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God Loves You, You Heathen We sat on a bench overlooking the Grand Canyon., but we weren't interested in the view. Frankly, we'd had enough of the place. This wasn't the real Grand Canyon, merely a representation of that geological wonder -- and a poor one at that. A mural covered one wall of the room, made to look as though you were standing at the precipice of the great abyss. Wooden posts and a rope fence guarded us from stepping too close to the imaginary edge. I was beginning to notice a pattern here, of reproductions and simulacra, pseudo-reality, a swindle perpetrated by the Grand Huckster Himself. My new lover and I had just spent two hours wandering through the Museum of Creation and Earth History, a 4,000-square-foot facility dedicated to creationism. I went looking for a little insight into that swath of America that believes the universe is just 6,000 to 10,000 years old, that it was all created in 7 days, and that human beings sprang fully developed from the hand of God. According to a 2001 Gallup Poll, 45% of American adults hold such views. The Museum of Creation and Earth History is easy enough to find, if you know the right people. Twenty miles east of San Diego is an arid landscape strewn with the pre-fabricated detritus of life at the edge of suburbia: a monotony of industrial parks, strip malls and auto shops. It's as good a place as any to get sucked into a cult, and an unlikely place for a date. Missing the turn-off, we stopped at a 7-11 in Santee to ask for directions. The woman behind the counter wearing the requisite red vest shrugged indifference when she realized we were not there to purchase 42-ounce Slurpees and Ding Dongs. She made vague intimations about getting on the freeway and driving west, back the way we came. "You don't belong here," is what I heard. Michael persisted. "Do you know where the Museum of Creation and Earth History is?" At this her features softened. She even cracked a smile. "Oh, you're one of us," her new demeanor suggested, and she cheerfully directed us to the museum. The tidy, utilitarian structure stands next to and is supported by the Institute for Creation Research, which offers graduate studies in Science Education and boasts four science labs and a computer center. The museum itself strives to prove that science is on the side of creationism. The museum charges no admission price. But racks of pamphlets and books litter the entryway, with titles like Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No, and That Their Words May Be Used Against Them. Inside the lobby -- a tiny room lined with more books and videos for sale -- a schoolmarmish woman wearing glasses on a chain welcomed us. At first whiff, the professional-looking museum smells only faintly of cult -- instead offering the heady scent of pseudo-science. The exhibits debunk such generally accepted scientific tenets as the Big Bang Theory, radioactive dating and, of course, evolution. We entered a hallway covered with paintings of swirling gases and masses of heaven and earth, light and dark, greenery, and all that was good (creation Days 1-3). In a room dedicated to the explanation of the solar system (Day 4), we learned that the Big Bang is a big hoax unsupported by empirical evidence. "During the creation period, the velocity of light could have been infinite, so that stars were seen on Earth as soon as God created them," noted one placard, without offering empirical evidence that light has ever traveled any faster than, well, the speed of light. Days 5 and 6 explained the creation of all living creatures on Earth. The room dripped with fecundity: a verdantly painted backdrop, plastic vines and palm fronds snaking across the walls, warm lighting, the sounds of crickets chirping and frogs ribbeting. It was almost enough to lull us into a Paleozoic rapture. Live animals -- birds, fish, insects, frogs, a hamster and a snake -- were on display in small glass terrariums. A glass case was filled with hundreds of delicate, colorful butterflies pinned to a wall, crucified for our edification. Michael felt a poem coming on. My heart went aflutter.
Caged bird The mood of the exhibit then took a turn toward the apocalyptic. The walls screamed with headlines like "The Fall of Man," "Entropy" and "Universal Disorder," along with piped-in sounds of wailing babies and buzzing flies. Human skulls and jars of dead animals preserved in formaldehyde leered behind glass cases under harsh red lighting. We held hands tentatively, like Adam and Eve as they were cast out of Eden, and bravely stepped into a new era of human history and nautical ingenuity. While there have been numerous ark sightings since the dawn of photography -- as evidenced by the drawings and descriptions of contemporary religious historians -- curiously, no photos of the massive floating zoo exist. Even Sasquatch and Nessie deign to pose for a few shots now and then. But at The Museum of Creation and Earth History, there is a photo op where you can pose as if standing on the ark's deck. A small sign here reads, "No running in the museum." The sign features a drawing of a presumably rule-breaking child scampering off the edge of a cliff, taking the guardrail with him, a snapping alligator waiting below. We could only presume that it's at this point in the exhibit that heathens with defective worldviews like our own are apt to run screaming from the museum. By the time we entered the Grand Canyon room, our heads were swimming with pseudo-science and anecdotal information. "Radioactive dating is based on untestable and unreasonable assumptions. It is discordant, anomalous and therefore invalid." The terminology is all very convincing. But we ignored the geological evidence of the flood -- saber tooth tiger skulls, the layers of Earth's crust, Mount St. Helens -- and threw ourselves onto a wooden bench. We looked out across the faux expanse of the canyon. There was nothing for us to learn here, no cataclysm in the chasm, no movement by the prime mover. We looked at each other and laughed. What if we took a different reading on all this, Michael suggested. Radioactive dating: That's what we were doing here. What better place to create than the Museum of Creation? Be fruitful and multiply and all that. We could find a hidden nook within the volcano's cone, beneath the painted lava. Mount St. Helens blowing her top. Earth-shaking revelations. We were saboteurs, infiltrators, lusty beasts. Our expedition concluded at a diagram of the gnarled and fruitless Evolutionary Tree. It asserted that the root of all deviant behavior and harmful philosophies -- pornography, homosexuality, drug use and let's not forget Marxism -- is the theory of evolution. We could see the woman at the entrance, which was also the exit, anxiously awaiting our arrival back into the bookstore. We whispered, just out of earshot. I called Michael a compulsive, occultist, dog-loving fornicator. "It's a good thing I have drugs and homosexual tendencies," he said. "I might not be able to make it through the rest of the day." I shushed him and laughed wickedly. The schoolmarm peered severely over her glasses at us. We stifled giggles. She was onto us. We diplomatically asked her about the volume of visitors -- we were the only ones there. She went on the defensive, saying the schools were on break and that soon there'd be loads of kids every day. I imagined all those impressionable young minds clogging their intellectual arteries with a diet of McScience and shuddered. After touring the museum, I realized that creationism is a lot like hypnotism. Simply going in with an open mind isn't enough; you have to already believe in it for it to work. And I could almost bite from that tempting apple of the language of science, the science of persuasion. But there were a few distasteful worms in the core: We are cursed. Man pitted against woman and beast. Misery is the water of the world. No smoking, drinking or eating in the ether. No running on the ark. Watch out for alligators and communists. I left feeling more securely in the 55%, more confident about the scientific method, more certain about the quackery of creationists, and more convinced that Michael was the perfect candidate for my own little creation experiment. At the very least I was sure that evolutionist heathens have more fun.
Jennifer Chung is a San Diego-based freelance
writer now in love with
a dog-loving occultist fornicator. She has written for The San Diego
Union-Tribune, The North County Times, San Diego CityBeat, Gay &
Lesbian Times, Asia Journal, and various other publications. |
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