August 2, 2006
Dreams of robot dinosaurs, fossil making floods and simpler times
The Head-in-the-Sand Society (a proud and noble order dating back many a year) is having a tumultuous time of late. After yesterday’s Kansas School Board election it seems as if the organization will suffer a loss in their fight against evolution. Yet in rural Kentucky the Creation Museum and Family Discovery Center will soon open its doors to teach the world about the role dinosaurs played in the Garden of Eden and how eons of fossil and geologic evidence is wrong because God created everything in six busy days less than 6,000 years ago.
The fight between religion and science is nothing new, but I’m a bit puzzled at how and why it’s continued for so long. Religious zealots are often slow to accept scientific theories that don’t seem to square with their thinking, but eventually religion comes around to accept solid science such as the Earth moving around the Sun. Sure that acknowledgment occasionally takes centuries to occur and horrible things have been done to heretical scientists in that interim, but over time the sense of a solid theory can be overwhelming.
Good science can almost rise to the level of clairvoyance. The real world still presents too many variables for things to prove out exactly as predicted every time, preventing theories like evolution from being considered scientific law. But evolution is one of those pesky theories that drops evidence everywhere and explains so much so elegantly it’s hard to deny. The Kansas School Board election and the state’s see-saw history on teaching evolution attest to the strong opposition and support for the theory, but the scales of thought have already made their tip in evolution’s favor and it will win acceptance eventually.
I think that’s the reason I find some amusement in what Creation Museum founder Ken Ham is up to. With statements like:
“If the Bible is the word of God, and its history really is true, that’s our presupposition or axiom, and we are starting there.”
and
“We’re going to show you that we can make sense of the different people groups, we can make sense of fossils, we can make sense of what you see in the world.”
Ham doesn’t do much to make his case beyond saying “God did it and wrote it down in the bible,” to answer any question. That doesn’t quite convince me, but he does seem to have a fun time in store for people next year. The Creation Museum will feature animtronic dinosaurs, a section of Noah’s Arc, a special effects theater and plenty more.
It’s going to be first rate and state of the art with a $25 million budget, much of that coming via donations to the cause. That’s where they lose me in all the fun. Ham and the other people supporting this museum feel the idea of evolution and any other science that might contradict a part of the bible is such a grave threat to their beliefs that it must be fought on a grand scale. I guess they are worried that if someone believes differently, there exists the possibility that their belief might not be correct. The notion of people who think differently about the world than they do must keep them up at night.
The Creation Museum is being built to promote Christianity by declaring its creators beliefs through gaudy animtronic proxies and informational nooks and kiosks. But I have to wonder what that $25 million could do if it was put toward enacting their faith’s charitable principles instead. Shouting down the naysayers seems to be the top priority of many evangelicals and that’s a shame because the way they mobilize people could really do a lot of practical good in this world.
That word that Ham uses, presuppostion, is key to their whole setup. When I first heard of this place I checked their job postings to see if I could possibly be hired as an incognito scientist, in order to inject a little Darwin into the exhibits. One of the requirements for the positions was that the applicant be well versed in “presuppositional apologetics,” and the job description went on to add that if the applicant didn’t know the meaning of the phrase, than he/she was probably not qualified. Although one might throw suppositional meaning at the phrase based on etymology, I, being of a scientific bent, did a little research and sure enough (look it up yourself) “presuppositional apologetics” appears to be a rather insidious method of persuasion whereby the argument is manipulated to take place completely and exclusively within the context of the desired outcome.
In other words, Goebbels would have been qualified for the position. I felt strongly, one might say viscerally, that I was not.
The following observation is my opinion, and I welcome debate: The staggering difference between most organized religion and science is that religion is a means by which truth is delivered to a people by its leaders, whereas science is a means by which people may discover truth for themselves. In other words, while both may ultimately arrive at truth, it is only during times when leaders mean to deceive their people that science and religion must be at odds.
The mind reels at a leadership that wishes not only to deceive but to rob people of the ability to discern truth for themselves. This was practiced in the ancient Roman Empire, which offered diverse educational opportunities to both citizens and the slave class, but where only citizens were “free” to partake of the so-called “liber”al arts of philosophy, history, literature - those disciplines which nurtured the intellectual capacity. I daresay that had evolution as a discipline existed during the Roman Empire, it too would have been placed in this category of subjects kept secret from slaves, lest they develop the intellectual capacity to free themselves.
I realize that your rant was about a museum that refutes science’s long accepted theories of evolution. And I apologize if this is a little off topic. But I think this museum, and the fundamentalism that its founder purports, raises an important question about the role of science and religion in society. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. In the same way that Christianity and Islam are not. In fact they depend on eachother.
Religion supposes a higher power. In Islam and Christianity (and even Judaism) you have religions that believe in the same “god”. So much so that they even read from some of the same teachings. They just disagree about the details. This prophet, that prophet, translation means this, or that. Religions biggest problem as Jessica points out is the fact that in the organized sense, they do not allow room for people to figure these things out for themselves. It is a great power struggle. Things like religion and nationalism are dangerous because they encourage people to forget their humanity. We are all the same.
But, science too can be an oppresive institution. The academic institution supposes certain accepted theories. History is filled with scientists whose work was scoffed at by the academic community before ultimately being accepted. They often find themselves fighting over the details, and the established institutions expect legitimate science to follow their own preconcieved notions. Physics for so many years has worked under the opposing theories of gravitation and quantum mechanics. Yet as scientists started to formulate new theories to explain the universe, at first they were not taken seriously. Today, they still do not have all of the answers. And we all know science can be dangerous, I don’t think I need to be too specific here.
In a more general sense religion is beliefs and practices that express ones desire to seek a higher truth. Is it starting to come together for you? I mean no disrespect to people who believe in science or those that believe in religion, as I said before they are not mutually exclusive. At their essence, they are the same thing, a search for truth. And they both take a leap of faith to truly believe. Modern physics is based on theories that scientists admit they cannot reconcile or prove, in any real sense. So they continue to search for answers and push themselves further and further into the realm of the unknown and possibly the spiritual. Religion is always trying to find relevance as cultures and societies evolve. Ultimately I believe they may find the answers they are looking for in eachother. Science is looking for the “theory of everything”, isn’t that what religion claim’s to offer?
All of the religions, and all of science is looking for the same thing. Just as I hope that Islam and Christianity and Judaism will eventually embrace their similarity and lay down arms. I believe that science and religion will be forced to do the same.