Millions... Of years.... Ago.... (Let's all bow together)

Earlier this week, we took Logan to the Museum of Nature, you know, the castle museum in downtown Ottawa.  We thought it would be a good thing to take him to see.  He loves dinosaurs.  He loves animals.  There is a lot of the building that you can't even get into right now.  They are doing a big renovation of the museum.  It does look like it will be very cool when it is done.

I found the place very disturbing though.  For those that don't know, I tend to lean towards Intelligent Design or even Biblical Creation as the theory of choice for the origin of the universe.  I have been studying the issue for about 20 years, so it is not that I haven't run into these things before.

I guess what got to me was that several million dollars were being pumped into this place for the "worship" of the theory of evolution.  There were several things that I saw that threw out the caution flags in the way that some of the things were presented.  Maybe it is me being the natural skeptic, but if you want me to buy into this whole theory of evolution, you're going to have to show me some good solid evidence.  With the way that museums are done now, you never know what things are real, what things are replicas, and what things are diagrams or models from someone's imagination to illustrate what they think MIGHT have happened, but is presented as what DID happen.

The dinosaur display was much better than when I was a kid.  It used to be one small room with some bones around the outside and a main skeleton in the centre of the room.  Now there are three or four main rooms.  One has some extrapolated replica dinosaurs, one has some "transitional" skeletons.  There was an elevated area with more "prehistoric" stuff, and there was a big room with some INCREDIBLE skeletons.

So much of it was presented as fact, when there is NO WAY anyone could "know" what happened millions or billions of years ago.... if such history even existed.  No matter your worldview about origins, it comes down to faith and our best guess based on what we can see today.  I was disturbed to see some people just swallow the whole thing hook, line and sinker.  Where is the skepticism that they would have put forth if they were in a creation museum?  Where is the critical thinker?

Let me be honest.  I believe in a literal 6 day creation 10,000 years ago.  I have answered several questions that I had in my own mind, and I still have many questions to find answers to.  My faith is in the Bible.

Most of this debate has nothing to do with where people think that they came from.  It seems to focus more along where you want to live your life on the line of morality.  No God = no rules (But don't let me catch you saying that there can't be a God because of all the evil in the world though.)  God = He makes the rules.  And people have several different views in between.  

Anyways... Think... ask questions.... Don't assume that a museum designer has it all.  Textbooks are rarely accurate.  I can remember my science teachers telling us in class that things were not correct in the textbooks.  There are many perspectives.  

Oh, and I can't stand that "Darwin" sticker that makes fun of the Christian Ichthus fish.  One of the staff members at the museum had one.