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."
Funny how they accept fossil evidence of dinosaurs, but then turn around and reject the rest of the fossil record. Very selective editing of reality.
Most dinosaurs were not meat-eating. They were vegetarians. To be sure, some were carnivorous, but most ate like modern reptiles.
Lifespan of pre-Noahic man? 900+ years, as the environment was a lot different than it is now. There was likely a water-vapor canopy surrounding the atmosphere that enabled tropical vegetation on Antarctica, lizards to grow huge, insects to become much larger.... and humans to live much longer.
I'm bracing for your impending ridicule. But before you begin to mock derisively, I suggest you read The Waters Above (Moody Press) by Joseph Dillow...with an open mind.
comic book-like placemarker
Sure, but there were plenty of carnivorous dinosaurs. There is a very good reason mammals didn't evolve into anything bigger than a shrew until after the dinosaurs went extinct. Dinosaurs and other reptiles had filled pretty much every evolutionary niche on the planet quite successfully. Slow, soft, weak humans would not have lasted long in such an environment.
Lifespan of pre-Noahic man? 900+ years, as the environment was a lot different than it is now.
What I mean by lifespan is the question of how long a primitive human would have lasted in an environment populated by large, predatory reptiles.
There was likely a water-vapor canopy surrounding the atmosphere that enabled tropical vegetation on Antarctica, lizards to grow huge, insects to become much larger.... and humans to live much longer
The Earth was a lot warmer back then? That may or may not be true, but why would that lead to humans living any longer? If anything, a warmer, wetter environment would be an even better incubator for such fun tropical diseases as malaria. Sorry, prehistoric humans lived lives that were nasty, brutish and short. Most would die by age 30. And this was in a world where the biggest land predator was a bear, not a T. Rex.
"Who said anything about supreme knowledge? You keep bringing up 'original' and then make silly statements that clearly point to the fact that you are out of your element on the issue. The onus is on you. Your nonsequiters only illustrate my point."
Yes we should not talk about things that might upset the pack.
bump
"You can say that, but I've heard plenty of people (both creationists and not) say that yom always refers to a literal day everywhere else in the bible."
As you probably know, using terms like always, always makes the statement wrong.
It is simply not true that yom always means literal day. You can go to Brown Driver Briggs and see that for yourself, if you like.
Let me ask you this. Wouldn't the yom be plural in Gen 2:4 if it meant a series of seven 24 hr days? Wouldn't it have said, "in the days" refering back to the seven days of creation? It does not
Strong's and KJV advocates insist that day with a cardinal number always refers to a 24 hour period, but this is more a pre-emption of good interpretation that it is a reality.
Since God didn't make the Sun until the fourth day, I hardly see how the concept of 24 hours of day and night is a reasonable concept for at least the first 3 days. So, if it can be a period of time the first few days, it seems it can also be a period of time the next. (I also hear the creationists arguments that light was a different speed at first and other things were speeded up or slowed down. Can you demonstrate a 24 hr day 15 billion years ago or 6000 years ago?)
Internally consistent interpretation demands accepting my view of these passages. To do otherwise is to make a farce out of God's Word.
"Or how the koala's made it without eucalylptus leaves"
Are you sure that this was their diet at that point? Creationism allows for change, but not the same kinds as evolutionists. Creationists allow for "degenerative change" and "pre-programmed change". The "pre-programmed" kind is not "today you will look like this", but more of built-in adaptations to certain environments, which can be triggered by certain events (epigenetics has confirmed that environmental influences can affect offspring in heritable manners).
"First the reason for the flood, maybe the 'flood' did not encompass the whole planet just the whole known earth that the writer knew about."
That's a possibility, but I think the earth has a pretty good evidence of global catastrophe.
"Christ says that this will be repeated yet again, wonder what kind of 'ark' will be supplied to the ones who do not participate?"
Its always good to threaten people into becoming Christians.</sarcasm off>
"That's a possibility, but I think the earth has a pretty good evidence of global catastrophe."
Oh really? Where did you find this evidence?
And how did Noah, his wife and kids get the next generation of humans? I am sure there are some entertaining links on how incest was divinely sanctioned in this instance and I await them with interest.
"Its always good to threaten people into becoming Christians.</sarcasm off>"
Careful now your teeth are showing. Nobody can threaten anybody into becoming a Christian.
“Darwinists” try to exclude God from creation by maintaining that naturalistic processes (i.e., not Divine intervention) are exclusively responsible for creation."
I am not sure who you are including as a Darwinist, but I know for a fact that creation is not included in the Theory of Evolution, except by creationists using a strawman.
"Evolution is supported not only by fossil evidence and a study of comparative anatomy, which was available to Darwin (showing hierarchical groupings)"
It does not show hierarchical groupings. What's the difference between a homology and an analogy? Well, there is no way to tell them apart except that one is along evolutionist's presumed hierarchies and the other isn't. You can't say that homologous structures show hierarchy, when it is the hierarchy that determines whether a structure is homologous or analogous.
Likewise, the fossil record shows all phylums coming into the fossil record fully intact, and in the cambrian period. We only lose phylums after that.
Genetics shows very different phylogenic trees depending on what you analyze. If the hierarchy was correct, shouldn't they all point to the same hierarchy?
Remember also that mendellian genetics was discovered by a creationist, so its hard to show heritability of genes as a counter-argument to creationism.
As for astronomy, who was it that correctly predicted the magnetic field of Uranus? That's right, a creationist working on creation assumptions. The long-agers were incorrect.
I think you may be overstating your case quite a bit.
Just a few of the thousands of questions that are difficult for biblical literalists and real easy for scientists to answer.
Oops, when I said "placental", I meant "marsupial" of course.
And of course, marsupials are not at all transitional. ;-)
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