sgmrt: kentucky

[ljplicease]

Apparently at my new job there was a rumor going around that I was there for a wedding (although not for my wedding at least). Not so! I was just there to hang out with Lena, who was there for a conference. It was a nice break from the long days of driving!

In Louisville, Lena and I went to the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory and took a tour of the factory where they showed us how they made the wooden baseball bats. They were at pains to mention that the forests that the bats were coming from were in net growth, which is good. They showed us the differences in how the bats were made for retail and how they were made for professional players. They gave us tiny little souvenir bats. Lena tried out the batting cage.

I feel bad about putting the Creation Museum in Kentucky in my writings here, because I remember the locals were against having the museum here. The founder Ken Ham is in fact from Queensland (which is in Australia’s defense our crazy state), but when he couldn’t find anyone in Australia who agreed with his literalist interpretation of the Bible (and Genesis in particular), he moved to America. The reason the Museum is in Kentucky is because it is a short distance from Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport, which makes it easily accessible to most Americans living in the United States. I am always the first to point out that Mel Gibson is from update New York and has never held Australian Citizenship when he comes up, so it’s only fair that we take “credit” for Ken Ham and to some extent Answers in Genesis (AiG) which runs the museum.

It might be a reasonable question to ask why we were going to the Creation Museum. Neither of us are Young Earth Creationists. Ever since I read about the Creation Museum I have wanted to see it. At first I am not entirely sure why. But what I love about the Creation Museum is the Dinosaurs and the focus on Genesis, the first book in the Old Testament. They also postulate that stories about Dragons may in fact been about Dinosaurs since we know that Dinosaurs and man coexisted since it says so in the bible. I love Dinosaurs, and I have a special place in my heart for Dragons since according to the Chinese Zodiac I am a Dragon. Genesis is also my favorite book in the bible. Well, I should say Genesis is the only book in the bible I managed to get through without falling asleep, but let’s not worry about that too much. Even though I am not a believer, I did want to get into the spirit of things a little bit, and I wanted to be respectful. When I went to the Hermitage, I didn’t much like Jackson as a human being, or a president, or as a general, but I was polite to the people who thought that he was.

Of course now I that I am in the comfort of my own blog, I can be as snarky as I please :) but I have to say that I really enjoyed the Creation Museum. It was the one thing that I really wanted to do on my road trip, and I am glad that I did it. Beyond my interest in Dinosaurs, I am interested in the bible as literature and as an influence on culture. I also think it’s interesting to read about the mental gymnastics that Yong Earth Creationist (YEC) scientists go through to explain their faith. I don’t believe a word of it, but it can be interesting.

First thing I noticed was how expensive it was. It was about $60 for the pair of us. Then they photographed us so they could sell us a green screen picture with a biblically themed background pasted in. Only later I took a look at the tickets, where it informs me in helpful small type that they are allowed to photograph our person, our property and our vehicle for “security” purposes. From memory, the entrance way was defended with Freedom Planters so they must feel that they might be a target. Before we left we bought photograph of us standing in front of Noah’s Ark. I look at the photograph as I write this and I imagine myself thinking, “Shouldn’t they be calling our boarding group now?”

The first order of business was to have something to eat at Noah’s Café. I had intended to get in the spirit of the place and say grace before eating, but as usual anytime food is placed in front of me I forget what I was going to do and start eating. Although I was thinking somewhat biblically as I thought to myself “Thank Adam for original sin, so that I can eat this meat lovers pizza!

Then we walked around the pond adjacent to the Museum for some fresh air. There were several dinosaurs around the lake which I believe were lit up with Christmas lights at night. It may seem surprising that the Creation Museum which advocates bible literalism would have such a Dinosaur fetish, given that accepted scientific thought on Dinosaurs puts them at Millions of years old and not living contemporarily with human beings. I think it’s like the Hermitage though, were they are eager to tell you all about the people who were enslaved there. Let’s get the awkward stuff out of the way first thing!

Once in the Museum proper, they explained how people can come up with different answers with the “same” evidence. This doesn’t seem particularly earth shattering to me. Some people believe that the Bible is the word of God and anything that contradicts it must be wrong. Some other people believe they can figure things out by observing how things work in practice, making theories and proving or disproving those theories. A common refrain throughout the museum were “problems” with “secular” scientists, as in “This is a problem for secular scientists.” Of course nothing that they say is really a problem with science. Science is constantly evolving theories to explain the universe. This pattern goes both ways of course, I was reading a blog critiquing AiG’s explanation for how it can be that we can see objects in the universe which are more than 6,000 light years away, and the author was sarcastically looking forward to the next explanation AiG would come up with when that one fell apart.

Then there is a mini hell house where they show us what happens when you remove God from society. There wall with a No Parking sign covered in Graffiti, and some videos. The first video features two boys in there room. One is playing “violent video games” while the other is looking at pornography on the Internet. There are clothes on the floor, so my first thought is, “hey that looks just like my room!” The next video features a pregnant teenager considering an abortion.

I know the conclusion I am supposed to draw is that without God you through morals out the door, but the one that comes to mind is: “without God, there is no parking and there are no hampers for dirty clothes!”

At the Hermitage, the jarring refrain was “Enslaved Africans” or “Enslaved Workforce”. I was a fan of Transformers from an early age, and one of the characters^[1] called Grimlock would prefix everything with "Me Grimlock"^[2]. In the Garden of Eden exhibit at the Creation Museum they had a speaker repeating (presumably) lines from the bible prefixed with “And The Lord God…” “And The Lord God…” “And The Lord God…” it wasn't at all repetitive!

There were of course Dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden. It’s okay though, because they were all vegetarians back then. Even the ones with sharp teeth obviously designed for eating meat.

They kept talking about Original Sin, and how all animals and people were vegetarians before the expulsion. I saw this poor mock dinosaur who had been killed and was about to be eaten by an animatronic dinosaur. Explain to me again how this poor guy is guilty and worth of being punished because Adam and Eve were naughty? I’ve never believed that the son should be held responsible for the sins of the father.

“If they were not ashamed [of being naked in the Garden of Eden], why is she covered up?”

—Lena

“Because we are.”

—me

Instead of “Do Not Touch” signs they had “Thou Shalt Not Touch! Please” signs.

After the Garden of Eden was Noah’s Ark, which was pretty cool (if not believable) from an Engineering perspective, but lacked the overt presence of Dinosaurs (there were Dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark; they just weren’t featured prominently in that part of the museum). Noah was in fact a crotchety old animatronic guy at the end who told us all about what he did and why. This is because God told him of course!

Some secular scientists believe that birds evolved from Dinosaurs. In fact I like to call birds “Avian-Dinosaurs”, and Dinosaurs as “non-avian-Dinosaurs”, because I like the idea of dinosaurs still being alive today. I was a little nervous that I would accidentally blurt out one of these terms by mistake while at the Museum and out myself as a secular. This put things strait for me. It says that land animals (including Dinosaurs) were created on the sixth day, whereas birds were created on day five, so clearly birds could not have evolved from dinosaurs. Everything in the museum comes down to this. And you are never going to believe what they are saying unless you already believe. Likewise, if believe what AiG is saying then you are never going to believe in “secular” science (whatever that means).

A dragon reading about himself.

I took a lot of photographs, here are a few more:

On Saturday Lena and I drove out to the Creation Museum which is near Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (SVG). Lena was flying back to New Jersey the next day so she drove us back, for a 208.1 mile loop, and a total of 2388.0 miles.

On Sunday after dropping Lena off at the Airport I drove 214.1 miles on to West Virginia for a total of 2602.1 miles.

The last day of driving I decided to delay my activity in West Virginia since I was getting tired of driving and looking forward to arriving at my final destination, the Washington DC metro area. On the last day I drove 413.5 miles.

In eight days I drove 3015.6 miles from Salt Lake City, Utah to Springfield, Virginia. In the next few weeks I hope to back track into West Virginia to do the planned activity there.

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1. who happens to transform into a Dinosaur
2. e.g. “Me Grimlock know all about wipers! Want to hear good part of story!”