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."
Science decides what science is, not the Bible. Sorry if you can't accept that. Just don't try to become a scientist.
Interesting that that happened before the Sun was created.
Do you think you are winning a debate on the merits of AIG's museum and the fact of evolution by being a stalker?
If you are out for my blood over a defense of the indefensible AIG nonsense, that is rather sad.
There is a reason. They make millions selling nonsense to the ignorant.
Atheism is frequently a pseudo intellectual affectation.
It's "science" but, unlike say the freezing point of water, they can't agree on the "facts".
Because both uses are in such wide currency it is not going to be possible to change it now. As we have seen the theory explaining gravity is comparatively new, I guess we'll have to wait and see if "the theory of gravity" becomes common currency. Any confusion in that area would be less significant because no-one denies the fact of gravity (I hope, though of course the church effectively tried to deny Galileo's observations of Jupiter's gravity operating on its moons).
Who is talking about atheism?
The theory is always under discussion and the details of science are always being reviewed. It is not dogma like the cultish fundamentalist view of Bible misinterpretation.
What is your position on AIG and the museum showing nonsense like a dinosaur chasing a human?
To each his own. Barnum's quote comes to mind.
No I'm proving that you are not a Christian. If you think I'm "stalking" you so that you can make a claim to the PTB, then stop pretending to be something you are not to discredit the ones of us who are
The Lord needs no sun to create light, if you read the bible, you'd know that
and as we know, a heap o' facts do not a science make
I don't care what you think. I always tell the truth.
Do you have any facts at all to support dinos running with Man, or are you just trying to distract from an empty position based on an absurd Bible interpretation?
yes, I do, the Flintstones.
"The Lord needs no sun to create light, if you read the bible, you'd know that"
I read the Bible a lot closer than you apparently do. How would I know about the Sun not being formed until after the first day?
No, you cannot refute the fact that 24 hr day interpretation is just silly in light of time period one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.