The Creation Museum

Yesterday, my friend Phyliss and I went on a road trip almost all the way through Kentucky to the town of Petersburg, so that we could visit the Creation Museum. Phyliss wanted to go, and asked on Facebook if any of her friends felt like a road trip, so I said, "Sure," but I want to get one thing out of the way first:

We did not go to make fun of people.

I was actually a little concerned about this, and discussed it with Phyliss before we went: "Why are we going? Because if it's just to make fun of people for their beliefs, that seems kind of mean, even if this particular belief is kind of stupid." I don't claim to be unbiased, but I felt like driving all that way just to walk around their museum and laugh at them was kind of cruel, and I try to avoid cruelty unless I think it's really necessary. Phyliss assured me that she wanted to go because she wanted a better understanding of why people believe in creationism, and that she really just wanted to get out of town for a day. That seemed innocent enough, so I agreed.

We went, we had a good time, and I learned some things and thought about some things. Before I get into what I learned, I want to get another thing out of the way: I didn't change my mind. I still disagree with their beliefs, I still think "Young Earth" theories of the planet being 6,000 years old or less are garbage, and I still think that "teaching the controversy" is a bunch of garbage, too.



Sorry, kids.

On to the things that I did learn:

1) Nobody there seemed overtly religious. I'll be honest: I expected to see a bunch of people praying, maybe some fundamentalist home-schoolers with a dozen kids and handmade extremely modest garments, and, honestly, way more Jesus, but for the most part the museum tries to present the idea of creationism in a serious sense, as if it is actually some form of legitimate science. The people lined up outside to get in looked like any people you might see waiting to get into a movie, or for school to open, or outside of in any line anywhere:







Granted, we only saw one family of color in the entire museum, so it was a pretty homogenous group of people, but they seemed incredibly normal for a crowd of irrational science rejecters. No one prayed, no one tried to convert us, there weren't any crucifixes in the gift shop, and really the only person who said anything religious to me all day was the lady who sold me my ticket:



and all she said was, "Have a blessed day." I hear that from people on campus all the time, and barely notice it. I only noticed yesterday because I was looking for it.

Seeing how normal everyone seemed was also a little disarming, though, like being in an episode of the "Twilight Zone" where everyone looks human but is actually an alien or a lizard person or an android inside.

2) I did see some things I expected to see. I saw cavemen and dinosaurs:



I saw displays proclaiming that "there's no ape in my family tree!":



and I saw books in the gift shop that confirmed that these people are, in fact, my enemy. That may sound a little harsh, but if they're going to sell books that explain that homosexuality is an abomination and that I'm going to hell for being one, then I'm not going to pretty up my language. They don't know me, but they hate me, so I feel justified in referring to them as enemies. They're definitely not my friends.

I also saw some religious displays. There's a whole section on Noah's Ark, including some adorably charming apocalyptic dioramas:



and we spent a lot of time walking through the "Garden of Eden"/Fall of Man display.

Things there started peacefully enough, with Adam frolicking in the bushes and naming the animals:



I tried really, really hard to see if naked Adam was anatomically correct, but was constantly thwarted by a well-placed penguin:



All of the animals lived happily together, and according to the signs they were also all vegetarian, which is why this dinosaur was clawing open a pineapple:



but then Eve came:



and fed Adam some berries:



and suffering was loosed upon the world:



And, also, weeds. Weeds exist because of Eve:



I also learned that Abel had no butt. Or pelvis. At least, that's my assumption based on the body:



but I guess I could just be interpreting that wrong.

3) Visiting the museum is like visiting a parallel universe where everything you know is wrong. The things that they present at the museum are packaged like science. There are displays that would be at home in any secular museum, like in the insect exhibit:







Some parts of it look very much like a legitimate secular institution of learning:



and that's how they make it so easy for people to believe in the irrational. The entire museum is founded on one idea, illustrated here:



It's the idea that the same evidence will lead you to the wrong conclusion if you start with the wrong assumption, and the museum spells out the difference between "man's word" (science) and "God's word" (the Bible) in almost every display. If you accept the idea that the Earth is only six thousand years old and was created exactly as described in the Bible, then all of the evidence in the world can be presented in a way that supports that. And if you don't believe it, all of the evidence in the world can be presented in a way that supports that view, too.

The museum and the people in it just feel bad for how misguided you are.

And I feel bad for the people in the museum.

The KFC Museum

Last week, when I was in Albuquerque, Kristin sent me a text that we needed to get out of town and go on a road trip. I agreed, because it seems like forever since we went somewhere fun. I didn't really have any ideas (Santa's Land, one of my perpetual "We have to go there!" places, has once again closed for the season without a visit from us), so Kristin suggested The Harland Sanders Cafe and Museum, or, as it is known colloquially, the KFC Museum.

"Do you want to go to the KFC Museum?"

OF COURSE.

Yesterday morning I got up early, got ready to go, and waited for Kristin to come pick me up, and then we were on the road, to a strange and distant land known as Kentucky, our neighbor to the north:



After only two hours in the car, we neared our destination, and Kristin tried to put a damper on my excitement.

"Now, I don't want you to get your hopes up, but it's not that great."

Not that great? How could a museum dedicated to a uniquely American facet of our cuisine, Kentucky Fried Chicken, made with Colonel Sanders' secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices, possibly be "not that great"? People in 105 countries known that "Kentucky" means "chicken" because of Colonel Sanders, and I refused to believe that the museum dedicated to this pioneer of business and Southern culture could possibly be anything less than a shrine.

And, of course, I was right. It is a shrine. A tiny shrine that takes up a small part of a regular, plain old KFC restaurant:



Everything on the right side of the picture, from the "Pure Oil" sign over, is the museum. Everything on the left is a KFC.

I should have listened to Kristin.

Really, my first indication should have been in the parking lot. They don't even have a sign that says "Museum". The sign looks like this:



The building itself looks somewhat historical, and still has a vintage sign:



but you can see right there from the rounded addition that they've added a modern KFC restaurant to the place despite the historical status:



The state of Kentucky does have a historical sign out front:





but again, this isn't really a museum. It's a KFC with some display cases:











a somewhat dirty statue of Harland Sanders on a bench that you're supposed to have your picture made with:





and a dark, windowless wood-panelled dining room that, I suppose, may or may not be historically accurate but is also a weird mix of styles from different decades:



There are a couple of displays in the dining room: a model of the motel rooms that used to be attached to the cafe, a model of Harland Sanders' kitchen that had vintage Borax boxes on the counter but modern faucet hardware in the sink, and a model of Col. Sanders' office:



I guess if you're hungry and on the way to somewhere else the museum is a good place to stop, but it was almost as disappointing as the National Knife Museum. Arguably, it may even be worse than the National Knife Museum, because that at least had a gift shop and some hideous animatronic animals. This seemed kind of like they couldn't tear the building down because it was on the historical register, so they pulled out a bunch of old KFC stuff, nailed it to the walls, and called it a day.

Kristin and I weren't ready to call it a day, though, and instead decided to press on to Lexington and visit Joseph-Betth Booksellers, which Kristin remembered as a huge independent bookstore with lots of obscure, hard to find titles but which has instead given over more than half of their floorspace to food, clothing, trinkets, toys, home decor, candles, and what is apparently the kind of business model that killed Borders. Still, I did find a book that I didn't know I wanted because I didn't know it existed, and we had a nice late lunch/early dinner at the Bronte Bistro inside the store.

The mini creme brulee is an excellent use of two dollars:



On the way home, Kristin had to stop for gas, so we also stopped for a minute at the slightly decrepit fireworks store next to the gas station:



and marvelled at the collection of weird statues:





and broken down amusement park rides (seriously, they had not one but two rusting inoperative ferris wheels):









on their front lawn.

We didn't buy anything, since neither one of us is allowed to have fireworks in our apartment complexes and both of us are liable to blow off a finger by accident, but it was a nice end to a fun road trip day.

I can only hope that the museum and shrine to Long John Silver or Chef Boyardee is more exciting and befitting of their stature as pillars of American culture.

The National Knife Museum

On Saturday morning, after Elizabeth and I went yard-saling for an hour or so (she bought a lamp and I bought a book for myself and one to donate to the resource center), I decided that since I was already awake and in the car, I would drive to the nearby National Knife Museum, located in Pigeon Forge in the gigantic multilevel Knifeworks store:



Then on Saturday afternoon and on and off during the day on Sunday I tried to think of an entertaining way to write about my trip, but kept running into a wall. You wouldn't think it would be hard to find something entertaining about a place where this brand of horror is the first thing you see:



Animatronic anthropomorphic animals with muscial instruments, covered in the preserved skins of actual animals. It's like a Chuck E. Cheese designed by John Wayne Gacy. It's also one of the few interesting parts of the trip because, unfortunately, the National Knife Museum is pretty boring.

Sorry, knife enthusiasts.

I really thought I would enjoy the trip. I'm not a knife craftsman (knifemaker?) or carnival sideshow performer, but I've watched a lot of horror movies and I cook a lot, so I have an appreciation for bladed weapons, and the knife museum and knife store has thousands of knives, swords, and other sharp objects. It just somehow managed to make them completely un-fun.

For starters, nothing in the museum is labeled. That means that if you do see something intriguing in one of the cases, like these wooden pocketknives:



you can't find out anything about them. Who carved them? For what purpose? And when? I'll never know, because the knife museum exists only to display knives, not to actually educate you about them.

There does seem to be some sort of order to the display cases, but this is just guesswork on my part. Here are the displays I think I saw, since there aren't any signs to tell me any different:

Animals That Died by Stabbing



The Knives That Won World War II



Knives of the American Old West, And Also a Gun



South American Knives Except for the Bottom One That Looks Asian



African Knives and Other Pointy Things



I Think This Is About the Civil War Except That One of the Coats is Red Instead of Gray



And that's it. I don't know if they were famous, historical, examples of something important in the hostory of knives, or if someone just cleaned out the knife sections at Pier One and the antique store and dumped the results into a few display cases. I learned nothing, except that knives exist and there are a lot of different kinds. Worst of all, I didn't even find the one famous knife that I was told to be there.

All I found was a poster:



You know what should be in a case, right next to that poster?

A bowie knife.

One that Rambo used to liberate entire countries of oppressed people in a movie.

But there's not. There's not even a plaque or a sign that tells you where the knife should be or if it was ever there at all. There's just a poster and a rack of dried fruit, down in the basement in the cooking section of the store that also happens to house the knife museum.

What a disappointment.