The 7 Wonders Creation Museum, also 7 Wonders Museum of Mount St. Helens, is a museum and bookstore dedicated to promoting young Earth creationism in |Silverlake, Washington (or Toutle, Washington) near Mount St. Helens, United States. Admission is free, and often accompanied by a guided tour of volcano sights.
The two-room museum was founded in 1998 by Lloyd and Doris Anderson, who live in a nearby house. Lloyd Anderson, born circa 1934, has a master's degree in theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, and is a retired former pastor; his wife Doris has worked as a registered nurse and journalist. The 7 Wonders Museum takes its name from seven Mount St. Helens land features that changed in no more than a few years. Lloyd claims that it offers creation evidence to support the Bible as "without error in the original writing." The Andersons see the eruption as divine evidence for young earth creationism, and see their museum as a counterpoint to the many shops and visitors centers near Mount St. Helens conveying the secular view.
The scientific community considers creationism to be pseudoscience. As a result, science organizations, such as the National Center for Science Education, criticize the promotion of creationism as a form of non-science. Scientists say the museum rejects modern science because of the museum's preconceived religious views, and misleads visitors by extrapolating very special geologic events into equivalence with much longer-term events.
Wilfred Elders, an emeritus professor of geology at the University of California-Riverside and a former chairman of the Education Committee of the Geothermal Resources Council of the U.S.A. stated:
The 7 Wonders Creation Museum is an example of the ‘best’ and the ‘worst’ of the young-Earth creationist movement. It is good in that it actually reports geological observations. It is bad because it ignores the scientific method in interpreting them. ...Constrained as they are by their view of biblical chronology, young-Earth creationists infer that the seven days of creation occurred less than 10,000 years ago, and that the next significant event in the history of the Earth and of life was the flood of Noah. The 7 Wonders museum ignores or rejects anything that disagrees with that view. In doing so it rejects modern science.
Famous quotes containing the words wonders and/or museum:
“We that are bound by vows and by promotion,
With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,
To teach belief in good and still devotion,
To preach of heaven’s wonders and delights—
Yet, when each of us in his own heart looks,
He finds the God there far unlike his books.”
—Fulke Greville (1554–1628)
“A Museum of fetishes would give special attention to the history of underwear.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)