This article by Catherine Tsai on ghastly creationist museum tours is getting syndicated all over the place, so I’m getting lots of mail from people complaining about this dreck appearing in the local paper. Basically, there is a group, Biblically Correct Tours, that is parasitizing museums, leeching money off people and leading them on tours through the museums while coughing up idiotic religious interpretations of their contents. It’s not just lying about the age of the earth, either; it’s accusing scientists of deep evil.
The tours are not all fun and games, with the guides claiming that evolutionist thinking supports racism and abortion. This happened on a recent NCAR tour, when Carter told a dozen children and their parents abortion was an act of natural selection carried out by humans.
Other tours suggest Hitler was playing his version of survival of the fittest by favoring whites, and note that museum dioramas of early humans have black “subhumans.”
“My contention is evolution kills people,” Jack said in an interview. “It’s not that evolutionists don’t have morality, it’s that evolution can offer no morality. Ideas have consequences. If you believe you came from slime there is no reason not to, if you can, get away with anything.”
One interesting comment is from one of the tour guides who is spewing this nonsense.
Carter, who has a degree in biblical studies, admits feeling somewhat intimidated when he first gave tours, knowing scientists were listening. “I used to think, ‘What are they thinking? Are they going to come out and correct me?'” he says.
I don’t think he needs to worry. Most people will simply ignore other people saying stupid things—why, it would be rude to correct misinformation—and even the people behind these museums make excuses for them.
Teri Eastburn, an educational designer at NCAR, said she would never engage in such discussions during a tour. She said the complex welcomes anyone, but notes in-house tours only espouse scientific views of the world.
“We try to explain it using evidence that we find in the natural world, whereas religion is dealing more with spirituality, ethics and morality, which science does not deal with at all,” she said. “It’s different ways of knowing. How people reconcile the ways of knowing is an individual choice.”
I would direct your attention to the quote a couple of paragraphs above, where the clueless twit from Biblically Correct Tours is telling people that the science of evolution is tied to abortion and Hitler and killing people. If religion is involved with “spirituality, ethics and morality”, this is a clearly a case where its influence is pernicious and vile. A museum is a place that is supposed to be dedicated to informing and educating the public (yeah, and making money…), and this is a case where a contemptible group is perverting its purpose to misinform and miseducate (and make money for itself.) I would consider it an obligation of the staff to speak out against it, not to make excuses.
That nice article by Matthew Nisbet I cited earlier has a fourth point: GOING ON THE OFFENSIVE IS GOOD. This is an excellent example of a place where the public and scientists and our institutions ought to be going on the offensive: when one of these tour groups goes through, and some biblical studies major babbles stupidly and misstates a scientific fact, everyone around him should turn around and shout, for the benefit of the group, “THAT’S NOT TRUE!” Make ’em sweat. Make the tour groups realize that all these smart people visiting the museum are looking at them like they’re a mob of dumb hicks and gomers, if they aren’t willing to listen to legitimate scientific explanations. And take the time to tell them what those scientific explanations are—they’re far more interesting and satisfying than the Biblically Correct Nonsense the guide is giving them.
I wonder if, while perusing the arthropod exhibits, they point out that true Biblical insects should have had four legs.
You can get to the one on the Washington Post without being a subscriber:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021700397.html
I wrote a few words about this article last night.
http://shrimpandgrits.rickandpatty.com/2006/02/19/biblically-correct-tours/
Whatever you think of the article, you should really take a look at the Biblically Correct Tours website. And beware the evil Dr. Secular!
http://www.creationtours.com/
It’s been noted before but these kinds of people are scary. They’re basically saying that their morality is based on the fear of punishment. I don’t want to be anywhere near him if he ever lose’s his faith.
Although he is right that ideas do have consequences. How much blood have people who think that their faith is the one true faith shed? How much harm can a person do if they think that they’re going to be rewarded in some imaginary afterlife?
Surely museums would be within their rights to stop this? If I were to set myself up as a tour guide and take money from a museum’s customers, they could – and probably would – quite sensibly object to my was making money out of their exhibits, and chuck me out.
But being ejected by a burly security guard would be good publicity for the nutters, so it would probably be better to follow them around the museum dressed as spaghetti monsters.
Oh, my dear Ed! Mathematics can’t offer any morality! Let’s torch all the math books!
I’ll let Nomad answer that, quotation marks added:
Of course, Darkling covered the angle he was hinting at.
With each passing day I cannot believe I’m reading about rampant stupidity. But there it is: every day.
Again, these groups THRIVE on fear. It is the only force that drives them. How else can one explain a social movement to go to public places, once of good repute, and judge them unworthy? Their god is their own arrogance., and arrogance is a false god. They should all be in church flagellating.
And another thing they kindly skirt around: Hitler killed Jews based on a false religious premise. Hitler wanted to institute his own religion, with him as the central figure. Evolution did not introduce social darwinism in the slightest. Persecution, especially that based on race or creed, has been around since “biblical times”. I cannot believe these church groups don’t even read the book they claim as fact.
This is a very serious social problem, when masses of people can be convinced using rehearsed verses from a book they’ve never actually read. That a kind of scary you can’t make up.
Apparently the promise of 70+ virgins seems to be a pretty good motivator. Between them and the tour group, though, the devoutly religious are not doing themselves any favors if they want me and other non-religious folks to come back to church (or temple or mosque or whatever). Radicalists like this tour group only alienate more people who might otherwise want to worship with them. Having seen this in my own family (both immediate and extended, as well as in my in-laws), I’ve developed a gut aversion to that way of thinking. I cringed when my grandmother-in-law wrote “Remember Jesus this holiday” in her Christmas card. And I didn’t like myself for it because she’s a wonderful woman, and I certainly don’t hold her strong faith against her. I blame it on the fundamentalists who can’t leave the rest of us alone.
1. Some people – the ones paying attention – have noted that humans are not slime and haven’t been for millions of years.
2. Certainly if you want to live completely alone and you have a very strong pain threshold you can almost “get away with anything.” However, living in social groups and having biochemical bodies means there are some very obvious limits to what you can “get away with”.
3. Duh.
4. It seems like you’re not one of the ones who’s been paying attention, so just in case: duh.
I would be the one yelling That’s Not True! My wife would slap me, and the kids would slink away because I would be embarrising them. I would call them an ignorant slut, but I just got in trouble for that with a poster on PT! (Someone that didn’t watch the OLD Saturday Night Live).
My other thought on the matter is that I would probably be the one that gets censured in the museum too. Oh well, no one said fighting for science would be easy.
The part claiming that evolutionist thinking supports abortion would seem to be, largely, correct.
Museums are strange places. In the late 1970s, I took my kids to the Field Museum and was appalled to see a Pyramid Power kit in the museum shop.
One of those kids grew up to be a museum curator, and she could tell you stories.
Is there anyone offering scientifically correct tours of churches, cathedrals, and other holy places?
I think perhaps merely pointing and laughing one’s ass off at them while talking loudly to your friends about how stupid they are is probably more effective than confronting them directly.
J-Dog is right.
If we don’t get museum managements on board, the correctors of the TheoCons will be the ones thrown out of the museum, particularly if the tour party is a large group of paying customers.
Museums are managed by people who like the money the customers bring in, and tours bring in money even if they aren’t scientifically sanctioned tours.
Oh, my dear Ed! Mathematics can’t offer any morality! Let’s torch all the math books!
Be careful – a lot of fundies do just that. Mathematics can’t be coopted for religious or nationalist goals, so religious fanatics and fascists tend to hate it. In Nazi Germany, the school system was all geared toward Nazi ideology: biology classes taught Nazi racial theories, history classes glorified Germany, English classes were supposed to instill a feeling of solidarity with fellow Aryans, physical education classes prepared kids for military service, and so on. Mathematics, physics, and chemistry, which could not be Nazified, were deemphasized, even though they could be useful in wartime.
“It’s not that evolutionists don’t have morality, it’s that evolution can offer no morality. Ideas have consequences. If you believe you came from slime there is no reason not to, if you can, get away with anything.”
Well, ideas do have consequences. It’s just that as it happens, true ideas always have good consequences, and false ones always have bad consequences. For example, the idea that ideas should be judged based on superficial consequences rather than veracity causes people to ignore reality around them and engage in feel-good activity that they’d easily see hurts them if they paid attention to the facts.
Effective at embarrassing them, but we also have to educate.
We have reached the bottom line. As far as I understand it, these tours are not challenging the fact of evolution, they are saying that it is evil. They have learned that they Creationism and other pseudo-scientific concoctions are unable to stand up to evolution. So they are back to the Wedge Project basic idea, that evolution – which “may be” ocurring in nature – is no good, it is evil, it is immoral, it harms humanity.
It is true that some evil social movements (like early dog-eat-dog capitalism and racism) enthusiastically adopted their own false interpretation of Darwin’s ideas. Of course Nature is morally indifferent, and I would even accept that if suffering is evil, then Nature has its evil aspects. So it may be understandable that these people finds better to derive their morality from an ancient text and not from natural reality. I could even imagine that squid sex is repugnant to them (since they may be imagining themselves doing similar things). To the point they are accepting science and not teaching things like Earth was created about a 6000 years ago, they dont really bother me. If I was shipwrecked in a lonely island, I would choose to be with a Christian missionary who believes in sacrifying himself for a fellow human being, than with an atheist believing in natural morality who would appraise me as a potential source of proteins and lipids. Of course, my first choice is Jennifer Lopez, not the holy man.
We have reached the bottom line. As far as I understand it, these tours are not challenging the fact of evolution, they are saying that it is evil. They have learned that they Creationism and other pseudo-scientific concoctions are unable to stand up to evolution. So they are back to the Wedge Project basic idea, that evolution – which “may be” ocurring in nature – is no good, it is evil, it is immoral, it harms humanity.
It is true that some evil social movements (like early dog-eat-dog capitalism and racism) enthusiastically adopted their own false interpretation of Darwin’s ideas. Of course Nature is morally indifferent, and I would even accept that if suffering is evil, then Nature has its evil aspects. So it may be understandable that these people finds better to derive their morality from an ancient text and not from natural reality. I could even imagine that squid sex is repugnant to them (since they may be imagining themselves doing similar things). To the point they are accepting science and not teaching things like Earth was created about a 6000 years ago, they dont really bother me. If I was shipwrecked in a lonely island, I would choose to be with a Christian missionary who believes in sacrifying himself for a fellow human being, than with an atheist believing in natural morality who would appraise me as a potential source of proteins and lipids. Of course, my first choice is Jennifer Lopez, not the holy man.
We have reached the bottom line. As far as I understand it, these tours are not challenging the fact of evolution, they are saying that it is evil. They have learned that Creationism and other pseudo-scientific concoctions are unable to stand up to evolution. So they are back to the Wedge Project’s basic idea, that evolution – which “may be” ocurring in nature – is no good, it is evil, it is immoral, it harms humanity.
It is true that some evil social movements (like early dog-eat-dog capitalism and racism) enthusiastically adopted their own false interpretation of Darwin’s ideas. Of course Nature is morally indifferent, and I would even accept that if suffering is evil, then Nature has its evil aspects. So it may be understandable that these people finds better to derive their morality from an ancient text and not from natural reality. I could even imagine that squid sex is repugnant to them (since they may be imagining themselves doing similar things). To the point they are accepting science and not teaching things like Earth was created about a 6000 years ago, they dont really bother me. If I was shipwrecked in a lonely island, I would choose to be with a Christian missionary who believes in sacrifying himself for a fellow human being, than with an atheist believing in natural morality who would appraise me as a potential source of proteins and lipids. Of course, my first choice is Jennifer Lopez, not the holy man.
We have reached the bottom line. As far as I understand it, these tours are not challenging the fact of evolution, they are saying that it is evil. They have learned that Creationism and other pseudo-scientific concoctions are unable to stand up to evolution. So they are back to the Wedge Project’s basic idea, that evolution – which “may be” ocurring in nature – is no good, it is evil, it is immoral, it harms humanity.
It is true that some evil social movements (like early dog-eat-dog capitalism and racism) enthusiastically adopted their own false interpretation of Darwin’s ideas. Of course Nature is morally indifferent, and I would even accept that if suffering is evil, then Nature has its evil aspects. So it may be understandable that these people finds better to derive their morality from an ancient text and not from natural reality. I could even imagine that squid sex is repugnant to them (since they may be imagining themselves doing similar things). To the point they are accepting science and not teaching things like Earth was created about a 6000 years ago, they dont really bother me. If I was shipwrecked in a lonely island, I would choose to be with a Christian missionary who believes in sacrifying himself for a fellow human being, than with an atheist believing in natural morality who would appraise me as a potential source of proteins and lipids. Of course, my first choice is Jennifer Lopez, not the holy man.
Surely museums would be within their rights to stop this?
No, they wouldn’t. As an institution created to serve “the public,” a museum cannot legitimately deny access to a group whose beliefs are objectionable to its employees or management. As to your argument about outside groups making money off of the museum’s resources, a ban on groups like Biblically Correct Tours would also have to extend to things like school groups or programs like Citypass that sell discounted package tickets to museums and other attractions in a particular city.
In terms of how museums can best cope with things like this, it’s an exceptionally thorny issue. Obviously, creationist groups can’t be barred wholesale from visiting museums or making use of their exhibitionary materials, just as they can’t be barred from quote mining or misinterpreting papers published in the scientific literature. Equally obviously, museums, just like publishing scientists, don’t want to be party to the misappropriation or abuse of their work. PZ’s fantasy about correcting creationist tour groups sounds nice in the abstract, but has the potential for serious negative consequences: no one wants to come to a museum and be hectored. I can easily imagine non-tour group visitors seeing this behavior directed at creationists and interpreting it as undue beligerence directed at some perfectly nice people who just wanted to spend the afternoon at a museum.
I would like to see musuems being more “aggressive” in their presentation of evolution, however. At the Museum of Texas Tech, there was a fight over the dinosaur hall in which the administration wanted to exclude any mention of evolution in the new dinosaur hall. The paleontology department didn’t think this was a particularly good idea, but the administration’s argument was that discussing the subject would drive visitors away (admission to MoTTU is free, so gate receipts weren’t an issue I feel compelled to note). The administration won.
I do think that there are positive signs that this attitude is on the way out. A New York Times article a while back quoted a curator at the Sam Noble Musuem in Oklahoma to the effect that this approach isn’t working, and the SNM is one of the institutions affiliated with the Explore Evolution exhibtion. The Field Museum is in the process of renovating their paleontology halls and changed the name of the exhibition from Life Over Time to Evolving Planet, though the old hall certainly didn’t shy away from discussing evolution. Another New York Times article cited the growing trend of training docents to handle more accusatory creationist visitors, which I think is one of the better solutions to the problem.
Other museums, like the McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, incorporate materials into their exhibitions that explicitly address creationist worries about evolution. There’s a discussion to be had here about whether or not this kind of material gives unwarranted legitimacy to creationism, but in certain parts of the country, I think it’s a good idea.
I think PZ may be giving short shrift to those of us in the museum world: we do recognize the problem and are stepping up to the plate.
Surely museums would be within their rights to stop this?
No, they wouldn’t. As an institution created to serve “the public,” a museum cannot legitimately deny access to a group whose beliefs are objectionable to its employees or management. As to your argument about outside groups making money off of the museum’s resources, a ban on groups like Biblically Correct Tours would also have to extend to things like school groups or programs like Citypass that sell discounted package tickets to museums and other attractions in a particular city.
In terms of how museums can best cope with things like this, it’s an exceptionally thorny issue. Obviously, creationist groups can’t be barred wholesale from visiting museums or making use of their exhibitionary materials, just as they can’t be barred from quote mining or misinterpreting papers published in the scientific literature. Equally obviously, museums, just like publishing scientists, don’t want to be party to the misappropriation or abuse of their work. PZ’s fantasy about correcting creationist tour groups sounds nice in the abstract, but has the potential for serious negative consequences: no one wants to come to a museum and be hectored. I can easily imagine non-tour group visitors seeing this behavior directed at creationists and interpreting it as undue beligerence directed at some perfectly nice people who just wanted to spend the afternoon at a museum.
I would like to see musuems being more “aggressive” in their presentation of evolution, however. At the Museum of Texas Tech, there was a fight over the dinosaur hall in which the administration wanted to exclude any mention of evolution in the new dinosaur hall. The paleontology department didn’t think this was a particularly good idea, but the administration’s argument was that discussing the subject would drive visitors away (admission to MoTTU is free, so gate receipts weren’t an issue I feel compelled to note). The administration won.
I do think that there are positive signs that this attitude is on the way out. A New York Times article a while back quoted a curator at the Sam Noble Musuem in Oklahoma to the effect that this approach isn’t working, and the SNM is one of the institutions affiliated with the Explore Evolution exhibtion. The Field Museum is in the process of renovating their paleontology halls and changed the name of the exhibition from Life Over Time to Evolving Planet, though the old hall certainly didn’t shy away from discussing evolution. Another New York Times article cited the growing trend of training docents to handle more accusatory creationist visitors, which I think is one of the better solutions to the problem.
Other museums, like the McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, incorporate materials into their exhibitions that explicitly address creationist worries about evolution. There’s a discussion to be had here about whether or not this kind of material gives unwarranted legitimacy to creationism, but in certain parts of the country, I think it’s a good idea.
I think PZ may be giving short shrift to those of us in the museum world: we do recognize the problem and are stepping up to the plate.
This is probably the same group that I once tailed giving a creationist tour through the Denver Museum back in ’94 or ’95 while I was working there as a fossil preparator. I hid my badge so it wouldn’t be obvious I was a scientist, but the adults in the group figured it out quickly enough — tight-knit group, those creationists. Probably about 50-60 people on the tour, and the guide was clearly catering to the kids, who always sat in a half-circle up front. Here’s an example of the kind of garbage he spewed forth:
In front of one of the Sternberg _Xiphactinus_ specimens (a “fish in a fish,”) he muttered something indistinct and vague about “how a scientist would tell you how this fish got buried and preserved.” He asked the kids how many of them have ever had a pet goldfish; most of them raised their hands. He then asked: “What happened to your fish when it died?” The kids, in rough unison, said “It floats!” So he latched on to this: “Right! So the _only_ way a dead fish could be buried would be in a big FLOOD!”
But the point at which I had to leave, because his nonsense got wholly unpalatable, was when he had the group in the old Hall of Mammals in front of a display on Agate Springs — the old display was a large block from the quarry with dozens of densely-packed rhino bones prepped out in bas-relief; a painting of the living rhinos in their ancient environment adorned the back wall. The guide asked the kids (rhetorically): “Now, what would a scientist tell you about how the bones of these animals all came together like this? He would tell you that these animals lived in a valley, and would fight, and when they were fighting, their bones would fly every ol’ which direction. Now, when _you_ fight with your brothers and sisters, do _your_ bones go flying every ol’ which way?” To which the kids inevitably resounded “NOOOOO!” I’d had enough and left.
Not only are these dimbulbs misrepresenting science, they aren’t even _mentioning_ anything vaguely scientific.
This is probably the same group that I once tailed giving a creationist tour through the Denver Museum back in ’94 or ’95 while I was working there as a fossil preparator. I hid my badge so it wouldn’t be obvious I was a scientist, but the adults in the group figured it out quickly enough — tight-knit group, those creationists. Probably about 50-60 people on the tour, and the guide was clearly catering to the kids, who always sat in a half-circle up front. Here’s an example of the kind of garbage he spewed forth:
In front of one of the Sternberg _Xiphactinus_ specimens (a “fish in a fish,”) he muttered something indistinct and vague about “how a scientist would tell you how this fish got buried and preserved.” He asked the kids how many of them have ever had a pet goldfish; most of them raised their hands. He then asked: “What happened to your fish when it died?” The kids, in rough unison, said “It floats!” So he latched on to this: “Right! So the _only_ way a dead fish could be buried would be in a big FLOOD!”
But the point at which I had to leave, because his nonsense got wholly unpalatable, was when he had the group in the old Hall of Mammals in front of a display on Agate Springs — the old display was a large block from the quarry with dozens of densely-packed rhino bones prepped out in bas-relief; a painting of the living rhinos in their ancient environment adorned the back wall. The guide asked the kids (rhetorically): “Now, what would a scientist tell you about how the bones of these animals all came together like this? He would tell you that these animals lived in a valley, and would fight, and when they were fighting, their bones would fly every ol’ which direction. Now, when _you_ fight with your brothers and sisters, do _your_ bones go flying every ol’ which way?” To which the kids inevitably resounded “NOOOOO!” I’d had enough and left.
Not only are these dimbulbs misrepresenting science, they aren’t even _mentioning_ anything vaguely scientific.
Thanks for your correction, Sean. I’d just assumed museums and zoos had regulations covering unofficial (paying) tours, but it seems I was wrong.
This is probably the same group that I once tailed giving a creationist tour through the Denver Museum back in ’94 or ’95 while I was working there as a fossil preparator. I hid my badge so it wouldn’t be obvious I was a scientist, but the adults in the group figured it out quickly enough — tight-knit group, those creationists. Probably about 50-60 people on the tour, and the guide was clearly catering to the kids, who always sat in a half-circle up front. Here’s an example of the kind of garbage he spewed forth:
In front of one of the Sternberg _Xiphactinus_ specimens (a “fish in a fish,”) he muttered something indistinct and vague about “how a scientist would tell you how this fish got buried and preserved.” He asked the kids how many of them have ever had a pet goldfish; most of them raised their hands. He then asked: “What happened to your fish when it died?” The kids, in rough unison, said “It floats!” So he latched on to this: “Right! So the _only_ way a dead fish could be buried would be in a big FLOOD!”
But the point at which I had to leave, because his nonsense got wholly unpalatable, was when he had the group in the old Hall of Mammals in front of a display on Agate Springs — the old display was a large block from the quarry with dozens of densely-packed rhino bones prepped out in bas-relief; a painting of the living rhinos in their ancient environment adorned the back wall. The guide asked the kids (rhetorically): “Now, what would a scientist tell you about how the bones of these animals all came together like this? He would tell you that these animals lived in a valley, and would fight, and when they were fighting, their bones would fly every ol’ which direction. Now, when _you_ fight with your brothers and sisters, do _your_ bones go flying every ol’ which way?” To which the kids inevitably resounded “NOOOOO!” I’d had enough and left.
Not only are these dimbulbs misrepresenting science, they aren’t even _mentioning_ anything vaguely scientific.
Thanks for your correction, Sean. I’d just assumed museums and zoos had regulations covering unofficial (paying) tours, but it seems I was wrong.
This is probably the same group that I once tailed giving a creationist tour through the Denver Museum back in ’94 or ’95 while I was working there as a fossil preparator. I hid my badge so it wouldn’t be obvious I was a scientist, but the adults in the group figured it out quickly enough — tight-knit group, those creationists. Probably about 50-60 people on the tour, and the guide was clearly catering to the kids, who always sat in a half-circle up front. Here’s an example of the kind of garbage he spewed forth:
In front of one of the Sternberg _Xiphactinus_ specimens (a “fish in a fish,”) he muttered something indistinct and vague about “how a scientist would tell you how this fish got buried and preserved.” He asked the kids how many of them have ever had a pet goldfish; most of them raised their hands. He then asked: “What happened to your fish when it died?” The kids, in rough unison, said “It floats!” So he latched on to this: “Right! So the _only_ way a dead fish could be buried would be in a big FLOOD!”
But the point at which I had to leave, because his nonsense got wholly unpalatable, was when he had the group in the old Hall of Mammals in front of a display on Agate Springs — the old display was a large block from the quarry with dozens of densely-packed rhino bones prepped out in bas-relief; a painting of the living rhinos in their ancient environment adorned the back wall. The guide asked the kids (rhetorically): “Now, what would a scientist tell you about how the bones of these animals all came together like this? He would tell you that these animals lived in a valley, and would fight, and when they were fighting, their bones would fly every ol’ which direction. Now, when _you_ fight with your brothers and sisters, do _your_ bones go flying every ol’ which way?” To which the kids inevitably resounded “NOOOOO!” I’d had enough and left.
Not only are these dimbulbs misrepresenting science, they aren’t even _mentioning_ anything vaguely scientific.
This is probably the same group that I once tailed giving a creationist tour through the Denver Museum back in ’94 or ’95 while I was working there as a fossil preparator. I hid my badge so it wouldn’t be obvious I was a scientist, but the adults in the group figured it out quickly enough — tight-knit group, those creationists. Probably about 50-60 people on the tour, and the guide was clearly catering to the kids, who always sat in a half-circle up front. Here’s an example of the kind of garbage he spewed forth:
In front of one of the Sternberg _Xiphactinus_ specimens (a “fish in a fish,”) he muttered something indistinct and vague about “how a scientist would tell you how this fish got buried and preserved.” He asked the kids how many of them have ever had a pet goldfish; most of them raised their hands. He then asked: “What happened to your fish when it died?” The kids, in rough unison, said “It floats!” So he latched on to this: “Right! So the _only_ way a dead fish could be buried would be in a big FLOOD!”
But the point at which I had to leave, because his nonsense got wholly unpalatable, was when he had the group in the old Hall of Mammals in front of a display on Agate Springs — the old display was a large block from the quarry with dozens of densely-packed rhino bones prepped out in bas-relief; a painting of the living rhinos in their ancient environment adorned the back wall. The guide asked the kids (rhetorically): “Now, what would a scientist tell you about how the bones of these animals all came together like this? He would tell you that these animals lived in a valley, and would fight, and when they were fighting, their bones would fly every ol’ which direction. Now, when _you_ fight with your brothers and sisters, do _your_ bones go flying every ol’ which way?” To which the kids inevitably resounded “NOOOOO!” I’d had enough and left.
Not only are these dimbulbs misrepresenting science, they aren’t even _mentioning_ anything vaguely scientific.
This is probably the same group that I once tailed giving a creationist tour through the Denver Museum back in ’94 or ’95 while I was working there as a fossil preparator. I hid my badge so it wouldn’t be obvious I was a scientist, but the adults in the group figured it out quickly enough — tight-knit group, those creationists. Probably about 50-60 people on the tour, and the guide was clearly catering to the kids, who always sat in a half-circle up front. Here’s an example of the kind of garbage he spewed forth:
In front of one of the Sternberg _Xiphactinus_ specimens (a “fish in a fish,”) he muttered something indistinct and vague about “how a scientist would tell you how this fish got buried and preserved.” He asked the kids how many of them have ever had a pet goldfish; most of them raised their hands. He then asked: “What happened to your fish when it died?” The kids, in rough unison, said “It floats!” So he latched on to this: “Right! So the _only_ way a dead fish could be buried would be in a big FLOOD!”
But the point at which I had to leave, because his nonsense got wholly unpalatable, was when he had the group in the old Hall of Mammals in front of a display on Agate Springs — the old display was a large block from the quarry with dozens of densely-packed rhino bones prepped out in bas-relief; a painting of the living rhinos in their ancient environment adorned the back wall. The guide asked the kids (rhetorically): “Now, what would a scientist tell you about how the bones of these animals all came together like this? He would tell you that these animals lived in a valley, and would fight, and when they were fighting, their bones would fly every ol’ which direction. Now, when _you_ fight with your brothers and sisters, do _your_ bones go flying every ol’ which way?” To which the kids inevitably resounded “NOOOOO!” I’d had enough and left.
Not only are these dimbulbs misrepresenting science, they aren’t even _mentioning_ anything vaguely scientific.
I agree that bad ideas should be challenged. If I were the museum owner I wouldn’t let these guys in. Museums are supposed to be about informing the public, not missinforming them. Another way to deal with the problem would be to set up exhibits which try to disspell some of the common myths and falsehoods peddled by creationists or ID types.
That is so fokking typical – on the one hand, the “spiritual” side says
when Carter told a dozen children and their parents abortion was an act of natural selection carried out by humans. Other tours suggest Hitler was playing his version of survival of the fittest by favoring whites, and note that museum dioramas of early humans have black “subhumans.” “My contention is evolution kills people,” Jack said in an interview.
and on the other hand the eeevil materialist secular eeevil side says
We try to explain it using evidence that we find in the natural world, whereas religion is dealing more with spirituality, ethics and morality, which science does not deal with at all,” she said. “It’s different ways of knowing. How people reconcile the ways of knowing is an individual choice.”
This has got to stop!!
Sane rational people have got to stop standing around with their thumbs up their asses saying ‘Oh that’s just their special way of knowing and besides they’re so much more moral and spiritual than we are, science has nothing to say about morality and the Bible and religion have all sorts of profound things to say’ – such as that people who don’t believe that horse shit are all Nazis. Christalmighty what is it going to take for the sane people to fight back?!
And people complain about Dawkins, who politely let people say their piece, and disagreed with them quite gently.
[bangs head on desk]
Actually, all I want to know is why is the AP (and by extension, the ‘Post for printing it) advertising for these people? This was among the most blindingly one-sided articles on creationist corruption I’ve seen yet.
Where is the expose when its most appropriate? Where is the power of the media to see through the bullshit of the world and present the truth that there are liars out there corrupting our children and we should be stopping them before the damage is permanent in another generation?
The “Freedom of the Press” is wasted on writers like Tsai…
Actually, they are doing both. They get the kids to chant that dinosaurs and man lived at the same time, that the Earth is 6000 years old, that Noah’s flood killed off all the dinosaurs, etc. etc. *And* they say that evolution is evil, and by association those associated with it (or if you look at their web site, any “secular” way of looking at the world) is evil, too.
Unfortunately, that tends to make them “circle the wagons”. Religious kooks practically thrive on persecution – real or imagined.
Evolution is a scientific theory. Scientific theories are descriptive: They’re about how the world is.
Morality is proscriptive. It’s about how the world should be.
Somehow I doubt Rusty Carter would appreciate the following very obvious paraphrase of his slime comment:
If you believe that God will forgive you if you ask him no matter what you do there is no reason not to, if you can, get away with anything.
The part claiming that evolutionist thinking supports abortion would seem to be, largely, correct.
Qu’est-ce que WHAT?
The part claiming that evolutionist thinking supports abortion would seem to be, largely, correct.
I wonder how my computer copy/pasted something that was almost certainly a line of text I hallucinated.
That may be, but so what? We can’t always sit back and let them lie.
Now I’m not talking about going in with jackboots and kicking the poor saps. I’m saying that when someone announces that this fossil supports a 6000 year old earth, for instance, someone should speak up and say, “No, it doesn’t. It was dated to 80 MY (or whatever).” And when they try to rebut you and say that dating methods are all wrong, there ought to be someone there (it’s a museum, after all!) who will politely seize that opportunity to step up and explain geological dating methods to everyone there. Everyone wins! Science advances!
Sometimes when I hear that “came from slime/no morality” crap, I say something like, “That’s why I tell my kids they were delivered by a beautiful, pure white stork. Because if they new what sperm looks like…just a globby wad of snot…and what eggs look like…just tiny blobs of jelly…they might think they can do anything at all, because, after all, if that’s all they are then why not?” The logic is just the same. Which is to say, absent.
I may steal that from you sometime, Greg.
Here’s an interesting development.
If evolving from slime means there’s no reason to be moral, does being composed of atoms and molecules also mean that there is no reason to be moral? After all, if we’re just bits and pieces of matter knit together in patterns, why not kill each other? Who cares what happens to a pile of quarks? Maybe they need to counter “Molecularism” with “Divine Substance Theory.”
Molecularism is evil. Therefore it must be false. Teach the controversy.
If you believe that God will forgive you if you ask him no matter what you do there is no reason not to, if you can, get away with anything.
Yeah, back in secondary school I was having a chat with one of the kids in my class who used to be a right thug, and he trotted out that exact explanation as a reason why he never felt too worried about throwing rocks through windows and the like. Even as an atheist I was able to give him a brief rundown on why this was Biblically inaccurate.
Last I heard, he’d emigrated to the US to train as a Southern Baptist preacher. I sometimes wonder if I’m to blame…
When I first heard about this here in town, I proposed a group visit to laugh at the idiots while taking their tour. Maybe I should get around to doing that…
Oh, don’t give that type any ideas! Chemistry, luckily, seems to fly in under the religious radar – at least, so far. The only people I get to offend im my classes are homeopathic medicine and magical water types. :)
London dispersion forces keep us liquid and moral. And for the real problem children, we tie them up with hydrogen bonds.
I would think that only government-supported museums would have to admit people whose announced policy was to subvert the message of the museum, although public accommodations law can get tricky.
It’s not easy for retail malls to keep protesters out.
So, Sean, where do you stand on selling Pyramid Power kits in the shops of supposedly scientific museums? What’s the educational message?
There are some very strange books offered by the American Museum of Natural History shop, as well.
As for abortion, correlation may not imply causation, but when it approaches 100%, you’ve got to wonder if something is going on.
I am the only materialist evolutionist with doubts about abortion that I’ve ever met.
They’re basically saying that their morality is based on the fear of punishment.
These Bible-bangers have an interest in destroying their flocks’ faith in their ability as individuals to make moral choices. These people really do believe that if they weren’t afraid of going to Hell, they’d do some awful, awful thing.
(What awful thing? Murder?
No.
Armed robbery?
No.
Sex?
That’s the one.)
One of the kindest things you can do to turn these people around is to convince them that, even without threats of divine retribution, they’re decent people and can trust their own judgements.
I mentioned this before in this blog but for giggles sometime you should all go see the new Dinosaur “Museum” they have Mall o’ America. It has lots of good stuff and then on every other wall a big old mural showing people frolicking with these very same dinosaurs. I need to go back sans the wife and kids and ask them what is up with that.
Speaking of anti-science, Dean Esmay is back (!) with more AIDS denialism. The best part about his post is that he viciously insults Tara, then accuses the scientists at her blog of using ad hominem arguments. Classic.
I’m posting this here, PZ, to see what kind of rise I can get out of you. Your outrages, and the threads that follow, are invigorating.
[actually, i’m hoping that PZ will post on it, Dean will come over, and then he can defend his views among people who might actually teach him something.]
I would think that only government-supported museums would have to admit people whose announced policy was to subvert the message of the museum, although public accommodations law can get tricky.
And most natural history museums receive government funding in one form or another (NSF etc.). As for Pyramid Power kits in museum gift shops, I’m against them. What did I say that would make you think differently? And yes, it’s nice to dump on museum gift shops (temples of Mammon in the heart of a scientific edifice!), but I have no doubt that they can also do a considerable amount of good. Leaving aside the purely mercenary concerns (every plastic dinosaur, every t-shirt, every poster dumps money back into the museum’s coffers), I’d offer the Darwin gift shop at the AMNH as a case in point. They had books on the subject for all levels of readers, from kids’ books explaining the basics of evolution and life on the Beagle to Stephen Jay Gould’s The Strucutre of Evolutionary Theory and Douglas Futuyma’s textbook Evolution as well as multiple editions of Darwin’s works. If the gift shop introduces these books to a wider audience, more power to them.
I can only hope that there are scientifically literate people just waiting for the opportunity to lead “similar” tours through the various Creationist museums.
Now that’s a good idea. When Ken Ham’s creationist museum opens, we should get a group together to go through and loudly discuss all the errors and fallacies and inconsistencies.
The phrase “spewing this nonsense” drives me to devil’s advocacy. Is he using “evolution” in the context of science, or of history of science? In the former context, what he’s saying is nuts. In the latter, merely confused. Neither history nor HoS is my field, but my understanding is in the early 20thC, in the intellectual establishment of Germany and elsewhere, a self-identified concept of “evolution” was indeed linked to racism, eugenics, and genocide. It is a separate question to what extent this included people actually _doing_ evolutionary science. But I would be unsurprised to find substantial overlap.
Surely it would be more effective to argue “The current view of evolution, at least among evolutionary scientists, has little in common with those views. Perhaps less in common than that between your current religious view, and the historical views that held a person’s interpretation of the Trinity was a good reason to kill them”. Though note my sleigh of hand. Given our public and politicians’ breathtaking grasp of science, it requires a very different and much more complex argument to extrapolate the aggregate social impact of their beliefs in “evolution”, whatever it variously means to them. Curiously, if his concerns lie in this divergence, one might find common cause in widely teaching exactly what evolutionary science does and does not consist of.
Choosing a definition of “evolution” which he is obviously, at least in part, not using, and then demolishing this strawman, is perhaps not the most interesting direction of inquiry.
Because if they new what sperm looks like…just a globby wad of snot…and what eggs look like…just tiny blobs of jelly…they might think they can do anything at all, because, after all, if that’s all they are then why not?
That’s what I don’t get: what is so amorality-promoting about evolution as an origin story, that doesn’t apply just as much or more to the whole process of conception and gestation? I mean, what ought to be more significant to your sense of self-worth and responsibility: your individual origin as a person, or the origins of the generic form of the human body?
I was ready to go to that wacky museum about a month after they got started on it! The only bright side to see is that maybe their fishpond will allow some real evolutionary biology a chance to live where before they could not. Certainly they will have plenty of flies around anyway. I will be looking forward to a very communicative visit!
It’s not that evolutionists don’t have morality, it’s that evolution can offer no morality. Ideas have consequences. If you believe you came from slime there is no reason not to, if you can, get away with anything.
Shorter version: No God = No Morality.
This line of reasoning comes up all the time and I find myself telling adherants to this line of reasoning the same three things:
1). If Christians (or believers) ostensibly have the market on morality, let’s please note that many of them do still, oh, lie, cheat, steal, sleep around, commit incest and murder. On the other hand, many atheists and othe rnon-believers try studiously to live moral lives (along with many believers, too), despite the fact that the don’t believe in a Creator of said morals.
2). We have plenty of examples of rules and regulations around us which were not handed down from God, but which we, um, created in order to maintain order. For example, traffic regulations. No one needed to come down from a Mountain with engraved tablets to tell us that we needed to have stop signs and that red would mean stop and green would mean go and there would be consequences for not following these agreed-upon regulations. Similarly, it is not at all hard to understand how morality, ethics etc could have, forgive me, evolved over time in order to maintain order. So, if anything, the evolution of morality (from a sociological perspective) is astonishingly easy to demonstrate.
3). I’d then point them to examples of how you can find make exceptions for supposedly inflexible moral guidelines or how what is an accepted practice now wasn’t in times past, etc.
There’s not much of an answer to any of these points that a Creationist can give, but I have heard in response something along the lines of “Yeah, but our morals are superior because they came from God.”
Then you go on to explain how they can’t make an argument which presupposes we agree with their foundational arguments and on and on and on it goes.
Where it ends nobody knows.
There’s not much of an answer to any of these points that a Creationist can give, but I have heard in response something along the lines of “Yeah, but our morals are superior because they came from God.”
A nice complement to this is to point out that even if we were to grant the existence of a perfectly good or moral being or code for the sake of argument, it’s still incumbent upon us to figure out that this being/code is actually perfectly good or moral. We still have to have logically independent standards of goodness or morality to reach this conclusion, and that requires independent moral deliberation on our part.
It isn’t just that “it isn’t true”
It is much worse.
The correct thing, even if “confrontational” is to address the group (and hope, that like me, you have a godd, carrying voice) and state, as clearly as possible that their guide is: A deliberate, and public liar.
Keep on saying liar, until they go away.
If you have time, follow them round the museum, saying it again, and again ….
And – go public – complain to the museum authorities about visitors deliberatly misusing their materials, and the local and national press…..
Maybe they can extend the concept to “Biblically Correct And Other Oxymorons”.
The good thing about these “just so” explanations is that in a few years some of the smarter kids will start to see how hollow they are, and that just might germinate a crisis of faith. Yeah, the kids will fill up on the Koolaid now, but unless they are kept in a hermetically sealed environment such intellectual junk food may not satisfy later.
Sastra, amazingly (or perhaps not so amazingly) your parody is correct for a certain domain. I am thinking of the psychoneural dualism that these groups almost certainly espouse. They (fuzzily) think that their “most important bits” are immaterial. Of course, the ironic thing is they don’t use these systems at all, since they are very clearly not thinking. ;)
“It’s not that evolutionists don’t have morality, it’s that evolution can offer no morality. Ideas have consequences. If you believe you came from slime there is no reason not to, if you can, get away with anything.”
Does anybody else think this is kind of an ironic statement coming from somebody who believes we were made from dust?
Second, this poor fellow clearly has some wires crossed; evolution is just something that happens; people who believe in it do not think it is the most moral way to do things, or even the most efficient; it’s just what happens.
Saying belief in evolution leads to belief in social darwinism is like saying belief in the holocaust leads to nazism.
Or as I like to say, it’s like saying that people who believe in gravity go around smushing things together.
Keith; I agree. My parody of “Molecularism” removing the rationale for morality is yet another illustration of the strong human bias towards “Like from Like” genetic fallacies. It’s just not one that’s commonly used by the same greedy reductionists who argue that lowly natural origins means we can’t have morals (which are presumably supernatural, then.)
Life can’t come from non-life: it comes from a pre-existing Life Force. Complexity can’t grow out of simplicity: it’s only derived from an ultimate Complexity. Morals come from a Moral Source. Meaning comes from a Meaning Source. And so on. If hydrogen is not wet, and oxygen is not wet, then water can’t be wet unless there is an Essence of Wetness existing somewhere “out there.”
It’s a view which presumes that nothing can be taken apart and examined for greater understanding. Nothing new was built up slowly from other things. We’ve got Daniel Dennett’s metaphor of skyhooks vs. cranes again. Creationists are in love with sky hooks, because they can’t think above the most simplistic types of dualism.
It would be fairly amusing to follow around such tour groups and at the end hand out a little pamphlet – with the front page containing the following quote from one Augustine of Hippo:
followed by a basic 10 mistakes about evolution bit.
Following them around shouting “liar, liar!” – however accurate – is just going to be counterproductive. Although perhaps “laughing it to scorn” . . .
Shame, though. It’s like folks were running tour groups that went into art museums and made fun of modern art, or gave historical tours that meandered past real monuments, etc., while garbling out a students’ bloopers version of history . . .
“A nice complement to this is to point out that even if we were to grant the existence of a perfectly good or moral being or code for the sake of argument, it’s still incumbent upon us to figure out that this being/code is actually perfectly good or moral. We still have to have logically independent standards of goodness or morality to reach this conclusion, and that requires independent moral deliberation on our part.”
Akin to the Euthyphro dilemma (from Plato’s dialogue of that name). If morality is what God says it is, is it right because God said so, or did God say it because it is good? First choice, you end up with the possibility that God could get cranky and declare that killing and eating babies is right and moral (what would the pro-life movement do?), second, you end up with independent, external standards.
There is a chunk of real research on moral development – interestingly, while the kind of moral reasoning that runs “I have to follow the rules because I’ll get punished if I don’t” is a part of Kohlberg’s classic model, it’s the very first stage, common in kids (and some adults). If one genuinely need God looking over their shoulder to be able to think morally as an adult, they’re – by this standard – at quite a low level of moral development.
In a certain sense, the stunting of intellectual – at least, critical – curiousity and reasoning that certain varities of religion promote may be paralleled by a similiar stunting or truncation of moral reasoning.
Drats, they’re on to me.
Hmm. You know, I would argue that Kohlberg makes one seriously erronous assumption, not just in assuming that justice and reasoning are key factors. Reasoning may go on, just not on a conscious level, so his steps are not invalid in that sense. What he screws up with is the theoretical step 7. I think the reason most people never make it to 6 is because the process looks more like the following past 4:
People get trapped of they take the second path and try to define some morals are transendent, while attempting to maintain some level of social contracts and espousing universal ethical principles. In fact, I think six isn’t even possible, because universal principles are only valid “in the abstract”, so you can’t reason yourself into them without losing the capacity to make reasoned judgements about completely unknown situations, where the universal principles don’t quite fit.
Sean, I think I missed the Darwin bookshop at AMNH.
But in one of their bookshops they were selling Lockley’s ‘Eternal Trail,’ which is as nutty as any creationist tract you ever saw.
Biblically Correct And Other Oxymorons
Yes, when I saw the title of this post “Biblically Correct Tours,” I thought it was an Onion-esque sorta joke. I shoulda known better!
But in one of their bookshops they were selling Lockley’s ‘Eternal Trail,’ which is as nutty as any creationist tract you ever saw.
I’m not familiar with the book, but if the Amazon reviews are accurate, they seem to support your assessment. Gift shops in natural history museums are weird beasts and tend to attract more flack than their counterparts in other types of museums – I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anyone objecting to the fact that you can pick up a coffee cup with a Monet painting on it at the Art Institute of Chicago or postcards of Wrigley Field at the Chicago Historical Society. This difference is probably due to the fact that art and history don’t, in the main, tend to attract the same sort of fundamentalist crackpottery or irrelvant “educational” materials that the sciences do. I suspect that part of the problem is that in major institutions like the AMNH, the gift shop is run as its own department and that buyers may not be able to effectively weed out materials of questionable relevance. Certainly, more egregious books like Gish’s Evolution: The Fossils STILL Say No! are unlikely to make it through, but something like The Eternal Trail might, especially if the buyer only has the publisher’s description to use in the decision. This kind of problem probably also explains things like the “Pyramid Power” kit.
Actually, the gift shop behavior that made me most unconfortable was when the Field Museum hosted the Smithsonian’s Star Wars: The Magic of Myth exhibition in 2000/2001. Without even considering the question of whether or not this sort of exhibition belongs in a natural history museum, I had a big problem with the museum’s gift shops selling Star Wars action figures. Beyond the fact that these things are of no educational value (unless you think Walrus Man is a cautionary tale about the dangers of Manimals), should a museum devote any of its scarce resources to making money for Lucasfilm and Hasbro? The counterargument is the one I made above: every little plastic R2-D2 the shop sold (not to mention every ticket for the exhibition) meant more money to use for things like expanding the museum’s storage facilities or funding research. But I think the philosophical question about where a museum’s priorites should be is still relevant.
“Ideas have consequences.” Damn straight. The idea that after this life you actually get *another* life, one that is guaranteed to be better and nicer, has sure had a lot of consequences for people who were whisked out of their mortal lives ahead of schedule because of it.
I agree with all that. I just wonder about the trustees or management of an educational institution who — it seems to me — don’t bother to look at the message their institution is sending out.
People look at the exhibits in the gift shops much more carefully than they do the actual exhibits because — they’re Americans! — it’s an opportunity to shop.
I have sometimes seen books in history museum shops that I thought were naive or trivial, but I cannot recall ever seeing one that contradicted the educational message of the exhibits. There is a whole lot of neo-Confederate proslavery literature out there the shops could stock, but the battlefield museums manage to restrain themselves. (Conversely, I have not yet been to a creationist museum, but when I do I do not expect to see ‘The Ancestor’s Tale’ in the gift shop.)
You can undo a lot of expensive effort by little signals like stocking Pyramid Power kits.