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.
Nice words, but you offer no proof, no science no peer reviewed data, etc.
Just dogmatic belief.
Which is fine, if you want to have faith in something, go ahead. Just don't enforce your faith based dogmatic pseudoscience on innocent kids in public school under the rubric of science.
40% of the human genome encodes things called retroelements, which are pretty much all essentially dead viruses that have inserted themselves into our genome. <5% of the human genome encodes the proteins/miRNAs/snRNAs/etc. that form us as organisms. If the human genome, at least, is proof of an author, it's proof of an author that likes parasites a lot more than it likes us.
It was a MAJOR meeting of scientists!!!!!!
Show me the names, and the resumes of the people, as well as the dates and where the "scientists" are now.
Second hand tales of something you believe to be important hold no weight with me.
And, what about the courts? You neglected that. Dover, lost by creationists, the case of the stickers in books, lost by creationists, etc.
Face it, creationism is a christian belief, which is fine in a christian school teaching christianity, but its not OK in a public school.
Really? Wish to share the proof behid that? Darwin came to the conclusion that evolution was wrong? Pray tell, I want to know about that, please teach us all about that.
The idea proposed initially by Lynn Margulis of how eukaryotes came to exist was that a large anaerobic bacterium engulfed a smaller aerobic bacterium. The aerobic bacterium was capable of converting the energy in reduced carbon compounds to ATP at a much higher rate than anaerobic bacterium. So the larger bacterium got the benefit of much more energy for each molecule (sugar, typically) that it "ate." The smaller bacterium got the benefit of protection from predators. This was a mutually beneficial relationship and not parasitism.
And I don't think that endosymbiosis (mitochondrion/chloroplasts/protonuclei) leads to necessarily a separate species initially, but only because it is incredibly hard to define "species" in the absence of sexual reproduction. Essentially, each separate bacterium (and there are something like 5x10^30 bacteria in the world) forms its own "species," as there is reproductive isolation between each bacterium.
Also, maybe you would like to define "eukaryote", because I am not entirely sure why you think that you are not a eukaryote.
You mean the Cincinnatti airport that is in KY?
LOL I used to live in No. Ky.
Why couldn't it all have been created in ten seconds?
Yeah, that one...:-)
As it should be
Especially the fantasy that we evolved from a single cell and that we are related to oak trees.
While foreign media and science critics have mostly come to snigger at exhibits explaining how baby dinosaurs fit on Noah's ArkBaby dinos in Noah's Ark? Pardon me while I snigger.
"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...I guess it was during her studies of classical sculpture that she learned to think critically about evolution.
-actually the facts I just posted about the amazing dna code very much supports creation theory. --
You posted no facts. DNA supports evolution.
Looy is upfront about the museum's mission: to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with nonbelievers.Question for those who actually know something about the Gospel of Jesus Christ (a group which, I suspect, does not include Looy):
Did Jesus Christ personally preach anything specific about the age of the earth? If You claim He did, please cite chapter and verse. And don't embarrass Yourself by citing vague generalities. If He really didn't mention the subject (which I suspect is the case, although I admit I don't know), please be Man or Woman enough to admit it.
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