Okay, first off: Ham's Beef. Just had to acknowledge that.
I always recognize in these posts bits of the fundamentalism -- including creationism and millenarianism -- with which I grew up. I don't know the percentages, but I suspect the vast majority of Protestants are creationists. Yet all that is loose.
Here's what I mean. Lots of people call themselves Baptists or Presbyterians or whatever without really knowing what those denominational distinctions mean. They claim those titles because they attended a church of that denomination as a kid, or a parent claimed it, or who knows why; they're much more religious about football on Sundays. I suspect most Americans are just that loose in their understandings about most distinctions. They'd say the U.S. is a Christian nation, though it's not. They'd claim at various times to believe God created the world in six days, at others that dogs evolved from wolves, or some random instance instead of natural selection, but hold firm that "we didn't come from apes" or some such misunderstanding. Truthfully, most of us don't know much about who we are, but get viciously defensive when we feel, rightly or wrongly, we're being challenged.
What's my point?
I find these varied and new lineages of creationism and 6,000 year earthers and so on intriguing, but also can't help but wonder how many people -- and you point out the numbers are hard to come by -- adhere strictly to this belief or the other. I imagine lots of people who move through the creation museum come out feeling utterly convinced and somehow defensively patriotic, but two days later make a half-understanding joke about their Yorkie having come from wolves.
It seems there are always these people who litigate narrow channels of exact beliefs, yet the larger danger is the failure of American education, leaving masses of people easily stirred up by something that taps the god-'n-country defense system embedded in their amygdalas. Still the Sarah Palins of the political landscape can stir millions of Americans' loosely understood beliefs into an uproar to hate those elitist scientists who think they're better than them and reject vaccines and vote.
Meanwhile, other parts of this remind me of Mormon beliefs about various races. I've only read John Krakauer's Into the Wild and have only seen, I'm ashamed to say, the TV version of Under the Banner of Heaven, but I believe Krakauer explores weird Biblical interpretations for explaining the existence of indigenous races, etc. (Then there's the Nation of Islam sci-fi creation of white people, as you reminded me recently.)
This is a really thought-provoking piece of writing. Having grown up in this mess, it's stunning to see all the specific rabbit holes (or rabbit warrens) that have branched off since I was a kid.
And finally (never finally but for now) I don’t think many visitors could really follow all the claims and misleading charts and dioramas in order to say whether they believe with great specificity the entire YEC narrative. But the broad strokes are put in place, and I think a lot of people do believe that mainstream evolution science is pushing an agenda that contradicts their religious beliefs and puts them on the defensive culturally. Much like climate science deniers.
In fact I imagine this long-standing resistance to evolution science due to its inconvenient complication of the words in Genesis has helped to create this culture in which denying other science like climate change and vaccines is common.
My main concern here is that the Creation Museum and its so-called educational materials, videos, etc. whip up a sense among followers—with various degrees of awareness of and commitment to the details—that a scientifically debunked worldview is legitimate and also that it’s the side of the controversy that aligns with morality. And when they see the anti-LGBTQ and anti-women’s bodily autonomy are a part of that, their commitment to those concepts becomes “religious.” Even if their allegedly literal interpretation of a text that is clearly not literal is a fringe on the fringe, they add their numbers to a much larger coalition of climate science denial, social intolerance, and misogyny. That’s Miss Piggy’s Beef over here.
Just thinking out loud —- thanks for your comments that help me think through it a little more, Tim!
I'm also concerned about the education system. Even worse than the often jingoistic and effectively Christianized public schools, their homeschool materials are seriously an assault. To raise kids in a nonsensical fact-free vacuum that will put them at odds with most of the world, or guarantee an enormous crisis, is abuse.
And even if the numbers are relatively low and some manage to get out, the larger culture's average mentality is still moved another notch towards general acceptance of nonsense and the abandonment of critical thinking. Then the Sarah Palins can get a foothold more easily. So this kind of nonsense being accepted by millions of people endangers everyone to some extent, I think. It changes the atmosphere just that much.
And I'm sure you're right that the most convinced visitor to the Creation Museum would also espouse contradictory ideas the next day -- when you're buying into something so counter to observable facts already, it's not a problem to incorporate a little contradiction. The baraminology and "kinds" theory allows just enough change in species (excuse me, kinds) to accommodate some wolf-to-dog stuff. But they do have this favorite bit of proof that can't be countered: no one has ever seen a chimp give birth to a human being! They're right about that but don’t know what it means.
Okay, first off: Ham's Beef. Just had to acknowledge that.
I always recognize in these posts bits of the fundamentalism -- including creationism and millenarianism -- with which I grew up. I don't know the percentages, but I suspect the vast majority of Protestants are creationists. Yet all that is loose.
Here's what I mean. Lots of people call themselves Baptists or Presbyterians or whatever without really knowing what those denominational distinctions mean. They claim those titles because they attended a church of that denomination as a kid, or a parent claimed it, or who knows why; they're much more religious about football on Sundays. I suspect most Americans are just that loose in their understandings about most distinctions. They'd say the U.S. is a Christian nation, though it's not. They'd claim at various times to believe God created the world in six days, at others that dogs evolved from wolves, or some random instance instead of natural selection, but hold firm that "we didn't come from apes" or some such misunderstanding. Truthfully, most of us don't know much about who we are, but get viciously defensive when we feel, rightly or wrongly, we're being challenged.
What's my point?
I find these varied and new lineages of creationism and 6,000 year earthers and so on intriguing, but also can't help but wonder how many people -- and you point out the numbers are hard to come by -- adhere strictly to this belief or the other. I imagine lots of people who move through the creation museum come out feeling utterly convinced and somehow defensively patriotic, but two days later make a half-understanding joke about their Yorkie having come from wolves.
It seems there are always these people who litigate narrow channels of exact beliefs, yet the larger danger is the failure of American education, leaving masses of people easily stirred up by something that taps the god-'n-country defense system embedded in their amygdalas. Still the Sarah Palins of the political landscape can stir millions of Americans' loosely understood beliefs into an uproar to hate those elitist scientists who think they're better than them and reject vaccines and vote.
Meanwhile, other parts of this remind me of Mormon beliefs about various races. I've only read John Krakauer's Into the Wild and have only seen, I'm ashamed to say, the TV version of Under the Banner of Heaven, but I believe Krakauer explores weird Biblical interpretations for explaining the existence of indigenous races, etc. (Then there's the Nation of Islam sci-fi creation of white people, as you reminded me recently.)
This is a really thought-provoking piece of writing. Having grown up in this mess, it's stunning to see all the specific rabbit holes (or rabbit warrens) that have branched off since I was a kid.
And finally (never finally but for now) I don’t think many visitors could really follow all the claims and misleading charts and dioramas in order to say whether they believe with great specificity the entire YEC narrative. But the broad strokes are put in place, and I think a lot of people do believe that mainstream evolution science is pushing an agenda that contradicts their religious beliefs and puts them on the defensive culturally. Much like climate science deniers.
In fact I imagine this long-standing resistance to evolution science due to its inconvenient complication of the words in Genesis has helped to create this culture in which denying other science like climate change and vaccines is common.
My main concern here is that the Creation Museum and its so-called educational materials, videos, etc. whip up a sense among followers—with various degrees of awareness of and commitment to the details—that a scientifically debunked worldview is legitimate and also that it’s the side of the controversy that aligns with morality. And when they see the anti-LGBTQ and anti-women’s bodily autonomy are a part of that, their commitment to those concepts becomes “religious.” Even if their allegedly literal interpretation of a text that is clearly not literal is a fringe on the fringe, they add their numbers to a much larger coalition of climate science denial, social intolerance, and misogyny. That’s Miss Piggy’s Beef over here.
Just thinking out loud —- thanks for your comments that help me think through it a little more, Tim!
I'm also concerned about the education system. Even worse than the often jingoistic and effectively Christianized public schools, their homeschool materials are seriously an assault. To raise kids in a nonsensical fact-free vacuum that will put them at odds with most of the world, or guarantee an enormous crisis, is abuse.
And even if the numbers are relatively low and some manage to get out, the larger culture's average mentality is still moved another notch towards general acceptance of nonsense and the abandonment of critical thinking. Then the Sarah Palins can get a foothold more easily. So this kind of nonsense being accepted by millions of people endangers everyone to some extent, I think. It changes the atmosphere just that much.
And I'm sure you're right that the most convinced visitor to the Creation Museum would also espouse contradictory ideas the next day -- when you're buying into something so counter to observable facts already, it's not a problem to incorporate a little contradiction. The baraminology and "kinds" theory allows just enough change in species (excuse me, kinds) to accommodate some wolf-to-dog stuff. But they do have this favorite bit of proof that can't be countered: no one has ever seen a chimp give birth to a human being! They're right about that but don’t know what it means.
Ham's Beef is definitely the most important observation I've made in this Creation Museum series. 😀