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.
how bout you taking my word for it and looking it up yourself? Nah- too much work, right? I've been in these arguments before and NOONE that supports evolution or old earth EVER does ANY of the looking up- it's always the others that have to get sucked into doing it all- Don't care to bleeive me? Fine- whatever- the info is out there freely available to you just as it is me- I've listed some links- but I am not going to get sucked into a long drawn out debate with people too lazy to do ANY of the work themselves and who just like to say "it doesn't exist- it doesn't exist'
make me some too- but no burnt kernals please- I can't stand carbon
There is an interesting and valuable message in the New Testament's recounting of Christianity. It justifies a much more general, but Bible-free, understanding of the relationship between human life and god. But there is no reason whatever, except for statements in the Bible itself and the claims of innately flawed human beings, to take the Bible literally.
I say this as a person who attends a fundamentalist church regularly and has for several years. I see in the fundamentalist presentatioan of Christianity a very valuable, worthwhile message, which is only wrong in one way: It, like most or all Christian churches, has turned the Bible itself into a thing of worship, which it should never be.
Yawn, real original. No, those are things you are more likely to believe in. They're about as dumb as evolutionism.
That said, I'm out. Be sure to say your prayers to Gaia tonight, my little Darwinists, that she might preserve your blind worldview in spite of science. Ay-May-Un!
Show me some facts.
How does it support Creation theory? Show me some proof the earth is 6,000 years old. Prove to me that evolution don't exist.
There is no Creation "Science", its a biblical belief, which is nice for religion class in a religious school, but its not science.
Where is the proof? Where are the published papers proving Creationism and disproving Evolution? There are none.
Time for you to put up some proof, not dogmatic BS.
**Yeah, I look down at 1800's USA. Why? I live in Phoenix, I have a car, an air conditioning unit, I buy fresh food from the store, I have a computer and a TV.**
I was at a large gas station a few years ago, when a large power outage shut down the fuel pumps, several dozen semis (the rigs that bring you ALL your afore mentioned conveniences to the desert) just sat there, unable to continue on to their delivery point.
I don't knock real science, just the "we evolved from dust over millions of years" junk.
Actually, scientific journals set actual rules, and for research and science that is necessary. Case in point, just yelling "its in the bible" doesn't cut it. You gotta collect some physical evidence, make some acutal data, propose actual hypotheses.
There is a reason for that, it seperates the junk from the science, sorry that it doesn't fit with your beliefs, but are your beliefs so thin that they can't stand some discovery?
no reason too? Then you must be unaware of all the archeology and geographical evidence supporting events all through the bible- there's some pretty darn compelling reason to beleive aside from faith- Not to mention thousands of eye witnesses that back up Christ's life and death and rising etc. No compelling reason to beleive? sure there is. There's plenty of acheological evidence
Sorry. No archeaological evidence, and no earnest statements from anybody can make me, or any other person, believe a book or physical object to be holy. That said, I believe in the Christian message. It is seen in the mind of a person who believes...with or without a book to convince him.
It would have been a lot easier for you to have just said I made it up. Because I did Google it and god a big zero, instant petrification doesn't happen.
Believe whatever you want, however don't disdain learned people that study the world and the universe.
If it is so great, then turn off your PC, throw away all your medicine, disconnect the electricity, ditch the car, buy some horses and learn how to be a smithy. Oh, and grow your own food and buy clothing only made from 1800's materials. And stop learning about the outside world, it would only corrupt you.
no no- it doesn't go against our beliefs- infact- science just strengthens our belief-- you aren't going to state that creation science is junk now are you? Because they use the very same science that you call real science and come up with very real evidences based on scientific facts-
Stand some discovery? Where? Discovery? Like the couple of truckloads of fossil bones and fragments that supposedly rtepresent millions of species evolution despite the fact that NO transitional species were ever found? NONE? Nadda? Zip? Zilch? Feathered dinos? Nope- sorry- not even close to being feathers- BUT- your 'peer review' magazines touted them to be feathers- that is until they were looked into by those who didn't just take hteir word for it and used scientific fact to prove they weren't feathers. Eukoroytes being transitional species? Nope- Sure- it was taught in schools (probably still is) UNTIL it was exposed that Eukoryotes were nothign but a symbiotic species living off their host- but you wouldn't know that unless you dug deep into the facts- Heck- the National Geographic still ists crap like this as their evidence- and indoctrinate our kids with junk science like that even though most scientists have dropped it because the facts were exposed
Cambrian explosion- many many species all came on the scene all at once fully formed- no transitional species- clams then are the same clams today as well as all the other species.
Ready to hit some biology? It's a biological impossibility for species to evolve- there are built in protection levels that prevent it- in order for evolution to happen you also NEED to have gene transference- without it, you'll never ever have evolution- mutations do NOT produce the necessary NEW informatiuon needed for one species to become a different one-
well ya might wanna tell that to archeologists who set out to disprove the bible with archeology, but came away astounded by what they found and ended up beleiving then.
They, and you, are entitled to believe what you want. The only message I would send to Christians of the Bible-is-holy school is that the Bible itself is not necessary...the core message, not the flawed container, is what's important.
Well now, I went to Catholic school from K-12. We learned evolution in science class, we learned religion in religion class. We got an amazing education, in fact, college was a joke to me, 4 years of minimal work and a degree to boot.
Why do Catholics not believe in creationism? Probably because we embrace learning, logic, science and free thought, and we aren't so terrified that some actual data may destroy our faith.
But, if you want to believe in Noah's ark, go ahead, just don't teach your fables in public schools.
So Physics, Astrophysics, Astronomy, Geology, Chemistry, Biology all, every one of them is wrong?
hmmm- plenty of evidence of it:
http://www.ibri.org/Books/Newquist_Nat_Sci/natsci-ch7/natsci-ch7.1.htm
http://www.ncsec.org/cadre2/team2_2/Lessons/howDoesWoodPetrify.htm
there were tons of links- not sure what you googled- Catastrophic events cause instant and rapid petrifications and the formation of coal contrary to prevoius beliefs that it took millions of years to form coal.
Creation "Science" IS junk.
Show me some data, some proof, some published and peer reviewed papers. Its a faith based belief, and that is just fine, provided you keep it in your church, and don't try to pawn it off as actual science or teach kids in public school your dogmatic fables.
You post all kinds of invective, but offer no proof.
Wanna prove Noah's Ark?
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