adam, eve, and pterodactyls

A few moths ago, I mentioned that there were plans underway to build a giant, $25 million Creationist museum in northern Kentucky, near to where my parents live. Well, the fellow behind the endeavor to popularize the myth that the earth is only 6,000 years old (based on his literal reading of the Bible), Ken Ham, is in the news again – this time for saying that he’s planning to invite student groups from public schools to experience (and be “saved” in) his pseudo-science “museum.” Here’s what he says in response to the question of public school involvement:

“We’ll try. Maybe we’ll invite some of the superintendents, and say, ‘We just want to show you what’s here. And you guys decide if there’s any way you can use it.’ It’s possible (administrators) might tell their students, ‘Don’t believe what they tell you, but let’s go see the dinosaurs.’ And we don’t mind that.”

So, there’s the plan — lure them in with the cool dinosaurs, and then, when you’ve got their attention, try to plant the seed that human beings and t-rexes walked the earth at the same time. It’s perfect timing too, as school budgets are being slashed, and such subsidized opportunities for outings would be welcomed… Here’s a longer clip from the article, in which Ham brings us up to speed on his project, and compares it to Disney World:

Soon, visitors to Ham’s still-unfinished Creation Museum will experience his view: that God created the world in six, 24-hour days on a planet just 6,000 years old. This literal interpretation of the Bible runs counter to accepted scientific theory, which says Earth and its life forms evolved over billions of years.

Undaunted by considerable opponents, Ham’s Answers in Genesis ministry is building a $25 million monument to creationism. The largest museum of its kind in the world, it hopes to draw 600,000 people from the Midwest and beyond in its first year.

“When that museum is finished, it’s going to be Cincinnati’s No. 1 tourist attraction,” says the Rev. Jerry Falwell, nationally known Baptist evangelist and chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.

“It’s going to be a mini-Disney World.”

Ham sees the museum as a way of reaching more people – along with the Answers in Genesis Web site, which claims to get 10 million page views per month, and his “Answers … with Ken Ham” radio show, carried by more than 725 stations worldwide. That’s in addition to his talks around the country, the sales of books and DVD’s, newsletters e-mailed to 120,000 people and Creation magazine, which has 25,000 U.S. subscribers.

“People will get saved here,” Ham says of the museum. “It’s going to fire people up. If nothing else, it’s going to get them to question their own position of what they believe.”

Primed to Fight

He walks briskly through the privately funded museum, pausing at a life-size model of a 40-foot-long, 14-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex.

Ham, 53, appears far less ferocious – there’s a resemblance to Abraham Lincoln – but he is primed to fight, too.

“It’s a foundational battle,” he says, his Australian accent unmistakable. “You’ve got to get people believing the right history – and believing that you can trust the Bible.”

Ham’s views of history and science are based on a literal reading of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament. Among other things, he believes that:

Earth is about 6,000 years old, a figure arrived at by tracing the biblical genealogies, and not 4.5 billion years, as mainstream scientists say.

Soon, visitors to Ham’s still-unfinished Creation Museum will experience his view: that God created the world in six, 24-hour days on a planet just 6,000 years old. This literal interpretation of the Bible runs counter to accepted scientific theory, which says Earth and its life forms evolved over billions of years.

And, not that anyone here really cares what we’re thought of across the pond, but here’s a clip from the UK Guardian aboutone of Ham’s competitors, the Museum of Earth History:

The razor-toothed Tyrannosaurus rex, jaws agape, loomed ominously over the gentle Thescelosaurus, looking for plants to eat. Admiring the museum diorama were old and young visitors, listening on headphones to a stentorian voice describing the primeval scene.

But the Museum of Earth History is a museum with a controversial difference. To one side, peering through the bushes, are Adam and Eve. The display is not an image of the Cretaceous. It is Paradise. ‘They lived together without fear, for there was no death yet,’ the voice intoned about Man and Dinosaur….

The museum forms part of a Bible-based theme park in Eureka Springs; the car park is full of cars and coaches from all over the country. To enter the museum is to explore a surrealistic parallel world. Biblical quotes appear on displays. The first has dinosaurs, alongside Adam and Eve, living in harmony. The ferociously fanged T. rex is likely to be a vegetarian. Then comes the Fall of Man and an ugly world where dinosaurs prey on each other and the first extinctions occur. The destruction of the dinosaurs is explained, not by a comet striking the Earth 65 million years ago, but by the Flood. This, the museum says, wiped out most of the dinosaurs still alive and created the Grand Canyon and huge layers of sedimentary rock seen around the world.

Some dinosaurs survived on Noah’s ark. One poster explains that Noah would have chosen juvenile dinosaurs to save space. An illustration shows two green sauropods in the ark alongside more conventional elephants and lions. The final exhibit depicts the Ice Age, where the last dinosaurs existed with woolly mammoths until the cold and hunting by cavemen caused them to die out.

There you have it. This is what’s become of our country. While other nations around the world are making significant strides with stem cell research, our efforts are being channeled into fantasy museums/evangelical Christian recruitment centers… How many alarm bells do we need to hear before we start taking this threat seriously? Our history is being rewritten right in front of our eyes. The scientific method is being dismantled piece by piece. Our world is being Disneyfied by radicals.

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15 Comments

  1. john galt
    Posted May 24, 2005 at 8:13 am | Permalink

    For once I agree with you Mark.. I mean WTF?? Why is the govenment allowing a private citizen to express crazy views that everyone knows are false? The govt. should send in armed troops and shut the whole place down. People shouldn’t be able to view subversive material like this and then make up their own mind. Children should get all their ideas from govt. sanctioned sources like the govt. school system. On a related note, I was watching TV this weekend and a show called the Flintstones was on.. Talk about a show that flies in the face of science.. There are so many examples but the one that bothered me most was this character called Fred who had a dinosaur as a pet. Can’t we think of the children.

  2. Posted May 24, 2005 at 8:22 am | Permalink

    This has nothing to do with TV.

  3. Ken
    Posted May 24, 2005 at 9:56 am | Permalink

    Why would they put Adam and Eve in a museum? Their one fuck up has snowballed into every problem we have today. I think it would be smart to forget about those two losers and start fixing their mistakes.

  4. Ken
    Posted May 24, 2005 at 10:01 am | Permalink

    Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I have a pterodacyl that lives near the pond behind my house. Folks tell me that it is a Great Blue Heron, but bully on that shit! I don’t think God would tease me like that.

  5. Tony Buttons
    Posted May 24, 2005 at 1:02 pm | Permalink

    You’d think that the writers of the Bible, for all of their mentions of cows, horses, sheep and the like, would mention that there were also giant, people-eating lizards. That’s one hell of an omission.

  6. Kurt
    Posted May 24, 2005 at 2:08 pm | Permalink

    Seems to me that if God exists in the way people like Ham consider God to exist (ie., as a mighty, bearded white guy in a robe looking down upon us wee, sinning humans, you know, kinda like Zeus or Odin) they might also consider that He existed long before He created the Earth and, as such, His “days” probably last quite a bit longer than 24 puny Earth-hours. Why would he set his personal clock on Earth time? Earth certainly wasn’t the first thing He created and if He’s so enamored of a 24-Earth-hour day then why did He choose days of different lengths for the rest of the planets in our solar system? Hell, if I can’t get all my shit done in 24 puny Earth-hours I’d hate to have God’s “To Do” list.

    Now that I think about it, I wonder if Earth is nothing more than God’s version of reality television, something he created just to watch when he’s kickin’ back. 24 Earth-hours might well be the equivalent of a half-hour sitcom for the Big Guy. Of course, I’m sure He’s got a God-style TIVO and can get through an episode in less than a second….

  7. keyra
    Posted May 24, 2005 at 3:16 pm | Permalink

    Kurt – you idiot. God created Americans in his image. That is the reason he goes by earth time. If you would get off your sitcom watching ass and read the bible, you might actually know that. Stupid dope smokin’ commie bot. You are about as bright as cut and paste Maynard.

  8. Teddy Glass
    Posted May 24, 2005 at 5:26 pm | Permalink

    I suspect that fewer mules are getting anally raped (see Mark’s post from a few days ago) now that we have the internet for Republican trolls to occupy their time on.

  9. Kurt
    Posted May 24, 2005 at 6:03 pm | Permalink

    Keyra,
    Is it okay if I just rent some Veggie Tales videos and get my Bible knowledge that way? Reading is hard!

    I’m as bright as ol’Cut & Paste? Neat!

  10. john galt
    Posted May 24, 2005 at 7:04 pm | Permalink

    “And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the
    earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy
    them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood;
    rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it
    within and without with pitch.”
    ~Genesis 6:13-14~

    of course most educated people know that the noah flood story was just a modification of the epic of Gilgamesh (babylonian)…

    However the Tinfoil hat brigade sees this story as an act of extraterrestrial intervention, a great catclysm was facing the earth (comet, pole shift, supervolcano..) and an alien race preserved the DNA of all the animals on earth, then after thing stabilized recreated the flora and fauna.

    I personally like the later story, but the flooding of the black sea is a much simpler and more believable interpretation.. It must have been hell to bring those velociraptors on the boat.

  11. chris
    Posted May 24, 2005 at 7:28 pm | Permalink

    Kurt!! I have a much better method for you!!! Even better than Chick publications little pamphlets for how you would burn in hell for all eternity unless you bared your soul and repented at….whatever church was ink stamped on the back. Man, I should’ve collected those.

    No, what I was going to suggest is http://www.bricktestament.com. Esp fascinating is the story of Er and Onan in Genesis. Check it out! Point to be made, I saw NO Lego dinos in the Garden of Eden.

  12. mark
    Posted May 24, 2005 at 9:58 pm | Permalink

    I think I mentioned it in an earlier post, but I like the image of a pterodactyl with an olive branch… Can one of you artists in the audience work on something?

  13. Stella
    Posted May 27, 2005 at 9:58 pm | Permalink

    Hooray! We’ve circled back to Chick tracts

  14. Bob
    Posted June 22, 2005 at 8:14 pm | Permalink

    The dating method used to give the date of the earth as 4.5 billion years old was jettisoned by the scientific community( soon after this ‘wonder date’ was revealed to all us lesser mortals), as unreliable.But the date itself was kept.This,I presume,is science. Darwinism is a complete,total,unscientific sham;if anyone wishes to accept it as truth,despite mountains of evidence against it,well,have fun in fantasyland.

  15. mark
    Posted June 22, 2005 at 9:45 pm | Permalink

    Answer me one question, Bob… How old is the planet that we’re on?

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