According to a story featured by the Christian news service AgapePress, “A biblical creationism museum in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas is attracting thousands of visitors each month and gaining more notoriety by the day.” You have to wonder what’s in the museum, given creationism’s only basis, Genesis. But it gets better.

The museum is a joint effort of the Oklahoma-based Creation Truth Foundation and Eureka Springs’ Great Passion Play Outdoor Bible Theme Park. That’s right, a “theme park”: a place where everything is artificial, fictional and meant to amuse, which is exactly what the creationism museum is and does.

According to the AgapePress story, museum creator Thomas Sharp believes “secularization” (aka “scientific knowledge”) begins “with the spinout of the dinosaur story because you’ve got death and pain and suffering being promoted by this dinosaur story before man ever walks on the scene.” The AgapePress story clarified: “The Museum of Earth History’s founder believes the concept of pain and death having existed before original sin is in conflict with the Genesis account of creation and the fall of man,” both of which creationists believe occurred approximately 6000 years ago.

“Spin out of the dinosaurs”? And they actually want this creationism nonsense taught as science in public schools?

Despite the vast archeological and anthropological records that seriously conflict with creationists’ 6000-year history and the literary record left by human civilizations that existed prior to the writing of Genesis, museum director Sharp claims there was no pain and suffering prior to “God’s” nasty trick: when the all-knowing “God” created two humans, set them up in a test he knew (being “all-knowing”) they’ll fail and when they did, he damned them and cursed all humans with “original sin.” How’s that for a father figure role model?

According to a follow-up AgapePress article, Thomas Sharp believes “we have the possibility in the near future, if the church in America can prepare herself and will engage the culture with biblical reality, that we can have an awakening in this country because we’re seeing a transition in worldview at the academic level. There’s a great shift taking place from Darwinism to intelligent design.”

Director Sharp added, “The biblical view is that we don’t hesitate to identify who the intelligence is”: the mean-spirited, cruel, homicidal “God” of Genesis who, in a fit of rage, murdered the entire human race, except for the family of Noah who, apparently with “God’s” blessing, came to “know” (in the biblical sense) his daughters.

Sharp claims (without evidence: the museum’s hallmark) that “a transition in worldview at the academic level” is occurring. It is not. Academically and scientifically, evolution is unquestioned. But since Sharp brought up academics, academically speaking the word “god” derives from Sanskrit “hu, to sacrifice (to), whence huta-, one to whom sacrifice is offered.” In other words, “god” is the thing living beings are murdered in order to honor. The Old Testament is filled with animal sacrifices (“burnt offerings,” as they were called), and “God” did demand a human sacrifice from Abraham, but eventually settled for Isaac’s foreskin. The final notation in Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary was most appropriate: “Not allied with good, adj.”

In keeping with that non-good-ness, the “God” of the Bible has a unique penchant for scatology:

If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.

Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it. (Malachi 2: 2-3)

That being the case, it’s not surprising M.G. “Pat” Robertson claims to have repeatedly spoken with that “God” of the Bible and conveyed their communal thoughts, such as when Pat said

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.

On August 22, 2005, televangelist Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The reasons he offered for this murder in the name of “God” and country were that Chavez was bent on exporting “Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas.” Aside from the fact that “communism” has historically been staunchly atheistic, isn’t Pat’s call-to-murder a glowing example of “Christian extremism”?

The Philadelphia Inquirer polled its readers about Robertson’s Christian call-to-murder. A common theme was summarized by this poignant posting:

In calling for the democratically elected leader of a foreign government to be assassinated Reverend Roberts is only spreading the message of love, compassion of his lord and savior Jesus Christ. Even though Jesus said, what you do to the least of these you do to me, even though his message was one of love, even though Jesus said, love thy neighbor as thyself, I guess Jesus made exceptions [for] Presidents of other countries who criticized the policies of the US. In these cases, the [ten] commandments, even though Robertson supports having them displayed in public schools and government buildings, simply do not apply. What the commandment really says is, “Thou shall not kill (unless Pat Robertson say to).”

That Pat Robertson would openly call for the murder of a democratically elected political leader is not that surprising. Also not surprising is the deafening silence from some of the leaders of the evangelical Christian Right who did not uttered one word of criticism after Robertson’s statement. Their silence confirms their complicity.

The politicians that the Christian Right bankrolls have also been dubiously silent. And for the Bush administration to say that Robertson was speaking “as a private citizen” was the epitome of absurdity. How many “private citizens” do you know who have their own syndicated TV show, command an international media empire, and exercise the social, political and financial clout Robertson does?

On Wednesday, August 24, 2005, Pat Robertson offered an “explanation” for his comments. It was difficult not to laugh while reading it:

I didn’t say ‘assassination.’ I said our special forces should ‘take him out.’ And ‘take him out’ can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP [Associated Press], but that happens all the time.

Kidnapping the duly elected president of another country is just as bad, Pat! Your subsequent “apology” is vacuous. Your record speaks for itself. As does your “God’s.”

Creationism museum director Sharp, Pat Robertson and the other leaders of the Christian Right make clearer every day that the “biblical worldview” they claim to represent is worse than irrelevant, it’s dangerous because truth is its archenemy. Only power – social, political and financial – matter. As Bishop John Shelby Spong recently put it, “Human beings are responsible for the creation of every doctrine of God, every creed and every religious system. Since that it true then we should expect to see our religious ideas be constantly corrupted by the human need to control and to build power.”

Pat Robertson made that clear this week, as did James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, both of whom reported being “too busy” to comment on evangelist Robertson’s call-to-murder or his ridiculous “explanation.” A quick visit to either organization’s web site confirms they’re busy alright… promoting hatred of gays Americans and trying to gain political control of America’s courts. Pat would, no doubt, be pleased…

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