This is a two part article and the second part is here.

The Creation Museum has a point of view — a point of view that is astonishingly anti science — that is the focus of the museum. It acknowledges that its purpose is to advance this point of view. Any objective observer would accurately described the museum as a sophisticated, coordinated and expensive work of propaganda. And the museum itself, I imagine, would be proud to acknowledge that fact. It seeks to convince, and, the museum’s point of view is the most radical anti evolution point of view possible, the “Young Earth” view, and the museum seeks to persuade attendees that its point of view is true.

It is amazing that people pushing this point of view raised $35 million or so to build the Creation Museum. The museum is located off in Kentucky off I-275, 10 miles west of I-75, toward the Cincinnati Airport.

The museum has beautiful grounds and state of the art displays. It has automated lifelike figures, huge dinosaurs, etc. It’s very high quality. I visited yesterday — two adults and a child cost about $50. Regardless of the cost, the place was full of people — I heard that usually more than 2000 people attend each day. It has a gift shop where I bought this amazing element collecting guide book and it also has many restaurants. It offers photographs and special features that cost extra (the planetarium costs $7 extra per person). This place takes in a ton of money. I’d love to know how much and how the profits are distributed. You’ve got to wonder if the opportunity to make big bucks was part of the motivation for starting this attraction.

The Creation Museum, run by a group called Answers in Genesis, teaches that the world is 6013 years old and that all 6.5 billion humans now on earth came all from a very small group of humans that survived a world wide cataclysmic event, a great flood, 4350 years ago. This Great Flood, according to the museum, wiped out all human beings in the entire world — except a small group of survivors, at most, fifty or one hundred people, led by a man named Noah. The whole story of Noah and the Ark plays a big part of the museum’s explanation. You might think that the Grand Canyon came about because of millions of years of erosion, but the museum teaches it came about in a short time because of the great force unleashed by the Great Flood.

The Creation Museum teaches that the Great Flood also would have destroyed all animals had Noah not saved a pair of each, and all animals that we presently know today came from that small group of animals from 4350 years ago. A scaled down replica of the Ark that Noah built is shown in the Museum. And, by the way, all dinosaurs, according to the Museum, were very much alive at the time of the Great Flood, and various displays in the museum show humans and dinosaurs in the same scene.

The point of view of the Creation Museum repudiates everything modern science says about the origins of the earth and the origins of humanity. The museum’s point of view demands that the words of Genesis be accepted as being literally true. When the Bible says “day,” according to the museum, it means 24 hours and when the Bible says the first human, Adam, was created in one day, it means exactly that. And, since the present generation can be traced back to the original human, in order for the generations to work out, Adam had to have been created in exactly 4004 BC — all at once, out of nothing, fully formed. The museum says that when humans rely on human reason to find truth, instead of finding truth, humans find error. The point of view of the museum is that the literal meaning of the words of ancient scripture reveals literal truth. The writer of Genesis clearly meant a day to mean 24 hours and, according to the museum, there is no reason to think that the Bible doesn’t mean exactly what its words originally were meant to say. Ancient people had words to describe eons, but the writer of Genesis deliberately chose the word, “day.” Fair enough.

This is amazing that here in 2009 a state of the art, high quality museum is so brazenly teaching anti scientific ideas. And, it is astounding that educated, prosperous, middle class Americans, in 2009, can agree with and support such a shockingly radical, anti-intellectual point of view, to the point of making this museum, by all appearances, a huge financial success. Who was it that said that nobody ever went broke by underestimating the thinking of Americans?

Carole and Ike at the entrance to The Creation Museum. The museum advances a “Young Earth” belief that says dinosaurs and humans at one time were contemporaries.

Jefferey, Sorry to hear that you are closing up shop at Daytonology. You’ve put together a lot of great articles. I’ve been proud that your web-site has been syndicated at DaytonOS. Thanks.

I think it is a wonderful idea that you organize your material into book form. Just for the fun of it I put together a little book from some of my articles and used a web-site called Lulu.

I like the name you chose for your site — Daytonology — the study of Dayton. One thing is for certain, there’s a lot about the Dayton area to study, a lot to understand. One topic that I think deserves a lot of attention, in order to gain understanding about Dayton, is the state of democracy in Dayton.

My basic premise is that the stronger the democracy, the better the society and the weaker the democracy, the worse the society. I believe the reason our society is in trouble is because our democracy is weak.

The theme of democracy, I believe, deserves a lot of attention, but yet it is a theme rarely dealt with in mainstream media in any educative way. The pillars of our democracy are crumbling, yet no one seems to think the startling evidence of such crumbling is very newsworthy. If vitalizing our democracy was somehow in the interest of corporations and the powerful, it would be important to the media as well. The fact is, many powerful interests feel it is in their interest to suppress democracy.

You are an experienced researcher. I would interested to know what research you might propose be done, in order to answer the question: How strong is Dayton’s democracy?

Yesterday, my complaint to the Ohio Election Commission was dismissed. The three members of the panel — Chuck Calvert, John Mroczkowski, and Harvey Shapiro –acting on the recommendation of the OEC’s Executive Director, Philip Richter, were unanimous in their decision. The panel found that there is no probable cause to believe that, in Kettering’s renewal levy campaign, Ohio Revised Code was violated. The panel meeting was held in Columbus.

Donna Dixon played the part of Maureen Dean iin Oliver Stone's film, "Nixon."

My complaint, that the panel dismissed, was that the Kettering School levy committee got carried away and, in its zeal to spur public support for the levy, and in violation of Ohio Code, made statements that were false. But, according to the OEC panel, the statement that I cited as a false statement “There will be absolutely no increase in taxes as a result of this Renewal Issue,” is actually a true statement. Yikes, how could I have been so wrong? The panel said the statement is true, regardless that individual taxes will increase, because the statement can be understood to mean, “There will be absolutely no increase in the total amount of taxes collected as a results of this Renewal Issue.”

The Kettering Superintendent, Robert Mengerink, made the statement that was the focus of my OEC complaint in “The Blue Ribbon Report.” Dr. Mengerink did not appear at the hearing, but, he was aptly represented by a pert, dignified young woman, out of an Oliver Stone movie, who reminded me in her appearance of a young Maureen Dean. She is Miranda Motter, an attorney with the Columbus law firm, Bricker and Eckler. Ms Motter provided the panel with a seven page memorandum of legal argument. It makes for interesting reading. I’m posting it here as a PDF file. She also provided an affidavit of statements made by Dr. Mengerink — posted here.

In the memorandum, Ms Motter gives a lawyerly explanation of what makes a statement true or false. Motter writes (p.3), “A statement is not false where, even though it is misleading and fails to disclose all the relevant facts, the statement has some truth in it. Moreover, a statement that is subject to different interpretation is not ‘false.’”

The problem is, a statement that is misleading and that fails to disclose relevant facts is not the kind of statement that builds trust or that builds a long relationship. My point, that I tried to make to the OEC panel, is that a school district cannot reach its potential without public support, without public trust, and a public cannot be expected to support a system that misleads it. The temptation for a school district in a levy campaign to cheat, particularly in a renewal levy campaign — by withholding information or by giving misleading information — is great. The stakes are high. But this cheating, at best, makes only a short term gain for the school system and in the long term causes an erosion of public support. The Kettering case, I argued, was clear cut and provided an opportunity for the OEC to put all districts in Ohio on notice about how they should advertise renewal levies.

Ms Motter included in her memorandum this sentence, “To determine whether a statement is in fact false, courts utilize an objective standard, using the perspective of a reasonable reader.” I like the idea of a “reasonable reader,” and in my presentation to the panel I urged the panel to consider these facts from the perspective of a reasonable reader:

1. The 6.9 mill levy had an effective tax rate of 6.9 mills when it was approved in 2004.
2. In 2004 Kettering’s property tax base, when taxed at a rate of 6.9 mills, produced $8.2 million in revenue.
3. In 2005, 2006, and 2007, Kettering’s tax base increased and, in order to raise $8.2 million in revenue, but no more, each year the effective tax rate was reduced.
4. In 2008 the effective tax rate for this levy was 6.13 mills.
5. But then the economy contracted, businesses and industry moved out of Kettering and the total tax base decreased. In order to generate the $8.2 million, the effective tax rate was increased to 6.16 mills.
6. Kettering property owners, because of this effective rate increase, from 6.13 mills to 6.16 mills, had an increase in property tax of three cents for every $1000 of taxable property.
7. Next year, because the total property valuation in Kettering has contracted even more, in order to raise the $8.2 million, the effective rate for this levy will increase again, from its current rate of 6.16 mills to probably 6.19 mills or more, and property owners, again, will see an additional increase in their property tax.

I thought that if the panel would take the point of view of a reasonable person, the statement, “There will be absolutely no increase in taxes as a result of this Renewal Issue,” would have to be seen as a false statement. Since a trend has already been established that this effective rate has increased, and since the conditions that caused this increase have worsened, it seem clear to me that it’s wrong to promise that this Renewal Issue does not pose a probable new tax liability to the taxpayer. But I failed to make that case.

I thought this aspect of the case, showing the statement to be false, would be the easiest part of the case to make, and that the reason my complaint would likely be dismissed would be some technical basis.

I’m surprised that this OEC panel, in its comments to me, seemed unconcerned that it is giving a green light to whatever exaggerated phrase a levy committee in Ohio might seek to use to promote a renewal levy. Kettering’s renewal levy promulgated big statements — “ZERO Increase In Taxes,” “Not a Penny More In Taxes,” “Absolutely no increase in taxes” — all not true. Because of the economic downturn, in order to generate the levy’s set amount, property taxes in Kettering, sufficient to fund this levy, in fact, will need to increase.

I stayed to hear the second case presented to the OEC panel and in this case the situation was reversed. In the second case, the Complainant was a school superintendent and the Respondent was a citizens group STOW CITIZENS FOR RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT from a community called Stow, in Summit County. This citizens’ group has a web-site with statements that the superintendent believes violates Ohio Law. One statement on the web-site says, “SUPERINTENDENT AND SCHOOL BOARD ABOUT TO DESTROY SCHOOL DISTRICT!!!” This is not the statement at the focus of the complaint, but, I imagine, gives the flavor of the dispute.

This Stow citizen’s group falls under special regulations because it was organized as a political PAC, and political PACS are governed by certain regulations. I don’t understand the legal basis for the Stow School Superintendent bringing a complaint to the OEC concerning this Stow citizens’ group. But after some discussion, the OEC panel, again followed the recommendation of their Executive Director. The panel members unanimously agreed — but this time the decision was opposite of the decision in my case. In the second case the OEC panel voted to find probable cause. The Stow citizen’s group now must defend themselves against the superintendent’s accusations before the entire OEC panel.

I was struck that in both cases, only one side was represented by an an attorney, the school district’s side. In both cases, the OEC panel sided with the school district and against the citizens.