1. This is a very powerful experience. If you attend the exhibits with even a little skepticism about the veracity of evolutionary theory, I believe this exhibit will increase your confidence that evolution is a weak theory.
2. This museum is at war. I've never seen a museum so relentlessly or so aggressively attack the tenets of science -- or even another ideology. A mirror image of this museum is nearly impossible to imagine, since the direct attacks against the foundations of religious faith in Genesis would be so vocally and passionately protested. But it's less the open mocking of scientists (evident only in the rather cocky introductory video) and more the unfair assumptions, the specific cherry-picked challenges, and the overuse of unsubstantiated Biblical authority to assert particular views that is so frustrating.
3. Yet at times, it's clear the museum is less about science vs. religion and much more about religion vs. religion. It's about asserting a particular religious point of view. In other words, the impetus for the fight against evolution is not a fight necessarily against science. It's a fight against a non-literal reading of the Bible. So while I'm put off because science is misrepresented and a whole heap of metaphysical realities are asserted (and assumed) with no evidence, those who have a different faith, who understand that the "days" of Genesis can be read more broadly as "ages" or "billions or millions of years" will not feel at home here. This is the starkest version of Christianity, and I know plenty who would find this not to their taste.
4. Coherence is the name of the game. According to the Museum's reading of the Bible, if God said at the end of seven days that things were "very good," then there was no death, no disease, no poison, dinosaurs didn't eat meat, etc. until after the fall. Similarly, those first six days have to be 24 hour periods. If they weren't regular, 24 hour days, then the whole Bible would tumble down like a house of cards. And because the museum seeks to set religion and science on the same level as starting points, this expectation for perfect coherence is transferred over to science. If science can't explain a particular phenomenon (or if the museum claims it can't explain it), then this starts to erode the foundations of the scientific worldview. Because the museum is not fairly comprehensive and fails to give science any voice for explaining why a complexity or perceived inconsistency makes sense in the bigger picture, science in this museum does come across as a house of cards, as a series of assumptions and failures to explain. To that end, the museum is highly effective. But science isn't a house of cards.
5. The museum moves through seven C's: Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, Consummation. Only the first four are on display. The last three are covered in a 15 minute video reminiscent of The Passion of the Christ. But jumping from the Tower of Babel to Christ's Crucifixion means a large majority of the Bible is skipped over -- that's a heck of a lot of text that must figure in any attempt to make this literal reading coherent.
6. I'm not a big fan of the form-content divide, but the amazing thing in this museum is that the museum/exhibit form is very authoritative, very powerful, very convincing. It looks and feels legitimate. And while the museum form lends this museum much of its power, the fact that it works so well reflects back on the museum form in general, making experiences in other museums feel a bit indoctrinating. I have much more work to do on this, but the initial feeling I had when I visited the Cincinnati Natural History Museum was that the tactics -- spatial and linguistic -- were the same. It made the Natural History Museum feel dirty. This went away as I appreciated more what that museum was after, but I'm not sure I can explain exactly why that happened. Was it because I buy the ideology on display? Or was it something more? Is the Natural History Museum more honest? More exploratory? More evidence-based? More comprehensive? Must spend more time here.
Posted by: |