How Discovering Dinosaurs Changed Everything: The Creation Museum
In Petersburg, Kentucky, a 75,000 square foot museum houses 150 exhibits. Inside is a 4D theatre, family dining options, botanical gardens and even a zipline. But, this is no ordinary museum. It is the largest “creation museum” in the world and takes visitors through the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis.
The Creation Museum is within a day’s drive for a third of the U.S population and is open year-round. Children under 4 may enter at no charge. Adults can get a daily pass for $35 or annual access for $100. This may seem steep, but the museum cost 27 million dollars to create.
To start our journey through Genesis, we enter the stargazers’ room. This is where we learn how big God is, and two very entertaining angels assure us that God can be trusted. We are then shown how science (radioisotope dating) is merely a bunch of assumptions and unreliable.
After a walk-through of the first six days of the earth, the story of Noah’s ark is told. Visitors are given astonishing detail about how Noah captured every single species and brought them onto the ark, as well as how he kept them alive. This exhibit leaves no questions unanswered.
After the ark, we see the moment where humankind split in their interpretations of time and space. This moment is when some people steered away from biblical history. Guests meet a display of two archaeologists discovering the dinosaur bones, each with a very different conclusion. One believed that the world must be older than what the Bible says due to radiocarbon dating and yadda yadda yadda. The other archaeologist, a creationist, looks to the Bible for some severe re-evaluation; Dinosaurs must have been left out of the Bible. Based on Dinosaurs are then featured throughout the museum, with statues of modern humans living beside them.
Following the archaeological site is a room that shows the consequences of those who have no faith with exhibits of drug use, porn, and abortion — the worst of the worst. The Light at the end of the tunnel is the 6-day theatre. The theatre tells the story of the first six days again, finishing with Adam’s image with dinosaurs in the background. Guests then enter the exhibit that attempts to explain all the tangible scientific theories behind God’s work. This room leaves no questions unanswered about creation or the age of the earth.
Finally, everyone is brought through a review of the “7 C’s” of history: Creation (the six literal days in which dinosaurs and humans lived together in harmony), Corruption (Eve’s sin), Catastrophe (the flood that killed all but Noah and his family), Confusion (God confused Noah’s descendant’s language, causing them to spread on the earth), Christ (the second Adam), Cross (the crucifixion of Jesus), Consummation (the day Jesus will return to bring all the believers to heaven with him).
After the displays, there is a gift shop and even a petting zoo.
A personal report of the museum comes from Buzz Feed’s Matt Stopera. He listed a few absurd things he came across in the museum:
1. Animals used logs from trees knocked down by the great flood to get to different continents.
2. Radioactive dating isn’t reliable because it yields different results every time.
3. If we weren’t there to witness an event, then we can’t possibly predict how it got that way.
4. Dinosaurs were vegetarians until Eve’s sin.
5. The great flood happened 4,350 years ago, destroying everything. This accounted for massive fossil layers.
6. Darwin was wrong, and natural selection is NOT the basis of evolution.
Stopera’s Buzz Feed article is biased to the non-believer side and presents a humorous tone, but he does give an idea of the detail put into the exhibits to leave people with no questions unanswered.
The museum’s content may be shocking and aggravating to many people due to the blatant denial of scientific facts and the attempt to educate and influence young people in this way. Setting up young minds to be antagonistic to science is disastrous for their ability to participate with the rest of the world.
I was to reiterate that I am not saying that believing in a God or creationism is problematic. It is the denial of science and twisting it to absurd lengths that is the problem. If a young person has a skewed understanding of their environment and earth’s history, how can they participate in rational discussion and contribute to improving their community?
The small population who reject science or non-religious thought may seem insignificant. But the movement in Kentucky is actually growing (Moore, 1997). Buildings like the ark and the museum have become money-making corporations. Randy Moore (1997) points out that “this anti-evolution corporation… has doubled its staff each year”. Moore also brings attention to the corporation’s goal to teach creationism in public schools.
As mentioned above, Ken Ham has also created a life-sized Noah’s ark, which is a short 45-minute drive from the Creation Museum. This is where he met with celebrity scientist, Bill Nye, to debate about climate change. In the video that both Ham and Nye filmed and presented, they got into some heated debates on how reliable science is in determining the age of the earth.
But the point here is not whether a god exists and created the world or how old the earth is. This argument distracts from the real issues of Ham’s creation. Ken Ham did not make all these displays and “scientific” explanations to prove God exists because his faith is not the one that is threatened. Science threatens the fundamentality of scripture, and he is trying to convince the next generations to stay clear of it at all costs.
