Do you know why dinosaurs became meat eaters? After Adam and Eve sinned and were banished from the Garden of Eden, even grass-eating dinosaurs started killing other animals.
Turning evolution on its ear, this is one of the theories being offered on the "Biblically Correct" tour at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
And never mind about the Earth being 4.5 billion years old or that dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago because the world is only 6,000 years old.
"Evolution is nothing more than a philosophy," Rusty Carter tells an audience of about 25 children from a private Christian school on his guided tour at the museum.
Carter, who has a degree in biblical studies from Colorado Christian University and earns his living doing floor maintenance, cheerily challenges evolution as he leads students from one exhibit to another.
The museum and the scientific community in general do not endorse the information espoused by Carter, although he conducts his tours just like any other school group going through.
"We welcome everybody to the museum and I'm happy to see the kids being exposed to the science world," said Kirk Johnson, chief curator at the museum. "But I completely disagree with their message."
Creationists take a literal approach to the origin of the Earth, meaning they believe God created the world in six 24-hour days.
The 6,000-year figure, first calculated by a 17th-century Irish Anglican bishop, James Ussher, adds up the life spans of patriarchs listed in the book of Genesis, starting with Adam and Eve.
Carter goes for the drama. Hitler believed in evolution, he tells the students, but is careful to emphasize he does not mean people who believe in evolution are racists.
For a little hometown shock he calls Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, two Colorado teenagers who killed 13 people at Columbine High School before killing themselves, evolutionists.
"Creationism values each person," Carter says before ending the tour with a prayer.
The Bible-oriented tour has been a fixture at the museum for 15 years, but is getting more attention thanks to the renewed US debate over evolution. The attack on evolution has been growing in recent decades and the Kansas State Board of Education has ordered teachers to discuss intelligent design -- a belief the universe is so complicated a supreme being must have planned it -- along with evolution.
Even US President George W. Bush has advocated teaching "both sides" of the issue.
"I'm not against evolution in the museum, I just wish creationism were also here," Carter tells students at the museum as he stands in front of a depiction of an archaeopteryx, whose fossil is believed by scientists to be a link between birds and dinosaurs.
Carter has no room for theistic evolution, a belief held by most Christian churches, including the Catholic Church -- that God created the universe and then allowed evolution to proceed through billions of years. Throughout the tour, he challenges fossil records and carbon dating.
He urges the students from the Truth Christian Academy, a private religious school, to always ask how does one know if something is true.
"That's a great question," the museum's Johnson said. "But the problem is they're teaching them how not to think."
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