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."
"There is no reason not to be both a creationist and evolutionists at the same time."
Right. Since creation is not even in the Theory of Evolution, I don't see what the creationists are making such a big stink about.
A few questions:
I didn't even mention the word "yom." I think you are arguing with someone else.
My father is fluent in those languages, and has many copies of the original texts from various sources (it was what he did his post-grad work in), and is currently a the Protestant minister at a little rural church.
It has been his contention since I was a boy that Genesis and Revelations are by far the most badly misinterpreted and misunderstood books of the Bible. The book of Genesis is not contiguously sourced, and of most relevance here, the creation story at the beginning of Genesis is sourced as a literal addendum to one of the many sources that contained the historical portion of Genesis -- someone added it to the source document at a later date in the empty space IIRC, kind of like scrawling in the margins. I've been told that in the original language, these verses at the beginning of Genesis read as a common poetic style (something which is only partially preserved in the interpretation).
While it works nicely there as the opening passage to the Bible, I understand that there is substantial evidence that those verses were plagiarized from local cultural tradition that predates the religion. While they've been merged nicely into the canon, I was always told that they should not be taken literally because the source appears to be a plagiarized poem someone scribbled in the empty space of cultural history. Not exactly the weighty sourcing that some of the other parts of the Bible have. Someone decided they sounded lovely way back when and added them to what we call the Bible, but the inspired word of God they most likely are not.
Or at least that is what I recall. My memory is rusty, and I haven't discussed Biblical sources with my father in many years.
"The Bible lists the ages and years of birth of Adam and his descendents. Add that up through the destruction of the First Temple (which we know was in 586 b.c.e.) and you get 5765 years."
Isn't Adam referred to as 'the' Adam, and this age would not be speaking about the age of this earth?
Why should I put my faith in your "reasoning" what is the truth, instead of what the Bible tells us directly. Isn't that the whole argument against evolution in the first place?
Whether or not classical Darwinian evolution is the mechanism of speciation is certainly arguable, but I would point out that evolutionary mechanics are a proven and well-understood system dynamic in mathematics -- arguing that the very notion of evolution is fundamentally unsound is simply incorrect.
The problem with classic Darwinian evolution is more parametric than fundamental. Given the parameters of the environment, one could make a good argument that the math does not support using that system model as an explanation for speciation. However, there are dozens of other system models that are a good parametric fit for speciation, so Creationism gains little by proving that Darwinian evolution is a poor parametric fit.
So you think that the king of Tyre was a real flesh being that was anointed as the covering cherub? Cherub is not a flesh being.
Not even King David was given this kind of description.
Sorry not even the Apocrypha is going to give you your missing links.
Are any of these phrases proceeded by a number?
Are any of these phrases the Word of God? Or are they the word of man?? None of it looks like scripture to me.
Genesis 2:2 - And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
Genesis 2:3 - And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his workd which God created and made.
So, technically, it would only be from Adam. But the Bible also says that Adam was created on the 6th day of creation... so it's the age of the earth too, for creationists.
It has been his contention since I was a boy that Genesis and Revelations are by far the most badly misinterpreted and misunderstood books of the Bible. The book of Genesis is not contiguously sourced, and of most relevance here, the creation story at the beginning of Genesis is sourced as a literal addendum to one of the many sources that contained the historical portion of Genesis -- someone added it to the source document at a later date in the empty space IIRC, kind of like scrawling in the margins. I've been told that in the original language, these verses at the beginning of Genesis read as a common poetic style (something which is only partially preserved in the interpretation).Really? That's fascinating. You should ask your father about that - are there really early versions of Genesis where the creation story was pencilled in?
The bible's account of human history is at variance with archeological, geological, and genetic evidence.
It's is scientifically impossible for homosapiens to have evolved to where we are in 200,000 years.
The entire field of biology will be extremely interested to see your proof of this impossibility. You should publish it and win a Nobel Prize.
How many Millions of years were dinosaurs on this planet and did not even approach our current faculty?
You appear to be assuming some superiority on our part over the dinosaurs (presumably on the basis of higher intelligence). Evolution isn't about some kind of climb to modern intelligence with humans as the ultimate expression. Learn what the theory says before you reject it.
Missing link=genetic minipulation. That's what science has proven and the Bible was there first with the answer. I don't see the conflict. They are one and the same.
Missing link = rare fossilisation and rare transitional forms. As it happens there is a good set of transitionals between our ape-like ancestors and modern homo sapiens. This is illustrated by the inability of creationists to agree on a classification for those forms as man or not-man.
And the 6 Days of creation reference is point of view dependent. 6 Days for whom if nothing was on the Earth to count a day? The rotation of a day varies from millions of years to our simple blink of 365 days rotation on this 3rd rock from the Sun. I don't doubt that validity of that either in the end.
You are reading a bronze-age creation myth with modern eyes. There is nothing to suggest that the originators of the bible story meant anything other than literal earth days.
Curious then that the verses immediately following the disemb-ark-ation appear to describe appalling behaviour on the part of Noah and his family. Or is enslaving grandchildren for minor (non-existent?) offences OK in God's book?
Well, why don't you explain why this evidence (warning, there is a lot, so it'll take time to read, and you'll have to do some science and math to understand it fully) isn't objective then?
And what did all the creatures with special diets eat on the journey to and from their habitat and the ark?
And did Noah carry a full complement of global plant-life on the ark too?
And how did the topsoil get recreated globally so that a variety of plantlife could grow and everyone could eat (starting with two earthworms that themselves have nothing to eat)?
Noah's Ark believers are FUN. They believe that God committed terracide in a completely stupid way (and then erased all the geological and genetic and archeological evidence that he had done it) that required millions of miracles when He could have just zapped all the sinful people, or created an epidemic and just made Noah and family immune. But no, he had to kill everything on earth in the silliest way imaginable and get Noah to build the ridiculous ark so that there could be the pretence that Noah had something to do with saving the world when every aspect of Noah's supposed participation required numerous supporting miracles.
Ho boy, where do you propose that this happened then?
Unless the flood was worldwide there would be no reason to save animals from destruction. The whole fabric of creationist "thought" crumbles under a regional flood.
It certainly does not matter if Noah did not realize the Earth was much bigger than he knew. God would have known how big the Earth was and would not have wasted Noah's time.
"So, technically, it would only be from Adam. But the Bible also says that Adam was created on the 6th day of creation... so it's the age of the earth too, for creationists."
Wait a minute, there was a creation on the sixth day but 'the' Adam was not created on the 6th, he was created on the day after the 7th, the day after the Creator rested.
If humans and dinos existed together, the theory of evolution is falsified. So, Ham puts them together falsely to confuse the poor shlups who are going to give him money to see this travesty.
Ham has made millions from Christian ignorance.
"Curious then that the verses immediately following the disemb-ark-ation appear to describe appalling behaviour on the part of Noah and his family. Or is enslaving grandchildren for minor (non-existent?) offences OK in God's book?"
Well I guess we get the picture of what happens when one drinks too much.
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