T-Rex in Wonderland: Kentucky’s 27-million-dollar Creation Museum Turns One

Abstract

One year ago, when I covered the opening of the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky (Slack 2007), I asked preacher Ken Ham, Answers in Genesis’ rugged-faced CEO and president, why the age of the Earth matters so much to his followers. “If any word of the Bible is false,” he said, “then all of it can be called into question.” From Ham’s point of view, the authority of the entire Bible rides on every word in it. If Genesis is wrong, then the Ten Commandments might as well be, too. And it is the Ten Commandments and other moral pronouncements in the Bible that are important to Ham, not really, in themselves, the age of the Earth or the method by which it was populated. The real concern and target of creationism is not evolution, it is moral relativism. The Creation Museum is no little roadside attraction. It’s a polished, 27-million-dollar, 60,000-square-foot “natural history” museum just about 20 miles southwest of Cincinnati and within easy driving distance of millions of people. In the 12 months since its opening, according to the museum’s website, more than 360,000 people have visited its halls. Answers in Genesis (AiG), the nonprofit ministry devoted to what it calls Biblical apologetics, or “the reasoned defense of the Bible,” is projecting at least as many in the year to come. It is remarkable that AiG was able to raise nearly 30 million dollars to build the museum and fill it with exhibits, but more astounding still is the fact that so many Americans will come here and say, “Finally, a decent science museum for me!” In fact, I heard that sentiment repeated time and again from museum visitors. A 2007 Newsweek poll found that 48% of Americans hold that “God created humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.” (Newsweek Poll 2007). That means about half of Americans would feel perfectly at home at the Creation Museum. That’s a higher percentage than accept the view of the world portrayed in mainstream science museums. In the same poll, only 43% answered affirmatively to the assertion that “Humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life.” Ham is explicit about the museum’s purpose. He hoped, he said, that it would undo “the damage done 82 years ago when Clarence Darrow put William Jennings Bryan on the stand” in the famous Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee. “Bryan was asked questions about the Book of Genesis that he couldn’t answer,” said Ham. “It was the first time the Bible was ridiculed by the media in America, and that was a downward turning point for Christendom.” In the decades that followed, Ham said, the Bible’s values were replaced by a tolerance for homosexuality, divorce, sexual promiscuity, porn, and the banning of God from schools and courts. “We are going to undo all of that here at the Creation Museum,” said Ham. “We are going to answer the questions Bryan wasn’t prepared to, and show that belief in every word of the Bible can be defended by modern science.” I am an evolutionist, not religious, and not an advocate of creationism in any of its forms. But wherever you stand on the evolution–creation debate, this museum has a lot to Evo Edu Outreach (2008) 1:342–345 DOI 10.1007/s12052-008-0063-6