Public mockery is still free publicity
Transcript of today's show: Sound Off: Science & Faith. Our point/counterpoint regulars Shelley (the voice of science) and Peter (the voice of faith), comment on the story. Peter Williamson, M.Div., comments:
The Memorial Day Opening of the Evangelical Creation 
Museum is heating up the evolution-creationism controversy. While foreign media and science critics have mostly come to snigger at exhibits explaining how baby dinosaurs fit on Noah’s Ark and Cain married his sister to people the earth, museum spokesman Mark Loy said the coverage has done nothing but drum up more interest reminding creation critics that “Mocking publicity is still free publicity.” [source: USA Today]
Listen to the 1-minute broadcast of this story [mp3]
Mockery is indeed free publicity. And I say "bring them on!" The opening of the Creation Museum, mockery or not, is proving to be an Evangelical media event of Biblical Proportions. Despite this inordinant lavishing of attention on the mockery, petitions, and naysayers, the Creation Museum is receiving robust and quite positive media attention. Ken Ham's tireless promotional tour, in which he's talked about the museum's opening Memorial Day, has been well received. And the Louisville, Kentucky daily recently carried a touching story about museum construction workers who's lives have been changed by the experience. One man says he found the Lord after working at the museum for a few months. ("I came to work for the museum, now I'm working for God"). He says he owes his transformation to the Creation Museum itself, both from what he learned while working on the installationos, but also from the loving attitude of those he worked with. As I expected, the Creation Museum will indeed be a beacon of light, of hope, and of God for many, many souls -- those who already believe, those who are looking, and those who are neither.
The Voice of Science: Shelley Greene, Ph.D., comments:
Yes, there is no such thing as bad publicity, but I'm not so sure I want the foreign press making fun of a pseudo-science museum, when the US is already carrying such a low image in foreign policy and the environment. As Al Gore says in his new book, The Assault on Reason, the U.S. is a country whose informed electorate has a long history of making reasoned decisions based on the best available information. A Holy Book written in primitive times when everyone still believed the Earth was flat should not be used as a scientific guide for the origins of life.