Here Be Dragons

1
Origins
How Life on Earth Beganl
t
T he Museum of Creation and Earth History stands on a freeway
frontage road in Santee, California, a nondescript suburb tucked
among the low hills east of San Diego. We pull into the museum's
forecourt and park backward in our space, thus concealing the
"Darwin fish" that adorns the rear of the car. We feel a slight anxiety.
The receptionist is a pleasant elderly gentleman, who nevertheless
increases our unease by asking, "You're not reporters, are you" "No,
no," we assure him truthfully, but it feels perilously close to a falsehood.
A sense of transparent culpability, not experienced since
Sunday school decades ago, accompanies us into the exhibition
rooms. For this museum raises one of the most profound questions
that humanity can ask—Where do we come from—and offers an unambiguous
answer: Scientists like ourselves have got it all wrong, and
the Bible has got it exactly right.
We move through a series of small halls, named for the Six Days of
Creation. In the first, light is divided from the darkness; in the second,
a firmament appears; in the third, the seas are divided from the dry
land. All this is visualized with the help of rather schematic artwork, to
the accompaniment of classical music. Things get a little more ani-