Page - 59 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/02

Emulating Science | 59www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/2, 53–64 cal terms, by which Campbell meant the employment of metaphor, analogy, and other figurative devices. For Campbell, only through the employment of such means and vivid imagination was darwin ingeniously able to engage and convert the members of the royal society, mostly composed of natural phi- losophers and devout Christians.16 for instance, in order to erase all the contra- dictions in his theory and overcome the lack of empirical data, darwin drew a simple illustration. the choice of the “tree” motif was neither casual nor guided by scientific rigor. According to the historian of science Daniel J. Kevles, Darwin chose to represent his theory as a branching tree, which he called the “tree of life”, echoing the biblical image that was familiar to and cherished by his audi- ence.17 rhetoriCaL fiGUres of CreatioNisM Such figures as polyptoton, antithesis, and incrementum are also found at work in the visual strategies employed by the Creation Museum. however, inside the museum, instead of evolutionary theory and common ancestry with primates, the rhetorical purpose is to present visitors with an alternative paradigm for understanding the creation of the world and how nature came to be the way it presently is: baraminology. “Baraminology” is a contemporary creationist taxonomy hypothesized to argue against evolutionary premises. introduced in 1990 by Kurt P. Wise (a graduate of harvard University and student of stephen Jay Gould), the theory proposes that in the six-day creation, God created not all forms of animals, as previously believed by creationists, but “kinds” or baramim (from the hebrew bara, to create, and mim, kind).18 Baraminology also was conceived to deal with the logical glitches contained in Creationism. for instance, the theory aims to explain within the scope of the fundamentalist Christian worldview how Noah could gather, accommodate, transport, and feed all present living forms in his mythical ark, which for critics is commonsensically impossible. according to Wise, such an unreasonable enterprise was never necessary. Noah did not bring to the ark all existing animals, but only all “kinds”, or, in other words, the com- mon ancestors of the major groups of animals. Curiously, although baraminology arose as an alternative model to the evo- lutionary scheme, its visual forms for rhetorical reasoning do not differ from its counterpart. if those forms were displayed outside the context of the Creation Museum, it would be hard to interpret such visual devices as non-darwinist. for example, baraminology is likewise visualized as a tree, only in the creationist 16 Campbell 1990, 59. 17 Cited in robin 1992, 16. 18 Frair 2000, 82–91.