Men Who are Meaninglessly Marked

Since moving to Ohio, I have asked about half a dozen guys with large and elaborate cross tattoos on their arms if there was any spiritual significance for their decor. For all of them, the answer was no. One just wanted a tattoo and liked the way it looked, another got it because his dad always wore a cross necklass around his neck, and yet another got it in honor of his brother who died, and on and on.

Now, I'm not trying to be judgemental, or imply that these men shouldn't have gotten these tattoos unless they believed in the faith that the symbol stands for. I'm glad at least a couple of them had some kind of personal or emotional purpose behind them. But I just found it interesting that all of these men are marked physically, but not at all spiritually. Which is more important? Hopefully the answer is obvious in that God cares about what's in our hearts and minds, and not about the ink on our shoulders.

Thankfully, I met a gentleman in the hot yoga class that I took on Saturday with a large cross on his back that actually had spiritual significance behind it. He was a Christian and said a Bible verse in Isaiah (I don't recall which specific verse) is what inspired him to get the tattoo. I shook his hand, gave him the brief story of my informal survey, and thanked him for not being one of the many men who are meaninglessly marked.

Creation Museum Critique

A couple weeks ago (Saturday 5/25) we went to The Creation Museum with a group of people from work and their families.  The tickets are normally pretty expensive, at $30 and $16 for adults and children respectively.  Thankfully, the group discount reduced these prices to $20 and $12.  Clara is younger than 5, so she was free. 

My first observation about the experience was that the displays and overall production was pretty top notch.  The place was clean and well maintained.  The layout flowed pretty well, and so did the traffic of the crowds.  Speaking of crowds, I was surprised by how many people were there.  It wasn't Disney World crowded, but still obviously well attended.

I also noticed that the Bible was quoted all over the place.  As a Christian I certainly don't mind this, but it gave the feeling that it was more Bible-centered than science centered.

The kids generally enjoyed the museum too, but at ages 8, 6, and 4 years old, they have pretty small attention spans for this kind of information.  This also made it tougher for me to read all of the displays and take enough time to understand all of the points that were being made.  Of the points and ideas I did get to see/read though, there were several in support the literal view of creation that I thought were made well, including:

• There are many assumptions made by evolutionists when interpreting the external physical appearance of skeletal fossil remains.  
• There are current examples of caverns, trenches, and canyons that have been formed rapidly (from geothermal, volcanic or other extreme forces).  Therefore, it's possible that other similar geographic formations could have been used to create many/all of the others that it's assumed were created by an alternate long, slow method that (such as by water flowing over millions of years).
• There is a big difference between Darwin's natural selection (which the museum creator(s) agree with) vs. evolution (which they do not).  

Two things that I would have liked to see more support for though were:

• A family tree from Adam and Eve to Jesus (an ex-co-worker of mine once made one himself), to help demonstrate how all human kind could have been the offspring of these two individuals.
• More convincing evidence or a better explanation of how so many cultures and appearances of people could branch from either Adam and Eve or Noah and his family.  For example, if they could show a few actual examples of several families that have drastically changed in appearance (skin color, eye shape, etc) over several generations.  They had one room that gave "The Tower of Babel" as the primary cause of the planetary variation in language and appearance.  But it still seemed pretty weak.

By the time we left, we had been there for several hours and still hadn't seen numerous exhibits, including one with dinosoars, another with insects, and also a planetareum. They still have plans to install an extensive zipline attraction (with numerous platforms and routes) too.  Overall, I had enjoyed the visit and was surprisingly impressed.    The food that we ate there for lunch was decent and acceptably priced too.  The non-group prices still seem high to me, but get a group of 15 or more people together and check it out!

Our group, before touring the museum.