Creation Museum Marries Adam, Eve and Dinosaurs

ABC News ^ | May 25, 2007 | Staff

[Sleeping Beauty]

Some Scientists Worry That Sophisticated Center Will Distort Children's Views of Science

According to an ABC News poll, 60 percent of Americans believe God created the world in six days. In Petersburg, Ky., this weekend, a creation museum is opening that depicts a story far from what you may have learned in science class.

Exhibits at almost every natural history museum teach that dinosaurs are millions of years old, and that they died out long before human beings existed. But at the Creation Museum, they say God created dinosaurs and humans at the same time.

The Creation Museum, designed by the same man behind some of the attractions at Universal Studios in Florida, is a $27 million, high-tech sensory experience with animatronic dinosaurs and a movie theater with seats that shake.

The museum is intended to convince visitors that evolution is wrong and that the biblical story of life on earth from Adam and Eve to Noah's ark is scientifically verifiable.

The museum depicts Adam living with animals, including a dinosaur.

Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis, the group that is funding the museum, says that only "secular scientists" would maintain that the first humans never lived with dinosaurs.

"[Scientists] can say that, but what's their evidence?" Ham says, insisting that "All land animals were made on day six."

Mainstream scientists worry that because the museum is so technically sophisticated, it could be effective in giving children a distorted view of science.

"That they'll show up in classrooms and say, 'Gee, Mrs. Brown, I went to this spiffy museum last summer and they say that everything you're teaching me is a lie,'" said Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education.

Ham believes that's what should happen.

"And I say, great. Amen. That's what this place is all about," he said. "It's meant to challenge people."

The stakes are high. The museum argues that evolution jeopardizes people's belief in the Bible and leads to social ills like pornography and abortion.

"In an evolutionary world view, why should you have things like absolute morality? Why would it be wrong to kill someone?" said Jason Lisle, of Answers in Genesis. "I'm not saying that evolutionists aren't moral. I'm saying they have no reason to be moral."

[more at the link]

[Sleeping Beauty]

Artist Laura Spence works painting next to a mechanical Utahraptor 16 May 2007 at The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ken. Designed by a former Universal Studios exhibit director, this state-of-the-art 60,000 square foot museum will demonstrate the Bible's authority in all matters including science is scheduled to open to the public this weekend. The museum is a fully engaging, sensory experience with murals and realistic scenery, computer-generated visual effects, over fifty exotic animals, life-sized people and dinosaur animatronics, and a special-effects theater complete with misty sea breezes and rumbling seats.

[bahblahbah]

I think Augustine had something to say about these people.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]

[LiteKeeper]

Mainstream scientists worry that because the museum is so technically sophisticated, it could be effective in giving children a distorted view of science.

Mainstream scientists worry that because the museum is so technically sophisticated, it could be effective in giving children a distorted an accurate, Biblical view of science.

[saganite]

Creationism and the word science don’t belong in the same sentence. Creationism is biblical propaganda wrapping itself in the mantle of science seeking to deceive the scientifically illiterate. Pretty much the same as global warming.

[ASA Vet]

Get your nomex undies on.

[M Kehoe]

Creation Museum Marries Adam, Eve and Dinosaurs

Was there a reception afterward?

5.56mm

[Coyoteman]

Seen any dinosaur bones around lately?

Not fossils, but bones?

There are mammoth and mastodon bones all over, along with dozens of other extinct critters--but no dinosaur bones.

How would a creationist explain this?

[ASA Vet]

Was there a reception afterward?

Nope, the T-Rex forgot he was supposed to only eat veggies.

[Cicero]

I am not a Darwinist, since I think the scientific difficulties of the Theory of General Evolution render it astronomically improbable. But I’m not a literalist creationist, either.

Still, I doubt whether this museum can do much harm, indeed no more harm than all those other museums which teach that Darwinism is the eternal truth that cannot be questioned. It will teach children about dynosaurs and other creatures, and it will also teach them to question Darwinism, which is not a bad thing.

Since this is one museum against the entire public school system, the courts, the universities, and all the other natural history museums in the country, it can do no more than teach children that there is more than one possible point of view about the origins of things.

[Alter Kaker]

We live in interesting times, where ignorance and superstition flourish.

[ASA Vet]

Magic

[Alter Kaker]

Mainstream scientists worry that because the museum is so technically sophisticated,

The techniques may be sophisticated, but the facts are plain and simple, and the creationists don't have any of them.

[saganite]

I’ve been flamed repeatedly on these threads. Nothing new with that.

[fortheDeclaration]

How would a creationist explain this?

How does an evolutionist explain the Universe coming from nothing, life from non-life?

[LiteKeeper]

Creationism and the word science don’t belong in the same sentence. Creationism is biblical propaganda wrapping itself in the mantle of science seeking to deceive the scientifically illiterate.

Apparently you have not read the latest "creationist" literature. So be it...

[Coyoteman]

How would a creationist explain this?

How does an evolutionist explain the Universe coming from nothing, life from non-life?

That is not a part of the theory of evolution. And it is a change of subject.

Where are the dinosaur bones? Until you can come up with dinosaur bones, not fossils, you haven't a leg to stand on.

[M Kehoe]

Nope, the T-Rex forgot he was supposed to only eat veggies.

LOL. At least the title didn't read, "Creation Museum Marries Adam, Steve and the Dinosaurs." Yuck, I gross myself out.

5.56mm

[ASA Vet]

Look at the bright side.
Their children won't be able to compete with ours for jobs requiring real science.

[dighton]

“Wilma! How come we weren’t invited?”

[saganite]

That’s correct, I have not read it. If I want to read fiction I buy a good paperback mystery.