In the beginning . . . Adam walked with dinosaurs
By James Langton in New York
(Filed: 02/01/2005)

With its towering dinosaurs and a model of the Grand Canyon,
America's newest tourist attraction might look like the ideal
destination for fans of the film Jurassic Park.

The new multi-million-dollar Museum of Creation, which will open
this spring in Kentucky, will, however, be aimed not at film
buffs, but at the growing ranks of fundamentalist Christians in
the United States.

It aims to promote the view that man was created in his present
shape by God, as the Bible states, rather than by a Darwinian
process of evolution, as scientists insist.

The centrepiece of the museum is a series of huge model dinosaurs,
built by the former head of design at Universal Studios, which are
portrayed as existing alongside man, contrary to received
scientific opinion that they lived millions of years apart.

Other exhibits include images of Adam and Eve, a model of Noah's
Ark and a planetarium demonstrating how God made the Earth in six
days.

The museum, which has cost a mighty $25 million (£13 million) will
be the world's first significant natural history collection
devoted to creationist theory. It has been set up by Ken Ham, an
Australian evangelist, who runs Answers in Genesis, one of
America's most prominent creationist organisations. He said that
his aim was to use tourism, and the theme park's striking
exhibits, to convert more people to the view that the world and
its creatures, including dinosaurs, were created by God 6,000
years ago.

"We want people to be confronted by the dinosaurs," said Mr Ham.
"It's going to be a first class experience. Visitors are going to
be hit by the professionalism of this place. It is not going to be
done in an amateurish way. We are making a statement."

The museum's main building was completed recently, and work on the
entrance exhibit starts this week. The first phase of the museum,
which lies on a 47-acre site 10 miles from Cincinatti on the
border of Kentucky and Ohio, will open in the spring.

Market research companies hired by the museum are predicting at
least 300,000 visitors in the first year, who will pay $10 (£5.80)
each.

Among the projects still to be finished is a reconstruction of the
Grand Canyon, purportedly formed by the swirling waters of the
Great Flood - where visitors will "gape" at the bones of dinosaurs
that "hint of a terrible catastrophe", according to the museum's
publicity.

Mr Ham is particularly proud of a planned reconstruction of the
interior of Noah's Ark. "You will hear the water lapping, feel the
Ark rocking and perhaps even hear people outside screaming," he
said.

More controversial exhibits deal with diseases and famine, which
are portrayed not as random disasters, but as the result of
mankind's sin. Mr Ham's Answers in Genesis movement blames the
1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, in which two
teenagers killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing
themselves, on evolutionist teaching, claiming that the
perpetrators believed in Darwin's survival of the fittest.

Other exhibits in the museum will blame homosexuals for Aids. In a
"Bible Authority Room" visitors are warned: "Everyone who rejects
his history - including six-day creation and Noah's flood - is
`wilfully' ignorant.''

Elsewhere, animated figures will be used to recreate the Garden of
Eden, while in another room, visitors will see a tyrannosaurus rex
pursuing Adam and Eve after their fall from grace. "That's the
real terror that Adam's sin unleashed," visitors will be warned.

A display showing ancient Babylon will deal with the Tower of
Babel and "unravel the origin of so-called races'', while the
final section will show the life of Christ, as an animated angel
proclaims the coming of the Saviour and a 3D depiction of the
crucifixion.

In keeping with modern museum trends, there will also be a cafe
with a terrace to "breathe in the fresh air of God's creation'',
and a shop "crammed'' with creationist souvenirs, including
T-shirts and books such as A is for Adam and Dinky Dinosaur:
Creation Days.

The museum's opening will reinforce the burgeoning creationist
movement and evangelical Christianity in the US, which gained
further strength with the re-election of President Bush in
November.

Followers of creationism have been pushing for their theories to
be reintegrated into American schoolroom teaching ever since the
celebrated 1925 "Scopes Monkey Trial", when US courts upheld the
right of a teacher to use textbooks that included evolutionary
theory.

In 1987, the US Supreme Court reinforced that position by banning
the teaching of creationism in public schools on the grounds of
laws that separate state and Church.

Since then, however, many schools - particularly in America's
religious Deep South - have got around the ban by teaching the
theory of "intelligent design", which claims that evolutionary
ideas alone still leave large gaps in understanding.

"Since President Bush's re-election we have been getting more
membership applications than we can handle,'' said Mr Ham, who
expects not just the devout, but also the curious, to flock
through the turnstiles. "The evolutionary elite will be getting a
wake-up call."

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http://lastliberal.org

In the beginning . . . Adam walked with dinosaurs
By James Langton in New York
(Filed: 02/01/2005)

With its towering dinosaurs and a model of the Grand Canyon,
America's newest tourist attraction might look like the ideal
destination for fans of

http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/02/weden02.xml&pos=portal_puff3
In the beginning . . . Adam walked with dinosaurs
By James Langton in New York
(Filed: 02/01/2005)
With its towering dinosaurs and a model of the Grand Canyon,
America's newest tourist attraction might look like the ideal
destination for fans of the film Jurassic Park.
The new multi-million-dollar Museum of Creation, which will open
this spring in Kentucky, will, however, be aimed not at film
buffs, but at the growing ranks of fundamentalist Christians in
the United States.
It aims to promote the view that man was created in his present
shape by God, as the Bible states, rather than by a Darwinian
process of evolution, as scientists insist.

The new multi-million-dollar Museum of Creation,
which will open this spring in Kentucky,

It is not going to be
done in an amateurish way. We are making a statement."