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.
Why? You think all "scientists" pretty much have the same pool of knowledge? That biologists and astronomers are interchangeable?
Boy, your ignorance of the actual workings of science becomes more and more apparent every time you lay fingers to keyboard.
The problem is you constantly post stuff you know has been refuted. This drives me crazy.
Honestly now. Please take some time (I know you are in school) and enroll in basic biology, astronomy, and geology. Really think about what is being taught, follow the sources cited in the textbooks and IMHO, you will be amazed at what we actually know about this world, it’s history, and the universe in general.
And yet we stand on the side of a vast ocean of future discoveries. This is what makes science one of the grand endeavors of our species.
That is a statement of opinion; Where in the transcript is evidence that supports it?
PING to #436, and the idiocy which necessitated such a response.
if this results in my banning or suspension, please do NOT trouble JimRob with words on my behalf.
if identifying a clear case of actionable libel and notifying the site owner of it is cause for my removal, so be it.
Wouldn't it make more sense to just not make legal threats that could damage everyone's ability to discuss issues here?
So the Judge lied about the evidence in his published opinion? Is that really your contention?
Just a hint -- break dancing can be dangerous.
Freep mail would have accomplished that without the other problems you created.
Hey there, RA. Is this true that RigthWingProf, Ich, and some others have been banned? PH?
hey, dimwit: I made no threat, leagal or otherwise.
your illogic is impressive. it is as if notifying someone that jumping off a tall building onto concrete will immediately involve gravity and predictably result in a painful and abrupt stop is a "threat" to push him over.
I'm not physics, nor am I the law - I'm just making a note of a problem.
you, on the other hand, seem to be trolling.
He has the power to state his opinion; it's difficult to call it a lie, but he was clearly dishonest in most of his analysis.
Oh my this looks like it could be the "Mother of All Threads"
RA:Bwahahahaha! OMG, you actually made me laugh out loud.
Yes, this coming from editor-surveyor. Have a look HERE , where I tried to get some evidence for a statement he made, namely:
"More media myth. White northern Europeans, and Americans descended from that group continue to be the longest lived population".
Anyone who comes up with such an astonishing statement should have some proof to back it up - but nothing, nichts, rien...
All I got was a revue of tap-dancing...
It's obvious what you're doing.
Yuppers. They (and many of FR's scientists are now at:
http://www.darwincentral.org/
You would be welcomed my friend.
What you did in #455 is specifically against the rules here.
I am...shocked.
doubtful - compared to many of the others who have been nuked or appalled into silence, I am small-fy
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