Opinion> Connie Schultz> Creation Museum Blurs Fact Faith Fiction

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Creation 'Museum' blurs fact, faith, fiction

Were it not for the folks who raised me, it would be easy to make fun of the new Creation Museum.

For one thing, this is not a museum, it is a $27 million theme park built in Petersburg, Ky., just across the river from Cincinnati. The chief designer is Patrick Marsh, the creative force behind the "Jaws" and "King Kong" attractions at Universal Studios in Florida. One of the first things you see are dinosaurs nibbling at treetops, just down the hall from mechanical, life-size humans meant to illustrate how T. rex and Man were happy neighbors on Planet Earth.

As for those fossils that prove dinosaurs died millions of years before we showed up? Forget about it. The Creation Museum insists that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Admission is $19.95 ($9.95 for children) for a heavy dose of the Old Testament. At the Creation Museum, humans are constantly screwing up and then suffering the wrath of an angry God.

Adam takes the apple from Eve, and then frogs become poisonous, animals start biting chunks out of one another, and women must scream their way through childbirth forevermore.

A dark, menacing corridor full of graffiti and news clips illustrates what happens when the "modern world abandons the Bible." No distinction is made between school shootings and stem-cell research, abortion and the birth-control pill. They're all evil. A continuous loop of taped pronouncements broadcasts this message: "Half of all teenage girls have sex before marriage." Apparently, this is their sin, and theirs alone, as the role of boys in this fall from grace is never mentioned.

One of the short films at the museum stars two good-ol'-boy "angels" trying their darnedest to dissuade us of evolution. They're two white guys wearing white overalls, white-rimmed sunglasses and white halos. They're cool, too. They even say, "dude." And nothing is left to chance. The same museum employee who told me he'd already seen the movie three times led the smattering of applause when the lights came up.

Surely, God is sturdier than our doubts, but the Creation Museum was built on the fear that teaching science somehow threatens the existence of God.

This is a confounding argument for those of us who don't see science and God as mutually exclusive, including the millions of Christians who can acknowledge the facts of science while embracing the mysteries of faith.

As scientist Francis Collins, longtime head of the Human Genome Project, wrote, "God can hardly be threatened by the efforts of our puny minds to understand the grandeur of his creation."

In his book, "The Language of God," Collins chronicled his own journey from an atheist to a Christian, and he offers great support for those who acknowledge the bounty of science right along with the gifts of their faith. Religious leaders, he argued, do a disservice to their followers whenever they are out of step with new scientific findings.

"The consequence can bring ridicule on the church, driving sincere seekers away from God instead of into His arms," he wrote.

Fear of that ridicule is what came to mind when I toured the Creation Museum, especially as I thought of my God-loving relatives who were certain that God loved them back. Parts of this museum would have warmed their Born Again hearts.

My great-grandmother thought Jesus helped her pick out her clothes in the morning. My grandmother used to hand out pictures of Jesus to strangers. My own mother drove around with a bumper sticker on her car that read, "My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter."

These were serious Christians. They would have enjoyed touring the section of Noah's ark and watching videos of people reading scripture. I can easily imagine them sitting through the museum's final movie twice, relishing its message of salvation through Christ.

But they would have rolled their eyes at the suggestion that we were once just like the Flintstones. On this we would have agreed: Christians deserve better than this caricature of their faith.

I am reminded of Proverbs 19:2:

It is not good to have zeal without knowledge.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… And His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.