Fundamentalists Meet Animatronics
A day at the new Creation Museum. By Nathan Dickerson, University of Kentucky
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The Creation Museum, which opened on May 28, is an innovative, $27 million complex in Petersburg, Ky. that argues “The Bible is true from Genesis to Revelation.” It exists to combat the consensus among geologists, paleontologists, biologists, cosmologists, and a variety of other professionals anchored in the framework of science, that the Earth is billions of years old and humans were not created by God in their present form. It is the headquarters for the United States branch of Answers in Genesis (AiG), an organization and ministry dedicated to defending the superiority of a literal understanding of the Bible.
The museum is located just a short drive away from the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport, which places it within a day’s drive of almost two-thirds of the U.S. population. As someone who used to believe in a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible myself, I thought it was worth a visit. This peculiar facility houses an educational museum, classrooms for students from Christian schools and households, a war room for crafting media strategy, and more.
But whether visitors are Christian moderates, atheists, or people of different faiths, the Creation Museum does little to persuade someone to challenge their presuppositions. For example, the museum explains that fresh water fish survived Noah’s flood because the fresh water remained above salt water, and the fresh water fish survived by merely swimming in a different layer of water. It also suggests that dinosaurs became extinct because humans killed them off and that dragon myths (including Chinese dragons which look nothing like dinosaurs) reinforce this notion. The museum, which insists that God created the universe in six 24 hour days, also does an especially frustrating job of reconciling how and why God created the day and the night on the first day of creation and the sun on the fourth day. This conflict was only passively addressed in a short film featuring “a dramatic reading of Genesis,” which showed an illuminated, computer animated Earth—complete with sunshine—on day one, but the formation of the sun only later.
What the museum lacks in reason-based persuasive appeal, however, it compensates with presentation. The museum is an entertaining experience comprising a fascinating array of sets, animatronic humans and dinosaurs, and other components common in theme park attractions. Patrick Marsh, who has created rides for Universal Studios, designed the museum. Appropriately, the Creation Museum had a ride-like set path that followed AiG’s structured and absolutist understanding.
The welcome gates feature silhouettes of Stegosaurs, the park outside the facility has bushes sculpted in the shape of Tyrannosaurs, and more dinosaurs dominate the main hub of the museum. But, alas, the Creation Museum sets any young dinosaur enthusiast up for disappointment.
The museum is currently constructing a “Dino Den” room to open on July 4, but the dinosaurs here remain little more than a motif intended to exploit children’s cultural fascinations to teach them religious lessons.
The museum demonstrated its real priorities as I entered the first major exhibit, which confusingly features the Grand Canyon. I expected the museum’s rooms to be chronologically structured, but the first several rooms postponed the 6,000 year history lesson and instead focused on why Christian fundamentalism is superior to the framework of science. The Grand Canyon room serves as an introductory example of how AiG claims Christian fundamentalism and science can reach such different conclusions from the same set of facts. In this exhibit, AiG suggests the Grand Canyon did not have to form over millions of years, and uses Burlingame Canyon, which was formed in six days after humans diverted excess water from irrigation canals, as a precedent. Water from Noah’s flood, according to AiG, probably created the Grand Canyon in a relatively short time.
The "Graffiti Alley" and "Culture in Crisis" exhibits are direct appeals to fear. Graffiti Alley was modeled after an urban back alley tagged with a variety of subversive messages and, curiously, a collage of news clippings showing threats including gay marriage and stem cell research.
The “Culture in Crisis” room showed what AiG believes are the consequences of Christians having assumed a more moderate position on the 6,000 year Earth theory. These consequences include abortion, Internet porn, and as an ominous overhead voice notes, the fact that “One in 10 teens does not believe in absolute truth.”
 Adam and Eve are portrayed frolicking with dinosaurs, evidence that ultimately, AiG can’t bring itself to rely solely on the Bible. The museum’s curators adopt scientific-sounding rhetoric to bolster an argument inescapably rooted in a leap of faith. AiG’s website explains, “Why do we interpret facts differently? Because we start with different presuppositions. These are things that are assumed to be true, without being able to prove them. These then become the basis for other conclusions. All reasoning is based on presuppositions (also called axioms).” [emphasis in original] Justifying fundamentalism in terms of “interpreting facts” and “presuppositions” instead of a direct appeal to faith seems to be a concession to the enlightenment values of reason over dogma. But this false equivalence of AiG’s faith with the more reasonable competing interpretations from science requires a suspension of disbelief from all but the already converted.
With its moving parts and ride-like atmosphere, the museum is, perhaps intentionally, an environment ill-suited for contemplation. By the time I was questioning whether the gene pool was still pure for intermarriage among Noah’s children as the museum claimed it was for Adam’s and Eve’s children, I was wondering if I missed the explanation for why God gave humans a tail-like bone. My mind began to shut down.
Perhaps the museum isn’t supposed to make you think at all. Rather, it fulfills its real mission quite effectively—it creates a symbol to bolster fundamentalist creationism. The museum’s arguments are lost in the shadows of its dinosaurs. The museum stands, symbolically and physically, to make a point that arguments for six day creationism exist no matter how implausible they may be. In so doing, it gives new life to the fundamentalist creationism movement, much like its artificial dinosaurs are bringing new life to AiG’s Eden.
Nathan Dickerson graduated from the University of Kentucky in May 2007 with a public policy major and computer science minor.
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Comments
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Do you mind me asking why you wrote this? I really fail to see your point in writing about someone else’s belief that you obviously find comically wrong for no other reason than deriving a sense of moral superiority. While we can find their world view incorrect, we were founded on ideas of religious tolerance, and that includes ones that some even find laughable. Show some respect for your fellow man.
— Mike - Jun 12, 06:02 PM - #It’s a free country, Mike. They are 100% free to expound their reality-impaired views. And we are 100% free to point out the egregious errors they make, and to be snarky and derisive while doing it. Have a problem with free speech?
— NJ - Jun 12, 07:00 PM - #I’m not arguing with that, it’s just if we all go around saying ‘your an idiot’ to everyone we don’t agree with, the world would not be a very nice place.
— Mike - Jun 12, 08:00 PM - #Mike, come on … when they blame all of society’s ills on the fact that we accept rationality and science, they’re not respecting our views and often they’re engaged in personal attacks as well (can’t separate this strand of wingnuttery from all its close cousins). The object is not to find accommodation with folks who are hurting us and the nation by promoting falsehoods; don’t avoid calling a spade a spade in the name of niceness.
When others insist on bringing religion into the public sphere to justify policy, they open up their beliefs to scrutiny. That’s hardly unreasonable.
— respectful.dissent - Jun 13, 12:13 AM - #Mike, I’ll address your misgivings.
I wrote the article because I used to believe in a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, and I was therefore interested in what AiG had to say with this musuem.
Also, the article is not meant to be snarky. AiG is making a public argument with this museum that touches upon policy issues such as science education and stem cell research. Giving this $27 million dollar argument consideration and evaluation is far from disrespectful or condescending.
— Nathan - Jun 13, 11:36 AM - #I find it curious that creationists feel compelled to argue their views at all. Since God is supposedly omnipotent he could have created the world in a second, 5 minutes ago and “pre-seeded” our brains with the notion that we have lived since we were born. With an omnipotent God there is no need for reason or theories around creation. It must feel nice to not be mentally constrained by reason and theories that can be proven wrong.
— Carl - Jun 14, 07:37 AM - #Mike,
Why write this? Polling shows that “Americans do not believe that humans evolved, and the vast majority says that even if they evolved, God guided the process.”
If this objectively false view on history is this prominent, I want to know about it.
— mcorcoran - Jun 14, 10:50 AM - #I think that Hume would agree with the creationists’ view of epistemology – knowledge being based on presuppositions instead of ‘evidence’, and the limitations of experience (science and rationality) as a means of arriving at the truth
— cmatt - Jun 14, 02:01 PM - #All this to say that fundamentalists can not be trusted with our politics. They can not be trusted to accept anybody else’s views. They would try to change everybody else to thier point of view. Hmm… sound like any other religious group we’ve heard of ?
— RS - Jun 14, 06:40 PM - #I think the thing I find most shocking about these types of exhibits, are the total lack of humanity.
I notice you didn’t say anything about peace or loving your neighbors and I think it’s probably safe to assume there wasn’t much on the subjects.
That they feel they must spend millions of dollars on their super defensive and hateful tactics, rather than engaging in open discussions and debate, is incredibly sad.
— Potter - Jun 14, 07:18 PM - #The creationists don’t have any room for debate! What could they possibly say in a debate over evolution? “God created the earth. Satan planted all the evidence for evolution to make you doubt God.” That’s about the extent of it.
More than that, the creationists are the “victims” only by their own propaganda. They say that leftist/atheist professors and teachers are influencing children to be non-believers. Considering the state of the education system, and that teachers are lucky if students do their homework, I really doubt these claims.
Thanks for the review, Nathan!
— Ann - Jun 15, 12:11 AM - #Doesn’t anyone else find it interesting that this project is called a museum to begin with? A museum is meant to be a collection of artifacts, documents, actual objects worthy of study. As this articles states, there are no artifacts. And the word museum has always meant to be associated with places of learning and education. They are using the connotation of the word to give legitimacy to their argument, without displaying any actual evidence. I think they realize they are losing the debate and that’s why they built this to begin with.
— CA - Jun 15, 11:14 AM - #re: fundamentalists can not be trusted with our politics:
There’s a true statement.
The Inquistion, Crusades, Muslim
fundamentalists, and a short search of history will demonstrate that ‘religion’ has been used to kill millions. Everyone seems to have ‘dibs’ on
some mythic invisible being that
authorizes them to kill.
NO THANKS!
— Big E - Jun 15, 11:25 AM - #and not to put too fine a point on the whole matter, BUT:
http://www.evilbible.com/Impossible.htm
— Big E - Jun 15, 11:42 AM - #Does anyone else wonder why this “religious” organization spent $27 million to build a theme park instead of to raise thousands out of poverty? Perhaps they’re a bit confused or never clicked “continue reading” on their e-bible to read on to the New Testament.
— Reason - Jun 16, 01:04 PM - #How sad to see such a waste of money and resources that could have been better spent actually HELPING the poor.
Message of these FUNDIS: Jesus hates science — and doesn’t care about the poor!
— SAD - Jun 16, 03:02 PM - #Does anyone find this museum offensive to their Christian faith? My point is that this museum’s purpose is to portray the strict literal interpretation of the bible, yet there is absolutely no mention of such things as massive floating forests preserving insects during the flood. Yet the museum portrays such things as absolute biblical truth.
— omg - Jun 18, 10:39 PM - #Surely he wouldn’t use human logic and reason for such conclussions, there is an entire section specifically condeming that as evil. So I guess my question is: does Ken Hamm consider himself a modern day devinely inspired contributer of scripture?
Ken Hamm is either a liar or an intellectual idiot. It seems a shame that the dinosaurs did not live at the same time of Hamm,s anscestors, they could have done us a favour and eaten them. Mike is as bad as Hamm. Millions of Germans voted for Hitler-did that make them right.
— sean connor - Sep 2, 02:53 PM - #