ADDITIONAL STORIES ON THE CREATION MUSEUM
Fellow Christians Aggreived by the Business Practices of Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis
The Marketing of Bedrock
The Creation Museum at the Crossroads of Faith and Science
The Trouble with Fred and Wilma: Why the Creation Museum is Bad for Christians
Aljazeera, International Islamic Television Network, Covers Grand Opening of Creation Museum
"Rally for Reason" Prepares for Protest
When Atheists and Muslims act more like Christians than Christians
Bill Maher Uses Deception to Secure Interview for "Hit Piece" on Creation Museum
Prepare to be Disappointed: Creation Museum Fails to Live up to Entertainment Value Hype
Prepare to be Disappointed
With a $27 million budget and the talents of Patrick Marsh, the man behind Universal Studios King Kong exhibit, you might expect to be spectacularly thrilled by the contents of the Creation Musuem. If you did, you would be severely disappointed.
The advertising theme of the much ballyhooed Museum is “Prepare to Believe.” A more accurate theme would be “Prepare to be Disappointed.”
Several of the early press reports from scientific critics of the Museum gave it high marks for entertainment value, even though it received negative marks for scientific value. I’m not sure which Creation Museum these folks visited, but it certainly wasn’t the one I saw in Petersburg, Kentucky this last Saturday.
To give the folks at Answers in Genesis, the owners of the Musuem their due, the surrounding grounds, exterior design, and interior design of the 60,000 square foot facility are quite attractive. The expansive trail walk adjacent to the museum, circles a large and beautiful pond just on the side of the building. In the morning mists it evokes images of the Garden of Eden and is particularly pleasant, preparing the mind of the visitor for the literal Genesis tale about to unfold in the museum itself.
Architecturally the musuem is appealing as well, from the first outside view to the high ceilinged lobby inside the entrance. And the stone wall motif fits well with the theme of the museum.
The disappointment begins, however, with the exhibits, and it continues through the highly promoted and extraordinarily pedestrian multi-media venues sprinkled through the building.
We’ll start with the “Men in White” theater, where a couple of annoying thirty something archangels clad in Star Trekkian white angel suits flitter around a large screen amidst an endless series of cartoon drawings. The purpose of this 15 minute video is to debunk Darwinism, and the public school teachers portrayed in it are presented as evolutionary apologists who are hapless imitations of the Ben Stein character from the Wonder Years television sitcom. I wish Stein himself had been asked to act in the video, and allowed to improvise his own lines. He would easily have devastated the irritating Creationist archangels and their dishonest arguments.
And oh yes, the “special effects” in this theater ?
Hold on to your hats, folks.
When God acts, the seats actually shake a little ! (I kid you not, they really shake).
And when the flood is depicted, guess what ?
A little water sprinkles down on the audience.
Wow !
I wish they had that at Disneyland.
Wait, they do, and in fact, they have it an order of magnitude better !
The multimedia disappointments continue in the planetarium, which presents a largely black and white depiction of the universe, one that brings back nostalgic memories of 1960's film strip projections. Within this universe, surprisingly, we are able to see the light from stars that are many millions of light years away from earth.
Rather than support the Young Earth 6,000 year old fantasy, the planetarium plants one of many unanswered questions. How can this be ? If the earth is only 6,000 years old how can light from stars millions of light years away be seen now on earth ?
The recorded program in the planetarium gives a one line explanation for this phenomenon.
According to Dr. Jason Lisle of Answers in Genesis, it’s the result of “gravitational time dilation.”
What’s that, you say, never heard of “gravitational time dilation” ? Don’t know where to find it ?
Go to Fantasyland at Disneyworld, turn left, and ask for Tinkerbelle. She’ll have a million fast moving light years for you to stuff into a 6,000 year old bag.
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