The decline of science education

What can you say about the state of education and the future of this country when there is the opening today of the Creation Museum Fantasyland, a new $27 million monstrosity of misinformation in Kentucky, paid for by Answers in Genesis and their donors.

Do we now wonder why China, India, Korea, Japan and Europe are up in science research and education and we are not? Want to bet where the Nobel Prize in the sciences will come from in the near future? Hint: not from the USA.

The LA Times had this to say about it:

[B]efore the first visitor risks succumbing to the museum’s animatronic balderdash — dinosaurs and humans actually coexisted! the Grand Canyon was carved by the great flood described in Genesis! — we’d like to clear up a few things: “The Flintstones” is a cartoon, not a documentary. Fred and Wilma? Those woolly mammoth vacuum cleaners? All make-believe.

Science is under assault, and that calls for bold truths. Here’s another: The Earth is round.

The museum, a 60,000-square-foot menace to 21st century scientific advancement, is the handiwork of Answers in Genesis, a leader in the “young Earth” movement. Young Earthers believe the world is about 6,000 years old, as opposed to the 4.5 billion years estimated by the world’s credible scientific community. This would be risible if anti-evolution forces were confined to a lunatic fringe, but they are not. Witness the recent revelation that three of the Republican candidates for president do not believe in evolution. Three men seeking to lead the last superpower on Earth reject the scientific consensus on cosmology, thermonuclear dynamics, geology and biology, believing instead that Bamm-Bamm and Dino played together.

The blogosphere is full of comments about this, mostly negative. The National Center for Science Education has collection of reactions to creation museum hoax. The Rally for Reason site is organizing a protest today, Monday May 28th outside the gates.

I shudder to think of the uninformed masses that bring their children, yet incapable of critically assessing the material presented, and believing that the Flintstones depicted real life at the time.