— A feverishly emphatic preacher on PBS,
reciting a popular mantra of Biblical inerrancy.
Welcome to the Museum of Unnatural History.
This summer parents can take their kids to a slew of multimillion dollar Creationist “Museums” where the deer and the dinosaur roam as Adam and Eve bathe beneath thundering waterfalls, their male and female parts coyly obscured by leaves, spray and dogma.
A museum in name only, these mini-Disneylands are cropping up throughout the Southwest and present a hodgepodge of naive Biblical beliefs, long discredited by scientists, as well as serious scholars of religion. Here children “of all ages” (as they say at the circus) are taught that dinosaurs traveled on Noah’s ark and that the earth — like Zsa Zsa Gabor — is only 6, 000 years old,. “That would mean, ” quipped biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, “that the earth didn’t come about until after the agricultural revolution.” The “Young Earth” creationists derive their numbers from Biblical genealogies; actual estimates, based on radiometric dating, place the earth’s age closer to 4.5 billion years.
Thus we see the latest skirmish in the centuries-old battle between religion and science. Coexistence is really not possible, despite what moderates contend. This is a battle to the death, and a battle vigorously waged for the only reason that matters: the victor gets to decide ultimate reality — a ground that both sides claim exclusives rights to. Of course that particular battle has long been over — over that is except for the shouting. As the score stands, it’s Lions 10; Christians 0.
Be that as it may, our favorite bit of Creationist whimsy, a really delightful canard on display at these museums, is how Noah managed to get those five-ton T-Rexes on his ark-raft. We imagine some bright-eyed evangelical staying up all the night to pray over that one. Finally, with dawn breaking, came the answer, delivered no doubt by a dove with a radiant letter in its beak: Noah had taken only dinosaur eggs aboard the good ship Future of the Word! Apparently this same dove must have told the patriarch which eggs would be male and which female.
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prizewinner and featured author here at Nightcharm (see When the Whip Come Down) recently toured one of these museums. Writes Hedges:
In the middle of the lobby of the 50,000-square-foot Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., a 20-foot waterfall tumbles. Two life-size figures of children with long black hair and in buckskin clothes play in the stream a few feet from two towering Tyrannosaurus Rex models that can move and roar.
The museum, which cost $25 million to build … has a scale model of Noah’s ark that shows how Noah solved the problem of fitting dinosaurs into the three levels of the vessel — he loaded only baby dinosaurs. And on the wooden model, infant dinosaurs cavort with horses, giraffes, hippopotamuses, penguins and bears. There is an elaborate display of the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve, naked but strategically positioned so as not to display breasts or genitals, swim in a river as giant dinosaurs and lizards roam the banks.
Before Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise, museum visitors are told, all of the dinosaurs were peaceable plant-eaters. The evidence is found in Genesis 1:30, where God gives “green herb” to every creature to eat.
There were no predators. T-Rex had such big teeth, the museum explains, so it could open coconuts. Only after Adam and Eve sinned and were cast out of paradise did the dinosaurs start to eat flesh. And Adam’s sin is a key component of the belief system, for in the eyes of many creationists, in order for Jesus’ death to be meaningful it had to atone for Adam’s first sin.
The museum has a theater equipped with seats that shake and gadgets that spray mist at the audience as the story of God’s six-day creation of the world unfolds on the screen and the sound system rocks the auditorium.
Ah yes, we can see T-Rex now, working the concession stand, wowing the crowd with flashy displays of nut crunching as he serves up those coconut patties and Pina Coladas. Welcome to showbiz, T.
Oh…for the love of god…or something.
Back in the day, I fucked Adam with a condom made of a triceratop’s intestines. Boy, was Eve pissed. Okay, so that’s beside the point but (as Jimmy Bob Todd LaVay would say) ‘don’t that make me biblical?’
Seriously, the determined drive these people have to remain ignorant, uninformed and dare I say it, just plain tacky, is mind warping. At at the expense they go to to bilk their young, burrowing into bullshit and building million dollar stupidity altars. Creationism, my ass. That ain’t faith. That’s just psychosis.
They’re disgusting. I mean, couldn’t they have done something Christian like save Darfur?
This may not be quite germane, but I very recently found myself driving behind a woman with a bumper sticker that read:
“Christian-bashing: The last acceptable form of hate in America.”
I wished tragedy and pain upon her.
Victimhood really does seem to be an essential component to this order of Christian zeal. These creationism museums fit right in to their whole persecution-complex.
It’s obvious that these guys do not care about science. But do they care about the Bible as much as they say? Are we obliged to understand everything in the Bible literally? At least St. Paul and St. Augustine didn’t think that would be possible or even commendable, St. Paul giving preference to the spirit over the letter. Serious biblical scholarship has shown that there are two different accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 - what do you make of the differences? Are dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible? As this seems not to be the case, some paleontological evidence is randomly and selectively read into the ancient text. I’ve got the impression that religious fundamentalists do not read very much the Bible and rely more on their preachers than on the biblical text itself. Stephen Prothero’s book about “Religious Literacy - What Every American Needs to Know - And Doesn’t” (link) might be interesting.
I feel that if these people want to make a dichotomy of science and faith, then they should do it whole hog or not at all.
Fuck ‘em. You can’t pick and choose which fields of science you’re going to “believe in.” If these people want to reject wholesale what evolutionary theory, paleontology, geology, astronomy and physics can tell us of our history, then they should give up EVERYTHING science has given us.
You don’t want evolution taught in the biology classes in the public schools? Well then fuck you, you can just go live like a Luddite. If you’re not going to respect science, reason and objectivity, then you can forfeit your fucking pacemakers, SUV’s, the Palm Pilots you’ve uploaded Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance onto, and every other technological convenience science has given you, you fucking hypocrites
tuffy that would be a bit harsh…its not their fault they are ignorant..they just act the way their parents did etc etc.they dont know any better.if they wish to be ignorant thats they right. but they shouldnt force it on their children. thats what i have a strong problem with.
no need to get so worked up over religion…its just crowd control gone wrong…
To me this is another heinous example of American Mythology - Santa Claus, etc. - where parents lie to their children in order to control their behavior (…he knows if you’ve been bad or good, blah blah blah). And I agree wholeheartedly with domo that there are far more pressing ‘Christian’ deeds than pouring money into a Pentacostal Chuck E. Cheese. But just as we responded to the movies we were shown in Middle School, where some Hardy Boys-looking kid is pressured into smoking a joint and then the next day he’s shooting heroine and robbing jewelry stores, it becomes easier for a young adult to abandon a value system once they discover that they’ve been lied to, i.e. one may smoke a doobie once in awhile without needing a stint in rehab. So if we are to believe in Darwinism, then we can expect that these Christian zealots are spawning children who will discover someday that their parents AND their pious communities lied to them blatantly, and then their religion will die out in a process we know as ‘Survival of the Fittest’. And if you don’t believe me, peek into a Catholic church on any Sunday and count the heads - it’ll only take you a moment or two.
Happy Easter (Bunny), everybody!
Guys, you’re making my day! Loving this vigorous discussion.
And Nick here blew my mind with the aptness of his comparison of these Creationist museums to “Pentecostal Chuck E. Cheeses.” Hysterical and dead-on!
Also, creechy, with the observation that “religion is just crowd control gone wrong.”
Wow. Sharp, witty stuff, guys and gals!
Nice writing Mr. Calendo.
As my boyfriend would say, “C-R-A-Z-Y M-A-K-I-N-G”
Traces of my mindset are brought to the fore from when I was religiously involved. I remember thinking how absurd it was that some people thought the seven days of creation were literal days. That a day for god had anything to do with our sun: very ego-centric.
Tuffy I kind of agree with you; why not pull back to the fundimentals when talking about fundimentalists.
Well, if you study Enocian,and Gnostic teachings it is clear. I mean blatantly clear that the bible is an allegory and not litteral.
During my forced childhood time in Sunday School, I sent my teacher into exasperated fits asking about dinosaurs fitting onto the ark. Present-day Creationists are today just cynically co-opting science-lite in order to try and legitimize myth so that they can shoehorn it into the classroom.
The thing I love is that we as gays are constantly villified for our conspiracies to recruit young people into our ranks. Here we once again have Christians utilizing the very tactics they demonize in others. It’s not enough to try and force prayer into school, insert Intellignent Design into science curricula, and ship kids off to creey Jesus Camps– now we have propogandist pseudo-museuems masquerading as kiddie theme parks. Isn’t this getting them while they’re young? Hypocritical? Hell yes.
It’s not that rational people are out to victimize Christians; it’s just that they’re so desperately intent on obliterating any form of individuality within the U.S. that they come across as tyrannical. Yeah, I guess hall monitors served some purpose when we were all in junior high, but did anyone with even a modicum of cool or brains take them seriously, much less want to be like them?