California museum brings creationism to life

1 view
Skip to first unread message

Pastor Dale Morgan

unread,
Feb 4, 2007, 1:09:04 AM2/4/07
to Bible-Pro...@googlegroups.com
*Perilous Times

California museum brings creationism to life*

'You cannot convince a kid they came from a fish. Kids know better'

Literal interpretation of Bible is illustrated

By Michele Clock

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
February 4, 2007

Cindy Carlson, curator of the Museum of Creation and Earth History in
Santee, showed the museum's python, named Cuddles, to a group of
schoolchildren from Berean Bible Baptist Church and Academy in Chula
Vista. "Who made snakes?" she asked the students. "God!" they shouted.

This lush, gardenlike room is part of the Museum of Creation and Earth
History, a beige, two-story structure that brings to life a version of
history that isn't taught in public schools. Here, God created Earth as
described in the Bible.

Each year, about 15,000 visitors come to Santee's only museum, deemed
the world's largest creationist museum by the Northwest Creation
Network. (A much larger, $27 million creationist museum under
construction in Kentucky will soon snatch the title.)

Folks may say they believe in evolution, but they don't really buy that
humans came from other creatures, said John D. Morris, president of the
Institute for Creation Research, which runs the free-admission museum.

“You cannot convince a kid they came from a fish,” he said. “Kids know
better and people know better.”

A group of uniformed parochial school students was an eager audience at
the museum one recent weekday morning. A chorus of “whoas” and “wows”
followed as they wandered into the gardenlike room, which is devoted to
Days 5, 6 and 7 of creation.

Caleb Barrera, 8, a second-grader at Chula Vista's Berean Bible Baptist
Church and Academy, moved his little camera as close as he could to the
critters, snapping photo after photo. Bible in hand, first-grader
Matthew Fernandez, 6, tugged fifth-grader Anthony Diez, 10, toward an
exhibit crawling with cockroaches.

Soon it was time for museum curator Cindy Carlson to bring out Cuddles.

“He won't bite,” she assured. With the brown-and-black snake perched on
her arm, she asked the students, “Who made snakes?”

“God!” they shouted.

No government funding
Just down the street from the Santee Drive In Theatre and a stone's
throw from an auto-body shop, the businesslike building seems an unusual
place to tackle such questions as, “What is the meaning of life?” and,
“Where did I come from?”

A member of the institute's board sold this chunk of East County to the
institute in the 1980s. Today, the two office buildings there serve as
headquarters for the institute, its graduate school and the museum.

A walk through the museum starts and ends in a small bookstore stocked
with not-so-subtle titles such as “God Created the Plants & Trees of the
World” and “Refuting Evolution.” A sign at the start of the tour states
that the museum accepts no government funding. It isn't affiliated with
any church, either.


Visitors step from the green-hued garden room into the reddish-orange
glare of “The Fall of Man.” There, a human skull and a preserved
tarantula are on display. A tiger painted on the wall bares its teeth as
if poised to attack. The sorrowful cries of a man and baby waft overhead.

The next room evokes the inside of Noah's Ark. A floor-to-ceiling mural
shows animals standing in pens. The sounds of cracking thunder and
pouring rain can be heard, and a flashing light simulates lightning.

Noah didn't need to load the largest animals into the ark, a plaque
reads. He could have collected “young virile specimens” instead, which
could have allowed 50,000 animals to squeeze on board.

Near the end of the tour, a drawing of a healthy, green “Creationist
Tree” is juxtaposed near a twisted “Evolutionary Tree.” Written next to
the creationist tree: “Genuine Christianity” and “Correct Practices.”
The evolutionary tree: “Harmful Philosophies” and “Evil Practices,”
including promiscuity, pornography, genocide, slavery and abortion.

Father of creationism
The museum has been around almost as long as the Institute for Creation
Research, founded by Morris' late father, Henry Morris, in 1970. It
moved to its current location in the mid-1980s.

Morris is credited with helping to spark a modern creationist movement
after co-writing the 1961 book “The Genesis Flood.” The work tried to
scientifically explain the theory of divine creation.

The movement has grown from very few followers when the book was
published to “tens of thousands” today, John Morris said, citing polls
that show most Americans believe God had some hand in creation.

Morris, who has led expeditions to Turkey's Mount Ararat in search of
Noah's Ark, said his father convinced many that creationism was true.
John Morris now travels the country making the case for divine creation
and against evolution.

From its Santee home, the institute also spreads its message across the
world through pamphlets, radio programs broadcast by 1,500 radio
stations worldwide, and a 113,000-circulation monthly newsletter.

Popular with students

Students on field trips and Bible study groups are among those who visit
the museum most.

Berean Bible Baptist Academy student Erika Fernandez, 8, said she liked
the room with live animals because her favorite parts of the Bible
describe how God made them.

“No one can make any animal but him,” she said.

The school's principal, Melito Barrera, said he doesn't worry about the
children getting mixed messages about creation and evolution from society.

He points to a nearby corridor in the museum, where photos of
creationist scholars hang opposite those of evolutionist scholars. On
the evolutionist side, Andrew Carnegie is described as “cruel and
heartless in his own day to competitors and laborers alike.” He's joined
by Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler, among others.

“That's what makes it very clear,” Barrera said. “There's no gray area.
It's teaching them the truth so that they will know what is in error.”

Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages