Here’s a creationist movement of which we can heartily approve: Creationist Students Take Trip to Evolution Headquarters: The Smithsonian.

Every winter, David DeWitt takes his biology class to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, but for a purpose far different from that of other professors.

DeWitt brings his Advanced Creation Studies [Good grief. – ed.] class (CRST 390, Origins) up from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., hoping to strengthen his students’ belief in a biblical view of natural history, even in the lion’s den of evolution.

His yearly visit to the Smithsonian is part of a wider movement by creationists to confront Darwinism in some of its most redoubtable secular strongholds. As scientists celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, his doubters are taking themselves on Genesis-based tours of natural history museums, aquariums, geologic sites and even dinosaur parks.

“There’s nothing balanced here. It’s completely, 100 percent evolution-based,” said DeWitt, a professor of biology. “We come every year, because I don’t hold anything back from the students.” …

Like the Liberty students, avowed creationists across the country are making a practice of challenging the conventional wisdom at zoos (questioning the evolutionary explanation of giraffe necks), the Grand Canyon (dating the rock layers in thousands, not millions, of years), and cave parks (describing the formations as evidence of rapid drainage after the Great Flood).

In the upcoming issue of Answers, a leading magazine of the young-Earth movement, the list of “creation vacations” includes the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, the New England Aquarium in Boston and London’s Natural History Museum.

“Why should we be afraid to test our worldview against reality?” asked Bill Jack, a Christian leadership instructor who leads groups across the country for a company called Biblically Correct Tours. “If Christianity is true, it better be true in the natural history museums and in the zoos.”

Why do we approve of this? Well, it isn’t what the creationists intend, but maybe one of these students will learn something that breaks through the anti-science brainwashing. Or maybe not.

Near the end of the “Evolution Trail,” the class showed no signs of being swayed by the polished, enthusiastic presentation of Darwin’s theory. They were surprised, though, by the bronze statue of man’s earliest mammalian ancestor.

“A rat?” exclaimed Amanda Runions, a 21-year-old biochemistry major, when she saw the model of a morganucodon, a rodent-like ancient mammal that curators have dubbed Grandma Morgie. “All this hype for a rat? You’re expecting, like, at least an ape.”