Jeers from Liberal Street Fighter

I wonder if they will have a Sleestak Wing at their shiny new “young-Earth” Creationist museum on the campus of Answers in Genesis in Kentucky:

In the United States, Answers in Genesis maintains a mailing list of 500,000 names and a monthly newsletter that goes out to as many as 120,000 readers, according to Mark Looy, chief communications officer.

Many of them have laid the financial foundation for the 50,000-square-foot, $25 million Creation Museum that Ham is building with donated money on a near-50-acre campus in the northern Kentucky countryside. As of March 31, almost $21 million had been raised, according to the Web site.

They promise a entertaining center for the celebration of psuedo-science, a playground where crowds of children can be ushered into this sick, twisted movement of backwards superstition. At a time where more and more American children go uneducated in science and mathematics, this new complex will enshrine ignorance.

While mainstream scientists shake their heads, marketing research indicates Answers in Genesis may be welcoming up to 250,000 visitors a year after the museum’s scheduled debt-free opening next spring, according to Michael Zovath, vice president of the Creation Museum. Admission fees remain to be determined.

“The 250,000 people going to it will go back to their legislators and pressure them to vote for Jesus,” said Volney Gay, director of the Center for Religion and Culture at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “There’s a suspicion of science and a suspicion of intellectuals in general.”

Said Ham: “What we see is if you can get information to people, their worldview will be changed, and the way they vote on issues, on a school board or whatever, will reflect that change.”

The destruction of this country proceeds apace. It is scary to watch a zealous minority of psychotic religious fanatics take a country founded on the principles of the Enlightenment back into an ignorant dark ages so damned quickly. They will only find more success as they use the media to drill their message of know-nothingism into the public conversation. More and more, the boilerplate of “faith” is pressed forward by nearly the entire political establishment as the measure of what makes a “good” American.

Inside, the museum will feature 31 rooms, 200 exhibit themes produced by a former Universal Studios designer and 55 video presentations, all offering creation science’s evidence for the Genesis account. There also will be a 2,600-square-foot bookstore with a medieval castle motif, a 150-seat Noah’s Cafe with dinosaur footprints embedded in the floor, an 84-seat planetarium, a 60-seat theater and a spacious refreshment area with palm trees and a waterfall.

The dinosaur replicas, many of them animatronic, are spectacular: Creationists say dinosaurs lived simultaneously with humans because their death came only after original sin. Some of the more compelling effects are in the key rooms depicting what are called “The Seven C’s of History.” They are: creation, corruption, catastrophe (the destruction of the world by Noah’s flood), confusion (Babel), Christ, the cross and consummation (his death and resurrection).

Along the Creation Walk

For instance, soft lighting, gentle sounds and pleasant fragrances will mark the Creation Walk, where Adam and Eve chat with God in the Garden of Eden before they are corrupted to commit original sin by an animatronic serpent. The dimly lit Corruption galleries, by comparison, will feature videos of pain and suffering, noxious odors and the heat, literally, turned up.

“We’re trying to make this the most uncomfortable place in the museum to show how original sin has corrupted the universe,” Zovath said on a tour through the site.

None of this has any more relationship to reality than Sid & Marty Kroft’s kitschy Saturday morning fantasy show. Sadly, far too many believe these fairy tales, and they will stop at nothing to keep isolating America from the rest of the civilized world.