so THAT'S what eden was like!

Random - 22
Originally uploaded by papervault.

take a moment to let this picture sink in. it is what it looks like: adam, reclining in the garden with some small raptor-like dinasaur just chillin' next to him. the things they don't tell you in sunday school! alas, there is a man who is attempting (with hundreds of thounsands of dollars of funding) to answer the age-old question "where do the dinasaurs fit into a seven-day creation?" or, more accurately, the question "is it possible to reconcile creationism with evolutionism?" a guy named ken ham believes that it is not only possible, but that it is fact. he believes it so strongly that he is in the midst of constructing a creation museum to supplement his own online ministry, answers in genesis.

jerry falwell proclaims ken to be "the most informed creationist in america."

a few thoughts. i don't want to sound like i am being anti-evangelical or anti-conservative or any of those things. but i do believe that a museum like this hurts the face of christianity in america. this cannot be the only face of christianity that people see. this museum seems ridiculous to me, and i don't wonder if ken could have done better to invest the hundreds of thousands of dollars that are being poured into this museum into food pantries or global health organizations or anything that will actually demonstrate christian love to this world. but to spend so much money into trying to convince people that adam had a pet t-rex? it makes me mad.

i get very frustrated with any strain of christianity that claims that it has everything figured out. i need room for the mystery of God. this museum doesn't really give me that room. i mean, who knows? maybe adam and eve really did coexist with dinasaurs in the garden, and maybe dinasaurs were there with noah on the ark. but don't tell me that as fact. don't claim to have God figured out.

i can't decide if this museum makes me want to laugh or cry....to get angry or to gag. all i know is that i feel like it is a disgrace to christianity and a completely misplaced emphasis on what it is to be Christ to the world.