Creationist Exhibit Displays Unique World View Philosophy: The new Museum of Creation and Earth History is devoted to the anti-evolutionary philosophy that the world was created over a period of days, not billions of years.: [San Diego County Edition]

John D. Morris was showing guests around his $50,000 pride and joy, a new, 4,000-square-foot museum extolling the virtues of creationism, when he came to a large glass cage full of finches.

"There are (Charles) Darwin's finches over there," he said. "They were the birds that convinced him of evolution. So, there they are."

He rolled his eyes and continued.

"They are finches! They are just finches! They haven't changed any. Some have big beaks. Some have little beaks. Evolution isn't demanded by finches-or by anything else."

Then, just as abruptly, Morris' dark look became one of exhilarated excitement.

"OK!" he said, peering into the next room. "Here's the Garden of Eden."

Morris, 45, is a professor of geology at the Institute for Creation Research, which his father founded in 1972 in Santee. In 1981, the school began granting graduate degrees in biology, geology, physics and science education, and has granted 35 so far.

Its philosophy has never wavered. Evolution, its professors preach, is a myth.

The school and its leaders, like the Christian forebears they embrace, are no strangers to conflict. In February, a federal judge awarded them $225,000 as a settlement in a lawsuit brought by the school against state education officials.

The institute's chief target was state schools chief Bill Honig, who has long maintained that the institute is a religious school, not a scientific one.

Based on a recommendation from a State Board of Education evaluation team, Honig sought in March, 1990, to revoke the institute's license to operate, because, he said, its physics, biology, geology and science education curriculum was not as rigorous as those at comparable degree-granting institutions.

But U.S. District Judge Rudi M. Brewster ruled that state officials violated the school's constitutional rights when they sought to strip it of its license to grant master of science degrees. School officials hailed the decision as a reaffirmation of academic freedom.

Friday marked the opening of a new and larger Museum of Creation and Earth History, which theorizes, among many theories, that the "young Earth" and its life forms were abruptly created in less than a week 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.

The museum leaves the distinct impression that the "genesis" of the planet did not happen, as most...