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  • SATURDAY MAY 26 2007 8:00 PM

Creationism Museum to Open in Kentucky; Now With More Dinosaurs

Submitted by _DictionaryGirl_

Edited by erin_broadley

Tags: Kentucky, creationism, dinosaurs



Dinosaurs and creation theory
live together in perfect harmony,
side by side on my laptop's keyboard;
Oh, Lord, why don't we-e-e...

Oh, uh, hello there!

I remember the first time I encountered a steadfast Creationist face to face. It was around ten years ago, I believe. We ended up in a very heated argument in the middle of eighth-grade homeroom period, the culmination of which was him telling me that dinosaur fossils were placed in the earth by God as a test of our faith, and me telling him that any God who would only half-ass the idea of dinosaurs is no God of mine.

I don't know if the new Creation Museum opening in Petersburg, Kentucky, this weekend is a sign of Fundamentalist Christians getting somehow more awesome over the years (in a strangely charming sci-fi sort of way), or just all the more utterly off their rocker, but either way it's kind of jaw-droppingly wonderful.

The Christian creators of the sprawling museum, unveiled on Saturday, hope to draw as many as half a million people each year to their state-of-the-art project, which depicts the Bible's first book, Genesis, as literal truth.

While the $27 million museum near Cincinnati has drawn snickers from media and condemnation from U.S. scientists, those who believe God created the heavens and the Earth in six days about 6,000 years ago say their views are finally being represented.

"What we've done here is to give people an opportunity to hear information that is not readily available ... to challenge them that really you can believe the Bible's history," said Ken Ham, president of the group Answers in Genesis that founded the museum.


Aw, H-E-double-hockey-sticks yes! That's $27 million well spent, I say. It's high time alternate realities were featured more prominently in museum form, and these guys aren't about to throw down for just any old tacky Disney Hall o' Presidents-type robot fare – the museum's exhibits are designed by Patrick Marsh, the man responsible for the Jaws and King Kong exhibits at Florida's Universal Studios. Marsh claims to have given his efforts to this cause on account of he's a devout believer himself; no word yet on his value system as it relates to freaky giant gorillas.

The main men behind this project are Mark Looy and the delicious-sounding Ken Ham, co-founders of Answers in Genesis, an "apologetics ministry" whose mission it is to provide creative interpretations of the Book of Genesis and reconcile it with modern science the best they can, providing all the better argument fodder for righteous eighth-graders everywhere. Their magazine alone boasts 50,000 subscribers, and they claim that 9,000 charter members have already signed on to fund the museum venture, placing it completely in the black. At least you can rest assured that it's not your tax dollars at work.

At this rate, you may be wondering what kind of wonders may await you at this Bizarro-Exploratorium. Well, wonder no more, my friends! We've got the goods:

It is a measure of the museum’s daring that dinosaurs and fossils — once considered major challenges to belief in the Bible’s creation story — are here so central, appearing not as tests of faith, as one religious authority once surmised, but as creatures no different from the giraffes and cats that still walk the earth. Fossils, the museum teaches, are no older than Noah’s flood; in fact dinosaurs were on the ark.

So dinosaur skeletons and brightly colored mineral crystals and images of the Grand Canyon are here, as are life-size dioramas showing paleontologists digging in mock earth, Moses and Paul teaching their doctrines, Martin Luther chastising the church to return to Scripture, Adam and Eve guiltily standing near skinned animals, covering their nakedness, and a supposedly full-size reproduction of a section of Noah’s ark.

There are 52 videos in the museum, one showing how the transformations wrought by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 reveal how plausible it is that the waters of Noah’s flood could have carved out the Grand Canyon within days. There is a special-effects theater complete with vibrating seats meant to evoke the flood, and a planetarium paying tribute to God’s glory while exploring the nature of galaxies.


Wait, but now I'm confused. Shouldn't a proper Creation Theorist assume that the dinosaurs were bad eggs and were left to drown with the unicorns? Because if they didn't die in the Great Flood, and there's no evolution so they couldn't have evolved into something else, then what happened to the dinosaurs? I mean, where would they...

Shoot. I think I just got a brain freeze.

Anyway, the Creation Museum officially opens to the public on Memorial Day (that's the 28th to you foreign heathens), and its founders expect a quarter of a million visitors within the first year. Will you be one of them? I won't lie: I probably, would if I was remotely near the region. Even though the thought of paying to get in kind of makes me cringe, you've got to admit that, at the very least, it must be good for some ironic laughs and Kodak Moments. Plus, who can resist the pull of friendly animatronic dinosaur pals? I'll tell you who: no one. Not even God.

And that's a fact.

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SocietysPliers

SocietysPliers

Ocala, FL
October 2004

MAY 27, 2007 07:33 PM

blitzkrieg00 said:
Ah man, hahahaha, I had to get up and walk away from my computer for a minute after reading that dinosaurs were on Noah's ark. Honestly, how much longer does this kookiness have to go on before Mankind, as a whole, realizes the fact that we're dumb?

I remember the first time I heard this, maybe around 1973 when I was in third grade, and immediately wondering the obvious: how they'd fit frigging dinosaurs on a boat the of the dimensions given (or any boat I later realized), or, for that matter, how could you fit the nonextinct animal on it?

ckdexterhaven

ckdexterhaven

USA
December 2005

MAY 27, 2007 07:43 PM


Why does Matt Groening hate America?

devil_girl

devil_girl

Grand Prairie, TX
May 2007

MAY 28, 2007 01:03 AM

SocietysPliers said:

blitzkrieg00 said:
Ah man, hahahaha, I had to get up and walk away from my computer for a minute after reading that dinosaurs were on Noah's ark. Honestly, how much longer does this kookiness have to go on before Mankind, as a whole, realizes the fact that we're dumb?

I remember the first time I heard this, maybe around 1973 when I was in third grade, and immediately wondering the obvious: how they'd fit frigging dinosaurs on a boat the of the dimensions given (or any boat I later realized), or, for that matter, how could you fit the nonextinct animal on it?



Former Christian here! If you asked them they would tell you that Noah took the smaller dinosaurs on the boat, that's how we have hippos, alligators, lizards and such, but that he was unable to take the bigger ones (aka actual dinosaurs) and that's how the rest became extinct.

There's a Creation Science Museum in Glen Rose Texas that has been here since the 70's. They have interesting ways of defending their beliefs. If you seriously want to read up on it you can find them at www.creationevidence.org. They believe they found a dinosaur track with a human foot print inside it, proving that man and dino lived simultaneously.

formerviking

formerviking

Denver, PA
May 2006

MAY 28, 2007 04:55 AM

thefreak said:


*ahem*

-TM



Thank you for that .

bean

bean

STAFF

Los Angeles, CA

MAY 28, 2007 05:15 AM

Roethke said:
I saw a documentary about evangelicals, and there's a scene in which they sing about thepeaceful and godlike dinosaur Behemoth (a mighty sauropod). It was incredible.



http://www.creationists.org/dinosaurs.html

The entire description given in these verses fit certain types of dinosaurs very well. But we're going to zero in on one particular verse. It's in verse 17 it says, "He moveth his tail like a cedar:".

This verse alone should be enough to put the whole issue to rest as to whether or not God is describing a dinosaur to Job in this verse. Keep in mind, God is talking to Job about a living animal, that Job is familiar with. What land creatures do we know of today that have tails the size of a cedar tree?



This makes me want to bash things. Forget allegory, It's as if the brains of these people are incapable of grasping even simple concepts like "simile" and "metaphor."

CptPyjama

CptPyjama

United Kingdom
October 2006

MAY 28, 2007 06:25 AM

Necia said:

aleksa said:
Can that $27 million explain how 6 billlion people evolved (oops, I mean, were created) from a single man and woman without some incestuous activity?



The way my high school religion teacher and some other chick in the class explained it when I confronted them with that issue was that "incest wasn't wrong then."

Seriously.

Now what I want to know is when God issued the, "okay, kids: no more incest, k?" decree.



I have a feeling that God created wives for the sons of Adam and Eve, just as he created Adam and Eve. But I could be wrong? Been a while since I checked a Bible.

Weird, but not as incestuous.

otaku

otaku

USA
January 2004

MAY 28, 2007 07:54 AM

Rockoval said:

theaceface said:
They'll make that $27 million back soon enough. I think that's probably the actual point of the place. Still sounds like way more fun than Legoland!



I wish I thought of that. If people are going to be stupid you might as well make a few bucks. biggrin



How much you wanna bet that the driving impulse for this wasn't so much as to spread the gospel of creationism as it is to create a Tourist Attraction (with the $ it'd bring in).

Nokturn

Nokturn

United Kingdom
April 2006

MAY 28, 2007 08:18 AM

If God didn't invent dinosaurs, I want to worship the divine being that did...
Because dinosaurs are fucking cool!!!

Nokturn

Nokturn

United Kingdom
April 2006

MAY 28, 2007 08:28 AM

...whose mission it is to provide creative interpretations of the Book of Genesis and reconcile it with modern science the best they can, providing all the better argument fodder for righteous eighth-graders everywhere.


I'd welcome 'creative interpretations' of the Bible as more than fodder for 8th graders.
It will be clear to anybody who has studied the style and purpose of literature at the time the Bible stories were told that it is highly unlikely they were meant as a literal record and far more likely they were conceived as a set of fables.
It was what we now call 'the church' (which was created hundreds of years afterwards) which pushed the idea that the Bible contains matters-of-fact.
So I think any effort to bring the Bible back to these roots should be welcomed as there are some quite nice stories in there from which people can learn something, and that don't have to be at odds with scientific fact.
...Though of course weird-arse theories should be treated with a pinch of salt.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Though having made it clear I'm on neither 'side' in the science-religion debate, I'll expect a string of assumptions about what I mean... and ignore them.
smile

madbax

madbax

Nome, TX
March 2005

MAY 28, 2007 08:40 AM

If these were Muslims would that 10% that believe in creationism merely strap on a bomb and go kill as many as possible of the other 90%, for recognizing science?

Chainlink

Chainlink

Key West, FL
August 2005

MAY 28, 2007 08:52 AM

madbax said:
If these were Muslims would that 10% that believe in creationism merely strap on a bomb and go kill as many as possible of the other 90%, for recognizing science?



Wow surreal

You know, I think a pretty good portion of Muslims believe God created the world too.
I don't have any stats for that but I'm gonna guess.

madbax

madbax

Nome, TX
March 2005

MAY 28, 2007 09:43 AM

I think you misunderstand... My point is, while this museum caters to the 5-10% of (Creationist) Christians that believe the world is only 30,000 years old and that dinosaurs were on the Ark. the rest of (normal) Christians realize that 65 million year old bones are really... 65 million year old bones. I was illustrating that while we can all poke fun, laugh at the silly Creationists and be amazed by the "flat earth" mentality of those people. Contrast that to (fundamentalist) Muslims that don't build museums but instead kill innocent people for not sharing "their" view of Gods word,

Himes

Himes

Astoria, NY
October 2006

MAY 28, 2007 09:54 AM

Roethke said:
OK, here it is for any interested parties.

From the documentary "Friends of God"


I love that song. I've got it stuck in my head now.

And yes, lady, you are ignorant for believing in shit simply because it's easier to explain to your children.




Hey kids - harness up your behemoth with christian patriot missles and let's go fight SCIENCE!




Eat Rocks - naysayers!

madbax

madbax

Nome, TX
March 2005

MAY 28, 2007 10:27 AM

Holy shit! This thread is an unstoppable wall of Mirth! tongue

lunchbox

lunchbox

Richmond, MA
March 2005

MAY 28, 2007 10:52 AM

I'm no bibleologist, but I do believe that Jesus could think of a shitload of better things to do with 27 mil than prove that his pops put some bones here to mess with our heads......i think some Christians never read the Christ.

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