[asa] Creation Museum report

I'm back online now, in the midst of a research/speaking trip to the
midwest.

I spent four hours at the Creation Museum two days ago, and another 75 mins
talking to an AIG staff lecturer who's office is in the adjacent warehouse
(which was actually completed first and functions as the mailroom, design
room, and warehouse for AIG).

It's a very impressive exhibit, IMO--if you overlook virtually all of the
science. I learned some new things (for me) about changes in YEC beliefs,
such as their endorsement of extraordinarily rapid evolution--excuse me,
adaptation--driven by built in genetic potential for variation and (shh)
natural selection. This happened both between fall and flood and esp since
the flood. My sense is that this is mainly in order to explain what is
otherwise inexplicable: how could there be so many different kinds of
creatures, in so many different environments, after a flood that allowed
only single digit numbers of individuals representing only (apparently) a
few dozen overall "kinds" of organisms (the ark wouldn't really support much
more than that, something that is apparently being conceded now) to survive.
 I also learned that AIG, at least, is now admitting the legitimacy of the
vast distances in interstellar and intergalactic space--ie, they don't blink
an eye about saying that a certain astronomical feature is much farther than
6,000 light years away. This would have shocked many in the earlier
generation of creationists. How to account for this, which strongly implies
that those objects are vastly older than a few thousand years? A lot of
handwaving referenced in a few words during the technically impressive
planetarium presentation. Clearly, AIG is now committed unequivocally to
Russell Humphrey's "white hole" theory (if I can call it a theory). Hardly
anyone in their target audience is going to realize this, of course; nor
will they realize most of the other things I saw.

A real howler: when you see the nice casts of various prehistoric (sorry,
AIG) animals, such as TRex or Velociraptor (which is accompanied by a
placard noting that the film "jurassic park" unjustifiably increased their
size by a large factor), you also see the information that they came from
specific geological periods and dates. This might not be an exact copy of
such information, but the impression you draw from my effort to reproduce it
will be exactly the right one:

Upper Jurassic (ca. 2348 BC)
Lower Jurassic (ca. 2348 BC)
Cenozoic (ca. 2348 BC)

Compared to those sloppy mainstream geologists, I'm impressed by how precise
these guys are. What's with the "ca.", anyway? Why be so timid?

Will these folks make it more likely that atheism will advance? For some
people as individuals, I'm sure the answer is "yes." When junior figures
out one day (as many will) that their godly, loving, well meaning parents
took them to such a chamber of horrors, he or she might indeed chuck over
the whole package, including God. This has happened to some mighty smart
people, such as historian Ron Numbers, and I fear it will happen again. But
it's hard to know whether or not the Museum itself will do much to add to
the total number.

If you already know what the truth is, and how to detect the "lies" in
modern science, then the Museum is undoubtely going to enhance your
confidence in the YEC position--and make no mistake about it, this is the
YEC position with no holds barred, and any & all OEC views (let alone the
dastardly TE view) are clearly stated or directly implied to be dangerous
compromise positions. Neither Charles Hodge nor BB Warfield escapes this
overzealous reductionism, and it is strongly implied (though not explicitly
stated) that Billy Graham is a YEC--which of course he is not, and to the
best of my knowledge never has been. When I pointed this out to the
enthralled woman next to me who was studying the same display, she was
aghast and clearly didn't believe me. Let's hope she doesn't do too much
reading: her faith is best left alone.

Ted

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Received on Sat Sep 8 18:37:55 2007