Inside the Jurassic Park of Genesis
Petersburg. Joe Boone (Photo Jean-Cosme Delaloye) is proud of his move. He just turned a switch on and the big dinosaur above him starts moving. “It’s great, isn’t?”, he asks looking at the animal. The animatronics are one of the main attractions of the Creation Museum, which opened his doors on May 28 2007 in Petersburg (Kentucky). These monsters made of foam and clay are displayed in the idyllic Garden of Eden and throughout the whole museum. “We have dinosaurs coexisting with humans”, Joe Boone says. “It always throws people off. But we want to show to our visitors that on Day Six, God created animals and human beings” The clean-shaved man is not a scientist. Joe Boone used to be an accountant and run a small company with his father. Eleven years ago, a great sadness fell upon him and his God-loving family. His wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor and his father had leukemia. His dad survived but his wife passed away. This challenging time made him question his faith. Why would God let his life fall apart? Joe Boone found the answer when he met Australian-born Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis (AIG), the evangelical group which owns the Creation Museum. “Ken wrote a book to explain how a loving God would allow bad things to happen”, Joe Boone says. “I liked how Ken gave people evidence to explain their faith and proved that scientific evidence support the Bible”. Joe Boone speaks of “edutainment” when he describes the museum. The goal, he adds, is to educate and entertain people as well as to promote a total Biblical worldview. The 300 employees of AIG and of the museum have to sign a “statement on faith” rejecting evolution. In 2006, Answers in Genesis earned $16 million selling books and promoting the idea that the Earth was created by God in 6 days less than 10,000 years ago. The visit of the museum starts in a room exposing the two conflicting worldviews. On one side of the room, God. On the other Charles Darwin. “We have the same evidence as the evolutionists, Joe Boone says. The question is how we can interpret this evidence. And the answer depends on our starting point. It really comes down to two different views: either God created the Earth or everything happened without God”. Once you leave this “theory room”, you enter the world of Patrick Marsh. Mr Marsh is a born again Christian, who designed the King Kong and Jaws attraction at the Universal Studios theme park before joining AIG and offering his services for the Biblical cause. He designed an interactive museum with animatronics and artwork. “Before he came, we were working on a $14-million museum, Joe Boone says. Patrick transformed the project into $27-million one.” Along the way, there are figures of Adam and Eve and of Luther. There is a replica of the snake talking Eve into biting the apple. Visitors can walk through what Joe Boon proudly describes as “reproduction of 1% of Noah’s Ark”. There is a display of house a crumbling. Inside the house, a video shows a girl on a phone and talking about having an abortion. In another room, a kid is watching porn on the Internet. “We are showing the consequences of compromise as it relates to the authority of the Scriptures”, Mr Boone adds. Ken Ham has hired scientists, who share his worldview to give weight to his belief that God created the earth in 6 days less than 10 000 years ago. In a small office inside the AIG headquarters, Dr. Terry Mortenson, an historian of geology, defends the idea that dinosaurs and human beings could coexist: “It is possible to have dangerous animals living with humans, he says. Today, we have poisonous snakes and alligators in Florida. The fact that the dinosaurs were big and carnivore does not mean they will attack men”. Terry Mortenson piles on a four religious books in front of him and uses them to represent the different layers of the earth . “We highly dispute the radiometric rating method, he says. The Bible says humans and animals were created on Day 6. The word dinosaur only appeared in 1841. The evolutionists date rock layers. But geology is based on the assumption that the absence of fossils proves the non-existence of the creatures.” “They say the dinosaurs lived down here, he adds while pointing to the book at the bottom of the pile. And we humans lived up here. This assumption is false. The living fossils prove it wrong. The living fossils are creatures the evolutionists thought were extinct. There is no way the scientist can prove the age of the earth” In another office, Dr Georgia Purdom, a molecular geneticist, speaks about her personal experience: “My daughter is adopted from China, she says. A lot of people would say she is Asian and I am Caucasian. But we all come from Adam and Eve. We are one family, one blood. From a genetic point of view, the word “race” is a bad term to use”. The creationist movement is pretty powerful in the US. Polls consistently show that more than 40% of Americans believe God created the earth and the human beings less than 10000 years ago. On August 9 2005, the Kansas Board of Education decided to teach Intelligent Design alongside evolution. The Board was eventually voted out and Kansas removed any reference of Intelligent Design as part of science. In 2002, Cobb County in Georgia added stickers in biology books that said: “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.” Cobb County was sued by parents and lost a long legal battle. On December 20 2006, the county authorities decided to remove the stickers. In Cincinnati, some Christians like reverend Mendle Adams oppose the museum. The 68-year-old preacher who keeps bursting out laughing, is worried about the new AIG venture: “I am a Christian but I believe in evolution, he says holding his Bible. Creationists went after me because I believed in evolution. Ken Ham’s theory is based upon misreading the Genesis. This craziness to reject science and evolution is the death of our culture. I therefore tell these people to keep their hands off my grandchildren and I will not be silent. The happy look on Mr Adam’s face suddenly becomes dark. The man who describes himself as being on the “left of the political spectrum”, speaks about a world very different from the beautiful displays and animatronics of the Creation Museum. His church lies in modest and mixed neighborhood of Cincinnati. “If I believed God is a God of vengeance, I would have to be an atheist, he adds. This museum will lead many astray. The creationists will use it for home schooling and against the teaching of evolution in public schools. They will claim that what they are teaching is scientific. I see that as an affront to my country and to my children. These are dangerous ideologues”. In the cafeteria of Answers in Genesis, Mark Looy, vice-president for ministry relations, disagrees. “These people oppose our message because of our viewpoint, he says. They prevented us from getting another property for the museum in the 90s. But in God’s providence, we got a better one. And our supporters rallied to our side and started giving very generously because of the opposition we were getting”. AIG expect to welcome 250 000 “creationist pilgrims” and visitors every year at the museum that stands just a few miles west from Cincinnati airport. “Our mission is to equip Christians to have answers for their faith”, Mark Looy adds. Answers in Genesis did not forget the souvenirs. In medieval-looking shop, one can buy shirts and mugs and all kind of souvenirs. There is also wide range of books promoting a total biblical worldview. Among them, one can buy “The new Answers book”, edited by Ken Ham. The red book with a skeleton of a tyrannosaurus on its cover will give the reader 27 “easy-to-understand answers that reach core truths of the Christian faith and apply the biblical worldview to subjects” such as dinosaurs and Noah’s Ark. But like everything else in the museum, this lesson of faith has a price. It costs $14.99. A French version of this story was published in in July 2007 in L’Actualité in Canada CommentsYou must be logged in to post a comment. |
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