Science at the Creation Museum

What happens when a group of scientists—attendees at the North American Paleontological Convention—take a trip to the Creation Museum? Science and religion clash, that's what.

The New York Times has an article this week about that very occurrence, with interviews with both the scientists and the staff at the Museum. There are some scary things in what the creationists have to say. Apparently the Great Flood was the cause of everything that turned the world into what it is today, including creating the layers of soil and rock that paleontologists dig through, as well as separating the continents and putting them where they are (all in a matter of a few days, not over the course of billions of years). One wonders what happened to all of the lava that would have welled up if you had ripped apart a massive land mass that quickly.

One also must wonder if the Great Flood changed the rate at which carbon-14 decays, since that's how scientists determine how old the various layers of soil and rock are. Did carbon-14 decay more quickly before the flood? Did God change the laws of nature on us, just to confuse us? Was He trying to deceive us into thinking that the world is billions of years old?

Or is it more likely that the Bible was written by people, not by God, people who are by their very nature flawed? The earliest stories in the Bible happened long before the Hebrews had a written language, so they were told verbally from one generation to the next. Isn't it possible—even likely—that some of the stories may have changed a little bit with the telling over tens or hundreds or thousands of generations? Not to mention the fact that there are numerous versions of the Bible, some of which have had translational errors over the years. So why do people insist on ignoring scientific evidence and believing that the Bible, as written, is the Word of God?