The Creation Museum, which opens outside of Cincinnati on Monday, received a surprisingly fair review by the New York Times today. The story, written by Edward Rothstein, claims the museum offers an "alternate world"--one differing with the world of Darwinian "Natural History" to an extent that parallels the difference between the Garden of Eden and life outside. But as he admits, the alternate world turns out to be pretty attractive.

Whether you are willing to grant the premises of this museum almost becomes irrelevant as you are drawn into its mixture of spectacle and narrative. Its 60,000 square feet of exhibits are often stunningly designed by Patrick Marsh, who, like the entire museum staff, declares adherence to the ministry’s views; he evidently also knows the lure of secular sensations, since he designed the “Jaws” and “King Kong” attractions at Universal Studios in Florida.

For the skeptic the wonder is at a strange universe shaped by elaborate arguments, strong convictions and intermittent invocations of scientific principle. For the believer, it seems, this museum provides a kind of relief: Finally the world is being shown as it really is, without the distortions of secularism and natural selection.

And rather than descending to the emotive lambasting that many critics of creationism retreat on, Rothstein asks a rather novel question:

[N]ow that many museums have also become temples to various American ethnic and sociological groups, why not a museum for the millions who believe that the Earth is less than 6,000 years old and was created in six days?

Perhaps the Times has finally become perceptive of the influence of these millions. After all, according to a 2005 Pew Research poll, half of Americans reject evolution as a theory of origins. And with a $27 million-dollar creationist museum constructed debt-free, there's money to had in this too. Money talks, as we all know, whether you're a skeptic or not.

Hopefully the money won't obscure the infinitely more important message the Creation Museum is seeking to spread--namely, the Gospel. The message of salvation is stacked squarely on the foundation of death, law, and sin, along with the bottommost portion, the creation of a perfect universe by an omnipotent God. Naturalism undermines the Gospel by rewriting the history of creation and death, and offering a plastered up perspective of life that seeks to answer all the big questions within an atheistic framework.

In order not to ruffle the more severe opponents of the museum, the Times story ends with with this question:

[O]ne problem is that scientific activity presumes that the material world is organized according to unchanging laws, while biblical fundamentalism presumes that those laws are themselves subject to disruption and miracle. Is not that a slippery slope . . ?

It's a legitimate question to ask, and one I think I'll submit an answer to. Some of this might sound a bit technical, but hang with me and you'll be glad you did.

Everyone agrees that nature follows certain laws. Some of the disagreement is over whether God sometimes breaks those laws. Given that most people who believe in God don't have a problem with the possibility that God could supersede his own created laws, the question is reduced to deeper one actually being debated: Whether God exists at all. But that's a discussion for another time.

The "slippery slope" Rothstein is probably referring to is the objection many people (even some Christians) raise concerning science and miracles. The fear is that by accepting the possibility of miracles, methodological materialism will go out the window. In other words, scientists will begin explaining away their bad science by saying a miracle interfered with their calculations. Believe me, I understand this concern, but don't share it, for the following reasons.

First of all, in our age of peer review, no scientist would claim miracles to fix his problems. No meteorologist, for example, would say the 2006 hurricane season was predicted wrongly because of an act of supernaturalism. He might blame other mysterious forces (El Nino, as it happened), but not God. As a scientist, his proper goal is to figure out the problem naturalistically, as far as his knowledge and ability can take him. That's as it should be.

Second, laws are in fact superseded. Imagine a sheet of paper falling to the ground. Suddenly, it stops in midair. Has the law of gravity been violated? Not when you notice the large fan beneath it--or when you watch me stretch out my hand and catch it. In both cases, the law of gravity has been superseded by another force or law. If you already accept the existence of God, you should have no problem with the idea that he can, by his own will, stretch out his hand and occasionally supersede natural laws. Just because we don't yet understand how the spiritual dimension works is not a reason to disbelieve it.

--As a side point, what are miracles anyway? By secular definition, they are anything that can't be explained scientifically. Going that route, can't we call the big bang a miracle? What about dark matter; isn't that just a term to explain the problems we're seeing in space? Is that equal to an appeal to a miracle? But I digress.

Here's the third reason I don't buy the methodological materialism argument: It may be inaccurately describing the world to us. If a miracle really and truly occurred in the past, we will in some cases be able to measure the results of it. If we measure the results, but assume a miracle didn't happen, we will come to an absolutely wrong conclusion. We'll assume for example that a cell slowly grew out of nonliving material. The reality of the situation is that miracles did occur in the past, and we can see and measure their results today. The universe is a living example.

Well done, Rothstein, on a fair and candid story that brings the most pertinent questions to the table.