June 28, 2007
Dystopia in Kentucky
George Packer in The New Yorker:
A few miles west of Cincinnati, near the northern Kentucky town of Petersburg, there’s a gleaming new monument to Christianist ideology called the Creation Museum. It was built by an Australian Biblical literalist named Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis, at a cost of twenty-seven million dollars, raised mostly in small donations. It opened over Memorial Day weekend with a blast of media attention (Edward Rothstein wrote two pieces about it for the New York Times), and since then ten thousand people a week have been flocking to its exhibits. Last Sunday, on a visit to my in-laws in Lexington, I joined them.
The sixty-thousand-square-foot museum mimics the language, layout, and technical effects of state-of-the-art science museums: mastodon fossils and mineral crystals, soaring dioramas of life-size animatronic dinosaurs, several movie theatres, conference rooms, cafés, even a planetarium, and an echoing soundtrack of bird calls. But, as you pay your $19.95 and walk through the entry hall, there are clues that this is all a sophisticated sham.
The simulation serves a primitive ideology known as “young-earth creationism,” which promote the idea that the earth is just over six thousand years old and that the fossil record appeared after the Flood, around 4300 B.C.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 03:57 PM | Permalink
Comments
Why doesn't Packard pick on somebody his own size? Holding up the idiocies of naive peasant belief systems gets old in a hurry. Quiz: did something really important happen in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley roughtly 6000 years ago? Was it, in a sense, the creation of a new world? Why not talk about that? The real issues are more about history (where civilization began, and what it cost the average human being) than about the creation of the earth in geological time. The word world is ambiguous. I'd say Packard is guitly of the same literalism he makes fun of.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Jun 28, 2007 4:22:12 PM
Luke, you seem to be criticizing an article about the creationist museum in Kentucky for not being an article about something quite different and only tangentially related, which doesn't make much sense. Are you really making the argument that since the article is about a museum based on the beliefs of creationists, and creationists believe the world was created about 6000 years ago, and something historically important did happen about 6000 years ago, somehow that actual historical change is the "real issue" behind the creation science museum, and the writer was remiss in not using the museum as a jumping-off point for a discussion of the birth of civilization? Also, when you say Packer "is guilty of the same literalism he makes fun of", where does he say that the Bible contains nothing of value about history? He doesn't, he's just discussing the literalist beliefs of creationists, who would certainly not agree that "the word world is ambiguous".
Posted by: Jesse M. | Jun 28, 2007 5:18:51 PM
Chilling piece. How ironic that sophisticated technologies, that are entirely products of a rigorously scientific world view, are used to produce such anti-scientific displays. This museum turns the Bible into a laughing stock, with its obsession with the creation myth recounted in the 1st few verses, as against that Book's deep insights into the human condition.
The inclusion of animatronic dinosaurs in these exhibits is evidence of the cynicism of its backers: dinosaurs are sure crowd pullers, so throw them in even if they weren't mentioned in Genesis. Dinosaurs helped the cinematic carreers of Faye Wray and Raquel Welch, so why not Eve's.
Good post.
Posted by: aguy109 | Jun 28, 2007 6:31:13 PM
No, Luke, in this particular case, the real issues are most expressly not "more about history (where civilization began, and what it cost the average human being) than about the creation of the earth in geological time."
Hamm and his followers aren't interested in that admittedly more captivating subject.
They're focusing on an out-dated and fallacious belief, which directly impacts the rest of us: their beliefs invariably translate into disrespect for the environment and disregard for mankind's impact on the earth. You can bet that Hamm and co do not believe in global warming, for starters. You can bet they have a very shaky idea of how fossil fuels are formed, as well, and how precious they are. And you can bet he and his sympathizers vote. And when people vote, one hopes they're going to be informed voters.
Posted by: Robert S. | Jun 28, 2007 7:37:32 PM
Never knew that Eve was so hot! I bet a lot of adolescent male fundies are really happy they built that museum, anyway.
Posted by: JonJ | Jun 28, 2007 9:54:46 PM
It was sure fun back when Eve would throw apples and her pet velociraptor would fetch them.
Good times...
Posted by: beajerry | Jun 29, 2007 1:05:59 AM
A most interesting aspect of this museum's impact is that it mimics the modern new museums as well as the stodgey old neo-classical colonades which tese days are typically re-named as "childrens museums" or "learning diversity centers" or some such pathetic attempt to make it relevant, which is easy to do these days since they are no longer a place where minds are challenged but rather, in the interest of making it "accessible" museums have been dumbed-down considerably, with the blessings of science-hostile (or at least science-indifferent) education professionals (they suck at math or they'd already be in a hard science or at least doing something practical). In lieu of inexpensive or free museums which teach a child about the vested cultural and technological interest, we get "the natural history of 'reality tv' or 'chocolate, from nature to our table (please visit the gift shop)". Families are charged too much money and in exchange their kids go on field trips where the objective is to fill out a class project sheet..multiple choice or true and false and some bogus report they work-on together. It's no surprise that students can't tell the difference between legitimate museums with real science and these misleading imposters. We can't change religion and its feedom to prostlytize much but for cryin' out loud, can't we get the people who direct the educational system to see what we're facing? I've long proposed that instead of charging people to go to museums with their families in order to inculcate the idea that being informed is a benefit, we should actually give 'em a tax rebate if they'll stay for 4 hours and bring their kids...or anybody's kids. We are in this for the long haul, are we not?
Posted by: doug l | Jun 29, 2007 10:31:30 AM
I was hoping, genuinely hoping, that an article about the mis-use of a book (the bible) would not end with an ill-informed reference to Orwell's '1984'. And then it did.
Jaysis, progressives need to find another work of dystopian fiction to link to the republican party. This is getting silly.
Posted by: Nick Smyth | Jun 29, 2007 3:15:42 PM
"that an article about the mis-use of a book (the bible) would not end with an ill-informed reference to Orwell's '1984'"--
Come now, the bible with make Orwell blush with it's bull Sh*t factor.
Of course, we could always ask the Talking Snake if this is really true--
Posted by: Scott Ahlf | Jul 1, 2007 7:43:24 PM
"The foolishness of God is wiser than men...the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." -The Apostle Paul
Posted by: Joe | Oct 16, 2009 12:04:21 PM
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