Creationists and Strauss

I was sent a link about a week ago now to a creationist video entitled "Creation is a Scientific Fact". I am led to believe that this is just the first in a series of videos, but my point is not to de-construct their reasoning of why they believe Creation is a Scientific fact, but I would like to simply point out something which I found rather ironic and amusing.


In the opening screen of the video they play the words "In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth.. etc. etc. etc." along with some images of stars exploding and such. To dramatise their opening credits they used a famous segment of a piece of music by Richard Strauss called 'Also sprach Zarathustra' (English: Thus Spoke Zarathustra). For those not familiar with the piece, or with Strauss' work in general, you would almost certainly recognise it as the music from the opening scene of the Stanley Kubrick film '2001: A Space Odyssey'. A film that champions the advancement of science, acknowledging the evolution of human beings. If that wasn't irony enough, Strauss' piece was directly inspired by Nietzsche's novel by the same name. Nietzsche's novel is written in the style of some Biblical texts, but presents ideas which are explicitly opposed to the Christian belief system, god and idea of morality.


Who knows, perhaps they planned to use the music because of its familiarity within the realm of science, but I thought it was noteworthy to point out that they are using a piece of music made famous by a film that promoted a worldview that is diametrically opposed to their position, that was written by a composer who was inspired by perhaps the foremost anti-Christian philosopher in history. Even if they intended it to be this way, it sure looks like a failure to me.

Here's a link to the creationist video.


For those who don't want to watch the creationist video, but just want to hear the epic introduction to Also sprach Zarathustra here is the famous performance of it that was used in 2001: A Space Odyssey.