A week ago my husband and I joined some friends of ours on a weekend trip to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky and the The Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky. The weekend was both enjoyable and thought-provoking. Both attractions are owned by a Christian organization called Answers in Genesis, and promote a literal interpretation of the creation of the earth as recorded in the book of Genesis in the Bible, an interpretation known as Young Earth Creationism. The 75,000 square foot museum cost $27 million to build and was entirely funded by private donations. Not surprisingly, we had to pay for parking at both attractions, but the lunch we ate at the Creation Museum was delivered quickly, was inexpensive, and was very tasty for something that was basically fast food. At the Ark Encounter, we opted for drinks and a slice of pizza from a snack “shed” rather than eat at the buffet, a time-saving device since we had tickets for the Cincinnati Dinner Train that evening.
I was impressed by the professionalism of the Creation Museum. The animatronics were extremely life-like and all of the exhibits and posters were very well done. As expected, the Christian message was clearly presented through the progression of exhibits through Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, and Consummation. In several spots, man’s explanation was set side by side with God’s explanation according to the Bible. As I am a firm believer in creationism, I found these particularly interesting. Our friend, Dale, is a scientist, and told me that remains from early Homo-sapiens have been found to contain DNA from Neanderthals, a different species, showing some cross-mating between the two groups. I find that understandable, but certainly not proof of evolution. If two Neanderthals produced a Homo-sapien, that would be one thing. But two Neanderthals would contribute Neanderthal DNA to their offspring, thus producing another Neanderthal, yes? Going back to the Monkey theory, where are the monkeys with human babies? And what happens when you cross a horse and a Donkey? You get a Mule . . . which is sterile and cannot reproduce. Doesn’t seem to support the “theory of evolution,” does it? Darwin himself admitted that the fact that we can’t find any in between examples tends to undermine his theory. But of course, that never stopped a scientist yet!
But I digress. The Answers in Genesis group which built both attractions, strongly supports the belief that when Genesis speaks of “the first day” or “the second day,” God is speaking clearly of a 24-hour period as we know it today. And this belief is strongly repeated throughout their exhibits. I have a more liberal view of creation. God, wise beyond all human wisdom, knew well that His people were limited in their ability to understand. This is why the Book of Revelation is filled with symbolism that Biblical scholars have spent centuries trying to interpret, and why Jesus often spoke to the crowds in parables, such as that of the lost sheep and the prodigal son. Given that fact, and given that the people for whom Moses wrote the description of the creation of the world were neither educated nor as understanding of the world around them as we are, I can easily understand the use of “first day” “second day” to represent time periods which could perhaps have been millions of years long. The shepherds of Moses’ time knew what a day was, but a million years? Beyond their ken. The Bible even explicitly tells us in 2 Peter 3:8 that “. . . with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Obviously, God doesn’t keep time in the way that we do. And how were the morning and evening determined in the first three days of creation anyway, as my scientist friend pointed out, since God didn’t create the Sun and the Moon, “lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night” (Genesis 1:14) until the fourth day?
So, I remain open to the scientific belief of the age of the earth and yet I found a couple of the arguments in the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter thought-provoking and compelling. According to scientists, dinosaurs, except in Jurassic Park, did not co-exist with human beings, yet the Creation Museum argues that some dinosaurs were undoubtedly aboard the Ark. Their proof, in addition to the 24-hour day argument, lies in the indisputable stories about dragons that can be found in cultures as far removed from one another as Japan and medieval Europe. And the descriptions of dragons bear some interesting similarities to some of the dinosaur fossils that have been found around the world. Where did the stories come from in so many different cultures? Through trade along the silk road? Through the attacks of Mongolian hoards who paused in their looting and raping to say, “Oh, by the way, have you heard about dragons?” Through collective unconscious? Through different cultures looking at the constellations and seeing dragons there? Through people who discovered dinosaur fossils in various parts of the world and dubbed them “dragons?” Or, as the Creation Museum suggests, through the oral history of people who lived with and fought dinosaurs? I leave the answer for you to determine.
Another exhibit which I found thought-provoking was in the Ark Encounter and dealt with the discovery of “the Lost Squadron,” a group of six American fighter planes and two bombers that were forced to crash-land in Greenland in 1942 during WWII. The 25 crew members were rescued, but the planes had to be abandoned and were finally found in 1988, buried under 260 feet of ice. According to a scientist whose video is played in the exhibit, the age of ice helps to determine the age of the earth and can be measured by drilling into ice and removing a core for analysis. Layers of ice can be detected and scientists believe that each layer represents a year. Thus a thousand layers would equal a thousand years. The number of levels found in only 45 feet of ice have been estimated to have taken thousands of years to form. Yet these planes were buried under 260 feet of ice in only 46 years! Thus it appears that each layer of ice indicates, not a single year, but a single snowfall, of which many could occur in a single year. Likewise, what scientists would describe as millions of years’ worth of layered sedimentary rock were formed within months of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. These facts do seem to cast doubt upon some of the methods by which scientists have determined the age of the earth.
All in all, these two attractions were well worth the time and the surprisingly cheap price of admission ($60 for adults, $45 for seniors, and $34 for children over five for a combo ticket to both). Anyone looking for a thought-provoking experience, Christian or not, would find these exhibitions enjoyable. The Creation museum was excellent and professionally done, but the Ark Encounter was simply awe-inspiring.
The Ark itself is just over 500 feet long, nearly the length of two football fields laid end to end and three stories high. It loomed over us as we approached it. Built upon the dimensions given to Noah by God as recorded in the Bible, it had a ramp by which animals would have entered in Noah’s time. Our entrance, however, with beneath the hull of the boat as it was supported on concrete pylons. Long, gentle ramps were built inside to make access easy for visitors, although such ramps would have been needed in Biblical times as well to move the animals to the various floors. Areas were filled with replicas of filled grain sacks and amphora (tall, two-handled jugs) that would have contained water for the animals as well as Noah’s family, all of whom had to stay in the ark for the 40 days of the rain and the 150 days it took for those waters to recede. Wooden cages of varying sizes were filled with examples of families of animals that would have been aboard the ark. The top floor contained the living quarters which looked surprisingly comfortable. (No doubt the women were busy fixing those areas up with blankets, pillows and rugs while their men folk were hammering away!). As with the Creation Museum, there were some videos which could be watched (a chance to sit after walking the length of all those football fields!). I jokingly mentioned to someone that at least if Kentucky was ever hit by a hurricane (impossible), people could take refuge in the ark and ride out the flooding. However, in a video I soon discovered what I should have already realized. This ark was built mostly with pine, not with the gopher wood ordered by God, and was not covered inside and out with pitch to make it water proof. So, this ark, would not float for long, even if it could be knocked loose from its concrete supports.
The message of the Ark Encounter was that the flood was real and that it was global. Again, evidence exists in the “flood” stories of cultures all over the world. So again we are faced with the question, was it collective unconscious? Or could it be that God really did send flood waters to cover the face of the earth? In this case, I stand firmly with the Bible as speaking of a real rather than a metaphorical flood. Unlike the “days” of creation, a flood would not be used to make something more understandable since what else could it be referring to?
The greatest lesson that I took from our visit to the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, however, was voiced by our friend Arlene, who as Dale and I were discussing evolution and the “days” of creation simply said, “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me.” And she is absolutely right. The age of the earth, whether or not the flood was global, or even how we came into being matters not so much in the face of the last three stages of the Creation Museum. Christ, Cross, Consummation. What is important is that we believe, as the Bible teaches, that Christ is the Son of God, the Messiah, and that He died on the cross to take our sins upon himself, to be the sacrifice for our wrongdoing. If we believe in Him, if we choose to accept Jesus as our Savior, to follow Him to the best of our abilities, then when the Consummation comes, Armageddon, the end of the world, we will safely go to be with Him. The rest will be revealed to us in Heaven. That, in the end, is all that matters.