Canada now has the unfortunate distinction of its own creationism museum in Big Valley Alberta, for those who, in the words of Warren Kinsella, think the Flintstones is a documentary:
Dinosaurs once walked alongside humans. The bloodline of King Henry VI of England can be traced back to Adam and Eve. There's proof in the dirt beneath Saskatchewan that the biblical flood really happened.
And planet Earth is just 6,000 years old, give or take a few centuries.
Walk through the doors of the Big Valley Creation Science Museum, and you get a very different version of the planet's past than gets taught in most classrooms.
Set to open June 5, the 900-sq.-ft. bungalow offers fossils, models of dinosaurs, multimedia presentations and professional-looking displays - all designed to poke big holes in the theory of evolution.
"This is a scientific museum," said founder Harry Nibourg, a 46-year-old evangelical who built and stocked the museum about 200 kilometres northeast of Calgary at a cost of about $300,000 - mostly out of his own pocket.
"This is compelling evidence for a creator. We want people to come take a look at it for themselves and make up their own minds."
Vance Nelson, executive director of Creation Truth Ministries, offers guided tours. He said evolution is as much based on "blind faith" as creationism.
"I have no problem with survival of the fittest," he said. "But survival of the fittest does not explain the origin of the fittest.
"Who was there to see the Big Bang? (Evolution is) based on presuppositions, assumptions and biases like all historical theory. Creationism and evolution are on the same level playing field and should be debated that way."
This is believed to be Canada's first permanent creationist museum. There are several in the U.S., including one opening in Kentucky on Monday that reportedly cost $27 million US to build.
Critics, meanwhile, say they have no problem with creationism - but they insist it can't be called science if it's based on a theological concept that can't be tested."Our goal is to understand the natural world using what we can see or scientifically prove," said Heather Addy, an biology instructor at the University of Calgary.
"When you invoke a supernatural being as a creator that is not science, and shouldn't be taught as science."
No kidding.
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