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
Showing posts with label Creation Museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Creation Museum. Show all posts
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Science, the Bible, and Worldviews in the Creation Museum
The Creation Museum's reasoning presents some complex problems.
Briefly: the Creation Museum's main display tour side-steps the traditional evolution/creation battleground of "who has superior evidence," essentially redefining both creationism and evolutionary theory as worldviews that frame particular interpretations of more or less neutral scientific data. A creationist scientist examines the fossils of a dinosaur and, due to her presuppositions, arrives at one conclusion. The evolutionary scientist examines the same fossils and arrives at a different conclusion--again based on her own presuppositions.
I must repeat here that I do not endorse the Museum's redefinition. As most scientists would point out, the second scientist in the example above arrives at whatever conclusion she does (e.g., the bones are of an animal that lived 100 million years ago and not 4,000 years ago) based not on pure presuppositional faith but on particular methods and knowledges that have themselves been developed, substantiated, and refined by many people over time. She could, if necessary, give a detailed account of how and why she arrived at the conclusions she did. Moreover, she would be open to the possibility that her conclusions might themselves be flawed; if she were presented with superior methods or supporting theories, she would revise her conclusions accordingly (assuming she's an ethical scientist).
This would, crucially, even be the case were tests by her and by other scientists to prove conclusively that the bones came from an animal that died only 100 years ago. To be sure, such a conclusion would be shocking and would challenge many long-held theories of dinosaurs. But, so long as the data were multiply, reliably, and repeatedly substantiated, the shocking conclusion would eventually be accepted. Scientific conclusions change in response to data.
The creationist scientist (following the model of creation science proposed by the Museum), on the other hand, explicitly begins her study of the bones by knowing the conclusion ahead of time. The bones cannot be more than X thousands of years old because the Bible (which is utterly without error), when read literally, suggests that existence itself is no older than 6,000-10,000 years. Any evidence or method that points to the contrary is cause not to doubt the conclusion but to doubt the evidence or method. Creationism, seen in this light, fails the disciplinary test of science not because it isn't detailed or careful or thoughtful (in its own way, it is all of these things) but because it does not arrive at conclusions based on data but expects data to line themselves up behind already-certain conclusions.
The Creation Museum passes over these key distinctions by rendering both creationists and evolutionists mute in terms of their respective scientific rationales. In place of evidence to arrive at their respective conclusions (suggests the Museum), evolutionists and creationists arrive at conclusions due primarily to their respective worldviews. The creationist starts from the assumption that the Bible is God's Word, utterly and literally accurate in every description of reality. The earth, the universe, and all life therein were created in six literal days. God brought into being distinct animal kinds (which later perhaps split off into species, e.g., canines became wolves, dogs, coyotes, etc.).
And the evolutionist? Now, of course, "evolutionists" would themselves answer the question of starting point in a variety of different ways. Many are Christians themselves, affirming that God is indeed the ultimate force behind all of the extant universe. Such Christian evolutionists might credit God with installing within creation the ability to self-develop, essentially making evolution the motor of life on earth. Or they might say that their starting points as religious believers are necessarily different--grander--than their starting points as scientists. Science, they might argue, isn't a worldview but a methodology brought into play in particular circumstances for particular ends. When doing scientific things, the Christian scientist does her best to bracket biases and preconceptions, focusing on empirically accessible data or experiments as well as the logical/mathematical connections and predictions that flow from those. One does not look to science to determine the existence of God or the soul or human rights because those things aren't amenable to empirical investigation.
In the Creation Museum's portrayal, however, that act of bracketing off unprovable biases--actually the act of considering "a belief in the inerrant Bible" as one of those biases--is itself a worldview-based, worldview-generative gesture. That is, if you believe it possible or wise to so categorize the inerrant-infallible-literally true view of the Bible as a consideration to be excluded from science--you're already playing in a different sandbox from young-earth creationist Christians.
And although I consider the Museum's definition of science to be tendentious, I think they score a point here. If you base your approach to all of reality on the foundation of the Bible as literal/inerrant Truth, then to bracket off or ignore Biblical testimony at any time is to break with that worldview. Worldviews are in this sense similar to Thomas Kuhn's scientific paradigms; they determine not only what counts as a conclusion but what counts as data. A definition of science as little more than careful observation of facts fails in that it assumes a kind of pre-agreement among observers about what a fact is. Part of scientific training--indeed, part of any discipline's training in observation, investigation, and analysis--involves absorbing what counts as significant. An archeologist working in the field knows, for example, what dust or dirt to brush away as unimportant and what bit of grit to value as, say, ash from an ancient cooking fire. An astronomer peering through a telescope knows to separate the dots of light that are celestial bodies from those that are optical illusions, reflections, or scratches on the lens.
Similarly, a creationist begins by assuming that a belief in the Bible as Utter Truth is inseparable from any other data she might consider. An evolutionist assumes the opposite, that such a belief is better separated from the investigation of data, at least initially. Crucially, neither of these assumptions are themselves justifiable or provable by appeal to scientific reason. They are pre-scientific, metaphysical.
And, as long as it has its druthers, the Museum is happier to argue metaphysics than evidence.
More tomorrow,
JF
Briefly: the Creation Museum's main display tour side-steps the traditional evolution/creation battleground of "who has superior evidence," essentially redefining both creationism and evolutionary theory as worldviews that frame particular interpretations of more or less neutral scientific data. A creationist scientist examines the fossils of a dinosaur and, due to her presuppositions, arrives at one conclusion. The evolutionary scientist examines the same fossils and arrives at a different conclusion--again based on her own presuppositions.
I must repeat here that I do not endorse the Museum's redefinition. As most scientists would point out, the second scientist in the example above arrives at whatever conclusion she does (e.g., the bones are of an animal that lived 100 million years ago and not 4,000 years ago) based not on pure presuppositional faith but on particular methods and knowledges that have themselves been developed, substantiated, and refined by many people over time. She could, if necessary, give a detailed account of how and why she arrived at the conclusions she did. Moreover, she would be open to the possibility that her conclusions might themselves be flawed; if she were presented with superior methods or supporting theories, she would revise her conclusions accordingly (assuming she's an ethical scientist).
This would, crucially, even be the case were tests by her and by other scientists to prove conclusively that the bones came from an animal that died only 100 years ago. To be sure, such a conclusion would be shocking and would challenge many long-held theories of dinosaurs. But, so long as the data were multiply, reliably, and repeatedly substantiated, the shocking conclusion would eventually be accepted. Scientific conclusions change in response to data.
The creationist scientist (following the model of creation science proposed by the Museum), on the other hand, explicitly begins her study of the bones by knowing the conclusion ahead of time. The bones cannot be more than X thousands of years old because the Bible (which is utterly without error), when read literally, suggests that existence itself is no older than 6,000-10,000 years. Any evidence or method that points to the contrary is cause not to doubt the conclusion but to doubt the evidence or method. Creationism, seen in this light, fails the disciplinary test of science not because it isn't detailed or careful or thoughtful (in its own way, it is all of these things) but because it does not arrive at conclusions based on data but expects data to line themselves up behind already-certain conclusions.
The Creation Museum passes over these key distinctions by rendering both creationists and evolutionists mute in terms of their respective scientific rationales. In place of evidence to arrive at their respective conclusions (suggests the Museum), evolutionists and creationists arrive at conclusions due primarily to their respective worldviews. The creationist starts from the assumption that the Bible is God's Word, utterly and literally accurate in every description of reality. The earth, the universe, and all life therein were created in six literal days. God brought into being distinct animal kinds (which later perhaps split off into species, e.g., canines became wolves, dogs, coyotes, etc.).
And the evolutionist? Now, of course, "evolutionists" would themselves answer the question of starting point in a variety of different ways. Many are Christians themselves, affirming that God is indeed the ultimate force behind all of the extant universe. Such Christian evolutionists might credit God with installing within creation the ability to self-develop, essentially making evolution the motor of life on earth. Or they might say that their starting points as religious believers are necessarily different--grander--than their starting points as scientists. Science, they might argue, isn't a worldview but a methodology brought into play in particular circumstances for particular ends. When doing scientific things, the Christian scientist does her best to bracket biases and preconceptions, focusing on empirically accessible data or experiments as well as the logical/mathematical connections and predictions that flow from those. One does not look to science to determine the existence of God or the soul or human rights because those things aren't amenable to empirical investigation.
In the Creation Museum's portrayal, however, that act of bracketing off unprovable biases--actually the act of considering "a belief in the inerrant Bible" as one of those biases--is itself a worldview-based, worldview-generative gesture. That is, if you believe it possible or wise to so categorize the inerrant-infallible-literally true view of the Bible as a consideration to be excluded from science--you're already playing in a different sandbox from young-earth creationist Christians.
And although I consider the Museum's definition of science to be tendentious, I think they score a point here. If you base your approach to all of reality on the foundation of the Bible as literal/inerrant Truth, then to bracket off or ignore Biblical testimony at any time is to break with that worldview. Worldviews are in this sense similar to Thomas Kuhn's scientific paradigms; they determine not only what counts as a conclusion but what counts as data. A definition of science as little more than careful observation of facts fails in that it assumes a kind of pre-agreement among observers about what a fact is. Part of scientific training--indeed, part of any discipline's training in observation, investigation, and analysis--involves absorbing what counts as significant. An archeologist working in the field knows, for example, what dust or dirt to brush away as unimportant and what bit of grit to value as, say, ash from an ancient cooking fire. An astronomer peering through a telescope knows to separate the dots of light that are celestial bodies from those that are optical illusions, reflections, or scratches on the lens.
Similarly, a creationist begins by assuming that a belief in the Bible as Utter Truth is inseparable from any other data she might consider. An evolutionist assumes the opposite, that such a belief is better separated from the investigation of data, at least initially. Crucially, neither of these assumptions are themselves justifiable or provable by appeal to scientific reason. They are pre-scientific, metaphysical.
And, as long as it has its druthers, the Museum is happier to argue metaphysics than evidence.
More tomorrow,
JF
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Creation Museum and the Creation/Evolution Battle
Just in case there was any doubt, let me declare that I endorse theories of evolution as articulated and studied (and revised and deepened) by mainstream science. I do not believe in a literal rendering of the Genesis narrative as the truth of the universe's origins. Nor do I see my convictions about evolution as in any way incompatible with my Christian faith. I join a host of other believers past and present in affirming my belief in a creating God alongside a belief in the Big Bang, a billions-of-years-old universe, the evolutionary development of life, etc.
Were I an anti-evolution creationist, though, I'd probably try to take my cues from the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis. [True confessions: some of what follows appears in slightly altered form in some articles about the Museum I'm writing currently].
Departing from the attack rhetorics of the creation-evolution data wars (i.e., barrage of specialized and often misconstrued data vs. consensus of scientists), the Museum's main walkthrough tour beings with an irenic scene, a life-sized diorama of two scientists at work. Against a photorealistic backdrop of the Grand Canyon, two scientists (mannequins, of course) perch on a dusty outcropping of rock, brushing dust away from the partially exposed bones of a dinosaur. TV displays on the walls of the diorama room play looped videotape of the two scientists the mannequins represent, each amiably explaining his work.
"I'm an evolutionist," declares the younger one. "I interpret these bones as belonging to a dinosaur who lived millions of years ago."
"I'm a creationist," says the other. "I see these bones as only a few thousand years old, buried in the Great Flood described in Genesis."
Neither scientist shares his rationale or supporting evidence. Nor does either one of the scientists attack his colleague's interpretation. They simply come to divergent conclusions based on their (apparently equally rigorous/well-informed) study of the plain evidence before them.
There's more going on here than a simple scene of collegial disagreement. Theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett argues that museums do more than merely show; they participate in the creation of knowledge in particular fields. A display of pre-Colombian Native American pots, for example, does more than merely show off some old kitchen implements. Behind that display are a number of predecessor actions, acts of selection (choosing this pot rather than that one from an archeological site), displacement (removing the pot from its original place buried in a cave), and re-situation (placing the pot in an exhibit, with a caption, alongside other such items). These acts collectively transform the pot from "just a pot" to an artifact, a stand-in for a whole culture, a whole history. Through "artifact-ing" objects, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett concludes, museums help to establish what "counts" as (in this case) pre-Colombian Native American culture.
Patterning itself after a mainstream science museum, the Creation Museum likewise creates an artifact in this first display. But the artifact in question isn't the half-buried fossil; it's the scientists. Or, more accurately, it's the sterilized snapshot of what it is to "do" science. Science, implies the display, is nothing more than looking carefully at evidence. By dis-placing the scientists from the context of real-world creation/evolution battles (really, in what context would two such scientists be working together?), by scrubbing the dig site scene clean of any hint of acrimony, legitimation challenges, or detailed rationales, the display presents both creationists and evolutionists equally as scientific.
Right at the beginning of the tour, then, the Creation Museum basically brackets off from consideration the whole data war over "who's more scientific?" that characterizes so much of the creation/evolution debates. What, then, if not legitimate science explains the difference between creationists and evolutionists? What, moreover, makes creationism preferable to evolution if not superior scientific support?
The Museum itself raises and answers those questions throughout the next section of the walkthrough, tellingly entitled "Same Evidence, Different Starting Points." Using a series of wall displays, the Museum strives to present an even-handed, comparison/contrast of evolutionary and creationist accounts of the origin of the universe and of life on earth (evolutionist, for the Museum, covers any scientific theory, biological or not, that posits a billions-of-years-old universe).
The wall displays replicate the pattern of the initial diarama: here's some observational data; here are two conflicting conclusions about that data. Again, the displays banish from consideration any detailed data, scientific theories, or rationales. The only real difference, it seems, between the evolutionary and creationist views concern their "starting point." The evolutionists, argue the displays, begin from a place called "human reason." The creationists start out from a place labeled "God's word."
Now, to an inerrantist--one who comes to the Museum already certain of the literal truth of the Genesis account--the side-by-side explanation presents a no-brainer of a decision: clearly only the Biblical account is true. Case closed. Yet the Museum does not itself immediately make this case. These displays remain decidedly neutral compared to the biased, straw-man presentations of evolutionary theory commonly found in anti-evolutionist literature. To be sure, the Museum's decision not to include the supporting data for non-creationist accounts of prehistory could itself be interpreted as a dishonest act; any mainstream scientist would argue that it is simply not the case that the two theories are coequal in terms of data-based support. But the Museum's choice to mask the data support (or lack thereof) in this section also keeps the museological focus on the starting points.
This focus proves vital as the walkway displays shift from comparing/contrasting views of pre-history to comparing and contrasting evolutionist and creationist views of human life in the present. Questions about how fossils form or how species emerge fade away, replaced by questions like "Why is there suffering?" or "How ought humans behave toward each other?" These latter inquiries are not scientific questions, to be sure. But that's the point: science, in the Museum's logic, is merely the looking at. The conclusions--evolutionary or creationist--are based on starting points, aka worldviews. Creationism and evolutionism are not themselves scientific doctrines to be proven or supported purely through data; they draw instead on essentially unprovable metaphysical presuppositions about what truth is and how humans gain knowledge. Accepting the Bible as literally true isn't a conclusion made on the basis of evidence and reasoning; it's the foundation that defines the nature of evidence and rationality. The interpretation of data (aka science) depends upon one's original worldview.
As worldviews, creationism and evolutionism are amenable to qualitative (rather than merely descriptive) evaluation. To the basic questions of present-day life--why do we live? why do we love? why do we suffer? why do we die?--evolution has no answers, or at best only the brutal, soulless rationale that we are all animals and that suffering/dying is the way of the world. Creationism, however, not only provides a comprehensive view of humanities origins (a view, imply the displays, that enjoys just as much material support as evolution); it also gives an answer to the nagging questions of human existence.
This, then, is the Museum's brilliance. It changes the nature of the creation/evolution debate. Rather than being a battle of data, a battle of science, the Museum re-casts the debate as a battle between worldviews. As a worldview, contends the Museum, evolution simply fails. Creationism wins, in the Museum's displays, not by out-evidencing the competition but by out-religioning it.
More tomorrow,
JF
Were I an anti-evolution creationist, though, I'd probably try to take my cues from the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis. [True confessions: some of what follows appears in slightly altered form in some articles about the Museum I'm writing currently].
Departing from the attack rhetorics of the creation-evolution data wars (i.e., barrage of specialized and often misconstrued data vs. consensus of scientists), the Museum's main walkthrough tour beings with an irenic scene, a life-sized diorama of two scientists at work. Against a photorealistic backdrop of the Grand Canyon, two scientists (mannequins, of course) perch on a dusty outcropping of rock, brushing dust away from the partially exposed bones of a dinosaur. TV displays on the walls of the diorama room play looped videotape of the two scientists the mannequins represent, each amiably explaining his work.
"I'm an evolutionist," declares the younger one. "I interpret these bones as belonging to a dinosaur who lived millions of years ago."
"I'm a creationist," says the other. "I see these bones as only a few thousand years old, buried in the Great Flood described in Genesis."
Neither scientist shares his rationale or supporting evidence. Nor does either one of the scientists attack his colleague's interpretation. They simply come to divergent conclusions based on their (apparently equally rigorous/well-informed) study of the plain evidence before them.
There's more going on here than a simple scene of collegial disagreement. Theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett argues that museums do more than merely show; they participate in the creation of knowledge in particular fields. A display of pre-Colombian Native American pots, for example, does more than merely show off some old kitchen implements. Behind that display are a number of predecessor actions, acts of selection (choosing this pot rather than that one from an archeological site), displacement (removing the pot from its original place buried in a cave), and re-situation (placing the pot in an exhibit, with a caption, alongside other such items). These acts collectively transform the pot from "just a pot" to an artifact, a stand-in for a whole culture, a whole history. Through "artifact-ing" objects, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett concludes, museums help to establish what "counts" as (in this case) pre-Colombian Native American culture.
Patterning itself after a mainstream science museum, the Creation Museum likewise creates an artifact in this first display. But the artifact in question isn't the half-buried fossil; it's the scientists. Or, more accurately, it's the sterilized snapshot of what it is to "do" science. Science, implies the display, is nothing more than looking carefully at evidence. By dis-placing the scientists from the context of real-world creation/evolution battles (really, in what context would two such scientists be working together?), by scrubbing the dig site scene clean of any hint of acrimony, legitimation challenges, or detailed rationales, the display presents both creationists and evolutionists equally as scientific.
Right at the beginning of the tour, then, the Creation Museum basically brackets off from consideration the whole data war over "who's more scientific?" that characterizes so much of the creation/evolution debates. What, then, if not legitimate science explains the difference between creationists and evolutionists? What, moreover, makes creationism preferable to evolution if not superior scientific support?
The Museum itself raises and answers those questions throughout the next section of the walkthrough, tellingly entitled "Same Evidence, Different Starting Points." Using a series of wall displays, the Museum strives to present an even-handed, comparison/contrast of evolutionary and creationist accounts of the origin of the universe and of life on earth (evolutionist, for the Museum, covers any scientific theory, biological or not, that posits a billions-of-years-old universe).
The wall displays replicate the pattern of the initial diarama: here's some observational data; here are two conflicting conclusions about that data. Again, the displays banish from consideration any detailed data, scientific theories, or rationales. The only real difference, it seems, between the evolutionary and creationist views concern their "starting point." The evolutionists, argue the displays, begin from a place called "human reason." The creationists start out from a place labeled "God's word."
Now, to an inerrantist--one who comes to the Museum already certain of the literal truth of the Genesis account--the side-by-side explanation presents a no-brainer of a decision: clearly only the Biblical account is true. Case closed. Yet the Museum does not itself immediately make this case. These displays remain decidedly neutral compared to the biased, straw-man presentations of evolutionary theory commonly found in anti-evolutionist literature. To be sure, the Museum's decision not to include the supporting data for non-creationist accounts of prehistory could itself be interpreted as a dishonest act; any mainstream scientist would argue that it is simply not the case that the two theories are coequal in terms of data-based support. But the Museum's choice to mask the data support (or lack thereof) in this section also keeps the museological focus on the starting points.
This focus proves vital as the walkway displays shift from comparing/contrasting views of pre-history to comparing and contrasting evolutionist and creationist views of human life in the present. Questions about how fossils form or how species emerge fade away, replaced by questions like "Why is there suffering?" or "How ought humans behave toward each other?" These latter inquiries are not scientific questions, to be sure. But that's the point: science, in the Museum's logic, is merely the looking at. The conclusions--evolutionary or creationist--are based on starting points, aka worldviews. Creationism and evolutionism are not themselves scientific doctrines to be proven or supported purely through data; they draw instead on essentially unprovable metaphysical presuppositions about what truth is and how humans gain knowledge. Accepting the Bible as literally true isn't a conclusion made on the basis of evidence and reasoning; it's the foundation that defines the nature of evidence and rationality. The interpretation of data (aka science) depends upon one's original worldview.
As worldviews, creationism and evolutionism are amenable to qualitative (rather than merely descriptive) evaluation. To the basic questions of present-day life--why do we live? why do we love? why do we suffer? why do we die?--evolution has no answers, or at best only the brutal, soulless rationale that we are all animals and that suffering/dying is the way of the world. Creationism, however, not only provides a comprehensive view of humanities origins (a view, imply the displays, that enjoys just as much material support as evolution); it also gives an answer to the nagging questions of human existence.
This, then, is the Museum's brilliance. It changes the nature of the creation/evolution debate. Rather than being a battle of data, a battle of science, the Museum re-casts the debate as a battle between worldviews. As a worldview, contends the Museum, evolution simply fails. Creationism wins, in the Museum's displays, not by out-evidencing the competition but by out-religioning it.
More tomorrow,
JF
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Comfort and the Creation Museum
The two sites I linked to yesterday, Ray Comfort's "Atheist Central" blog and the home page of the Creation Museum, each represent two different but related strands of the current worldview-evangelism critique of evolution.
Comfort's postings, which are often nowadays about the foolishness of evolution, partake of what might be called a low-road approach. He will, for example, cherry-pick some random bit of evolutionary data, quote it out of context, and then basically state, "Now, who in their right mind would believe this? It just goes to show how idiotic/delusional atheists [i.e., anyone who believes in evolution] are." Call it aragumentum ad incredulitatum: because Mr. Comfort finds it personally unlikely that, say, the "Ardi" fossils represent an ancestral homonid species, it must therefore be foolhardy for anyone to think so.
I call this the "low road" because it's basically the same tack taken by generations of anti-evolutionists: erect and knock down a straw man figure of what scientists actually assert. Such a tactic invites (and receives) derision from people who affirm evolution (or, at least, from people who dislike shoddy rhetorical tricks); Comfort's "comments" section sizzles with the acid of his detractors.
The Creation Museum, by contrast, largely eschews such low road tactics. Established and maintained by Answers in Genesis, the Museum taps into the same repertoire of display conventions that people use to identify and invest trust in mainstream natural history museums. Indeed, the Museum, which features work by a former Universal Pictures Theme Park designer, combines the glitziest features of a discovery center and a theme park. It's edutainment with a Biblical twist.
And--to be frank--it's impressive as all get-out. Evangelical culture features an array of alternate-universe versions of mainstream (secular) cultural products. There's evangelical rap, evangelical historical romance novels, and evangelical superhero shows on TV (you haven't lived until you've seen Bibleman). Most of these are, well, faintly embarrassing, akin to watching the nerdy kid in school (and I speak as a nerd myself) trying to act like the cool guy and not quite getting it right.
The Creation Museum shatters this stereotype. In terms of the slickness of its design, marketing, and execution, the Museum rivals any secular edutainment I've yet encountered. A ton of talent and effort (and money) went into the place, and it shows. From the exquisitely detailed life-size tableaux of scenes, to the multiple films shown in big-screen auditoriums, to the planetarium show, to scenes of animatronic dinosaurs, to the well-stocked fossil displays--the Museum delivers on its promise of just-like-secular culture family fun.
Well, "just like secular culture"--with the glaring difference of the overtly creationist worldview. The dinosaurs cavort with Adam and Eve's young children (not Cain and Abel but other ones). The tableaux features scenes drawn from Genesis. The films explain how, for example, dragon legends from around the globe substantiate the recent history of dinosaurs living alongside humans. The planetarium hints at elaborate explanations of how light from galaxies billions of light-years away can possibly reach earth. The fossils are accompanied with captions that explain the rock layer (not the age) from which they came, specifying some time in the last few thousand years (rather than millions of years) as the date of fossilization. The Museum is not shy about its anti-evolutionist stance.
Yet the Museum displays, its main walk-through, and its multimedia features all steer clear of the dismissive attack that characterizes Comfort's blog postings. Instead, the first part of the Museum devotes itself to a relatively even-handed examination of why people might believe in evolution versus creationism.
More tomorrow,
JF
Comfort's postings, which are often nowadays about the foolishness of evolution, partake of what might be called a low-road approach. He will, for example, cherry-pick some random bit of evolutionary data, quote it out of context, and then basically state, "Now, who in their right mind would believe this? It just goes to show how idiotic/delusional atheists [i.e., anyone who believes in evolution] are." Call it aragumentum ad incredulitatum: because Mr. Comfort finds it personally unlikely that, say, the "Ardi" fossils represent an ancestral homonid species, it must therefore be foolhardy for anyone to think so.
I call this the "low road" because it's basically the same tack taken by generations of anti-evolutionists: erect and knock down a straw man figure of what scientists actually assert. Such a tactic invites (and receives) derision from people who affirm evolution (or, at least, from people who dislike shoddy rhetorical tricks); Comfort's "comments" section sizzles with the acid of his detractors.
The Creation Museum, by contrast, largely eschews such low road tactics. Established and maintained by Answers in Genesis, the Museum taps into the same repertoire of display conventions that people use to identify and invest trust in mainstream natural history museums. Indeed, the Museum, which features work by a former Universal Pictures Theme Park designer, combines the glitziest features of a discovery center and a theme park. It's edutainment with a Biblical twist.
And--to be frank--it's impressive as all get-out. Evangelical culture features an array of alternate-universe versions of mainstream (secular) cultural products. There's evangelical rap, evangelical historical romance novels, and evangelical superhero shows on TV (you haven't lived until you've seen Bibleman). Most of these are, well, faintly embarrassing, akin to watching the nerdy kid in school (and I speak as a nerd myself) trying to act like the cool guy and not quite getting it right.
The Creation Museum shatters this stereotype. In terms of the slickness of its design, marketing, and execution, the Museum rivals any secular edutainment I've yet encountered. A ton of talent and effort (and money) went into the place, and it shows. From the exquisitely detailed life-size tableaux of scenes, to the multiple films shown in big-screen auditoriums, to the planetarium show, to scenes of animatronic dinosaurs, to the well-stocked fossil displays--the Museum delivers on its promise of just-like-secular culture family fun.
Well, "just like secular culture"--with the glaring difference of the overtly creationist worldview. The dinosaurs cavort with Adam and Eve's young children (not Cain and Abel but other ones). The tableaux features scenes drawn from Genesis. The films explain how, for example, dragon legends from around the globe substantiate the recent history of dinosaurs living alongside humans. The planetarium hints at elaborate explanations of how light from galaxies billions of light-years away can possibly reach earth. The fossils are accompanied with captions that explain the rock layer (not the age) from which they came, specifying some time in the last few thousand years (rather than millions of years) as the date of fossilization. The Museum is not shy about its anti-evolutionist stance.
Yet the Museum displays, its main walk-through, and its multimedia features all steer clear of the dismissive attack that characterizes Comfort's blog postings. Instead, the first part of the Museum devotes itself to a relatively even-handed examination of why people might believe in evolution versus creationism.
More tomorrow,
JF
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