Creationism in popular culture: NYT culture critic visits creation museum
| May 29, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
When I first turned to read Edward Rothstein’s account in the New York Times’ Arts section of the just-opened creation museum at Petersburg, Kentucky, I gritted my teeth in advance.
I have little use for creation museums, but way, way less use for self-regarding, overaged art twerps who pretend superiority to millions of people who do real jobs for a living. So, I thought, Die. Twerp. Die. Before the cat gets you.
Well, I was overreacting, I am glad to say! Rothstein’s review is thoughtful and his reflections are of genuine use to those who want some idea of what they might see at a creation museum – and how it differs from a Church of Darwin museum:
The Creation Museum actually stands the natural history museum on its head. Natural history museums developed out of the Enlightenment: encyclopedic collections of natural objects were made subject to ever more searching forms of inquiry and organization. The natural history museum gave order to the natural world, taming its seeming chaos with the principles of human reason. And Darwin’s theory  which gave life a compelling order in time as well as space  became central to its purpose. Put on display was the prehistory of civilization, seeming to allude not just to the evolution of species but also cultures (which is why “primitive” cultures were long part of its domain). The natural history museum is a hall of human origins.
The Creation Museum has a similar interest in dramatizing origins, but sees natural history as divine history. And now that many museums have also become temples to various American ethnic and sociological groups, why not a museum for the millions who believe that the Earth is less than 6,000 years old and was created in six days?
Rothstein, a good multiculturalist, makes clear that, if you grant the premises of multiculturalism, the creationists are as entitled to tell their own story using their own funds as any other cultural group. (Incidentally, Darwinist museums receive considerable public funds, which creates an interesting conundrum when so many Darwinists treat their convictions as an anti-theistic religion.)
And, if you are not a frothing Darwinist, it is not always clear who is right:
Nature here is not “red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson asserted. In fact at first it seems almost as genteel as Eden’s dinosaurs. We learn that chameleons, for example, change colors not because that serves as a survival mechanism, but “to ‘talk’ to other chameleons, to show off their mood, and to adjust to heat and light.”
The creationists could well be right about the chameleons. Darwinian theory needs the colour change to be a survival mechanism and interprets just about everything in that light. The chameleon itself may not have any such need. If you think that everything about life forms exists in some relation to a survival mechanism, you have spent too much time among Darwinists.
One thing that Rothstein’s review illustrates is the way in which popular American evangelical culture has become technically mainstream and innovative – and that’s not typically a sign of weakness:
Whether you are willing to grant the premises of this museum almost becomes irrelevant as you are drawn into its mixture of spectacle and narrative. Its 60,000 square feet of exhibits are often stunningly designed by Patrick Marsh, who, like the entire museum staff, declares adherence to the ministry’s views; he evidently also knows the lure of secular sensations, since he designed the “Jaws” and “King Kong” attractions at Universal Studios in Florida.
Well, the museum, a short drive from the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky Airport, hopes for a quarter of a million visitors a year. We’ll see.
Also, at the Post-Darwinist:
Would Francis Crick be allowed to speculate on extraterrestrial origin of life today? Interesting comment from Beast Rabban. By the way, does anyone know who Beast Rabban is, and if he is really a beast? Of what type? Social or antisocial? He has obviously put a lot of thought into the ID controversy.
At the Mindful Hack:
Fruit flies and free will – and now hornets: Insects triumph over mechanistic interpretations
Why you do NOT need to be a creationist to disbelieve in evolutionary psychology. Common sense will do just fine.
46 Responses to Creationism in popular culture: NYT culture critic visits creation museum
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Sal and Mung, thanks for considering my question. I would not expect the DI to criticise any other orginisation, that would be counterproductive in my veiw.
However, given that in the past Stephen Meyer has said that ID is ’180 degrees’ different from creationism and given that the creation museum is a topical issue, I think it would be a wonderful opportunity for the DI to stake out where and why they differ from the creationist approach.
Sal – I agree with you about Wilder-Smith. He was brilliant and eloquent – it’s a shame he isn’t still around.
I got a copy of that Oxford debate on CD and have downloaded the audio available on his site. He’s a real delight to listen to. As for who can fill his shoes today? That’s a tall order – I don’t know….
jpark320, “But isn’t the account complete in regards to # of days?”
Of the current age, yes, it would seem.
Note that the text does not mention the “sons of God” who “shouted for joy” at the laying of the earth’s “foundation”. (Job 38:7 which arguably predates the Torah itself.) If you throw that into the mix, one has to wonder where in Gen 1 the creation of these “sons of God” would fit, who already existed when the “foundation stone” of the earth is “laid.”
If you take other parts of the Hebrew Bible, the Gen 1 narrative is obviously incomplete. And if it is incomplete about the “sons of God”, it may be incomplete about other things, like perhaps a prior age that included the dinosaurs that is not at all covered in Genesis 1 (except perhaps to say it may have *became* a waste and desolation, in verse 2.) It is obviously silent about where the talking serpent came from, and what he was doing opposing God in the Garden.
My point is this: The “six days” may indeed be real 24 hour days. But these days may have nothing at all to do with dinosaur bones, and a fossil record of progressive development of various species. In other words, the OECs and the YECs may be partially right about different things. The earth may be up to five billion years old, with a lot of hidden history, and the six days may only refer to the current age, which started 6000 years ago or so.
(The so-called “gap theory” seems to be a bit wrong headed about the creation mentioned in Gen 1:1 given than the “heavens” is referred to in verse 8 as something apparently ordained at that time. IOW, “heavens” does not seem to refer to the cosmos at large, but rather the “sky”. Yes, the “stars” are mentioned in verse 16, but note that the Hebrew word “asah” does not necessarily indicate beginning of existence, but rather an “ordination”. The stars may have already existed and simply had come into view of the earth at that time because of the clearing of the atmosphere.)
Of course, ID need not commit to any of these, being theology independent.
Thanks for the discussion, folks. I have some further comments, since many questions and comments have been raised about Biblical interpretation.
It seems difficult, in my view, to make those 6 days into long time periods. One reason is this: Genesis 2:2 says that on the seventh day God rested. Not coincidentally, in the Mosaic Law God prescribes a day of rest… the sabbath. It seems obvious to me that this is patterned after the days of creation. If the days of Genesis are really extended periods of time, then how long, exactly, is the sabbath supposed to be?
Now, I won’t claim that this is proof of 24 hour days, but it ought to at least make you scratch your head. It’s an example of how there are clues elsewhere that can help steer our interpretation of Genesis.
Another example pertains to the flood. Some of you might believe the flood was local, not worldwide. However, aside from the fact that the Genesis account says it was worldwide… if you insist on taking that as allegory, you run into a fairly large problem a little later on in Genesis 8 when God promises he will never again flood the Earth. If the flood was localized, and the Noahic Covenant was God promising to never again wipe out living things with local floods, then obviously God has violated His promise thousands if not millions of times since then because there have been, and continues to be, local floods. So either God’s broken His promise or the flood was worldwide. Seems that those are the only choices.
Now maybe you want to take the Noahic Covenant as allegory, too. But in that case I would have to ask how you know when to stop interpreting as allegory? Why not just throw the whole book out the window?
These are among the reasons why I tend to stick to the YEC side of things.
There was some talk about time dilation, which is the issue I raised in my earlier comments, but I’m still confused about that because folks seem to still be saying that we know how long it takes light to go from there to there, even though we (seem to be) admitting that time is not a fixed, known quantity. Obviously, and I don’t mind saying, I have a lot to learn about this and so I’ll persist in my cautious bent toward YEC, admitting that for now, (and like Atom) I hold that view largely on faith.
Also, there’s been much said about God making the universe “appear” old. I think there’s a difference between making it appear old and simply making it difficult to determine how old it is. And I think it’s obvious that God has not seen fit to make it easy for us to determine with any degree of certainty how old the universe is. I view that as a sort of test of one’s faith in God.
One other observation is that most folks on this blog agree enthusiastically that the scientific community as a whole (at least in biology, anyway) have been largely lead astray and duped by Darwinism and many of those folks are persisting and actually attempting to perpetuate that theory, unworkable though it may be. Well, if we agree that can happen, and HAS happened, in one field of science, why should we surprised to find that it’s happened in ANOTHER field of science?
And isn’t it a coincidence that the one theory that we’re all so bent on debunking relies so heavily on the other theory? So again, is it really so unreasonable and silly, as some have suggested, to question these old Earth arguments?
And thank you, Sam Chen, for the link to your youngcosmos blog. Perhaps I’ll learn a lot more there so that I don’t have to “pollute” this blog with an issue that’s not all that pertinent to its purpose.
One of the signatories of the Dissent from Darwin list has also expressed critcisms of YEC. See: Criticism of CDK from brother Stephen J. Cheesman
Aw, geez… do I ever feel stupid. I meant Sal Cordova. Thank you Sal Cordova for providing that link to young cosmos!! Sorry about that, Sal… my brain slipped a cog.
troutmac, “It seems difficult, in my view, to make those 6 days into long time periods.”
You don’t have to. Though not specified, it is certainly allowed by the text itself that there were prior ages to this one, and that Genesis 1 refers only to this age.
mike1962 wrote:
“You don’t have to. Though not specified, it is certainly allowed by the text itself that there were prior ages to this one, and that Genesis 1 refers only to this age.”
Yes, the gap theory. I agree that if the universe and the Earth really are old, that implied gap is probably the best candidate to accommodate the extra time. I’m open to the gap theory, or some permutation of it. I don’t think I’m open to the “day-age” theory, theory.
Hey, what about the soft tissues in the T-Rex femur that they found in Montana in 2002? Do old-Earthers not view that as a threat? Do we have reason to believe that soft tissues really can survive fossilization through 65 million years? Should the soft tissues inside that femur serve as proof that such material CAN be preserved for 65 million years? Or should it make us question whether the 65 million year date for dinos is correct?
Thanks again. Interesting discussion.
I see that the Creation Museum is still causing a comotion among unguided evolutionists. The pandanians are going nuts over it.
What people don’t realize is the financial power of the YEC movement.
Discovery Institute CSC annual budget: about 800,000
YEC Annual Budget (my estimate): 20,000,000 to 50,000,000 world-wide and probably growing
The Darwinists had their hands full with the tiny ID movement, now the YECs are coming back stronger than ever. The Darwinists must now defend themselves on two fronts (ID and YEC) in the USA, and more fronts world wide…..
What needs to happen is to crush the political and financial clout of the Darwinists. No more NSF or taxpayer monies to fund their scientifically useless and socially harmful enterprise.
The Darwinists also grossly underestimate the abilities of the modern YECs to debate. 20 years ago the YECs were easy pickins, not any more. That’s because some major developments in science have come through for the YECs where they most needed it:
1. Doubts about the Big Bang
2. Secular Physcists advocating Variable Speed of Light theories
It’s a whole new ballgame.
True but the Darwinist budget is probably in the billions if you consider almost every researcher in the fields of biology, molecular biology, astronomey, astrophysics, geology, paleontology, and evolution at every university world wide and the secular media that makes huge fanfare out of any piddling discovery.
Dr. Walt Brown’s site has many interesting articles, including this link to Galaxies.
http://www.creationscience.com.....#wp1257493
“The arms in these six representative spiral galaxies have about the same amount of twist. Their distances from Earth are shown in light-years. (One light-year, the distance light travels in one year, equals 5,879,000,000,000 miles.) [the six distances are 2, 18, 25, 32, 65, 106 ly] For the light from all galaxies to arrive at Earth tonight, the more distant galaxies, which had to release their light long before the closer galaxies, did not have as much time to rotate and twist their arms. Therefore, farther galaxies should have less twist. Of course, if light traveled millions of times faster in the past, the farthest galaxies did not have to send their light long before the nearest galaxies.”
Brown musters quotes to show that a good deal that’s postulated about galaxy formation is speculative or doubtful. I’m just guessing, but it seems to me that knowledge of galaxy formation would constitute a major component in determining the age of the universe. If astronomers don’t know what made innumerable galaxies flat and thin, instead of globular, then perhaps astronomers don’t know as much as they’d like non-specialists to believe.
Moreover, though the idea of unseen matter existed previously, the trigger for the search for dark matter was the discovery in the mid 70′s by Vera Rubin that ~60 spiral galaxies that she studied showed the stars in the arms rotating at the same velocity as the stars near the center, a completely unexpected result, since that would have caused galaxies to have lost their spiral form in less than a billion years, according to one. This resulted in a concerted effort to find either dark matter or a revised formula for gravity. But of course no mention of revising theories of origin or dating schemes.
Regarding scriptural testimony, to me one of the more significant difficulties for postulating either an age preceding the current age, or some version of the day-age interpretation of Genesis 1 comes from Mark 10:3-9. Christ based his demands for abiding marital commitment on the fact that “from the beginning of Creation” (apo de arches ktiseos) “male and female He made them” quoting Genesis. To me (and I suspect to most YEC folk) that leaves no room for 4.5 billion years (much less 15 billion years) prior to the creation of humans. The tenor of the NT leads me to conclude the authors believed in recent Creation and the universal Noahic flood, including their testimony of Christ.
benkeshet,
If Gen 1 refers to only the current age (assumption there were prior ages), then Mark 10:3-9 could not be evidence that there isn’t a prior age. The question about Gen 1 has to be solved another way, or perhaps not solved.
Peanut Gallery Notes on all the above:
People mention a wide variety of things that will probably never be settled to everyone’s satisfaction.
There is the tension about the new YEC museum that just opened up. I had the link from MSNBC but lost it due to a computer error where I had to shut down, but trust me that Eugenie Scot is probably apoplectic right about now and ready and armed with a petition to counter “creeping theocracy.”
Beyond this is the disagreement over Scripture and of course the YECs take (vs. IDers) on issues like rocks and fossils and whether “behemoth” was a crocodile or something like a dinosaur. I make no commentary on the proposition of this type except to say that to me the more serious issue is whether we as
Christians get cowed into thinking that Adam himself was some marvelous allegory or proto human when in fact according to some scholars I ran into he was certainly referred to by Christ as a real person. This being the case, and ancestral lineage meaning everything in OT and NT custom to show the kingship of Christ (both physical and divine) we have a problem on our hands, folks. That to me is far more serious a thorn than starlight contraction or dilation or whether bacterial mechanisms are front-end loaded to later develop funny little eye bulges. Ken Ham for one has been open about what he thinks borders on the apostate in trying to seek “creation compromise” with ID, in that (in his mind) the research programs of ID that refuse to name or procaim the exact Intel Agent are missing the larger point.
On the other hand I understand the need for DI to remain at a distance from the doctronaire in order to foster a healthy and inclusive approach to DI.
Others dwell on whether the Bible is cosmologically inaccurate and promotes a realm where the Hebrew authors merely copycatted their NME neighbors and declared, say, that the earth flat (not true, so far as we can tell, see JP Holding’s historical notes on all this) and said the stars could “fall from the sky”, etc. Where in this case it is probably a matter of true allegory. “Flat Earth” is a smear campaign, for example, that according to Rodney Stark (who refuted the notion that the Church gave us “ignorance” during the alleged “dark ages”, when all manner of learning and invention actually took place under noses!) and others, that had its origin in misinterpreted language from Isaiah about the “foundations of the world.”
Job said mentions the “circle of the earth” and other than allegorical language about foundations (God’s power, etc) there is little evidence that even IF the early Hebrews felt this way, certainly their writings didn’t make manifest a belief in a flat earth. Nor did the issue even come up that often in Church teachings nor was anyone persecuted for all we know, for that kind of belief system. That came from their neighbors, and in point of fact even IF some thought that, no educated Christian from about 100 AD onward thought that, from everything we can tell. And it came from rather fanciful writers like Washington Irving (of Sleepy Hollow fame) who made cute stories with cock-n-bull input about Christopher Columbus and others facing down stern hooded and ignorant Church elders before their voyages. But it was not quite so simple.
Smear campaigns against Christians are nothing new–but certainly once the full context of things is hashed out it can, if we get lucky, shed light on these kinds of topics. So it is refreshing to have a forum where some things CAN be rolled out for examination where you don’t have the usual jackals calling names and appealing to the NSF for the final word
There is another creation science museam opening in Canada.
It’s opening in July! See Creation Science Museum
I wouldn’t count the YECs out. They’ve been the object of derision, and many times, deservedly so, but the new YECs will be a force to be reckoned with. A new weblog is being constrcuted to cover these developments.
Visit:
http://www.CreationSafaris.com
http://www.CreationScience.com
http://www.YoungCosmos.com
And remember, it was the YEC A.E Wilder-Smith PhD PhD PhD (from Oxford) who so badly mauled Richard Dawkins in debate, that Dawkins refuses to this day to debate creationists. If Dawkins were up against Walter Brown, Dawkins would be put on his rear end.
Indeed. The author is rather obviously framing the creation in a literal week with a literal 6 days. To try to turn that into some “day-age theory” is to recognise this fact while at the same time trying to ignore it. I find such an appoach irrational.
It certainly fails to capture the original intent of the author. But then, I understand that method of interpretation is out of vogue these days anyways.