May 28th, AD 2007 is when the Creation Museum opened up in Petersburg, Kentucky. Organized by Answers in Genesis, a young-earth creationist entity, the $27 million museum received over 4,000 visitors on its first day of operation and has garnered international attention. Here are some details gathered by secular media about this controversial edifice to creationism.

"Outside the museum scientists may assert that the universe is billions of years old, that fossils are the remains of animals living hundreds of millions of years ago, and that life’s diversity is the result of evolution by natural selection. But inside the museum the Earth is barely 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were created on the sixth day, and Jesus is the savior who will one day repair the trauma of man’s fall."

"It is a measure of the museum’s daring that dinosaurs and fossils — once considered major challenges to belief in the Bible’s creation story — are here so central, appearing not as tests of faith, as one religious authority once surmised, but as creatures no different from the giraffes and cats that still walk the earth. Fossils, the museum teaches, are no older than Noah’s flood; in fact dinosaurs were on the ark."

"So dinosaur skeletons and brightly colored mineral crystals and images of the Grand Canyon are here, as are life-size dioramas showing paleontologists digging in mock earth, Moses and Paul teaching their doctrines, Martin Luther chastising the church to return to Scripture, Adam and Eve guiltily standing near skinned animals, covering their nakedness, and a supposedly full-size reproduction of a section of Noah’s ark."

--New York Times

The Creation Museum, a project of the socially conservative religious organization Answers in Genesis, mocks evolutionary science and invites visitors to find faith and truth in God. It welcomes its first paying guests -- $19.95 for adults, $9.95 for children, not counting discounts for joining a mailing list -- just weeks after three Republican presidential candidates said they do not believe in evolution.

Opinion polls suggest that about half of Americans agree. They dismiss the scientific theory that all beings have a common ancestor, believing instead that God created humans in one glorious stroke. Similar numbers say the world's age should be counted in the thousands of years, not billions, as established science would have it.

--Boston Globe

Twenty-five years ago, Ken Ham says, he felt a calling to build a museum to promote creationism. A quarter-century and $27 million later, The Creation Museum has opened in Petersburg, Ky., just outside Cincinnati. The displays offer the creationists' view of how the world came to be, which differs sharply from the teachings of science.

Ham, a native Australian, breaks down the differences for Steve Inskeep: "There is a conflict if you try to add evolution to the Bible and take Genesis as literal history," he says. "For instance, the Bible teaches man was made from dust in [the book of] Genesis … whereas evolution would teach that man came from some ape-like ancestor.”

--National Public Radio (NPR)

Mainstream scientists worry that because the museum is so technically sophisticated, it could be effective in giving children a distorted view of science. "That they'll show up in classrooms and say, 'Gee, Mrs. Brown, I went to this spiffy museum last summer and they say that everything you're teaching me is a lie,'" said Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education.

Ham believes that's what should happen.

"And I say, great. Amen. That's what this place is all about," he said. "It's meant to challenge people." The stakes are high. The museum argues that evolution jeopardizes people's belief in the Bible and leads to social ills like pornography and abortion. "In an evolutionary world view, why should you have things like absolute morality? Why would it be wrong to kill someone?" said Jason Lisle, of Answers in Genesis. "I'm not saying that evolutionists aren't moral. I'm saying they have no reason to be moral."

--ABC News

The museum's aim is to bring Genesis - the first book of the Bible - to life for all ages, and promote the belief that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. Everybody who works at the museum has to sign on to the belief that the living Earth was created in six 24-hour days - rejecting the convention most scientists view as fact, that life evolved slowly over millions of years.

To hammer that point home, two smiling children clad in tasteful animal skins, work and play alongside a pair of baby Tyrannosaurus Rex. "You go to some of the major museums and dinosaurs are their teaching icon," said Mr Looy. "We're going to turn that on its head, and use dinosaurs to show that the Bible presents the true history of the world. We have people, and dinosaurs, together."

There is no mention of dinosaurs anywhere in the Bible, but for every sceptic, there is a committed Christian eager to listen and proselytize.

--British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)