Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
10
Dinosaurs in Paradise
W
HEN
I
HEARD THAT
the new Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, featured exhibits
showing people picnicking with dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden, I had to see it. Nothing
could have prepared me for a dinosaur-petting-zoo version of natural history. Upon entering,
I was greeted by a diorama showcasing a velociraptor straight out of
Jurassic Park
calmly
standing beside Eve while she feeds a squirrel.
Visitors pass a ticket checker dressed up as a Park Ranger stationed at a Grand Canyon Na-
tional Park sign, then navigate a fake bedrock canyon designed to enthrall kids and arrive at
a large two-panel board that addresses the issue of the age of the universe. The left-hand side
says that reason holds the universe to be billions of years old. The right-hand side indicates
that God says that it all began six thousand years ago. So which should we believe—reason
or God, the creator of reason?
I was prepared for unusual perspectives, but one of the next panels caught me off guard
by endorsing evolution. Its diagrams illustrated several versions of the tree of life to contrast
the scientific view with the creationist view of what really happened. Alongside the conven-
tional portrayal of life evolving from single-celled organisms to modern flora and fauna, the
display illustrated how a limited number of species in God's original “creation orchard” star-
ted branching into new species before Noah's Flood. Afterward, some, like dinosaurs, went
extinct, while their luckier peers rapidly flowered into modern species. The diagram for hu-
mans stood out as a simple straight line, showing no change from Creation to the present.
More surprises awaited me down the next hall, where floor-to-ceiling panels asserted that
scientists throughout history conspired to question, destroy, discredit, criticize, poison, and
