The Creationist Museum – a piece of a larger ethnographic puzzle?

 Like I said in an early post,  I’m not here to argue evolution vs. creation or some other permutation.

Thought this was an interesting article though on Cincinnati’s Creation Museum, where creationist theory is presented as fact:

Its popularity should perhaps be no surprise. A survey published this week by the respected Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that the “typical” American believes not only in God (92 per cent) but also in absolute standards of right and wrong (78 per cent), life after death (74 per cent) and, most interestingly, that the Bible is the literal word of God (63 per cent).

I was born and raised in the US – in the Midwest no less – so these figures are not too surprising to me.  I think it would be fascinating though, for an anthropologist from a completely different culture to come in and live in a small town in the Midwest or South amongst Fundamentalists for a years and do an ethnography of sorts. 

Not a New Yorker or other ‘city slicker’ though–I think they develop elitist attitudes about Midwesterners that would too heavily bias what they observe.  I’m thinking more an ethnographer from China or Japan.  I for one, would love to read an ethnography or cultural study on what apparently is a dominant culture here in the US.  We are so accustomed to reading ones on the “exotic” worlds of some “uncontacted people” or tribal group somewhere.  I’d love to see how some of these people perceive us.

If any of you have visited the Museum mentioned above, I’d also love to hear about it.