I’m afraid I don’t have access to this specialty journal, Curator: The Museum Journal, so it’s a good thing the author sent me a copy of his article on the modern treatment of human origins in museums. It’s amusing, since part of it is a substantial comparison of the exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Smithsonian in Washington DC, but there is also a thorough discussion of Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum” in Kentucky. The Creation Museum does not come off at all well.

Asma highlights a couple of things that leapt out to me, as well. It’s not really a museum — there’s no opportunity to explore or think, you’re given a script to follow and you may not deviate.

When I visited, I discovered no way to break off the tour at any point prior to Consummation. About two hours in, I started to get claustrophobic; the spaces seemed to get tighter and darker as I walked the eschatological narrative. I decided to step away–just as racism and crime were being blamed on Eve’s taste for forbidden fruit. I tried to find an exit to the cafeteria (“Noah’s Cafe”) so I might nourish my weakening spirit. To my horror, I discovered that one cannot actually exit anywhere along the pathway. The herding is so absolute that when you attempt to backtrack, you find that the doors you’ve been entering have no handles on the opposite side. Like someone in a haunted house, you must complete the entire circuit.

The other striking thing about it is that it is an empty shell, a hollow façade. Go to any other respectable museum in the country, such as the Science Museum of Minnesota (which does have a bit of a pop-science, entertainment quality to it), and you can find extensive collections and research facilities behind it. The part that most people visit is the public relations side, with nicely laid out exhibits and explanatory material and hands-on elements. Behind the scenes, you’ll find large rooms with shelves everywhere and buckets and barrels and crates full of specimens, the smell of formaldehyde and alcohol, and spaces full of beetle larvae gnawing away at carcasses. Not at the Creation “Museum”, though!

It’s not quite accurate to call this evangelical center a “museum.” It contains almost no “information,” unless you count as information speculations on how Noah kept dinosaurs on the ark. It offers no new observations about nature, unless you think that inferring a Designer can be called observational. Unlike most other nature museums, it has no “research” component whatsoever. When I asked Mark Looy, vice president for AiG ministry relations, where the research labs and archive collections were located, he confessed that he didn’t understand the question. “This is a museum,” he finally said, chuckling.

That’s revealing. These people don’t even know what a real museum is.

When you finally spill out of this ball of confusion into the gigantic gift shop, you become keenly aware of the unholy mixing of piety and profit. Someone is making a fortune on this stuff. The museum speaks directly to the anxieties of a fearful subculture that sees its family values under attack by a rising secular tide. The visitors at the Creation Museum feel like David, facing the secular giant Goliath. They see themselves as underdogs of righteousness who’ve chosen an origin story that’s different from the science story. Like bad reality television that drives up ratings with violent and abusive scenarios, the museum drives up profits by demonizing science. The search for meaningful origin stories is understandable, of course, but the museum’s suggestion that science causes nihilism and racism is inexcusable.

It’s actually a relief when the paper leaves the Creation “Museum” and focuses on comparing the AMNH and Smithsonian. Both are great museums, and even more glorious in contrast to that silly place in Kentucky. Asma does mention one failing of the AMNH — it made me happy to see that someone else noticed.

Near the end of the Spitzer Hall, a video kiosk presenting near-life-sized images of science administrator Ken Miller, Catholic biologist Eugenie Scott, and geneticist Francis Collins, waxes philosophical about evolution and faith. Collins, a “theistic evolutionist” who founded an organization called BioLogos in 2007 to explore religion-and-science intersections, offers most of the edifying reflections. Collins has since moved on to be the director of the National Institutes of Health–he was nominated by President Obama–but the AMNH is clearly happy to present his theory that religion and science are allies. The atheist new-guard–Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, for instance–is not invited to convey its message of religion-and-science incompatibility. The AMNH wants to reassure and accommodate visitors. The kiosk video feels like a bit of a sop, however: tacked on the end of an otherwise strong exhibition in order to pacify a specific visitor contingent.

The Smithsonian, by contrast, seems to avoid this careful placating, sensitive tiptoeing, and accommodating consideration. Refreshingly, the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins does not treat the visitor with kid gloves. The curators do not seem nervous about evangelical blowback. They don’t waste time and space repeatedly reassuring visitors with plaques and videos about the dignity of everyone’s diverse cultural beliefs.

Asma also does mention the message of these respectable museums — they actually do have a moral, even in these sections on human evolution, and it’s ecological. Creationism is over, don’t you know.

The developers of these new exhibitions worked to engage the emotions of visitors: their hearts as well as their heads. Of course, no contemporary museum is complete without a cautionary morality tale at the end, and both the AMNH and Smithsonian follow form. In the 1940s and 1950s, museum directors like Albert Eide Parr at the AMNH began to redirect their giant institutional “arks” toward the new mission of ecology education and research. In 1943, for example, Parr begged an esteemed group of curators at the Field Museum to follow his lead and focus the new museum message on local ecology rather than exotic safari-type entertainment. And besides, he argued, the old mission of educating citizens about evolution had been
successfully accomplished. That’s right– curators in the 1950s believed that evolution theory was now firmly entrenched in the common sense of mainstream America. The irony is delicious. Dim the lights, cue the diorama of Ken Ham’s evangelical anti-Darwin displays, and watch the rapid spinning of Albert Parr in his grave.

But Parr’s message has been rekindled by the recent mainstreaming of the environmental movement. Museums keenly feel the responsibility of eco-ethics. To that end, both museums stress the way that humans–uniquely, among our evolved animal brethren–can significantly transform our environment. We have become ecological niche-makers. This brings new drama to our consideration of the future. Both exhibitions educate us about the facts: the earth is getting warmer, habitats and species are disappearing, natural resources are depleting, populations are rising beyond sustainable levels, and so on. But both exhibitions resist the heavy-handed doom-and-gloom approach, and give us instead some more nuanced glimpses into our possible future. The AMNH presents an optimistic response to the apocalyptic characterization that sometimes colors eco-ethics. We are encouraged to learn that “humans have an extraordinary capacity to improve the future. Given the wondrous achievements in human history, from the wheel to computers and spacecraft, our potential for advances in art, science and technology is incalculable. By taking an active role in transforming our world and ourselves, we will affect our destiny, for better or worse.”

I think that’s appropriate. Creationism really is a freakishly weird fringe belief that is inconsistent internally and with the evidence, and needs to be dealt with with ridicule and laughter, which isn’t exactly what museums are good at. Our prospects for the future are a serious matter that can be discussed rationally, and museums — the real ones, that is, not the “museums” — are well equipped for that.

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Asma ST (2011) Risen Apes and Fallen Angels: The New Museology of Human Origins. Curator: 54(2): 141-163.

Ken Ham was asked what Answers in Genesis would do next, after building a gigantic wooden boat on dry land in Kentucky, and now Mark Looy has confirmed it: they have big dreams. They want to build a copy of Solomon’s Temple. Don’t panic, though, they promise “it’s not going to be some kind of secular temple where all sorts of weird religious ceremonies are held.” That’s a relief. I thought they were going to build a place for pagan orgies.

But wait! That’s not all! They also want to build a full-scale copy of the Tower of Babel!

Uh, hang on there…haven’t they read their bible? Building a tower to heaven was what triggered the wrath of their god!

This year’s Upchucky award, which is “bestowed upon that person or organization who persists in denying evolution despite a blizzard of empirical evidence,” has gone to a particularly deserving entity: Answers in Genesis. Their plan to build a giant “life-sized” model of a fictitious boat and use it to miseducate children is a brilliant example of upchuckiness.

We occasionally get threads full of deconversion stories here: atheists arrive at their conclusions by some very different paths, where sometimes it was an easy and natural transition, and sometimes it was painful, agonizing, and there are still deep wounds left from parting the ways with religion. Today, though, I’d like to ask a narrower question: How did you come to accept evolution?

Some of you will find the problem odd, because you’ve never believed in anything else. I know when I was growing up, despite going to Sunday School and all that nonsense, my church never mentioned the subject of evolution, either to approve or disapprove; my public school classes never discussed it, either, to their disgrace. I grew up devouring books on natural history at my local library, and absorbed the evolutionary explanations within them, only getting formal training when I entered college. It was quite a shock to me to discover what kind of absurd twaddle other people thought was real science!

But others may have been instructed early on in creationism as part of their religious upbringing, and the process of learning had to involve a lot of unlearning as well. Where were you on the continuum? Was your childhood science untainted by religious dogma, or were you a full-on bible-thumping young earth creationist, or something in between? How did you wrestle the myth to the ground and drop-kick it into the local lake?

Ken MacLeod was a youthful creationist who got better, if you need an example. He brings up another interesting point, a perspective that I share: once you recognize the fallacies behind creationism, you also realize that creationism’s promoters are not simply deluded folk — they are monsters of malice who are intentionally trying to undermine science education because it conflicts with their religious values, and they are perfectly willing to lie and slander to achieve their goals.

What quote-mining shows is that some people who produce creationist material are conscious liars. Behind these pseudo-science hacks are worse people yet. These are theologians who have the education to understand the conflict precisely. It’s not one between ‘science and the Bible’. It’s a lot more stark than that. It’s a conflict between a particular way of reading the Bible (what is loosely called ‘literalism’) and normal scientific method. There would be a certain integrity in acknowledging the conflict, admitting that there was no obvious resolution, and pointing out that we are not always given to comprehend the intent of the Ancient of Days. That at least would allow young people from these traditions to study biology and geology and astronomy without the constant arguments at home interrupting their thoughts like a buzz of static across their brains.

There’s one further ironic revenge visited on all this. A frequent complaint against the New Atheists is that they’re only arguing against fundamentalism, and ignoring the broader and more accommodating forms of religious belief. This isn’t exactly true, but to the extent that it is, they’ve hit a sweet spot in the market. When I rejected fundamentalism I didn’t turn to broader and more accommodating forms of religious belief. I didn’t start wondering if maybe there was something to be said for Anglicanism. I just went straight over to atheism. If this is typical, and I think it is, then there must be many for whom the New Atheist books are like water in the desert. We need no condescension from those who have already found an oasis.

I’ve interacted with a lot of creationists over the years, and one thing I’ve learned is that they aren’t necessarily stupid people: they are often accomplished, literate, successful in fields that aren’t science, and entirely capable of following some of the most byzantine threads of logic. And yet, when they are confronted with the logic of evolution, which is relatively simple and clear and also backed by impressive amounts of empirical evidence, they balk and begin to reach desperately for the worst arguments, striving to debunk the truth with dishonesty to an exceptional degree.

It’s one of the reasons I encourage students to listen to the other side. If the student has any knowledge of biology at all, they find the lies they use appalling and horrifying. And I do not hesitate to call them lies: they know better. Anyone who can ferret their way through the chaos of the Bible is smart enough to understand how to read a lucid Charles Darwin for meaning.

MacLeod’s last point about the New Atheists is also valid. Encountering fundamentalism was the trigger that woke me up to the follies and fallacies of creationism, but it also made the conscious blindness of less toxic religions obvious. Over and over again, I have witnessed the silence of the churches. Over and over again, a creationist rides into town, spouts his lies and nonsense, and who rebuts them? Usually, only the atheists. Even the liberal church congregations sit quietly, many of their members even attend these talks with muted assent, and the general attitude even from sects that don’t demand adherence to beliefs in a young earth is…let them abide.

I often hear the argument that not only is creationism bad science, it is bad theology. I don’t accept that argument at all. In part, it’s because all theology is bad, and if we’re going to start winnowing out particular religious beliefs on the basis of their nonsensical nature, we can’t stop with Genesis literalism — Jesus and Mohammed and Vishnu are all going to have to go, no matter how socially progressive their advocates might be. And it’s also because I see all those churches, each with their brand of theology, all almost entirely silent on the theological errors of their neighbors. Bad theology apparently doesn’t matter that much.

I’m pleased to see that the Intelligent Design creationists do actually occasionally challenge themselves — it’s just too bad that they trip and fall flat every time they do. Over at Uncommon Descent, that hotbed of hot air hosted by William Dembski, one poster slipped the leash and asked an uncomfortable question: how do we calculate Dembski’s measure of ‘complexity’, CSI, or Complex Specified Information? She didn’t know. It turns out that almost 300 comments in the subsequent thread are spinning their wheels — they don’t know either.

Doesn’t this sound just like Ontogenetic Depth, the magic metric Paul Nelson invented to describe the history of complexity of life on earth, which he couldn’t define and couldn’t explain how it was calculated? An immeasurable metric is a curious thing to hang a science on, I think.

By the way, we’re coming up on the 7th anniversary of Paul Nelson’s failure to deliver a promised explanation. I’m getting old here. He must be hoping to just outlive me.

The fine folks at Answers in Genesis are working themselves into a good lather over the fact that they were expelled from homeschool conferences for being too obnoxious and intolerant. Recall that the the Christians doing the banning are also young earth creationist/evangelical/fundamentalist crazies when you read this characterization by Nathan Ham, Ken’s son:

Some Christians today are like the hippies of 50 years ago who used the word “love” to justify their fornications and sins against the word of God. The hippie culture is often pictured as a group of drug-addicted, fornicating drunks whose catchphrase “make love, not war” gave their movement a false sense of piety.

Sir, I have known many hippies in my life, and I have greatly admired them. I resent the fact that you have such a grossly muddled idea of what being a hippie is all about to the point where you think the puckered-sphinctered, pursed-lipped, suit-wearing, dogmatic, jebus-lovin’ dingleberries of the Great Homeschool Convention’s Advisory Board are anything like hippies.

Mother Jones recently interviewed Texas legislator Bill Zedler, the fellow who has authored a bill that would outlaw discrimination against creationists. I read the whole thing, and now my head hurts (partly due to the fact that I was up to the wee hours last night and I’m already functioning on a pool of fatigued neurons). Zedler really is an idiot; the entire interview is a series of non sequiturs as Zedler blindly recites from the creationist script. Here’s an example:

Mother Jones: Are you a creationist?

Bill Zedler: Evolutionists will go “Oh, it just happened by chance.” Today we know that’s false. Today we know that even a single-celled organism is hugely complex. When was the last time we’ve seen someone go into a windstorm or a tornado or any other kind of natural disaster, and say “Guess what? That windstorm just created a watch.”

First sentence: No credible scientist claims evolution is a theory solely of chance. It wouldn’t be a very interesting theory if it were, now would it?

Second sentence: I know it’s false that Bill Zedler has sex with chicken corpses.

Third sentence: Yes, cells are complex. So? Complexity can be produced by chance, so announcing an irrelevant fact does not challenge his strawman version of evolution, anyway.

Fourth sentence: Job 38:1. “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind”. So the last time anyone claimed a windstorm created a watch, it was their god. Scientists aren’t the ones claiming that purely chance forces assemble functional complexes.

I have to say that ol’ Bill Paley was a smart guy for his time, a persuasive writer, and extremely influential…but every time some clueless creationist drags out a watch analogy, I want to build a time machine, go back to 1743, and strangle him in his crib.

Of course, then someone else would invent some catchy but irrelevant parallel, and creationists would be endlessly recycling the same tired metaphor, whatever it was. It’s been over 200 years; can they please come up with something original now?

Something nasty seems to get passed on with the name “Hovind”, anyway. Eric Hovind’s latest stunt: He’s ‘taking back’ Earth Day with a silly, misguided campaign to replace tree-planting with Christian evangelism, and with selling t-shirts to benefit his lunatic ministry. There’s nothing in his plans about conservation or protecting endangered habitats or species — he’s only hijacking the holiday as a pretext for more god-babbling.

His father, Kent Hovind, gets out of prison in 2015. Then there will be two of these scumbags fleecing the public and lying in the name of their god.

Amazingly, a gang of ignorant young-earth creationist crazies who are running fundamentalist home-schooling conferences decided that Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis were just too crazy even for them, and they have formally banned AiG from appearing at any of their conferences. This wasn’t a dictate from irate scientists or atheists, either: this decree has come down from his own people, fellow creationists who also believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old and that God shuffled every kind of animal on the planet into a big boat before drowning everyone else. Here’s the official letter they sent to AiG:

After much prayer and deliberation over the weekend, Great Homeschool Convention’s Advisory Board has unanimously decided to disinvite Ken and AIG from all future conventions, including the Cincinnati convention next week. The Board believes this to be the Lord’s will for our convention and searched the Scriptures for the mind of the Lord and the leadership of the Holy Spirit before arriving at this decision. The Board believes that Ken’s public criticism of the convention itself and other speakers at our convention require him to surrender the spiritual privilege of addressing our homeschool audience.Please know that our Board is 100% young earth and we largely share AIG’s perspective from a scientific standpoint. That is why Ken was originally invited and treated so graciously and extremely generously in Memphis and Greenville (far beyond what we do for other speakers or their ministries). Our expression of sacrifice and extraordinary kindness towards Ken and AIG has been returned to us and our attendees with Ken publicly attacking our conventions and other speakers. Our Board believes Ken’s comments to be unnecessary, ungodly, and mean-spirited statements that are divisive at best and defamatory at worst.

One of the core values of our convention is that we believe that good people can disagree and still be good people. We believe that Christians do not need to personally question the integrity, the intelligence, or the salvation of other Christians when debating Biblical issues. Ken has obviously felt led to publicly attack our conventions and a number of our speakers. We believe that what Ken has said and done is unChristian and sinful. A number of attendees are demanding explanations from our board and we must respond to them.

We believe that Dr. Ham is very intelligent and deliberate and that he decided that publicly slandering our conventions and defaming a number of our speakers is what he wanted to do. Whereas Ken chooses to conduct himself in a way that we believe to be unscriptural, we cannot countenance that spirit as we believe it would not honor the Savior whom we serve.

A public statement will be prepared for distribution at the convention explaining our Board’s decision. Anyone who inquires regarding Dr. Ham or AIG will be referred to that statement. We have no intention to defame or publicly slander Dr. Ham, the Creation Museum, or the work of AIG. Our Board would respectfully request that Dr. Ham and AIG prayerfully consider doing the same. Our Board takes seriously the admonition of Jesus in John 13:35, “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

Sincerely,

Brennan Dean
Great Homeschool Conventions, Inc.

Ooooh, burn. These people are deranged, but there they are, chastising Ken Ham for being beyond the pale. It’s got to sting when all the other inmates in the asylum shun you.

I really should stop linking to these bozos, since they don’t ever bother to link to any sites outside their incestuous coterie of jebus-wanking apologetics sites, but I cannot resist. Ken Ham is bragging about his web traffic, and it’s rather pathetic.

• In 2010, the Answers in Genesis main website had more than 10 million visits for the first time (10,225,465 visits, previously 8,726,503–a 17% growth) from more than 5 million unique visitors (5,445,617 unique visitors, previously 4,650,206–a 17% growth).

• The Creation Museum website had more than 1 million visits for the first time (1,079,290 visits, previously 899,890–a 19.9% growth).

• The Answers Vacation Bible School (VBS) website had more than 100,000 visits for the first time (110,767 visits, previously 34,231–a 223% growth), with almost half a million page views (476,551 page views, previously 122,301–a 289% growth).

Oooh. Millions are big numbers. But just to put it all into perspective, some random low-ranking non-entity of a godless college professor in the most rural part of Minnesota gets about 25-30 million visits per year, and yeah, it’s growing every year. And his site links regularly to AiG, meaning a lot of the visitors to Ham’s precious empire are there to laugh at him.

And I’m not bragging — I know I’m dwarfed by the really big players, and that web hits are not instruments of self-validation. You can get lots of traffic by being one of the dumbest punching bags for national stupidity on the web, after all, just like Answers in Genesis. That his traffic isn’t even close to a mere blog tells you that biblical literalism possibly isn’t all that popular a draw.