(June 10, 2009)

PETERSBURG, Ky. -- A school bus hissed to a stop near a giant concrete dinosaur perched outside the Creation Museum, a $27 million, 70,000-square-foot natural history museum-meets-Biblical theme park.



Three dozen middle school students tumbled out the doors, stretching after the 113-mile drive from Westside Christian School in Indianapolis for a field trip to augment their science lessons.

Inside, the students learned from displays that, contrary to mainstream textbooks, science supports the Bible's accounts of the Earth's creation in six days; that the Grand Canyon was created suddenly in Noah's flood; that dinosaurs and humans lived together; and that animal poison did not exist before Adam's original sin.

"Creation makes more sense -- what's here just confirms it," said seventh-grader Nick Johnson of Westside Christian.

Two years after its controversial opening, the Creation Museum has drawn 720,000 visitors, far more than the 250,000 annually organizers predicted. It brought in $7 million in receipts last fiscal year, with organizers saying it has had an economic impact of more than $20 million.

Along the way, it has become a popular science field trip destination for Christian schools, religious and home-school groups and public-school clubs. Students represent many of the museum's group visitors, which make up roughly 20 percent to 30 percent of overall attendance, officials said.

Several public schools have made the trip, museum officials said, declining to identify them. Some public-school religious clubs from as far as New Jersey have made the trip to a destination that continues to draw international media attention, partly because of the ongoing commemoration of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday.

Now, the museum is planning next year to expand its reach to young people, including a "Knee High Museum" of interactive displays and activities for young people. And it's increasing its reach by sending representatives to meet with teachers at religious schools and planning exhibits to counter Darwin's theory.

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"Children should be exposed to alterative views," said Mark Looy, a museum co-creator. "Where do you go to get an opposing view? To the Creation Museum."



Fear of pseudo-science
Scientists and secular educators fear those students are being led astray by pseudo-science that they say distorts accepted scientific findings, including a fossil record that shows life becoming progressively complex over billions of years. They also argue it fosters a distrust of science.

"The poor students who go there thinking they will learn some science are done a great disservice," said museum critic Lawrence Krauss, a physicist who directs the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University.

The National Center for Science Education asserts that "students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level."

Yet religious schools are flocking to the museum, including schools from Louisville that view it as a valuable educational resource.

"It really helped supplement our curriculum" and "shed a lot of light" on earth sciences, said Dan Delaney, principal of Louisville's Northside Christian School, who objects to evolution "propaganda" in museums and textbooks.

That opinion is shared by Ann Shively, high school principal at Evangel Christian in Louisville. Shively said her school's visit last year confirmed "there's just too much fact and research that goes to prove that there's an intelligent design behind the universe."

The museum, which includes a digital planetarium, 150 exhibits and an effects theater, is the work of Answers in Genesis, a conservative religious group with a $24 million annual budget that is part of the "young Earth" creationist movement.

They believe that the Bible's book of Genesis literally depicts how the world was formed in six days.

As a result, they say that dinosaurs must have co-existed with humans and that the story of the flood and the ark are true.

Creator Ken Ham, who started the ministry in his native Australia and raised money to build the museum, says he uses "the same science" as evolutionists, but interprets it differently.

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Displays assert that genetics and archaeology had "confirmed" various Biblical stories and that complex human organs couldn't have evolved from simpler forms.



"Science tries to discredit God," said Della Davidson, a parent accompanying Westside's field trip with her 12-year-old daughter, Kyla. The museum "shows how God can discredit science."

Kentucky Department of Education spokeswoman Lisa Gross said nothing in state law would bar public schools from visiting, if it were part of "a lesson" on "how some perceived the world's beginnings."

Kentucky requirements
Kentucky does not require the teaching of evolution or creationism (or even science at all) in private schools. And public-school science teachers aren't prohibited from mentioning creationism, but lessons often include concepts behind evolution, Gross said.

Just last weekend, a New Jersey public-school history teacher who leads a religious club at Kearny High School took a bus full of students for a visit.

The teacher, David Paszkiewicz, gained national attention in 2006 for "telling students that dinosaurs were on Noah's ark -- things you shouldn't be saying as a public-school teacher," said Matt LaClair, a former student and member of the Ohio-based Secular Student Alliance, which complained about the recent field trip.

Kearny School District Superintendent Jacqueline Cusack said the school bus was paid for by the group, which had a right to go because it was an extracurricular activity.

Biologist Gene Kritsky, a professor at College of Mount St. Joseph in nearby Cincinnati, said he realizes that polls show almost half of Americans don't accept the evolutionary explanation and recognizes the right to believe in any view. But he worries the museum cloaks religion in science.

"The Bible is not a science book," he said. "In Job, it says that the Earth rests on pillars, but we don't teach that to children."

Reporter Chris Kenning can be reached at (502) 582-4697.
(rest of story with cool dinosaur video): http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20090610/NEWS01/906100383