The Creation Museum Trip: A Religious Experience?

by Senior Campus Organizer Lyz Liddell

When I agreed to organize the Secular Student Alliance trip to the Creation Museum, I wasn't expecting it to be a "religious experience." In fact, I was expecting it to be a mostly overlooked crowd of 20-30 students and maybe a few local supporters going through with PZ Myers, discussing the inanity of what we saw.

So even I was surprised when we ended up with almost 300 freethinkers - or, as PZ put it, "quietly chortling, science-minded people." Did I think we were going to have an epiphany and recant our evolutionist ways? Of course not! Did I think we would get kicked out? Well, probably not. But I wasn't expecting the stories of the people I met to have such an impact - and those stories made all the difference.

I can be perfectly honest: I wasn't expecting the trip to go as smoothly as it did. But from my first few steps onto the Creation Museum property, I was taken aback by the kindness, courtesy, and above-and-beyond hospitality of the Creation Museum staff, over and over again. The tent-and-table combination that they allowed us to use might have been there all season, but they had no obligation to let our group use it. Nor were they obligated to bring my volunteers bottles of water as they checked in all 300 museumgoers. They didn't have to take our check-in list at the ticket counter in case someone turned up late. They could have been cold, distant, and minimally polite; instead, they were warmly welcoming, despite our differences in worldview.

After our trip through the museum, I stopped for a few moments to talk to a group of people about what they saw and thought. The most touching of all of these was the story of a young woman who had driven all the way up from Fort Worth, Texas to join us. She had heard about the trip on PZ's blog Pharyngula, and took the day to come up and see us. As we stood in a little circle talking, she explained how she had never before been able to talk so openly about her nonreligious beliefs with other people. Not until that day, at the Creation Museum, of all places, was she able to say what she really thought without fearing the consequences. How often do you get to provide that kind of experience for someone?

A skeptical kid at the Creation Museum!

One of the many, many people who came up to introduce themselves to me that day had emailed me just the day before the trip. He had gotten tickets, but was concerned that his 12-year-old son would have trouble looking critically at the museum and would be vulnerable to blind belief. I had emailed the dad back with a response encouraging him to come, and included advice from Camp Quest Executive Director Amanda Metskas. I was glad to see both father and son there, and set them up to go through the museum with a graduate student in evolutionary biology to help answer any questions that might come up.

I heard from this man and his son a few days after the trip. He wrote me to let me know that the trip had turned out to be one of those days that they will both remember fondly forever. The son had learned about everything from meteors to mutations, and more critical thinking skills than most people acquire in their entire lives. The museum was a inspiration to discuss what we should believe, and why. And to make things better, a quick hike on the way home turned up brachiopod and crinoid fossils - what better souvenir for someone so newly excited about the real history of our planet?

I could tell more stories, for hours and hours. The student from DeAnza College who finished his last final exam, got a ride from the classroom to the airport, and flew out to Columbus to join us; the student who more or less accidentally ended up in my car on the ride back to Columbus; the openness and honesty of the Creation Museum's Mark Looy; the head of the security team, who admitted as we were leaving that we had been a better group than he had expected (I gave him my "I was there" button for surviving us!); the Christian radio interviewer who was straightforward and honestly interested in what we were doing and our reasons for doing it.

Was it a religious experience for me? I suppose it depends on how you define "religious." It was an opportunity to learn about a group of people that I would never have walked up to otherwise, a chance to understand a belief system that I would have otherwise dismissed out of hand. But more than that, it was a chance to help make a difference in a few people's lives. To change some impressions. To help people understand one another and the world we live in.

So would I do it again?

Well...we'll have to talk about that one!

Lyz Liddell is the Senior Campus Organizer for the Secular Student Alliance and was the primary organizer for the Creation Museum trip. Now that she has free time again, she spends it playing renaissance instruments with funny names, canning vegetables, and enjoying Columbus' great local ice cream.