Of Pumpkins and Polar Bears

The traveling creation “museum” paid a visit to Gastonia, NC last night. The anticipation from the atheist group was electric. We had been looking forward to the group outing for the past week and were sure that the experience would be more than we possibly could have expected.

We arrived to the church around 7:15 pm. After paying our $3 to gain admission, we were told to wait in the sanctuary while the group of children was completing their round of indoctrination. I am sure that the “bouncer” was suspect of our group when we all 14 of us sat together and basically bought out their event. After a 20 minute wait, we were invited to come into the room and look around before the lecture started.

As soon as I walked through the door, I knew we were in for a great night. This particular “museum” consisted of about 20 wall panels with various descriptions of how God had created the universe. Of course, the most prominently placed panels were the creation story boards. There was a panel devoted strictly to atheists, progressives, Nazis, communists, and abortionists that made me feel a little ill. I expected to see something of that nature, but was taken aback to see it so shamelessly displayed. I was to come to the conclusion that out of all the words that could use to describe the person putting on this particular show, Mr. Meeks, “shameful” would not be one of them.

“The Bible starts off by saying that God created the heaven and the Earth. If you were to say this is scientific language, this is when God created time, space, energy; the basic structure of all creation – is time, space matter energy. On the second day, the Earth was an 8000 mile diameter mud ball, hanging out there. On the third day, he took the big mud ball and separated it, with the dry land on one part and the water on another.” It had begun, and was going along as expected. This went on for roughly 15 minutes, explaining how the Atlantic Ocean “didn’t even exist before the flood” and how God made plants and such. This is the point where things started to plummet.

Mr. Meeks began to explain how this is when his favorite plant was created, “chocolate.” He went on “chocolate grows on trees, and God made chocolate trees.” He told us that he was going to remove all of our feelings of guilt by telling us that chocolate was and health food and good for us. He made it seem as if there was some wondrous forest that had trees with Hershey bars hanging from them. I am sure there was, but before the flood. We are now 2 minutes in to the lecture.

This is where the “evolutionists” were shown to be the silly, stupid atheist know-it-all’s that we are. “The fourth day is when God created the sun, the moon, the stars, and the planets.” There was no big bang. It was God. I know this because Mr. Meeks told me so. “The big bang was something created by evolutionists about a hundred years ago and all sorts of other silly stories about monkeys turning into people and fish turning into lizards and all kinds of silly stuff. The big bang is the silliest of their silly stories.”

I am fairly sure that this is a good place to cease quoting Mr. Meeks. This man was repeating the same old information that has been refuted time and time again. I am sure that this will come as no surprise to anyone else, especially to those who have experience with this sort of person. The mistake in his format of conduct this lecture came from the interactivity of the whole thing. It was when he brought up the age of the Earth and radiometric dating that the whole lecture turned on its head. A few members of the group challenged Mr. Meeks, and he accepted. He was challenged on radiometric dating, the age of the Earth, and the evolution of life. At this point, the bouncer (who was roughly a 65 year old preacher) came in and announced that this wasn’t a debate, it was a lecture. The questions were meant to come afterwards.

We were good. We were quiet. We listened to his evidence. When the end of the lecture came (which was right after he explained that because the scientists like Newton, etc were Christians, then the universe was created) we offered up our questions. It was like pulling teeth. There was a mention of a cubical Earth and only animals that interacted with people were mentioned in the Bible. It was infinitely interesting and annoying at the same time.

None of this will come as a surprise to most of the people who read this. However, this was the first time that most of the people in our group had been confronted with such blatant refusal to acknowledge the facts. This was coupled with the absolute randomness of the entire lecture. We went from creation, to chocolate, to pyramids, to a story about polar bears loving pumpkins. One member, Mike, made a good point: “If everything was intelligently designed and polar bears love pumpkins, then why didn’t God put polar bears with the pumpkins?”

Another of our members, we’ll call him Bobby, made an excellent observation after the lecture was over. He said that Mr. Meeks entire premise was that if someone didn’t see it happen, then we (evolutionists, I guess) made it up. Since scientists weren’t there in the beginning, they are just making the evidence up. Mr. Meeks is under the impression that scientists “looked at things and made up possibilities of what might be and explanation of that, and went with it because it seemed to make sense.” It truly is a misunderstanding of the fundamentals of science.

The reactions from everyone that attended the lecture were hilarious and upbeat, in spite of the beating our brains had just taken. Another of our members, Ryan, made the correct observation that the room was devoid of logic. Finally, our resident scientist Jim had a few thoughts on the whole ordeal. “He wasn’t trying to prove his [Meeks] points; he was trying to disprove the points of evolution. He fails to realize that even if they do manage to disprove everything in evolution, they still haven’t proven creationism remotely correct.” Jim also had a few words about the characterization of scientist. “I do get tired of people telling me what scientists think and what scientists believe because they are not scientists. They have never been in the scientists’ mindset.”

I know you have all been waiting for my reaction. I didn’t see a person who was interested in listening to any facts. I didn’t see a person who wanted to accept the smallest bit of what scientists had to say or what science was capable of doing… all while he pulled out his cell phone to make a call. I guess you don’t need to believe in science to benefit from their advances.

Here is one of Jim's responses to the creation "museum".

And here is the link to some of the pictures taken during the event.