In Dallas, there is a wonderful little place right across from the Kennedy
Memorial called The Conspiracy Museum.  The curator has tied every politcal
assassination of the past 140 years together into a single grand scheme,
without a single guilty party ever being apprehended; he has about a dozen
gunmen at Dealey plaza; he has the Soviets shooting down a Korean airliner
in the late '80s as part of the conspiracy... It's all truly mind-warping
stuff.

But what's really, really great about this place is, as you walk in, there
is a huge sign titled "What We Believe."  No trying to trick you into
anything, no condescending assumption that of course everyone sees the
world the same way we do.  Rather, they tell you, here's where we're coming
from; accept it or reject it, this is how we've put the pieces together.

I think every museum in the country should be required to have such a
sign.  Walk into a science museum and be told what science is: a particular
way of looking at the world, based on evidence, observation, and repeatable
experiment; a way that has tremendous strength, but also some very real
limitations.  I believe many people who resist evolution do so because
science is presented to them in precisely the same way religion is
presented: as received wisdom from an all-powerful source which we are not
allowed to question.  And hey, if I had to choose between two omnipotents,
I'd take a loving God over an indifferent universe any day.

Of course, I realize that, in the words of Pope John Paul II, these are non-
overlapping magesteria.  Unfortunately science, recognizing that religion
is really good at getting its message across, has adopted much of
religion's form, thus obscuring its own message and confusing the public.
And, not surprisingly, religion has turned around and adopted the form of
science, in "scientific creationism" and "creationist museums."

Art and history museums, which are perhaps even more subjective, may be in
even greater need of such up-front explanatory labels.

-- Eugene Dillenburg
Exhibit Developer
Science Museum of Minnesota

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