by Susan Trollinger and William Trollinger

We are pleased to announce that our article, “From Creationism to QAnon: Answers in Genesis and the Culture Wars,” has been published in the June issue of Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society.

Below is an excerpt from our article. The full article can be found here.

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If promoting creationist theories is not the primary agenda of the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis (AiG), what is? As we detail in this article . . . much or most of what one finds in AiG articles, blog posts, videos, and social media entries involves culture war battles. There is much that could be said here, especially regarding sexuality, but we limit ourselves to three examples. The first has to do with climate change denialism. [Note: the other two examples we give have to do with COVID/anti-vax, and the QAnon conspiracy.] As K. L. Marshall has pointed out in “Revisiting the Scopes Trial,” many Protestant fundamentalists and evangelicals “have come to deny anthropogenic climate change and support their views by pointing to the conclusions produced by creation science, which claims to have its basis in the divine authority of the Bible.” Ken Ham and other AiG writers are perhaps the leading creationist producers of climate change denialism, and what they have written is, conveniently enough, a moving target. According to AiG publications:

• There is no conclusive evidence that the Earth is warming.
• But if the Earth is warming, it is not significant, and it is not because of humans.
• But if the Earth is warming and it is significant, this may be a good thing.
• But if the Earth is warming and it is significant and is not a good thing, this simply another chapter in climate history, which is the story of dramatic change and catastrophe (as we see with Noah’s Flood).
• Government needs to stay out of climate politics, allowing capitalism – God’s blessed economy – to proceed smoothly.
• God has promised that “While the Earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22)
• God and only God will destroy the Earth.

According to AiG, people concerned about global warming “have the wrong starting point (man’s word) and the wrong history (evolution and millions of years), so they come to wrong conclusions about the future.” Zealous climate activism “is a false religion with false prophets” who are actually anti-Christian leftists driven by politics and greed. Jenna Scaramanga and Michael Reiss have observed that “both climate denialism and creationism are conspiracy theories” in that, “when pressed to explain the overwhelming scientific consensus, both the creationist and the climate denier must resort to an imagined cover-up by scientists.”

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In the end, it is clear that AiG and the Creation Museum are not just devoted to popularizing creationist theories. Rather, they promote a very specific of interpretations that feed into different strands of the culture wars: scientific and medical thinking, progressive and fundamentalist Christianity, and theories about political conspiracies pervading the culture. Climate denialism, COVID/anti-vax, QAnon, and young Earth creationism are all wrapped into one package. Given the ongoing and ever-more-heated culture wars that are polarizing American culture, we must pay attention to what is happening at the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter and in AiG’s virtual space. It matters to all of us.