The official synopsis for Religulous says that Bill Maher "applies his characteristic honesty" to the subject of faith. Apparently, he has a somewhat selective definition of honesty. I've noted the sleights of hand used with Francis Collins and John Adams.
Consider, too, what they did to the Creation Museum near Cincinnati.
Now, in a documentary on religion, I think it's fair game to probe creationism and the role of "young earth" theology in public policy making. So I can understand why Maher was dying to get his crew inside the Museum and interview the leaders of the Museum. But he faced a problem. As a well known critic of religion, there's no way the Museum would give him free run of the museum. They'd turned down request to appear on Maher's TV show, figuring that they would simply become an object of ridicule.
So, Maher and company tricked them.
First, they secured cooperation by completely concealing Bill Maher's role in the movie. According to representatives of the Museum, on January 30, 2007, they got an email from someone named Bethany Davis. She gushed that "photos of the museum on your website are awe inspiring and we feel that showcasing this amazing museum to a broad audience would add to spreading the word of Answers In Genesis."The "documentary" would "explore the cultural landscape of the United States through highlighting religious centers, historical sites and key religious experts." They noted that the "producers involved have worked on various projects for CBS news, ABC news, Discovery Channel, FX and MSNBC to name a few." (Full email below the fold)
There was no mention of Bill Maher.
According to Ken Ham, the president of the Museum, here's what happened next. On the day of the interview, the crew (but not Maher) showed up at the main entrance, as planned, to interview Ham. He spoke to them about the Museum and gave a tour. Again, no mention of Maher.
After a while, the crew requested to interview Ham in his office. Maher snuck in a side door of the museum (picture, from a security camera, above) and went to Ham's office. Ham says he doesn't get HBO and didn't remember who Maher was. He assumed he was another reporter from the crew. He gave an interview which became the grist for a brutal segment in Religulous.
Ham saw the movie recently and claims, not surprisingly, that Maher left out parts where he was best defending his position. "Their agenda was to mock people," Ham said. "They don't believe in ethics."
Asked to comment on the idea that they tricked the Creation Museum into cooperating, the director, Larry Charles, sent me this statement via email:
"Ken Ham is a media whore. He has cultivated all sorts of media outlets to promote his agenda. Why should he be allowed to get off the hook? Why shouldn't he be asked some tough questions? He has built this quasi-museum to quasi-science, isn't there a journalistic obligation to scrutinize this?He has gotten a free ride from the media. He is a dangerous man. We don't even know where the money comes from to build that $30 million museum. If Mike Wallace had grilled him for '60 Minutes', we wouldn't be having this conversation. Just because someone doesn't want to talk to us, doesn't mean they shouldn't be talked to."
The ends, in other words, justify the means. Now, as I said at the outset, I think Creation Science is certainly a fair topic for a movie like this. But for a movie that draws blood by accusing religious figures of dishonesty and hypocrisy, it's more than a little ironic that deception was such a central part of their modus operandi.
It would be one thing if Bill Maher marketed this only as a prank-filled comedy. But Religulous claims to be a "documentary" that raises profound questions of life and death. How can we take it seriously as a documentary if it relied so heavily on deceit?
The full email:
Dear Mr. Ken Ham,My name is Bethany Davis and I am currently working on a documentary for First Word Productions, an independent production company.
Our documentary seeks to explore the cultural landscape of the United States through highlighting religious centers, historical sites and key religious experts. The producers involved have worked on various projects for CBS news, ABC news, Discovery Channel, FX and MSNBC to name a few.
After seeing one of your speaking engagements, and then further researching Answers In Genesis and The Creationist Museum we think you could be an invaluable inclusion in our exploration. Reading through some of your online material, we believe that you and your museum can illustrate Creationism in an insightful and engaging way that will appeal to our audience. We would be especially thrilled to be able to include a guided tour of the Creationist Museum with you. The photos of the museum on your website are awe inspiring and we feel that showcasing this amazing museum to a broad audience would add to spreading the word of Answers In Genesis
I'd love to discuss the details of this project with you further over the phone. I can be reached at
323-860-3553
323-202-7343or via email. When might be a good time to call and where can I best reach you?
I look forward to hearing from you.All the Best,
Bethany Davis
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bunyan
i look at the evidence found in research surrounding biblical stories. based on the geological understanding of many geologists around the world, they believe that there was, before the time of jesus, a great flood.
" A ''flood of biblical proportions'' has become a cliche, but researchers studying the Black Sea may have actually found such a flood.
In the book ''Noah's Flood,'' geologists Walter Pitman and William Ryan theorized that some 7,000 years ago melting glaciers raised the Mediterranean Sea level to where it poured through the Bosporus at 200 times the volume of Niagara Falls, flooding thousands of square miles and creating the Black Sea." http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-65223912.html
but everything except a flood occuring is just fanciful. bunyan just to clear up exactly where our views are, can you explain to me what you believe within the noah's ark story. including the 2 of every animal, flooding the enitre world etc.
Ridiculous. You obviously know only slightly more about evolution than Michael. I was referring to the actual results that were found left over from the experiment 50 years ago, that completely destroy the creationists arguments regarding the experiment in the first place. Not any change in thinking over how life may have formed(which is also ridiculous, since everything has been and will be on the table until refined to a single possibility; there has been no change in thinking).
Since you refuse to look at the issue clearly, and are getting repetitive, it's time I take the gloves off. Current biodiversity proves there is not a creator, as no creator would need such diversity. A creator would have made an efficient system capable of defending itself against change. Our environment is anything but.
The laws of physics prove there is no creator, as matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Logic proves that even if there is a creator(and your supposed one is certainly a lie told through the generations; proved as much over and over again), it has absolutely no meaning to any of us, as he/she/it is completely unaware of our existance and is incapable of altering or interfering in any way shape or form; as to be outside the box of our creation is to be oblivious to it and powerless to affect it.
You have nothing to stand on. And I am bored of this weak attempt of creationists to fight reality. One day you will be extinct, as there is no advantage in believing in this fiction, and every advantage to not believing in it. The greatest irony in your position is that evolution will literally destroy those who disbelieve in it, ensuring an end. The only question is when it'll finally happen. Fortunately, you're already down to about 10% of the population on a global scale. Only the Flat Earth Society numbers less. Even Scientology numbers more.
Vastet,
Has no post to support that issue of chirality has been solved which is the original argument of life originating from nothing. I am now posting this from the Answers in Genisis web site to show Vastet that once again I am correct and He is wrong. Vastet does not have answers only insults. Clearly I am right in my post and know the whole story.
October 25th 2008
News: “New Spark in Classic Experiments”
Zzzzzap! All it took was a helping of primordial stew and a bolt of lightning—or perhaps the hot gases of an angry volcano—and, voilà, you’ve got life.
It has now been more than half a century since the famous (or infamous) Miller–Urey experiments, which many still claim are evidence for an atheistic origin of life.
In the 1950s, scientists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey were hoping to recreate the supposed conditions of a primeval earth to see if they could engineer organic compounds. They essentially sent sparks through a mixture of gases, with the result being a handful of amino acids, the basic building blocks of proteins. Evolutionists have hailed the experiment as a stunning success ever since, claiming it shows how the necessary ingredients for life could have arisen spontaneously. (BBC News notes that newspapers of the time “were overstating the case when they claimed he had actually recreated life in the lab.”)
Now, there’s a new twist as vials from the experiment have turned up in the hands of one of Miller’s students. When Miller died last year, a former student of his, Jeffrey Bada, inherited his lab materials—including “several little cardboard boxes, taped shut and all dusty, carefully labeled with all of these little vials with dried material from his experiments,” said Bada, now at the University of California–San Diego.
Of specific interest to Bada were vials from experiments Miller conducted to replicate conditions inside a hot volcano. Why? BBC News explains:
These experiments were the ones that intrigued Jeffrey Bada. Because not long after Miller’s original experiments, it became clear the Earth’s early atmosphere was nothing like the “reducing” mixture simulated in his apparatus.
The first experiments remained iconic in their attempt at simulating pre-biotic chemistry, but became irrelevant in detail.
Likewise, the WIRED science blog notes:
Miller is famed for the results of experiments on amino acid formation in a jar filled with methane, hydrogen and ammonia—his version of the primordial soup. However, his estimates of atmospheric composition were eventually considered inaccurate. The experiment became regarded as a general rather than useful example of how the first organic molecules may have assembled.
Those facts are of interest to creationists, who have long pointed out that the Miller–Urey experiment not only didn’t create life or anything near it, but also failed to replicate what evolutionists themselves thought about the early earth. In fact, there were a whole host of problems with the Miller–Urey experiment that remind us how little evolutionists have explained about a supposed “accidental” origin of life (for more, see the linked articles below). (Of course, evolutionists seem to mention those facts more freely now that they’ve found a “better” experiment!)
The hype has now shifted to Miller’s “volcano” experiments, because, according to Bada, the vials made both more of some of the amino acids, and produced a greater diversity of amino acids overall—a total of 22.
“What we suggest is that volcanoes belched out gases just like the ones Stanley had used, and were immediately subjected to intense volcanic lightning,” Bada explained, noting that electrical storms frequently accompany volcanic eruptions. WIRED quotes Indiana University graduate student Adam Johnson, a co-author on Bada’s study, who claimed, “The amino acid precursors formed in a plume and concentrated along tidal shores. They settled in the water, underwent further reactions there, and as they washed along the shore, became concentrated and underwent further polymerization events.”
It sounds like the same old song and dance to us: evolutionists, based on a carefully controlled laboratory scenario, build a just-so story of how things just maybe, just might have come together and—like magic!—fallen right into line as chains of RNA. Never mind that creating amino acids would only be the first step of many progressively more unlikely ones in organizing life. Never mind that they cannot explain how a meaningful code for building proteins could arise in the first place, let alone how chemicals could organize into cells more complicated than our latest technology. Never mind that they have yet to show, experimentally or otherwise, how a genome can mutate new information. Never mind that . . . (the list goes on).
If one has the faith in directionless chance that evolutionists do, why even bother with a step-by-step model of how life originated? They may as well believe that in a primordial pool one day, every single molecule—by pure chance—organized in exactly the right place to create a fully formed human!
:)
Person who suffers,
I was unable to read the whole article unless I signed up for highbeam. I don't like to sign up and put my credit card out there any more than necessary. If there is something specific in the article you'll need to post it for me
"can you explain to me what you believe within the noah's ark story. including the 2 of every animal, flooding the enitre world etc"
I can give reasons, I believe it to be an actual event but I think it will take several posts and chances for you to either disagree or agree. We have to start with current day thought on geology and recongnize its foundation.
Charles Lyell is the founder of modern geology. The key to the past is the present day processes, or "Uniformitarianism". This belief has clouded many discoveries and likely the one you posted would have been rejected years ago because of the fact that we dont observe huge volumes of water pouring out and making the Black Sea or other seas. The fact that there is acceptance is a reflection of movement tword what is called "Actualism", which allows for events like the "Black Sea flood of biblical..." on occasion as shaping geology.
Any person in the right mind has to admit that at one point all mountain ranges were under water. The highest mountain ranges have sedimentary rock, and fossils which is formed under water so to say these mountains were never under water is ridiculous.
So then where is the argument? Its more of a question of how do mountains form? Can they form quickly?
Uniformitarinism would say mountains have slowly pushed up over years and years. This is a belief on that model of uniformitarianism. Current studies suggest that erosion rates currently out pace any uplift that is occuring. So at some point in the past mountains would have had to move faster.
Water run off post ice age would still fit in a Biblical time frame having the ice age occur very rapidly in 300-500 years and can still account for a Black sea water runn off theory just fine. 7,500 years ago is picked because its believed to be that last ice age. (I think it was more recent)
A global flood with rapid moving geologic plates can explain mountain building, it can give a much more accurate scenario for the reason of the ice age with the oceans having been mixed and warmed along with increased vocanic activity. There is no really good explanation for the ice age to begin with, which is why there are many competing ideas as to why the ice age occured.
With your post we see how geologic features can and do happen rapidly, I can accept a global flood I feel it makes the most sense of all the evidence that is out there.
Past thinking for geologic processes have not allowed for what you have posted in the past. There is some mainstream movement that the Grand Canyon also was formed more quickly from a large release of water as well instead of slowly over millions and millions of years.
I'll stop there and then wait next post I'll talk about the Ark and animals.
:)
I guess you grew weary of the conversation take care. I will be thinking of you. Get your answers at Answers in Genesis for more answers.
Paul
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