The Creation Museum

In March I posted a blog entitled “An Educational Weekend” where I stated that I had never heard of an exhibition of any kind about creationism. Well, guess what, such an exhibition does exist: the Creation Museum was opened in May last year in Petersburg, Kentucky, USA, to promote “young Earth creationism”. Here the origins of the universe and life are presented literally as in the Book of Genesis from the Bible. In short, the museum (sic) apparently “shows” how the earth and life was created in 6 days, around 6000 years ago, while disputing the theory of evolution, and the generally accepted scientific basis for the Earth’s age of 4.5 billion years. Strangely, the “museum” also goes to great lengths to showcase the existence of dinosaurs, which they maintain, were created by God and lived side-by-side with man.

The “museum” reportedly cost about $27 million to build, funded by donations from the public, rich local families and even a congressman. Naturally, such an absurd waste of money has drawn criticism from a wide range of people from the scientific community, the public at large, the general press, education authorities and interest groups, and even Christian groups, some moderate and those opposed to the young Earth creationist movement. Not surprising, considering that the exhibitions are based not on documented scientific proof, but on the writings of the Bible. Even the exhibitions claiming to be based on science (such as the dinosaur models), have been discredited as utterly false and misleading.

One well known author and blogger, John Scalzi, who was paid $5000 to visit the “museum”, take pictures and report back, had this to say:

“And this is, in sum, the Creation Museum. $27 million has purchased the very
best monument to an enormous load of horseshit that you could possibly ever hope
to see. I enjoyed my visit, admired the craft with which the whole thing was put
together, and was never once convinced that what I was seeing celebrated was
anything more or less than horseshit. Popular horseshit? Undoubtedly. Horseshit
hallowed by tradition and consecrated by time? Just so. Horseshit of the finest
possible quality? I would not argue the point. And yet, even so: Horseshit.
Complete horseshit. Utter horseshit. Total horseshit. Horseshit, horseshit, horseshit, horseshit. I pity the people who swallow it whole.”

And he’s not the only person saying bad things about this abomination. There have been numerous responses to John’s blog which can be accessed by clicking on the highlighted link. There is even a website that has been created to parody the “museum”. However, it does not end there. I was even more dismayed to learn during my research, that there are several other “creation” museums either established already, or being planned: two in Canada, one in Germany, one in Serbia, one in Turkey, two in the UK, and believe it or not, no less than twenty four in the good old US of A. It seems that there is no shortage of gullible people in the world. The mind boggles at the amount of money being spent on perpetuating ignorance, which could be put to better use helping the starving masses in Africa and elsewhere.

You may have noticed that I have included the word museum in parenthesis throughout this blog. The reason is quite simple. The word museum is defined as “a building or institution where objects of artistic, historical, or scientific importance and value are kept, studied, and put on display” by the Encarta Dictionary, English (UK). The Creation Museum, most certainly does not conform to this definition, not by a long shot.

Picture and museum article derived from Wikipedia.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/the_creation_museum.php