Where You Should Not Take Your Family This Summer: The Creation Museum

IsThatLatin sent her readers to this Flicker account to see pictures of the Creation museum. Ever since I took a look at these (Monday) I have been haunted by the very existence of this museum, its veneer of credibility, and the large sums that must have gone into financing it. I am trying to picture what family would take their children to this museum and the damage it would cause. There are two exhibit photos in particular that trouble me:

and

Let's ignore, for the moment, the substantial racism that has gone hand in hand with most religions. And, let's put aside the fact that the Enlightenment was a huge emancipation for the common human being--and that the Enlightenment took aim precisely at the Church teachings that supported Racism and Sexism.

What is most disturbing about these images is how sinister they are in teaching young, impressionable children to "hate." So, while the explicit message is that God loves everyone and finds a place for all, the implicit and more powerful "take home message" is that God hates humans who dare exercise reason and judgment in the service of the progress of humanity. In other words, these exhibits teach children to hate, distrust, and reject reasoning that is not rooted in the blind acceptance of a particular spin on what Christianity is all about.

The exhibit is actually performing what it accuses the secular, scientific, rational thinkers of doing: create hate, intolerance and catastrophe.