New Bible-Based Museum Has Dinosaurs

Charter patrons of the Creation Museum stop during a tour of the new facility to chat next to a dinosaur display in Petersburg, Ky., Thursday, May 24, 2007. The Creation Museum opens to the public on Memorial Day. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke) (Ed Reinke - AP)

Fancy might best describe the facility's multimedia rooms, where no expense is spared. After a stop at its digital planetarium, museum guides steer visitors into a 200-seat special-effects theater with seats that quiver as the sound system rumbles. Up on the screen, two angelic characters proclaim to the audience that "God loves science!"

But the creation story found in Genesis is the centerpiece of the museum. Patrons walk through a lush recreation of the Garden of Eden, see life-sized models of Adam and Eve frolic and then get banished. Then it's on to the era of the Great Flood, where animatronic workers are busy building Noah's giant ark, which rises two or three stories inside the museum.

Ham enlisted Patrick Marsh, designer of the animatronic "Jaws" monster at Universal Studios in Florida, to oversee the exhibits. When fully staffed, the building will house about 160 museum workers, along with an additional 140 employees at the Answers in Genesis headquarters attached to the Creation Museum.

Ham started the ministry in his native Australia, and came to northern Kentucky in the early 1990s with the idea of building a museum that could stand as a beachhead for creationist study.

He had plenty of supporters, who helped fund the museum, allowing it to open free of debt. Ham said the museum received three gifts topping $1 million.

"Christians across this nation see this place as a rallying point," he said. They "recognize that we live in a culture that no longer believes the Bible is true."

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