When I go to museums I find myself retaining very little information, because often it's more of me gawking at shiny orbs and large paintings. So when people go to the Ark Encounter or Creation Museum, for that reason alone I doubt much is learned. Which isn't saying museums aren't critical and useful. People do learn a lot there, but there are also a large chunk of people who aren't really focusing that hard. Hopefully you leave a museum learning 1-2 new things.

However, the frustration with Creationism is that there is an entire industry with followers of it that are devoted to denying science, mainly evolution. I may not understand genetics but I don't claim to have a better theory under my belt and I don't claim all of the experts are lying. The laity of Creationism make these claims, but they don't even bother trying to understand what they claim isn't true. In many cases I think, not all of course.

I was talking to my friend that's a Creationist, and he told me that he watched videos on YouTube from creators that made very compelling challenges. He couldn't name any examples though. He had no idea what the creationist arguments were that he watched. It's fine to not understand something, but it's frustrating when someone says evolution is "probably" not true when they can't even parrot any of the claims they say are convincing.

I told him that what actually happened is he watched intelligent looking people say things he didn't understand, and because they share the same beliefs as him, he believed them. To his credit: he said I was probably right. Though he still is a Creationist unfortunately.

I think if Creationists actually read Ken Ham's words, and read his "theories" that lions could have been eating plants in the Garden of Eden, they would stop being Creationist. I think they like the aesthetics of having science. They like having published books and charts and all of the things that look scientific, but if you actually read the arguments, you realize it's nonsense. They let the creationist leaders think for them.

I don't think Ken Ham believes what he peddles. He knows the biology textbooks don't talk about "star evolution" and those PhDs he hires know what star nucleosynthesis is. He also makes a lot of money pretending he doesn't know these things.

In a prior thread "Why do Young Earth Creationists seem to prefer for the Earth to be young?" there are some intensely revealing comments about why anti-evolution zealots, young-earth creationists, and other purveyors of anti-science cult talking points act as they do.

• One creationist who aggressively wanted to give sermons when informed that his sermonizing had "not much science there," declared "Exactly my friend. It's all about truth." Most of his follow-up replies are deleted for violating sub rules against preaching.
• Another wrote "It’s not a preference. It’s what the Bible indicates, and the young age is corroborated by many physical evidences" followed by fucking off and never providing any of the "many physical evidences" they claimed existed.
• Still another, when it was pointed out that religion-induced anxiety disorders are commonplace, and that forcibly indoctrinating children can constitute child abuse, remarked "So would you say teaching the child anything is abuse?" and then followed up with "I could say the same about you and that you are indoctrinating your children ;)" before making an unsubstantiated claim about "a lot of abuse happening in atheist ideologies as well." When asked to name the "atheist ideologies" it was referring to, it declined to do so.

A particularly telling one offered a number of inane claims along with admitting they were using AI to generate their slop responses, including:

1. "Abiogenesis is the start of your guys world view."
2. It’s a beliefs system like Christianity. I would argue Christian’s have more evidence. When you get into the weeds of evolution it’s a whole bunch idk but it must have happened. Like how do you evolve step by step chemically speaking the process of going from not having a liver to a liver. Than your probably going to say ok this happens than this than this…. Ok but still not able to reproduce it in a lab setting so it’s irelevent.

The underlying issue, and why the anti-science religious cannot be taken seriously, seems to be this: they reject the very premises of scientific inquiry. They treat the scientific method, and the very ideas of working with a hypothesis and following the evidence through structured inquiry and experimentation, as a competing organization, the same way that they view other religions.