Feeling for Their Tails

Posted on September 20, 2005 in Evolution & Creation

The span of Humankind is less than the universe and longer than the Book of Genesis. Yet there are those who want to force both between black leatherette covers. I think that the origin of the belief that the Bible was the absolute Word of God came when Depression-era salesmen went from door to door proclaiming “In this book you’ll find all the answers. This book holds nothing but the Truth.” And ever since that time, biblidolatry has crushed the American imagination as well as its Reason.

My experience with creationists and intelligent design theorists is that they will go to any lengths to insist that they have the right theory without proving anything at all. They pull out the book and say “That’s the answer” even when the phrase is pulled out of context and says nothing at all about the matter at hand. They continually attack evolution by misrepresenting it. When asked by creationists why I don’t subscribe to their theory, I simply say “I have a thing against lying.” Science is about finding the truth by testing it. The biblical account just doesn’t stand up to its scrutiny. So biblidolators just say “it ain’t so”.

The latest is that they’ve taken to invading science museums with paid tours and their own explanations of what the exhibits mean. Now they put dinosaurs on the ark or back in the flood zone so that their children can continue to play with Barney and plastic toys from the Discovery Channel stores. They’re feeling bold now that 54 per cent of Americans evince that humans did not descend from earlier species. And now, the administrators of science museums are facing them dead on by confronting them with the facts. Dr. Warren D. Allmon is one of those speaking the still small voice of Reason against the screaming voices of those seduced into Creationist mendacity:

“Just telling them they are wrong is not going to be effective,” he said.

Instead, he told the volunteers that when they encounter religious fundamentalists they should emphasize that science museums live by the rules of science. They seek answers in nature to questions about nature, they look for explanations that can be tested by experiment and observation in the material world, and they understand that all scientific knowledge is provisional – capable of being overturned when better answers are discovered.

“Is it against all religion?” he asked. “No. But it is against some religions.”

There is more than one type of creationist, he said: “thinking creationists who want to know answers, and they are willing to listen, even if they go away unconvinced” and “people who for whatever reason are here to bother you, to trap you, to bludgeon you.”

Science museum directors now distribute a pamphlet that describes how to deal with creationists and IDers come to munch on the entrails of docents.

“There is an art, a script that is very, very helpful,” he said.

A pamphlet handed out at the training session provides information on the scientific method, the theory of evolution and other basic information. It offers suggestions on replying to frequently raised challenges like “Is there lots of evidence against evolution?” (The answer begins, simply, “No.”)

When talking to visitors about evolution, the pamphlet advises, “don’t avoid using the word.” Rehearse answers to frequently asked questions, because “you’ll be more comfortable when you sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

Dr. Allmon told his audience to “be firm and clear, not defensive.” The pamphlet says that if all else fails, and docents find themselves in an unpleasant confrontation, they excuse themselves by saying, “I have to go to the restroom.”

(Creationists who think they’ve scored a victory when a docent resorts to the last strategem should take note: what has been proven is that they are jerks.)

That five years into the twenty first century a sizeable portion of the American population refuses to believe that the most comprehensive and accurate theory explaining the history of life on earth shows that something went wrong, very wrong, in the late twentieth century. That they continue to show up at medical clinics whose methods and knowledge are based, not on creationism, but on the work of Darwin, Mendel, Crick,and Watson strikes me as not unlike the mentality which excoriates the government for taxes and then uses government service after government service in their daily life without a second thought.

What attracts them to their heresy against Nature, I think, are two things: The first is fear and disgust. They’ve gone to zoos. They’ve seen the filthy little monkies that organ grinders send chasing after pennies. And they don’t like thinking that in those capuchin eyes and limbs lurks a creature like them, made in their image. The second is a love of the story of the Bible, all its fantastic generations and its miracles. If God did not make the world in seven days, what of Moses parting the Red Sea? What of Jesus? Despite my belief in evolution, I hold on to the philosophy of Jesus. The details of the story do not matter as much — and never have mattered as much — as the gospel of compassion that Jesus preaches. That is the greatest wonder the Bible contains and yet these creationists are often the first to try to wiggle their way around them. Creationism is just a way for them to avoid being Christians.

We are nothing in the greater scheme of the Universe (cf. the Book of Job) and yet to each of us, we are substantial. I have lived my forty seven years on this earth reveling in the experience of the natural world. The details are astounding — the way a spider builds her web, how wind and moisture combine to form clouds, how the sunlight traveling from eight and a half light minutes away warms the grass. The Bible salesmen who trampled that grass had no clue just how wonderful that was, how vast the space that our tiny planet resides in. They preferred to take all that they could not touch and try to say that it was entirely confined in a few thousand thin pages and black leather. That I feel is blasphemous and ultimately demeaning of the grandeur of the Universe.

Read the New York Times article here