I remember taking an Earth Science class in high school (or was it middle school?) but I don’t think the Museum of Earth History has anything to do with science…or truth for that matter. This little Creationist museum, first located in Arkansas before moving to its present day location in Texas, features exhibits based on fundamentalist Christian theology. In case you didn’t already know, Creationism holds that the Earth is just a few thousand years old and that the biblical account of Genesis is indeed factual (as TLC once sang, “Baby, that’s actual and it’s factual”). It doesn’t matter if findings in paleontology, astronomy and physics disprove creationism, recent surveys show about 45% of Americans believe the Earth was created by God within the past 10,000 years. So it sounds like Creationism (and its museums) are here to stay.
You heard of Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood? Well, the museum believes that it caused the extinction of dinosaurs. Even though most scientists agree an asteroid struck off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago (see the Chicxulub crater) wiping away most animal and plant life, including dinosaurs. There are actually replicas of dinosaurs being carried aboard Noah’s famous ark. Amazing they fit, but also happily went along for the ride, no questions asked!?! And if that’s not crazy enough, a Tyrannosaurus rex is exhibited living in harmony alongside Adam and Eve, making the dino a herbivore rather than a carnivore, which I believe is impossible (kind of like the whole story of Adam and Eve). Another exhibit depicts the Ice Age, where the last dinosaurs existed with woolly mammoths until the cold and hunting by cavemen caused them to FINALLY die out.
Before the museum left Ar-Kansas for Texas it was part of the Christian theme park known as the Holy Land Experience. I’d say get your tickets now, but it closed in late 2012, but may reopen when God comes through with more funding. For people who couldn’t make the trip to the real Holy Land, all they had to do was take an electric tram over 50 acres of pagan altars, biblical scenes (including Moses’s desert tent tabernacle) and even an impressive replica of the Great Wall of Jerusalem. The believers were then treated to a play called “The Great Passion” (better than the Mel Gibson version apparently). Well, at least there is still a Holy Land in Orlando, Florida (read this shit for a laugh)…oh, and the Middle East. But hopefully God will hear our prayers and Jerusalem, Arkansas will return to its former glory!
