Creation Museum - Displays and Exhibits

Displays and Exhibits

Kurt Wise was hired as scientific consultant for the project and played a major role in designing the exhibits, which are intended to be state-of-the-art, and include 52 professionally made videos. In addition to large movie screens showing a young-Earth history of the world, the museum also features a 78-seat planetarium depicting creationist cosmologies and a 200-seat special-effects theater with seats that vibrate and jets that can spray the audience with mist. Many of the displays were designed by Patrick Marsh, who had formerly worked for Universal Studios designing attractions such as Jaws and King Kong before becoming a born-again Christian and young Earth creationist.

Among its exhibits, the museum features life-size dinosaur models, over 80 of them animatronic (animated and motion-sensitive). Model dinosaurs are depicted in the Garden of Eden, many of them side-by-side with human figures. In one exhibit, a Triceratops and a Stegosaurus are shown aboard a scale model of Noah's Ark.

A major portion of the displays relates to the Great Flood as described in Genesis 6-9. The message is that the world prior to the flood was significantly and fundamentally different from the world we know today. The Flood is presented as literally real, a global catastrophe which fundamentally altered the landscape of the Earth, and was the event that produced most of the geologic features (fossils, sedimentary strata, canyons, continents) we observe today.

The museum is critical of evolutionary theory that links dinosaurs with the origins of birds. The second room of the creation museum for example displays a model prehistoric raptor, stating that the species was featherless and had no connection to birds; this is a reference to Genesis 1, which states that birds were created before the advent of land animals. Biologists and paleontologists, however, point out that the recent discovery of a Velociraptor forearm bearing quill knobs, distinct structural parts of bones into which feathers are anchored, provides further evidence that the species did indeed have feathers.

Other rooms on the tour depict Old Testament prophets, Martin Luther stressing the importance of using faith as a tool against contrary evidence, and a video presentation on the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. Some of the rooms on the tour show modern times and espouse the view that families and society are hurt by a world view which is not Biblically based. In one video, a male teenager is shown sitting at a computer looking at internet pornography and a female teenager speaks with Planned Parenthood about having an abortion; both acts are portrayed as the result of a world view which is not Biblically based. The belief that the Earth is "millions of years" old is also portrayed as deriving from a non-Biblical starting point. The climax of the tour is the life of Jesus Christ, with a three screen depiction of the crucifixion. The exhibits have been called "painstakingly detailed" and even critics have agreed that "Answers in Genesis has gone to great lengths to make their new museum a place that has quality displays". The museum also includes a restaurant, outdoor walking trails, and a medieval-themed gift shop.

In 2009, the Creation Museum added a one room display devoted to Charles Darwin. The display "argues that natural selection—Darwin's explanation how new species develop because of new traits or new environments—can coexist with the creationist assertion that all living things were created by God just a few thousand years ago."

The museum is planning on building a full-size replica of Noah's Ark, which will be called the Ark Encounter. The Ark will cost $24.5 million to build and is expected to be completed in 2014.