C-J letter-writers vs. Willmot

In my most recent blog entry, I detailed some of my complaints about Willmot's piece on the Creation Museum. Now, to relate the thoughts of two who responded to the C-J through letters to the editor.

First, the CCO of the CM, Mark Looy...

On Sunday, a former science instructor wrote a scathing commentary about our new Creation Museum near Cincinnati. Unlike a careful scientist, he made several mistakes and misrepresentations. Among them:

He misspells our president Ken Ham's name, but that is the least of the column's problems.

To add insult to injury, the editor who labeled the pictures misspelled his name twice more for good measure. Should we infer anything from such an effort on a little but important detail-- from a scientist and an editor?

He is absolutely wrong: Creationists do believe in natural selection. We even present it in our museum (we wonder if the writer has ever visited). In fact, Charles Darwin was not the first to fully describe natural selection; it was a creationist, Edward Blyth, 24 years before Origin of Species. Darwin just popularized an already existing idea and tagged it onto his belief about origins. (Blyth, though, did not believe that natural selection could be a mechanism to produce new genetic information in creatures that could, over time, turn molecules into men.)

A nice, ironic historical detail. And Looy makes the point that there is some (considerable) distance between natural selection and evolution as a comprehensive explanation for the development of life.

The writer makes it a point to stress that admission to the Natural History Museum in London is free, but our museum is not. Apples and oranges. More than 80 percent of that British museum's funding comes from a government department, but we have not taken a penny of tax money. Does the columnist suggest we should accept government monies so that our high-tech museum could also be free?

Very funny!

On the contrary, Noah did not have to save "all" the species on the ark. (Fish, other marine animals, etc., were not needed, as the Bible clearly teaches.) There were probably fewer than 16,000 biblical "kinds" (not species) of land animals required, which would have filled only half of the enormous ship.

While we don't have as many scientists as the London museum (the writer used the "argument from authority" -- that the majority determines truth), the writer conveniently omits that our non-profit, non-government-subsidized ministry has seven full-time staff who hold doctorate degrees. We are not anti-science, as was suggested many times in the column.

A bit of a tangent, but useful info...

Ironically, we were the ones accused of being dogmatic. But it is educators such as this writer who continue to censor those who want to question the prevailing view.

Boom!

And now, a few words from Jane Lindsey, apparently a lay-person from Louisville...

Wow, someone must really feel threatened to warrant two articles on the Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky in Sunday's Courier-Journal and, need I mention, both negative.

A reasonable inference-- and similar to what we saw a few months ago from the C-J on Clarence Thomas.

I want to address the...language and tone of the article. Christian parents are "inflicting" injustice on our children. We are "throwing away reason" and when all else fails, let's resort to name-calling: "close-minded, non-thinking, anti-reasoning, etc."

C'mon Jane, don't be so surprised! This is Rhetoric 101. If you don't have much of an argument, use logical fallacies and ad hominems. And it's simply not in good taste for you to point out that Mr. Willmot was being a jerk.

I do not home-school my children but know many families that do...[T]hese families, mostly highly educated, well-informed parents (many of whom are former educators themselves) are coming under fire from individuals like Willmot, who appear to have an agenda to change how they perform this task. In fact, this whole article appears to be a thinly masked effort to that end.

Boom!

If Willmot prefers his "bang" theory to the "poof" theory, so be it. He has his museums and now we have ours, and as he points out, his are much better because they are free and we all know that is the measure of worth and value in this society.

Ouch! A nice punchline to a great letter. Way to go, Jane!