Posted on 01/14/2007 5:31:07 PM PST by Tim Long
PETERSBURG, Kentucky - Ken Ham's sprawling creation museum isn't even open yet, but an expansion is already underway in the state-of-the art lobby, where grunting dinosaurs and animatronic humans coexist in a Biblical paradise.
A crush of media attention and packed preview sessions have convinced Ham that nearly half a million people a year will come to Kentucky to see his Biblically correct version of history.
"I think we'll be surprised at how many people come," Ham said as he dodged dozens of designers working to finish exhibits in time for the May 28 opening.
The $27 million project, which also includes a planetarium, a special-effects theater, nature trails and a small lake, is privately funded by people who believe the Bible's first book, Genesis, is literally true.
For them, a museum showing Christian schoolchildren and skeptics alike how the earth, animals, dinosaurs and humans were created in a six-day period about 6,000 years ago -- not over millions of years, as evolutionary science says -- is long overdue.
While foreign media and science critics have mostly come to snigger at exhibits explaining how baby dinosaurs fit on Noah's Ark and Cain married his sister to people the earth, museum spokesman and vice-president Mark Looy said the coverage has done nothing but drum up more interest.
"Mocking publicity is free publicity," Looy said. Besides, U.S. media have been more respectful, mindful perhaps of a 2006 Gallup Poll showing almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve, but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.
Looy said supporters of the museum include evangelical Christians, Orthodox Jews and conservative Catholics, as well as the local Republican congressman, Geoff Davis (news, bio, voting record), and his family, who have toured the site.
FROM 'JAWS' TO EDEN
While the debate between creationists and mainstream scientists has bubbled up periodically in U.S. schools since before the Scopes "monkey trial" in nearby Tennessee 80 years ago, courts have repeatedly ruled that teaching religious theory in public schools is unconstitutional.
Ham, an Australian who moved to America 20 years ago, believes creationists could have presented a better case at the Scopes trail if they'd been better educated -- but he's not among those pushing for creation to be taught in school.
Rather than force skeptical teachers to debate creation, Ham wants kids to come to his museum, where impassioned experts can make their case that apparently ancient fossils and the Grand Canyon were created just a few thousand years ago in a great flood.
"It's not hitting them over the head with a Bible, it's just teaching that we can defend what it says," he said.
Ham, who also runs a Christian broadcasting and publishing venture, said the museum's Hollywood-quality exhibits set the project apart from the many quirky Creation museums sprinkled across America.
The museum's team of Christian designers include theme park art director Patrick Marsh, who designed the "Jaws" and "King Kong" attractions at Universal Studios in Florida, as well as dozens of young artists whose conviction drives their work.
"I think it shows (nonbelievers) the other side of things," said Carolyn Manto, 27, pausing in her work painting Ice Age figures for a display about caves in France.
"I don't think it's going to be forcing any viewpoint on them, but challenging them to think critically about their evolutionary views," said Manto, who studied classical sculpture before joining the museum.
Still, Looy is upfront about the museum's mission: to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with nonbelievers.
"I think a lot of people are going to come out of curiosity ... and we're going to present the Gospel. This is going to be an evangelistic center," Looy said. A chaplain has been hired for museum-goers in need of spiritual guidance.
The museum's rural location near the border of Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana places it well within America's mostly conservative and Christian heartland. But the setting has another strategic purpose: two-thirds of Americans are within a day's drive of the site, and Cincinnati's international airport is minutes away.
The project has not been without opposition. Zoning battles with environmentalists and groups opposed to the museum's message have delayed construction and the museum's opening day has been delayed repeatedly.
The museum has hired extra security and explosives-sniffing dogs to counter anonymous threats of damage to the building. "We've had some opposition," Looy said.
--they are oft repeated coyote becaUSE they are facts which dispute the reliability of carbon dating- --
You have been asked several times to provide support for your claim but fail to do so.
IT'S A MIRACLE!
You think too small.
Way too small.
Thanks! I found the same article on a different site doing a Google search on the name. Some of it is a bit beyond me - my Masters is in Business Administration, not Geology or the like - but a lot of it was in terms I can understand from my undergraduate days.
You give them too much credit. It is more like:
Hypothesis: Darwin was wrong.
Experiment: We don't need no stink'n experiment. We researched the internet.
The RATE project did standard creation "science" in their examination of radiometric dating--in other words, apologetics. They are not high on the waiting list for a Nobel prize.
You can google their work pretty easily. I have read it and find it short on science and long on apologetics.
I could do a rebuttal, but its a waste of time: nobody in science takes their work seriously, and those who do take it seriously don't care what scientists think.
I'm gonna go to bed and read a good book instead.
Show me your research on why carbon dating is wrong.
Real research, not just you saying it, and not some non accredited bible thumper saying it. Real data, from real scientists, using real provable, testable methods.
Come on, it should be simple, otherwise, you wouldn't have said it...
If it were up to the creationist luddites science wouldn't have gotten beyond the 1800's. And boy, Little House on the Prairie sure was a great way of life...
--not some non accredited bible thumper saying it.--
One non accredited bible thumper trumps all of science.
Well, yeah....if you are ignorant.
if you really look into the evolution theory you will see how completely false it is. It was only proposed as a false scientific theory to try and create doubt about God. But it is easily put to shame. How is that prideful to see that? Seems like that is God given insight supported by much scientific facts.
Proof?
Or just ignorant rant?
I do a lot of radiocarbon dating and I find your comments to be uninformed. You better go find the notes on your hard drive and get back to me.
Unless it is just standard creation "science" from AnswersinGenesis.org or any of those other creationists sites. If so, don't bother. I have checked out their writings and from a scientific viewpoint they are nonsense.
So far I have posted some good links to comprehensive articles on radiocarbon and radiometric dating, and you have just posted your personal disbelief.
If you can bring up any specific problems with radiocarbon dating let me know and perhaps I can help you understand them. But please avoid those creationist websites; they are simply not telling you the truth.
Whats your definition of a fact?
--if you really look into the evolution theory you will see how completely false it is.--
Please cite your research.
--please avoid those creationist websites; they are simply not telling you the truth.--
Aren't they the word of God?
you should really look deeper into the facts of creationism and the holes in toe with an open mind. I think you would enjoy true science alot more than bad science. It is so much more fascinating to look at the complex dna code which is responsible for more involved actions than a computer code and see that it must have been created by a super intelligence than to just write it off as a natural process. It's just the darkside of people that causes them to think that.
You are mixed up. If science proclaimed that something was the result of the supernatural, it would not be science, it would be RELIGION.
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