The Cul-de-Sac of Autonomous Human Reason!!

Continuing my reading of the Creation Museum's walkthrough tour: having defined to its satisfaction both creationism (the young-earth variety based on a literal interpretation of Genesis) and evolutionary theory (as well as all other science that points to a billions-of-years-old universe) as interpretations based on worldviews, the Museum then proceeds to compare the two interpretations' worldviews. Thus: the Bible versus "autonomous human reason."

Guess which one comes out on top?

To a certain extent, the Museum tips its hand with the "Same Evidence, Different Starting Points" displays, which end up asking philosophical questions about the nature of evil that evolutionary theory--surprise, surprise--proves ill-equipped to address. Already evolution fails one of the worldview tests that evangelicalism puts to non-Christian philosophies: is it comprehensive? Clearly not, if it can't jump the hurdle of Why-Is-There-Suffering.

But things get more explicit as the tour shifts form the theoretical to the historical. The next scenes feature a sort of history of the Bible. Life-sized dioramas exhibit various Biblical writers hard at work scribing Hebrew or Greek on parchment and scrolls. A text-heavy well display informs visitors that the Bible has been under nearly constant attack by critics and heretics, but that throughout history, God has preserved God's Word. As if to prove the point, the next room discovers a mannequin Martin Luther hammering his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg door (signaling tacitly the Museum's Protestant-evangelical orientation). Opposing this display is a stylized representation of the Scopes Trial--a key defeat for fundamentalist creationism and a watershed moment in an ongoing cultural decline. Underlining this point, a line graph slopes downward, dotted with particular historical events, representing the ever-weakening regard for the Bible by rebellious humanity. A special display for Charles Templeton, a former evangelist-turned-atheist, pictures a dark cemetery with "God is Dead" on a gravestone.

The next room arrives at the present, represented by a run-down urban alleyway strewn with trash and (fake) rats. Graffiti and torn newspaper/magazine clippings cover the walls (samples: "Modern World Abandons Bible," "Today Man Decides Truth [with Truth crossed out with spray paint and replaced with "Whatever"]"). The darkened alleyway opens up into a cul-de-sac. On one side, three looped video monitors play scenes of cultural decay: a boy looking at pornography, a teenage girl learns she is pregant, and a minister preaches that evolution and Christianity can co-exist. Across from these movies is a huge facade of a dilapidated church. Through a broken stained-glass window visitors can see the family (the same featured in the videos) sitting in the pew. A massive wrecking ball with the words "Millions of Years" engraved on it hangs from the ceiling, frozen in the act of smashing into the church's walls as the creationist scientist from the beginning totes a wheelbarrow full of bricks (the words "God's Truth" are emblazoned on the wheelbarrow) in a futile act of repair.

Clearly the Museum sees the "autonomous human reason" as a ruinous starting point that ends up in a hot mess of relativism, dysfunction, and urban blight. At stake, again, isn't merely evolution or creationism per se but the worldview underlying each: the Bible (certain Truth) or not (no truth).

The rest of the Museum drops the compare-contrast and focuses entirely on the Creationist case, beginning with a "time tunnel" festooned with glowing stars that leads to a "Six Days Theatre," where sonorous narration of the first chapter of Genesis accompanies a multi-screen movie of the first six days. The walkthrough really takes off soon after, as visitors stroll through an immersive recreation of the Garden of Eden.

The worldview battle, though, catches my attention most, as the features of that argument--here's where autonomous human reason leads--forms the basis for a lot of evangelical apologetics today. Of course, most worldview analysis from the evangelicals is more nuanced than the Museum's one-or-the-other focus. Worldview Analysis books and curricula typically go through seven or eight alternative worldviews to "Biblical Christianity," from Hinduism to Islam to "New Age" to Postmodernism. Increasingly, postmodernism gets the most attention from evangelical apologists, as its major threat--relativism--mirrors that staged in the hell-of-the-present cul-de-sac.

Indeed, it wouldn't be wrong to say that much of present-day evangelical outreach in the US operates in reaction to postmodernism.

More tomorrow,

JF