DINOSAURS AND NOAH'S ARK

DINOSAURS AND NOAH'S ARK. Have you ever wondered how creationists manage to squeeze the dinosaurs into the ark? This is the sort of research problem one faces when believing in the Bible as the literal explanation of creation. But the creationists are up to the challenge:

The Ark easily had room for the dinosaurs (as you can see in other articles in this issue). First, the Ark was the size of a huge cargo ship (at least 450 ft [137 m] long). Second, there weren't many different kinds of dinosaurs (only about 50 "kinds"). Third, God most likely brought the smaller juvenile dinosaurs, not the aging adults, because they would be better suited for the voyage and the responsibilities of reproducing rapidly after the Flood.

You can find much more about the alternative prehistory at the Creation Museum. (Charlie Pierce wrote about it for Esquire in 2005.) What you might not see there any longer is the video showing Adam. This is because the actor playing Adam turns out not to be a very wholesome person:

The man who plays Adam in a video aired at a Bible-based creationist museum has led a different life outside the Garden of Eden, flaunting his sexual exploits online and modeling for a clothing line that promotes free love.

After learning about his activities Thursday, the Creation Museum in Kentucky pulled the 40-second video in which he appears.

Why am I writing about this today? Because a recent USA Today poll found that 66 percent of the poll respondents think that God created human beings pretty much in their current form within the last 10,000 years. Confusingly, the same poll also finds that 53 percent of the respondents believe that human beings developed from "less developed" forms of live over millions of years.

Odd how seldom I read about the creation story as a metaphor in this country. While that treatment is fairly common among Christians in Europe, many American churches have decided to support a literal interpretation, come hell or high water. This is unfortunate, as a metaphoric interpretation could reconcile science and faith.

--J. Goodrich