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.
"...the moon landing was fake, Elvis is alive, etc."
Hey, leave Elvis out of this. Show some respect.
Bacteria became mitochondria? How did cellular metabolism occur before that? And what made them change? And those must have been tiny bacteria... and what evidence proves that mitochondria were once discrete bacteria? Interesting. I've never heard that before.
"Show me where the Catholic church teaches the creationist nonsense. "
If ever any of your arguments are to be taken seriously, CS, you need to understand one very simple fact: the Catholic Church believes in Creationism.
It is an a priori fact. Without Creationism, there IS NO Catholic Church. Jeez.
You have just come right out and said that the Pope, all clergy, and the masses of faithful, are all atheists. Oh, except for a few dumb Catholics, scattered here and there.
"40% of the human genome encodes things called retroelements, which are pretty much all essentially dead viruses that have inserted themselves into our genome. "
Yes, I've heard that before. How do scientists know that parts of our genetic makeup is virus pieces? How did they come to that conclusion? Is that the only possible explanation for the evidence?
"...he knows that fabian..."
Yep. When dealing with some evolutionist fanatics, especially the strongly anti-Christian faction, you are expected to prove every assertion, no matter how obvious, while they sit back watch. If you tell them the sun rises in the east, they ask for a specific scientific, peer-reviewed, published article, with a list of the writer's credentials. Then they make some sneering comment referring to your belief in a flat Earth.
Ridiculous? Maybe so, Ivan. But it sure would have been cool. Imagine, an order of ribs that could tip your car over; quarrying rocks on the back of a big brontosaurus; opening your canned dino meat with the beak of a terasaur! Of course, putting the cat out could be somewhat problematic...
"...trying to discredit facts by avoiding the facts and pointing out someones affiliation..."
It's called "genetic fallacy." Discrediting an idea or assertion, because of the originator of the idea's personal traits is common, and many of us are guilty of it.
Is this all your original work?
The question of the firmament (Genesis 1:6) has also generated various interpretations, but we need to keep in mind that the Hebrew word (raqia) means simply "expanse," as in "a great expanse of water between California and Hawaii." An essentially synonymous English term would be "space." And just as "space" can be used to refer to space either as an entity or to a particular space, so likewise for the word "firmament."
There are at least twoprobably threespecial "firmaments" mentioned in Scripture. The most exalted firmament is under God's throne (Ezekiel 1:26). Also, there is an atmospheric firmament, where birds fly, and a stellar firmament, where the stars are (Genesis 1:20,14). There are likewise three "heavens" (note II Corinthians 12:2), and it is significant that God called the firmament "Heaven" (Genesis 1:8), where the Hebrew for "heaven" is actually a plural noun (shamayim), frequently translated "heavens." These distinctions are not often made by creationists when discussing a particular firmament (or space, or heaven), but they are Biblical, and it is important to take careful note of the context in each case.
This brings up another controversial subject, the canopy theory, the essential component of which is "the waters which were above the firmament" (Genesis 1:7). If the particular firmament (or space, or heaven) in mind here is the atmosphere, and if the waters were in the vapor state, then many Biblical facts and scientific relationships are beautifully explained. However, there are certain scientific difficulties that are still unresolved, and there is again a temptation to abandon the theory because of these.
from http://www.icr.org/article/503/
Because you are incapable of accepting deeper theological alternatives. Of course God set in motion naturalistic phenomena, including evolution. His creation speaks of this. But I would not expect you to neither care not understand that. It is beyond your grasp and pointless to discuss with you.
Interesting.
Thanks!
Those would fit in a pretty small space.
I checked the posters listing. There is no such thing as instant petrification. The attempts to make petrification all have maybe, close, nearly, you add all the synonyms. But no real instant petrification, sort of like making gold out of lead.
Sigh......I never said life was one big coincidence. Stop putting words into people's mouths.
I asked some creationists to prove their assertions, and I got nothing but the usual hyperbolic spin, the scientific ignorance and the usual common sense disconnect.
Life does exist in many regions, which attests to its skill at adaptation, I suppose we could create life in a lab if we had controlled conditions and several million year to work with.
More abject stupidity from you, more reason for everyone to see that you are a crank, with very few argumentative skills, just very stupid statements like the one above.
Good question.
Carbon-14 dating is based on the isotope carbon-14, which has a half-life of about 5700 years. This means that every 5700 years, half of your carbon-14 has gone away because of beta decay. Because there is very little to start with, after 5 or 8 half lives, there are increasing problems measuring the beta decay against the background radiation.
To date older materials you simply need isotopes with longer half lives!
On this website: Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens there is a table of naturally occurring isotopes. These columns are the parent isotope, what it decays into, and the time it takes:
Samarium-147 | Neodymium-143 | 106 billion |
Rubidium-87 | Strontium-87 | 48.8 billion |
Rhenium-187 | Osmium-187 | 42 billion |
Lutetium-176 | Hafnium-176 | 38 billion |
Thorium-232 | Lead-208 | 14 billion |
Uranium-238 | Lead-206 | 4.5 billion |
Potassium-40 | Argon-40 | 1.26 billion |
Uranium-235 | Lead-207 | 0.7 billion |
Beryllium-10 | Boron-10 | 1.52 million |
Chlorine-36 | Argon-36 | 300000 |
Carbon-14 | Nitrogen-14 | 5715 |
Many of these are used for dating. Each has its own particular uses and limitations. For example, carbon-14 dating can only be used where there is carbon, so it is good for once-living things (bone, shell, charcoal, peat, etc.).
Check out the website I linked, above, for a lot more good detail.
Putting aside quibbles about the accuracy of this statement, I take it you accept that the Cambrian period commenced approximately 542 million years ago and ended approximately 488 million years ago, and that you are therefore not a young earth creationist. Correct?
before that period, you have basically nothing, and certainly no transitional species
Again, putting aside your notion of "basically nothing" pre-Cambrian, I take it from this statement that you accept the existence of transitionals in the fossil record from at least the Cambrian period forward. Correct?
there's plenty on the net explaining the explosion
And you accept the explanations on the "net" that the duration of the "explosion" was approximately 30 million years (a kind of a slow motion explosion, if you will). Correct?
As for your "built in protection levels" that prevent speciation, you seem to be contradicting yourself. It certainly appears that you accept the existence of "transitionals", yet you state:
the protections are built in to the cells- they prevent foreign info from tainting the species info- there are several layers of these protections which ensure that species will always remain within their own kind
Are you contending that speciation does not occur, but that the fossil record nevertheless contains transitionals?
And with respect to your "protections", what, precisely, are these "protections"? Invisible force fields of some sort? Or maybe armor plating? Or some kind of "DNA-acide"? Since this is the first I've ever heard about "built in protections," perhaps you could be a tad more specific, or at least direct me to some kind of literature on the subject.
we find htese celular protections going all the way back to the cambrian age
We have Cambrian cells to study?
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