Who Are the British Creationists?
BBC: Widely believed in the United States, creationism - the belief that God created the earth and man in six days - is enjoying a resurgence of support in the UK, say its believers and its critics.

At first glance the Genesis Expo museum, in the naval town of Portsmouth, looks like any other repository of natural history exhibits: fossils of dinosaurs and unusual rock formations.

But focus on the narrative of the information panels alongside them, and you start to realise this is a museum with a difference - one dedicated to the theory of creationism.

The revelation that US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin says creationism should be taught in schools, alongside that of evolutionary theory, has raised few eyebrows in the US. An estimated 47% of Americans reject outright Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, accepting instead the Bible's account of the creation of the universe - as laid out in the first chapter of Genesis.

But in Britain, where a portrait of Darwin appears on the back of the £10 note, his theory of life evolving from primitive to complex structures by means of natural selection appears to be unchallenged orthodoxy.

Not so, say those on both sides of the creationist divide - a point amply proved by the existence of the Genesis Expo museum, to date Britain's only creationist museum. The museum is the work of Britain's oldest creationist group, the Creation Science Movement, which has built Genesis Expo to visibly challenge the theory of evolution .

In its walk-through display, fossils in glass cases purport to show that ancient animals - including man - did not evolve from lower creatures but were instead divinely created "after their kind" (Genesis Chapter 1, verse 21).

A picture of a landslide-causing volcano is used to counter the scientific understanding that rock strata took millions of years to build up.

And throughout the display are scattered examples of "intelligent design" - complex creatures that "could not have evolved" as the result of natural selection. Who Are the British Creationists? >>> By Julian Joyce, BBC News | September 15, 2008

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