Creating A Truth
The Smart Set (a reincarnation of H.L. Mencken’s great magazine from the Twenties) has an article on the creationist museum in Kentucky. Excerpt:
The museum here isn’t the first devoted to a literal interpretation of the Bible’s opening book. There’s also the 7 Wonders Creation Museum near Mt. St. Helens, the Museum of Earth History in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and the Institute for Creation Research’s Museum of Creation and Earth History in Santee, California. This summer, the Big Valley Creation Science Museum opened to less fanfare in a small, vinyl-sided building in Alberta, Canada.
AiG’s museum in Petersburg, however, is the biggest creationist museum in the country and, AiG boasts, the most “professional.” The ministry brought in Patrick Marsh, the designer behind Universal Studios’ Jaws and King Kong attractions. At Universal, Marsh used special effects to build a fear of killer sharks and giant gorillas. In Petersburg, he’s used the same tools to build a fear of God.
The Creation Museum also draws the most on the conventions of traditional natural history museums, including the rush for interactivity and entertainment as a means of reaching young minds. Qualities like these led believers to pony up the entire $27 million in construction costs, leaving the museum debt-free, according to its builders. They’re also what AiG hopes will attract 250,000 people every year to this sleepy corner of Kentucky.