Jerry Falwell, self appointed mouthpiece of God. August 11, 1933 – May 15, 2007
Jerry Falwell, sadly, didn’t live long enough to experience the Grand Opening on May 28 of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.
I’m sure that he would have jumped at the chance to view animatronic exhibits depicting humans and dinosaurs living together on the Earth and the planetarium, which presents to the astronomically curious Christian a selection of “creationist cosmologies” all unfolding within the approved Biblical time span of six thousand years.
A display at the Creation Museum near Cincinnati, Ohio
Jerry probably studied this stuff when he went to school at Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, but he would have relished the chance to witness the sharing of the true, biblically correct, “history” of the universe with a new generation of inquiring young minds.
After a lifetime devoted to the dissemination of the kind of claptrap which is the stock in trade of the museum, which was created through 27 million dollars in donations to “Answers In Genesis” (AiG), a non-profit Christian ministry which focuses on “young Earth creationism” and rejects such secular scientific theory and theorists as evolution and Darwin, relativity and Einstein, and just about every rational thinker in human history, favoring instead the first three books of the Bible as the authoritative text on natural sciences, history, morality and in short, everything else worth knowing.
The tagline on the Creation Museum website is “Prepare to believe” followed by a countdown in days, minutes and seconds until the blessed event (Grand Opening).
Admission :
* Adult (13-59 yrs) $19.95
* Senior (60 yrs & up) $14.95
* Children (5-12 yrs) $9.95
* Children (under 5 yrs) Free
* Planetarium with admission, $5
Bill Maher paid a covert visit to the museum back in April and was apparently the first visitor, a fact which I doubt will be engraved on a plaque near the front door.
The facility, the crowning achievement of Answers in Genesis, which defends a biblical worldview including its account of Creation, was visited unexpectedly – and covertly – by comedian Bill Maher, formerly of ABC’s “Politically Incorrect” and lately of HBO’s “Real Time,” and who once said Christians suffer from a neurological disorder.
Ken Ham, president of the organization, calls the incident part of “an elaborate media deception.”
“A video crew with so-called ‘First Word Productions’ arranged to come to AiG to visit the museum for a documentary on world religions,” explains Ham. “At the end of their three-hour visit and taping, they wanted to do a sit-down interview with me in my office. They asked permission to drive around the back of the building to bring in their equipment. Then one of the crew members distracted a staff member who was with me and – without registering with our security office, as they knew had to be done – they propped open a back door and sneaked HBO commentator and comedian Bill Maher into my office. I only vaguely recognized him, and just figured this person was a latecomer to the filming.”
Those who are currently wringing hands, rending garments and beating breasts at the passing of Falwell will take some solace in the knowledge that AiG’s website gets nearly 50,000 hits every day, Pat Robertson and James Dobson still inhale oxygen and exhale fundamentalist bunkum, and there are over 150 graduates of Robertson’s Regent University employed in a Federal Executive Department still presided over by Born Again George the Compassionate Conservative, the Decider, who just has decided that funding AIDs programs in Africa should not involve condoms but should focus instead on abstinence.
Weep not children, all is not lost, bullshit still has a prayer, when one religious wacko falls, a dozen more shall rise in righteous self delusion to take his place. The wonderful people who gave us the Inquisition, the burning of the library at Alexandria, all of history’s pogroms, and the destruction of the World Trade Center are alive and still energetically and joyfully performing the Lord’s work.
Bob Higgins
