Do Printed Newspapers Have a Future?

I have been hearing recently that most major newspapers in the USA are declining in readership (and advertising revenue) and are struggling. Some have already shut down (our local Cincinnati Post stopped printing 10 months ago) or have been reformatted (for example, the long-time national newspaper The Christian Science Monitor will soon be exclusively on-line). This trend really hit home when a reporter from Brazil came by the museum yesterday, and we asked which media outlet he was representing. It wasn’t a newspaper, TV network, or radio station but the website for www.Globo.com, which sent him from Sao Paulo (St. Paul in Portuguese, by the way—the main language of Brazil) to America to write articles just for the web.

The reporter, Daniel, had just been to Houston and New Orleans to file stories and told us that he came to visit the museum because he thought that Brazilians—who are largely Catholic—might be interested in how the museum portrays the book of Genesis. Daniel said that the museum was impressive, but wondered why Christians couldn’t believe in both Genesis and evolution, especially if Genesis was really allegory. Mark Looy of our staff shared with him that Genesis was not written as poetry or allegory but historical narrative, and that there was no room for evolution in the Genesis text. Mark also said to him that to believe in “theistic evolution,” you had to believe that God must have used a cruel and wasteful process (“survival of the fittest”—with animals killing each other over millions of years to survive), and this is not what an all-powerful, benevolent God would have used—nor is it what God said He did!

Earlier this week, a reporter based in Milan, Italy, was here to tour the museum and write a story. Also, I’ve heard that another BBC TV crew is coming to film here for a documentary to air on British television (Darwin’s 200th birthday is in February, so I suspect the crew’s visit has something to do with this), and yet another Australian TV crew will also tour soon.

We are grateful that so much of the world’s media has taken an interest in the museum and, on the whole, has covered us fairly (and we have ministry friends who translate articles for us to check on how we’re covered). With the exception of some of the British and Australian press (which often have a mocking edge to their stories)—and there is an occasional poor article in the U.S. press—we have been pleased with the overall coverage (as you know, the secular media can be harsh towards Christianity). When reporters see the quality of the museum and talk to our PhD scientists, it’s difficult not to say some good things about the Creation Museum (even if disagreeing with much of the message).

Dinosaurs on Stage

This weekend I’ll be walking with dinosaurs. You may have heard about a multi-million dollar show that is traveling America—based on a British TV program called Walking with Dinosaurs—that is a very high-tech spectacle, but also very pro-evolution (e.g., that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago in evolutionary history—well before humans appeared). As you probably know, our Creation Museum and its high-tech dino exhibits (e.g., animatronic dinosaurs, which are as good as what you’d find anywhere in the world—our Utahraptor, for example, is especially impressive), present a biblical view of dinosaurs.

I may have something to report about this show on this blog in a few days; so, check back. We wrote a web review about the TV series Walking with Dinosaurs back in 2000.

Devotion

Few days left

(Daniel 12:1–2) thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

In the few days left, our job is to do all we can to point the lost to the Lord Jesus Christ as the only righteous servant who saves from eternal hell & gives eternal life.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken