Hamigos, el Apocalipsis se acerca.
The world's first Creationist museum - dedicated to the idea that the creation of the world, as told in Genesis, is factually correct - will soon open. Stephen Bates is given a sneak preview and asks: was there really a tyrannosaurus in the Bible?
Yo no alcanzo a comprender cómo es que pueden hacer estas cosas sin que se les caiga la cara de vergüenza. Serán todos psicóticos o algo? El periodista no es "neutral" en este caso, pero es que cuando te toman el pelo no se puede.
The Creation Museum - motto: "Prepare to Believe!" - will be the first institution in the world whose contents, with the exception of a few turtles swimming in an artificial pond, are entirely fake. It is dedicated to the proposition that the account of the creation of the world in the Book of Genesis is completely correct, and its mission is to convince visitors through a mixture of animatronic models, tableaux and a strangely Disneyfied version of the Bible story.
Parece que alguien se cansó del mariconeo del Diseño Inteligente, esa versión descafeinada del creacionismo, y -paradójicamente- decidió salir del armario:
Theological scholars may have noticed that there are, in fact, no dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible - and here lies the Creationists' first problem. Since there are undoubtedly dinosaur bones and since, according to the Creationists, the world is only 6,000 years old - a calculation devised by the 17th-century Bishop Ussher, counting back through the Bible to the Creation, a formula more or less accepted by the museum - dinosaurs must be shoehorned in somewhere, along with the Babylonians, Egyptians and the other ancient civilisations. As for the Grand Canyon - no problem: that was, of course, created in a few months by Noah's Flood.
But what, I ask wonderingly, about those fossilised remains of early man-like creatures? Marsh knows all about that: "There are no such things. Humans are basically as you see them today. Those skeletons they've found, what's the word? ... they could have been deformed, diseased or something. I've seen people like that running round the streets of New York."
Primitiva existe! Debe ser cuñada de la Promotiona.
The light of keenness shines from the faces of the workers, too, as they chisel out mountain sides and work out where to put the Tree of Life. They greet us cheerily as we pass. They, too, know they are doing the Lord's Work, and each has signed a contract saying they believe in the Seven Days of Creation theory.
No les debe faltar gente que lo crea en serio, pero nunca está de más convertirlo en una obligación contractual.
The museum's planetarium is his pride and joy. Lisle writes the commentary. "Amazing! God has a name for each star," it says, and: "The sun's distance from earth did not happen by chance." There is much more in this vein, but not what God thought he was doing when he made Pluto, or why.
No me queda claro si a Galileo lo respetan. A esta altura del partido no es que haga mucha diferencia.
We wander across to the bookshop, which, far from being another biblical epic, is done up like a medieval castle, framed with heraldic shields and filled with images of dragons - dragons, you see, being what dinosaurs became. It is full of books with titles such as Infallible Proofs, The Lie, The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved and even a DVD entitled Arguments Creationists Should Not Use. As we finish the tour, Ham tells us about the museum's website, AnswersInGenesis.org. They are expecting 300,000 visitors a year. "You've not seen anything yet," he says with a smile.
Que venga, que lo llevamos a cenar a San Telmo.