Confident Creationists: A Review

     I went to the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky as a critic; a friendly critic, but a critic nonetheless. If its presentation was tacky or silly or careless, I was ready to call ‘em out. I found a few glitches, but mostly I saw a bold, confident, intelligent analysis of the differences between old-earth evolutionism and young-earth creationism that follows the Bible. They’re on the Bible side, and they can tell you why.

     Clearly explained is the difference in starting point, or world view. The evidence we have—the fossils, rocks, canyons, rivers and creatures—exists in the moment that we observe it. We can’t go back and see what they were like 6,000 or 6 million or 6 trillion years ago. We can only make our best guess. The people at the museum figure they have an eyewitness account in the book of Genesis. The Creator was there, creating, and He had an account of the process written down for our information. Starting from that position, they show how any honest scientific fact can fit nicely into the creation model. They also show how the other side sometimes cheats.

     That was most dramatic in the exhibit on “Lucy,” the supposed human ancestor dug up in 1994. Casts of the fossil bones show how little hard evidence there is to work with—roughly half a skeleton and a third of a skull. Even though the leg bones fit together pretty well in a short configuration, the text says, evolutionist paleontologists spread the bones out, with only air in between, to make it look like Lucy had a long, human-ish leg. (And the creationists are supposed to be the ones operating on faith.) There’s more about the hip and knee joints, which evolutionists say are humanoid, but the CM text explains that similar structures are seen in apes, so there’s no definitive evidence that Lucy was anything but an ape. This is illustrated with a nifty hologram.

     A panel shows also how artistic interpretation shapes the models of critters like Lucy. Forensic reconstruction can give some idea of what the owner of a skull looked like, as far as shape and thickness of tissues go, but it says nothing about eyes or hair or color. (There’s not a whole lot of skull to work with in Lucy’s case, either.) You can give Lucy human-like eyes and a hairless face if you want her to be your great-great-grandmother, but you can also make her a hairy ape. They turned an artist loose, and he/she crafted on the same base faces  that resembled a chimp, a gorilla, an orangutan, a proto-human. It’s a matter of imagination. And dogma.

     The heart of the museum is a walk through history, which starts with creation. Adam and Eve figures looked more realistic to me than the animals in Eden. “Real” versus “not” kept my brain churning. I admired a glass cage full of finches and moved to the next “window” to spy a very plastic red cardinal on a branch. Next, I spotted the chameleon. It moved a bit, and lashed its tongue out to the glass. Real. Poison frogs: I couldn’t decide. Bright blue and still, they looked artificial, but later, they were in different spots, joined by yellow and black types. In a hall full of pinned insects, a child asked, “Are they real?” Dad replied, “They used to be.” 
     Some human models in the “walk through history” were animatronic, and some still. Oddly, the still ones seemed more realistic to me, especially the prophets and apostles. A lot of care went into the eyes, outfits and hair. They even had unique feet and sandals. King David had a slight bunion. But then I passed a couple of figures meant to be middle-school-aged students. “Weird,” said an actual student. I couldn’t argue. Fake hair, clothes about a generation old, distinctly unhip. One of them has a speech balloon saying, “I never heard this before in school,” and the other says, “Come on, let me show you the rest.” Sorry, CM, but they’re oddly placed and pointless. The theme might work in an ad, but not in the middle of the exhibits. I’d also lose the stairwell pic of a kid looking a little deranged because Mom bought a pass. Rather than happy, he just looks like the photographer said, “Bug out your eyes. Now stick your tongue out.” Not convincing.  But the enormous, round “7 Cs” quilt in another stairwell is spectacular.

     Gustav Dore etchings and images of classical paintings and statues give an air of seriousness and historicity. Creationism is not a new-fangled idea. The Biblical account was seen as real through centuries of art, literature and theology. The museum recounts the history of religious and scientific thought. It even covers the Scopes Trial with depth and context that are usually ignored. Bravo.

     I do have my quibbles: an extraneous comma in the introduction to Art and the Bible, a misplaced apostrophe in Answers Hall, and one mistake each in the narration of otherwise splendid planetarium shows: “the nuclei of Halley’s comet” in “Fires in the Sky” (should be “nucleus”) and in “The Created Cosmos,” a pet peeve, “is comprised of” should be “is composed of.” I’m probably the only one who noticed.

     In the models of life in Noah’s ark, which overall are brilliantly conceived, I wondered whether a little garden bed could really have lived in the ark. Next to it, in an aviary, a tiny bird had fallen from its perch. Next, one of the women is reaching into a cage. It looks as if something should be in her hands, but they are empty. A dead insect lay in a flood diorama—an accidental reminder that death has entered the world. The little figures on the exposed rocks lay in despair, fought each other, or confronted wild animals. One stood with hands on hips, as if to say, “Huh. It’ll subside in a minute.” Gave me the willies.

     There’s a lot more to the museum, from the bridge-strewn garden and the zipline (I did not zip) to the lectures. I heard one on the resurrection of Christ, the evidence for it and the silliness of theories against it, from “He swooned” to “They forgot which tomb He was in” to “God made Judas look like Jesus, and that’s who they crucified.” Yes. Silly.

     It took me three days to feel I’d covered the museum anywhere near thoroughly, but I finally walked out the door with more confidence than ever in the truth of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. I was pretty sure I was already on the same side as Ken Ham. Now I’m all the more likely to stay. 

Who and How

Just around the bend from the Creation Museum in Kentucky, I passed a church marquee that said, “The book of Genesis is about who, not how.”  It must have been a dig at the museum.  I wondered why a church would make a point of separating itself publicly from the literal Genesis. It might as well have said, “We don’t think all of the Bible is true.” Here was the schism that divides our culture, with groups who claim to follow Christ apparently taking their stand with the dogma of evolutionism rather than the historic dogma of Christianity. How sad. For one thing, they’re looking in the wrong direction for truth. For another, should Christians be airing their differences this way in order to curry favor with… whom? Stephen Hawking? Trust me, church people, hard-core evolutionists may snicker in triumph at your capitulation, but they still think you’re morons for believing any of that God stuff. If it’s their approval you seek, you have to throw out the whole Bible, including the Savior. Ironically, this church stands near a neighborhood labeled “Mars Hill” in the town of Hebron. There’s even a “Damascus Rd.” Do those names mean anything, or are they just jokes? From the book, see. Clever, huh?

The Museum deals with the history of belief in a six-day creation. Apparently, nobody much thought six days meant anything other than six days until the 1700s. Eventually, theologians wanted to be hip and modern and started proposing that, well, maybe “day” doesn’t mean “day,” even though that’s what it means in the rest of literature, and if the creation days are really zillions of years, then the commandment about keeping the Sabbath makes no sense. “Six days  shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not labor or do any work.” (Deuteronomy 5:13, 14) Huh? Work for six zillion years, and rest for one zillion? It just doesn’t work. If you try to bow the knee to Christ and Carl Sagan at the same time, you will tear yourself in two.

 

Life, Death, Suburbs

      Out for a walk with toddler grandson, I hear tapping in a tree. I walk around it until I spot a woodpecker high on a branch. I pick Edward up and point out the bird. We both stare until it finishes its lunch and flies away. The scene comes to mind as I’m watching “Nature” and hear the Himalayas described as “a place to see the power of nature and the fragility of life.” So is our suburban neighborhood.

     In the Himalayas, a snow leopard stalks and chases a markhor goat. Right under my front window, a cat battles a black snake. They freeze and stare at each other. When the snake finally makes a move, the cat pounces. The snake slithers up the wall, drops, tries to hide under the wood siding, is batted out by the cat. They spar for a good half hour until both give up and wander away. In that same front yard, a crane has stalked a lizard in the mondo grass, and flocks of ibis stroll through occasionally, nibbling at the lawn. Down by the library, an alligator lives in a drainage ditch.

     As Edward and I kick a ball back and forth, sparrows begin to peep in the oaks and dash from branch to branch. A mockingbird calls and glides to another tree. I wonder what the fuss is about. Then comes the indescribable whistling “scree” of a hawk, and there it is, wheeling in its self-assured way high above the houses. One of them glided into our back yard when it saw a snake entangled in netting that I wrapped around a fig tree to keep squirrels away. I saw it from the kitchen window, hopping forward to snap at the snake, but pulling back as the netting tangled its talons. By the time it gave up, it had made a long gash in the side of the snake. Some little birds, diving and chirping, drove it away. The snake had pulled the netting so tight, I couldn’t work a blade in to cut it loose. I saw the eyes lose their light.

     The nature program shows people erecting an enormous flag-bedecked pole that is supposed to convey their prayers to the mountain top where their gods reside. Mine goes with me all the time. He shows His character in great oaks that grow from acorns, in the smooth bark of crape myrtles, in fluorescent fuchsia ti leaves and the exotic yellow-flowered shrub that my South American neighbor says can help regulate diabetes. This created world has neighbors who smile and garbage truck drivers who honk the horn and collectors who wave to my grandson and make him feel like the center of the universe. And I get to stand there with him.

Poor Charles Darwin

     Soon as I started wresting out roots and weeds from my new peanut patch, what should pop into my head but the lyrics, “I was out choppin’ cotton, and my brother was bailin’ hay-ay-ay.” Over and over, that one line from—anybody remember?—“Ode to Billy Joe.” All about “the day Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.” Mm hmm, a real classic. Digging just a few yards from my air-conditioned suburban 4/2, I was hardly a redneck farm girl, but I felt a teeny-tiny bit of kinship. I was wearing a straw hat, anyway, and the band was sweaty.

     The first peanut patch is looking quite vibrant and productive, with a splash of astonishing beauty, ‘cause that’s how God rolls. The plants seem sturdy and businesslike, like Tolkienish dwarves, especially compared to the lacy tomatoes behind them. They are short and strong and do their main work underground. They also craft gorgeous, complex golden flowers, yellow with slender veins of orange, about half an inch wide. Like other tiny flowers I’ve discovered in my garden, they are shaped like orchids.

     Discovery, discovery, discovery, that’s gardening. I suppose farmers and other more experienced plant growers might pat me on the head and smile tolerantly, but I keep finding things to wonder at. Like those orchid-shaped flowers that you need a magnifying glass to discern. Or an odd little weed that belonged in an antique botanical sketchbook, bearing as it did tiny sprigs of round seed casings, articulated like pumpkins. The sprigs emerged from a slit in a flat green envelope that simply wasn’t roomy enough to produce them!

    I feel like Dr. Maturin in the Patrick O’Brian seafaring novels (Master and Commander, et al.) when I find one of these wonders. Just look how the baby figs pop out directly from the stems. How new pineapple plants show up in the wreckage of frozen parents. How the passionfruit vine, with its most splendid of purple, yellow and white flowers, climbs into the oak tree and drops fruit from the sky.

     “Poor Charles Darwin,” I think. He looked at such things, along with the lizards and snakes and squirrels and hawks and buzzards and ibises and mallards (all of which have turned up in our neighborhood if not our yard) and tried his best to explain them away. He couldn’t give God credit, so he made up a system of time and accident to explain eyes and ears, flowers and seeds, and color-changing lizards. I can’t not give God credit. The closer I look, the more marvelous the creation seems, and the more it seems He is standing right there saying, “Yes, I made this too.” The peanut is no accident. And neither am I. 

Peanut blossom, half inch wide in real life.

Impossible burst of pods

Passionfruit vine blooms twice a year