Yesterday I went with 10 members of the local atheist community representing West Valley Freethinkers, Idaho Atheists, and Humanists of Idaho to the Northwest “Science” Museum.

Proposed Design of the Northwest Science Museum.

If you check out their website, you will find very quickly that the goal is to have a state of the art, multimillion dollar creationist propaganda center, excuse me, museum. For now they just have one exhibit in a classroom at Zion Christian School in Nampa, ID.

This is a long, but it’s mostly pictures. For the print impaired I have added “alt text” or captions to all of the pictures. I’ll be providing limited commentary throughout, saving most of my conclusions for the end. Since it is quite long, the rest will follow after the jump.

When you enter the room you are greeted by a table of religious and political handouts:

There’s a sign over the table that says the handouts are free if you read and share them. To keep up my end the bargain I’ll read the few I picked up and share them here on the blog. That’s going to be fun.

The first piece of the exhibit is a cast of the Lone Star Mastodon, currently one of the largest that as been found, discovered near San Antonio, TX.

Next up are some giant sloth and bones and a cast of a mammoth jaw.

A cast of a nearly complete Psittacosaurus. This is a small, bird like dinosaur that has a beak and no teeth. So far we have seen bones from relatively recent mammals and fossils of dinosaurs and one ancient mammal. Certainly nothing that would shatter the conventional scientific understanding of ancient species. Then we have a juvenile Psittacosaurus or similar small dinosaur that was found in the stomach of a mammal. Shocking, Right?

Since modern mammals, even rather small ones (like cats) can be found eating birds and lizards, it shouldn’t be surprising that a small mammal 100 million years ago could have eaten an even smaller dinosaur.

Many fossils are found with their mouths closed and cocked back. According to the sign at the museum, this does not happen naturally, so they must have been in agony and buried rapidly.

I’m curious what percentage constitutes “many” and whether or not this is a phenomena that occurred in certain geographical regions or ecosystems or if it has been found everywhere through all strata. Rapid burying can happen due to localized flooding, sedimentation, volcanic activity, or shifting sand dunes. So that certainly wouldn’t require a global flood. A head that’s cocked back while the rest of the body is flat doesn’t scream agony to me. I’m also curious about the sources for all of the speculation the offer.

Next up, we have the impressions taken from various sedimentation slabs from a river in Texas. Apparently these slabs contain impressions from both dinosaurs and humans, of course I did hear an admission that they are never found in the same slab, but the possible human impressions were found in a slab that was underneath one that contained possible dinosaur impressions.

Small dinosaur or large bird.

This is supposedly a human hand print.

A three toed foot print and a five toed foot print.

A five clawed foot print.

A paw print.

A five toed foot print.

Apparently some giant humans were found in a tomb in Turkey in the 1930s, or at least a femur, and a few other large human skeletons:

Isn’t circular logic fun?

It just wouldn’t be a creationist museum without a jab at abiogensis. Of course they are failing to consider that self replicating amino acids have been demonstrated in laboratories.

Ever Christian ministry needs at least one Pauline metaphor.

Now it’s time for the clincher for the evidence of the flood: there’s clam and snail fossils above dinosaur tracks and ancient sea life, such as trilobites found at the top of mountains.

During different time periods plains can be come swamps, coast land can become the bottom of a bay, and plate tectonics can move rocks that were once part of the ocean floor to the top of mountains. These events don’t refute modern science, they’re predicted by it.

Of course they did have to go from a little crazy to completely bat shit crazy…

I know they’re claiming that this proves that humans and dinosaurs coexisted, but with the “Astronaut” (top) it almost seems like they’re also suggesting that we’ve been visited by aliens.

I’d be curious to see a professional assessment of these engravings to determine whether or not they’re even genuine. Even if they are, the presence of mythical artwork doesn’t prove that dinosaurs, dragons, unicorns, or space aliens have ever co-existed with humans. Ancient people had plenty of crazy ideas that we’ve out grown.

How about some dinosaur bones (not fossils) found in an archaeological site? Now that would be worth considering.

If, as creationists suggest, all species were present before the flood, then we should find modern species, or at least something close to modern species fossilized in the same strata and dated to the same age as trilobites, dinosaurs, and other species from eons ago. We should also find bones, not just fossils from dinosaurs that were spared from the flood on the Ark. Ambiguous footprints are no where near as compelling as fossils.

I know it’s still quite small, but the Northwest “Science” Museum is a joke. They have a few cool bones and fossils, but they don’t make a compelling or even interesting argument. It would be interesting to see if the full museum would be any higher quality, but that’s assuming they ever get the money to build it.