since the plan is to thoroughly document the trip (I originally typoed “tripe”, and almost left it in), I see them as ‘taking one for the team’; making the trip so the rest of us don’t have to. And they get to enjoy the snark-party afterwards first-hand, while the rest of us have to settle for reports!

    If I had the time and money (and the knees), I go like a shot.

  • cicely

    And here’s a thought….

    If a ‘travelogue’ is made, and produced to a reasonably high level of professionalism, would there be a market for sales of the tapes or DVDs? Maybe something to defray the production costs and donate the ‘profit’ to a secular charity? Maybe the SSA would want to do it as a fund raiser?

    Or would this be a legal problem?

  • http://cycleninja.blogspot.com Paul Lundgren

    Hemant,

    I’m a former radio announcer who would be delighted to lend my talents to a studio voice-over on this project, but I am unable to attend in person. Let me know if I can help.

  • http://friendlyatheist.com Hemant Mehta

    I’m a former radio announcer who would be delighted to lend my talents to a studio voice-over on this project, but I am unable to attend in person. Let me know if I can help.

    Paul, thanks for the offer. If we can use your talents, I’ll be in touch!

    If a ‘travelogue’ is made, and produced to a reasonably high level of professionalism, would there be a market for sales of the tapes or DVDs? Maybe something to defray the production costs and donate the ‘profit’ to a secular charity? Maybe the SSA would want to do it as a fund raiser?

    Or would this be a legal problem?

    I would suspect we cannot film and sell anything that happens inside the museum. But I like the idea :)