February 7, 2005 by s.z.

Creationist Science

Thanks to Agape Press we are reminded of the Creation Museum, the "natural science museum" that is going to use models of dinosaurs, dioramas of Eden, and a replica of Noah's ark "to teach about how science supports the biblical view of creation."

And when we visit Answers in Genesis, the organization spearheading the building of the museum, we see that they haven't just been getting attention from nice, Christian publications like Agape Press, but also from secularists like Maureen Dowd in the NY Times, and the Sunday Telegraph. 

But Ken Ham, President of AIG, takes them both of them to task. He starts out his reply to Maureen's column by using Shakespeare to imply that she's an idiot:

“It is a tale … full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.” This quote from Macbeth appropriately describes what is probably the most bizarre newspaper commentary dealing with the creation issue that I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying something, since I’ve seen “countless” such commentaries over the past thirty years.

Regardless of your political leanings, to see that such a prestigious newspaper as the New York Times would print such a disjointed, irrational and absurd commentary as the one written by Maureen Dowd on February 3, 2005, is almost unbelievable.

Well, yeah, Maureen can get pretty silly in her pieces, but what exactly did she do to upset Ken so?

So what am I fussing about? Well, the commentary in question is titled “Inherit the Windbags.” Apparently this is taken from the anti-Christian and demonstrably deceitful Hollywood movie Inherit the Wind, supposedly based on the 1925 Scopes trial.

The commentary begins by asking a question about male nipples and then informing people about the AiG Creation Museum near the Cincinnati airport. Interesting transition—male nipples to the Creation Museum and back to a creationist-mocking discussion about male nipples!

Yes, Maureen did indeed start out asking a question about male nipples.  Here's the beginning of her column:

Do male nipples prove evolution? Not at all, according to a website for a planned Creation Museum devoted to showing that the Bible is literally true.

Nipples may be biologically de trop for men, an “expert” on the site notes, but that doesn’t mean they resulted from natural selection. They could just as well be a decorating feature of the Creator’s (like a hood ornament).

And what male nipples have to do with the Creation Museum is what Maureen said they do: the info about them is provided at the "Answers in Genius" website, along with the pastel drawings of the proposed museum designed to prove that evolution is false (you can read the last part of the nipple discussion here). If Ken thinks the topic of male nipples is ridiculous, he shouldn't devote so much time to  them in the "Q&A" section of the site.

But what really ticks of Ken is that Maureen used Ken's museum to poke fun at George Bush.

Dowd obviously wanted to slam Bush for his views on social security. And how does one do that? Well, you start with male nipples and the AiG Creation Museum, of course!

Yes, she obviously wanted to slam Bush's plan for social security, because that's what she did.  And yes, the way she did it was to claim that the repudiation of Darwin and evolution is similar to the way that Bush wants to take us back in time and do away with the New Deal.  So, while Ken might not like her column, mocking as it does creationism, his museum, his ministry, and George Bush's plan to privatize Social Security, I don't think an impartial reader would actually find it irrational.  And if it's absurd and bizarre, well, that's only because "Answers in Genesis" itself is pretty weird.

But let's move on to the Telegraph piece, which Ken calls "probably one of the worst pieces of journalism we’ve seen in a while" (Maureen's column not counting as journalism).  Ken does a "point-by-point critique" of it, rebutting almost every line.  However, most of his corrections are "tomato/tomahto" type things (the Telegraph calls the museum, "America’s newest tourist attraction," while Ken says "I wouldn’t really call the museum a tourist attraction.")

But here are a couple of points that I found especially enlightening (the sections from the Telegraph are in italics):

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.

Saying Grand Canyon was formed by swirling waters of the Great Flood is misrepresenting what the creationists believe. (See A canyon in six days!) Also, dinosaur bones are not associated with the Grand Canyon.

Then where did the Telegraph get that idea about the dinosaur bones in the Grand Canyon?

Well, maybe from the AIG's Museum Walk-Through section:

Grand Canyon Wall Gape at the towering face of Grand Canyon along the front wall, while bones of dreadful dinosaurs hint of catastrophe.

Here's another line from the Telegraph that Ken objected to:

Elsewhere, animated figures will be used to recreate the Garden of Eden, while in another room visitors will see a Tyrannosaurus rex pursuing Adam and Eve after their fall from grace. “That’s the real terror that Adam’s sin unleashed,” visitors will be warned.

We’re going to have a T. rex, but we never said he’s going to be pursuing Adam and Eve!

And again, from the Museum Walk-Through:

T. rex—the real king of the beasts. That’s the terror that Adam’s sin unleashed! You’ll run into this monster lurking near Adam and Eve. How’s this possible? Find out soon!

So, Ken's website just said that Adam's sin unleashed T. rex, and that you'll find the monster NEAR Adam and Eve, not pursuing them.  That's completely different!

Yes, this is the kind of stuff that caused Ken to say, "Sometimes I shake my head and sigh when I see what the secular reporter said compared to what really happened!"  You know, I bet God had the same reaction to some portions of the Bible.

Anyway, we still think this museum will be lots of fun, and we hope to see you all there when it opens in spring 2007 (or whenever they get enough donations to finish everything), even if it will reportedly (by the Telegraph) cost $10 to get in.  Hey, it will be worth that much to get to the diorama of the dinosaur eating Maureen Dowd. 

2:59:06 AM