While millions of Americans head to beaches, campgrounds and amusement parks over Memorial Day weekend, a Christian conservative group will be launching a very different type of attraction: a $27 million high-tech museum devoted to creationism.
Dubbed simply the Creation Museum, the venture will share many of the features common to all big natural history displays: dinosaur bones and fossils, a planetarium and a model of the Grand Canyon. But the tag line for the Kentucky-based center — “Prepare to believe” — reflects a devotion to the “young earth” movement, which holds that the Book of Genesis is an accurate historical record. The museum, which rejects evolutionary theory, maintains that the earth is 6,000 years old and that humans coexisted with dinosaurs.
While the Petersburg, Ky.-based center is not the first of its kind, it is perhaps the most ambitious. Its chief designer, Patrick Marsh, designed the Jaws and King Kong attractions at Universal Studios. A 176-seat special-effects theater will take visitors on a “visual thrill ride” through biblical history, and animatronic Bible characters will illustrate the story of Noah’s Ark.
Some church-state activists are less than pleased with the new museum, which is the brainchild of the Christian group Answers in Genesis.
“This is part of a long-term agenda on the religious right to undermine scientific understanding in our country,” said Clark Stevens, co-director of the Washington-based Campaign to Defend the Constitution. It’s designed to give the impression “that it’s a real museum based on real science, which it definitely is not.” Stevens’s group has launched a petition campaign among educators and citizens, and is planning a protest at the museum Memorial Day.
Some in the Jewish community are taking a more live-and-let-live approach.
“They are entitled to their opinions up to the front door of the public schools,” said Michael Rapp, acting director of the Jewish Community Relations Council in Cincinnati. “The genius of American life is that individuals can hold whatever religious views they wish.”
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Unfortunately these Christians obviously don't know much about science and end up making religion and Genesis look silly. Their irrationality and ignorance result in the erosion of biblical credibility. However, they are no more irrational and ignorant as those teaching Darwin's theory of evolution as fact. I agree with their desire to make it extremely clear to children that Darwin's theory is not true. As far as I'm concerned my belief in G-d would not change regardless of whether evolution is true or false. Atheists and the secular left however, need evolution to be true because they think evolution disproves the existence of G-d. That is why liberals cling to this theory so desperately. Otherwise it would have been thrown into the trash heap of history long ago. The reason that after 150 years of accumulating scientific evidence it is still only the THEORY and NOT the LAW of evolution is because it does not accurately explain the evidence. We need to be honest with our children and stop teaching this theory as if it is a fact. I'm sure that the majority of people reading this are under the impression that it has been proven. In fact the more we discover from paleontology and molecular biology the more Darwin's theory is discredited. An analysis of the extensive fossil record we have today disproves his theory of small totally random changes/mutations being selected for by the environment and inducing morphological changes and thus transforming one species into another. The problem with Darwin's theory is that it was based on animal husbandry and not the fossil record. That's why in his book "The Origin of Species" he pleads with the reader not to look too closely at the fossil record (which is now far more extensive). Making big dogs out of small dogs or blue daisies from yellow ones is impressive but they are still dogs and daisies. That is called micro-evolution. Macro-evolution which is what Darwin's theory tries to explain has never been observed. There has NEVER been any evidence found of one body type becoming another in the fossil record. About 530 million years ago we had the Cambrian explosion of life where some 50 phyla (basic body plans) appeared suddenly in the fossil record. Only 30 to 34 survived. The rest perished. Since then no new phyla have evolved. Abrupt morphological changes do not occur according to Darwin. The Cambrian era‘s sudden appearance of all the phyla known today appeared with fully developed limbs, claws, eyes with optically perfect lenses, and wings. They suddenly appeared fully formed. They exploded onto the scene with no underlying hint in the fossil record that they were coming. Directly beneath these fossils are older fossils of one-celled bacteria, protozoans, and algae. These findings have been shown to be true in fossils all around the earth. Random processes could not have suddenly formed such complex structures. Something else is at work. Some other process produced these unexpected sudden developments. It is not Darwinian evolution. In fact the sudden appearance of new species in the fossil record is so common that the scientific journal Science featured an article, “Did Darwin get it right?” And they answered that question no. It turns out to be an evolutionary bush rather than a tree. Those are the facts. Our children deserve to know the truth. The only thing these Christians got right is that Darwinian evolution is false, there was a beginning to the universe, and the Torah is accurate as written (but not the way they think). We know that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and that the universe is about 15 billion years old and expanding rapidly. The dinosaurs lived 250 million years ago, well before humans and went extinct about 60 million years ago. Homo sapiens have lived on earth at least 100,000 years. The scientific evidence can not be discounted. To discount these facts and to believe the earth is only around 6000 years old is delusional. Just as there should be a disclaimer in books that teach evolution, there should be a disclaimer in front of this museum. There is a very elegant scientific explanation using Einstein's Law of Relativity for the (15 billion years) "six days" of creation as written in Genesis, and careful examination of Hebrew texts can explain the creation of Adam 6000 years ago from homo sapiens who were already here. Maimonides was right when he wrote that conflicts between science and the Torah arise from either a lack of scientific knowledge or a defective understanding of the Torah. Unfortunately these Christians have a defective understanding of both.
" ... irrationality and ignorance result in the erosion of biblical credibility." I didn't know there was any "biblical credibility" left, at least not since they outlawed burning heretics at the stake. At what point does the bible become "credible," then? When it says that the universe was created in six days, and someone comes along and says, no, it wasn't really six days because "God's day" is something altogether different? Does that enhance the credibility or diminish it? The reinterpretation of six days to six eons is a contortion, fitting the facts to the fantasy. (Of course, anybody who still believes that creation occurred in literally six earth-days is a moron.) Christianity diverges from the Jews here. Christianity developed a world view that was somehow locked into the physical world as envisioned by Ptolemy, among others. New ideas of astronomy with their implicit consequences for humans were squelched until the flood of science overwhelmed the Church. Curiously, the Jews seem to have a much more flexible religion that is not so invested in any particular version of reality. I am not aware of any major upheavals in the Jewish communities when Kopernicus and Galileo published their works, but perhaps I'm wrong? Perhaps the European Jews felt dethroned from being the jewels of Creation (created in Gods's very image,) to just another orbiting bunch going round and round the Sun, the true center of our solar system?
Creation is in the mind. God is enlightenment. Awareness is profound. When I read, with I trust an open mind, the Bible discusses a time of enlightenment. A time when simple men (women) lived in the presence of enlightened men (women). Intelligence found a way to explain the unknown. Man is creative - remember, 'I think therefore I am'. I am that I think! Intelligent man created this world in the form of recording it. Pictures, words, art and architecture: we have left a record. Choose which to believe. Believe that you have 'the god' in you. As the Bible records, actions of god are as actions of man. God does not deny man his actions, they are expected! Man creates and man destroys. Man loves and man hates. Man forgives and man forsakes. Such is man. Love man as creator, for we have the power to create and destroy. We must be responsible for creation and destruction - for it will be man that shall destroy his earth, as it is man that inherited his earth! Be it from divine intervention or natural evolution. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Whichever one, it was created. From some things or no things, that is the question. I believe that our world expands around us. As with a newborn discovering the universe, so too does man discover the universe. It exists - we just develop new ways to make it so - to see! This theme park is just that. As is suggested in the bible, we must take time to reflect! Save your money, or give it to the needy. Go outside, into the wilderness, sit on the ground, then stand on your feet- pause. Look into the sky and realize its vastness. Listen to the wilderness. Smell the aromas of earth unscathed. Drink from an unspoiled stream. Hold the hand of your partner and believe, cherish and love. This is what man can do. Everything that keeps you from doing this is also what man can do.
DARWINISM AND ATHEISM BOTH UNSCIENTIFIC & MYTHICAL http://evolutionfacts.blogspot.com