Museum breathes life into creation fossil
Any number of exhibits could astonish a visitor to the near-complete Creation Museum in Kentucky, US.
Stroll through the planetarium that demonstrates how God made the earth in six days some 6,000 years ago. Get comfy inside the five-screen, special effects movie theatre to behold the science of biblical blockbusters like Noah’s Ark or the parting of the Red Sea.
Gawp wide-eyed at the 12-foot high model T. Rex as it poses in the Garden of Eden alongside Adam, waving aside any notion that there was an age of dinosaurs.
Or step inside the “Bible Authority Room” that warns visitors, “Everyone who rejects His history – including the six-day creation and Noah’s flood – is wilfully ignorant.”
The principal brainchild of this AUS$26 million monument to creationism is Ken Ham, an Australian-born former high school teacher from Brisbane who is now president of a powerful evangelical ministry in America called Answers in Genesis.
Mr Ham boasts that his museum, strategically located just six kilometres from the airline hub of Greater Cincinnati International Airport, is no more than one-hour’s flight from 69 per cent of the American population.
What teachers from leading theological colleges in NSW say about creation … . The Rev. Dr Jione Havea, lecturer in Old Testament studies at United Theological College (Uniting Church)
“I don’t think it’s important to believe in Creation in a literal sense. I treat this story as a literary product from a cultural context, not so much as a scientific or historical account. One of the questions I ask of students is what kind of situation or ‘threat’ created the desire to come up with a story such as Genesis; what ideological birthplace gave rise to this particular story. My calculation is there had to be a chaotic situation that gave rise to a story that was so orderly. That kind of story pre-supposes a situation where order was necessary.”
. The Rev. Dr John Woodhouse, principal at Moore Theological College (Anglican)
“My worldview would not be shattered if I were suddenly informed by some authority that Creation took place in six days. I believe in a God who could do such a thing. I certainly don’t accept the scientific explanation of Creation because it changes every day. One of the difficulties I have is that certain members of the scientific community become so dogmatic that their model has got it, but it’s in constant flux. I’ve had conversations with scientists who want to censor the Creation science view. I happen to doubt very much that creationists are right but I do want to support their freedom to put forward their view in the marketplace of ideas.”
. The Rev. Dr Mark O’Brien, lecturer in Old Testament studies at the Catholic Institute of Sydney
“I’m happy to accept the scientific view of Creation. I believe that God created the world but how it came about is explored by science in terms of geology and natural history and evolution. The sixth day and the day of rest in the Genesis story, for me, prefigures what’s to come with the Sabbath law in the Torah. So the Jews, in keeping with the Sabbath, are acting in the image and likeness of God by doing what God does. They work six days and rest on the seventh, just like God did in Creation. The text is shaped to make that theological point; it has nothing to do with eons of Creation.”
. The Rev. Dr Ross Clifford, principal at Morling College (Baptist)
“I would hold to a hermeneutical approach to Genesis, but whether that’s described in a literal six-day day process is something that students and faculty at Morling would disagree about. We expect students to look at the text and apply a conservative, evangelical model to the text. Genesis is the inspired word of God and correct in what it asserts. The question is, what is the genre of the text, what’s the text trying to say, and what’s the context of people’s understanding from that day. People in evangelical traditions will differ even though they have the same approach to the Bible, not because one is liberal or one is literalist; it’s because their hermeneutic reaches a different conclusion.”
Teachers across America have been quietly ignoring evolution – even though the subject is in their curriculum – thanks largely to the growing political clout of evangelicals in the country’s south and Midwest (who played no small part in re-electing George W. Bush into the White House).
In Georgia, for instance, a civil trial is under way over an attempt by a county school group to print warning stickers in school biology textbooks that say evolution is “a theory, not a fact.”
This new wave in Creation science might not concern Australians, where secular traditions have always resisted any intrusion of conservative religion into politics or education. But political writers such as Marion Maddox (whose book God Under Howard is just released through Allen & Unwin)
have noted the growth of independent, parent-controlled Christian schools which are increasingly supported by federal funding and preach conservative, literalist theologies.
Robert Johnston, executive officer for the Bible-based umbrella group Australian Association of Christian Schools, concedes that most of the 100 schools AACS represents would cover Creation science in their curriculum, but claims that only a minority would teach it as scientific truth.
Meanwhile Ted Endacott, the national director for Uniting Education, reckons most Uniting Church schools would be hostile to the idea that Creation science be taught in their classrooms.
However, new research suggests we may be more inclined to the six-day creation story than is believed. Twenty-eight per cent of Australians think the Bible offers a more likely explanation for the origin of life than evolution, according to a recent opinion poll by UMR Research.
Only 43 per cent prefer the theory of evolution, while 12 per cent believe a combination of both explanations, and 17 per cent are undecided as to whether the earth was created in six days or billions of years.
Among the pews of Christian congregations, 51 per cent of attenders across all denominations do not believe in evolution, according to 1995 research by NCLS. A belief in creationism is highest among the Assemblies of God (83 per cent) and Baptist (60 per cent) congregations, while only 31 per cent of Uniting Church members are creationists.
The Rev. Dr John Dickson, a historian with a doctorate in the origins of Christianity, argues that – unlike today’s creationists – the ancient peoples for whom Genesis was written would not have believed it important to view the world as being created in six, 24-hour days.
“It should be the most obvious thing in the world that the writer of Genesis could not have been making scientific statements,” he says. For Dickson, Genesis presented three challenging, theological themes to those who first read it.
“Genesis proclaims an uncompromising monotheism. There is only one god in the whole story and if you were brought up in an ancient culture in which Genesis was written you believed in lots of gods. All the creation stories alive at that time proclaimed many gods being involved in many different ways in creation.
“The second theme that would have really struck ancient people is the complete coherence and order of the physical universe, which was not believed in the ancient world. Then, physical creation was considered a dangerous, random, completely unpredictable entity, full of dangerous spirits.
“Along comes Genesis and says that everything is good. The word ‘good’ is repeated several times, just so you get the point. And the beautifully-ordered way in which the chapter was written only underlines the reality that this is an ordered, predictable creation.
“The third thing is that human beings are the centre, climax and object of affection in the story. If you were brought up in a pagan culture, that would have been a complete novelty. Ancient pagan myths appear in part to have been designed to put man in his place, to say that he’s just an afterthought of the gods.
“In Genesis we have a God creating human beings in God’s image. That’s an outrageous idea in the pagan world: that God actually creates a being to share His own image, and then that God spends time talking to these beings.” What does this say about the authority of the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky?
“My own personal opinion is they should’ve sent the money to the poor,” says Dr Dickson. “I think Jesus would be more honoured by a lavish gift to our struggling brothers and sisters around the world than a multi-million dollar monument to a theological argument.”
Erin Tennant
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