A new museum devoted to the promotion of creationism is opening soon in Petersburg, Kentucky (near Cincinnati). It features a number of exhibits and demonstrations meant to show that literal interpretations of the Bible are plausible.

What is most interesting about this to me is the fact that this is some sort of odd hybrid of religion and science. Museums, products of the Enlightenment and the 19th century bourgeoisie, were meant to promote knowledge and in some cases became secular substitutes for religious institutions. It seems like this sort of museum would satisfy neither creationists nor evolutionists.

The Creation Museum actually stands the natural history museum on its head. Natural history museums developed out of the Enlightenment: encyclopedic collections of natural objects were made subject to ever more searching forms of inquiry and organization. The natural history museum gave order to the natural world, taming its seeming chaos with the principles of human reason. And Darwin’s theory — which gave life a compelling order in time as well as space — became central to its purpose. Put on display was the prehistory of civilization, seeming to allude not just to the evolution of species but also cultures (which is why “primitive” cultures were long part of its domain). The natural history museum is a hall of human origins.

The complete article in the New York Times: “Adam and Eve in the Land of the Dinosaurs”