Paleontologist on point
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
A scene from the Creation Museum’s biblical history exhibit.When the North American Paleontology Convention was held in Cincinnati last week, a group international scientists visited the nearby Creation Museum and the New York Times covered their visit. In the article published yesterday, the scientists convey astonishment, amusement, and mild to moderate revulsion at the misportrayal of scientific knowledge. There’s also a gem of a quote by Dr. Arnold I. Miller, the University of Cincinnati geologist who organized the convention and suggested the trip to the museum:
Too often, academics tend to ignore what’s going on around them… I feel at least it would be valuable for my colleagues to become aware not only of how creationists are portraying their own message, but how they’re portraying the paleontological message and the evolutionary message.
In the culture war over science and religion, words are weapons. Dr. Miller’s words here—intentionally or not—are sharp and strategic. The assumption that the creationist message is separate from paleontological or evolutionary messages is subtle but eviscerating. The brand of creationism advocated by the museum—which is run by Answers in Genesis, the same people who attempt to fight science with the pseudoscientific publication Answers Research Journal—uses the language and imagery of science to assemble a biblical explanation. (As the Times article puts it, “same facts, different conclusions.”) Consequently, parsing the paleontological and evolutionary components of the museum from the creationist mission undermines the strategy of the $27 million Creation Museum.


A donkeycorn in a water garden. Photograph by 
Picture of the Patagonian cavy sign at the Southwick’s Zoo. Photograph by Mary Schwalm.

In the mad scramble to challenge this new challenge to evolution and possibly rewrite the laws of nature, an interesting ancillary fact has emerged. Apparently most evolution deniers and supporters of Intelligent Design also believe in the jackalope. “Of course I’ve always believed in jackalopes,” said one 17-year-old girl who rejects evolution as a materialistic conspiracy perpetrated by godless academics. “We know antelabbits are real, because full-size antelopes could never forage in narrow crevices or really dense underbrush and the circle of life depends on balance in nature. It’s simple logic,” explained her father, misconstruing the ecological niche concept. It’s unclear how the scientific establishment will weather this assault. In the past, major revisions to scientific theory have led to an ultimately more robust understanding of the natural world, like when Einstein dropped the cosmological constant from his field equations for general relativity after facing undeniable evidence that the universe is indeed expanding. But these findings may destroy science altogether, and lead to a total deterioration of knowledge and pursuit of rational thought.