If the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) gets their way, North Texas will house a second creationist museum.
The ICR — an organization headquartered in Dallas and founded in 1970 by “scientific creationism” author Henry Morris (The Genesis Flood) — is hoping to expand on its current setup at Royal Lane and Luna Road, building what it calls the Dallas Museum of Science and Earth History, a blatantly misleading moniker for an intellectual center that will give many a malleable child stirring lectures and vibrant interactivity about the six-day Creation myth and how humans, at one time, lived alongside non-avian dinosaurs.
Eat your heart out, Jurassic World.
As it stands right now, if the denizens of North Texas feel the need to learn about how biblical creation is the only rational means by which to view the world, they’d have to jump in their vehicles and travel all the way out to some tornado-prone hellscape called Glen Rose. After passing Dinosaur Valley State Park, Texans will find themselves pulling up to what appears to be a large converted shed. Inside the Creation Evidence Museum, people from all around can gaze upon rewritten history, misinformation, fake fossils, and obvious scientific nitpicking, their eyes full of the kind of wonder only achieved by those who are perpetually ignorant of the way things actually are.
Well, except on the first Saturday of each month, when instead of viewing the exhibits (which is why people go to museums), patrons will have to either listen to an entire day’s worth of lectures by the creationist museum’s director or they “can git out.”
So, how does the ICR plan on financing this monument to intellectual irresponsibility? By soliciting donations, of course, passing around a bloated metaphysical collection plate to Texas’ king’s ransom of scientifically-impaired business moguls, as well as (presumably) the scores of everyday evangelicals who believe the mighty scourge of secularism is killing their way of life. After all, even though we already have one, “isn’t it about time we have a museum that shows how science confirms Biblical creation?“
Eat your heart out, Perot Museum of Nature and Science.
The proposed Dallas Museum of Science and Earth History is not without its supporters. To many, the idea of a technologically marvelous creationist museum (complete with 3-D planetarium!) is a great one. From the Huffington Post:
“One supporter described the proposed facility this way:
‘When visitors walk in the door they will be surprised at how different things are here. They will know, from the moment they walk in, that this is a museum that’s going to talk about the glory of God as our creator.'”
That “surprised” response the supporter described is the feeling people have when the parts of their brain responsible for keeping them rational stroke out.
It also wouldn’t be too unreasonable to assume (at least not unreasonable when compared to the content of this proposed creationist museum) that there exists a monetary incentive to erect a temple of bastardized intellect in Dallas: the homeschooling crowd. After all, Texas regulates homeschooling even more loosely than it regulates guns.
As one Texas mom puts it:
“As a homeschool mom, I had the hardest time coming up with resources that would teach my children the science and the faith. This is exciting to me because the kids can come here, they can touch and feel and experience science confirming what the Bible tells us.”
This homeschoolin’ mother laments that there is not a shortage of science materials available from which to teach her children, but a shortage of “science materials” that blend cherry-picked “woo” with 2,500 year old folklore written by people who believed in talking snakes.
Eat your heart out, Texas Board of Educa– … wait.
At this rate, why not embrace the “science” behind crystal healing or the benefits of psychic surgery as a cancer treatment?
