The Smug Baldy Speaks

The news out of Frankfort, KY is that Park Rangers in the state are increasingly challenged by visitors who had also visited the Creation Museum:

The Creation Museum, which presents the Bible’s creation story as fact supported by science, was opened in late May in Petersburg by the Answers in Genesis Christian ministry.

And there might be millions of years of difference between what a tourist is told one day at the museum and the next day at a state park.

“At places like Cumberland Falls or Natural Bridge — where we’re interpreting geologic history based on the scientific evidence that has been provided — we talk about going back into hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years,” Tichenor said. “The theory of creationism is that the world is only 6,000 years old.”

So, in an effort to better prepare Park Rangers to respond to such challenges, the State of Kentucky is sending 18 park naturalists to the Museum on the taxpayer’s dime. OK - it’s only going to be around $300, but still, that’s $300 dollars collected from Kentucky taxpayers.

I used to live in Kentucky, and I now live in Alabama, but the two states are very similar in this respect: they’re both filled with wonderfully friendly people, many of whom consider themselves over-taxed as it is, and who frequently vote against their own children’s best interests and de-fund educational programs by killing educational taxes in election after election. Now, there’s a proposal to send state workers to what is without any doubt a religious attraction using taxpayer dollars to fund the entire thing.

If I didn’t know any better, and I don’t, I might suggest that this is a blatant case of the State of Kentucky supporting a religious organization.

Whaaa? A museum is a religious organization?

You better believe it. The Answers in Genesis (AiG) ministry spent $27 Million dollars to build the 40,000 square-foot museum in which animatronic dinosaurs provide the foot in the door, and visitors are treated to an evangelical Christian version of natural history, in which children played with dinosaurs, Noah’s Ark apparently cause an extinction event since some animals missed the boat, and “science” is something of a bad word:

The Creation Museum goes far beyond mere science. It doesn’t elevate man’s intellect by using science to “prove” Scripture. Instead, God’s Word is placed first and human reason is last. [ref]

Recently, a BBC camera crew toured the Museum with Evolutionary Biologist Gene Kritsky, from the College of Mount St. Joseph in Delhi Township, and an adjunct curator at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History. When the camera crew asked him what the Creation Museum was all about, he replied:

“It’s bait-and-switch,” Kritsky would explain moments later, BBC interview concluded. Get them in with dinosaurs, then let the message morph. Adam sins, Noah’s ark arrives.

Then it’s on to more biblical history and on to a subterranean world that is wrought by sin and animated with a basement of lurid graffiti garishly lit that exposes and excoriates abortion, homosexuality, pornography.

Bait-and-switch? That seems plausible, especially considering how impressionable children are, and how they gravitate to cool things like dinosaurs, bugs, sea turtles, and poison dart frogs. And if you’re thinking it’s the AiG crowd isn’t all about hooking your kids, think again as you check out the AiG’s latest website, KidsAnswers.org, where your kids can get this nifty anti-eolution coloring sheet, or find out which day those colorful but deadly frogs were created.

Dr. Kritsky later explained to the camera crew:

“The dinosaurs?” Kritsky continued. “They’re eye candy for kids. A lot of kids get into science because of dinosaurs. I did. For me it was Frito Corn Chips. Seven years old and little dinosaurs were in Frito’s. I asked my mom what was that, and she said, ‘A dinosaur.’ So they’re using dinosaurs as an eye candy.

“At the risk of sounding really mean, it’s almost like intellectual molestation.”

I think that, rather than mean, intellectual molestation sums it up pretty well. So smile, Kentucky Taxpayers, you’re paying your government to send some of your state employees to be intellectually molested. Bless you one and all.