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The Creation Museum

The Creation Museum
-- Joseph Laycock

Last summer I took a road-trip to Kentucky to see the new Creation Museum.
The twenty-seven million dollar museum was established by the Biblical
apologist movement Answers in Genesis (AiG).  The movement teaches that the
earth is only six thousand years old, and the museum sets itself to the task
of explaining how a "young-earth" theory can account for diamonds, the Grand
Canyon, and even starlight from millions of light-years away.  AiG not only
pits itself against the findings of mainstream science, but also against
intelligent design, and "old-earth" creationists––those who believe that the
Genesis narrative occurred millions of years ago.  The museum claims to
present a "scientific account" of Creationism where children can see Adam
and Eve cavorting with robotic velociraptors.

Although the displays often wax polemical––directly blaming the theory of
evolution for the Holocaust and eugenics––the museum's staff was quite
affable during my visit.  I had expected seasoned apologists ready to
confront me with well-prepared rhetoric.  Instead, I was cheerfully guided
from room to room by beaming volunteers.  This was a friendlier, subtler
culture war than that of the Scopes Trial.  In fact, AiG does not support
efforts to teach Creationism in public schools.  AiG CEO Carl Wieland refers
to public education as a place that "would fiercely resist a frontal
assault."  Instead, his style is to "gently" reach out to hearts and minds.
The Creation Museum is a reflection of this strategy.

But while the robotic dinosaurs were certainly winning the hearts of
visiting children, I saw little evidence that the Museum's carefully
constructed arguments were influencing minds.  I watched visitors glance
over plaques explaining how Pangaea formed under water and then separated in
only forty days.  There was seldom an expression of enlightenment or
rejection—visitors simply took it all in and moved on.  Most visitors seemed
to have come to the Creation Museum simply as a family-friendly summer
activity, just as they would visit any other museum.

But a problem lies in the fact that the Creation Museum is not any other
museum.  Enlightenment thinkers compared the idea of a natural history
museum to an encyclopedia:  The contents of a traditional museum are
arranged thematically and the visitor can choose what to see first.  By
contrast, the Creation Museum is configured into a single, winding path.
There are no choices of direction and no shortage of volunteers to usher you
from one room to the next.  In fact, when I purchased my ticket for the
museum's planetarium show, I was told I could not enter the museum until I
had seen the show.   When I asked why, I was told, "Because the whole thing
is *designed* that way."  If the traditional museum is an encyclopedia, than
the Creation Museum is, by its very design, an argument.  Visitors are
required to experience the argument in sequence for maximum effect.

The issue, then, is one of autonomy—specifically, of reducing the
museum-goer's autonomy.  By promoting an article of faith through the color
of science, the Creation Museum attacks the very process of critical
thinking.  For example, a plaque explains that biologists *once* believed
that new animals could emerge from a completely different species; however,
biologists *now* agree that animals can only breed within their own kind.
Darwin's argument was that new species emerge *through* animals breeding
within their own kind and natural selection.  In a cunning rhetorical
maneuver, the AiG has taken two parts of a theory and presented them as if
they were at odds.

The same tactic is repeated against philologists in the Tower of Babel
exhibit.  Here a display states that scientists *used* to believe different
languages had emerged over thousands of years, but *now* scientists
recognize that languages can be divided into families.  Again, two parts of
a unified theory are presented without context so as to convey that one part
is replacing another, and that the findings of science are being abandoned.
The museum gives visitors rhetoric when they are expecting science, and that
prevents any rational assessment of the theories presented.

Creationism is a religious conviction, and as such, it is entitled to a
degree of respect and Constitutional protection.  However, no such
concessions should be made for willful deception.  An autonomous individual
is free to believe or disbelieve in Creationism, basing that decision either
on scientific evidence or on faith.  To deceive someone who is basing the
decision on evidence is to rob that person of autonomy and is
unethical––especially when that someone is a child.

*Sightings * 3/13/08

*References*

The official website for the Creation Museum is:
http://www.creationmuseum.org/.

The official website of Answers in Genesis is:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/.

Carl Wieland's article, "Linking and Feeding" can be found at:
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3156/.


Joseph Laycock has a Master's Degree from Harvard Divinity School and
teaches secondary school in Atlanta.

----------

The March issue of the Martin Marty Center's Religion and Culture Web Forum
presents an essay by Jerome Copulsky, Assistant Professor and Director of
Judaic Studies at Goucher College:  "The Last Prophet: Spinoza and the
Political Theology of Moses Hess."  Commentary from Rabbi Shai Held (Jewish
Theological Seminary of America), Leah Hochman (University of Florida),
Jeffrey Israel (University of Chicago) and Ben Sax (University of Chicago)
will be available on the forum's discussion board,where readers may also
post responses.

Access this month's forum at:
http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/webforum/index.shtml

Access the discussion board at:
https://cforum.uchicago.edu/viewforum.php?f=1

----------

*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty
Center<http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/>at the University of Chicago
Divinity School.

Attribution
Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author
of the column, *Sightings*, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.

--


Shalom/Salaam/Pax!                         Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/   (20,000 articles 4000 humor)

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