Yesterday, Dave and I went to the 27-million dollar Creation Museum. Why? Because I'm all about religious mysteries these days, and the most mysterious of them all is who in the world actually believes that the earth is only six thousand years old. I wasn't actually surprised by the quality of the displays; I grew up in a crazy-ass Pentecostal church, I know all about the power of fundamentalist showmanship. Plus I'd read some articles and some reviews, so... Yeah. I knew that there was a born-again Disney guy who'd personally done the animatronics, and that there was a Garden of Eden and part of a life-sized replica of Noah's Ark.
So what was the surprise, you may ask? The surprise was the number of people there. On a Tuesday in September, there were bevies of old folk, Amish folk, teen folk with "I Heart Jesus" t-shirts, couples with babies... Holy Moses, what's going on with the world? According to the affable older archaeologist man (think of him as the Anti-Giles) featured on the many video "documentaries," creationism is indeed a science. It seems that if you just base all of your beliefs on the COMPLETELY UNFOUNDED notion that there was a worldwide flood back in the day, that explains why everything - fossils, the earth's crust, our apey non-ancestors - look so doggone old.
The first stop in the tour is a realistic rendering of an archaeological dig, complete with two waxy figures digging up waxy bones. Anti-Giles narrates from a widescreen, flat panel TV above. Anti-Giles is also involved in an archaeological dig, with a swarthy, vaguely inept fellow explorer. It seems his companion doesn't actually believe in creationism, and proceeds to give a stumbling, bumbling explanation of why evolution makes more sense. Then AG smoothly intercedes, to tell us why he believes that creationism is totally the way to go. It seems that it's all about the Flood - the one God sent down because he was pissed at how crappy people were. You know the story: Noah and two of every animal on this huge boat and it rained for forty days and forty nights, yada yada yada. Anyway, the result of this monstrous natural disaster was that it screwed up the world's climate, plunged us into an ice age, sped up sedimentation rates, and generally just made things look... well, really, really, really old.
From that convincing scientific argument, we make our way to the Graffiti Alley (aka the Tunnel of Shame), with graffiti and a magazine clipping collage showing the decline of western civilization. Most of it has to do with homosexuality, of course, but then there are a few fun snippets about plastic surgery (vanity, I guess, is what they're getting at there), stem cell research, school shootings, and all those other crappy things in our lives. Then you go through the tunnel itself, which flashes violent black and white images on the wall while somebody screams and there's somebody else crying and some random guy tells us why the world is such a shitty place.
Then you through another alley to get to Culture in Crisis, which features a bunch of dastardly home scenes - one with a renegade teen downloading Internet porn (you can't see the porn, so I'm just going on the creepy faces he's making) and some poor knocked up girl trying to schedule an abortion. There's also a vignette of a gossipy woman and her gossipy best friend talking in hushed tones while her husband drinks beer and watches TV in the background. I thought at first that the problem was the gossiping, but it turns out hubby's a druggie who won't get a job. There's also a statistic saying that one in five women in the U.S. has sex before they're married, and I was totally like, "Seriously? It's gotta be more than that." Don't you think? One in five... I think three of those five are total liars.
Anyway, from there we're finally allowed into the Garden of Eden. Eden, incidentally - totally cool. The guy they modeled the animatronic Adam after is actually a porn star (or so the rumor goes), so he's very swarthy and muscular and, I imagine, well endowed. Creationist Adam has no penis parts, so that's all my imagination talking there. Adam and Eve have a rockin' life, and then all hell breaks loose when Eve makes Adam take a bite out of the famed Apple of Satan. Cain kills Abel, there's a frankly horrific display of Adam and Eve standing over the skinned corpses of two unidentifiable animals, and I can just imagine the number of screwed up Bible beater children who'll be haunted by these images for years to come.
From there we get to meet Methuselah, the oldest man ever. 969 years old, was Methuselah. He looks a lot like Yoda, and kind of sounds like him. Apparently Methuselah spawned Noah, because then we head right on over to the Ark. Which also rocks. There are lots of animals, and movies, and scale models, and you actually wander around a structure that is allegedly the size of 1% of the actual Ark. There are lots of little teeny animal figurines and fun shadow boxes, one of which contains swarthy Bible people sitting around a table having dinner. There are an equal number of men and women, just to make sure we know there was no funny stuff going on on the ark (of course, most of these men and women were siblings, but that's clearly not an issue).
Then we head over to the crucifixion, and a twenty minute feature film starring - you guessed it - our good friend Anti-Giles. There are a lot of gruesome dramatizations of animal sacrifices and the crucifixion itself, and a telling interview with Mary. Once you've survived the crucifixion, you get to go outside and enjoy the Creation Gardens, which are still under construction but promise to be very, very cool.
So my general impression of the Creation Museum? Nicely presented, well organized, and completely terrifying. That parents who actually believe this bunk are allowed to bring their kids, and present all of this to them as truth... Well, the whole thing seems a little nuts to me. According to a recent ABC news poll, up to 60-percent of the country believes that the world was created in six days. Sixty percent! People are completely gullible. I do, however, admire the whole spin the authors of the Bible took way back when: If you don't buy my book (both literally and figuratively), you'll burn in hell forever and ever. It's not subtle, but it's clearly effective. I'm planning on using the same strategy with my next novel.
