Founded 1998 | ||
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Similar Creation Evidence Museum, Akron Fossils & Science, Museum of Creation and Earth, Big Valley Creation Science, The Creation Adventur | ||
The Mount St. Helens Creation Information Center (previously the 7 Wonders Creation Museum), also 7 Wonders Museum of Mount St. Helens, is a ministry, museum, and bookstore dedicated to promoting young Earth creationism. The museum is located along the main road off of I-5 at Castle Rock, Washington near Silverlake, Washington (or Toutle, Washington) near Mount St. Helens, United States. Admission is free, and often accompanied by a guided tour of volcano sights.
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." The eruption and rapid formation of structures are presented as divine evidence for a young earth.
Criticism
Most of the scientific community currently considers creationism to be pseudoscience. As a result, science organizations, such as the National Center for Science Education, criticize the promotion of creationism as a form of non-science. 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.
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 U.S.A. stated:
The 7 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.