7 Wonders Museum

The Mount St. Helens Creation Information Center, previously Seven Wonders Creation Museum and Seven Wonders Museum of Mount St. Helens, is a ministry, museum, and bookstore dedicated to promoting young Earth creationism. The museum is located off of I-5 at Castle Rock, Washington on Front Street near Mount St. Helens, United States.[1] Admission is free but donations are accepted, and often accompanied by a guided tour of volcano sights.[2][3]

Sign post of the museum.

The museum was founded in 1998 by Lloyd and Doris Anderson, and is now directed by Paul and Geraldine Taylor. The Museum presents geologic evidence and facts about Mount St. Helens as being consistent with the Bible as "without error in the original writing."[2] The eruption and rapid formation of structures are presented as divine evidence for a young earth.[4]

Criticism

Most of the scientific community currently considers creationism to be pseudoscience.[5] "By one count there are some 700 scientists (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve but appeared 'abruptly'"[6] Scientists say the museum rejects modern science because of the museum's preconceived religious views, and misleads visitors by extrapolating very special geologic events into equivalence with much longer-term events.[3]

Wilfred Elders, an emeritus professor of geology at the University of California-Riverside and a former chairman of the Education Committee of the Geothermal Resources Council of the US stated, "The Seven Wonders Creation Museum is an example of the 'best' and the 'worst' of the young-Earth creationist movement. It is good in that it actually reports geological observations. It is bad because it ignores the scientific method in interpreting them. ... Constrained by a view of biblical chronology, young-Earth creationists infer that the seven days of creation occurred less than 10,000 years ago, and that the next significant event in the history of the Earth and of life was the flood of Noah. The 7 Wonders museum ignores or rejects anything that disagrees with that view. In doing so it rejects modern science.[3]

Footnotes
  1. "Volcano "Creation Center" museum moves to downtown Castle Rock". Longview, Washington: The Daily News. May 11, 2017.
  2. Paulu 2004.
  3. Johnson 2005.
  4. Lewis 2004.
  5. Project Steve 2008.
  6. Martz & McDaniel 1987.

References


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