Closing on a note of conciliation: on the attempt to reconcile science and religion at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Human Origins

Abstract

ABSTRACT Commentary on the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Human Origins often omits a closing exhibit wherein three scientists speak about the nature of faith and evolutionary science. Two prior reviews of this exhibit criticize an effort to conciliate patrons and avoid controversy, a charge that is, in part, substantiated by an accompanying plaque disclaiming any inherent conflict between “scientific explorations into the material world and a spiritual search for the meaning of human existence.” Written plaques are reinforced by three scientists on continuous loop, two of whom are professed Christians whose views might be faulted for abstracting humans from the animal kingdom, granting to religious metaphysics what has been explained by evolution, and implying a purposeful teleology where none exists. Eschewing these points of criticism, this paper pursues the divide between the exhibit’s conciliation and scientific opinion. Inclusion of two prominent theistic evolutionists implicitly biases public perception, as previous authors charge. Here, criticism might rest, except for decades of evolutionary explanations of human brains and behaviors. With advances in behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, and evolutionary biology, there are compelling reasons to understand religion itself to be a product of evolution, as do the majority of life scientists. Unfortunately, this museum video, operating without reference to sociobiological explanation, continues, like Stephen Jay Gould, to parse religion and science into independent magesteria.