sciencegeekgirl » Creation Science Museum

Creation museum Yikes! A “Creation Science” museum just opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. You can read the article about it in Salon, which I highly recommend. It’s really a religious museum, which would be fine, but it posits itself as a science museum. It claims that modern science isn’t to be trusted, and explains phenomena using the bible. For example, the fossil record can be explained by where animal remains were deposited before the floodwaters receded in the Great Flood. The Flood also created the Grand Canyon as it receded.

It was put in Kentucky so it would be within a days’ drive for 2/3 of the U.S. population. Darn, I’m just too far away in California. (Still, wouldn’t it be an amazing trip. I could make a pilgrimage of sorts, a sort of anti-Darwin road trip complete with stops at creationist outposts.)

It’s disturbing in itself, but I was particularly upset when I read this passage, taken from the Salon article linked above:

“With a staff of nearly 300 employees, Answers in Genesis, devoted to “Biblical apologetics,” produces a daily radio program fed to 860 stations, operates a Web site instructing visitors how to out-argue Darwinists, and organizes about 300 traveling lectures each year. It’s also a well-oiled money-raising machine and opened the $27 million museum without a penny of debt to banks or lenders.”

That’s about the operating budget of the Exploratorium. We also have a staff of nearly 300 employees. We are constantly struggling for funding. We do host programs outside the museum’s walls, but certainly not a daily radio program. This isn’t just some rinky-dink museum. It’s a major endeavor, with major backing. Why don’t people donate as generously to science as to religion?

Plus, very few organizations (certainly not us) help train scientists or people who believe in evolution to respond to creation scientists’ arguments, which are often very well-argued and convincing.

About equal numbers of the American public believe the message of the Creation Science museum versus the views put forward by traditional science museums. In addition, most traditional science museums don’t explore issues of evolution. Should they?

Creation Museum Website