Bill Oliver, Professor and Chair of the Chemistry Department at Northern Kentucky University, spoke on his experiences with creationism and on the recent efforts of the fundamentalist mission organization Answers in Genesis to build a "museum" in Boone County. Oliver was raised in a fundamentalist church and is therefore familiar with the mindset of those who feel Genesis must be read literally and the earth must be only about 6000 years old, and has undergone a world-wide flood which Noah's family survived on the ark, along with two of every species of animal. This presumably includes the largest and fiercest dinosaurs, since nothing in Genesis excludes them.
As preposterous as this sounds, this is exactly the position of the young earth creationists represented by Answers in Genesis. They will not advance their young earth position in most forums; instead they work to gather support from other religious folks who are inclined to "rally round" Christians who are being attacked by scientists, in much the same way that African-Americans rallied around O. J. Simpson, whether they believed him guilty or not. It has been Bill's experience that many churchgoers who are inclined to support creationism are not aware that the leaders of creationism adopt such an extreme position with regard to the literal truth of Genesis.
Although Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati have largely been free of creationism activities, Answers in Genesis appears poised to change that. There is little doubt their efforts at building a museum will be followed by attempts to have "intelligent design", "abrupt appearance" and other euphemisms for creationism taught in the public schools. This has been the experience in other locales, i.e. San Diego, where creationists have settled and built such a creation museum.
It is not clear what approaches should be taken to combat them, beyond vigorously resisting their efforts to incorporate their religion into the public schools. Bill did not recommend debating them in a public forum since long experience has shown that their naive arguments are much more appealing to non-scientific laypersons than the more difficult, sometimes mathematical, scientific points that need to be made. Furthermore, experience has shown that these so-called Christians are not above distortions and outright lies during debates. While we all deplore the building of their "museum", they can legitimately point to the fact that they are building it on private property with private funds. Bill pointed out that this argument was hard for him to argue against personally, especially since he was not a resident of Boone County. It is sad that Northern Kentucky, which has largely been free of creationist influence, has to endure this assault on common sense. Experience has taught us, however, that the creationists' influence will still be minor, since they are such a tiny minority, even of most conservative Protestant churches. It was pointed out that future efforts opposing the museum and other creationist initiatives would profit from association with some mainstream ministers who are opposed to the creationists.
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