A new theme park that features the Bible as a literal story, albeit one in which children cavort with dinosaurs, has opened in northern Kentucky.

"We wanted to show people there's no mystery with dinosaurs, we can explain them," said Ken Ham, founder of the Answers in Genesis Ministry.

The non-profit group created the US$27 million Creation Museum, but protestors said the money could have been better spent.

"Twenty-seven million dollars could have gone towards a lot of other things other than propping up a fairy tale," said one man.

The dinosaur exhibit is at odds with scientists who say that the massive lizards existed tens of millions of years before man.

In the literal interpretation of the Bible, however, dinosaurs were created by God at the same time as all the other animals just a few thousand years ago.

"People are just fascinated by dinosaurs, but they've sort of become synonymous with millions of years and evolution," Ham said.

The 5,600-square-metre facility rebuts the theory of evolution. Ham claims the Bible's stories about the world being created in six days are supported by science.

At the website of the Royal Tyrrell Museum in the fossil hotbed of Drumheller, Alta., it says, "There's been life on Earth for more than 3.9 billion years, so we have a lot to show you!"
 
One exhibit offers a chance to view "a giant recreation of underwater life from 350 million years ago."

While the Tyrrell museum has dinosaur skeletons, Ham hired Patrick Marsh, who designed the "Jaws" monster at Universal Studios in Florida, to oversee the animatronic exhibits, including dinosaurs.

Eugenie Scott of the U.S. National Center for Science Education fears students who visit the Creation Museum will "show up in classrooms and say, 'gee, Mrs. Brown, I went to this spiffy museum last summer and they say that everything you're teaching me is a lie."

The museum contains fossils, but Ham said most were created by the massive flood described in the book of Genesis.

"They can believe whatever they want to believe about when dinosaurs were created and when humans were created," said Jeffrey McKee, an anthropologist at Ohio State University.

"The fact is that dinosaurs went extinct long before humans were around."

Ham is originally from Australia and began developing the idea of a creationist museum in the early 1990s.

Donations have been sufficient to allow the museum to open debt-free.

"Christians across this nation see this place as a rallying point," Ham said. They "recognize that we live in a culture that no longer believes the Bible is true."

With a report from CTV's Joy Malbon and files from The Associated Press