User:Acdixon/Creation Museum stuff

Beliefs

See also: Creation–evolution controversy

The Creation Museum's stated mission is to "exalt Jesus Christ as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer", to "equip Christians to better evangelize the lost", and to "challenge visitors to receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord". Its displays and exhibits portray a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative. This worldview, known as young Earth creationism, holds that God created the universe and everything in it in six literal, 24-hour days approximately 6,000-10,000 years ago. These ideas contradict the current scientific consensus that the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old and that living organisms descended from a common ancestor via the process of evolution. Prior to the museum's opening, the National Center for Science Education collected over 800 signatures from scientists in the three states closest to the museum (Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio) on a statement calling the museum's exhibits "scientifically inaccurate materials" and expressing concerns that students who accept its premises as scientifically valid would be "unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level" and "need remedial instruction in the nature of science, as well as in the specific areas of science misrepresented by Answers in Genesis".

Despite scientific consensus to the contrary, public opinion polling consistently shows substantial support for tenets of creationism in the United States. A 2012 Gallup survey found, "Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years", a figure which has essentially remained unchanged since Gallup first asked the question 30 years ago. Another 32% agreed with the idea that humans evolved according to a process guided by God, a position known as theistic evolution. Only 15% claimed belief in secular evolution.

"We're not out to convert people to believing in Intelligent Design. We're not out to convert people to not believe in evolution. And we're not out to just convert people to being Creationists. We're Christians.”

—Ken Ham, Cincinnati Magazine (June 1, 2005).

Robert C. Newman, a member of the American Scientific Affiliation and co-author of What's Darwin Got to do with It? A Friendly Conversation about Evolution, identified three major creationist positions: Young Earth creationism, Old Earth creationism, and theistic evolution. AiG's stance in favor of Young Earth creationism has garnered criticism from individuals who adhere to the other two interpretations. In a press kit released in connection with the Creation Museum's opening, geologist Greg Neyman, founder of the Old Earth creationist organization Old Earth Ministries, wrote: "Those who will benefit least from the museum are the non-Christians, who are firmly grounded in their belief through modern science that the Earth is billions of years old. They will see the museum, and recognize its faulty science, and will be turned away from the church. This will increase the already widening gap between the unchurched and the churched. This gap is the direct result of young Earth creationism." Roman Catholic theologian John F. Haught, a theistic evolutionist, claimed the museum would cause an "impoverishment" of religion, adding, "It's hard for me to come up with a single reason why we should be doing this. […] It's theologically problematic to me, as well as scientifically problematic." Theistic evolutionist Michael Patrick Leahy, editor of the online magazine Christian Faith and Reason, argued that the museum "makes all Christians who don't accept evolution look stupid", "undermines the credibility of all Christians", and "gives the growing movement of militant atheism... an easy opportunity to misrepresent all Christians as 'irrational'".

Although the intelligent design movement is often associated with creationsim, in a 2005 interview with The Kentucky Post, Ham said of the movement, "They are not a Christian movement, they are not about the Bible. It's not even against evolution, not really, because they don't tell you what that intelligence is. It could open a door for Muslim belief, for Hindus, for New Age. We are telling you unashamedly that the word of the Bible is the way." In 2006, AiG Communications Director Mark Looy told the Post that intelligent design advocates "want nothing to do with us".

History

From the time Christian apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis (AiG) was founded in Florence, Kentucky, in May 1994, ministry officials planned to open a museum and training center in the area. In an ABC News interview, AiG founder and executive director Ken Ham – a native of Queensland, Australia – said, "Australia's not really the place to build such a facility if you're going to reach the world. Really, America is." In a separate interview with The Sydney Morning Herald's Paul Sheehan, Ham explained, "One of the main reasons [AiG] moved [to Florence] was because we are within one hour's flight of 69 percent of America's population." The museum is located in Petersburg, Kentucky, 4 miles (6.4 km) west of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

Planning and approval

In 1996, AiG petitioned the Boone County government to rezone 40 acres (0.16 km²) of land near the intersection of U.S. Route 42 and Kentucky Route 338 from agricultural to recreational use to facilitate the construction of what was then called the "Genesis Park-Museum and Family Discovery Center". An organization called Concerned Citizens of Boone County argued that the offices and mail order business proposed as part of the center were inappropriate for the rural location proposed for construction. The secular humanist organization The Free Inquiry Group claimed the rezoning and construction conflicted with a portion of the county's comprehensive plan to build "a proper museum" at Big Bone Lick State Park, an internationally known geological site containing fossil remains of mastodons, sloths and giant buffalo located 4 miles (6.4 km) from the proposed site. The Free Inquiry Group also expressed concern that the museum's promotion of a creationist worldview would undermine the exhibits at Big Bone Lick. In October 1996, the Boone County Planning Commission recommended approving the rezoning by an 9–4 vote after Answers in Genesis' agreed to limit the museum's hours of operation and construct buildings with designs that blended in with the surrounding countryside, but the Boone County Fiscal Court voted 4–0 against the proposal in December.

In June 1998, AiG announced plans to seek rezoning of an alternate 47-acre (0.19 km²) site south of Interstate 275 in Boone County from residential to industrial. The proposed project included the ministry's headquarters, an educational center, and the renamed Creation Museum of Natural History. AiG noted that rezoning the area from residential to industrial was consistent with the county's 25-year projection. The Kentucky Post reported that, "The public comments on the proposal steered clear of the religion-vs.-science debate that generated much of the oppositionin 1996", but county officials expressed concern that building public water and sewer infrastructure to support the site would attract further growth to the rural area. In response, AiG proposed to construct an on-site well and package waste water treatment plant. AiG also agreed to change the entrance to the facility from Deck Lane to Bullitsburg Church Road, limit its development to 25 acres (0.10 km²), and submit a proposed building design so planners could review how well it fit in with its proposed surroundings. Following these concessions, the Planning Commission's zone change committee recommended approval of the rezoning by a 3–2 vote, but the full commission rejected the proposal by a vote of 9–5. After the Boone County Fiscal Court unanimously refused to overturn the Planning Commission's ruling in November 1998, AiG filed suit in the Boone Circuit Court. AiG Executive Director Ken Ham explained the rationale for the lawsuit: "The county had told us weeks ago we would have to provide that infrastructure, so we agreed to that, and now they say they can't rezone the property because it doesn't have 'necessary' infrastructure in place. ... This is a type of Catch-22 and shows the clearly arbitrary nature of their decision."

The terms of all of the commissioners on the Boone County Fiscal Court expired in January 1999, and the new members of the court agreed to negotiate with AiG to settle their litigation. As part of those negotiations, AiG agreed to refile its rezoning request to change the designation from residential to public facilities, a lower-impact designation than industrial. The Kentucky Post reported that the fiscal court received 562 letters and a petition with 2,670 signatories supporting the revised proposal. In March, the zone change committee again recommended the change by a 3–2 vote, but the Planning Commission rejected it by a vote of 8–6. The Fiscal Court overturned the Planning Commission's decision in May by a 3–1 vote.

In June, a group of property owners near the proposed construction site filed suit against the Boone County Fiscal Court and AiG, charging that fiscal court commissioners met with AiG officials outside the context of a public meeting and that Commissioner Robert Hay should have recused himself from the vote because he had a conflict of interest by virtue of appearing in promotional materials for the museum. AiG countersued, seeking to recover its legal costs. In February 2000, a circuit court judge dismissed the claim against AiG. Announcing that his clients would not appeal, attorney Jay Fossett explained, "they don't have the same war chest as Answers in Genesis".

Construction

In May 2000, AiG announced that it had completed the purchase of the rezoned land for an undisclosed price and expected to begin construction on the "Creation Museum and Family Discovery Center" in March 2001. At the time, AiG planned a 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m²) museum, which they believed would cost $14 million and open by mid-2002. In June 2000, the ministry selected the Cincinnati-based firm of A. M. Kinney Associates as lead architect for the project, noting that the firm would donate "a significant portion of its services". At a March 17, 2001, groundbreaking ceremony, AiG announced that it had raised $4 million for the museum's construction. The Kentucky Post reported in May 2001 that a Michigan-based construction company had donated its services to excavate the construction site.

After independent studies projected that more patrons would visit the museum than AiG had believed, plans for the museum were altered, expanding it to 50,000 square feet (4,600 m²) and pushing the cost estimates to approximately $25 million. AiG staff moved into the Creation Museum's office space in late 2004. In January 2007, AiG responded to favorable visitor projections by adding another 10,000 square feet (930 m²) to the museum at an additional cost of $2 million. On April 1, 2007, AiG officials reported that they owed no debts on the facility's $27 million construction cost but noted that they needed to raise an additional $3 million to cover other costs such as increasing staff. All funds for the museum were privately raised.

Opening and attendance

About 5,000 of the museum's charter members were given preview tours of the facility in the week before it opened to the public on May 28, 2007. The opening date was chosen to draw in visitors on vacation during the Memorial Day holiday. Approximately 4,000 patrons visited the museum on opening day, and the event was covered by both national and international media outlets. In a blog post on the AiG web site, Ham called the opening "not just a historic event in America, but a historic event in Christendom". About 200 protesters attended a Rally for Reason organized by Edwin Kagin, the Kentucky state director of American Atheists, at a farm across the road from the museum. An airplane flew over the museum pulling a banner with the words, "Thou shalt not lie".

AiG had projected that the museum would have 250,000 visitors in its first year of operation, but ministry officials said that number was achieved in just over five months. To deal with the larger crowds, AiG proposed adding 663 new parking spaces to the 500 already available at the museum, moving the museum's highway entrance, and adding canopies to the front of the building to accommodate larger crowds. The expansion – projected to cost about $500,000 – also included the construction of a 14,400 square feet (1,340 m²) maintenance building and a 19,200 square feet (1,780 m²) lake to capture and hold runoff from the overflow parking area, preventing it from polluting nearby Garrison Creek. The Boone County Planning Commission approved the plan after AiG agreed to do a traffic study of Bullitsburg Church Road and construct a left-turn lane if necessary, paint the maintenance building to blend into its surroundings, and not use the area under the canopies as a stage for outdoor performances.

In its first year of operation, 404,000 people visited the Creation Museum. Over 300,000 patrons visited in the next two years, and on April 26, 2010, AiG recognized a Dayton, Ohio man as the Creation Museum's 1 millionth visitor, presenting him with a gift basket and a lifetime membership to the museum. In 2012, Cincinnati CityBeat reported that, from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012, Museum attendance had dropped to 254,074, a 10% drop from the previous year and the fourth straight year of declining attendance. AiG officials cited the poor economy and high gas prices as reasons for the decline. On July 1, 2012, the Museum raised admission prices by $5 to $29.95 per person. In June 2013, AiG senior vice president Mike Zovath told the Lexington Herald-Leader, "We're pretty happy with the way attendance is playing out," noting, "The 250,000 number has been our business model all along, and we've exceeded it every year." He also said the number of groups visiting the museum in mid-2013 had increased.

In July 2013, the Museum added 25 zip lines and 10 sky bridges in hopes of attracting a wider audience. Zovath explained, "It should be three to four hours of non-stop fun for visitors. We're also going to have some information about the different trees and plant species, so there will be a little bit of educational value as well, but it's mostly an adrenaline rush."

Displays and exhibits

The Creation Museum proper encompasses 60,000 square feet (5,600 m²). In its 78-seat planetarium, visitors view a show written by AiG's staff astrophysicist Dr. Jason Lisle that presents creationist cosmologies as alternatives to the Big Bang Theory of the origins of the universe. In the 200-seat theater – which features special effects such as seats that vibrate and jets that spray the audience with mist – a film depicts two angelic beings who proclaim, "God loves science!" Outside the main structure is a 5-acre (0.020 km²) lake. When the museum opened, the exterior grounds contained approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) of walking trails, but by the end of its first year in operation, AiG had added additional trails. The museum also includes a restaurant and a medieval-themed gift shop. A petting zoo opened in 2008.

Design and acquisition

In January 2002, AiG announced that Patrick Marsh would lead the design of exhibits for the Creation Museum. At the time, Marsh was design director for a Tokyo-based company that designed theme parks and resorts; previously, he designed the Jaws and King Kong attractions at Universal Studios Florida. Kurt Wise was hired as scientific consultant for the museum and also played a major role in designing the exhibits, including the 52 professionally made videos. The exhibits have been called "painstakingly detailed" and even critics have agreed that "Answers in Genesis has gone to great lengths to make their new museum a place that has quality displays".

Some of the exhibits used in the museum, including a 50-foot model of a rockfish, were purchased in a public auction from the Columbus Center, a science center in Baltimore, Maryland, that ceased operation in 1999. A private collection of toy dinosaurs and another containing 10,000 minerals are among the donated items displayed at the museum. The museum features life-size dinosaur models, over 80 of them animatronic (animated and motion-sensitive). Some are depicted in the Garden of Eden, side-by-side with human figures, and in one exhibit, a Triceratops and a Stegosaurus are shown aboard a scale model of Noah's Ark.

Arrangement

Visitors to the museum are directed through a series of sequentially arranged rooms. Writing in the journal Argumentation and Advocacy, authors Casey Kelly and Kristen Hoerl note that "the museum constructs an argument chain in which claims from previous rooms provide support for subsequent claims". The first room in the sequence contains a diorama of two archeologists uncovering the skeletal remains of an indistinct creature. Two actors meant to represent the archeologists are displayed on television screens mounted nearby; one explains that he believes that the creature died in a local flood millions of years earlier, while the other surmises that the creature died in the biblical Great Flood about 4,300 years earlier. This room is immediately followed by a second room of placards explaining various natural phenomena using two distinct "starting points" – mainstream science and the biblical narrative, respectively. From here, visitors enter an L-shaped corridor that begins with mannequins representing the Old Testament prophets Moses, David, and Isaiah, while audio recordings of passages from the Book of Psalms are played nearby. Further down the corridor, placards detail historical arguments against a literal interpretation of the Bible and conclude that "The elevation of human reason above God's word is the essence of every attack on God's word." The walls near the corridor's exit contain existentialist questions such as "Am I alone?", and "Why do I suffer?", paired with illustrations of human conflict and suffering.

A wrecking ball labeled "millions of years" smashing the brick foundation of a church.

After leaving the corridor, visitors enter a room designed to resemble a decaying urban alley full of graffiti and littered with newspaper clippings about the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthenasia. An accompanying placard concludes: "Scripture abandoned in the culture leads to... relative morality, hopelessness and meaninglessness." In the final room in this series, video screens depict the purported results of abandoning a literla interpretation of the Bible. In one, a teenage girl is on the phone with an abortion clinic. In another, a teenage boy rolls rolls a marijuana joint while staring at a computer screen; a narrator informs the viewer that the boy is looking at pornography. In the center of the room, a wrecking ball labeled "Millions of Years" damages the foundation of a church building. Nearby sits a wheelbarrow full of bricks meant to symbolize the reparative work of AiG.

The second series of rooms depict a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, arranged around the concept of "The Seven C's of History": creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, Christ, cross, and consummation. At the entrance to this area, a flat panel television displays a CGI animation of millions of particles converging to create an adult human male, the biblical Adam. Subsequent creation dioramas show Adam naming animals in the Garden of Eden and Eve being created from Adam's rib. Accompanying placards maintain that the special creation of Adam and Eve conveys God's desire for families to consist only of opposite sex couples and their offspring.

The exhibit on corruption shows Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, resulting in the fall of man. Further exhibits depict the aftermath of this event: animals being killed to make garments for Adam and Eve, Cain killing Abel, and Methuselah warning of God's coming judgment. Black-and-white photographs also show examples of modern suffering, such as the Holocaust and the explosion of an atomic bomb. According to accompanying placards, after the fall, some animals became carnivores, and competition for resources drove some creatures to extinction.

The catastrophe, an allusion to the Great Flood recounted in Genesis chapters 6 through 9, is represented by animatronic figures constructing Noah's Ark and an interactive exhibit that allows visitors to select frequently asked questions about Noah's Ark and have them answered audibly by an animatronic Noah. Kelly and Hoerl describe the interactive Noah as "remarkable", noting: "Noah is imbued with human affect and individuality, including complex physical features and detailed bodily movements; his speech patterns, facial expressions, and bodily gestures are in near-perfect sync with his eye, mouth, and head movements; and his hair, skin tone, and musculature closely imitates real human features." The catastrophe displays are futher enhanced by CGI animations of the Great Flood covering the Earth as observed from both outer space and a period-specific settlement.

The post-flood world is presented in the next room as a time when man began to rely solely on human reasoning, resulting in confusion. A diorama shows the Tower of Babel and presents the idea that it explains the dispersal of people after the flood and the rapid divergence of languages during that period. Displays argue that dependence on human reasoning leads to racism and genocide, with one sign bearing a quote from Stephen Jay Gould noting that racism increased exponentially following the acceptance of the theory of evolution. The final three C's – Christ, cross, and consummation – are presented in a single room where visitors wait before entering a theater to view The Last Adam, a film where actors representing Mary, the mother of Jesus, and an unnamed Roman soldier describe their experiences during the crucifixion of Jesus.

After the Seven C's area, a video introduces the next section of the museum by stating that "Scientists are developing a series of models to explain how the Flood and its aftermath could have shaped the world today." Large fossils displayed in glass cases are purported to have been formed as a result of the Great Flood. Large placards illustrate geological models developed by creation scientists at AiG, the Discovery Institute, and the Institute for Creation Research. The tour continues in the "Dinosaur Den", which contains models of dinosaurs with attached signage explaining their lives and features from a young Earth creationist viewpoint. The Dragon Theater, the last exhibit space on the tour, posits the relatively recent extinction of dinosaurs and speculates that Medieval dragon legends may have been inspired by actual encounters with dinosaurs. Visitors exit the tour through the museum's gift shop, which contains both souveniers and AiG print and multimedia publications. The gift shop generated $5.6 million in gross revenue in 2011.

In 2009, AiG added an exhibit about natural selection, the process by which changes that give members of a species a survival advantage become more prominent within the population of that species. The exhibit features models of finches, the birds Charles Darwin observed before proposing the theory of evolution in 1859. Models of bacteria and live blind cave fish are also part of the exhibit. Ken Ham stated that creationists accept that natural selection allows species to change over time, but not that it allows one species to evolve into another, as Darwin posited.