Say we take the Creation Museum's purpose and arguments and flip them, creating an exhibit in a natural history museum that takes religion seriously but tears down creationism. What would this look like? How would it be received?
The fact of the creation museum looms large, larger than it probably should. After all, even I wanted to use it as a starting point. Yet it's really a religious institution, fighting for a very specific and very narrow reading of the Bible. It's not a scientific institution. So does its existence mean museums should take it seriously?
Since most large natural history or science museums are funded at least in part by the state, building an anti-creationist exhibit would not be well-received. It would alienate a significant portion of its audience, because even those who do not accept the creationist view would likely find this sort of exhibit as anti-religion. The distinction between creationism and religion would be too hard to establish. The Creation Museum doesn't have this problem. It's inherently alienating, and it doesn't mind. It's successful because (and when) it strikes across the mainstream.
Yet there's a portion of the museum audience that flails against a non-creationist account, that, like me in the creation museum, will immediately throw up walls when faced with a view of evolution they do not accept. What responsibility does the museum have to this audience? And more pointedly, what responsibility does the museum have to audiences that respond to science with despair?
I tried to work through this the other night using an analogy about wine and wine tasting (I was talking about it with Liz). It didn't really work. My idea was to say this: the science museum doesn't promote a godless world or threaten religion or undermine life's deep meaning; it's agnostic about such questions. Rather the creationist brings these problems to the science museum. They're the ones unfairly assessing science for things it doesn't place in its purview. But this is why the Creation Museum is a powerfully persuasive and science museums remain rather traditional institutions of the enlightenment.
Yet meaning is front and center at the Creation Museum. The route alternates between sciency rooms and rooms that directly point out the moral issues at stake. Visitors face what happens when science and evolution trump creation and challenge the Bible. So, after pointing out that different starting points and different, the CM doesn't pull punches; Using a rhetorical question, it goes right to the core of their problem:
So would it be appropriate for museums to get into the meaning business more fully? To make the argument that science provides a way of thinking about our lives that supports a moral stance?
After visiting the creation museum and reflecting on it, I find its confidence and appeals to authority a bit brazen, and its representation of science mind-bogglingly frustrating. And yet at the core of this institution is a very deep defensiveness, a defensiveness not found even in the evolution exhibits I've described as defensive. So I have no clear answer to what museums should do in response to an institution like the creation museum or the larger intelligent design and creationist movements. Experiencing the power of the Creation Museum made me realize the stakes. But is the museum the site where the battle should be joined? I'm not sure. By largely ignoring it, the science museum grants the Creation Museum the upper hand; by engaging it, the museum threatens to alienate audiences, becoming a specific site for the controversy. Perhaps the approach they've taken -- the small installation on meaning or responding briefly to creation science -- is appropriate.
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