Genesis on display at "creationist Disneyland"

PETERSBURG, Ky. — At the Creation Museum, a fanciful Eden rises from the void. Adam appears, bearded and handsome, if slightly waxen. Eve emerges from his rib with luxuriant hair and a kindly expression. Trees blossom and creatures frolic, evidence that all started well in God's perfect world.

Elsewhere, as the story develops, Cain stands over his slain brother, Abel; life-size workmen build a replica of Noah's ark, and Methuselah intones, "With each passing day, judgment draws nearer ... I can tell you, whatever God says is true."

In another scene, a pair of ancient children frolic a few feet away from a group of friendly dinosaurs.

"We wanted to show people there's no mystery with dinosaurs, we can explain them," said Ken Ham, a co-founder of the socially conservative nonprofit ministry Answers in Genesis that built the $27 million facility near Cincinnati.

Scientists say there's a gulf of millions of years between man and the giant lizards, but according to the Creation Museum, they lived in harmony just a few thousand years ago. "People are just fascinated by dinosaurs, but they've sort of become synonymous with millions of years and evolution," Ham said.

Despite the showmanship behind the museum opening in Petersburg on Monday, the evangelists who put it together contend none of the gleaming exhibits are allegorical. God did create the universe in six days, they say, and the Earth is about 6,000 years old.

Biblical scenes are hardly a fresh phenomenon, either as expressions of faith or as missionary props. What separates the Creation Museum from its Bible-boosting brethren is the promoters' assertion that they can prove through science that the Book of Genesis is true. All of it.

But in this latest demonization of Darwinian evolution, there is a sticking point: For the biblical account to be accurate and the world to be so young, several hundred years of research in geology, physics, biology, paleontology, and astronomy would need to be very, very wrong.

"This may be fascinating, but this is nonsense," said Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist at Case Western Reserve University and a vocal defender of evolutionary science. "It's fine for people to believe whatever they want. What's inappropriate is to then essentially lie and say science supports these notions."

Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, calls the sparkling facility "the creationist Disneyland."

Come Monday, when the museum opens, protesters plan to gather at the gates for a "Rally for Reason."

The Creation Museum mocks evolutionary science and invites visitors to find faith and truth in God. It welcomes its first paying guests — $19.95 for adults, $9.95 for children, not counting discounts for joining a mailing list — just weeks after three Republican presidential candidates said they do not believe in evolution.

Opinion polls suggest about half of Americans agree. They dismiss the scientific theory that all beings have a common ancestor, believing instead that God created humans in one stroke. Similar numbers say the world's age should be counted in the thousands of years, not billions, as established science would have it.

For the record, mainstream scientists estimate the age of the Earth at 4.5 billion years, but don't try telling that to Ham, an Australian-born evangelist and former high-school science teacher.

The busy ministry and its 160 employees produce a daily radio show, a magazine and 20 DVDs a year. Their offices are in the new museum, which has about 140 employees of its own.

"When you're talking about origins, you're not talking about science," Ham said as charter members snapped photographs in an early walk-through. "You're talking about belief."

Museum exhibits suggesting that man coexisted with dinosaurs — which fossils show became extinct millions of years before humans existed — rely on the notion that the evidence is simply open to interpretation. One sign sets "Human Reason" against "God's Word."

The backers of the concept of intelligent design, which posits that living beings are too complex to have evolved from a primordial soup, take a similar approach, widely discredited by scientists.

Designed to inspire Christian belief, the museum was largely built with contributions of $100 or less, although three families gave at least $1 million each, said Mark Looy, an Answers in Genesis co-founder.

To put together a museum with pizzazz, the planners recruited Patrick Marsh, who created the "Jaws" and "King Kong" attractions at Universal Studios in Florida. The exhibits, backed by dozens of professionally produced videos, keep the action lively and the content coming: "to create something of a 'Wow!' factor," said Looy, who expects 250,000 visitors the first year.

"We're going to blow people out of the water with how many people we'll get," Ham said. "A lot of non-Christians will come. You couldn't blow them into church with a stick of dynamite, but they'll come to this."

The overriding goal is to convince visitors that the Book of Genesis is scientifically defensible, Ham said, for if Christians lose faith in the literal truth of Genesis, doubts about such matters as the virgin birth and Christ's resurrection, for example, will follow.

"You're then telling the next generation they can reinterpret the Bible. Then what we've lost is Christian morality," Ham said.

The museum also contains fossils, hung in large glass cases. Ham said most fossils were created by the massive flood detailed in Genesis. "The Bible doesn't talk about fossils, but it gives you a basis for understanding why there are fossils around the world," he said.

One of the museum's slogans is "Prepare to Believe." The charter members touring the building already do.

"This shows why the creationist view is so popular," said Bill Haney, a retired steel-company worker from Ohio who values the museum as a counterpoint to public education and the certitude of mainstream scientists, of whom he said, "They don't know what happened. They might be right. They might be wrong."

Just south of the Creation Museum, with its animatronic dinosaurs, its planetarium and its Noah's Ark cafe, lies a humbler museum, off the beaten track. Just one room with glass cases containing rocks and old bones, it is in Big Bone Lick State Park, advertised as the birthplace of American vertebrate paleontology. Admission is free.

The first sign inside the door begins, "Over 480 million years ago, an inland sea covered a large portion of the United States." In time, huge creatures arrived, mastodons and woolly mammoth. Tusks and teeth are in the cases, and a left tibia the size of a small child. A plaque notes that humans lived on the land perhaps 12,000 years ago.

Since 1739, more than 250 skeletons have been collected at the site, some of them by explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, dispatched by President Jefferson.

Among the onetime visitors was Ham. Asked about it last week, he said, "There's not much there."

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.