The Grauniad: Defying Darwin

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Defying Darwin
The fundamental ideas behind the theory of evolution have been scientific gospel for decades - and yet creationists refuse to go the way of the dinosaurs. Who exactly are they? And just what do they believe? Stephen Moss reports
Stephen Moss, 17th Feb 2009

They do it differently in the US. The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky (motto: "Prepare to believe!") measures 70,000 sq ft, cost $27m to build, was designed by someone from Universal Studios, and promises "murals and realistic scenery, computer-generated visual effects, over 50 exotic animals, life-sized people and dinosaur animatronics, and a special-effects theater complete with misty sea breezes and rumbling seats". The museum, opened in 2006 by creationist group Answers in Genesis to promote "true history", looks Edenic on its website.

By contrast, Britain's creation museum, Genesis Expo, is housed in a former bank next to the bus station on the harbour front in Portsmouth. It does not appear to have any connection with Hollywood, and is an animatronic-free zone. The sign stretching across the front of the building is peeling, an elderly volunteer from a local church is manning the front desk, and the museum is only slowly converting its stock of creationist videos to DVD. The upside is that Genesis Expo is free to enter.

The museum was opened in 2000 by the Creation Science Movement, which claims to be the oldest creationist movement in the world, beginning life in 1932 as the Evolution Protest Movement. In 1935, Sir Ambrose Fleming, one its founders, explained at a public meeting why the movement was necessary: "Of late years, the Darwinian anthropology had been forced on public attention by numerous books in such a fashion as to create a belief that it was a certainly settled scientific truth. The fact that many eminent naturalists did not agree that Darwin's theory of species production ... was generally repressed." The CSM still quotes his words as its credo today, and in Darwin's bicentenary year Fleming's successors think they are finally making progress.

The bicentenary has been good for Genesis Expo. David Attenborough extolling the virtues of Darwin on TV - and attacking the vices of militant creationists, who he says have subjected him to hate mail, in the Radio Times - has been bringing in the punters. On the Saturday that I drop by, there is a steady trickle of somewhat bemused visitors - small church groups, a few young foreign tourists and several children eager to play with the dinosaurs.

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