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."
Laughable, you want specifics when it helps your side, but you get quite vague when asked for specifics, guess it helps when you can just plead ignorance and claim its a miracle.
So, what about animals like the Koala? Only eats one specific kind of leaf, one that would not be on Ararat, but I guess you think Australia didn't get flooded, or it was a miracle eh?
So during the 150 days, what did the animals eat?
How did they get back home, across oceans to other continents? How did reptiles survive? How did warm weather animals handle being on a mountaintop? How did the carnivores get by without eating other animals?
You will never have a good answer, because it is a story, not reality.
Because in Ezekiel 28 we are told he was created, not when.
Lucifer was created beautiful and perfect, "Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. 13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
14. Thou are the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of GOD; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
15 Thou was perfect in thy ways from the day that thou was created, till iniquity was found in thee.
16 By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou has sinned:
therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of GOD: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
This sin happened before the Adam was created in the flesh.
Well, I am also a man of some faith and I believe that the theory of evolution is extremely well supported.
Oh heaven help me.
Dinosaurs and people did NOT co-exist!!!!!
No wonder nobody takes intelligent design seriously when we praddle this crap. Golly.
Kem Ham needs to be strung up.
Genesis 6:17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, (NOTE the Adam was said to have been given the "breath of life") from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
21. And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.
agreed.......I too am of faith but think they both occured but we have no conception of how or why or when..... God will provide those answers when we meet him
Sir, what are you talking about? Australopithecus was the last known common ancestor of both humans and apes and it lived approx. 3 million years ago. Homo habilis or whatever you're referring to 200,000 years ago was part of the genus homo, and was not an ape.
What Would We Expect to Find if the World had Flooded?
Problems with a Global Flood.
The Geologic Column and its Implications for the Flood. By a former creationist.
You probably mean Adam and Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden.
Evidently that wasn't the first time sin had been rampant in the world, however. If you would like to have a discussion about it, please FReepmail me.
I still believe there is a God and he created exactly what He says He did.
However, I do not believe this earth is 6,000 years old, the evidence says otherwise. The Bible does not say how old this earth is. No man in the flesh knows either.
Now it really makes no difference to me "if" the flood covered the whole earth as some claim. That answer I apparently will have to wait for. However, right now on this day I do not believe the whole earth was covered in water in Noah's time.
I do believe that it was covered in water long long before Noah or flesh man was created. Jeremiah 4:23 describes a flood wherein there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. Not describing Noah's flood.
Here's something for you to ponder:
God destroyed every living thing on the earth, except for what He had Noah save on the ark, for the purpose of destroying the evil that was in the world. Did it work?
You are in under your head on this thread.
If you would like to know what is said in the Bible about this, please FReepmail me. You might find it interesting.
"Here's something for you to ponder:
God destroyed every living thing on the earth, except for what He had Noah save on the ark, for the purpose of destroying the evil that was in the world. Did it work?"
Specifically the "evil" that was to be destroyed was indeed destroyed, Christ was to come from the lineage of the Adam and Noah and his family were the only ones not polluted.
I'm sure you can detail any number of things. The Bible is full of things meant to trip up people like you - apparently.
The Bible does tell us how old the Earth is specifically - and does so in the lineages presented which trace all the way back to Adam. The Hebrew Grammer does not allow for your "gap" theory. Your philosophical predelections have allowed you some alternate universe you're trying to project onto the scriptures. The scriptures are clear on the point in commentary. The first Day. The second day. The third day. And you'll note that processes completed are requisite to processes that follow and vice versa. Plants created one day, the sun for light to nurture them the next followed by insects to polinate them. No room for gaps. Words mean things. The text is plain and works easily till you start second guessing God with your infinately wiser understanding of His creation. The Bible has no problem with Science. Evolution isn't science - it is a religion - a theoretical opinion with a frothy maouthed radical minority fan club who's only defense seems to be "the majority of scientists agree". Whooopty doo. They agreed on blood letting too.
Stop trying to project evolution onto God's word - it won't do anything but leave you in the position of calling God a liar so that you can ride the fence.
Contortions - you mean "how dare someone use common sense.."
IIPeter 3: 8 BUT, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing,
that one day is with the LORD as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
You're going to Hell. (Ken can explain)
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