God made dinosaurs on the sixth day of Creation, the same day He made people, according to Rusty Carter’s interpretation of the Bible.
“The word dinosaur was not invented back then, but in Job 38, there’s two large creatures, behemoth and leviathan,” said Carter, director of the Littleton-based Biblically Correct Tours, as he prepared to give his first tour of this school year.
Either or both creatures were probably dinosaurs, he said.
Nineteen 10 and 11 year-olds trailed behind Carter Saturday morning at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, most of them nodding knowingly as their tour guide pointed out flaws in exhibits.
“What do you guys think? Is the world really 4.5 billion years old?” Carter asked.
“Nonsense!” one girl called out, and the adults in the group smiled.
Carter said demand for his religious tours of secular sites has been continual since the company’s founding in 1989, but the media’s attention has exploded recently as local and state school boards across the country debate how to teach evolution.
“There’s a lot of people asking questions about science,” Carter said.
Tour leaders say they’re trying to point out flaws in the “so-called science” of evolution, which contradicts their own understanding of Creation.
Many scientists say they have deep concerns about the “inaccurate” way Creationists are portraying science.
“Science…helps us to frame our thoughts into a logical structure,” said Richard Stucky, vice president for research and collections at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
For example, evolutionary science is the only way to study how bacteria come to evade antibiotics, a critical problem in medicine today, he said.
Evolution’s proof? “The millions of fossils that occur in layered sequences in rocks that show changes and adaptations over time,” Stucky said.
Most of the children on Saturday’s tour attend Foothills Bible Church in Littleton. About half go to public school, the rest to Christian or home schools.
Many of them already knew the Creationist critiques of evolution: That scientists’ methods of dating rocks are inaccurate, for example.
For Tanner Cameron, a 5th grade student at Shaffer Elementary, a public school in Littleton, life’s history finally began to make sense Saturday.
“Ohhhh,” he said as Carter’s colleague Tyson Thorne explained how fossils form. Thorne’s story included water, mud, sudden catastrophe…
“They’re fossilized from the flood!” Cameron exclaimed. “So maybe the dinosaurs became extinct because of the flood?”
Well, the flood fossilized dinosaurs, Thorne said, but dinosaurs made it onto the Ark – all the animals did. He suspects that Noah brought baby dinosaurs (because who would want an adult Tyrannosaurus around?) and that the creatures succumbed to either overhunting or climate change.
Biblically Correct tours cost $5 per person plus entrance fees, and most of Carter’s clients are from Christian schools, churches, or homeschools.
Neither Carter nor his colleagues make a living off the tours: Carter, for example, runs a flooring business.
Carter estimated 30,000 people have taken BC tours of local sites – from the Denver Zoo to Garden of the Gods – since the group’s founding in 1988.
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science accommodates the biblical groups graciously, Carter said, although museum volunteers have occasionally confronted tour leaders. Museum staff confirmed that.
“I can understand,” Carter said. “It’s offensive to them. We’re kind of attacking what they believe.”
What he teaches comes direct from the Bible, Carter said:
Earth is 6,000 years old.
The fossil Lucy, purportedly a transition between ape-like creatures and humans, is shoddy science.
Organisms can’t evolve from one thing into another. “You might have a small change, like a tadpole to a frog, but nothing more than that,” Carter said.
Stucky, a paleontologist who studies vertebrate evolution, has seen BC Tours lead groups through the museum many times, he said. He appreciates their work, not only as a matter of free speech.
“I think it’s great that a lot of these students are exposed to evidence from the fossil record,” Stucky said.
Stucky himself grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home in Kansas. He declined to discuss his own faith, but said he has deep respect for his parents’.
“Spiritual beliefs are something only the individual can decide,” Stucky said. “Science, on the other hand, is a collective enterprise.”
The critical thinking model used by scientists, which includes testing ideas about how the world works, is crucial for understanding the past and preparing for the future, he said.
“The understanding we’ve gained of the physical world has led to the economic prosperity of today,” Stucky said.
Evolutionary science has helped conservation biologists figure out how to save species, he said. It has led to smarter agriculture and animal husbandry.
It’s also closer to the “truth” than Creationism, said Michael Tooley, a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
“And as a philosopher, I’m inclined to say that it’s rarely the case that false beliefs are beneficial to the society over long run,” Tooley said.
Tooley said he appreciated Carter’s goal of teaching students to think critically about what museums tell them. He questioned, however, whether groups such as BC Tours are applying lessons selectively.
A literal reading of the Bible, for example, not only reveals that God created people and dinosaurs the same day, Tooley said. It reveals that slavery is acceptable, as is the stoning-to-death of a woman who is not a virgin on her wedding night.
At the end of the tour, Carter led a prayer to thank God for this opportunity to see His hand at work.
All 19 students said they believed Carter’s interpretation of the museum’s exhibits.
Did anyone think the museum got something right, or Carter got it wrong?
“Come on, put your hands up if you disagree with me,” Carter urged.
None went up. But most said they’d love to visit the museum again.
“It’s interesting,” said Courtney Luster, 11, “whether it’s true or not.”
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-820-1910 or at khuman@denverpost.com.
