True science has a new ally. Answers in Genesis CEO Ken Ham's vision of a science museum that supports biblical truth became reality on Memorial Day when the $27 million, high-tech Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky, near the Cincinnati airport. On opening day over 4,000 people experienced the museum's state-of-the-art, family-friendly exhibits that include startlingly lifelike animatronic figures, dioramas, and presentations that contrast creationists' and evolutionists' markedly different interpretations of the scientific data concerning life and the universe. The museum's stated goals are to exalt Jesus Christ as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, and to better equip Christians for evangelizing by providing evidences of the Bible's inerrancy.
Not surprisingly, the museum's opening drew negative attention. Protesters gathered outside the gate with signs, and a plane hired by The Campaign to Defend the Constitution (DefCon) circled overhead trailing a banner reading “DefCon says thou shalt not lie.” The science education establishment is up in arms over this challenge to evolution's school-based monopoly:
"Teachers don't deserve a student coming into class saying 'Gee Mrs. Brown, I went to this fancy museum and it said you're teaching me a lie,"' Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, told reporters before the museum opened.1
Some news reports took a dismissive approach to the launching of a pro-Creation science exhibition, but others2 were surprisingly evenhanded, and the museum's high quality and advanced-technology displays earned glowing reviews from news organizations across the spectrum. The museum's opening has provided Answers in Genesis (AIG) with a forum to clearly state the creationist viewpoint, and AIG has turned even negative publicity into opportunities to present scriptural answers to "scientific" objections. The opening-day protestors distributed a flyer designed by DefCon entitled "The Top 10 reasons why the Universe, the Sun, the Earth, and Life are NOT 6,000 years old," which AIG has answered point-by-point on its website.3
We rejoice in God's answer to prayer and in this new resource for spreading God's truth.
1 Andrea Hopkins, "New Museum Says Dinosaurs Were on Noah's Ark," Reuters News Service, May 26, 2007, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireSto
ry?id=3215854. See also ICR's article "Science Teachers Violate NSTA Standards of Open Inquiry," http://icr.org/article/3346/.
2 See Edward Rothstein, "Adam and Eve in the Land of the Dinosaurs, The New York Times, May 24, 2007, http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/art
s/24crea.html.
3 http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles
/2007/05/30/responding-to-propaganda