Exhibit Evolves Into Debate on Life’s Origin

CHICAGO —  In the beginning, there was a bulletin board.

Placed amid dinosaur skeletons and depictions of DNA in an exhibit on the origins of life at the Field Museum of Natural History, it gives visitors a chance to address one of the most fundamental of all questions: Where did life come from?

The answers form a fierce but impersonal debate--a patchwork of scribbled bits of paper posted with thumbtacks, by turns emphatic, sarcastic, searching and sober, some with arrows pointing to earlier answers they seek to refute:

* “Life began when DNA mixed together, making life.”

* “God made us!”

* “Oh yeah? Well who made God?”

* “God was just there.”

* “There is no God. Get over it.”

* “Don’t let the evolutionists make a monkey out of you.”

* “It all started with the goddess. . . .”

* “Do you really want to be a mistake of nature?”

* “I don’t know about you, but I didn’t evolve from an ape.”

* “Evolution was always God’s plan. So science and religion go together.”

* “Faith versus fact. Dogma versus logic. Myth versus reality. Some are incapable of letting go . . . the rest evolve and take their place.”

So in an exhibit centered around evolution, creationism has crept into the corners.

Stephen Borysewicz, one of the exhibit’s developers, said the museum expected the “DNA to Dinosaurs” exhibit to prompt debate among visitors.

“People have very strong ideas about a lot of this,” he said. “We want (visitors) to feel it’s their museum, too. There’s not some Wizard of Oz behind the curtain running the whole show.”

And so the bulletin board was created. The museum keeps all the scraps of paper after they’re taken off the board to make room for others.

Borysewicz said the museum isn’t trying to alienate people who believe in other theories besides evolution. “We’re just showing evidence that presents this theory that some people use to explain the world. We’re not ruling out others’ beliefs.”

Yvonne Shu took her children to the exhibit, even though she said she’s a creationist.

“Museums are a place where you learn about science. We go to church for the other,” she said.

Her son, Adam, 9, was fascinated by the huge dinosaur display that closes the exhibit. And his theory about life showed his preoccupation: “I think God created a cell, and people and dinosaurs grew out of that.”

Dinosaurs, however, bring up other unsettling issues for museum visitors, such as the possibility that humans will follow the beasts down the path to extinction.

Replies on a bulletin board relating to human extinction included some gloomy ones, with people predicting the end of the human race through overpopulation or AIDS.

Most of the responses, however, are more like these optimistic ones: “We can beat the odds! We have intelligence.” And, “We are unique because we’re best at changing the environment to meet our needs.”

Borysewicz said this shows that many people want the principles of evolution, such as extinction and natural selection, to apply only to animals and plants--not humans.

“Evolution makes us just animals subject to the same rules as dinosaurs and passenger pigeons,” he said.