[Article] Creationist museum to promote homophobia

ixoy

Ah look what those darlings are getting up to now in Kentucky [from the Irish Independent]:

WITH its towering dinosaurs and a model of the Grand Canyon, America's newest tourist attraction might look like the ideal destination for fans of the film 'Jurassic Park'.

The new multi-million-dollar Museum of Creation, which will open this spring in Kentucky, will, however, be aimed not at film buffs, but at the growing ranks of fundamentalist Christians in the United States.

It aims to promote the view that man was created in his present shape by God, as the Bible states, rather than by a Darwinian process of evolution, as scientists insist.

The centrepiece of the museum is a series of huge model dinosaurs, built by the former head of design at Universal Studios, which are portrayed as existing alongside man, contrary to received scientific opinion that they lived millions of years apart.

Other exhibits include images of Adam and Eve, a model of Noah's Ark and a planetarium demonstrating how God made the Earth in six days.

The museum, which has cost $25m (€19m), will be the world's first significant natural history collection devoted to creationist theory. It has been set up by Ken Ham, an Australian evangelist, who runs Answers in Genesis, one of America's most prominent creationist organisations.

He said that his aim was to use tourism, and the theme park's striking exhibits, to convert more people to the view that the world and its creatures, including dinosaurs, were created by God 6,000 years ago.

"We want people to be confronted by the dinosaurs," said Mr Ham. "It's going to be a first class experience. Visitors are going to be hit by the professionalism of this place. It is not going to be done in an amateurish way. We are making a statement."

The museum's main building was completed recently, and work on the entrance exhibit starts this week. The first phase of the museum, which lies on a 47-acre site 10 miles from Cincinatti on the border of Kentucky and Ohio, will open in the spring.

Market research companies hired by the museum are predicting at least 300,000 visitors in the first year, who will pay $10 each.

Among the projects still to be finished is a reconstruction of the Grand Canyon, purportedly formed by the swirling waters of the Great Flood - where visitors will "gape" at the bones of dinosaurs that "hint of a terrible catastrophe", according to the museum's publicity.

More controversial exhibits deal with diseases and famine, which are portrayed not as random disasters, but as the result of mankind's sin. Mr Ham's Answers in Genesis movement blames the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, in which two teenagers killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves, on evolutionist teaching, claiming that the perpetrators believed in Darwin's survival of the fittest.

Other exhibits in the museum will blame homosexuals for Aids. In a "Bible Authority Room" visitors are warned: "Everyone who rejects his history - including six-day creation and Noah's flood - is 'wilfully' ignorant."

In keeping with modern museum trends, there will also be a cafe with a terrace to "breathe in the fresh air of God's creation", and a shop "crammed" with creationist souvenirs, including t-shirts and books such as 'A is for Adam' and 'Dinky Dinosaur: Creation Days'.

The museum's opening will reinforce the burgeoning creationist movement and evangelical Christianity in the US, which gained further strength with the re-election of President Bush in November.

Followers of creationism have been pushing for their theories to be reintegrated into American schoolroom teaching ever since the celebrated 1925 "Scopes Monkey Trial", when US courts upheld the right of a teacher to use textbooks that included evolutionary theory.

In 1987, the US Supreme Court reinforced that position by banning the teaching of creationism in public schools on the grounds of laws that separate state and Church.

Since then, however, many schools - particularly in the religious Deep South - have circumvented the ban by teaching the theory of "intelligent design", which claims that evolutionary ideas alone still leave large gaps in understanding.

Charming. Whatever about teaching the "merits" of Creationism, having set aside an exhibit to promote vile homophobia is absolutely sickening. I'd love to see if such stands are protected under free speech or can they be shut down. The worst thing is the growing fundamentalist movement in the US will be attracted to such a place and may be encourage to believe in its nasty bigoted bile and further sour any proper development for same sex relationships in the US. Progress? Time to return to the caves for some.

Sarky

I can see it now. The dinosaurs became extinct through AIDS and not praying enough, obviously.

Pet

AAAAAAAAAARGH!!!

*bangs head against desk*

*repeats until sweet, blissful unconsciousness follows*