Shuck and Jive


Wednesday, September 02, 2009

I Evolved From Jesus


Over my vacation to visit my family in Montana I made my parents take me to the Glendive Dinosaur Museum.


They weren't particularly excited.




It had just opened and had been operating for three months when we visited a couple of weeks ago. I wrote about it last year when it was under construction.

Lying for Jesus
Noah and the Dinos in Glendive

Daily Kos reported on the museum's opening in July.

I even paid the $7 entrance fee ($6 for seniors) for both my parents and I. It certainly was not worth it except in that Barnum and Bailey sense. We were there for about two hours. We saw all the exhibits and watched a 45 minute film. During our visit we were the only customers.

I could say I was suckered by one of the most bizarre scams of our era, creationism. I knew what it was of course before I toured. I just had to see it for myself. The building has two floors that include a movie theater, gift shop, and numerous displays of dinos, bibles, and pseudoscientific pablum. It is elaborate, artistic, stylish and wrong. Wrong beyond belief.

I cannot seem to allow myself to call it a dinosaur museum. Here on out, I will refer to it as the Glendive Creationist Arcade. They do have dinosaur replicas there. They aren't cheap. One of the volunteers (local church members participate in this ministry) told me that one cost $60,000 and another over $100,000.

My favorite exhibit was a replica of Noah's ark. Seriously. Another volunteer told us that the ark replica is about 1/90 of the actual size (similar to model trains). Little figurines (sheep, giraffes, humans, and dinosaurs) were placed around the ark. The script described how all the animals (including the dinos) were loaded, kept, and fed by Noah and family. The script included hearsay accounts of various explorers who had discovered the remains of the ark somewhere in Turkey.

There was an exhibit of a bunch of old Bibles and what not including a 1611 King James Bible. I guess. Who knows? I wasn't quite sure of the point of the Bible exhibit. They did mention more than once that the Bible mentions dinosaurs. Maybe that was the point.

In other places were theories as to how the Grand Canyon was carved out during Noah's flood and cave drawings of supposed dinosaurs (to prove that humans and dinos lived together). And the message was repeated in many different ways that "Darwinists" are misinformed and deceptive.

The film,
Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution, featured...

...a dentist!

Dr. Jobe Martin, an "expert" on evolution had one basic message: "These animals are too hard to figure out. God must have made them. Have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior?"

It was a wild, disconnected trip to the crazy house.

The good book urges us not to "fret the wicked." I don't fret the wicked. These folks certainly aren't wicked. They are nice people.

I do, however, fret the wingnuts.

Will this go away? Or will it get worse and make humanity collectively dumber?

3 comments:

  1. And to think what those church volunteers could be wasting their time on...

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  2. Dinosaur museums make Raptor Jesus cry.

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  3. The danger in this is that people who know science believe that in order to have integrity, they have to outright reject the Church and all the good things it can do. I know that you are trying, but somehow we have to get better at getting the counter message out, that it is possible to be rational, science positive and work to make the world a better place by promoting justice.

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