Christian Museum Tours Interview with the International Association for Creation

Genesis Apologetics

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Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Dan Biddle with Genesis Apologetics, and I'm here with my good friend today,

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Stephen Policastro, who is the president of the International Association for Creation. And I'm interviewing him today because he's got an amazing program where they're installing museum tour guides in secular museums all across America, so you guys can go in there and check out these museums from a

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Christian biblical worldview. This is an important topic. For example, I was at the Royal Tyrrell Museum up in Canada once, it's the largest dinosaur museum in the world,

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I'm told. I was there with my daughter, and we walked up to this museum exhibit, and there was a young man there with his mom, and this young man was sitting there staring at this museum exhibit that was kind of a goo to the zoo, to me and you kind of display.

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There was a pond scum at the beginning, then evolution went up from cells to fish, fish eventually up to mammals and reptiles and humans.

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And this kid was looking at this, and he was just, you could see the gears turning in his mind.

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He's sitting there thinking about this, and he was a little bit perplexed, I could just detect it just looking at his face, my daughter's there, we were both just observing this.

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After a while of contemplating, he looked up at his mom and says, mom, is this true? Did I evolve from a fish?

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And my daughter and I are sitting there thinking like, oh my gosh, what is she going to say? And after a couple seconds of pause, she says, yes,

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I think it's true. And we walked away, and about 100 feet later, I looked at my daughter and she was crying.

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And I'm like, my gosh, how many times in museums do kids have their identities about their origins just wrecked, and their relationship being made in the image of God, just severed to think

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I'm just evolved pond scum. So Steven, why are you working so hard to put museum tour guides in these leading cities across America?

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Yeah, so we're working to have Christian museum guides in world -class secular museums to give biblical worldview tours.

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And one of the reasons for what exactly you just described, that a lot of parents and their children are going through these world -class museums, honestly, some of the world's best museums, and they're learning things that are contrary to their faith, which causes, you know, a lot of problems, maybe early on, or later on in life, when it comes to sowing seeds of doubt, and maybe, you know, did

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God's word really say what it says? And as we all know, like, that's a lie as old as time itself, right?

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I have a new face that same exact lie from Satan, you know, did God really say that?

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And so, you know, when we bring our kids through these institutions, we have to remember that A.

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God created everything that is on display there, right? He set it all into motion because he created the whole world.

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And we should be able to bring our children and our friends and just, you know, anyone around town through these institutions, be able to tell them about it from God's perspective, from biblical worldview.

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So give me an example, pull out your hottest museum with a great guide, but lots of velocity going through it.

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Like, well, how many people are going through every month, you got people leading tours, how long are the tours, that kind of stuff.

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Just pick out an example. Yeah, yeah. So we have tours in the top seven cities right now, we're consistently expanding that reach.

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And right now, I would say some of our more full tours are, you know, 30 to 40 people.

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And we try and break that into smaller segments of 15 people per tour group.

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So you'll have maybe multiple tour guides with you in any one given day. And that allows you to have, you know, personal experience, the tour guide gets to know you and your child and what your child likes to see, will take you through the exhibits that really inspire awe and wonder in your children, which is a beautiful thing to see.

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And so it's amazing, Dan, to see kids be able to go through these secular museums and see

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God's creativity and see God's design, right?

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And with the help of our Christian Museum guides, they're doing just that. There's hundreds of youth going through these museums every single year.

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You go to the Smithsonian, for example, in Washington, DC, and there's a line there in the morning that just goes forever.

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And you go to the break room in the cafeteria, and I think they probably seat 500 people.

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It's huge. I was in there and I went through the hall, the human evolution hall, and they have this display in there where you go and you go to up to a computer screen, there's like four or five different computer screens, you get in line, you go up to computer screen, and then you choose an early human evolution ancestor, it could be

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Artie or Lucy or Homo erectus, whatever, you choose that, and the computer takes a picture, takes your picture, and superimposes your image upon that supposedly human evolutionary ancestor, the ape -like creature.

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So they put your image on top of an ape -like creature and say, look at that, that's what you would have looked like as a female version of Artie or whatever.

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But think about how blasphemous that is, because we are holders of the image of God, Amogh O'Dea, we have the image of God, and we're superimposing that upon this supposedly transitionary form that didn't exist, or some version of it did exist, probably an ape -like creature, but how that must grieve the heart of God, to superimpose your image, which is made in the image of God, upon an ape, which is just a created animal.

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So yeah, we have a lot of passion about doing this, and you've got these seven cities up and they're running well.

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Are most of your clients, I take it a lot of them are probably homeschool moms, homeschool parents? Yeah, so a lot of homeschool parents are coming through, just individual families as well as co -ops and groups from around the country.

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They really love it, because like you said, at the end of the day, if you just go by yourself through these museums, it's really easy to get caught up in the evolutionary dogma that the museums just share from the public's perspective.

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But when you are on a Christian museum tour, you're able to go through and see all the same things, but from a

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Christian perspective, a biblical worldview, and it really builds the faith of our children, it even builds our faith, honestly.

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I love going through these tours and hearing from our tour guides, just the different facts that they have about dinosaurs and being made in God's images as we are as humans, or biodiversity and things like that.

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So there's so many different types of things that we can see at these museums, and they all point back to the truth in God's word.

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Is there a cost? How does that work? Yeah, so it depends on your local market and which museum you're going to.

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That is all dependent on who's leading the tour, and so if you go to our website at christianmuseumtours .com,

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you can request a tour in your local city, and then we can get you connected with the tour guide, and you'll figure out all the scheduling and cost information from your local guide.

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How many people are going through it every year? I know you're just getting this program started, but I know you have some cities that have a lot of flow, a lot of people, but what's your number right now on the cities?

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Is it 1 ,000 people a year, 2 ,000 people a year? Yeah. How many people are going through the program? Yeah, so there are some cities that have up to 1 ,000 people a year.

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We've seen a few cities with north of 3 ,000 a year previously, so it's exciting, it's a growing movement, and people are really able to see

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God's world through the lens of God's word when they go to the world's best museums with the Christian Museum Guide.

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How are you able to not disrupt the patrons when you're going through it with 31 homeschool kids?

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How does that work? How do you guys do that? So all of our guides, or most of our guides, are equipped with earpieces and microphones, so as a...

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A whisper set. Right, a whisper set, yeah. So the whisper set provides the earpiece, and then you can hear the tour guide speaking at a lower tone, so they're not necessarily disrupting others.

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And honestly, even when non -attendees are hearing the tour, they might tag along and just listen because it's such different and interesting information they may have never heard before.

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So we've had a lot of people come on our tour that didn't necessarily book with us and stay for a while to listen to what they have to say from our tour guides and new information, and hopefully get to hear the gospel.

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That's great. Do you have any hostility from people in the museums that are sometimes die -hard evolutionists, or people that are walking around that hear the creation -based talk going on, or how does that work?

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Yeah, that seems to be a really popular, maybe misconception in the creation movement, that our secular friends are hostile towards what we believe and think.

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But what I've found, and what many of my colleagues have found by giving tours in museums around the world, is that our secular friends actually are intrigued by what we believe, especially when we present it in a way that's respectful and courteous of differing beliefs.

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So when we're able to engage in dialogue with our friends, maybe from a different perspective, they're willing to listen, and they ask sincere questions.

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I've been giving a tour at the Natural History Museum in Phoenix, and at the end of my tour, the director of the museum brought all of her docents for that day into the lobby, and they sat with me for about 15 minutes and asked me really good, sincere questions.

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Most of them said, that's the best presentation of alternative view we've ever heard before. And if that doesn't make us say, wow, this is worth it, we're not only reaching the young children and the kids who otherwise would just be inundated with evolutionary theory, we're also reaching the very people who are curating these exhibits with the biblical worldview.

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It's really exciting to see how open different people are to Christianity.

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When we present it in a way that's respectful and kind, and we know what we're talking about, we understand that at the end of the day, we're the experts.

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When we go into these museums, we're the experts on the topic. We want to share with you and your kids about these facts and about the truth of the

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Bible. And so if anyone else can come along and join us, we always welcome that. The respect factor is huge.

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The Bible says, speak the truth of love, and it's to give a reason for the hope that lies within you. So I know our ministry is based in California, and we have to really balance truth and love and do it with compassion, understanding that the

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Bible says that the unregenerate mind is not going to be able to understand the things that are true, the things of the spirit, the things that God said that what he did in his word with respect to creation.

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So you really want to be mindful and sensitive that different people are along different steps of their journey.

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And sometimes there's a time to be forceful and hold your ground. You know, we're not going to change what we teach or believe, but we have to be gentle knowing that it's

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God who's going to convince someone ultimately. So we're just here as his agents to present the truth and get it out like that.

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But you're right, sometimes the docents can almost be helpful in this process.

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I'll never forget, I was in the L .A. Natural History Museum looking at a coelacanth exhibit there, and it says that they all died in a flood at Ghost Ranch.

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And I'm like, look at that, of course they did. And a museum docent walks up to me and says, well, I actually find this all around the world that these dinosaurs died in a flood.

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And I say, oh, you don't say. So it's very interesting that you just have to be...

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Ephesians 2 says that we should do the good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do. So if we follow him, we're filled with love, and we do our best to study to show ourselves approved, he will provide opportunities for us to present to the docents and to the other patrons.

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Why were they all training people who are part of our own fabric in the first place? But Stephen, thanks for what you're doing.

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How do people get information on how to be a part of that? Yeah, so you can just go to christianmuseumtours .com,

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and you can learn all about our tours, learn how to plan your day before a tour, get in contact with one of our local guides in your area.

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Again, that's christianmuseumtours .com, and we look forward to seeing you out there soon. Great. Thanks for having us.