Creation museum opens in Alberta, Canada

Recently, I was reflecting on the differences between the way the intelligent design controversy shapes up in Canada and the United States. And lo and behold, a Creation Science Museum just opened in Big Valley, in the western province of Alberta, in June.

Unlike the Kentucky extravaganza in the United States, the museum developed by Harry Nibourg with exhibits by Vance Nelson of Creation Truth Ministries of Red Deer, Alberta, is housed in a 900 square foot bungalow .

Creation Truth Ministries is a Christian evangelistic organization that wants "to see unbelievers come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ". And don't miss the petrified teddy bears.

The difference in scale between these two museums reflects the difference between the extent to which the controversies have been politicized in Canada vs. the United States more than the difference in population size. In Canada, certainly, we can do something big and remarkable when we want to. But a lot of people have to be inspired by the idea. Origins is not that big a controversy here.

A further note on the Creation Museum vs. the vertebrate paleontologists

This note follows up this story:

My lawyer friend has stressed that the Creation Museum makes one thing quite clear: It is a privately funded enterprise whose purpose is apologetics based on a literal interpretation of Genesis.

By denouncing the Museum, the vert paleos are revealing a classic modernist agenda - namely that they are the only ones who have a right to interpret the story. In a post-modern society, they are sure to lose.

Just watch them blame the swelling crowds of museum-goers (the outcome of their private stupidity in this matter) on ID theorists like Mike Behe, who would want nothing to do with the Creation Museum.

Given their (inevitable) views, the vert paleos would be wiser to treat the Creation Museum’s account of Earth’s history the way a smart church treats the Da Vinci Code’s account of Christianity’s history.

That is, don’t bother to get hot and bothered about it, just make clear that this is all very fun and interesting as a novel but it is simply not history. Period.

I wonder if the invert paleos (we haven’t heard from the inverts yet) will behave in their own best interests, or if they will help swell the crowds at the Creation Museum by denouncing it?

Come to think of it, if I were doing PR for the Creation Museum, I would be trying to schedule a denunciation from the paleobotanists as well ...

Update September 8, 2007 Here is an interesting comment from a Christian science historian who is not a creationist.

Creationism and popular culture: A friend visits Kentucky's Creation Museum

The Society for Vertebrate Paleontology, be it noted, has denounced the recently opened Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky:

Dr. Catherine Badgley, a professor at the University of Michigan and president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, remarked, “according to the Creation Museum, the history of life is short, sin-ridden, and laden with moralizing imperatives. In contrast, the real fossil record shows that this long history is brimming with discoveries of new kinds of animals, plants, and environments, inviting people to use their unusual minds to question, to reason, and to wonder at life’s remarkable variety.”

Unusual minds? Interesting choice of words. But what on earth has happened to the Society for Invertebrate Paleontology? Why aren't they chiming in? Maybe next month. Never mind. The Creation Museum has just recorded its 100, 000th visitor, so it won't need the additional puff for a while ...

A thoughtful lawyer friend visited the Museum, following in the steps of a perceptive New York culture critic. He kindly sent me some thoughts:

I just visited the museum on Saturday. It was a zoo. We got there at 2:00 pm and were turned away for a lack of available parking. We finally got in around 2:30 and spent a good part of our time standing in long lines. The exhibits are very well done and have been designed for children and uneducated adults. The placards that describe the exhibits consist of very short sentences that make the points clearly and succinctly. The movies are first class with not only sound effects but vibration effects in seats and water sprinkling during the clip that explains the world wide flood.

My friend, who is well versed in issues around evolution and disagrees with most of the Museum's key interpretations of Earth's history, is particularly interested in issues of bias. He explains,

What I found interesting about the new Creation museum is that it very clearly explains the preconception used and makes no attempt to assert that its presentation is unbiased. It is an honest statement of an effort to reconcile biblical explanations with the observed data. You will never find this candor in the evolution museums. An observer knows up front that this interpretation is based specifically on a religious text. The museum also addresses the moral implications of a world guided by human reason rather than the moral and ethical principles and wisdom found in the Bible. This take home message is riveting.

He contrasts that with the assumption of materialism that underlies the taxpayer-funded museums - an assumption not shared by most museum-goers in the United States:

Glaring omissions render evolution museums that are popping up around the country extraordinarily misleading. Misinformation and deception is based primarily on omission rather than explicit misrepresentation. Most of what is said in the evolution museums is probably true. It is just misleading because of an extraordinary body of relevant information that is not included.

What I would like to see is an origins museum that simply presents a complete set of the material evidence relative to the issue of origins that is necessary for a reasonable member of the public to make an informed decision about the matter. So far, I am not aware of any museum that does this.

I am glad that my friend is a patient man. I expect he will wait a long time. So far, the publicly funded museums' response has been to give docents (guides) training in dealing with the objections of visitors and to develop new exhibits promoting their view, sometimes with a hard sell.

This should not be surprising, because as historian Michael Ruse (himself a Darwinist) notes,

Evolution after Darwin had set itself up to be something more than science. It was a popular science, the science of the marketplace and the museum, and it was a religion—whether this be purely secular or blended in with a form of liberal Christianity … When believers in other religions turned around and scratched, you may regret the action but you can understand it—and your sympathy for the victim is attenuated. (Michael Ruse, The Evolution Wars: A Guide to the Debates (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000), p. 114.)

It's worth noting that the Creation Museum was built with private, not public, funds. We are in an interesting phase in popular cultural history, to be sure: American museum goers are compelled by law to fund the Darwinists' side of the story, however dodgy. Those who dissent respond by building - at their own expense - a museum to tell their side, do the public a service by making their religious agenda clear to all.

Museum not particularly friendly to intelligent design

Also from my friend's report, the Creation Museum:

... is not particularly friendly to ID. I saw no evidence of the bacterial flagellum or of the work of [key intelligent design theorists] Michael Behe or Bill Dembski. I had to go through the entire book store to find an ID video and finally stumbled on Unlocking the Mystery of Life.

Let's see, Unlocking was published in 2002, and was soon overshadowed by the controversy surrounding its stable mates, Privileged Planet and the clearly religion-directed Case for a Creator . Obviously, the Creation Museum isn't going to any trouble to stock ID materials if it missed the famous (or infamous, depending on your viewpoint) Privileged Planet.

Thus, an interesting pattern is shaping up: The paleontologists greatly help the Creation Museum by denouncing it - making far more sympathizers aware of it than Answers in Genesis could afford to reach from its own resources. Then the creationists in turn help the ID theorists by making clear what creationism is and what it is not. Creationism is about the BIBLE, see? It's not about intelligent design theories like Behe's* Edge of Evolution or Dembski's design inference.

Anyway, here is a series of private photos taken by an unsympathetic source that give you some idea what's inside.

Would I go to the Museum, given the opportunity? Of course. In a heartbeat. Just as I would go to a Museum of the Medieval Worldview and a Museum of the Materialist Worldview. I love cultural history. ANd I think the Cration Museum is valuable for clearly distinguishing what creationism is and what culture sustains it, separating it from the broader question of intelligent design of the universe or life forms.

*Behe, for what it is worth, is not in any sense a creationist. For example, in Edge of Evolution, he argues for common descent of humans and chimpanzees. (But note his key point: Common descent does NOT necessarily mean that we can go from goo to zoo to you by the means that Darwin and his heirs put so much faith in - in fact, the evidence is actually against that. His is a very unpopular finding among Darwinists, to be sure, but it is not evidence for the creationism promoted by the Creation Museum my friend visited.

Creationism in popular culture: NYT culture critic visits creation museum

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 asign 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.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

NEW!! Evolution in the light of intelligent design - look up intelligent design topics here.

Animations of life inside the cell, indexed, for your convenience.

Anti-God crusade ... no, really! My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

Catholic Church A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

Collins, Francis My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God

Columnists weigh in on the intelligent design controversy A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

Darwinism dissent Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin

Gilder, George A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

Intelligent design academic publications.

Intelligent design-friendly students should be flunked, according to bio prof Evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Intelligent design controversy My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

Intelligent design controversy timeline An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Intelligent design and culture My review of sci-fi great Rob Sawyer’s novel, The Calculating God , which addresses the concept of intelligent design.

March of the Penguins A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

Origin of life Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Peer review My backgrounder about peer review issues.

Polls relevant to the intelligent design controversy A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

Stove, David O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

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