A Man of Science ; For the Field, an Exhibit on Evolutionist Charles Darwin Was a Natural Selection

Jun 19, 10:28 AM

Current Headlines: By MIKE RAMSEY GATEHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

CHICAGO - It's a testament to Charles Darwin's prominence that his theory of evolution is the subject of the Field Museum's major summer exhibit.

And then there's the Old Testament itself. The Bible's story of Genesis also refuses to die, as evinced by a $27 million museum that says God took six days to create humans and their world about 6,000 years ago. The Creation Museum opened last month in rural Kentucky, near Cincinnati.

The privately financed, multi-media attraction suggests, in part, that dinosaurs were contemporaneous to man, rather than preceding humans by a considerable gap, according to media reports. The Creation Museum rejects the cornerstone concept of evolution that humans and animals descended from common ancestors over millions of years.

"Man is absolutely separate from the animals," said John D. Morris, the president of the Institute for Creation Research near San Diego, which endorses the contents of the Kentucky site. "People just know that they didn't come from fish."

A third viewpoint, "intelligent design," arguably falls somewhere in between. Proponents may disagree on details but contend that a higher power guided the development of nature.

In one of its final galleries, the new "Darwin" exhibit in Chicago recognizes the lingering conflict between religion and modern biology. A Field Museum official said the research institution falls firmly on the side of science.

"As a secular, science-based institution, everyone here endorses the theory of evolution as the reason for life's biodiversity," said Tom Skwerski, project manager for exhibitions. "In fact, the scientists and curators (at the Field) utilize it every day, and they contribute to it every day through their own research."

Creationism and intelligent design are each a belief system that "doesn't have a place here, in a scientific institution," he said.

Running through December, "Darwin"

charts the English scientist's 1809-82 life story and explains how he came to postulate that organisms change over eons. The narrative presentation includes historic photographs, Darwin's personal belongings and writings, plus replicas of the animals and fossils that were pivotal to his research.

"Sometimes it helps to understand a complex theory if you look at its development in Darwin's mind," said Olivier Rieppel, the Field's curator of fossil amphibians and reptiles. "What were the steps that Darwin had to take in order to put that theory together? If you put those together in a nice fashion like it's done in this exhibit, then you have a means to communicate the evolutionary theory."

Darwin, a onetime divinity student, first cultivated his ideas during a five-year stint as a naturalist aboard the survey ship HMS Beagle. He observed variations in species and fossils in exotic locations such as the Galapagos Islands and wondered why certain creatures possessed characteristics that others within the species did not.

Over subsequent decades as a settled family man, Darwin fine- tuned his theory of "evolution through natural selection" and published his ground-breaking, controversial "Origin of Species" in 1859. Then, as now, the theory clashed with religious views, and Darwin himself wrestled with issues of faith before settling into agnosticism.

In a nutshell, Darwin said man and animals came from the same basic life forms and mutated differently and slowly over time. In the competition for survival, organisms with the most useful traits survived to pass them on to subsequent generations.

"His theory of evolution is something that has stood the test of time," Skwerski said. "There haven't been any scientific theories that have come into play in the last 150 years that have disputed anything that he put forth."

Morris, the advocate for creationists, begs to differ. He claims scientific data can be used to support a Biblical view of the world's origins. He also notes that, technically, there are no eyewitness accounts to support evolutionary theory.

"Creationists are making such gains that (Darwinists) are running scared, and they're starting to pull out all the stops to do whatever they can to teach evolution more," he said.

Gallup opinion polls have indicated that only about 10 percent of Americans believe in a Godless evolution.

Field Museum senior vice president Lance Grande, head of collections and research, said a higher percentage of people, about 30 percent, believe in evolution. But he said that minority level still is "appalling."

Grande said Americans have not given science enough attention and have deferred to religious leaders.

"We have a problem today in this country in terms of math and science education," he said. "It's fine to let your children go into an exhibit that has plastic models of dinosaurs and humans living together, but how is that going to serve these children when they get into college and that's their background in science?"

Creation Museum representatives did not respond to interview requests for this article. For more information about the facility, go to www.creationmuseum.org.

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