ARTICLES

Two Creation Museums

Balboa Park v. Lakeside

By Robert Kumpel

In February of 2002, the Museum of Man in Balboa Park will open "Footsteps Through Time: Four Million Years of Human Evolution," a new, interactive exhibit on evolution. Evolution exhibits are not new to the museum -- since opening in 1915, the museum has been one of the earliest to offer such displays -- but questions about the theory of evolution will not go away.

San Diego has a lesser-known museum that offers an alternative to the Museum of Man -- the Museum of Creation. Located in an industrial park between Santee and Lakeside, the museum is a free public exhibit offered by the Institute for Creation Research, a graduate school.

The museum is series of rooms contrasting Biblical information with science and scientific theory. It begins with walls labeled: "Day One", "Day Two" etc. offering what the Book of Genesis says about each day of creation. There are photos of planets with explanations of religions and their beliefs about the universe, and scientific explanations that seem to refute evolution and support creation. One example is a display on the Big Bang Theory. After explaining the theory, it offers several rebuttals, including: "Contradicts conservation of energy law: No source of vast energy for the primeval explosion. Contradicts law of increasing entropy: No source of vast order in the universe: Explosions produce disorder. Contradicts law of angular momentum conservation: Radial scattering from center could not generate circular motions. Homogenous origin is evidenced by background of radiation: Could not produce clustering of galaxies or the vast voids that occur in space." and more.

The exhibit goes on through several rooms explaining dinosaur fossils, geological changes, the ice age, Noah's Ark and the Great Flood, natural catastrophes, various civilizations and, finally, the state of modern man and his beliefs. This exhibit focuses on the theorists and leaders who have influenced science and current popular belief, including Darwin, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Marx, and Nietzche. Meanwhile, the Museum of Man is preparing for its new exhibit.

No one seems to know more about the new exhibit than Melinda Newsome. As director of development for the Museum of Man, she wrote the National Science Foundation grant that brought about the new exhibit. "I coordinate with all the different departments in order to write a grant application. To do a grant, I oversee it the way perhaps a project manager would. When I do something of this magnitude, I have to be sure that we do everything we said we would do in the grant. It's a massive project."

Newsome describes the exhibit as a hands-on experience. "It's very tactile. There's very little label-reading, which is kind of unusual for something with this depth of science. It will occupy five galleries of the museum. It will take people on a journey through time. We're not saying how people evolved, because we really don't know. You'll see somethings in the context that the original scientists would have seen them, so you draw your own conclusions."

Newsome says that the museum has considered differing religious viewpoints in planning the exhibit -- including that of the Creation Museum. "I don't want to say that the religious community drove it, but we have a strong community advisory committee with people from the religious community on it. We're trying to listen to what they're saying. One of our advisors from UCSD has a master's student who has done a lot of research on the Institute of Creation Research's questions and concerns. We've even deliberately addressed that information. None of the usual responses, questions or concerns about evolution are visible. Some of the things are totally outrageous, so we don't address them. Some of their more outrageous claims have more to do with astronomy than evolution. For instance, they say that all the stars were created on the same day and that there's no way that certain things can be dated. There's a lot in their exhibit about astronomy that astronomers would have more trouble with.

"Evolution and religion co-exist in almost every country but our own. It has a lot to do with a certain group of fundamentalists and I'm not saying they're right or wrong. There happens to be a really big pocket in Lakeside (referring to the Institute for Creation Research). This exhibit has drawn the support of the National Science Foundation and they're not going to take on something totally controversial at this time, when their funding is being questioned. One of the questions and concerns that we have had from the teachers who come through the museum, is they want to know how to teach pure scientific information on how to teach human evolution because they're required to teach it in sixth and seventh grade. They're apprehensive, because it's chock full of controversy. So one of the big parts of this exhibit is an education program, not only for the county of San Diego, but statewide with curriculum developed by the museum, teacher training and outreach to the kids with no charge to the school. It will also be available nationally through the internet.

"The goal of this exhibit is not to say that man came from monkeys. In fact, it's very different than that. This exhibit is very experiential and very tactile. We're not saying that we're descended from Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis -- a hominid species based on fossils). You can see Neanderthal burial and decide whether that means they had some kind of proto-religion or not. This exhibit isn't designed to answer all your questions. It's designed to provoke a lot of thought. We incorporated people from all walks of life, including the religious community. We are very comfortable with the presentation. If anyone from even a fundamentalist viewpoint would come through, I think they would be hard pressed to come up with the same types of arguments because they won't be valid with this exhibition."

"The funny thing is, we already have had public rebuttal. There was a letter to the editor on May 10th in the San Diego Union Tribune from someone named Patrick McCue in Lakeside. It's funny, because we've had a human evolution exhibit in some way shape or form since 1915. The founding exhibit of the museum was on evolution. The Smithsonian sent scientists around the world to collect information about human origins and at the end, that collection became the origin of what we now call the Museum of Man, and that's still a big part of our collection. It's not like this is a huge departure. We have a human evolution exhibit in one hall that was installed in the late 70s or early 80s that over two million students have seen."

Although Patrick McCue lives in Lakeside, he is a Catholic and hardly fits the fundamentalist profile Newsome describes. McCue is an elementary school teacher, artist, husband, and father. "My understanding from the Union-Tribune article -- the way it was written -- is that it will show humans evolving from apes as scientific fact, and I have yet to find any scientific fact that supports that. My problem was them trying to pass something off on us, like we're related to the apes, when, in reality, there's no proof of that at all. There's was one part where they described a path of footprints on the ground, where the footprints start as apes and end as humans. That in itself is pretty explicit. I didn't put this in my letter, but I also have problems with a description of the exhibit looking to the future of evolution, including embryo research, invitro fertilization, cloning, and all the controversial stuff we're dealing with now. So they want to imply that's where we're headed and what we're evolving to. That's disturbing to me."

McCue is not entirely closed to the idea of evolution. "It's my understanding that God could have worked in various ways of getting to the point where humans are today, but there's definitely a difference between humans and animals. Humans have an eternal soul, and animals don't. Even if evolving from apes were true, that could still be consistent -- in my understanding of Catholic theology -- if the soul were given to the first human body. Personally, I don't believe that, but it doesn't have to rule out evolution. But there is no proof for it. Species have evolved within themselves, but I know of no evidence that one has changed into another. Even if God did work it that way, there's an infinite difference between humans and animals."

McCue seems to be in good company. In Did Darwin Get It Right? Catholics and the Theory of Evolution, (Our Sunday Visitor, 1998) author George Sim Johnson quotes John Paul II speaking to a general audience in 1986 about the first chapter of Genesis: "There are not to be sought in it significant elements from the point of view of the natural sciences. Research on the origin and development of individual species in nature does not find in this description any definitive norm.... Indeed, the theory of natural evolution, understood in a sense that does not exclude divine causality, is not in principle opposed to the truth about the creation of the invisible world, as presented by the Book of Genesis.... It must, however, be added that this hypothesis proposes only a probability, not a scientific certainty. The doctrine of faith, however invariably affirms that man's spiritual soul is created directly by God. According to the hypothesis mentioned, it is possible that the human body, following the order impressed by the Creator on the energies of life, could have been gradually prepared in the forms of antecedent living beings."

Johnson goes on to quote a 1996 letter of the pope's to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: "The theory cannot be adopted as though it were a 'certain proven doctrine, and as though one could prescind from revelation with regard to the questions it raises"; and, "theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider spirit as emerging from forces of living matter or as mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the human person."

Johnson explains, "The pope's letter recognized the controversy among evolutionists, stating that 'rather than speaking about the theory of evolution, it is more accurate to speak of theories of evolution. The use of the plural is required here ... because of the diversity of explanations regarding the theories of evolution.' The pope's most controversial (and mistranslated) statement was his calling evolution 'more than a hypothesis' (plus q'une hypothese in the original French text). The pope was thereby not saying that evolution is a proven fact. Rather, in accord with scientific terminology, he was saying that we may regard evolution as a theory -- a model of explanatory value. The pope actually exercised restraint in refraining from commenting on the paucity of scientific evidence for any macroevolutionary mechanism."

John Rajca is the curator and director of the Museum of Creation. "We started as a research arm of Christian Heritage College. The institute and the college started about the same time back in 1970. The museum, in various forms, has been open since the late 70s and the present museum opened in 1992. The main purpose of our exhibit is to expound the Biblical world view and the scientific information that we think supports it."

Rajca hasn't seen much about the upcoming Museum of Man exhibit, but remains skeptical nonetheless. "They have a fairly extensive 'man' collection now. They outline the conventional evolutionary viewpoint. Of course, I disagree with it, but I think even the one they have now is probably the best illustration that's around -- at least from what I've seen in San Diego County.

"In conventional evolutionary theory, Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal and the like are considered transitional forms. We take issue with that on biblical and scientific grounds."

Rajca finds it hard to believe that an exhibit on evolution could be so benign as to allow its viewers to draw their own conclusions. He dislikes the idea that one can believe in traditional Christianity and still be open to evolution. "That's party-line in a lot of places. The idea here is that religion and science can get along because they cover different spheres of influence. The problem with that is science keeps talking about where we came from, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that Genesis does the same thing. So when they say, 'Science talks about things that we can know and religion talks about faith,' essentially, what they have said is that scientists can have knowledge and religious people just have feelings.

"There are a lot of Christians who agree with that viewpoint -- Protestants, Catholics, the whole nine yards. Most of the big schools in fact teach the standards of evolution. But what we think, though, is that science is questionable. Take a closer look at scripture, if it's really God's word -- that's just not what it says."

Particularly interesting to Rajca is the idea of a tactile, non-labeled exhibit. "I'm kind of surprised that they don't have a bunch of labels in ... this subject of anthropology, and I think that's what they're limiting it to. It does take some explanation. You need to learn some information. If that's not there, I think it will be less than what they had, which was a fairly decent presentation of the evolutionary viewpoint. Again, while I disagree, it's probably the best exhibit around for giving the overall view of what scientists in that community think.

"The other thing that kind of amazed me is that they're going to have a curriculum out to the community, so to speak, to teach teachers how to teach evolution. Instead of just saying, 'We're going to show all the evidence and let people really make up their mind--even the evidence from what these crazy creationists are saying in Lakeside! That's not they're saying. They're going to teach people how to talk to them. In the past, organizations like the National Science Foundation and others have said, 'Yes, we agree you can have your religious views, and we're not questioning that. We're just telling you what science says. That's the same condescending thing I mentioned before: 'Science talks about ideas and truth whereas religion talks about opinions and faith.' It already puts us at a lower rung on the ladder. You can believe whatever you want about religion, kind of like picking flavors for ice cream. I know she's (Newsome) soft-pedaling it, but I would wager that the museum exhibit does say that the best evidence supports that people came from apes. 'Yeah, we're not telling anybody what to think, but here's what the truth is.' I would really like to see this exhibit."

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