The Lion, The Lamb and The Velociraptor

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The Lion, The Lamb, and The Velociraptor - Cabazon, March 2009

As a kid growing up in Southern California back in the 1970’s, my favorite childhood memories are of my Dad piling the family into our artificial wood-paneled Ford LTD station wagon and heading out onto the open highway for a family road-trip. Sometimes it was just a day trip up the coast, or a weekend out into the desert… Sometimes we would drive all the way up to Oregon, or out to Arizona - even as far as Idaho - spending up to a month on the road.

Back then the highways of the western states were dotted with interesting roadside attractions. In the Redwoods there were the three story high statues of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe at a place called The Trees of Mystery. I remember at least two different motels which featured oversized concrete Indian teepees as rooms. It seemed that every other farm town had a building shaped like a fruit or a vegetable. I remember buying a bag of artichokes in Salinas at a building shaped like a giant artichoke. But of all these, my favorite were the two massive dinosaurs off Hwy 10 at Cabazon, on the way to Palm Springs. Back then they were known as "Claude Bell’s Dinosaurs". And they could be seen from the highway, standing alone against the desert sky, causing thousands of kids to beg their parents to pull off the freeway.

About a month ago, while out on a weekend drive with my wife and three year-old daughter, I was happy to see the two enormous beasts still standing proudly against the desert skyline. And so I pulled off the highway to take my daughter to visit the massive cement dinosaurs, just as my father had taken me nearly 40 years earlier. We parked at the nearby Wheel Inn coffee shop and had a breakfast of chicken-fried steak and eggs before walking over to the have a closer look at the enormous concrete reptiles.

But as soon as we reached the entrance to the gift shop, located in the belly of the huge Brontosaurus I realized that something was wrong.

"Primordial soup, to the zoo, to you, is evolution true?"

As we ascended the stairs inside of the Brontosaurus' tail I saw the following sign:

All around the gift shop, amidst the toy dinosaurs, I noticed that there were laminated signs posted on the walls.

Placed directly below a sculpture of a Cro-Magnon man - a sculpture put there by Claude Bell back in the early 1960's…

…there was this small sign:

And another:

I asked the kid behind the counter, "what's up with all the anti-evolution messages?", and he informed me that I was presently standing in the gift shop of the "creation science" museum which was located at the back of the property, by the T-Rex.

Yes, the very T-Rex made famous in the Tim Burton film, PeeWee's Big Adventure - the one in which PeeWee and the waitress, Simone, confide to each other their innermost longings while watching the sunrise through the dinosaur's teeth - was now a "young Earth", "creation-science" museum!...I told my wife we had to go take a look, but she wasn't interested, especially at 5 bucks a pop. And so before we climbed back into the car and headed out, I made her promise that we would come back one day soon and have a look.

Well, that day came last weekend. This time we skipped the gift shop and headed straight to the cave-styled entrance, paid our $15, and were greeted by a cheerful fellow in a green dinosaur costume.

This is going to be great, I thought to myself, but my excitement soon turned to disappointment when I realized that the "museum" was nothing more than another gift shop, with a couple coin operated dinosaurs for the kids to ride on. Off to one side was a "study room" where a video was playing, the gist of which was that most of the dinosaurs died out a few thousand years ago due to the fact that they were just too big to fit on Noah's Ark. The few that survived are what we think of today as dragons and were killed off during the middle-ages.

While I watched the video, my wife and daughter browsed through the toys, t-shirts and games for sale in the shop.

Many of the toy dinosaurs had this interesting tag attached:

There were also many books for sale…

Bibles were displayed along side of the "science" books.

There were plenty of children's books as well, many of which contained the same theme about dinosaurs and dragons being one and the same.

And there were also informative signs hanging on walls and leaning against sculptures of dinosaurs.

Pages from creationist coloring books hung on the wall of the study room.

At this point I was beginning to get a bit restless, and so we headed outside to have a look at the dinosaur sculpture garden.

I must admit, some of the dinosaur sculptures were pretty cool…

I especially liked this ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex, which frightened my little daughter.

And as I followed the footpath around the corner, I soon saw the reason why the T-Rex was so upset; there was a 11th century crusader throwing rocks at him!

A little further down the path I came across this scene, straight out of the Book of Isaiah:

"And the lion will dwell with the lamb, And the velociraptor will lie down with the goat"…or something like that.

They also had a trough where children could (for a small price) "pan for fossils".

As we wandered down the pathway toward our final destination, the giant T-Rex, I was a bit surprised to see the "rainbow flag" flapping in the wind.

Finally we reached the big T-Rex where PeeWee and Simone shared their heart's desires.

We entered at the back, through the side of the enormous tail. On the wall I saw a hieroglyph from the Claude Bell era.

I also saw more recent hieroglyphs.

Finally the three of us reached the inside of the great behemoth's head. The wind was blowing hard through the 12 inch tall cement teeth as I paused to think of that great cinematic moment which was captured in this very space more than 20 years before…

Simone: I know you're right, Pee-wee, but…

PeeWee: Everyone I know has a big "But…" C’mon, Simone, let’s talk about your big "But".

Of course PeeWee was right, we all have a big "but"… And as I looked out through the giant teeth, I thought about the big "but" that was on my mind that day.

I didn't drag my family all the way out here simply to poke fun at a goofy, creationist roadside attraction. In fact the people who were working at this place were sincerely nice folks. It was also not my intent to ridicule their religion. But still I felt compelled to photograph this place and share the pictures on my website. Why?

The reason is that there are those who would have this type of "creation science" taught in American public schools as part of the science curriculum… And most of the people pushing for this are members of the Republican Party; the party of which I am a member.

States such as Texas and Louisiana have already passed legislation which would allow this type on nonsense to be introduced in to publicly funded schools and promoted as valid "science", equal to legitimate scientific theories regarding, not only evolution, but also geology, biology, astronomy and even archeology! To me this is beyond embarrassing, it’s a travesty.

The governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, who was selected to give the Republican rebuttal to President Obama's recent speech before Congress, is a strong proponent of introducing this kind of phony science in public schools. He is also often referred to as "the future of the Republican Party"… Well, if Jindal really is the future of the Party, then it’ll have to be a Party without me.

And so that is why I post these pictures; to offer a little bit of visual proof of the nutty - and clearly religious - ideas that are at the very core of the pseudo-science known as "creation science".

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