Abstract - Illinois State



The Future of Natural History

The Creation Museum and the Young Earth Creationism Bid for Scientific Proof

Mary Anne Stear

[pic]

Figure 1 A display at the Creation Museum critiques the origins of evolution.

(Photo Courtesy of AiG)

Abstract

According to the scientific community, the basic outline of how life developed on Earth seems to be well known: over billions of years single celled organisms evolved into complex, multicellular organisms whose radiating evolution in response to environmental pressures gave rise to every species of living thing that has ever existed or exists today. This process happened gradually over time and the mechanisms that controlled it existed of their own accord and as a product of the measurable laws of matter. However, a growing Christian population in the United States not only rejects the idea of evolution but supplants it with the concept of Young Earth creationism, the religious concept that an omniscient creator God created everything that exists on Earth just about 6000 years ago. This belief asserts, among other things, that humans and dinosaurs lived happily in the Garden of Eden, and Noah included those dinosaurs on the ark during a great flood. Young Earth Creationists claim that not only is the Christian Bible the sole source of truth of these occurrences, but that evidence of the creation of life on the planet is indeed found in fossils previously misinterpreted by scientists, geologic formations, and phenotypic patterns. They dismiss concepts such as evolution, the scientific method, and modern scientific reasoning as flawed, controversial, unknown, and based on erroneous assumptions. To counter what they believe to be lies in the mainstream natural history museum, the Young Earth Creationist movement, with funding from Answers in Genesis Ministries, recently established a Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky in order to provide what they feel is a scientifically provable natural history. The presentation of creationism as a valid alternate theory by its proponents causes one to pose the questions of how Young Earth Creationism thrives in a modern world of science, whether indeed creationism can be supported with scientific principals, and if so, utilized in the exhibits of natural history museums concerning the development of life. To respond to these issues, this thesis will look at the historic background and essential beliefs of creationism, the scientific principals and Young Earth’s main points of issue with evolution, as well as the reactions of museum directors through their choices of exhibit policy and the attitude of the general public to inclusion by examining their writings and comments. Also explored are the inception, mission, and presentation of the Creation Museum as an outward representation of the movement’s growing influence.

Introduction

Creationism is a religious belief that states that the planet Earth, the solar system, and indeed the entire universe were created in its present form by a supreme deity, the account of which is literally told in the Christian Book of Genesis and in the Muslim Koran. Nearly every religion has a supernatural creation story, and the creator god varies from religion to religion, but in the United States this god is most commonly the Judeo-Christian God, also known as YHWH, Adonai, Jehovah, etc. While the concept of the world being entirely dependant for creation upon a supernatural being is as old as religion, the term “creationism” in its modern incarnation is fairly recent and seems to have become an active movement only after the development of widely disseminated scientific reasoning among a previously unscientific populace.

To better understand the origins of creationist belief, the sects of Christianity that tout it most ardently, and its own evolution of sorts, I studied the writings and personal lives of some of the first figures in creationist thought both in its early years in and in its germination, change and revival in the United States. The literature ranges from a direct examination of several versions of the Biblical creation story to the personal interpretations of the Christian scripture by key figures intent on its propagation as literal truth. Also of great help in investigation of argumentation for creationism is the web site, , internet home of the foundation responsible for funding, operation, exhibit design, and apologetic mission of the Creation Museum as well as the writings of the founders of modern day Young Earth creationism. Examination of the Creationist Movement in America and its fundamentalist genesis has been relatively overlooked.

Oddly, there have been few social-scientific analyses-anthropological, sociological, or psychological-of this antievolution movement. Unlike with other social issues-such as antiabortion or animal rights-there is a marked shortage of research on what makes these people tick [Scott 1997:265].

Several accounts of walk-throughs of the Creation Museum revealed the exhibit techniques and presentation of creationist principals as scientific. Main themes regarding flood geology and genetic patterns emerge in these exhibits, and these are described, however examining records of archaeological sites excavated by groups with creationist motivations shed some light on the widespread absence of scientific principals in the field. Speaking via email informally to directors of natural history museums in the states of Oklahoma, Kansas and Georgia helped to flesh out the reactions of museum administrators when faced with the issue of the scientific validity of creationism, as well as any inclusion in their museums. Professional reactions to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky showed the impact the museum is having in the media and the true impact (or lack of) it is having in the world of science. Additionally, in this thesis I analyzed the title of “museum” by the Creation Museum and examined the decisions made by those in administration of natural history museums in regard to this claim. If the word “museum” is used to designate any edifice that seeks to educate on any topic the founders seem true, the integrity of scientific-based museums may be in jeopardy.

Literature Review

Where It All Began: The Bible

The Bible is simply the collective work of religious writings of Judaism and Christianity. The books that are considered to be part of the Biblical canon vary depending upon the historic tradition using or defining it. These variations are a reflection of the range of traditions and councils that have convened on the subject, all influenced by the time period they are held during as well as the social and political atmosphere. The Christian version of the Bible includes books of the Jewish Tanakh, but includes added books and reshuffles them into two parts: the books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament originally written in Greek but translated into English and a plethora of other languages.

As Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of the Bible, have idioms and concepts not easily translated, there is an ongoing critical tension about whether it is better to give a word for word translation or to give a translation that gets the symbolic meaning across in the target language. For instance, translations like the King James Version and the New American Standard Bible are seen as word for word translations, and versions like the New International Version and New Living Translation attempt to meaningfully translate idioms. One of the benefits of larger idiom translation is that the reader does not need to have significant theological training in order to comprehend what is read. This difference can be seen in the accounts of four different translations and their creation accounts. All four of these excerpts come from Genesis 1:20-23 (Bible 2000:4-5). It is interesting to note, near the end of the passages, the reference to the fifth day, and how the definition of day slightly changes between versions. The way the sky is named as firmament, sky, expanse of the heavens, etc is useful to understand the later references to the sky when the flood and Noah’s ark are mentioned, as the concept of how this mechanism operates is central to the idea of flood geology.

|King James Version |New International Version |New Living Translation |New American Standard Bible |

|And God said, Let the waters bring|And God said, “Let the water teem with |And God said. “Let the waters swarm with |Then God said, “Let the waters teems with |

|forth abundantly the moving |living creatures, and let birds fly above |fish and other life. Let the skies be |swarms of living creatures, and let the |

|creatures that hath life, and fowl|the earth across the expanse of the sky.” |filled with birds of every kind.” So God |birds fly above the earth in the open |

|that may fly above the earth in |So God created the great creatures of the |created great sea creatures and every sort|expanse of the heavens.” God created the |

|the open firmament of heaven. And |sea and every living and moving thing with|of fish and every kind of bird. And God |great sea monsters and every living |

|God created great whales, and |which the water teems, according to their |saw that it was good. Then God blessed |creature that moves, with which the waters|

|every living creature that moveth,|kinds, and every winged bird according to |them, saying, “Let all the fish multiply |swarmed after their kind, and every winged|

|which the waters brought forth |its kind. And God saw that it was good. |and fill the oceans. Let the birds |bird after its kind; and God say that it |

|abundantly, after their kind, and |God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful |increase and fill the earth.” This all |was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be |

|every winged fowl after his kind: |and increase in number and fill the water |happened on the fifth day. |fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters|

|and God saw that it was good.And |in the sea, and let the birds increase on | |in the seas, and le the birds multiply on |

|God blessed them, saying, Be |the earth.” And there was evening, and | |the earth.” There was evening and there |

|fruitful and multiply, and fill |there was morning-the fifth day. | |was morning, a fifth day. |

|the waters in the seas, and let | | | |

|the fowl multiply in the earth. | | | |

|And the evening and the morning | | | |

|were the fifth day. | | | |

The King James Version, however, remains chief among fundamentalists as their version of choice when dealing with direct quotations. Thus, this will be the version of choice when references to the Bible in this thesis are made.

Many Christians regard the Bible as inspired by God yet written by a variety of imperfect men over thousands of years. “…it is certain that this does not always represent what was originally written” (Bible 1971:xvi NEV). Many others, who identify themselves as Bible-believing Christians (who are also considered fundamentalist), regard both the New and Old Testament as the undiluted Word of God, spoken by God and written down in its perfect form by humans (). The Young Earth Creationist movement and thus the administrators and visitors to the Creation Museum would be amongst those of this profession. Still others hold the Biblical infallibility perspective that the Bible is free from error in spiritual but not scientific matters, and that creation, while still divinely brought about, may have relied on preexisting laws of nature to run its course (Scott 1997:271). Most of what would be considered mainstream Christians and Jews lean toward this interpretation. From what is written in the books of the New Testament concerning the formulated beliefs of the early church, the New Testament writers believed in a more literal inspiration. As 2 Timothy 3:16 states, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (Bible 2005:1811 KJV).

Genesis: Accounts of Creation and Flood

There are actually two accounts of creation in the Book of Genesis. The first is much better known and quoted when Young Earth Creationists refer to the order in which things were believed to have been created as well as the literal translation of “days.” As Genesis 1:1-2 begins, it reads, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Bible 2005:3 KJV).

Next, God creates light and separates waters into areas above what is called a firmament and below, what later becomes the sea and dry land. Plants and seed bearing fruits are created next, followed by the sun, moon and stars in the firmament. Sea creatures that breathe air and birds follow, and on the sixth day, animals and creeping things of every kind. Then mankind is created in Genesis 1:26-27. "Then God said, Let us make man in our image ... in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them" (Bible 2005:4 KJV). On the seventh day, God is said to rest.

The second account of Genesis 2:4-19 focuses more on the creation of man and the specific Garden of Eden but does have some references to the creation of geography, including some well-known place names such as Tigris, Euphrates and Assyria. The blending of factual geography and supernatural creation story often leads readers to judge that since these rivers and places actually did exist, the Garden of Eden must exist or have existed as well. The reverse of the logic does not apply: that if the Garden of Eden is not real, neither are these places.

And the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.  A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. [Bible 2005:4 KJV].

Following this account is the creation of woman, Eve, from a rib of Adam while asleep and the story of what is called the Fall of Man, where Original Sin is seen to enter mankind through the disobedience of first Eve then Adam through their consumption of fruit from the forbidden tree. Their punishment is expulsion from the garden, a hard life of toil for food and childbirth pains for Eve. Later on, in Genesis 6: 11-24, angered by the wickedness of mankind, God selects Noah, a descendant of Adam and Eve and said to be a righteous man who walked with God, and commands him to build an Ark, and to take on it his family and representatives of the animals.. God destroys the world with a flood, and afterwards promises Noah and his descendants, which will make up the entire human race, promising never again to destroy mankind with a flood. Noah is said to be 600 years old when this occurs and does not die until 950 years old, and follows the trend in the Old Testament of holy men having unusually long life spans.

They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. The flood continued forty days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all human beings; everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.  Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark [Bible 2005:8-9 KJV].

The flood does come to an end after one hundred and fifty days, and the method which it does is detailed in Genesis 8: 1-4 along with a supposed location of the ark resting place being on the mountain of Ararat, again using actual historically known geography that blends in with allegory and metaphor.

Creationism: Early Development and Influences

From the early days of the Christian religion, the disciples of Jesus were set to the task of formulating their exact beliefs in order to have a standard with which to identify themselves as distinct from the Jews and Greeks their shared their territory with, and also to have a set of beliefs by which to uniformly convert others, as their believed-to-be resurrected leader had instructed them. Greek Aristotle had already posited that the universe was infinite in origins and future, and early Christians did have the story of Genesis to work with from their Jewish background. An interpretation that favored the yet-to-be-discovered principal of evolution was not the one that automatically came to their minds. In fact, it would be illogical to assume that a group of Roman citizens whose main goal was to create a new splinter group of Judaism would even worry themselves with such a conception, even if the social atmosphere leant by the historical period had been conducive to scientific thought. “This does not mean that the early Christians were creationists in the modern American sense. They accepted the stories of Genesis as the correct account, but primarily because they could see no reasons to do otherwise” (Ruse 2005:10).

Although their thinking was a pre-scientific one, some members of the early church, such as Saint Augustine, said to be the greatest of all early theologians (Ruse 2005:10), emphasized that the very nature and history of the creation story called for a non-literal interpretation, and that translation word-for-word was detractive. Augustine was aware of all the problems with the Old Testament, such as the conflicts between the two different creation stories in the first two chapters of Genesis, and he feared that a strict obedience to the letter of the Jewish, Mosaic text was the last thing that Christianity needed. He stressed that those early stories were written for primitive, nomadic peoples, and if one had a scientific reason to reject a literal reading of the Bible and to accept a metaphorical interpretation, then so be it (Ruse 2005:10). While no one seemed to think that such reason existed essentially from the time of the founding of the early Christian religion through much of the Dark Ages, the seed of possibility of non-literalism had been planted.

Following the Reformation, which tore the Christian religion in half and gave rise to the kind of Biblical revival that would later produce non-denominational fundamentalist Young Earth Creationism, Protestantism (and Christianity in general) became exposed to an increasingly rational group of philosophical influences that critically examined the concept of revealed religion. Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who would ultimately become known as the father of English deism, postulated that religion was useful in its concepts of a God, a need to worship him, and a call toward morality, but nothing more than that, and the sixteenth century scientific triumph that did more to discredit previous religious conventions on the workings of nature was the discovery of Copernicus regarding the solar system.

No longer were we humans at the center of things, but off to one side, revolving around something bigger and brighter. Suddenly all of those Genesis stories about fashioning humans from dust in the image of God stared to seem more a function of ignorance than of reason [Ruse 2005:14].

Modern Development: Flood Geology Gives Birth to a Young Earth

Young Earth Creationism is only really a late twentieth century phenomena, and its rise is directly the result of the development of what became known as flood geology. Flood geology refers to the assertion that the literal interpretation of the Earth’s age in years, being less than ten thousand, can be corroborated with the flood story of Genesis and corresponds to what is believed to be evidence in soil stratigraphy (Morris 1993:39). Before the propagation of the flood geology concept among Christians, many had chosen to accommodate the findings of historical scientific geology by interpreting the “days” of Genesis during which the creation took place as being representative of expansive lengths of time, or ages, and accepted that while a generally natural process, the hand of God was still needed for pivotal functions, such as the construction and installation of the human soul (Numbers 1992:xxi). Another way of meshing creation belief with science was to separate a creation that happened sometime previous from a literal six day creation in a later Eden. This was called the gap theory. Either way, believers were able to defend the accuracy of the Bible while at the same time embracing the latest geological and fossil discoveries.

William Jennings Bryan, the much misunderstood leader of the post-World War I antievolution crusade, not only read the Mosaic “days” as geological “ages” but allowed for the possibility of organic evolution-so long as it did not impinge upon the supernatural origin of Adam and Eve. Harry Rimmer, the flamboyant evangelist who occupied center stage on the creationist platform between the great wars, squeezed millions of years into the presumed gap in the Genesis narrative and drained the deluge story of all but local significance [Numbers 1992:x].

Leading figures of creationism during this period had relatively open mindsets concerning evolution when compared with the Young Earth Creationists of today. But then again, the Young Earth Creationist movement is quite a different permutation of what started out as a very open amalgamation of science and belief. Creationism is not an all-encompassing belief, but rather lies on a continuum that ranges from the now defunct flat earthism to materialist evolution. (See figure 2).

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Figure 2 The continuum of creation to evolution. Each worldview is shown equidistant apart, but in reality some views are closer together and others are farther apart. (From Scott 1997:267)

Old Earth Creationism has gone through several transformations (see figure 3) through its growth and revival and the main proponents and their contributions have aided in the development of the belief system that we now see in Young Earth Creationism. As aforementioned (Numbers 2992:x) with evangelists Bryan and Rimmer, it seems that the transition only served to more strictly reject science as it went along. By the time Henry Morris and his contemporaries got a hold of it, it had essentially become the Young Earth position that we see today in the growing modern American fundamentalist Christian population.

[pic]Figure 3 The progression of creationist thought, beginning with the Day-Age theory and resulting in the Flood Geology view that pervades modern Young Earth Creationism. (From Numbers 1992:xii)

When examining why there was such a large creationist revival that occurred after 1960, it is useful to note that a shift was happening among those who had previously favored accommodation in the past as a way of harmonizing religion and the discoveries of science. In increasing numbers, they were now turning toward a Young Earth theory and rejecting historical geology. It seems that the political and social atmosphere of the time was a major motivation.

In the United States, the outcry against evolution undoubtedly owed its timing to the abrupt appearance of evolution in many high-school classrooms in the 1960s as federally funded biology texts featuring evolution replaced books that treated evolution in muted tones [Numbers 1992:337].

The immense social change that took place in the 1960s unsettled many Christians and may have led to a revival of religious belief in order to counter the perceived descent into chaos the United States was experiencing. Likely spurred by post-war ambivalence toward political systems such as communism, which had an adversarial relationship with religion, the only cure for the decline of religion in Europe seemed to be an increase of religion in America. Evolution and science were seen by the creationist revival leaders as dangerous and a bedfellow of radical political and social systems. “In the words of Henry Morris, a prominent creationist, ‘Evolution is at the foundation of communism, fascism, Freudianism, social daminism, behaviorism, Kinseyism, materialism, atheism, and in the religious world, modernism and neo-orthodoxy’ (Scott 1997:264).

Along with John C. Whitcomb, Jr., in 1963 Henry M. Morris wrote and published The Genesis Flood, a book seen to be one of the major turning points in the transition from accommodation to complete repudiation of historical geology. Morris is often looked to as the definer of modern creationism in its Young Earth form. The book was written with a fundamentalist mindset and then propagated among Christian congregations as mainstream. The Genesis Flood went through the flood account and attempted to fit scientific data to the outline of the story while keeping the account intact and maintaining a literal interpretation. This was to contrast what had been seen before with reinterpretation of the creation and flood stories to include scientific discovery. The book was widely popular among those who had felt as though they had been made to compromise their beliefs and those alarmed with what was perceived as a decline in social morality brought about by the development of scientific knowledge seeming to disprove what had been thought to be God-controlled processes. Whitcomb and Morris provided the Christian public an amalgamation of science and belief without having to compromise belief, and simultaneously refuted other syntheses. Publication of The Genesis Flood also opened the door for a new mindset in Young Earth Creationism to develop. “The book made it possible for religious antievolutionists to argue that evolution was not only religiously objectionable but also scientifically flawed” (Scott 1997:268). This is the point when creationists came to the conclusion that science would prove useful in their quest for religious legitimacy in the face of scientific progress.

The Institute for Creation Research

Established by Henry Morris and his subscribers in the early 1970s, the Institute for Creation Research was intended to increase the volume of published works in Young Earth Creation science. The special focus was on flood geology and to educate students.

It remains the flagship creationist institution to which all other YEC organizations look. It has a large publishing arm called Masterbooks, a graduate school conferring masters degrees in science and science education, and a public museum. Most other YEC organizations sell and other wise distribute ICR books, pamphlets, filmstrips, videos, movies and other materials through their newsletters, and the movement leans heavily on Morris's writings and perspectives [Scott 1997:268-267].

Interestingly, very little actual research is performed by ICR faculty. Works that are published are almost entirely on Christian apologetics. A visiting group of scientists reviewed the ICR graduate school and came to the conclusion that no one in the faculty of ICR has participated in an active or published research program since their arrival at the institution. The committee concluded that, using these criteria, the Institute for Creation Research indeed could not be considered a scientific research institution (Scott 1997:269).

Australian evangelist Ken Ham, an ex-ICR employee, created his Answers in Genesis ministry, situated in Florence, Kentucky. Ham was born in Queensland, Australia in 1951. In any written works or information that can be found on the internet, there exists little on his parents, his youth, and his intellectual influences from birth to his entry into the Australian school system. This is a strangely absent period in his biographies. What is known is that prior to his move to the United States in 1987, Ham received a bachelor’s degree in applied science with a concentration in environmental biology, which was awarded by the Queensland Institute of Technology in Australia. He also received a diploma of education from the University of Queensland, which is a graduate qualification that was necessary for him to begin his initial career as a science teacher in Australian public schools. In addition, Ham has been awarded two honorary doctorates. He received a Doctor of Divinity in 1997 from Temple Baptist College in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a Doctor of Literature in 2004 from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Ken Ham might be called the very model of a modern anti-evolutionist. Although his view of the earth's origin is entirely fundamentalist, his techniques for spreading his message are cutting-edge: a huge mailing list, presentations with artfully done visuals, and a Web site he claims gets 3,000 visits a day (Anderson 2006:2). He also claims to have started 110 "creation clubs" in American schools. And Ham is one of the most in-demand Christian speakers in North America (Answers in Genesis Ministry). He has a busy speaking schedule as he criss-crosses the country denying that evolutionary theory has any basis in truth. It is from this background that he and his organization approached the establishment and operation of the Creation Museum.

The Creation Museum

Creation of a Creation Museum

Imagine believing, to the very core of your being, that something is true. Then imagine going through daily life in a world that seems to be living in a lie. Belief seems to be quashed in this world, and there seems no voice speaking out for what you absolutely believe is the truth. Whole generations of children are progressing through schools receiving an education that seems devoid of any knowledge of God. This is the world that Ken Ham, the Australian-born head of Answers in Genesis Ministries lives in. And he’s not alone. “According to nearly a quarter-century of Gallup polls, about half of all Americans consistently agree with the biblical account that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so” (Anderson 2006:2).

What to do? In response to evangelical nature of the born-again Christianity that Young Earth Creationists subscribe to, the feeling that simply believing is not enough abounds among their members. The beliefs, seen to be truths, must be spread throughout the world and non-believers convinced of their validity. Ham recalls the thought process that went into the establishment of the museum:

This idea came about from when I was a teacher in public schools in Australia actually, teaching in the science classes and students saying, "sir, you're a Christian, how can you believe the Bible when we know that's not true because of evolution and what's in our textbooks?" And then when I took them to museums and saw that they were presented evolution as fact, I thought why can't we have a creation museum. And so I had this embryonic idea 25 years ago in Australia. But of course, Australia's not really the place to build such a facility if you're going to reach the world. Really, America is (Ham 2007).

One of the major motivations toward this evangelical mission of Young Earth creationism is to encourage Christians who subscribe to this belief and its ramifications for daily life to practice it outside the church. "What we see is if you can get information to people, their worldview will be changed, and the way they vote on issues, on a school board or whatever, will reflect that change" (Anderson 2007:3).

What better place to proclaim what Creationism holds to be true than a museum? The public trusts museums. They expect that what they view will be factual and accurate. This is because museums are seen to be places of education and even an extension of the classroom. The scientific, mainstream natural history museum holds no such truth or trust for the Young Earth Creationist. They feel the world is filled with natural history museums that tout the concept of evolution. Ham and his organization believe that the time is ripe for a rebuttal museum. They feel that almost all natural-history museums proclaim an evolutionary, humanistic worldview. “AiG's museum will proclaim the authority and accuracy of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and will show that there is a Creator, and that this Creator is Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:15-20), who is our Savior” (Asma 2007:2).

The high-tech methods used by Ham to propagate YEC to the Christian populace have been extended into the structure and exhibition method inside the Creation Museum. The exhibits borrow techniques and design qualities from the best of the mainstream natural history museums and apply their crowd-pleasing and interactive functions to the message of the Bible. Using technology, a product of scientific achievement, to spread creationism does not seem to phase Ham and his associates. It instead shows the overall willingness of the museum to increase the viability and credibility of a non-scientific religious belief through scientific means. Walking into the museum transports the visitor into a world of engaging display. The main entrance hall is a lush, tropic world with gigantic dinosaur animatronics that growl and roar at the visitor. (See figure 4). This is Eden.

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Figure 4 The front entrance and lobby of the Creation Museum (Photo courtesy of Education Week)

Realistic animatronic children gleefully play alongside raptors and other sauropods as well as mammals such as squirrels (See figure 5). “To play on Max Weber's famous terminology, the Creation Museum exhibits the world as an ‘enchanted garden’” (Asma 2007:4). Dinosaurs are presented as totally vegetarian, and would not have felt the need to eat meat until after the flood, during which they were said by the museum to be carried aboard Noah’s ark.

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Figure 5 Part of the Creation Museum main lobby exhibit that features an animatronic raptor and child, who interacts with a squirrel (Photo courtesy of AiG)

Children of the many visitors are encouraged to become part of the exhibit, posing atop small, detailed models of triceratops as though riding, (See figure 6) as Young Earth Creationists believe the early inhabitants of the Earth would have.

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Figure 6 A young visitor to the museum climbs onboard a stationary model of a triceratops. (Photo courtesy of AiG)

Visitors progress through the museum which features a plethora of brightly illustrated signage that appears as timelines, adding an air of authority to displays. (See figures 1 and 7). Again, evolution is shown as detrimental to the health of society, possibly recalling creationism’s anti-communist reactionary roots.

In the exhibit "Culture in Crisis," a fake street shows a church being destroyed by a wrecking ball that symbolizes evolution. Through a window, a boy can be seen surfing internet porn, and a teenage girl holds a positive pregnancy test and a pamphlet about abortion [Rothstein 2008:3].

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Figure 7 Examples of signage displayed throughout the museum, utilizing modern graphic design techniques (From Rothstein 2008:5)

Evolution is even shown as being a symptom of a mindset that promotes hatred and inequality in such forms as racism, genocide and what the museum feels is the social evil of abortion. (See figure 8).

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Figure 8 Signage from an exhibit claiming evolution to be a dangerous concept that breeds evils in society (Photo courtesy of AiG)

Next, the Noah’s ark exhibit engulfs the visitor. The scale of the exhibit of Noah’s ark is dwarfing. There are 12 animatronic figures building the vessel, and guests are able to wander around two floors, walking both inside and outside the ark and observing models of animal pairs contained inside. (See figure 9).

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Figure 9 Outside view of the ark exhibit (Photo courtesy of AiG)

There is also a display of the design of the ark to lend scale, demonstrating to visitors that this massive diorama represents only 1 percent of the total ark space. (See figure 10).

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Figure 10 Interior view of the ark exhibit (Courtesy of AiG)

The walls are covered with murals that show how Noah's family took care of the animals, including engineering speculations about food and waste management. “And crucial to the logic of the entire ark display is the exhibit showing how two of every ‘kind’ of animal were brought on board, not two of every ‘species’” (Asma 2007:2). This adherence to Biblical literalism with the word “kind” is a highlight of the argument presented against evolution. “…the plants and animals made by God during creation week were given reproductive systems that enabled them to reproduce only ‘after their kinds,’ never after some other kind” (Morris 1993:224).

Science Proving Religion? Examples of Arguments

It is obvious, through the displays and exhibits of the Creation Museum that the YEC movement is no longer satisfied with trying to convince others of the truth of a God-created Earth using only one source: the Bible. The Creation Museum asserts their beliefs through scientific jargon, beliefs that fly in the face of what science knows to be true. Is this creationism using the pliability of scientific principal against evolutionary thought, or is the Creation Museum filled with what can be called pseudo-science, and in fact essentially non-scientific? In fact, the YEC movement not only views science as dangerous, but also as a belief system based on assumptions.

If you believe in the Big Bang and eternal matter and energy, you believe by faith that an outside “force” acted on this matter-in-neutral to supply the energy necessary to explode it into action. In reality you are face to face with God. Everyone believes by faith in something eternal [Martin 1994:18-19].

Martin (1994) also quotes the book Implications of Evolution by Dr. G.A. Kerkut who asserts that there are seven basic assumptions that are made among those who subscribe to the concept of evolution. They are included (see Appendix 1) with their scientific counterpoints in an attempt to reveal if the “science” behind creation truly has any merit. If it does, the assertion that creationism has no place in a natural history museum may be challenged.

The Days

To understand the idea of how Young Earth creationists justify the “days” of the Genesis creation story as being actual, literal 24 hour days, one must first understand their concept of time and its origins. Time is said to be created by God. The belief is that God is not subject to time, because He is said to be eternal while time is temporary. A much quoted verse is from 2 Peter 3:8 which says “be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (Bible 2005:1840 KJV). This is interpreted by most Christians to mean that evolution in the mainstream sense is indeed quite possible, as the word “day” could be figurative and correspond to ages or even eons. This was the view of the majority of Christians before the YEC movement took hold in America. Contemporary Young Earth creationists believe that this merging of evolution and the Bible is not only inadequate but an insult to their creator god. “It portrays a vicious, stupid God who needed millions of years (of ferocious animals eating animals or ‘survival of the fittest’) to produce something He considered perfect enough to announce that man was finally in His own image (Martin 1994:27).

YEC also cite the account in John 2 concerning Jesus in a marriage party in Cana and a miracle that is said to have taken place there by the hand of Jesus at the urging of his mother. The wine had run out, and Jesus told the servants to fill pots with water and taste what was inside. When the servants did so, they are told to have discovered that not only was it wine, but a wine that had surpassed the previous wine in quality, a characteristic of a wine that has been aged for quite some length of time. Young Earth creationist Jobe Martin sees this as proof of the transcendence of God over time.

He can create whatever He wants to create and make it appear to “have some years” on it. Creations that are new can appear to have gone through a process that required time-but there was no time. Jesus manifested His glory as He performed His earthly miracles, without the use of time, just as He had created each aspect of the universe, instantly complete and fully functional [Martin 1994:25].

Thus, with this assertion of God having power to manipulate appearances and ages on a whim, time is essentially thrown out as a non-entity when talking about creation to the YEC. And yet, man perceives the concept of day. Scholars of Hebrew generally are said to agree that the word yom used in the book of Genesis is meant to mean a literal 24 hour day. To most Christians, the book of Genesis is fraught with allegory and symbolism, and the word “day” often does not actually mean “day,” as it was written several thousands of years ago by a people relatively ignorant of notions of science and geology. Creationists are quick to counter with the extreme that if one word is symbolic, the entire Greek lexicon must be, and thus words have no meaning (Martin 1994:106). This is a trend that one sees often when the YEC is faced with dissention concerning their scientific and logical reasoning: the reaction is to try and create an instance, however vastly improbable, where an exception applies. The following step is to then jump to the most extreme and unrealistic conclusion. The Young Earth creationist assumes that if day does not always mean day, the entire Greek lexicon must then be symbolic.

Flood Geology and Fossils

Flood geology is often confused with catastrophism, the pseudoscientific belief that the shaping of the planet Earth’s geology is the direct result of waves of dramatic events, or catastrophes. “…such a flood would have deposited the very rock units which today are misinterpreted as evidence for the geologic ages” (Morris 1993:227). This is in contrast to the scientific principal of uniformitarianism, which states that while massive events do happen such as large scale floods or earthquakes, the majority of geological processes occur slowly and over large stretches of time. Not so for the YEC movement and their principal of flood geology. Retaining some oversimplification and general misunderstanding of scientific forces, they claim that fossils are produced not by a process lasting millions of years, but by rapid burial of the remains of many of the Earth's life forms by sediments in the short period of the flood. The separation between dinosaur fossils and hominid fossils is not a product of the organisms living in different geological eras. Instead an unspecified and unmodeled hydraulic sorting action is claimed to be able to sort out fossils according to their shape, density, size, and the gases released from the body after death. Also, humans were said to have fled flood waters and thus less if them would have been buried. “Their bodies would float on or near the surface until eaten by scavengers or until the waters finally abated; there they would decay and eventually turn to dust” (Morris 1993:38). It is also not uncommon to hear a creationist refer to fossils as the work of the devil (sometimes God), said to manufacture fossils and place them in the earth in order to trick them/test one’s faith.

The beginning of the flood is attributed to an Earth believed to be described exactly in Genesis, but one that science ultimately shows to have some major gaps in logic and even perhaps a suspension of disbelief involved. The “firmament” mentioned in Genesis 1:20 in which the birds were let to fly around in is referred to by YECs as a water vapor canopy that acted to maintain the Earth in a terrarium-like state (Martin 1994:126). Martin goes on to explain that the type of water vapor present in this canopy was much like the 212 degree Fahrenheit steam that comes from a heated kettle. This is the same vapor that the birds must have flown around in. Martin (2007) fails to realize that at this heat, the birds would have been steamed alive. Seemingly unaware of this crucial flaw, he goes on to explain that the shielding effect of the vapor canopy, attributing the unusually long life spans of Adam and Noah to this effect, and even claims that this shielding would cause inconsistencies in C-14 decay, attempting to negate the entire carbon dating system with which modern evidence for evolution and civilization is based. Additionally, the end of the flood and the mechanisms for its occurrence are supposed to deal with entire continental plates shifting. The cause of this shift is speculative, at best.

Somehow new continental structures and mountains would have to rise up, accompanied by the opening of new ocean basins into which the floodwaters could drain. How his was accomplished--whether by divine miracle or by natural tectonic readjustments—may remain to be determined by future studies [Morris 1993:40].

Much of the principals and explanations central to flood geology revolve around ideas that, scientifically speaking, are not possible. When vital defects are revealed to the holders of these doctrines, the general response is to assert that because God is outside of the conventions of physics and chemistry (which He is said to have created), feats deemed impossible are in fact possible, and divine miracle can produce any phenomena that lack scientific evidence. The true colors of flood geology are not, in fact, science, but belief.

A Critical Look at Qualifications

First of all, to really understand the credibility of such champions of the creationist cause like Jobe Martin, Kenneth Ham, and Henry Morris, one must take a closer look into their backgrounds and educational qualifications to get a glimpse at what, if any, merit lies in their claims. Martin is a dentist with a divinity degree and has had no formal scientific training. As aforementioned, Ham is the only one of the three with a biology degree, which was granted in 1987 and only at the bachelor level. Ham has conducted no research nor furthered his understanding of the complex yet observable processes of nature. He relies on the framework set down by ICR founder Henry Morris, who received a bachelor’s in civil engineering from Rice University and later a master’s and PhD in hydraulic engineering from the University of Minnesota. While obviously of some general intelligence to have been able to gain these degrees, the knowledge Morris gained during his education qualified him in no way to pretend to understand the scientific concepts of geology, genetics, and physics. If anything, the creative and technical mind that served him well as a professor at Southern Illinois University, among others, was the main route by which an oversimplified and misinformed version of science was created and then applied to his personal interests of furthering the Young Earth Creationist movement.

This is the intellectual equivalent of changing the rules mid-game in order to assure one’s victory. The assertions and claims made by Young Earth Creationists like Morris, Martin, and Ham among others are nothing more than using scientific jargon to give an appealing albeit dangerously deceiving sheen to a rusty movement that had been lacking luster in the public eye.

Semantics and Institutional Integrity: Professional Reactions and Approaches

As seen by the history of the Institute for Creation Research and the backgrounds of Morris, Ham, and Martin, Young Earth Creationism is not, as they would like one to believe, a movement and belief system populated by distinguished research and discovery. Knowing this, the YEC movement is, and is simultaneously not a threat to the integrity of the natural history museum. Its science is, in fact, pseudo science and cannot be called an equal or alternative theory for evolution and by this definition has no place being presented in an institution of science. However, the appearance of science-like qualities and the presentation of the YEC principals in a museum format do call into question whether the credibility of a museum as an establishment of science is up for interpretation.

Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the National Centre for Science fears the museum will give children a distorted view of science. “I wouldn't mind if it was called 'Bible Land' or if they called it 'Genesis Land', but to call it a museum with a false façade of science, that's where the problem is” [Ham 2007].

The majority of natural history museums in America operate their institutions with the mindset that the purpose of such an institution is science-based education that provides material evidence of the evolution of humans and nature (Burcaw 1997:20). However, with the growing expansion of what may be considered a museum, the definition is weakening and new types of institutions to now claim the title of museum, allowing a community to reap the benefits that an attraction such as a museum draws. “The term ‘museum’ must today be reserved for official institutions in the public interest” (Burcaw 1997:20).

The decision on what to incorporate into an exhibit on evolution in a natural history museum is not one that falls on any specific person. Decision-making on this level involves the interactions of many players. Museums have complex administrative systems that promote an exchange of ideas from many different angles. Depending on the mission and monetary genesis of a museum (private, corporate, government, etc), these angles come from such diverse positions as members of the board of directors, major contributors, city councils, community referendums, and CEOs among others. A good gauge for the current view of a particular museum toward its exhibits, however, is the director. This person is directly involved in the day-to-day business of running the building, and takes part and implements the scientific policies of the museum in respect to what is put on display.

Jerry Choate, director of the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Kansas expresses what natural history museums, being part of the scientific community with a staff comprised mainly of molecular and evolutionary biologists, have to say about creationism’s attempt to seek equal footing in the museum world.

The scientific community does not recognize creationism (in any of its various disguises) as science. It satisfies none of the criteria for scientific investigation, and it thus is regarded more as philosophy, religion, or mythology. We would NEVER include non-scientific mythology in exhibits or education programs [email to author, February 12, 2008].

Choate acknowledges that there have been some mild attempts in the past in his institution by visitors to include creationism. The standard reaction for natural history museums is exemplified by the Sternberg Museum’s reaction to such pressure.

An occasional evangelical zealot comes through the museum leaving anti-evolution (and anti-science in general) pamphlets around the museum. We simply gather them up and throw them away. If a museum supporter attempted to get us to include creationism as an alternate explanation, we would thank him/her for past support and ignore whatever pressure that person attempted to exert [email to author, February 12, 2008].

Director Ellen Censky of the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History adamantly asserts that no judgment of spiritual belief is made in her museum. “…the SNOMNH presents information supported by research that is grounded in accepted scientific methodology and based on evidence” (email to author, February 12, 2008). Bud Freeman of the Georgia Natural History Museum agrees with Censky’s refusal to include creationism in discussions of evolution because of its non-scientific nature. “… they are not falsifiable hypotheses-that is they can never be tested-, and they are often religiously based, and these notions are contradictory to the vast evolutionary data that are available” (email to author, February 12, 2008).

Epilogue and Conclusion: A Personal Reaction to My Findings

After evaluating its core beliefs and recent use of scientific jargon to boost credibility, I find Young Earth Creationism to not simply be a belief system, but an ideological attempt to shift the mainstream mental perception of science and its trustworthiness. A letter that was written in response to the article by Stephen Asma in the Chronicle of Higher Education (2007) concerning the Creation Museum and its very public face to creationist belief expresses this mental shift in terms of standards of truth.

Mr. Asma expresses concern about creationism's fostering distrust of science. We are already witnessing this, as discussions of human-caused climate change illustrate. To say it is the consensus of the international scientific community that humans are largely responsible for global warming is, for many people, a refutation of that view because they have been taught to reject anything that is the consensus of the international scientific community. … That disagreement over standards for truth will have disastrous consequences for our future on this planet [Knepp 2007:1].

In the end, the Young Earth Creationist phenomenon and the establishment of its Creation Museum can be ascribed to the attempts of a religion to stay modern and feel applicable to its followers. More than anything, the assertions against nature and evolution made by creationists really have little to do with science at all, and much more to do with submitting to a god that dictates the exact belief. “…they concoct foolish speculations rather than bow their knees and heads before their Creator who told us that dinosaurs and humans existed together on the sixth day of the creation week” (Martin 1994:135 emphasis added). Creationism, though it tries to relate to a scientifically educated population through the use of jargon, remains a religious belief without tested evidence. While the Creation Museum may exist as an institution satisfying a cultural niche and continue to attract scores of visitors and vividly display concepts and ideas in high-tech, engaging fashion, it will never satisfy the mainstream public as a natural history museum. Despite the initial alarm that their scientific-seeming assertions may cause, I believe the natural history museum is not at risk as one might think.

However, Young Earth Creationists are not active in museums only. Public life is showing increasing signs of their and other fundamentalists’ influences. It is in the other aspects of daily life and even the United States government that Americans will, in future years, need to become increasingly vigilant about this ideology. The actions of creationists in public life are driven by the assertion that, at all costs, “His truth will ultimately prevail—eternally!” (Martin 1994:11). Silverman (2007) expresses an opinion that serves as a cautionary tale about the current and future influences of Christian fundamentalism and all it has and will involve.

As a card-carrying member of the ACLU, I support the right of the Creation Museum to promote its views, just like I supported the right of the American Nazi Party to march in Skokie years ago. Which do I consider more dangerous? Surprisingly, it is the people who believe Genesis is a science book. I'm not particularly concerned about the American Nazi Party, despite losing relatives in the Holocaust, because almost no one takes them seriously anymore. A politician, who would say he was a Nazi sympathizer, or that the Holocaust didn't exist, would be drummed out of any political party. On the other hand, three presidential candidates recently said in a nationally televised debate that they didn't believe in evolution. Three men seeking to lead the last superpower on Earth reject the scientific consensus on cosmology, geology, and biology. How scary is that [Silverman 2007:34]?

Appendix 1

|Alleged Assumption |Scientific Reality |

|1. Non-living things gave rise to living material i.e. spontaneous |Spontaneous generation is a gross over simplification. Organisms did |

|generation occurred |not simply rise from goo. Scientific consensus is that abiogenesis |

| |(origin of life from non-life) occurred sometime between 4.4 billion |

| |years ago, when water vapor first liquefied, and 2.7 billion years |

| |ago, when the ratio of stable isotopes of carbon, iron and sulfur |

| |points to a biogenic origin of minerals and sediments and molecular |

| |biomarkers indicate photosynthesis. [Hayes 2006:847] |

|2. Spontaneous generation occurred only once |The conditions of the primordial planet, element levels, atmosphere, |

| |even temperature no longer exist on the planet today, thus it cannot |

| |occur. The very existence of life such as plants changed the face of |

| |Earth. However, some processes that helped aid in the ancient planet’s|

| |development of life are still seen, such as deep ocean thermal vents, |

| |pumping out nutrient rich waters. |

|3. Viruses, bacteria, plants, and animals are all related |DNA is the binding link between all organisms. All living things use |

| |DNA transferred into RNA to reproduce and deliver information. |

|4. Protozoa (single celled life forms) gave rise to metazoan (multiple|Protozoa are seen to work together to be more competitive in the |

|celled life forms) |survival arena. Many single cells working together is in fact, a |

| |metazoan. |

|5. Various invertebrate phyla are interrelated |Various invertebrate phyla are related, but not in the again |

| |oversimplified manner that the fifth assumption suggests. The tree of |

| |descent is interwoven and subject to a variety of forces such as |

| |founder effect, genetic drift, and sexual selection. |

|6. Invertebrates gave rise to vertebrates |The notochord, found in invertebrates as the main nerve pathway, over |

| |time became armored due to environmental pressures from predators and |

| |other influences. This increased the longevity of the animal and |

| |allowed it to reproduce more successfully. Those in environments that |

| |did not pressure this kind of adaptation retained the notochord. It |

| |was not only the spinal column that led to vertebrates but also bony |

| |jaws and skeletons. |

|7. Fish gave rise to amphibia to reptiles to birds and mammals |Again, this is not a direct line. A frog did not just one day crawl |

| |out of a pond with scales that turned into feather and then fur. This |

| |is the oversimplified, almost childlike supposition of one who does |

| |not fully understand the interconnected process and forces |

| |(environmental pressures such as food availability, predator |

| |avoidance, sexual selection, gene flow, and many others) at play that |

| |influenced the progression of evolution. |

Works Cited

Anderson, Lisa

2006 Genesis of a museum: Creationists, saying all the answers are in the Bible,

put their beliefs on display in $25 million facility. Chicago Tribune, April 25

Answers in Genesis Ministry. .

Asma, Stephen T.

2007 Dinosaurs on the Ark: the Creation Museum. Chronicle of Higher

Education, May 15

Bible, King James Version.

2005 London: Penguin Group.

Burcaw, G. Ellis

1997 Introduction to Museum Work. Lanham: AltaMira Press.

Hayes, John M

2006 The Carbon Cycle and Associated Redox Processes Through Time. Philosophical

Transaction of the Royal Society Biological Sciences, June 29.

Ham, Kenneth

2007 Interview by Kim Landers. AM. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. May 29.

Knepp, Dennis

2007 Dinosaurs, Drowned or With Noah? Chronicle of Higher Education Letters to the

Editor, June 8

Martin D.M.D., ThM, Jobe

1994 The Evolution of a Creationist. Rockwall, Biblical Discipleship Publishers.

Morris, Henry M.

1993 Biblical Creationism: What Each Book of the Bible Teaches about Creation and the Flood.

Grand Rapids: Baker Books.

Numbers, Ronald L.

1992 The Creationists. New York: Alfred A Knof Inc.

Rothstein, Jandos

2008 Graphic Displays of Faith. Print, February 2: 97-100

Ruse, Michael

2005 The Evolution-Creation Struggle. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Scott, Eugenie C.

1997 Antievolution and Creationism in the United States. Annual Review of

Anthropology, Vol. 26: 263-289

Silverman, Herb

2007 Compete or Cooperate? Endorse, Ignore, or Oppose? Humanist, Sep/Oct:

33-35

Today’s Parallel Bible

2000 Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Toumey, Christopher P

1994 God’s Own Scientists. Natural History, July:4-9

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