The Creation Museum Takes On the American Museum of Natural History.

The Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY and the Museum of Natural History in New York NY both claim to explain the origin and nature of the physical world. But there the similarity ends. The Creation museum traces the world’s origin to the whim of a biblical God 6,000 years ago. The Museum of Natural History has creation originating in a “big bang”, 13.5 billion years ago.

Which one, if either, gets it right? After all, both seem far fetched. And both beg problematic questions.

For instance, why was the creationist God so intimately involved with humans in the beginning – talking to them, putting marks on them, demanding sacrifices of family members, turning them into pillars of salt and selecting one family to avoid the drowning death that befell every other – but then so little?

The “Big Bang” theory maintains that all the physical matter in the universe was once compacted into a volume smaller than that now occupied by a sub-atomic particle. Mind-boggling. How is that even possible?

So what to believe? Let’s look at the evidence.

Creationism’s authority is based on one book, written 2,000+ years ago by a Bronze/Iron age civilization. As evidence, it is thin gruel. Believers in its authenticity as God’s inerrant word must explain the remarkable coincidence that His knowledge was only as great as that of the humans that wrote it – and far less than what we know today.

Creationism is also hobbled by its immutability. When new facts challenge scientific wisdom, the science is discarded. When new facts challenge creationism, it is the facts that are discarded. The Creation Museum even admits so. Written in its Statement of Faith is, “By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.”

The Creation Museum

So the Creation Museum’s position is this. “We are right. If you disagree with us, you are wrong. And there are no facts that will change our mind.” Based on that hubris, it is safe to discard the Creation Museum’s position as bunk.

So does that prove the American Museum of Natural History’s explanation of existence is correct? No. The museum has to put forward its own proof positive. Has it? The scientific community overwhelmingly says yes.

Unlike the denialism inherent in creationism, science cannot ignore facts it finds inconvenient. In the biblical era, it was “obvious” to contemporary thinkers that a flat earth was the center of a universe comprised of a sun, a moon, some planets, and holes in the celestial sphere letting in heaven’s light.

Better tools have revealed a much greater truth. A universe unimaginably vast, made up of particles unimaginably small, working in ways that cannot be adequately explained by reference to the observable world. In all likelihood that which we know, amounts to far less than that which we do not know. Fortunately, we have done a better job with earthly concerns.

We may be at the beginning of the journey to understand the behavior of cosmic “strings”, but our understanding of things longer contemplated is far more profound.

Even in the earliest days of scientific thought academics accepted the theory that 2+2 = 4. As time passed other scientific explanations matured from proposition to theory (to whit, a universally accepted true account of a physical phenomenon). Good examples include the theory of gravity, the germ theory of disease transmission, and the theory of evolution.

The American Museum of Natural History.

So the American Museum of Natural History’s position may be describes as this, “The consensus of the minds educated to analyze these things is that we know some things to be true beyond all reasonable doubt. That we know other things to be well and best explained by these ideas. And that there are some things we have no good ideas on yet.”

Visit both museums by all means. For truth, visit the Natural History Museum. For a good laugh, visit the Creation museum.