I remember as a boy, my father reading to me about, how on Glossopteris Sunday, Jesus rode into Jeruselam on the back of an Apatosaurus.
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.
You have to have faith to believe Darwinian evolution.
Yes, you can't seem to manage it. Biblical parables never name people. If you're going to say something is a parable because you don't believe it, why would you believe any of the rest of the Bible. If you don't believe it, just say so, don't call it a parable with no backing.
--And how is it supposed to when Darwinists scoff at the mere mention of opposing views? They fire professors, pour money into school board elections, and you expect Creationist evidence in journals? Appearing in a journal has nothing to do with truth--
How many of the thousands of myths out there do you want to include in the science classes.
Calling science that you can't accept a myth isn't an argument. You failed to address the unscientific communities' suppression of dissent. I'm tired of countering the same fallacies. I'll let Dave.
--So Henry Morris did nothing with his life but read Genesis? Did the RATE project just consist of reading Genesis?--
?
Uh, no, you have to understand testable and repeatable science done in specific conditions. You have to have faith to believe in creationism, because there is zero proof, just dogma.
Never a dull moment when you're a creationist.
Creationism finds a bunch of fish and animals at the bottom of the lake and declares that they all fell in at the same time but never question why there are no dinosaurs or men in the pile.
Never a dull moment when you know nothing about opposing theories.
--Never a dull moment when you know nothing about opposing theories.--
Life is exciting for you when you get exposed to these new ideas.
Exactly. If you have never heard of either, I understand why you do not understand true origins science.
Lets not forget my favorite, the three toed sloth which only lives in trees and eats one type of leaf crawled down, walked and swam all the way to Noah and survived the ark, and swam home and found a tree that didn't die in the flood and then propogated the entire species.
Multiply that by 1000 plus species, then throw your brain away and scream "It was a MIRACLE!!!"
--Exactly. If you have never heard of either, I understand why you do not understand true origins science.--
My ? was what do you mean by your reply to my post. You seem to have gone off on an unexplained tangent.
they are oft repeated coyote becaUSE they are facts which dispute the reliability of carbon dating- if you have a calculator that adds 2 and 2 and gets five- then you can show the error with a fact- same with the radio carbon dating- They throw out readings that don't correspond with their preconceived notions of how old the earth should be- I used to have all this info in notes on my hard-drive- but if you're set on believing selected numbers then you're going to ignore just how prevelent the case is that uncorresponding numbers are thrown out.
--Lets not forget my favorite, the three toed sloth which only lives in trees and eats one type of leaf crawled down, walked and swam all the way to Noah and survived the ark, and swam home and found a tree that didn't die in the flood and then propogated the entire species.--
The sloth survived because the tree floated.
Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens.
it's well known- a search for instant petrification on St. Helen will bring it up- it's been Chronicled.
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