trenchkamen | Kamen goes to a creation science museum (Reply)

I've only included some of the many, many pictures I took. Please check out all of the full-sized pictures here.

Yesterday I actually left Phoenix at a decent hour, sometime before noon. Around 4:30 PM I reached Cabazon, CA, which is just west of Palm Springs, and noticed a billboard advertising the World's Largest Dinosaurs just off I-10. I remembered that I meant to stop by this place every time I passed, because those are the dinosaurs from Pee Wee's Big Adventure, and I grew up on that movie. I watched it countless times with my parents from the time I was a baby. Now that I'm 22 I enjoy it more on the level my parents did.

Same sign as from the movie. And the dinosaurs were right behind it. I thought I'd just go take some pictures, climb up inside, maybe get a passerby to take a picture of me. Simple, five minute stop.

And then I passed this sign.

I get the shape of the place by this point.

Of course, my perverse sense of curiosity drives me to follow the arrows around the perimeter of the parking lot to the entrance.

My suspicions are 99.99% confirmed. I keep going.

There's a lone guy, around my age, manning the gift shop/ticket counter. Nobody else is in sight. He's shy, very polite, and we talk a bit. Apparently, yes, this is indeed the place featured in Pee Wee's Big Adventure, but the inside of the T-rex mouth featured in the movie is a fabrication, as the inside of the actual T-rex mouth is nowhere near that big, and does not face east/west. About 15 years ago, after the death of the original creator, a young earth creationist group bought the attraction and turned it into an evangelical attraction. And evangelical it indeed was. I suspect the creator would be rolling in his grave; the frescoes he painted inside the brontosaurus show evolutionary pictures of early humans.

My curiosity convinces me to shell out $5. I wander around the gift shop. There are raptor-looking dinosaurs in one of the niches. There are signs everywhere reminding me that I am on camera. Regardless, I get out my own camera.

There are lots of signs like this around the shop.

There are also lots of signs like this around the shop, and the attraction as a whole. Some awesome science going on here.

And, of course, gotta pay the bills somehow.

I just can't say anything that adds to this. Sums up the place perfectly.

I sign the guestbook, comment: "I am an evolutionist. Still am." Because I can't think of anything else to say. The young man behind the counter tells me to walk around and enjoy myself. I step outside.

The complex borders the northern edge of a huge parking lot, with a Burger King, the diner, a gas station. It's long, crescent-shaped, and behind a wooden plank fence. The mountains are in the distance. Nobody else is there. I can hear the cars on the freeway.

I'm not even sure how to describe this poor soldier's expression.

This was some sort of wet-mining thing for the kids.

Lions, alligators (crocodiles?), and lambs coexisted with dinosaurs...

...and humans with stegosauri.

It is a beautiful day.

I stop inside a small hut, with more signs the like of which I saw in the store.

I can't prove it, but I get the impression somebody's hating on Carl Sagan here.

I approach the T-rex, and enter just to the left side of the base of its tail. There are two split levels of straight stairways, a tight circle around them, and the walls are plastered with more of those handmade clip-art signs, and the lengthwise anti-evolution posters. I got pictures of all of them. Check the gallery.

Cool story, bro.

Constantly, I am assailed by comments I want to counter, but then I realize, I don't even know where to begin with some of these.

And up to the T-rex's mouth.

Looking east down I-10 at the windmills.

I wanted a picture of myself in the mouth, but I was alone, and I refuse on principle to take a MySpace picture. My face looks weird enough without weird angles.

And back outside we go.

Place is hopping on a Wednesday afternoon.

It's time to go inside the brontosaurus. I have to leave the complex and go all the way back around to the Burger King. When I pass the young man at the front desk, he tells me that he has to close up by 6--at that point, in 45 minutes.

I'm expecting more of a climb like in the T-rex, but it's just another stairway leading up to another store.

Maybe I missed these textbooks because I went to elementary school in Texas.

What is it with evangelical creationists and bananas? (And I can think of something else that is the perfect shape for the human mouth; your mom knows it pretty well too.)

This is what I really don't get about these arguments. The thinking goes: A scientist faked a piece of evolutionary research. Therefore, not only is the entire evolutionary theory bunk (it's a goddamn theory, a constant work in progress), but, therefore, that the literal interpretation of the Bible is also true. This is a false dilemma. But fundamentalists like two things: simplicity and certainty. False dilemmas make things seem simple.

Also this argument. They are saying that the first five evolutionary categories are religion, not science, and therefore invalid. But their own beliefs are religious in basis. Should they also not be therefore invalid? Oh, yeah, because all other religions are False.

The beautiful thing is none of them would even catch the irony in confirming that if I ask.

GENTLEMEN, BEHOLD:

I talk a little with the young woman running the brontosaurus store. She gives me two free DVDs in paper envelopes, both by this guy: "Lies in the Textbooks", and "Dinosaurs in the Bible".

I later watched the first DVD at Vicky's house; we got about 3/4 of the way through it before one of her roommates wanted us to stop this rampant faggotry so he could play a game. It was incredibly painful and lulzworthy. Not only is the guy constantly setting up the false dilemma, he finally trots out the consequences of teaching kids evolution: Nazism, socialism, communism, the Columbine shooting, and, of course, abortion. Yes, because people haven't been subjugating each other since the dawn of time, and finding any excuse to justify it. He hit every pitch-point one would expect in a ham-handed, embellished parody. He also had some amazing hand-drawn illustrations of his own exploits arguing with skeptics. He always looked very handsome in those pictures. He also thinks because some pro-choice feminists walked away from him in an argument that he won. My response to all of his self-aggrandizing stories of converting museum curators: Cool story, bro.

I haven't finished that DVD, or started the second one yet. Maybe when I'm really drunk.

Anyway, back to the end of the story.

The sun is coming out by this point.

I walk back to my car, only to find the gate has been closed. I drag it back open, and, as I am getting in my car, the guy from the front desk comes to close it after me. I wave good-bye.

All 98 of the full-sized images are here