Over the next few entries I'll be posting some photos and news from I and my family's recent trip (a vacation, technically speaking) to Virginia for the Vision Forum Jamestown Quadricentennial. On the way there and back, we stopped at a couple noteworthy places, including Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and Petersburg, Kentucky, where sits that famed and recently opened monument to biblical creation, the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum. For this post I'll be focusing on the Creation Museum.

In case you wondered, I've been out of town for two weeks, and internet access has been elusive. Leaving Northwest Indiana in the first place was a tad bittersweet since it meant I'd be leaving the peak season of the Brood XIII 17-year cicada outbreak--but I was relieved upon my return when I heard the sound of their droning emanating from the woods next to my house. They've begun to die and fall to the ground, and yesterday I picked a twig with holes bored into the bark where the females had laid eggs.

But on to the subject at hand:

AiG employs between two and three hundred staff, some of whom work as security for the controversial museum. Both media and protesters have pulled various bluffs or pranks, nothing violent or very serious, but enough to warrant the careful attitude the museum now has toward visitors.

Although construction and landscaping is still in progress, there are several acres of ponds and gardens next to the Creation Museum that are open to visitors who want to stretch their legs. The several bridges and bush sculptures include a suspension bridge and a large T. rex. 

Inside the museum you'll be greeted by a few of the 130 static and animatronic figures (one non-animatronic dinosaur is below), designed to transport you back into a time when dinosaurs and humans lived together, and when all animals ate plant life instead of meat (as Genesis 1-2 explains). The museum focuses on both science and history; the history is based on the Bible, taken to be the inerrant Word of God and reliable in all its assertions and information. The science is secondary, based on the presupposition of biblical history and intended to show that the evidence supports the Bible rather than evolution or naturalism. Although the scientific content is very helpful for skeptics and believers who want to strengthen their faith, the museum is also heavily evangelistic, showing how the story of history (from Creation to the Fall to the Cross) leads all people to make a choice about the Creator and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

Below: A display from the Creation Museum's fine fossil collection. Elsewhere are two rare specimens that were obviously buried quickly (one shows a fish eating another fish), demonstrating that catastrophism is a key component to the geologic and fossil record.

There are several live animals in the museum, including fish, turtles, finches (of course, in honor of Darwin), poison-dart frogs, and Mr. Bigeyes above. It was entertaining to see him watch two separate moving objects on either side of his head.

The majority of the Creation Museum is designed as a walk through the first chapters of Genesis--or, if you prefer, the "Seven C's of History": Creation, Corruption (below), Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, Consummation. Some could probably quibble that Israel and the prophets get a back row seat in this arrangement, but after all this is an anti-evolution museum, intended to reach the general public with a simple gospel message. Beside that, the "Eight C's of History" doesn't have the same ring to it.

After watching a minifilm about the six days of creation, visitors enter a recreation of the Garden of Eden, where Adam, and later Eve, enjoy the beauties of the world God gave them.

After their sin, however, everything on earth changes. No longer are all the animals vegetarian, or free from sickness and disease. Man is introduced to a kind of labor that will no longer be pleasant or easy. 

Other displays show the first murder and other results of sin's entrance into the world.

The Noah's Ark and Flood areas are truly fascinating, containing a recreated, full-sized portion of the Ark, and showing examples of ancient ship building techniques that Noah might have used. Below is a smaller model of the Ark, and an example of the Greek technique of "edge-jointed planking."

Several rooms were dedicated to explaining the geological dynamics and impact of the global flood. Several videos and displays such as one below showed how the geological formations we see today are better explained by flood models than by uniformitarian ones. There was a lot of fascinating stuff in this area, including, but not limited to, perspectives on the fossil layers (below), continental drift, stromatolites, hypercanes, floating forests, coal, canyons, log rafts, post-flood animal dispersion, the Ice Age, and more.

The second display below looks like it came out of the Field Museum of Natural History, but it's actually intended to support the creationist idea that some modern and extinct species had a common created ancestor, called a baramin. The display suggests that all equids (horse-like animals) belong to a single baramin, and were able to genetically diverge more quickly in the past than at present.

After the Flood geology area is a room explaining the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages, and finally a theater playing a minifilm called "The Last Adam," which wraps up the museum's spiritual message with gospel presentation.

Near the end of the museum tour is small display giving tribute to Ken Ham's parents, Mervyn and Norma, for their "godly legacy in training their children." What an amazing impact they've already had, simply by raising their children in faith.

I can't forget to mention a couple other Creation Museum features: The planetarium and special effects theater. The special effects theater is now playing a satirical film called "Men in White," in which two angels ridicule the evolutionary propaganda that has been taught in public schools for so many decades. I can imagine that a secular geologist or evolutionary biologist might get angry watching this film, which parodies evolution-thumping science teachers. But it nevertheless provides much-needed comic relief for all those who had atheistic origins science stuffed down their throats in high school. It's also a good introduction to creationism for the uninformed.

I thought the planetarium was outstanding. It plays a film called "The Created Cosmos" that takes viewers on a tour of the universe, giving them a shocking sense of the actual vastness of space. In the process, the film points out several aspects of the universe that point to it being both designed and young (i.e. decaying magnetic fields, spiral galaxies, blue stars). I was impressed to learn that the film was entirely researched, written and created single-handedly (minus the voice-over) by Jason Lisle, AiG astrophysicist-in-residence. Lisle is almost finished with a second planetarium film, a tour of the solar system, and is planning a third in time for Christmas--a film exploring what the biblical star of Bethlehem might have been.

To make my conclusion brief, the Creation Museum met and exceeded my expectations. The presentation is professional and scientifically tenable, entertaining, and can be easily grasped by any layperson. I do plan to return. Because the museum is directed to a wide audience, it's a perfect day trip to invite friends to, whether they're convinced of biblical history yet or not.

If you've been able to visit the Creation Museum yet, please let me know what you think of it. 

Addendum: If the Creation Museum weren't delightful enough, there is another top-notch creationist production now being performed by Sight & Sound Theatres, based near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which we were able to see earlier this week. The stunning show In the Beginning dramatizes the creation events, the rebellion of Lucifer, the Fall, the life of Adam, Eve and their children, and finally the restoration of paradise at the end of the age. Like the Creation Museum, In the Beginning presents the Genesis account as real history (Adam's children marry one another and ride wooly mammoths) and focuses on the connection between the Fall and the gospel. And like the Creation Museum, it's professional--complete with trained animals, a 270^o stage, animatronics, and all the special effects you'd expect after laying out $45 a ticket. The vocals were so good I thought they were prerecorded until I checked the website today. Well worth seeing.}

photos copyright Daniel James Devine