Zoo Officials and Religious Exhibits

The Zoo in Tulsa already has at least two religious displays. They have a statue of the Hindu god, Ganesh, outside the elephant exhibit because Ganesh is portrayed as an elephant. They have a marble globe inscribed with an American Indian saying: "The earth is our mother. The sky is our father." So hundreds of people signed a petition requesting a Creationist exhibit (showing God creating the world in six days). Zoo officials objected to this mixing of religion and a state supported scientific institution, but the The Tulsa Park and Recreation Board voted 3-1 in favor of the Creationist exhibit.

ARticle here

It seems obvious to me that anybody with just a modicum of foresight and common sense might have seen this coming when they put up the exhibits honoring Hindu and Native American religious themes. We once experienced a similar situation directly affecting our family- I'll blog about that later, maybe. The DHM could never understand the obvious double standard, but years later an atheist friend explained it to her. The DHM, he said, understood that a pagan or pantheistic religion is still a religion and she actually respected it as such. The agency in question actually did not respect them but treated them as cutsey children's story. They did not take it seriously. They did take Christianity seriously, and that is why they did not want any part of it.

In this story, I suspect that really, its' the same thing- the disply of Hindu gods and Native American religious views is acceptable to Zoo officials because they don't take it seriously and instead view it on the same level they do Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit stories. But the Bible frightens them.