Finding Truth at the Creation Museum
“It is true that those who have ability to manipulate social relations for their own advantage have to be reckoned with. They have an uncanny instinct for detecting whatever intellectual tendencies even remotely threaten to encroach upon their control. They have developed an extraordinary facility in enlisting upon their side the inertia, prejudices and emotional partisanship of the masses by use of a technique which impedes free inquiry and expression. We seem to be approaching a state of government by hired promoters of opinion called publicity agents. But the more serious enemy is deeply concealed in hidden entrenchments.”
— John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems
When Donald Trump first started racking up wins in the Republican primaries, there were hundreds of articles that attempted to explain who his supporters were and how his ascension could have been possible. To many of my comrades in the liberal bubble, the simplest solution was usually the best — his supporters are crazy and stupid. Besides being unhelpfully insulting, comments like that make the same fatal assumption that got our country in this situation in the first place, dismissing Trumpism as something outside the realm of rationality. Clips from The Daily Show of flag-draped rally-goers contradicting themselves can be hilarious to those of us who know better, but they also reinforce our overconfidence. Clinton’s election is not inevitable. Some unpredictable October surprise could easily tilt the vote back toward Trump, a candidate who sees chaos as a smart campaign strategy. I’m even worried that the assumptions pollsters used in previous elections might not apply in 2016, so Clinton’s supposed lead may be less than what the numbers show. Regardless, this election has exposed a deeper flaw in our society that needs to be examined and addressed. Calling the other side crazy and irrational is not a satisfactory solution. With this in mind, I went looking for answers in Petersburg, Kentucky, home of the Creation Museum.
Opened in 2007, the Creation Museum is owned by Answers in Genesis (AiG), an organization that promotes Young Earth Creationism (YEC). To be clear, YEC is not just intelligent design. Philosophers from Socrates to Isaac Newton have argued that there is too much complexity and purposefulness in the world for it to be the result of random chance; there must be some intelligent being — a version of God — that designed it all. Taken broadly, evolution and the Big Bang could be part of that design, rather than theories opposed to the existence of God. But as its name suggests, Answers in Genesis does not agree. YEC and the Creation Museum claim that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, that it was created by God in six days, that Adam and Eve were the first humans, and that all of the history described in the Bible is literally true, including Noah’s flood.
Being a good logician, I’m well aware that not all creationists are Trump supporters and vice versa, but I think it’s safe to say that their Venn diagram has a sizable middle. From the vantage point of the liberal bubble, Trumpism and creationism receive the same kind of scorn, both firmly inside the basket of deplorables. Like Clinton, I don’t think that all Republicans or all conservatives fall into this category. Perhaps unlike her, I think that there are plenty of Democrats and liberals who do. I will not forget that neither side has a monopoly on crazy, but for the sake of starting with a narrow focus, I’ll be talking mostly about Trump supporters and creationists. And talking about them as “crazy people” stops short of an answer. They have families, jobs, normal lives. They are rational, having reasons for the things they do. Truly crazy people cannot function in society, and they certainly cannot construct an entire museum dedicated to their way of thinking.
How many of the museum’s 2.5 million visitors believed in the Biblical version of history before purchasing their ticket? It’s impossible to know for sure, but I think it’s probably a very high percentage. With $30 admission, there aren’t going to be a lot of non-believers who visit the museum to gawk at ridiculous exhibits. (Yes, there is a dinosaur in the Garden of Eden.) In fact, I tried to visit the Creation Museum several years ago while on a road trip, but my travel partner refused to go. She didn’t want to give any money to AiG; buying a ticket supported their cause. I don’t blame her, and I was personally conflicted about going as well, but this election decided the matter for me. It was worth the cost, not because the museum was a sideshow where I could laugh at all the freaks, but because it was where I could learn about a group of people, equally human yet still so fundamentally different.
As a place of learning, the Creation Museum is unimpressive, not so much because of its topic but because of its presentation. The exhibits are really just dioramas. There are some plaques to read, but even they don’t elaborate much on the bunk science being used to argue that Earth is only a few thousand years old. I can’t imagine many adults visiting the museum and changing their minds about evolution based on the exhibits. It’s clear that the museum was designed for children. The dioramas provide a much more visual experience than would a traditional museum, and there are videos looping in pretty much every room so that kids don’t have to sit still and read about geology. The museum puts a lot of emphasis on dinosaurs because… well… kids love dinosaurs. And outside, on the museum grounds, are a zip line course, a petting zoo, and something called a “carnivorous bog garden.” There’s plenty there to lure families to Kentucky to learn about creationism, but I think that kids see through stuff like this. They will never mistake the Creation Museum itself for something cool. My visit made me realize that indoctrination works in other ways.
I want to be careful here because I think my description so far has been fairly negative, but I did not begin my day at the museum looking only to criticize. If anything, I was hoping that the museum would force me to question some of my own beliefs. I’m not religious in the traditional sense. I was raised Catholic, attended CCD (our equivalent of Sunday school), and went to church with my family every weekend through high school. Never devout, I stopped going to Mass when I went to college because it was there that I truly found religion. Everyone has a creed, and mine is older than Christ: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates said this when he accepted his own martyrdom, choosing death over exile from Athens. I took my first philosophy course freshman year, and I was instantly hooked. I came to believe in the power of skepticism as a starting point and in the Socratic method as a means of searching for truth. It’s only when we subject our beliefs to intense scrutiny that we can see what they’re actually worth. The Creation Museum represents an entirely different way of thinking about the world. By engaging in dialogue with it, I could gain a better understanding of both myself and my opponent. My criticism thus far is mostly that the museum’s exhibits were too devoid of substance, too shallow to pose much of a challenge to my beliefs. The museum itself is preaching to the choir, unlikely to convert anyone who doesn’t already believe in YEC.
The bigger problem is Bryan Osborne. While at the museum, I saw him give a presentation titled “Do Animals Evolve? Evolution Defined.” His answer is no, animals do not evolve as described by Darwin. (Surprised?) His hour-long talk was very good, and I could easily see him changing minds. To start, he looks trustworthy, with his Luke Bryan-esque smile and charm. More important, he actually builds a decent argument against evolution. It’s not valid, of course, but it has the power to convince and would be difficult to refute effectively, especially with an audience that’s already receptive to his points. Why are they receptive? As I’ve said, I don’t think it’s because they’re religious fanatics who are incapable of thinking rationally. They have reasons and act according to them. The truth of the Bible is as certain to them as the truth of evolution is to us. If someone tried to convince you that everything you thought about the world was false, you’d think him ridiculous. For the sake of the Socratic method, however, we have to let Bryan Osborne try.
If you have an hour, I really do recommend watching the entire talk. Follow his argument, and you will learn a lot about how humans think. Try to put yourself in the shoes of a believer and walk the ground that his intellectual world is built on. About seven and a half minutes in, Osborne makes a point about skepticism, essentially saying that our scientific worldview is based on faith just as much as his Christian worldview. He’s right, but only superficially. I have never personally observed the motions of the planets or calculated the formulas that prove the Earth revolves around the Sun. I assume that the work done by others is correct, and I trust in their conclusions without ever bothering to check for myself. Osborne says that my faith in man’s word is equivalent to his trust in the Bible. False! In a debate, I would never concede this point. The observations of thousands of scientists over thousands of years have been tested and retested, each time bringing us closer to certainty. My faith is not in a particular conclusion or assumption, but in a process — the scientific method. Unfortunately, if you’ve only seen science as a list of facts to memorize, Osborne’s false equivalence is more tempting. A textbook and a Bible look pretty similar.
Keeping this important disagreement in mind, let’s continue to follow the creationist argument. I at least agree that skepticism is a valuable tool for acknowledging the possibility of error. Once Osborne gets us to doubt our faith in evolution, he’s able to use his version of science to make a case for creationism. If you are well-versed in evolutionary theory, you’ll find his arguments hilarious, preposterous, and infuriating. But again, put yourself in the shoes of a more receptive audience member, someone whose knowledge of evolution maxed out at a C plus on a high school biology test. Osborne’s argument has enough truthiness to change a few minds. How, then, should we defend evolution?
We could do a better job of teaching it in the first place, but I think that’s an imperfect solution. For one, there’s no guarantee that we can find teachers able — or even willing — to do the job. Here’s a line from Osborne’s bio on the AiG website:
For 13 years he boldly and enthusiastically taught Bible history in a public school system in Tennessee
Feel free to take a second to scream into a pillow.
Better? Me neither, but understanding this creationist phenomenon is the only way to fix it. We must persevere. And lest we start thinking too highly of ourselves, let’s be honest about how well we remember the mechanisms driving evolution. If you were ambushed by a reporter, man-on-the-street style, would you be able to intelligently discuss Punnett’s square and Mendel’s peas? Around minute 49, Osborne plays a video clip designed to humiliate the evolutionists by making them explain the significance of Darwin’s finches:
Osborne uses this as evidence that evolutionists have no idea what they’re talking about, implying that they’re “brainwashed.” He sees the confused look on their faces and concludes that they’ve been successfully stumped, but we all know that he’s starting with the wrong assumption. They aren’t stumped by the question; they’re stumped by the questioner. They’re speechless because they’re all thinking, “this guy is asking me about evolution, but he doesn’t even know what a species is.”
The distinction between a species and a kind runs throughout Osborne’s presentation. Creationists concede that natural selection and adaptation lead eventually to new species, but they reject the idea of a common ancestor because different kinds of animals don’t evolve into each other. There are several species of crocodile, several species of duck, but no such thing as the crocoduck. (He actually used this picture to make his point.)
A dedicated, open-minded student will pay attention as you patiently explain the minutia necessary to understand why the crocoduck argument is ridiculous. You would need to clarify how speciation works. You could discuss findings about the common ancestor of crocodiles and ducks, but then you’d also have to explain that it looked very little like a crocodile and almost nothing like a duck. And this would only work if you were able to demonstrate that the Earth is old enough for changes of kind to take place over millions of years, a point that YEC is unwilling to concede. Basically, the evolutionist argument is very difficult to make when there’s already a strong creationist current pulling the other way. There is no scientific ground to stand on. We can and should make sure that children have a solid understanding of scientific facts from an early age, but can we do so without being susceptible to Osborne’s accusation of brainwashing?
Unfortunately, there will always be those who believe in evolution simply because their teacher told them that evolution was on the test. Later in life, some may bump into creationism and find the idea attractive enough to completely let go of evolutionary beliefs, which they never had more than a loose grip on to begin with. It’s not that they are irrational or dumb. I believe that there are deeper, more fundamental assumptions driving their reasoning and priming them for creationism. The Creation Museum made these assumptions clear in the exhibits, the presentations, and this pamphlet:
Sadly, [generations of young people] are being brainwashed into believing that the history in Genesis concerning the first Adam and the entrance of sin is not true. Logically then, they begin rejecting the truth of the last Adam, Jesus Christ.
If the history in Genesis concerning our origins is not true, and if there really is no absolute authority, then there is no ultimate purpose and meaning in life.
Why go through all the trouble of defending the idea that Earth was created in six days? Because if the creation story can be doubted, then all of the Bible can be doubted, and then we have no basis for morality. Philosophers have spent centuries poking very wide holes in this argument, but it’s difficult to convince the believers that it’s invalid. Their assumption is simple and circular: the Bible is God’s Word, and it is a sin to attack or question God’s Word. We could try to explain the categorical imperative, or we could point out that Osborne himself told us to question our assumptions, but I don’t think that arguing nuance and hypocrisy is a path worth taking. And I still don’t see irrationality. A philosopher would call this argument circular, but a creationist might describe it as self-contained: Where can we find truth? In the Bible. How do we know it’s the truth? Because the Bible says it is. Even I think there’s something beautifully clever about that.
Let’s bring the 2016 election back into this. Circular logic could be what creationists and Trump supporters have in common: Why do you support Trump? Because he’s a good businessman. How do you know he is? Because he says he is. Just like with creationists, you can spend hours with a Trump supporter, refuting every bogus claim with clear evidence and getting absolutely nowhere. It’s because the assumption at bottom is self-contained — Trump is the only one telling the truth because Trump says everybody else is lying. We are all guilty of circular reasoning from time to time. It’s whether we are able to break the cycle that matters. At a certain point, stubbornness turns into something else. Trump supporters and creationists seem to be thinking in an infinite loop of self-reinforcement. No evidence or argument can cause even the slightest questioning of Trump’s promises or the Bible’s certainty. Trying to show that the border wall is unworkable is like explaining away the crocoduck. There are too many attendant beliefs.
Another tactic is to attack the man, not the plan. We could show that Trump and AiG are scam artists, stealing money from their unsuspecting supporters. To me, this feels like what’s actually happening. Whether it’s Trump University or the outrageous ticket prices at the Creation Museum, there’s no denying that a lot of money is flowing into their pockets for very little benefit to their “customers.” Most of Trump’s campaign promises have the too-good-to-be-true feel of a late night infomercial or a male enhancement supplement. Similarly, the Creation Museum claims to defend the Bible by successfully refuting 500 years of scientific discovery. My instinct is to doubt; theirs is to trust. In politics, at least, it’s easy to dismiss these big promises as just part of the game, but some voters — both Republicans and Democrats — really do believe them. These loop-thinkers believe the plan because they already trust the man.
Trust in authority has played an interesting role in this election, but the unevenness of that trust long predates it. At some point, we all need to choose which authorities to believe and which to question. That’s why, according to Osborne, there’s still an element of faith in scientific thinking — some of us give scientists privileged authority. The loop-thinkers privilege other authorities. Religious leaders haven’t been as much a part of 2016 as in past elections, but the continued success of AiG suggests that they maintain their elevated status. Veterans have a privileged place in every election, with members of both parties outdoing each other to win them over. This year, the focus has shifted to law enforcement, thanks in large part to the activism of Black Lives Matter. Without wading too deeply, I think the controversy largely rests on whether law enforcement is a privileged authority. Loop-thinkers believe BLM is undermining the authority of police officers who deserve special respect because they perform a dangerous but vital public service. BLM is arguing that police officers are human beings just like the rest of us, flawed, mistake-prone, susceptible to bias, and not necessarily deserving of the increased weight that society gives to their word. AiG sees any attack on the Bible as undermining all of its authority; those hostile to BLM seem to have a similar all-or-nothing justification.
While loop-thinkers privilege the authority of some groups, they have almost no respect for the authority of others. Climate change deniers are really denying the authority of scientists. Journalists are really just scientists of the news, so it’s no wonder that loop-thinkers assume stories and fact checks are lies by default. Many in the Republican Party have spent the past decade or more eroding the authority of government generally and the Obama Administration in particular. Trump’s extension of these attacks to the electoral process itself should not be dismissed. All of the people who doubted the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate will also doubt the validity of the 2016 election, except that now, the campaign has made them even more zealous. Dangerously so.
My hope is that 2016 is not the year for a constitutional crisis. But that’s not to say it will never happen. How did a wealthy, slaveholding minority convince a poor, non-slaveholding majority to die defending slavery during the Civil War? I’m not sure, but I do know that we’ve never ratified a constitutional amendment to fix that underlying problem.
Visiting the Creation Museum helped me understand the problem a little better. To my friends in the liberal bubble, the enemy isn’t conservatives, Republicans, Trump, or religion. Nor is it some incorrect and indestructible belief picked up in childhood from indoctrinating parents. If it were, we’d all be doomed from birth, permanently stuck in the web of opinions that we grew up with. The problem with loop-thinkers is not a belief but a process, or more accurately, the lack thereof. Loop-thinkers never learn the language of skepticism. They have no mechanism for entertaining doubt, no means of stepping outside the loop.
Osborne’s charge that belief in science ultimately rests on faith is an accurate one. But not all faiths are equal. The scientific method is a process that is circular in a way that loop-thinking is not — it returns to its starting point to challenge, rather than reinforce, the central claim. Likewise, the Socratic method gives individuals a process for reevaluating their beliefs and checking their assumptions. More than being unafraid to ask questions, skepticism is also understanding that certainty is a rare and precious thing. Internalizing this idea does not rule out the possibility of religious belief, nor does it make someone a liberal Democrat. Individuals must still make choices about where to place their faith, which authorities to trust. We can have honest disagreements about those things because our different experiences will always affect how we see the world. The trick is to see our disagreements not as debates to be won, but as dialogues that continue perpetually. But without skepticism, loop-thinkers are unable to question authorities that have already been deemed trustworthy. For them, contrary evidence is seen as an attack, which reinforces the trust and tightens the loop.
Like any language, skepticism can be learned to different degrees of fluency. All humans utilize the basic grammar and vocabulary: why? how? for what purpose? But true fluency requires repetition and immersion. In high school, I learned four-years-worth of Spanish vocabulary, but I was always translating in my head, never able to think in Spanish. Likewise, deconstructing a poem or debating an article’s biases were important steps toward my fluency in skepticism, but it took my college immersion in philosophy to make skeptical thinking routine. With practice, I was able to see truth in terms of probability instead of certainty. I still occasionally rely on circular logic, but I’m aware that each loop is just a guess. I seek out opportunities to challenge my beliefs because even being wrong means learning something new.
I worry that the language of skepticism becomes more difficult to learn as we grow older. I lament that it took me until age 18 to learn about Descartes and the Evil Deceiver. Humans are creatures of habit in both our actions and our thought processes. Tangential exposure to skepticism is not enough. Making it a habit requires active incorporation of the skeptical process. Without it, loop-thinking becomes entrenched. Having never developed the tools to question and break the circle, creationists and Trump supporters appear impervious to facts and, at least in the short term, irredeemable. When did they pass the point of no return? I think that if you enter adulthood without consciously developing the skeptical language, it’s unlikely that you ever will. Once education stops, the flow of new ideas slows to a trickle, never enough to break the habit loops that guide thought and action. Perhaps only through a massive crisis of faith, upending an entire worldview, can a loop-thinker get a second chance at skepticism.
So we have to start teaching skepticism at a young age. American education already does, to an extent, but it’s often a secondary lesson disguised behind something else. Analyzing Shakespeare strengthens the skeptical process because it lets us practice asking questions; understanding wordplay, character motivation, and theme requires that we stop assuming that the literal meaning of words is the only meaning. But to a high schooler, Shakespeare is just a dead guy with no practical contribution to success in modern life. We need to make learning skepticism more conspicuous. If students see skepticism as a weapon against Internet scams, bad mortgages, and miracle diet pills, they may be more willing to develop their critical thinking skills. Why not have students deconstruct television commercials before moving on to political speeches? If there’s one thing that everyone agrees on this election, it’s that there are bad people out there who manipulate and exaggerate, swindle and steal, lie without any hesitation. Skeptical thinking assumes that bias could be everywhere; loop-thinking gives certain groups privileged authority, essentially exempting them from bias.
Breaking the infinite loop may save you money or protect your family, but on a larger scale, it’s necessary for the preservation of our democracy. Blind trust in a candidate or a party is loop-thinking at its worst. If you agree with everything your candidate says, you are in a cult. Voting should be an internal Socratic dialogue, where we weigh each candidate’s opinions, policies, experiences, and promises and take an educated guess as to who is most likely to make our lives better. Be wary of feelings of certainty.
This is not to imply that all Trump supporters have a fanatical, unwavering devotion to their candidate. Right now, many Republican leaders are struggling with whether to endorse their party’s nominee. I feel for them. Of course, self-interested political calculation is part of it, but rejecting the will of the voters in a democracy is not something to be taken lightly.
I think it’s clear by now that I support Hillary Clinton for president. I do so fully aware of her flaws and her mistakes, and disappointed by some of her policy choices (debt-free college especially). But in one area in particular, Clinton has a definitive advantage over Trump — she knows that compromising to govern is not compromising your ideals. Loop-thinking promotes the opposite, and Trump encourages it, whether or not he truly believes it himself. Principles are important, but loop-thinking leaves no room for alternatives. The unbreakable circle of reasoning rejects all evidence and tolerates no dissent. Trump’s insistence that he has all the answers, that he is the only one who can fix America’s problems, goes against everything that has made our country prosper. We succeed because we value free expression and diversity of thought. Our government was designed to be slow — discuss, deliberate, decide. Our Constitution itself was a compromise. Its mistakes get fixed because some person at some point says, “I have a different opinion.” And if a majority can’t agree on policy, we should at least agree on process. Skepticism protects against tyranny because it refuses to operate on the plane of certainty.
With less than a month before Election Day, I encourage my fellow skeptics, liberal or otherwise, to come out in full force. Find the loop-thinkers in your life and engage them in a Socratic dialogue. Don’t attack; ask. Don’t insult; inquire. You may discover that they have real reasons for their choices, not in a loop at all. You may find that the source of disagreement is a faulty assumption, easily correctable with the right evidence. But if they are stuck in a loop, hopefully your questions will allow them to discover the error for themselves. Calling people irrational makes them defensive and only tightens the loop.
At the same time, you must also be open to the possibility that you are wrong. What better way to find out than by engaging in a discussion with someone you disagree with? If you discover a belief built on shaky ground, it only means that you have more work to do. And it’s important work. Our democracy depends on an informed and open-minded public that takes its responsibility seriously. The worst thing you can do — especially in this election — is opt out. Loop-thinking may have the upper hand this cycle, but we could vote for policies that reverse the trend. With patient effort, we can build a skeptical society that isn’t afraid to deliberate before war, compromise during disagreement, and improve after error.
We have to start by voting against a man whose brand is certainty. Donald Trump is the embodiment of loop-thinking — he’s right because he’s right. There are skeptical Republicans. They tried desperately to stop Trump’s nomination. Having failed in the primaries, how effective will they be at restraining him once he officially holds the reigns of power? How effective will any of us be? I left the Creation Museum demoralized by the surprising power of a fringe idea. If we make the right choice, we can leave this election feeling the same way about Trump. But then we have to start a dialogue to break the loop that currently plagues American politics — that pandering to these voters is a harmless campaign strategy. By not speaking the language of skepticism, our leaders allow it to die. Those of us who are able must constantly engage in the skeptical process, immersing our families, our friends, our countrymen, and ourselves in a dialogue about our assumptions. The debate will be long. Consider this my opening statement.