In my previous post, I introduced my visit to the Creation Museum (CM). Now I turn to some critical remarks.

Critical Comments: 

For all of my enjoyment, CM is not really a natural history museum (and in that sense cannot be fairly compared to the Smithsonian or any other). It is, after all, called “The Creation Museum.”  Even though it is filled to the brim with archaeological and historical items, presentations, and exhibits, natural history is not its driving theme. “God’s history” or “Genesis history” (as understood by CM) would be closer to a proper description.  CM offers a rather narrowly focused and singular view of the Bible presented as history.  I don’t agree with this approach, but I can’t really say I was disappointed in it, because I already knew (from previous readings in Answers in Genesis) before arriving how “flat” a view of the Bible this group takes.

Here are a few examples. And please notice that I am looking at this from the point of view of “what biblical texts actually claim.” I do not care at this point whether the science is any good or not—I have no interest in that issue for this article.

1. 1. Comparative Charts: Throughout the museum, there are numerous comparative charts contrasting (1) “traditional science” with (2) “the biblical view of science.” (Unfortunately, I did not not take any pictures of these numerous charts). However, not once (in my mere 4 hours of being there) do I recall seeing a comparison of (1) “What we (CM) think Genesis says” with (2) “What other biblical scholars say about Genesis.”  It is a pervasive, unspoken assumption made throughout the museum that what the Bible says about creation” is whatever CM says it is.
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   2. “Dinosaurs in Eden”: A specific (and stark) example of the first point is how “a biblical view of creation” is plainly said to include dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden (I saw them, right there in the exhibit, right next to Adam and Eve who are naked in the garden in 3 or 4 major exhibits). The idea is that at creation, all created beings had harmony, peace, and good will–and there was no “food chain”. And this is actively taught to children.  (A kind of Walt-Disney Eden.)
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      1. No biblical text says any such thing about the Garden of Eden: not in Hebrew, Greek, or English. In fact Gen 2:9-17 highlights (1) abundantly watered “trees good for food” (but no other kind of food is mentioned); (2) two other trees not strictly about food but at the center the garden and of the story; and (3) the fact that the man was put in this garden to “till it and keep it”—the man was put there to work. Even in the verses that follow (2:18-25), there is no indication of any kind “my little pony” world of perfection or any idyllic or fantasy state in which animals had no big teeth or inclinations to eat each other. None of that is the point of the story. Genesis 2 is, instead, directly about explaining the origins and foundations of marriage. The Hebrew word for “garden” in 2:8 is gan which occurs some 41 times in the Hebrew Bible and has no special significance except as any context may lend it. Greek translated this as paradeisos (which occurs 48 times in the OT and Apocrypha) from which we get the word “paradise,” but which is best translated as “orchard” or the like. It would be a mistake to idealize this into anything beyond a likely beautiful place with plenty of food. Unfortunately the Douay-Rheims Bible translated Gen 2:8 as “And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure.”  The idyllic lore of the place in later Christian literature grew dramatically. Interestingly, Gen 21:33 says “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree at Beersheeba, and there he called on the name of Yahweh, the eternal God.”  Known in Genesis and thereafter as a holy place, the Jerusalem Targum and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan both render this as “And Abraham planted a paradise in Beersheba . . .” This of course would not imply that it was a perfect place or that the animals would not bite each other.
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      2. No biblical text says, or has any contextual interest in saying, that mankind and all animals were originally created as harmless so that only after the disobedience of Adam and Eve did some (why only some?) turn into meat-eaters, now devouring one another in a newly established “food chain,” with bunnies at the bottom of the chain.  Did God not like bunnies or something?  And why are humans at the top of the food chain when they caused the problem? 
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      3. This elaborate story that gets told (to children and all) is fantasy and it grows out of desperation to explain other ideas that are also foreign to the Genesis text. I can’t help but ask:  Is this supposed to mean that the Bible is claiming that no fish ever ate another fish till after the Garden? That hawks ate only plants?  That moles ate only plants and not grubs, worms, or insects? What did mosquitoes eat? What about Anteaters? Did Adam originally name them “Planteaters”?  Were there no flies or gnats or even vultures? Did fruit simply appear and then forever stay ripe? Genesis has no interest in these types of questions because that is not what the story is about. Where in any biblical text is there any interest in showing that God changed the eating habits and temperaments of all created beings after their original creation to establish a “food chain”? Gen 3:14 is not it, nor Rom 8:20. These texts are about deep theological issues of the devil, temptation, sin, judgment, human mortality, meaning, futility, and hope. To turn these texts into God’s hidden puzzle pieces for the one true 21st century science is worse than a travesty, it becomes a joke.  These texts are not about what serpents looked like (with legs or wheels?), or whether only then, in the Garden, they began crawling on the ground (cf., Gen 1:24-30).  These are theological texts written for theological reasons; and they should be read for that purpose.  
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      4. In context, Gen 1:29-30 is making the case that God created all life and gave them food to eat. And in 3:17, 23, when God pronounces judgment in the Garden, they still are told to eat “the plants of the field” and “till the ground” . Only now, the emphases is on “from now on, you’ll work yourself to death.”
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      5. Not even one of these texts is attempting to prescribe what they must eat and proscribe what they cannot eat (except for one tree).  To read this text in this fashion is a major imposition of foreign ideas into this text that are not in the purview of Genesis at all. Genesis is not written so that one might ask, “How does one rule over a fish or a bird?” 
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   3. Dominion:  Third, in fact, “dominion” or “rulership” over the livestock, wild animals, birds, fish, and “things that creep on the ground” in Gen 1:26 shows that God created humans in his likeness and then gave them rule over all these created things. That is the point! For Genesis 1, humans are the culmination of his creation. Then later in the Genesis story, the very fact that God “looks upon” Abel’s sacrifice of fat sheep in Gen 4:4 means “to look upon with favor” (very much like “God saw that it was good”, cf. Gen 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31.) For God to “look upon” in this context means he gave Abel the nod of approval.  Nothing at all implies that this is the first time anyone ate meat or that it is now possible to eat meat as a result of the curse of God against humankind. Either Abel had fixed mutton as a sacrifice, or at God’s county fair, Abel’s fattest sheep beat out Cain’s biggest watermelon for the blue ribbon.
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   4. Eating the Dinosaurs? Fourth, no biblical text says anything about dinosaurs at all, anywhere. Despite the flood of articles that can be found all over the internet that argue whether dinosaurs are found in the Bible, it is an idea that is imported into the Bible. Let me put this another way: it is just as likely that the dinosaurs all disappeared because ravenous people began killing and eating them, as it is that the Bible ever mentions dinosaurs.  
      
      
      
      In fact, how about this: Just maybe the phrase in Gen 4:4 about Abel bringing “the firstborn of his fat sheep” should be translated as “dinosaur sheep,” which shows Abel killing them off with God’s approval after the curse.  Now, would I make this up? After all, (1) Gen 4:4 is the only time this exact phrase, sono umehelbehen, occurs in the Hebrew Bible; (2) it occurs immediately after the Fall; (3) cf. Psa 74:14 “you fed [Leviathan] to the people who live along the coast (NET)”; and (4) I have a picture of one! This suggestion has just as much “biblical support”—and makes just as much sense— as other views about dinosaurs in the Bible. 
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   5. A Globe? Another example at CM is how 20th-21st century understanding and imagery of the earth as globular is used to depict the earth as created by God in Genesis 1. Can somebody please show where Genesis assumes or proclaims a globular earth? (Sorry, Isa 40:22’s “circle of the earth” does not show a round earth any more than  Rev 7:1’s “four corners of the earth” shows a flat one. And besides, these are both poetry, and neither one is in Genesis.)
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   6. Sailing the 7 C’s:  The clearest of all examples is how the 7 C’s are the guiding light to how the museum is laid out; and this is called “what the Bible teaches.”

This last example is a nice sermon. I guess. And I think it is incredible how God’s eternal plan since before the foundation of the world just happens to work out in English with 7 memorable c’s! (This must prove the CM view of inspiration!) So if any group wants to lay out a museum using this pattern, that is their $27 million prerogative, I suppose.

1. But it is interesting that the first 3 c’s are supposed to summarize Genesis 1-9.
2. Then with Genesis 10-11, the “Babel story” is all about confusion, which apparently is supposed to overshadow (or maybe foreshadow or maybe even color) the rest of Hebrew literature. Sorry, Abraham, who gets the Call in the very next few verses (Gen 12:1ff); or Moses to whom God gives the Commandments;  or to Solomon and David to whom God gives the Cingdom (sorry, just trying to stay on board, here.) Is this what Babel in Gen 10-11 is trying to say? I know it preaches well; but is that the point of this biblical text? [No.]
3. Then the last 3 c’s show, finally, “Hey, this was God’s systematic plan all along!”

This preaches great! The first three led to confusion; the last three delivered us from confusion.

Forgive me if I don’t walk down the aisle after this sermon. It is a nice way of proclaiming a simple message that everyone can remember and repeat. I do appreciate the desire of people to share their faith about Christ. And for marketing purposes, it speaks a direct and clear message.

But as a statement of biblical theology, it leaves a LOT out. And it puts huge things in  that do not belong there—namely, dinosaurs! (Which is exactly why this “plan” was conjured up—to include dinosaurs.)  To be clear: nowhere does anybody’s Bible lay this out in 7’cs, or 5 steps, or 24 letters, or any such thing. No biblical text, no biblical author, ever does this. This is made up by a person (or a few people) of faith and they have now told their story by using very high quality style and design, many artifacts, and a particular attitude about what “the Bible” says.

Obviously, lots of people like this. I certainly liked my time at the museum. I don’t like how the Bible is presented and (ab)used over and over again by CM to make its case. As I have said in previous articles, it makes Christians look desperate and foolish, not even understanding how to read and apply what it calls its own book.  

I enjoyed my visit, and I very much want to return.  I applaud the quality of exhibitions and materials. I wish I could say the same for the way the biblical text gets handled. (And again, I deliberately have made no comments on the quality of the science.)