Museums Scare Them

As a girl, I saw something on the floor of a natural history museum that has always stuck with me. A long painted line snaked through an exhibit showing all the different periods of our earth’s history as well examples of the types of life that lived during those periods. It was a fabulous tool for showing young minds the amazing natural history of our planet. It was only in the last few inches of the timeline that human life was present. Looking back over the yards and yards of distance, I felt heavy with the weight of time and a little spooked. Thinking back on how I felt at that moment, I can understand the comfort people seek in trying to claim the world is only 6,000 years old as opposed to 4.5 billion years. It’s more comfy to think of themselves as a small part of something large than it is to think of themselves as a tiny spec part of something unfathomably enormous. The creationists are so freaked out by the true nature of the world that they have built a special museum just for them. It has dinosaurs living side by side with people. Had to explain all those bones, I suppose. They can’t take their kid’s to a real natural history museum. The kids might learn some truth just as I did following that painted line all those years ago.