Creationist iconography can be very creepy

Cody visited the creation science "museum" near Glenrose, Texas, and came back with a photo of the mural portraying Adam and Eve. Adam looks…familiar.

i-b2cb8e3b94d4e2abaa1bc232e85604ec-adam_and_eve.jpg

I knew he was old, but that old?

I'm not sure who Eve resembles. Anita Bryant? Skeletor?

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Heck with that. I want to know who does their hair.

By speedwell (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

Looks like Mark Wahlberg.

By Great White Wonder (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

Oh. Shit.

Baugh must be even stranger than I had imagined.

The one thing Adam doesn't look like is Middle Eastern.

Brooke Shields, maybe?

Looks like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to me.

What, no vitamin C in paradise?

By Fortunato (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

Looks like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to me.

That, or a young Martha Stewart. I'm not sure who the lady looks like, though.

Adam looked like Ted Haggard to me. Adam and Steve, indeed.

As for Eve, her ugliness maybe the personification of the religious right's view of women and womanhood.

Eve looks sort of like Amy Poehler on SNL.

By Tyler DiPietro (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

This is almost worthy of Bram Stoker. Notice Adam is looking up, pure joy on his face. Eve is skeletal by comparison, and noticeable less appealing. Note the deep-set eyes, and her mouth is less a smile than a leer. They don't seem to go so far as to make her explicitly sexual but look at the use of shadow on her face compared to Ronald-Adam's. While Adam has a handsome, square jaw, Eve has a virtually disembodied head, floating over a pencil-neck.

Man, there's some sick sexist scum at work in the cretinist camps.

Chris

Goodness, PZ, every time I get a link from you my website seems to automatically sense the deluge of coming traffic and shuts down before anything can happen.

No no, you have it all wrong. It looks like Ted Haggard. Notice how he's not interested in Eve in the least? Maybe he found the meth tree...

Mike Haubrich is only half right. Eden was considered Paradise because it offered the largest casino in the Middle East. What the Bible doesn't tell is that Adam was addicted to craps and rolled dice incessantly at that casino, known as Paradise. His sin is probably the root of all the wailing against gambling.

Adam and Eve were white people? Wow, what a surprise.
And Adam is looking heavenward while Eve is coming on to us. That dirty little minx.
See, we wouldn't have fallen from grace or whatever if it weren't for those women. Bad women. Baaaaaad women!

This all brings to mind the Ted Haggard thing though I'm not sure exactly why.

They had plastic surgery in Eden? And body waxing?

That's a TV/Model Actress... can't remember her name... or what show though.

Yeah, the "reference" to Ronald R. is there for sure.

And the woman with the eating disorder is certainly intended to suggest some sort of weird Schriver/Kennedy chimera, as others have suggested.

So on top of the usual white male-domination ethos, we've got a particularly twisted strain of we-Rethuglicans-stole-your-women thing aimed at the Dems.

Pretty funny, actually, if you can--very temporarily, please!--twist yourself in the same direction.

By Steviepinhead (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

What? Clearly Adam looks more like Kevin Bacon than Reagan.

Makes sense... if we're all going to be connected to someone by six degrees, it might as well be the first man on earth.

By the amadaun (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

Eve looks like she has a black eye. Probably got belted by old Adam. Adam looks like he's on something.

lower on the woman's green "wrap" it says:

"I'm with stupid"

One of Christianity's few redeeming points is the fact that, historically, it has produced some breathtaking art. But man, this isn't it. Whatever happened to the Sistine Chapel?

P.S. - I'm seeing shades of Ann Coulter in the woman, but perhaps I'm just paranoid.

More than anyone else, the woman reminds me of the strange makeup worn in DEVO's "Freedom of Choice" video.

By Great White Wonder (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

The expressions on their faces is best understood when you realize that they are standing amongst giant pot leaves.

By Great White Wonder (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

Mark Wahlberg & Brooke Shields

What the heck is that line going across the picture and casting a shadow on Adam's forehead? Is it their clothes line?
I'm sure that look on Eve's face must be because she's already met the serpent and had a bite of the forbidden banana from the banana tree in the background...yummy!

By Fernando Magyar (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

Not that she would have ever taken a nibble from the bad banana, but the woman looks a lot like Ann Coulter. You know, except that this one appears sane. I guess back then God hadn't gotten around to inventing psychotic paranoia.

Mike Haubrich is only half right. Eden was considered Paradise because it offered the largest casino in the Middle East.

You get kicked out of any casino if you're caught card-counting.
I can just hear Adam as they toiled and sweated post-ejection: "Some system!".

I'm surprised that nobody commented on the girl's eyes. I mean seriously-- she looks like that green dude from the Troma movies... one eye is WAY lower than the other. She has a very un-bilaterally symmetrical face-- if those are the appropriate words for it. As for the guy, he's kinda Mark Wahlberg-y, but with worse hair. Clearly, another satisfied MasterCuts customer.

kurage:

As much as anything else that was a matter of state- and church-sponsored arts, picking the best people to do the job. The modern Right doesn't like supporting the arts, or basic science, or anything that doesn't fit their slant, so we don't get so much state-sponsored art.

The problem is that modern Christianity has become so isolationist that they have to make do with what they can get -- smart people, as a rule, stay away from them, so they get unwatchable "movies", music lacking in personality and originality, and Thomas Kincaid. Hell, L. Ron Hubbard was a better writer than LaHaye and Jenkins, and that really isn't saying much.

Daephex:

I have never gotten a haircut from a chain salon that I really liked. I go to SuperCuts once in a great while, and it's still never as good as the barber shop I go to the rest of the time. And Eve is creepy. Very creepy.

Looks like Mark Wahlberg.

Yes, yes it does! I stared at it for like 2 minutes trying to figure it out before looking down and seeing the comments. Ah, relief.

The one thing Adam doesn't look like is Middle Eastern.

Yup, Christian Nationalism is closely tired to 'Christian Identity,' yup yup yup!

Eve looks sort of like Amy Poehler on SNL.

No she does not! And I should know. I've been a fan of Amy Poehler since Upright Citizens Brigade, the improv troupe she was a part of, had a short stint on Comedy Central, years before she hit SNL.

By Aerik Knapp-Loomis (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

Reagan and Jackie Kennedy. No question.

But hey, at least his hair isn't oiled.

By Ick of the East (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

I don't remember the Bible mentioning razors in the Garden of Eden so beards must have been another of those sneaky little punishments God inflicted on men after the Fall.

By Ian H Spedding FCD (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

I'm in the Mark Wahlberg camp. That's him, for sure. Are you sure this isn't a movie poster for Planet of the Apes?

"How'd these monkeys get like this?"

Well, "Adam" is definitely Ronnie Raygun, but "Eve"...? Maybe she's the long-lost love child of Helena Christensen and Sloth Fratelli?

By Rainbow Serpent (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

Adam and Eve white...

Didn't see that one coming.

By Nathan Perrier (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

Ah, c'mon! Eve simply has to be....Ann Coulter. Okay, so they touched up the Adam's Apple a bit, but maybe it's depicting them *before* they ate the apple, so Ann's lack thereof makes sense. In a Creationist, delusional sort of way, I mean.

A young, skinny Ronald Reagan and an aged, crow's-feet'ed Brooke Shields. Is that supposed to be an aura around them, or just the afterglow of sex?

I figure Kevin Bacon or Dick Clark too. Still trying to figure out who the guy looks like, though.

By the way nobody has mentioned Tom Cruse yet.

Adam reminds me of Patrick Swayze. I was wondering what he was up to.

By Silmarillion (not verified) on 13 Nov 2006 #permalink

Check this out. That's Ronnie, fer sure. In fact, give her straight long hair and Doris would look a lot like Eve, too.

So the limbo stick game originated in Eden?

Chris:

They don't seem to go so far as to make her explicitly sexual but look at the use of shadow on her face compared to Ronald-Adam's. While Adam has a handsome, square jaw, Eve has a virtually disembodied head, floating over a pencil-neck.

Of course she looks sinister and troubled. She's the mother of original sin, remember? It was Eve eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that led to the downfall of all mankind.

So you'd expect the Christian fanatics to make her look like a plotting, psychotic bitch. Death incarnate, dragging poor helpless Man along with her.

Am I the only one that thinks that Adam is getting a reach-around from Eve?

By The Squid (not verified) on 14 Nov 2006 #permalink

The woman is a B-list actress... I've seen her in various made for TV movies and or dramas in the 90's. But I can't for the life of me remember her name.

As it happens, there's a nuclear power plant near Glen Rose (yes, it's two words) as well. Let's hope the creationists aren't also the technicians there....

As it happens, there's a nuclear power plant near Glen Rose (yes, it's two words) as well. Let's hope the creationists aren't also the technicians there....

Maybe that's why the two in the picture are glowing.

Looks like Mr G. W. Bush to me. Something about the smarmy grin.

By Digital Lifeforms (not verified) on 14 Nov 2006 #permalink

So you'd expect the Christian fanatics to make her look like a plotting, psychotic bitch.

Sorry, I just thought this was hilarious...

Hear, hear, Brother Warren!...

I think she looks like Julianne Moore at the end of the movie "Safe". He's definitely the Gipper.

It's not Julianne Moore. It's driving me nuts... but I could pick her out in a B-list line up.

It's Ronny with a bad toupee.

By Madam Pomfrey (not verified) on 14 Nov 2006 #permalink

Ronald Reagan and Ann Coulter, for sure. Copying that facial expression from that one still of Michelle Malkin that everyone puts on their website, because it captures her inner derangement so beautifully, but definitely Ann Coulter.

By Interrobang (not verified) on 14 Nov 2006 #permalink

NO! That female doesn't have an adam's apple like Coulter.

I say she resembles Calista Flockhart.

yes, eve's crazy-eyes are quite assymetric here...kinda like shannen doherty's.

technically, adam and eve (and lilith) were jewish, no? so where's the beard and body hair on adam?

NO. NO. NO. She's not that famous. Always plays the semi-badgirl after someone else's man...

I don't know about the woman, but the man is definitely recognizable as Reagan, to me at least.

Somewhat oddly, too, since it looks like a combination of Reagan as he appeared as president, and a younger version. (But not the younger version of the actual Reagan.)

Isn't she the one who played that rat-eating female alien on the old "V" series? Although iirc the hair was darker.

By Madam Pomfrey (not verified) on 14 Nov 2006 #permalink

I'd say the guy looks a lot like Bea Arthur, and the lady bears a striking resemblance to Tiny Tim.

Maybe that's Lilith and Adam is coming to the realization that he doesn't have to do it with cows anymore.

Actually I kind of thought that she looked like a blonde Terry Farrell (Jadzia Dax) painted by someone who wasn't very skilled.

Reagan yes. As for the woman, I'm certain it's Jodie Foster in The Accused. The museum must not have gotten the memo that she's gay.

I'll go along with Ronald Regan, she is obviously a rib.

It's the gipper. Just after Eve (defintitely the rat-eater from V) told him she was going to reomove that banana leaf....

It's a badly painted Tracy Scoggins! Damn I'm good.

Adam & Eve sure look white?

I didn't know the Garden of Eden was in Germany?

MYOB'
.

You're thinking of the Garden of Vreden.

Besides the Reagan thing and the Western European theme going on here, this is just one of many visions of human history that really catch my attention because THEY LOOK SO DAMN CLEAN. And, except for the 21st century American anorexic look of Eve, HEALTHY. Don't people have the faintest clue of how brutal and short life was for most of humanity until, oh, about 90 years ago? (Not to mention that it's still that way today for the majority of people on the planet). Adam and Eve would have been matted, parasite-ridden, and likely had severe dental disease.

Oh, come on. You can't buy into it halfway. If they're Adam and Eve they're in Paradise, for crying out loud. Of course they're clean and healthy. And white. And Reaganesque. It's a FANTASY of white, gun-toting, middle-American fundies. You can't pretend that there really was an Adam and Eve except they'd be parasite-ridden, etc. That's just stilly.

As opposed to this museum, which is deeply disturbing.

Haggart and AMY GOODMAN!? Talk about your Yin and f*cking Yang!

Poor Amy...we never knew..Sheesh...what a burden...

-JJR

I think I found the identity of our gal...
Barbara Steele

Hammer Vamp!

By Cathy in Seattle (not verified) on 14 Nov 2006 #permalink

The third picture of her actually shows her in the Garden of Eden.

By Cathy in Seattle (not verified) on 14 Nov 2006 #permalink

hm, I agree that Adam looks a lot like Reagan. But to me, Eve looks nothing like any of the suggestions in this thread. She resembles a grotesque stereotype more than any woman I've ever seen.

The first name that popped up in my mind was Ted Haggard, and then George W. Bush. But I see now that he also resembles Ronald Reagan.

It's Tracy Scoggins damn it.

The manic grin is 100% Haggard, the rest of the face is definitely the Gipper.