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In the beginning . . . Adam walked with dinosaurs [Creationist Park]
Telegraph.co.uk ^ | 02 January 2005 | James Langton

Posted on 01/02/2005 12:20:11 PM PST by PatrickHenry

With its towering dinosaurs and a model of the Grand Canyon, America's newest tourist attraction might look like the ideal destination for fans of the film Jurassic Park.

The new multi-million-dollar Museum of Creation, which will open this spring in Kentucky, will, however, be aimed not at film buffs, but at the growing ranks of fundamentalist Christians in the United States.

It aims to promote the view that man was created in his present shape by God, as the Bible states, rather than by a Darwinian process of evolution, as scientists insist.

The centrepiece of the museum is a series of huge model dinosaurs, built by the former head of design at Universal Studios, which are portrayed as existing alongside man, contrary to received scientific opinion that they lived millions of years apart.

Other exhibits include images of Adam and Eve, a model of Noah's Ark and a planetarium demonstrating how God made the Earth in six days.

The museum, which has cost a mighty $25 million (£13 million) will be the world's first significant natural history collection devoted to creationist theory. It has been set up by Ken Ham, an Australian evangelist, who runs Answers in Genesis, one of America's most prominent creationist organisations. He said that his aim was to use tourism, and the theme park's striking exhibits, to convert more people to the view that the world and its creatures, including dinosaurs, were created by God 6,000 years ago.

"We want people to be confronted by the dinosaurs," said Mr Ham. "It's going to be a first class experience. Visitors are going to be hit by the professionalism of this place. It is not going to be done in an amateurish way. We are making a statement."

The museum's main building was completed recently, and work on the entrance exhibit starts this week. The first phase of the museum, which lies on a 47-acre site 10 miles from Cincinatti on the border of Kentucky and Ohio, will open in the spring.

Market research companies hired by the museum are predicting at least 300,000 visitors in the first year, who will pay $10 (£5.80) each.

Among the projects still to be finished is a reconstruction of the Grand Canyon, purportedly formed by the swirling waters of the Great Flood – where visitors will "gape" at the bones of dinosaurs that "hint of a terrible catastrophe", according to the museum's publicity.

Mr Ham is particularly proud of a planned reconstruction of the interior of Noah's Ark. "You will hear the water lapping, feel the Ark rocking and perhaps even hear people outside screaming," he said.

More controversial exhibits deal with diseases and famine, which are portrayed not as random disasters, but as the result of mankind's sin. Mr Ham's Answers in Genesis movement blames the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, in which two teenagers killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves, on evolutionist teaching, claiming that the perpetrators believed in Darwin's survival of the fittest.

Other exhibits in the museum will blame homosexuals for Aids. In a "Bible Authority Room" visitors are warned: "Everyone who rejects his history – including six-day creation and Noah's flood – is `wilfully' ignorant.''

Elsewhere, animated figures will be used to recreate the Garden of Eden, while in another room, visitors will see a tyrannosaurus rex pursuing Adam and Eve after their fall from grace. "That's the real terror that Adam's sin unleashed," visitors will be warned.

A display showing ancient Babylon will deal with the Tower of Babel and "unravel the origin of so-called races'', while the final section will show the life of Christ, as an animated angel proclaims the coming of the Saviour and a 3D depiction of the crucifixion.

In keeping with modern museum trends, there will also be a cafe with a terrace to "breathe in the fresh air of God's creation'', and a shop "crammed'' with creationist souvenirs, including T-shirts and books such as A is for Adam and Dinky Dinosaur: Creation Days.

The museum's opening will reinforce the burgeoning creationist movement and evangelical Christianity in the US, which gained further strength with the re-election of President Bush in November.

Followers of creationism have been pushing for their theories to be reintegrated into American schoolroom teaching ever since the celebrated 1925 "Scopes Monkey Trial", when US courts upheld the right of a teacher to use textbooks that included evolutionary theory.

In 1987, the US Supreme Court reinforced that position by banning the teaching of creationism in public schools on the grounds of laws that separate state and Church.

Since then, however, many schools – particularly in America's religious Deep South – have got around the ban by teaching the theory of "intelligent design", which claims that evolutionary ideas alone still leave large gaps in understanding.

"Since President Bush's re-election we have been getting more membership applications than we can handle,'' said Mr Ham, who expects not just the devout, but also the curious, to flock through the turnstiles. "The evolutionary elite will be getting a wake-up call."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; Philosophy; US: Kentucky
KEYWORDS: creationism; cretinism; crevolist; darwin; evolution; kenham; themepark
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To: PatrickHenry
That second link has one of the most irritating ad windows ever done anywhere.
141 posted on 01/02/2005 7:17:43 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: Just mythoughts
NO fig grove hey?

Correct. No mention of a 'fig grove'. Can you find the 'apple'?
142 posted on 01/02/2005 7:17:50 PM PST by safisoft (Give me Torah!)
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To: VadeRetro; longshadow
And this: Hovind: Assault and Battery?.
143 posted on 01/02/2005 7:18:31 PM PST by PatrickHenry (The List-O-Links for evolution threads is at my freeper homepage.)
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To: Lucky Dog
Let’s see… Does the following sounds very “gentle” and “respectful?”

Gentle enough and respectful enough for anyone. If you want to see rage, shouting and nastiness in it, that's what you're going to see. If you want to see frank correction in monotone, that's what you will see. I find it instructive that it has to be evil to frankly tell someone that they're wrong and what the upshot of that might be. Your problem. I'd try gettin over it.

Here is another bit “respect” don’t you think? …

Yup. Statement of basic understanding of how these things come to be. Nothing disrespectful in it. Matter of your projections.

Gosh, this is so polite and gentle:

Again, simple statement of fact. It is neither abusive, rude nor nasty. It is just the fact.

This is so tactful and a real model of respect:

Look, tact is called minimizing and sugar coating the truth in order to play it down for weight. How do you sugar coat Blasphemy? Heresy? You can't. It either is or is not. Pick one. If it is, you can't say it is near it or other than it. Some of you are so tactful you don't have the respect or love to tell someone when they're wrong, much less correct them - even when their error ranks on the scale of attempted murder in spiritual terms. Sugar coat that. You can't. This approach of minimizing the damage done by people when they're in the wrong is in big part the reason so many people continue to do it. If it's not that big a deal, why worry, right - did you bother correcting any of what was said - or are you just upset that you believe as this other person does and don't like the correction yourself.

None of the above quotes are mine. Therefore, I am not the one conscience should be bothering…

Yeah, but you're the one reading tone into a typed chat. I didn't provide any hint of tone nastier than a loving one. Nasty is your own baggage.

144 posted on 01/02/2005 7:18:43 PM PST by Havoc (Reagan was right and so was McKinley. Down with free trade.)
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To: safisoft

Well where did they get the fig leaves to hide themselves?


145 posted on 01/02/2005 7:18:53 PM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: Just mythoughts
Well where did they get the fig leaves to hide themselves?

Well, since you are concerned with the 'original' then you should know shouldn't you? Here, I'll help: t'anah is a word that means 'fig tree'. Hmm, the leaves seem to have been from a fig tree. That is all it says, which was my point. Apples, fig groves, etc. are a part of the myth. The 'Chrisitans' I know go by the very words themselves and not the myths that add to those words.
146 posted on 01/02/2005 7:22:48 PM PST by safisoft (Give me Torah!)
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To: VadeRetro
The internet has ads? Huh. Go figure.

Take one of these, and one of these, and call me in the morning...

147 posted on 01/02/2005 7:24:41 PM PST by general_re (Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.)
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To: safisoft

What myth? They were in a garden you would hardly expect one fig tree here and there, considering the horticulture of the fig and other fruit trees.





148 posted on 01/02/2005 7:26:57 PM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: general_re

You guys might learn something.


149 posted on 01/02/2005 7:28:06 PM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: Just mythoughts
You guys might learn something.

I *am* learning something. When you extrapolate from fig leaves to fig trees, you assume too much.

150 posted on 01/02/2005 7:30:13 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: PatrickHenry

One thing is for sure "evolution" is certainly NOT scientific! Never has been and never will be because no objective evidence supports it. Sorry ole PatrickHenry but you'll have to peddle the evolutionary myth to someone who is ignorant and wishing to remain so.


151 posted on 01/02/2005 7:32:00 PM PST by nmh (Intelligent people recognize Intelligent Design (God).)
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To: Just mythoughts
Havoc God gave me a brain, and He did not instruct you to tell me if I am or am not using it.

Still don't know your scripture do you. If you see a sin and don't act to correct it, you're as guilty as the person who is committing it. It's called a sin of omission. Makes you an accomplice. God gave you a brain. And he may have granted you intellectual talent. Nobody is calling you dumb; I would merely point out that you lack God's perspective as do all of us when it comes to facts not shared in scripture.

Now either Jeremiah being known and sanctified and ordained before he was born tells that there is a history there or Jeremiah was created a robot.

No, you're projecting the possibility you can imagine in favor of those you either haven't thought of or are unaware of. Being known is a matter of a being seeing all of time because he's not bound by it. That we've already been over. Being ordained and sanctified before he was born merely means that God made plans for him before he popped out of the womb.

There is also no sin in being ignorant but it is one to stay that way.

You might consult the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden again. Cause staying ignorant would have saved the world needing a messiah. On the other hand, Christ said 'my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge' - knowledge of God's word. I ain't preaching to you; but, I do understand these things or I wouldn't bother commenting. If you don't want to be corrected, don't speak heresy in my presence. Correction isn't preaching. And twisting scripture is heresy. For a person claiming christianity, the things you're commenting on smack of things I've read from cultists. I hope that isn't your disposition. But, you really need to become more familiar with the subjects you're commenting on and that may solve the problem of your misunderstanding. If you refuse correction, I'll dust my feet of you as caring goes; but, if you continue stating these things when I'm present and can see it, I will correct it. I owe that to others and to God, not to you. As of now, you've been corrected. What you choose to do about it is your business.

152 posted on 01/02/2005 7:34:02 PM PST by Havoc (Reagan was right and so was McKinley. Down with free trade.)
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To: nmh

Given that you falsely claimed that Antony Flew had rejected evolution, why should anything that you say be trusted given that you have used falsehoods to support your position in the past?


153 posted on 01/02/2005 7:35:42 PM PST by Dimensio (http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif <-- required reading before you use your next apostrophe!Ah, but)
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To: PatrickHenry

We have numerous Jurassic period dinosaur tracks around here, but nary a one is accompanied by human tracks. I don't personally believe that there were humans at the time of the dinos, but if someone will show me the tracks and human remains intermixed with dino tracks or remains I might change my mind. There's a large dino museum in the state, plus thousands of dino skeletons in several areas. They are studied in great detail by expert paleontologists that work in the museum and in the field. They tell me they have have never uncovered any evidence of human existence in ancient dinosaur times and say that such an idea is preposterous.


154 posted on 01/02/2005 7:35:54 PM PST by Paulus Invictus (Tanycangreus topwilsoni, a terrifying Jurassic predator, is named after my Brother, a great Marine.)
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To: VadeRetro

"I *am* learning something. When you extrapolate from fig leaves to fig trees, you assume too much."



Really now, we have a garden, garden implies to bear fruit.

Not nearly as big a stretch as E's claiming art work as evidence for missing links.

Of course we do have other places where we are given instruction about the 'fig' tree.


155 posted on 01/02/2005 7:36:11 PM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: Just mythoughts
What myth? They were in a garden you would hardly expect one fig tree here and there, considering the horticulture of the fig and other fruit trees.

On the contrary, Figs are edible and quite good. Further, you can't speak to the conditions in the garden can you.

156 posted on 01/02/2005 7:36:52 PM PST by Havoc (Reagan was right and so was McKinley. Down with free trade.)
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To: Paulus Invictus

Sounds like a place I saw in Texas. Glen Rose I think.


157 posted on 01/02/2005 7:38:37 PM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: Havoc

NOT all of them are good to eat. Do some research on the horticulture.


158 posted on 01/02/2005 7:39:27 PM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: Just mythoughts
Not nearly as big a stretch as E's claiming art work as evidence for missing links.

If someone has a problem assuming that leaves had a plant, I can see where they might not want to assume that bones had flesh. I just didn't know how far this went until I saw the fig thing.

159 posted on 01/02/2005 7:40:41 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: nmh
One thing is for sure "evolution" is certainly NOT scientific! Never has been and never will be because no objective evidence supports it.

Are you really that ignorant or are you just a troll trying to be disruptive?

160 posted on 01/02/2005 7:41:48 PM PST by shuckmaster
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