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."
"You are merely dragging a red herring across the path of common descent -- which is among the most thouroughly agreed upon facts in science."
Common descent is "just a theory". Heeheeheee Sometimes I crack myself up.
Yes that theory, hypothesis, wild speculation, asspu11 has been seriously (and I use the word with trepidation) advanced by Creationists to explain Continental Zip.
And claims like that are why Creationism is a considered risable.
Anyone with an ounce of sense would suspect that having level 9 Earthquakes (and associated tidal waves) occuring on an hourly basis, every day of the year, for a generation would impose a level of evironmental stress that life on Earth might not survive.
What did I say?
It wasn't you who said it, but the post replied to a post that accused me of saying the TOE was an "absolute fact".
I assumed you supported that canard, if not, I apologize.
I'm not convinced that is true. But then few have accused me of having an ounce of sense.
I thought I was extending your point. Not the first time I've been misunderstood.
Similarly. Can you imagine the mindboggle had God revealed "atoms" or "molecules" five thousand years ago?
I'm happy we've evolved to the understanding we have today.
LOL, let me go look in the kitchen to see what's for supper, before I answer
D ED
No problem, sorry I misunderstood. Sometimes the lack of ability to see all the posts at the same time and the lack of reference is confusing.
Thank you, safisoft. We're on to ole shubi
D Ed
Yes, Havoc has you confused with Lucky Dog. After telling you to re-read your own posts and correcting your poor "grammer." lol
His repeatedly condemning you, and refusing to accept that he was falsely accusing you sounds quite familiar to many of us.
As quick as he is to judge others so harshly, it will be interesting to see if you get an apology at all, or another wordy attempt to obfuscate and deny his own offense.
It is very similar to evolution, isn't it? We take little "alleles" of knowledge and accrete them until we have a whole system of knowledge similar to macroevolution.
Ad Hominem and ridicule are not Christian.
I hope you will come up with some substantive discussion of the issues and refrain from childish taunting.
I will not have my fwiends widiculed by the common soldiewy. Anybody else feel like a little... giggle... when I mention my fwiend... Biggus...
What about you? Do you find it... wisible... when I say the name...
Sowwy, I'm hunting wabbits.
mea culpa. Coffee deprived. Mental acuity low.
And here I thought you were gonna give up posting when drunk
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