Creationist Dinosaurs

Driving east on the 10 en route from the sublime emptiness of Joshua Tree National Park, back to the sea of metallic machines and smog so thick you can chew it, a party of dinosaurs rose up in the distance. To be precise, there were two, both with a pallor suggesting the aftermath of a disagreeable meal, frozen in place as if victims of the white witch. I was simultaneously gratified and disturbed by their presence. I had traversed this almost entirely vacant stretch of the 10 at least two dozen times and somehow managed to bypass the most arresting and curious element of the landscape. So it was fortunate that on this occasion I was riding shotgun with a partner at the wheel. Indeed, it was he who spotted the Jurassic giants. 

On spying them he let out an excited cry, which seemed a touch overenthusiastic, even for such an awesome and rare (unless you are driving through Colorado) sight. "Wizard!" was the single, breathless word he uttered. "Wizard!" Clearly missing the reference and a piece of childhood for people of my age I responded, not unkindly, "What?" In an even more ecstatic and breathless outpouring he rejoined, "Wizard!" (which I found a touch redundant and unhelpful). "The movie. They're in the movie! Man, but are the guys gonna be jealous. Let's pull over!"

Not one to turn down any eccentricity of architecture, I concurred. And so we were to be found, moments later, jacket clad, standing below the behemoths in what was apparently a wind tunnel (the windmills should have been a clue). As all tourists are obliged to do, we pulled out cameras, orchestrated ourselves in a multitude of interesting positions - underneath claws, on top of toes, beneath bellies, in mouths - and then attended the gift shop. It was there that I had the first inkling that something was not quite as it should be.

In an effort to make the lifeless cement gigantors worth more than a couple of snapshots, the dinosaurs' owner had located a shop in the belly of the beast, a.k.a. the bracheosaurus. The stairs, marching upward through the creature's tail, sported glass covered display cases on both sides. Inside were the usual - fossils, maps, plastic figurines, geodes. Having seen such displays upwards of 1,000 times in my 23 years I paid them scant attention and proceeded to the stomach and intestinal region. 

As per the usual, the shop was packed with plastic toys, shop encasing "fossilized" insects, shirts in colors only tourists go for, like moths to a flame, magnets, and then that array of toys which has nothing to do with the overall exhibit such as miniature men in medieval gear riding stallions with those legs that never seem to stay quite straight. While I am in many ways still a child and enamored of toys, I was not overly interested in the spread and was about to tune my surroundings out when, from the corner of my eye, I spotted a display of shirts sporting the catch phrase "By design, not by Chance" written beneath the feet of a T-Rex. This was a shirt suggesting either that natural selection is a little savvier than generally supposed or a billboard for intelligent design. My suspicions pointed to the latter. And if so this was something to get excited about, not because I am a creationist Christian or anything of the like, but because it was so wholly different, so wonderfully novel. This was a dinosaur gift shop like none I had previously encountered. My explorative impulse renewed I pressed on, pawing through everything in the store. Moments later I came upon a display of truly wonderful shoes, my particular favorite of which was fashioned after the face of a T-Rex, a piercing yellow eyeball on each side. While the graphics intrigued me, it was the quote on the box which really tickled my fancy, "I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science." - Soren Lovtrup. My previous suspicions were now confirmed beyond doubt. These idols were not dedications to Darwin, but offerings to God, representations of his creative genius! On the verge of an almost hysterical giddiness I all but ran about the shop, turning over every box, peering under every product to read what was written there. Every passage was highly rewarding, consisting of quotes from Bible passages, information for a duped world. 

I simply had to know who the curators of such a bizarre anomaly were. Mustering my courage I approached the blond, middle aged, overly spunky lady behind the counter. "I'm curious, may I ask who owns this, uh, establishment?" Turning on a recording that she must be entreated to rehash a thousand times a day she answered. Apparently the creatures' initial creator and proprietor was a man who had aided in the design and construction of Knotts Berry Farm. Looking at the modern architectural landscape, where there's nothing that can be built which cannot be torn down, he wanted to find a place where he could build something that would last. Selecting a remote region in the Mohave desert he used left overs from the freeways being built at that time (rebar and cement primarily) and constructed his mammoths. A devoted darwinist he dedicated them to evolution and evolution was promoted in the gift shop. Upon his death his pets passed to his son who turned around and sold it to (this is my favorite part) a group of creationist Christians. Oh, but how the old man must be turning in his grave. Since then it has become a place for the promotion of not just intelligent design, but creationism. "We have evolutionary biologists come in from time to time," the women said as she came to the close of her tale, "and they try to argue with us, but you just can't really argue with the truth. That's what we're doing here, we're getting out the truth, dispelling the lies." Brilliant.

I was so taken with the surreal bizarro world that I had entered that I found no choice but to make two small purchases. The first was one of the afore mentioned shirts. I figured that it would come in handy as a conversation starter in bars and would give me a bearing on the number of creationist and anti-creationists out there by the number of people who applauded me or threw rocks at me. Part way through this initial purchase I saw on the edge of the counter a book entitled "Refuting Evolution: A response to the national academy of sciences' teaching about evolution and the nature of science". I mean, how could I refuse. Pleased with my booty my partner and I headed back down the stairs, this time peering into each display case. Therein were maps not of any real world, but of the Flood, the Garden of Eden, and other important but metaphorical locations. Exiting the tail and stepping back into reality, I found myself thoroughly pleased with the experience, reinvigorated, and pleased to live in a country where such things as creationist dinosaurs exist.