Monday, November 21, 2005

Exploring the Creation Museum

I'm just about speechless. I just stumbled onto the web site of The Creation Museum. Subheading: Upholding the authority of the Bible from the very first verse. Here are some highlights from the "walk-through".

Stargazers' Room

Peer back into the deepest recesses of the heavens, and discover that the latest images of the stars confirm an all powerful Creator, not a random bang!

Bible Authority Room

The Bible is true. No doubt about it! Paul explains God’s authoritative Word, and everyone who rejects His history—including six-day creation and Noah’s Flood—is ‘willfully’ ignorant.

Oh dear. That would probably be the "the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true" argument. See Kissing Hank's Ass for a send-up of this sort of explanation. But just because I'm irreverent, it doesn't mean I don't take the Bible seriously. (As Marcus Borg suggests, I take the Bible seriously, but not literally.) I wouldn't be devoting time in my busy schedule to the EFM program if I didn't take the Bible and my faith seriously. This page describes a bit of what we're learning in Year 1. We're learning that the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures are ancient stories probably knitted together from at least four sources. There are also many different kinds of literature in the Bible, but it is understood by the writers of our course materials (those flaming liberals at Sewanee) that many of the stories aren't meant to be read as factually, literally, historically accurate.

Because if you *did* read it that way, wouldn't you have to think about things like "Where did Cain and Abel get their wives?"

Anyway, one more lesson from the museum:

Creation

Explore the wonders of creation. The imprint of the Creator is all around us. And the Bible’s clear—heaven and earth in six 24-hour days, earth before sun, birds before lizards.

Other surprises are just around the corner. Adam and apes share the same birthday. The first man walked with dinosaurs and named them all!

God’s Word is true, or evolution is true. No millions of years. There’s no room for compromise.


Humans and dinosaurs, living together? So, the Flintstones were right, and the science teachers in my Catholic elementary and high schools (who taught me about evolution) were wrong? Wild.