Creationist Exhibit Displays Unique World View : Philosophy: The new Museum of Creation and Earth History is devoted to the anti-evolutionary philosophy that the world was created over a period of days, not billions of years.

John D. Morris was showing guests around his $50,000 pride and joy, a new, 4,000-square-foot museum extolling the virtues of creationism, when he came to a large glass cage full of finches.

“There are (Charles) Darwin’s finches over there,” he said. “They were the birds that convinced him of evolution. So, there they are.”

He rolled his eyes and continued.

“They are finches! They are just finches! They haven’t changed any . Some have big beaks. Some have little beaks. Evolution isn’t demanded by finches--or by anything else.”

Then, just as abruptly, Morris’ dark look became one of exhilarated excitement.

“OK!” he said, peering into the next room. “ Here’s the Garden of Eden.”

Morris, 45, is a professor of geology at the Institute for Creation Research, which his father founded in 1972 in Santee. In 1981, the school began granting graduate degrees in biology, geology, physics and science education, and has granted 35 so far.

Its philosophy has never wavered. Evolution, its professors preach, is a myth.

The school and its leaders, like the Christian forebears they embrace, are no strangers to conflict. In February, a federal judge awarded them $225,000 as a settlement in a lawsuit brought by the school against state education officials.

The institute’s chief target was state schools chief Bill Honig, who has long maintained that the institute is a religious school, not a scientific one.

Based on a recommendation from a State Board of Education evaluation team, Honig sought in March, 1990, to revoke the institute’s license to operate, because, he said, its physics, biology, geology and science education curriculum was not as rigorous as those at comparable degree-granting institutions.

But U.S. District Judge Rudi M. Brewster ruled that state officials violated the school’s constitutional rights when they sought to strip it of its license to grant master of science degrees. School officials hailed the decision as a reaffirmation of academic freedom.

Friday marked the opening of a new and larger Museum of Creation and Earth History, which theorizes, among many theories, that the “young Earth” and its life forms were abruptly created in less than a week 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.

The museum leaves the distinct impression that the “genesis” of the planet did not happen, as most scientists and Bill Honig believe, 4.5 billion years ago.

The younger Morris, who said he once taught at the University of Oklahoma, said the new museum (which replaces the older one in the basement) took shape over a year and a half and was designed and built by the institute’s staff of about 50 paid employees.

The presentation greets the visitor with such signs as “How Do We Know That Jesus Saves?” and “The Imminent Return of Christ.” Morris said the previous museum drew 10,000 visitors in 1991.

The 21,000-square-foot building encompassing the museum is located in a scrub-ridden industrial park.

The museum, which Friday was chock full of cookie-toting children, is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Admission is free. Some of the opening-day crowd included visitors from the East and Midwest.

“It is awesome!” said Garnet Smith, 28, a naval electronics engineer from Upper Marlboro, Md. Smith said he extended his trip to San Diego after hearing--in Maryland--of the museum’s imminent grand opening.

“It is a breathtaking layout of all the different concepts of the Bible, laid out so you can follow them through the whole period of the world,” he said. “It opens the Bible up to the full dimension of the mind.”

One wall features pictures and short biographies of heroes (creationists) while another chronicles the misadventures of their villainous counterparts (evolutionists).

The latter group includes John D. Rockefeller, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and, of course, the finch-loving father of Darwinism--Charles Darwin.

One poster proclaims “Racism: The Fruit of Evolution” and notes in the text: “Darwin, (Sir Julian) Huxley and most evolutionary scientists were racist until (Adolf) Hitler gave racism a bad name.”

The “Evolutionists” section also includes a menacing portrait of Hitler himself.

“We don’t claim to be able to prove creation,” said Morris, who, like many of his colleagues, said he has a Ph.D. “That is not what we are doing. We don’t claim to be able to disprove evolution. Both of them are about world views of the past.”

But the museum, like its tour guides, seeks to discount, among other things, the so-called Big Bang theory and other such ideas of how the universe began.

“The Big Bang is on its way out,” Morris said. “Many astronomers are abandoning the Big Bang theory. They put all their eggs in that basket, but it didn’t fit the evidence. So, the Big Bang is on its way out, and what will they think of next!?”

But Morris’ own theories can be tough to follow. Taken verbatim from a taped interview, he issued the following:

“The evidence is very much consistent with and supportive of the idea that each of the basic stars, planets, whatever, were created. . . . Sure, there’s things going on, some of them die, you know, there’s things going on. But the evidence fits with the idea given in Scripture.

“We can’t prove Scripture. We can just show the scientific evidence. The observations are exactly what they should be, if the biblical statements about the past are correct.”

Creationists start from the belief that evolution is as much a religion as is Christianity. Since no one witnessed the Earth’s first moments, they say, both theories about the universe’s origins are unprovable and equally viable. Therefore, both evolutionists and creationists can be scientists, each analyzing data in accordance with their world view.

Under this reasoning, everything is up for debate--from the age of the Earth to the formation of the Grand Canyon. The Colorado River did not cut the 1-mile-deep-gorge into the Arizona landscape slowly, they say. Instead, they believe the waters of “The Flood”--the one that begat Noah’s Ark--chiseled the canyon quite rapidly.

Naturally, the institute has plenty of critics.

Many of its teachings are ridiculous, said Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard professor and leading evolutionist who is often referred to in Institute for Creation Research publications as the arch “anti-creationist.”

“There are certain issues that do get settled--the shape of the Earth, whether it goes around the sun,” Gould told The Times in a 1991 interview. “They have this absurd notion that something that occurs in the past and that is not subject to direct observation is not provable. There is a mystery as to how evolution occurs, but there is not a whole lot of doubt as to whether it occurs.”

Much of the institute’s--and the museum’s--thrust is political in nature. Morris said proudly the money used to fund it came entirely from “private donations,” unlike the $15 million that the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla spent on its new, state-of-the-art aquarium.

Morris’ museum features a florid, day-by-day accounting of how the world was created. It starts, of course, with Genesis, and the proclamation that “Science, as such, cannot prove God exists, but neither can it prove there is no God.” It moves on to The Flood, the Ice Age, the Tower of Babel, concluding with that murderer’s row of “evolutionists.”

Much of the focus involves Noah’s flood, which institute members say formed fossils by drowning all but the animals aboard the ark. The “Ark Room,” as Morris calls it, features hardwood floors that appear to lead onto a boat with an identical layout of hardwood floors.

As proof of his belief in Noah’s boat, Morris said he has journeyed 20 times to Ararat, a 17,000-foot mountain in eastern Turkey that is the supposed landing place of the Ark.

“We have never found it,” Morris said, “but we keep looking, and one day, we will.”

In the meantime, Morris and his colleagues are often preoccupied with less exotic--and much more unpleasant--pursuits.

He said of Honig, a longtime adversary, “I don’t know what motivates him, but it is very similar to what motivates modern evolution--which, I am convinced, cannot stand the tests of science.

“It is an inferior view. The creationist view is much superior. The only way evolution can stand is to make it exclusive. They tried to make it exclusive academically, but it didn’t work. They tried to make it exclusive through the courts, and that didn’t work. Let’s face it, truth is stronger than bigotry.”

Morris paused and took a sweeping glance at the pictures near the entrance.

“We have got the fossils, we have got the dinosaurs, we have got everything!” he said. “We have got a good explanation that fits the evidence very well indeed--far better than their explanation.

“The Honigs of the world are intimidated by it, so they have got to do everything they can to shut us down. We won the first round, but the battle will come again--and the next time, we will be even more prepared.”