On Monday, May 28th the religious right's new "Creation Museum" in Petersburg, Kentucky will open its doors. For those unaware, the Creation Museum is a $27 million structure, built to promote the idea that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and the lie that SCIENCE SUPPORTS THIS ABSURDITY!
Unlike previous attempts to refute science, the Creation Museum goes one step further: blatantly lying about what science does and does not say.
The organization behind the "Museum" -- Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis -- is among the most anti-science organizations in the country. Despite their claims to the contrary, they often imply that their efforts are pro-science, they have waged a consistent war on evolution and scientific understanding, especially among children -- this Museum is no exception.
With that in mind DefCon has launched two petitions -- one for national educators (preschool teachers to tenured professors) and one for concerned citizens -- encouraging Americans to voice their opposition to this deceptive institution and AiG's war on science.
Since yesterday, over 1,800 2,000 educators from all 50 states have joined our Educators Petition. Another 9,000 concerned Americans have signed on to the Citizens Petition.
The amount of resources already spent by AiG, as well as the media campaign they have waged, reveal just how serious they are about confusing our children and creating general uncertainties about bedrock scientific principles.
This effort, of course, is not new. As we've all seen with the various attempts to promote intelligent design in the classroom, or undermine science education with anti-evolution stickers in Georgia textbooks, the religious right will go to great lengths to fight scientific understanding in America.
However, the "Creation Museum" represents a new low in this campaign. Mimicking a real science museum, the "Creation Museum" is full of exhibits explaining how science proves that dinosaurs and humans co-existed a few thousand years ago, how Noah's Ark actually did carry all those species, and how fossils and the cosmos prove that the Earth is in fact 6,000 years old.
DefCon's efforts to inform citizens about what this institution is really about will only increase over the next few weeks.
In the mean time, be sure to join our petitions condemning AiG and the religious right's continuing war on science.