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This week, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary named creationist Kurt P. Wise to replace outgoing Intelligent Design proponent William Dembski. The theological and scientific differences between Dembski and Wise are deep and wide. Intelligent Design and creationism are not co-conspirators trying to overthrow Darwinian evolution.

While the press railed against efforts to introduce Intelligent Design into classrooms, spokespersons at the Discovery Institute routinely distanced their theory from creationism and from those who wanted to teach ID in science classrooms. At the same time, creationists were warning their millions of followers about the dangers of ID. Its foundation in science, not the Bible; its willingness to accept large aspects of evolutionary theory; and perhaps a little jealousy of ID's quick rise to prominence make ID unacceptable to creationists.

Besides, they don't need ID's help to topple evolution. They're doing just fine. An April CBS poll found that 44 percent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

Across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, just off of the 275 bypass, is the almost completed Creation Museum being built by Answers in Genesis. AiG was formed in the United States 11 years ago by Australian Ken Ham, Mark Looy, and Mike Zovath. AiG's international chapters date back 25 years. But in AiG's short time in the U.S., it has built a ministry of 140 employees holding 300 conferences each year and distributing magazines, books, curricula, as well as a radio program on 750 stations.

The crown of AiG's ministry will be its creation museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. The $25 million museum is expected to be complete by spring 2007 and fully paid for. It will be a Mecca for an expected 250,000 annual visitors for whom the museum is not just a fun family excursion, but a biblical answer to their local natural history museum.

The museum will trace the seven Cs of history: Creation, Corruption (the fall), Catastrophe (the flood), Confusion (Babel), Christ, the Cross, and Consummation (the Second Coming). So, only one seventh of the Creation Museum will specifically teach six-day creation. The rest focuses on telling the story of the Bible and teaching biblical authority and biblical interpretation. Outside the museum, trails through 50 landscaped acres will take visitors along paths with interpretive signs explaining aspects of creation.

But the growth of AiG's ministry doesn't put a smile on the face of Mark Looy, vice president of outreach. "We're ministering to many, many more people. We're seeing a lot of people saved," Looy says. "But the other side of that coin is if the church had been doing its job in the Bible colleges and been doing its job to equip people to defend their faith, we wouldn't be a ministry."

"Our growth really is kind of an indictment on a church that's either ignored the issue of the authority of the Bible in Genesis or even compromised—theistic evolution, progressive creation," Looy says. Elsewhere he calls Genesis the most-attacked book of the Bible.

But such "compromise positions," as Looy calls them, are not limited to versions of the gap theory, which allows for any amount of time to be inserted between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. The most recent attack on Genesis, one that to AiG's dismay is accepted and promoted by evangelicals, is Intelligent Design.

"I don't think the ID movement would be where it is even now if it was not for the general creation movement," says Ken Ham, president of AiG. "They're riding on the coattails of the creation movement."

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April (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50