American Fundamentalism and the Creationist Museum

A few miles from my hometown of Cincinnati, tucked in Northern Kentucky near the airport, lies a multi-million dollar development project touted at proclaiming the literal truth of the Bible. The ‘Creation Museum and Family Discovery Center’ was a brainchild of Answers in Genesis, a non-profit Christian apologetics ministry claiming ‘on providing answers to questions surrounding the book of Genesis.’

The new museum will illustrate in lush details the story of the first book of the Bible: six days of creation, the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood, the works. Highlights of the museum will include full-scale model of a T-Rex, a planetarium, pretend archaeological digs, a ‘Bible Authority room’, indoor waterfalls, a replica of the ‘pre-flood world’, and a walkthrough version of Noah’s Ark. And, of course, there’s plenty of kids-friendly displays so our youth can learn more about the ‘Master Designer.’

It’s bizarre that millions of dollars are being poured into a pseudo-science museum whose default answer to any and every question is based on a religious text. For example, did you know that the T-Rex (featured prominently in the lobby area), despite its fierce appearance, was actually a vegetarian? This strange assertion is based not on an examination of its anatomical structures, but on a Biblical passage:

And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
- Genesis 1:30

Here on the West Coast, it’s rather easy for me to forget that we live in an astonishly religious country. James Randi explains it best:

There is currently an exciting and very strong exhibition celebrating the life of Charles Darwin featured at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It cost three million dollars to organize and set up, but it has failed to find any corporate sponsor support simply because American companies are anxious not to take sides in the present brouhaha between science and fundamentalist Christians over the theory of evolution, which theory the exhibit firmly endorses‚ as it should. Wealthy individuals and private charitable donations are supporting the show, instead.

This reluctance - refusal! - of American companies to back what is a brilliantly educational exhibition, is believed to be due to the growing influence‚ in business and in education‚ of the fundamentalist movement. Adding to the dismay of New Yorkers over this failing, another fact has shocked them; the Creationist Museum near Cincinnati, Ohio, which treats as fact the Biblical story of creation, has recently raised seven million in donations.

What’s going on here? Don’t we live in a rational, scientifically advanced society? Why do religious people find the idea of evolution so threatening?

To get at the root of it, perhaps the first thing we need to do is examine why people are religious in the first place. The new Atlantic Monthly (full text here) has a feature that proposes why humans have developed religion and the belief in God: there was no reason.

Enthusiasm is building among scientists for a quite different view, that religion emerged not to serve a purpose but by accident.

This is not a value judgment. Many of the good things in life are, from an evolutionary perspective, accidents. People sometimes give money, time, and even blood to help unknown strangers in faraway countries whom they will never see. From the perspective of one’s genes this is disastrous‚ the suicidal squandering of resources for no benefit. But its origin is not magical; long-distance altruism is most likely a by-product of other, more adaptive traits, such as empathy and abstract reasoning. Similarly, there is no reproductive advantage to the pleasure we get from paintings or movies. It just so happens that our eyes and brains, which evolved to react to three-dimensional objects in the real world, can respond to two-dimensional projections on a canvas or a screen.

Supernatural beliefs might be explained in a similar way. This is the religion-as-accident theory that emerges from my work and the work of cognitive scientists such as Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, Justin Barrett, and Deborah Kelemen. One version of this theory begins with the notion that a distinction between the physical and the psychological is fundamental to human thought. Purely physical things, such as rocks and trees, are subject to the pitiless laws of Newton. Throw a rock, and it will fly through space on a certain path; if you put a branch on the ground, it will not disappear, scamper away, or fly into space. Psychological things, such as people, possess minds, intentions, beliefs, goals, and desires. They move unexpectedly, according to volition and whim; they can chase or run away. There is a moral difference as well: a rock cannot be evil or kind; a person can.

Fundamentalism and creationism seems to be wired into our brains. Ironically, our disbelief in evolution seems to be a direct product of the evolutionary process:

But the real problem with natural selection is that it makes no intuitive sense. It is like quantum physics; we may intellectually grasp it, but it will never feel right to us. When we see a complex structure, we see it as the product of beliefs and goals and desires. Our social mode of understanding leaves it difficult for us to make sense of it any other way. Our gut feeling is that design requires a designer—a fact that is understandably exploited by those who argue against Darwin.

It’s not surprising, then, that nascent creationist views are found in young children. Four-year-olds insist that everything has a purpose, including lions (“to go in the zoo”) and clouds (“for raining”). When asked to explain why a bunch of rocks are pointy, adults prefer a physical explanation, while children choose a functional one, such as “so that animals could scratch on them when they get itchy.” And when asked about the origin of animals and people, children tend to prefer explanations that involve an intentional creator, even if the adults raising them do not. Creationism‚ and belief in God‚ is bred in the bone.

Stay tuned for pics. I’ll be heading to Ohio in December, and I’m hoping to do some reconnaissance while I’m there.

Link

Related posts:

• Random Street Art
• The Empty Walls of Spain
• The Light Graffiti of Denis Smith
• Life Machines / Death Machines
• Taylor Pemberton’s Light Graffiti
• A Few Maps of the World
• Bangkok’s Post Diluvian Future
• Here & There: A Horizontal Projection of Manha…