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."
I have considered the possibility that Adam and Eve lived for an untold number of years in the Garden prior to the fall. However one scripture does not permit me to fully embrace that possibility.
Gen 5:5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died (emphasis added).
It has become my opinion that the Holy Spirit is very cautious in how He words things. Short of the Holy Spirit personally revealing to me that this verse only meant after the fall, I must take it at face value in order to maintain intellectual honesty.
I am aware that my attempts at being intellectually honest does not ascertain a correct view of truth. My views on certain passages have changed from time to time, but I can say that it has always been tied to ignorance as opposed to forcing the scripture to fit into a formula. This is all that we can do.
To both azhenfud and nightdriver; thank you for your comments. I look forward to hearing from you both again.
keep talking
"We don't talk about dog races, do we? "
I believe Greyhounds (dogs not buses) race.
Once I saw a Corgi race. It was really cute.
game playing evo bump
misinterpreting Scripture creationut bump
God had to put them in at the last minute to give Columbus somewhere to go. As for the people that were already there, God said, "Don't let on that you're really illegal immigrants."
Please tell us who it was Jesus was talking about in the quote I posted to LL
Perhaps not. But it's important to calmly and clearly demonstrate to the lurkers that his position is incorrect, and why it's incorrect.
Please discuss why you think the fact of evolution has anything to do with the Bible.
Oh,the truth hurts when your man St. Ken is shown to be a crook, eh? Thanks for posting all my confirmation that St. Ken is a false prophet.
Now you're doing the SNL lady who said "talk among yourselves" Say... are you Chevy Chase?
I'm not trying to build a doctrine on it, I merely say that IF it is what it appears to be, it gives a tremendous argument against the theory of evolution.
"I'm not trying to build a doctrine on it, I merely say that IF it is what it appears to be, it gives a tremendous argument against the theory of evolution."
Oh yeah. It as good an argument against evolution as
dinos and humans holding hands dancing around Stonehenge.
Which Scripture are you referencing?
I never interpreted your post as calling me a liar, so there is no need to apologize. But your civility is appreciated and respected.
s-evolution is God's creation
mm-Thank You very much :) It makes perfect sense that God created everything, therefore God created evolution as well as science. God created the technology that allows lifeform creatures, such as humans, to explore and discover the physics that constitute His creation.
Yep and if these "Biblebelieving" gentlemen could read Scripture for meaning, they would find God entrusted us with stewardship of the Earth, using the science knowledge He would reveal.
Thank you
Let's not forget Gore's assertion that Stephen J. Gould wrote a number of papers lauding the benefits of communism, not offering so much as an "oops" when it was pointed out that the papers that he referenced were written by one "Steven" J. Gould, a completely different person.
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