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Who Created Heaven and Earth - and When? Museum stirs scientific debate, theological woesBY JOHN JOHNSTON
The Creation Museum that opens in Northern Kentucky next weekend is built on this belief: God created the heavens and the Earth and all living things in six consecutive 24-hour days, 6,000 years ago.
Which leads to this belief: Floodwaters carved the Grand Canyon in a matter of days or weeks.
And to this: Dinosaurs and humans once co-existed. Indeed, museum exhibits will show them sharing space on Noah's Ark.
To believe any differently undermines biblical authority, say supporters of Answers in Genesis. And so the nonprofit, nondenominational ministry has constructed the $27 million museum to save souls and persuade people to embrace its literal interpretation of the Bible.
The ministry's claims that its views are backed by "real science" positions the museum - the largest of its kind in the world - in the center of a controversy that cuts across scientific and religious lines.
"Everything science has taught us over the course of the last 200 years teaches us that this kind of literal, biblical, creationist notion is misguided at best, and just plain false at worst," says Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The world's largest general scientific society, it serves 10 million scientists and publishes the journal Science.
Leshner is familiar with the Creation Museum.
"I believe in free speech," he says, "(but) I believe that people who go into the public education business - and that's what museums do - have an obligation to convey the most up-to-date and accurate information that they can, not to try to persuade people to (accept) a particular ideological belief."