A grand delusion

It sure is hard getting a clear picture of just how creationists view the history of a 6,000 year old earth. One day, they're telling us that the dinosaurs were "unleashed" by the original sin, then all drowned and were fossilized by the Great Flood. The next, we're hearing that dinosaurs romped happily in the Garden of Eden alongside Adam and Eve and were even brought onto Noah's Ark. Which is confusing. So, why aren't any dinosaurs roaming the earth only a few thousand years later? Don't look for an answer here. I'm not the one making this shit up.

Two years late in opening, the Creation Museum, aka The Museum of Creation, is set to astound us all and dismiss evidence that fossils, geostratification and the Grand Canyon could not possibly exist on an earth that was 6,000 years old. It can and has, the founders of the museum say and have proceeded to demonstrate this compacted coexistence with some fancy animatronic and entirely disingenuous displays.

A modern day Oryx stands next to a child-friendly dinosaur while it licks
a giant Kraft Marshmallow, also thought by the Creation Museum
to have been present in the Garden of Eden 6,000 years ago.

I'm not sure what is worse with this most recent story: that such a ridiculous undertaking is about to open or that the New York Times feels a need to accommodate Biblical literalists and present their "museum" as a legitimate venue of historical record. Some of the statements in this most recent sop to the Christian right are truly aggravating when seen in "the paper of record," a self-approbation that continues to defy all common sense.

Outside the museum scientists may assert that the universe is billions of years old, that fossils are the remains of animals living hundreds of millions of years ago, and that life’s diversity is the result of evolution by natural selection.

Yes, that's all that scientists do, assert things.

Further along, Eric Rothstein informs readers that, to the scientifically literate, a visit to the museum is a "disorienting mix of faith and reason." While I'm quite certain that the Creation Museum's displays are indeed "disorienting," which appears to be another way to describe ignorant lies, the conceit that this dumb show and the organisation behind it have attached any reason to the animatronics is beyond abysmal. There is no reason here. That is why it is called faith.