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.
--At best- the two methods above are only accurate to about 11,000 years due to numerous conditions and environmental uncertainties--
Thanks. Fifty thousand years plus or minus 11,000 years is still greater than 6,000 years.
The saddest thing about these efforts to promote non-scientific fantasies is that they completely ignore the great truth known to many many thoughtful, serious and intelligent theologians (a truth also known to many scientists), that religion and science, on the most basic level, are talking about two different things and are not in direct competition with each other.
That competition only exists in the small minds on each side. Richard Dawkins, for example, is the quintessential small-minded scientist, tilting at the windmills of what he sees as The Dangers Of Religion.
Creationists are the small minds of theology, imagining that they have to invent a "science" to "prove them right". Creationists know nothing about science, that goes without saying. But sadly, Creationists also know precious little about religion. They share the ignorant attitude of Dawkins, that religion must be somehow "scientifically correct" for it to be valid.
A pox on both their houses.
Sure thing, but they are dead now, so it won't matter much. BTW, better report all them evil Jesuits too, they also teach science.
Then grabbed a cup of coffee, sat back to watch, every so often says, "Wow! I can't believe it did that!" And on rarer occasions, says, "I wonder what happens if I give it a nudge right here."
Dendrochronology actually supports the radiocarbon method; the calibration curve for the US is now past 12,600 years (not 10,000).
If you think you have evidence for a 6,000 year old earth or for inaccuracy in the radiocarbon method, then post it. Long cut and pastes that you don't understand don't help your argument.
I recall learning about quite a few other chemical/radioactive tests whilst in archaeology school - not just radiocarbon - do you have stats on those as well? I get kind of nervous myself whenever radiocarbon is used as the definitive test for paleological specimens...seems we are dealing with completely different chemical and radiological factors.
When did the Cambrian explosion occur, and how long did the "explosion" last?
It's a biological impossibility for species to evolve- there are built in protection levels that prevent it-
Can you describe what these "built in protection levels" consist of and how they work?
THANK YOU! - EXACTLY HOW I FEEL!
Who was it that began the scientific method? MONKS Why? Because they wanted to know the mind of God...and God granted them the Holy Spirit to discover His creation. All else is just fascination.
I can't comment on the 6,000 year thing, but I believe dinosaurs were described in the Bible - and not as fossils but as living breathing creatures that the reader understood.
Just look up behemoth and leviathon. No matter what your Bible concordance may say, they were not an elephant or an aligator. ;)
And you know that how?
Great Image! Thanks!
>>And you know that how?<<
By reading it.
Radiocarbon only goes back some 50,000 years. Older samples, and samples not containing carbon, require other methods.
Here is a link I posted earlier that has some good information:
Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens.
Thnak you for eloquently putting so many people's thoughts into such few, but accurate, words. I am sure you will be flamed for it, but often the truth hurts. To many people have gone from worshipping God to worshipping the Bible and have fallen into the trap you describe.
God did.
As have I. Job describes a behemoth as eating grass like an ox and drinking up the Jordan, which seems to leave out a whole host of meat-eating dinosaurs. A leviathan seems to be limited to the sea. So how do you really know that Job wasn't talking about elephants and whales?
Read the description of the Behemoths tail, and then look at a picture of an elephants rump. Also, I don't really "know". I specifically used the word "believe" in my original post very consciously on purpose.
None of us were there so none of us really KNOW anything beyond our own lifespan. ;)
Just a thought...
Objects in a gravitational field of a black hole experience a slowing down of time, that is called time dilation.
you sound pretty self righteous...many creationists do know alot about science. They are simply showing how amazing scientific discoveries show an author to them. That is not small minds. And many of the great scientists of the past and of the present are religious people too. Religion and science are intertwinned...there is no divorce between the two except in the minds of most darwinists.
it's worse than that- I was being generous giving huge leway- radio carbon dating goes wonky after much less than 50,000 due to condiotions that are less than ideal- Which evo's fail to account for or even concider
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