The Creation Museum

As a disclaimer, I'm not a religious person. I am also not anti-religion. I am anti- anti-logic, however. I am agnostic and I don't pretend to know what is the truth, because I don't. I try to keep an open mind.

More information on the Creation Museum can be found here :http://creationmuseum.org/

The Creation Museum is in Petersburg, Kentucky, which is about ten minutes away from my parents house. It hasn't been in existence that long- I think it was built when I was in high school. I've always had an interest in going, just to see what they had to say, but the price of admission is steep ($24.95 per person) and I don't want to give money to crazy fringe religious groups if I don't need to. It only supports the crazies.

After arriving at my parents house on Wednesday, Dad informed me that on Christmas Eve, the Creation Museum would be free from 10 to 3, and they were going if I'd like to join them. I jumped at the chance to finally get to check this place out. 

My parents are my parents, so we arrived at the museum promptly at 10. It was pretty busy. The place has a weird layout and includes a planetarium and a theater (screen, not live) in addition to the main museum part. A long line at the planetarium steered us away, and we tried to go to the show playing in the theater. It was called the Men in White, and we just missed the first showing, so we headed on into the main part.

The first thing you see are some foreshadowing posters hinting at what lies within the museum, and an impressive wax sculpture of two archeologists . I had to stare at it for a minute to see if it was real or not. The point of this sculpture was to point out that scientists make conclusions on the things they find based on their assumptions and Biblical scholars make theirs based on the Bible. 

I don't have a problem with that on a very basic level. Obviously, people are going to see things differently based on their own perceptions, and there isn't anything anyone can do about that.However,  I felt like this being the first thing, along with the way it was presented, was going to be used as justification for ignoring anything that might dispute their mindset. I wasn't wrong. 

We continued. I didn't actually know what to expect from the museum other than a creationist mindset. What I learned was the the museum was either built by or in conjunction with the Answers in Genesis people- the ones who think dinosaurs lived with people. This interested me even more, because I was really interested to see how they were going to justify this claim. 

They didn't do it very well. The museum was strangely put together. I don't feel like it had a logical flow at all. We went from creation to the flood, but intermixed were all kinds of side exhibits ranging from what would happen if atheists ruled the world  (abortions, drugs, and Hitler, if you're wondering. Funny, I always thought Hitler was a Christian…) to Natural selection. Nothing flowed very well. 

The point of the Creation Museum is to share the idea that God created the Earth roughly 6,000 years ago, dinosaurs were created the day before people, and they lived with people until they died. Also, Jesus died for your sins. 

I get the dinosaurs living with people argument at first. There are some passages in the Bible that speak of animals that don't quite add up to any animal I've ever seen or heard about. The CM has decided these are dinosaurs- and they do fit the description of dinosaurs pretty well. Okay, fine. This raises one main questions- what happened to the dinosaurs? There isn't an answer for that. They say there were dinosaurs on the ark, though they didn't back that up in Scripture. Then, at some point after the flood, all the dinosaurs died. They kind of dance around the idea that humans killed all the dinosaurs after the flood. Well, there were, what, 6 people after the flood? And two of every kind of dinosaur. Why wouldn't the dinosaurs eat the people? And even if they didn't, six people taking on that many dinosaurs is a huge undertaking. But whatever. I guess it is possible if you assume the entire Earth was flooded and a dude made a boat big enough to hold two of every species on Earth. 

I don't believe the whole dinosaur thing. I didn't before I came, but I felt more like my intelligence was being questioned at this place. I felt like I was supposed to walk through the museum, believe everything I read, and go on with my life. There weren't answers to any of the questions that naturally popped up in my mind. If there had been more of that, I probably would have enjoyed hearing this opinion more.

The other part of the museum is all about Natural Selection. The CM says that Natural Selection isn't evolution- but they don't really seem to be able to explain the difference. They're really good at showing how natural selection exists, but they don't explain why evolution doesn't, other than the assumption of God. I'll give them that natural selection isn't proof for evolution. They fit along nicely together, and I think the idea is one of the best we have, but it isn't proof. However, one can look at it logically and say, okay, natural selection and evolution go hand in hand. This makes sense. The CM says- I shit you not- that God made animals evolve really fast after the flood, which is why we find evidence of different kinds of animals, but then he slowed it down, and that's why animals don't evolve so quickly today. Um, what? That doesn't even pretend to make sense. I can't stand arguments that are that illogical. Come up with something better, please! That was the only mention of any kind of evolution, including rebuttals to the argument. Disappointing. 

Don't get me started on The Men in White. Imagine religion trying to be hip while mocking people who believe in science, and things that can be proved. Oh, and the Men in White are Mike and Gabe. Not Michael and Gabriel, but Mike and Gabe. Barf barf barf. Is there anyone in the world who would be more likely to listen to a representation of an archangel who is like, totally cool, dude, and wears white overalls rather than the traditional one? Are people that dumb? "He's more like me, so he must be right!" 

One more point- I heard at least three times that carbon dating is based on assumption. At no point did they clarify what those assumptions are. Besides, their entire mindset is based on assumption! They just call it faith. 

I shouldn't have expected so much, but I would have loved an actual argument to evolution. I don't want to go to a museum to be told the same things I would be told by an uneducated creationist. Why spend all that money on nothing? I guess it isn't nothing. The people who go there want justification for their beliefs. Churches have been raking a profit for providing justification for mindsets they've taught for years and years. I guess it isn't much of a stretch that a museum do the same.