Creation Museum a Threat Down Under?

Well, it looks like there are some secularists who are once again worried about the impact of our ministry! In a recent opinion piece titled "Monkey Business," which appeared in an Australian newspaper, writer Ian Henschke expressed his deep concern over the lack of a human evolution exhibit at a South Australian Museum (we'll call it SAM for short).

Apparently, the SAM removed the human evolution display five years ago to make way for another exhibit, and it was never reinstalled. Why is this? He writes, "We may never know the truth. And as long as there's nothing on human evolution in our museum, neither will the hundreds of thousands of children and adults who visit the place."

So why is Henschke really this concerned about it? Well, because of biblical creationists, of course:

That brings us to creationist beliefs of Christian fundamentalists. In their world, our journey began a few thousand years ago. So a display in a museum which outlines the four-million-year-old story of human evolution would be blasphemy at worse and science fantasy at best.

Henschke goes on to list statistics on how many people believe in some form of creation, saying that they can't "let those beliefs override or confuse scientific facts."

Now, I've talked about this problem of confusing the types of sciences many times on this blog elsewhere. Henschke very quickly confuses historical (or origins) science, which deals with how the universe began and cannot be tested or proven, to operational (or observational) science. The latter is the kind of science that leads to advances in technology, medicine, and so on. Good operational science can be performed without holding a belief in evolutionary ideas. In fact, we have a number of PhD-level scientists on staff at Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum who are all biblical creationists. They would all say that evolution has nothing to do with operational science—in fact, it hinders it!

But what does the Creation Museum have to do with SAM? Well, Henschke claims that our Creation Museum is a “vast complex compared to the SA Museum.” Now, it’s true that the Creation Museum is large—we have a planetarium, an observatory, the gardens, the museum’s “walk through history,” a new insectorium, a soon-to-open dragon exhibit, a special effects theater, and much more. Australia is my homeland, and so I’ve been to the SAM. And while the Creation Museum is large, the SA museum is actually much larger. In fact, the SAM has one of the largest aboriginal artifact exhibits in the world, and it receives government (tax) money for funding and so the entrance is free. The Creation Museum is privately funded by donations and entrance fees.

Henschke closes his article by saying he’s concerned that a version of the Creation Museum will be built in Australia. It’s amazing to me that the impact of the Creation Museum is even affecting secularists as far away as South Australia. I praise God that our ministry is having such an impact on people who hold evolutionary ideas.

Isn’t it fascinating to note that there are hundreds of secular museums around the world that present evolution as fact, and evolutionists are concerned about one creation museum in America? Think also of the majority of students in America (and Australia) who are going to public schools and are being taught evolution as fact. Furthermore, most of the secular media presents evolution as fact. Yet secularists are really worried about one privately funded museum near Cincinnati, Ohio!

Yes! God’s message is powerful and the secularists know it—that’s why they fight so hard against it.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken