A Strange Fascination for the Creation Museum

The Creation Museum event is over a week away and the publicity is starting.

Steve Goble from the Mansfield NewsJournal is fascinated with the museum:

Perhaps, like me, you harbor a morbid fascination for the infamous Creation Museum near Cincinnati.

…

Maybe you’ve even opined that you’d prefer to have your skin peeled off — followed by a bath in orange juice — than spend a day at the Creation Museum.

…

There’s this morbidly curious side of me, however, that wants to see the vegetarian velociraptors.

He encourages readers to join the Secular Student Alliance on our trip there.

I really liked this excerpt from the article:

This field trip with Myers might be enough to get me inside the place. Walking through with a group of science geeks would be a blast; it’d be sort of like Mystery Science Theatre 3000, only we’d be heckling exhibits instead of bad sci-fi movies. Everyone would be racing to get off the best one-liners. The comedic competition alone would be intense.

Now that’s an aspect of this trip that hasn’t really been discussed.

With so many atheists (nearly 250 at last count) coming together for this event, I wonder how different their write-ups will be. No one wants to read 200 blog postings covering the same info.

We’ll all be trying to get different pictures, have different experiences, talk to different people… collectively, I imagine this will be more than you ever wanted to know about the museum 🙂

(Thanks to Ashley for the link!)

Portland ME Skept

I, for one, will be surprised if they get in. I’m betting the police are called and/or security blocks them from entering.

Myers’ group will be labeled “trouble-makers,” and the incident will be fodder for religious radio and TV complaints about how scientists are “intolerant.”

Any takers?
Jennifurret

Man, I have to think of some creative way to make my write up unique. Maybe it’ll be entirely in Hiakus!

Never thought I’d see
PZ on a dinosaur
My day is complete

Hmmm, better work on that a bit. Maybe I’ll just try to be the *first* person to update stuff. On that note, we really should make a list somewhere of everyone who’s going to be twittering/liveblogging so people can keep track.
Kevin

It would be very cool if bloggers within the collective group could divide-and-conquer the exhibits, so that each exhibit was photographed, reviewed, and analysed in detail by at least one blogger. A follow-up project could consilidate, organize, and publish the information into a book (I’d buy it) and perhaps a watered-down summarized pamphlet(now, where could we disseminate such a pamphlet?)
Jennifurret

Kevin, that’s an amazing idea. Not sure of the legal ramifications…but still pretty amazing nonetheless. You should send that idea to PZ.
Simon

@Portland ME skept

Well, the visit has been officially organized with the museum’s direction.
PZ even received a nice semi-threatening letter on the ‘museum’s policy toward guests’.

Now it is always possible for the museum to refuse them entrance at the last minute. Or throw them out for and use the accident as one more ‘proof’ of atheists being rudes and such…
Of course, PZ is aware of that and they are going to do their best not to give the museum any excuse.
Wait and see ’nuff said.
Jay

hahaha. i live in mansfield. i can’t believe this shit.
stephanie

Am I the only one who still can’t believe atheists are happily giving money to these people?
Portland ME Skept

Simon,

This is a museum built on intentional lies and religious fantasy; these people have implied on billboards that not believing in gods makes you a murderer. They are not going to let a bunch of atheists and skeptics look civil and well-behaved.

They control the venue, and if they prevent the Myers group from videoing the proceedings, they’ll be able to make up whatever they want about what the “horde” does.

I absolutely wish them the best, but every one of them should watch their back, literally and figuratively.
no2religion

I think you should collect all of the blog posts from the visit into a Blog Carnival.