It’s interesting you should raise the politics question. It’s one I’ve struggled with and it’s particularly pertinent here in the UK where the “political divide” is no longer as wide as it once was. I’m mired in the “ideal absolute” myself – could I *ever* bring myself to vote Conservative? Absolutely not, ever. Is the tory party looking more left wing than Labour right now? Yes. Worrying.

Anyway. Back to museums…

Too late, Mike!

A solid *half* of America already believes that the Biblical account of the world’s origin is “true” (whatever that means to them)! A scientific worldview, i.e., one based on conclusions drawn from observable and testable reality, has an extremely tenuous hold in this country. Many, many people do not believe that science offers them anything useful or fulfilling in their lives, whereas religion does, esp. fundamentalist religion, filled with absolutes, where moral decisions and even physical reality is free of all ambiguity.

(As a mostly relevant aside, one sees this is politics nowadays too, where policies are formed based on dogma and ideal absolutes, rather than on testable, measurable ideas about real-world conditions. Moral absolutism trumps pragmatics.)

But I am still resistant. I guess this is because I have a fixed and quite romantic notion of what museums are for – which is, ultimately, about fact rather than “just” entertainment. Not that entertainment is bad, but the tag “museum” lends a legitimacy which “theme park” just doesn’t. These are places where “the truth” is explained.

It will be interesting to see what research (if any) is ever done on the Creation Museum – will visitors already be believers? Will they change their views? Will skeptics visit or steer clear? Will people go there to be entertained or to learn? Or both?

I don’t think the situation could *rationally* be any different but it still makes me uncomfortable that some people may leave the Creation Museum really believing that this stuff is fact.

There’s an interesting post over at ‘Museum 2.0′ about story-telling in the Creation Museum. There’s been lots said about this bible-telling museum, which has just opened in America, and I suspect that it’s wound up much of the museum community…

It’s not that different from newspapers, after all, where you have papers with a reputation for accuracy and impartiality, and papers which are unapologetically polemical, even to the extent of having been published by a particular political party or other campaigning body.

Ultimately, the best way to fight propaganda, of the dangerous and false kind (which the Creation Museum is both), is through counter-information and awareness campaigns, not through control over the means and form of communication.