What do we need when Christ knows how many Americans and Iraqis have died in (what is arguably) a religious war?  I know.  We need a Creation Museum; one that reaffirms how the little blue planet, including all us, was created.  The Museum of Creation is a 60,000 square foot, $27 million dollar creation by man though.  God had nothing to do with this one.  Although, not just any man, but an ex-Universal Studios exhibit director.  That is, a man who knows all there is to know about theme parks.  Including, it seems the theme park Planet Earth.

Look I haven’t been to the Creation Museum.  But hearing about its opening on May 28th, 2007 in Kentucky, all the way in Miami did peak my interest.  You see, this isn’t just a biblical museum, but rather it is an anti-evolution concrete philosophy that puts forth arguments and a point of view about history that completely contradicts evolution.  Yes.  Here we are in 2007 and a museum opens seriously offering an option to those who can’t stand the idea that they were once a fish, or even worse, a baboon.

The museum, which is a literal interpretation of the book Genesis (chapter one of the bible for you heathens out there) has a publication called Answers which attempts to do exactly that by answering evolutionary claims with other creationary ones (I admittedly created that word).  It puts forth an argument that actually evolution is also somewhat ‘faith based’ too, which could be true of course, but some of its arguments are not very, um, convincing.  About the idea that dinosaurs inhabited the earth for about 150 million years it says:

“This claim is full of assumptions about the past, which directly contradict Scripture. According to the Bible, all land animals were created on the same day as the first humans, and so they shared the same world only a few thousand years ago.” www.answersingenesis.org/articles

 

And this is what the museum puts forth with dramatic effect.  Dinosaurs embarked Noah’s Ark, two by two.   Along, no doubt, with the Saber Tooth Tiger and other now extinct carnivorous animals that would have undoubtedly rocked that little ark all over Mesopotamia.

But the Creation Museum is just the icing on the cake of ideas that have been baking, if not evolving, for years.  And this evolution can be witnessed creeping into school systems.  Here they call it Intelligent Design.  According to USA today, an article in 2004 noted the following states as being pro-creationary science.

• In western Wisconsin, the small Grantsburg School District now requires that alternative theories of evolution be taught. (this ruling was eventually reversed)

• In Ohio, the state school board passed a measure that encourages the teaching of evolution and "intelligent design," a hypothesis that says life is so complex that some intelligent force was responsible.

• In Kansas the board ended the teaching of evolution in 1999, then reversed that decision after a subsequent election. It has been deadlocked since.  

www.usatoday.com/news/education

When a headline reads: Bush Endorses Intelligent Design then the joke just got sour.  Yes.  In 2005, CommonDreams.org, an online publication by Knight Ridder Newspapers notes that Bush, “…waded in the debate over evolution and “intelligent design”…saying schools should teach both theories on the creation and complexity of life.”  This is really quite terrifying.  Look at how much freedom has been reversed in countries like Iran when a fundamentalist government completely reversed social rules by reverting to the Koran as its guide for lifestyle.

No, when viewed as an isolated case, the Museum of Creation is not dangerous, cute even.  But looking deeper, it is a real testament to our inability to move on and when viewed with other movements to try and make Intelligent Design a science, it should be taken very seriously.  

The museum is a success because believers in creation make it one.  It makes them feel safe.  But it is unhealthy.  In a world where there is not only the concept of a jihad, but the daily reality of suicide bombers taking their lives for the sake of an ancient doctrine, why would we all want to cling so ardently to a good book that, like the Koran, is very much based on telling the reader that if you are not one of them, you are a heathen.  A godless being who will not and should not be saved?  

The true question is this: how can the insights of people who had to write on Papyrus help us today?  Yes, there is some wisdom, but wisdom from a different time, from a people with different needs.  Their worries are not our worries.  They certainly didn’t worry about a nuclear attack.  Yes. Religion has its place.  In history books for instance.  But not to keep us stuck in a mind set that could end up obliterating, not the little blue planet, but us humans.

So in this vein, I have taken it upon myself to write a letter to the Museum of Creation:

Dear Museum of Creation Director.

I love the way you have bought the book of Genesis to life.  But does this mean that your creation story is right and all others are wrong? Native Indian people have as many creation stories as they have tribes.  The Choctaw people say that when people first came up from the ground, they were encased in cocoons (like the matrix), their eyes closed and their limbs folded tightly to their bodies.  This was true of all people – bird people, insect people and people people. The Navajo’s creation story began before creation even, in a world way below the earth where the first man, first woman, first salt woman, fire god, coyote and the golden haired child of the sun existed.  Forgive me, but how can you prove that your creation story is the right one.  I want to make sure that I believe in the right story.  Help.

Thanks

Shashoua