The adam and eve creation story is also the creation story of the Jews and Muslims, so yes, people here are mocking those as well.

Adam and Eve, yes. But as far as Muslims are concerned, the six-day creation and 6000-year age are not true: "Although not all the questions raised by the descriptions in the Qur'an have been completely confirmed by scientific data, there is in any case absolutely no opposition between the data in the Qur'an on the Creation and modern knowledge on the formation of the Universe."

Slogging through 12 pages of postings about this article, one can't help but getting a bit forlorn.

Most posters complain about the theology behind the museum. But that specific theology is shared by a good 40% of U.S. citizens.

Of those complainers, one wonders how many believe that if they are good, they will go to "heaven?" Is there any better basis for a belief in heaven than there is for saddled dinosaurs broken to ride?

The posters ignore the fact that perhaps the majority of that most-deluded 40% are in fact decent people who care about our world and try to do the right thing.

The 40% afraid to die in large part, so they try to propitiate "the" god by believing in some fairly vacuous silliness. How many posters, on the other hand, aren't afraid to die?

The 40% constitute a large majority of the people who believe Bush no matter what humbug he's pushing, even when the words, even as they are spilling out his mouth, are as disprovable as the fantasy about the Biblical "flood" and the Grand Canyon.

And that goes to the core of the problem, perhaps. How may we sway them to believe that global warming is more real than are the prayers of Pat Robertson or James Dobson? How can we get them to understand that the Constitution never meant to force the working and middle classes to pay for the private schooling of the children of the rich? How can they learn that AIDS is not the well-deserved consequences of sin, but a problem to be dealt with rationally including via legitimate sex education and population control programs? How can we get them to understand that the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are at least as important as the continued existence of some unfettered monozygote swimming around in a uterus?

These things are important. Anger and disdain won't rectify or ameliorate these problems any more than quoting scripture will.

There are a million and one things wrong about this idiotic museum, but the worst might be that the people who visit this without irony also vote.

Can American democracy survive a system in which people who believe that early man lived side by side with dinosaurs are also allowed to vote?

Keep up the good work, see you in heaven, hell or wherever. We all have to die whether or not we believe in the crap presented in this "Museum" and spread by the likes of Falwell, Roberts and those who digraced themselves by not even living up to their preachings. The sun still revolves around the earth, which by rhe way is still flat and on its foundation! What is scary, however, is the number of ignorants like you in a supposedly enlightened society. Heil Bush!

This article is amazing. Think of it, $27 million has been spent to create a monument dedicated to otherwise intelligent and mature human beings' seemingly infinite capacity for delusion and rationalization! If there is indeed a God, why is H. L. Mencken not here when his country needs him?

There are so many aspects of this place that anger me. I agree with the physics professor interviewed in that it is an anti-science institution. More than that, it is anti-thought, racist, homophobic, political, culturally biased, ridiculous, mendacious -- if not for the 1000 word limit of this comment, I would come up with another 6000 criticisms for each and every one of the 6000 years of their incredible history, which is as far from the history in which I majored at college as the remotest galaxy is from our planet.

Nevertheless, groups such as Answers in Genesis have a right to their beliefs and to spend their money how they like, and those of us who disagree, must try to extinguish the animosity we may feel. Of course, it is difficult to silence our antagonism when such places are given titles they do not merit. The word museum comes the ancient Greek mouseion, meaning 'shrine of the Muses,' and obviously predates Christianity. The modern concept of the museum is one of the many begotten by the Renaissance, a time that brought Western Civilization out of the Middle Ages, encouraging people to analyze and think critically. The so-called 'Creation Museum' does just the opposite, in the audacious guise of what it is not. Could they have named it something else?

I heard about this on NPR and was interested in learning more. Your article was great! It felt like a tour and I think you are a more appropriate tourguide for me than say, one of the wingnuts that created or works in the place.

What next?!

I love mythology. I want to go see this museum someday. Mythology is cool. I wish there were more museums for different religions, and I could go look at dioramas of their myths.

god is such a trickster!

Presumably public schools will not be making field trips to this theme park, but the real intention is to use it to indoctrinate the children of fundamentalist families. It would just be an amusing folly if it did not have this sinister purpose.

It will also provide more ammunition for all those citizens of the world who believe that Americans are collectively crazy.

However, the response to this is surely that freedom of religion means allowing people to believe what they believe, regardless of whether it seems rational.

couldn't the money used to build this monument to denial have been used to help those truly in need of it? what a terrible waste of funds, time and purpose...