Skepticism

Creationists Not Telling the Truth

I’m still in the Czech Republic at the AFO science film fest, but I wanted to quickly post this funny article that Hemant Mehta just sent me: Ken Ham sez Skeptics Not Telling the Truth, referring to a Skeptical Inquirer article that quotes me talking about the Paranormal Road Trip at CSICon:

The visit by Richard Wiseman, Jon Ronson, and Rebecca Watson to the Creation Museum in Kentucky didn’t happen. Recounted Watson: “They said yes, you can film. But you can’t make fun of us. We ended up skipping it.”

Ham spends several paragraphs building an ironclad argument that I lied about that, which is very strange. He seems to think “we ended up skipping it” is code for “the evil creationists barred the door and are hiding something.” No, actually. Their PR person was very polite, and she was clearly concerned that we would make fun of their beliefs. At our other stops, the believers we talked with were by and large aware that their beliefs were weird and were fine with us having fun and making jokes. It didn’t seem to us that the creationists would like it if we made jokes about their weird beliefs, which is perfectly reasonable. Here is what their spokesperson said, in part:

While I know you may disagree with what the Creation Museum is all about, we wanted to make sure you weren’t approaching it with the attitude that people who hold those views are “weird” or to be made fun of.

I think that’s understandable from their perspective. Because it was sounding like we couldn’t really have fun without worrying about the creationists later watching the videos and getting upset and feeling that we broke a promise if we were sarcastic, we skipped it and went to Mammoth Cave instead.

So that’s that, really. Much to Ken Ham’s disappointment, we aren’t spreading any kind of conspiracy theory about them. We really did just decide to skip their anti-science museum in favor of actual science.

I think you all won’t be disappointed, though, because we got some fun videos out of our trip, that will debut online for free within the next few weeks!

EDIT: after posting I realized I forgot to reference back to my title. I was going to make a joke about Ham saying we were just too cheap because we didn’t want to pay for our tickets. I AM cheap, though, to be fair.

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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11 Comments

  1. I live close to the museum. I wouldn’t pay to go either, the tickets are what? 25 dollars? Wait until the theme park (seriously, no joke, they are building rides) is finished so you at least get something for your money.
    Mammoth Cave is much better anyway. What tour did you go on? We’ve done half day, historic, and primitive.

  2. What about Genesis 10:40 “And it will come to pass that a demon with brown red purple blue hair in the form of a women and her minions with a strange way of speaking, as if from a distant northern isle or the far corner of the world will come to look upon Thy works to make mockery, but, being overawed in the presence of Thine dinosaurs, will lie about the whole thing and bugger off.”

    Explain that!

      1. “Your explanation for anything slightly peculiar is aliens, isn’t it? You lose your keys, it’s aliens. A picture falls off the wall, it’s aliens. That time we used up a whole bog roll in a day, you thought that was aliens as well.”

        – D. Lister

        1. “Look, you’re not thinking alien. That’s what aliens are: alien. They do alien things. Things that are… alien. Maybe this is the way they communicate.” – A total smeghead

  3. The reason you were denied FREE tickets was because of possible disruption of
    other guests as in any place you visit. You could have just bought tickets like
    everyone else and just walked right in.

    They allow credentialed journalists in no problem that report in a professional manner.
    Logic and common sense, with a dose of professionalism.

    It really is real science by the way.

    1. I’m sorry, what? :P Nowhere did they claim that they wanted, or that their visit was dependent on free tickets. As Rebecca pretty plainly wrote they simply felt that since they couldn’t have fun, joke around or whatever at the museum without ending up leaving the creationist museum people feeling like they’d been mislead, they decided to skip it and go to another place instead. How…. how does this have anything to do with free tickets? I mean… what? To me it seems like they were actually being polite since noone would have physically stopped them from being sarcastic or whatever, but they explicitly didn’t want to step on the toes of the CM people so they decided that a visit there weren’t suited for their project.

      Also, no.

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