The Bible as museum guide

[Amelia]

The Bible as museum guide

By Katy Human

Denver Post Staff Writer

DenverPost.com

God made dinosaurs on the sixth day of Creation, the same day he made people, according to Rusty Carter's interpretation of the Bible.

"The word 'dinosaur' was not invented back then, but in Job 38, there's two large creatures, behemoth and leviathan," said Carter, director of the Littleton-based Biblically Correct Tours, as he prepared to give his first tour of the school year.

Either or both creatures were probably dinosaurs, he said.

Nineteen kids trailed behind Carter on Saturday morning at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, most of them nodding knowingly as their tour guide pointed out flaws in exhibits.

"What do you guys think? Is the world really 4.5 billion years old?" Carter asked. "Nonsense!" one girl called out. The adults in the group smiled.

Carter said demand for his religious tours of secular sites has been continual since the company's founding in 1988, but the media's attention has exploded recently as local and state school boards across the country debate how to teach evolution.

"There's a lot of people asking questions about science," Carter said.

Tour leaders say they're trying to point out flaws in the "so-called science" of evolution, which contradicts their own understanding of Creation.

Many scientists say they have deep concerns about the "inaccurate" way creationists are portraying science.

"Science ... helps us to frame our thoughts into a logical structure," said Richard Stucky, vice president for research and collections at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

For example, evolutionary science is the only way to study how bacteria come to resist antibiotics, a critical problem in medicine today, he said.

Evolution's proof? "The millions of fossils that occur in layered sequences in rocks that show changes and adaptations over time," Stucky said.

Most of the children on Saturday's tour attend Foothills Bible Church in Littleton. About half go to public school, the rest to Christian or home schools.

Many knew creationists' critiques of evolution: that scientists' methods of dating rocks are inaccurate, for example.

For Tanner Cameron, a fifth- grade student at Shaffer Elementary, a public school in Littleton, life's history finally began to make sense Saturday.

"Ohhhh," he said as Carter's colleague Tyson Thorne explained how fossils form. Thorne's story included water, mud, sudden catastrophe ...

"They're fossilized from the flood!" Cameron exclaimed. "So maybe the dinosaurs became extinct because of the flood?"

The biblical flood fossilized dinosaurs, Thorne said, but dinosaurs made it onto the ark - all the animals did. He suspects Noah brought baby dinosaurs (because who would want an adult tyrannosaur around?), and the creatures succumbed to overhunting or climate change.

Biblically Correct's tours cost $5 a person plus entrance fees, and most of Carter's clients are from Christian schools, churches or home schools.Neither Carter nor his colleagues make a living off the tours: Carter, for example, runs a flooring business.

Carter estimated that 30,000 people have taken Biblically Corret tours of local sites - from the Denver Zoo to Garden of the Gods - since the group's founding.

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science accommodates the biblical groups graciously, Carter said, although museum volunteers have occasionally confronted tour leaders. Museum staff confirmed that.

"I can understand," Carter said. "It's offensive to them. We're kind of attacking what they believe."

What he teaches comes direct from the Bible, Carter said:

The Earth is 6,000 years old.

The fossil Lucy, purportedly a transition between ape-like creatures and humans, is shoddy science.

Organisms can't evolve from one thing into another. "You might have a small change, like a tadpole to a frog, but nothing more than that," Carter said.

Stucky, a paleontologist, has seen Biblically Correct Tours lead groups through the museum many times, he said. He appreciates their work, not only as a matter of free speech.

"I think it's great that a lot of these students are exposed to evidence from the fossil record," Stucky said.

Stucky himself grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home in Kansas. He declined to discuss his own faith but said he has deep respect for that of his parents.

"Spiritual beliefs are something only the individual can decide," Stucky said. "Science, on the other hand, is a collective enterprise."

The critical-thinking model used by scientists, which includes testing ideas about how the world works, is crucial for understanding the past and preparing for the future, he said.

"The understanding we've gained of the physical world has led to the economic prosperity of today," Stucky said.

Evolutionary science has helped conservation biologists figure out how to save species, he said. It has led to smarter agriculture and animal husbandry.

It's also closer to the "truth" than creationism, said Michael Tooley, a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "And as a philosopher, I'm inclined to say that it's rarely the case that false beliefs are beneficial to the society over the long run," Tooley said.

Tooley said he appreciated Carter's goal of teaching students to think critically about what museums tell them. He questioned, however, whether groups such as Biblically Correct Tours are applying lessons selectively.

A literal reading of the Bible not only reveals that God created people and dinosaurs the same day, Tooley said. It also says slavery is acceptable, as is the stoning to death of a woman who is not a virgin on her wedding night, he said.

At the end of the tour, Carter led a prayer to thank God for this opportunity to see God's hand at work. All 19 students said they believed Carter's interpretation of the museum's exhibits.

Did anyone think the museum got something right, or Carter got it wrong?

"Come on, put your hands up if you disagree with me," Carter urged. None went up. But most of the kids said they'd love to visit the museum again.

"It's interesting," said Courtney Luster, 11, "whether it's true or not."