Creationist logic: creationism is the science and evolutionary biology is the religion

The world’s first museum devoted to showing the biblical creation myth as fact opened last spring in Northern Kentucky near Cincinnati. The museum promotes creationism – the religious belief that life and the universe were created in their original form as spelled out in the Book of Genesis. In recent decades creationist proponents have attempted to present this belief as scientific to somehow give it equal standing to the use of evolution as the explanation of the development of life on earth.

The museum includes displays of those pesky dinosaurs’ bones that keep showing up all over the world. In fact, there are dinosaurs shown along humans in the world’s 6000-year existence. And, of course, Adam and Eve are positioned in such ways as to maintain their modesty – just the way God intended. They also have computer animation of how all those animals actually fitted in Noah’s Arc.

The museum certainly found a niche in the market for those interested in this type of entertainment. The facility recently expanded although another creationist museum in Texas is auctioning off a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off that museum’s extinction.

The Creation Museum, a project of the Answers in Genesis Ministry (AIG), $27 million project designed to promote as fact an odd jumble of biblical myths intermixed dinosaurs and fossils cloaked as science. This is an excerpt of an article by Dr. John N. Moore, a founder of the Creation Research Society, appearing on the AIG website:

… the science and research practices of both creationists and evolutionists involve the very same techniques, equipment, etc. In fact, the very same objects—such as rocks—and all measurable entities are the same for each investigator. As a consequence, I avoid the expression “creation science.” I prefer the use of a hyphen—i.e., “creation-science”; the hyphen conveys that two areas of human knowledge have been joined.

In addition, though most people, including scientists, consider the biblical teaching of origins to be religious and consider evolutionary ideas scientific, we should challenge such a view. In the secular media, for instance, the debate is often described as “creationism vs. evolution,” as if the “ism” should not apply to “evolution.” This is not accurate, because believing in evolution, like believing in creation, requires acceptance of a certain presuppositional dogma and requires placing one’s faith in a story about the unrepeatable past. See Science or the Bible?

Also, the term “religion” must be defined clearly. While beliefs and worship practices, procedures, and conduct are involved in religion, any belief system that purports to be a total explanation of reality is more-or-less religion. Thus, insofar as it is an attempt to explain why the world is the way it is, held to with ardor and faith, Darwinian evolution can thus be considered religion.

So it seems we all have it backwards – creationism is the science and evolutionary biology is the religion. George Orwell would have recognized this twist in logic for what it is.

The backers of the museum and Answers in Genesis are people who do not read the Bible for the truths it may tell but as factual evidence of real events – in other words, all biblical stories are literally true. At the same time these people are products of their time and are enamored with scientific methods and the illusion of science. In the museum they have merged the two to come up with something on the level of the Flintstones – the 1960’s cartoon series about prehistoric people living in prehistoric suburbs along side dinosaurs. That there are people who will undoubtedly take this sham of a museum and the writings from their website such as above serious is rather sad, if not frightening.

(Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan.)