Posted on 07/31/2006 12:47:09 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
PETERSBURG, Ky. - Like most natural history museums, this one has exhibits showing dinosaurs roaming the Earth. Except here, the giant reptiles share the forest with Adam and Eve.
That, of course, is contradicted by science, but that's the point of the $25 million Creation Museum rising fast in rural Kentucky.
Its inspiration is the Bible — the literal interpretation that contends God created the heavens and the Earth and everything in them just a few thousand years ago.
"If the Bible is the word of God, and its history really is true, that's our presupposition or axiom, and we are starting there," museum founder Ken Ham said during recent tour of the sleek and modern facility, which is due to open next year.
Ham, an Australian native who started the Christian publishing company Answers in Genesis in the late 1970s, said the goal of his privately funded museum is to change minds and rebut the scientific point of view.
"We're going to show you that we can make sense of the different people groups, we can make sense of fossils, we can make sense of what you see in the world," he said.
Visitors to the museum, a few miles from Cincinnati, will be able to watch the story of creation unfold in a 180-seat special-effects theater, see a 40-foot-tall recreation of a section of Noah's Ark and stare into the jaws of robotic dinosaurs.
"It's education, but it's also doing it in an entertaining way," Ham said.
Scientists say fossils and sophisticated nuclear dating technology show that the Earth is more than 4 billion years old, the first dinosaurs appeared around 200 million years ago, and they died out well before the first human ancestors arose a few million years ago.
"Genesis is not science," said Mary Dawson, curator emeritus of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. "Genesis is a tale that was handed down for generations by people who really knew nothing about science, who knew nothing about natural history, and certainly knew nothing about what fossils were."
Ham said he believes most fossils are the result of the Great Flood described in Genesis.
Mark Looy, a vice president at Answers in Genesis, said the museum has received at least $21 million in private donations. He said two anonymous donors have given $1 million, and he expects the museum to be debt-free when it opens next May.
John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, an organization that promotes creationism, said the museum will affirm the doubts many people have about science, namely the notion that man evolved from lower forms of life.
"Americans just aren't gullible enough to believe that they came from a fish," he said.
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On the Net:
Answers in Genesis:
http://www.answersingenesis.org
Carnegie Museum of Natural History:
http://www.carnegiemnh.org
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ping
Thanks for the ping. But I don't use the evolution list in the religion forum, so I'll have to pass on this.
Didn't see it was in the religion forum. My bad.
This guy's name is Ham?
That is too strange. Are his partners Shem and Japeth?
To the extent certain practitioners of philosophy attempt to dress science in a garb that denies intelligent design (the essential declaration of the biblical texts) they do a disservice to mankind in general and science in particular.
Of course the biblical texts are much more than that, answering also the ultimate purpose and intent of the Creator. I've always wondered what is so unscientific about someone plainly stating what are their actions and intentions. Scientists tend to do that frequently. At least honest ones admit as much. But when God does it, all of a sudden we are told He is "religious" and "unscientific." How is it that the Source of nature can be called "supernatural," or "unscientific?" By what science has that appellation been established? None whatsoever.
It takes a studied avoidance of fact to deny order and purpose to physical reality - the essential product of intelligent design. It also takes a remarkable faith to confess a billion year history that cannot be the object of empirical testing and yet declare it as objective fact.
Needless to say, they don't get federal funding.
Thanks for the link. I perused it in some detail. Intelligent design is not supernatural. Neither is creation. Neither is God. The word "supernatural" is an arbitrary distinction concocted by the human imagination to assert and/or confirm some distance between man and the Creator.
The upshot hits the nail on the head: we are dealing with a philosophy that makes assertions in the name of science as if this philosophy is somehow more reliable, accurate, or authoritative than the biblical texts. The bottom line is simply an ongoing struggle over the big question: "Did God say?"
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