Disclaimer:  If you are a very religious person and get easily offended, feel free to read this.

The weather in South Florida is very predictable this time of year.  It almost feels as if someone is planning the whole deal.  A soft, strong hand paints purples and pinks into the sky in the morning hours.  As afternoon rolls in, powerful, pursed lips blow clouds into the blue-domed world.  Then, softly, you can hear the pitter-patter of the rain.  You can actually hear it before you see it.  It is an incredibly comfortable sound.  In the distance, a roll of thunder cascades with a laugh. 

Remember this conversation?

"Mommy, where does rain come from?"
"Well, sweety, when its raining, its really God crying."
"Oh.  Why is God crying?"
"Probably because of something you did."

Ok.  So maybe your conversation didn't go exactly like this, but I bet it was similar.  Parents are either oblivious to the rain cycle, or they just don't feel like explaining it.  Instead, they poison their child's mind with a silly myth. 

I'm not taking a shot at religion (not yet - wait for it).  There are plenty of ridiculous secular myths as well - the stork delivering babies, rainbows leading to pots of gold.  All of them have something in common:  They loathe science, abhor knowledge.

For the most part, these untruths are harmless.  The tellers smile as they spout their bullshit, understanding the fallacies that are flowing from their faces.  But some people hold on to their folly a little faster.  Some of these people take pilgrimages to a magical place.  Families pack minivans full of Capri-Suns and undertake a journey to their personal Mecca:  Petersburg, Kentucky.

Petersburg lies in a cultural vortex - in just minutes one could claim to be standing in Indiana, Kentucky, or my personal favorite, Ohio.  Cincinnati is only minutes away.  So, Petersburg was a very logical choice to build a beacon of bewilderment:  The Creation Museum.

Creation.  It is actually a very loaded word.  We've all asked impossible existential questions to ourselves.  Who am I?  How did I get here?  Who put me here?  Why?

These questions are, of course, impossible.  Pondering the answers can pass the time on a Monday afternoon, but for the most part, we are not qualified to actually attempt to answer them.  However, at the Creation Museum, there is one, unified answer to all of these questions:  The Bible.



Listen - before I continue I think I need to confess a few details.  I do not want to sell you something that you have no intention of buying, like the other day when I purchased dental floss in bulk over the internet.  I am in no way objective.  I hate it when I read articles where authors pretend to be something they are obviously not.  I disagree very much with the principles of the Creation Museum.  I used to call myself an atheist.  But, that one word kept popping up:  Creation.  So, ever since I've decided to replace a lack of beliefs with an apathy for them.

However, apathy does not fly.  This occurred to me today when I was planning my curriculum for the following year.  The 10th grade text book focuses heavily on writings from across the planet.  Many of these texts have religious roots.  Today, from a Prentice Hall literature book, I read Genesis 1-6, parts of the Koran, and writings from Confuscius.  Obviously the world sees these as very important texts - and they are.

It had been a very long time since I had read the story of our creation, as written in The Bible.  I was shocked!  There was something that I had never noticed before, and it would forever change my interpretations.  The revelation was this:  The Bible is very poorly written.  It is nondescript, vague, and it leaves so many details out.  Whoever wrote it must have not been very smart.  Maybe the author was a Brontosaurus.

Because according the Creation Museum, that is entirely possible.  As you maneuver your car through the gates, you can not help notice that the entryway is designed to look like a Stegasaurus.  The Creation Museum believes that humans and dinosaurs lived concurrently.  Before The Fall, (a term used to describe Adam and Eve's major faux pas, the eating of some delicious fruit) Adam and Eve actually got along pretty well with the massive predators.  As you enter the main hall of the museum, there is a lifescape of Eve hanging out with some Velociraptors.



 Little children pointed and "ooooohed."  They shouted "Look out Eve, there's a dinosaur there!" 

Not to worry little ones, no harm will come to Eve.  Before Sin, dinosaurs used their incredibly sharp claws and their razor-edged teeth (given to them by God, not evolution) to dig at roots and get at appetizing flora.  Before Sin, every creature was a vegetarian.



With my friends Sean and Bryan, we purchased our tickets with a slightly guilty conscience, and strolled towards the entrance.  It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and masses had made their way to the museum.  There were elders with walking sticks, ambling along and nodding.  There were tots, teeming to and fro, asking questions from their parents, who they assumed were just as omnipotent as God.  I think the phrase I am about to use was created specifically for this situation:  The Creation Museum was a madhouse. 

The museum was bright and colorful.  In the first several rooms, it took to explaining its position.  It was actually set up very well.  It had many plaques giving details of how this crazy planet came to be.  On the left of the plaque, it said "Human Reason," and then would give a short, dismissive blurb about what modern science says about our situation.  On the right, it was "God's Word," and it would depict The Bible's explanation.



It made for a lot of interesting reading.  The people-watching was also intense.  I wasn't sure how my intrusion would be taken.  I guess in the depths of my destitute heart, I was hoping for an argument. I was hoping someone would yell at me and call me a heathen.  But then I looked around.  I mean, these are people, aren't they?  Beautiful human beings, with a belief that happened to be different than mine.  I was beginning to feel a little self-conscious.

But I persevered.  Several times I had to stifle laughs. According to the museum, the world is about 6000 years old.  Scientists have decided that the first fragments found of The Bible are about 10000 years old.   The Fossil record is wrong, because the fossils were actually displaced by the Great Flood.  I'm not going to include any contradictory evidence in this blog.  It's pretty easy to find.  Go to google.com, and type in this word:   Science

Is it right of me to laugh?  Does my minor in Chemistry give me some greater knowledge?  Probably not.  Does my major in English give me some greater humility?  Definitely not. 

Before we left the museum, we took off our outer layers of clothing to reveal our inappropriate shirts.  Bryan was wearing a shirt that said, "I went to church and all I got was this lousy t-shirt (and a guilt complex).  Sean's read, "Fossils, not Gospels," and I of course was wearing my ubiquitous "I Think I Pinched Something" shirt.  Bryan and I posed by the dinosaur out front, a little sad.  We were sad for the human race, sad that we had come to mock nice people.



But then Sean and I took a much happier picture.  We were happy that we had escaped with our lives, happy that we had gotten to view Creation from another perspective.  That has to be worth something, right?  (About 19 bucks - the cost of admission)



It was fascinating.  I really do try to be fairly open-minded.  But there are some myths that are just too damaging to accept.  In an exhibit about Noah's Ark, a normal-looking family was checking out a picture of the boat adrift during the float. 



There was this conversation - see if it sounds familiar.

"Mommy, how was Noah able to survive for all that time with all of those animals on the boat?"
"Because, honey, that's what The Bible tells us."
"Oh."

Actually I read it today.  It doesn't say that.  It's pretty vague.

The child actually posed a very intelligent question.  According to the museum, all of the dinosaurs were on the Ark with Noah.  So after The Fall, how did
Noah and his family survive a harrowing journey with massive predators aboard?
His mother knew the answer, and I'll bet that kid won't be asking any more questions for a while.  His curiosity has been silenced, and that makes me very sad.

When religion becomes a convenient excuse for not having to explain difficult uncertainties about life, that's when it becomes dangerous.  I do not know many of the answers.  Actually, sometimes I do have an answer:  "I don't know."  Sometimes it's ok to simply not know.

It could not rain at all tomorrow, and that would be ok with me.