Princeton Student Lies About the Creation Museum

I recently came across a blog that was full of outright lies about our Creation Museum.

A Princeton University student, Tyler Simko, who appears to be majoring in physics at the school, authored the post for his blog, Quantumaniac. (Ironically, this was the university that produced the cofounder of the modern creationist movement, Dr. John Whitcomb.) Now, while this blogger writes about what we teach in the Creation Museum, his post shows no evidence that he has ever even bothered to visit the Creation Museum!

Simko makes a number of outrageous claims about the Creation Museum.

First, he says we teach that “the reason there are different races is because of birth defects which caused early black people’s skin to discolor.” That’s outrageously false. Moreover, I have coauthored an entire book with Dr. Charles Ware on the issue of race called One Race, One Blood. In that book, in several articles on our website, and in videos, we teach that man is descended from a single couple, Adam and Eve, who had all the genetic material in them to produce all the different shades of skin we see today. We explain that there is one basic color for humans because of the pigment melanin. We believe (and it fits with our understanding of genetics) that they were a middle brown shade, and the Tower of Babel resulted in a sorting out of genetic material. This produced the many skin tones we see today, which are all really just varying shades of brown. There is only one race—the human race—and even secularists are beginning to agree!

Actually, an exhibit at the Creation Museum explains all of the information above about the origin of the people groups. Surely if the blogger had been to the museum or had read articles on our website, he would have known not to write the nonsense he has.

In another lie, Simko claims the museum teaches that “there are no fundamental physical laws of the universe, everything is subject to disruption and miracle.” This is simply not true—the Bible clearly says that there are laws of nature. Jeremiah 33:25 tells us that there are “ordinances of heaven and earth.” And, of course, God can interrupt these laws—He put them in place and He sustains the universe, and He’s free to suspend them if He chooses!

I encourage you to read the article “Don’t Creationists Deny the Laws of Nature?” for information on what Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum teach on this subject.

In his third untruth about our beliefs, Simko says we teach “that all logic is irrelevant, and to never trust ‘man’s word,’ only ‘God’s Word.’” We’re not ashamed to tell people that God’s Word is the ultimate authority in every area of life, and that man’s word is fallible and changes. However, we don’t teach that logic is irrelevant—logic comes from God! Logic is the correct way of thinking, and the laws of logic are God’s standard for reasoning. It would make no sense, logically speaking, for us to claim that logic is irrelevant. In fact, the Bible says: “Come now, and let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18). Again, for the truth about what our ministry teaches, read the article “Logic or Faith?” on our website. By the way, if the universe was a result of random processes, why would we even have (or trust) the laws of logic?

Finally, Simko tells the most egregious lie about the Creation Museum when he writes, “There are guards present to suppress criticism and nonbelievers (you must sign a document upon entering that requires you not to discuss any contrary ideas!).” First of all, we have public safety officers (not “guards”) because we are a public facility and have large numbers of the public visiting throughout the year. Also, in this day and age, most public facilities recognize the importance of having visible safety officers. We have had numerous guests thank us for providing public safety officers—they feel safer.

Also, there is no such document for guests to sign at the Creation Museum. Simko linked to an article but has intentionally misrepresented the information he found there. He pulled it from an article on my blog from 2009. In 2009, the museum had a group of 285 Secular Student Alliance members, most of them atheists, tour the Creation Museum. We were concerned about possible disruptions, and when we expressed our concerns, the SSA organizer volunteered to have everyone in her party sign statements that they would not be disruptive and keep the other guests from enjoying the musuem. The report from Mark Looy, the AiG–U.S. CCO, is as follows:

It helped that all 285 atheists/agnostics signed a statement that they would be civil—they did that when they checked in and got their tickets from their organizer, Lyz (who was a pleasure to work with). By the way, I did not request that the signed agreements were to be done (with the exception of getting the professor’s signature [he is an out-spoken atheist and anti-creationist, who is known for making vile comments], which we demanded in a certified letter mailed to him over a week ago)—to her credit, Lyz, after hearing our concerns about the web chatter about the possible behavior of her SSA group, did not want to see a ruckus in the museum, and she, I understand it, volunteered the idea of having her group sign such a statement (and we did verify with Lyz that the prof signed it).

It’s very, very disappointing to see that a student at an Ivy League school like Princeton (secular as it is) can’t seem to do proper research before posting inaccurate information about our organization. Let’s hope he does better research for his courses at the college!

At the end of his post, he writes, “I pity the children. . . . The ideas presented in this ‘museum’ are flagrant lies that stomp on the legitimacies of science, shutting the door on disciplines such as biology, cosmology, chemistry, and reason.” How ironic that he used the word “lies.” Second, the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis have no problem with observational science like biology, chemistry, etc. It’s the false interpretations of historical science that are the problem—in other words, untestable and unprovable evolutionary ideas. Simko’s flagrant lies make me want to pity him for the account he’ll have to give one day for his attempts to lead others astray and to undermine God’s Word.

I wonder if the young man will be honest enough to apologize to his readers and correct his false statements? And if he hasn’t visited the Creation Museum, he needs to admit that. I encourage him to visit (he can drive here in a day from Princeton) and see firsthand what we really teach.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken