Poor Science, Lousy Religion and the Circus in America
Originally Posted on Seed Magazine's (defunct) Sciencegate blog
I’m sympathetic to the notion expressed in the
New Scientist opinion piece, and raised by
Christopher here on Sciencegate, that intelligent
design is both poor science and lousy religion.
Attempts to bolster Christian doctrine with
scientific rationales undercut the very faith they
purport to defend. But I think it bears reminding
that this is a very old phenomenon. And so I’ll
share a story I ran across recently in an unlikely
quarter of the country.
Not long ago, I flew into Fort Dodge, Iowa
("Frontier of the Future") to attend a friend’s
wedding. It was apparent before I left the airport that the town has a muted, but persistent
flair for showmanship. The display case at the airport, titled "IOWA CELEBRATES 100
YEARS OF FLIGHT" included, inexplicably amid a collection of models of historic airplanes, a
bit of the Berlin Wall, a piece of petrified wood from Egypt, a large gun, a fragment of a Scud
missile from the Persian Gulf War, and personal photographs of Manuel Noriega, all of which
belonged to a local police officer named Guthrie.
But I was quickly informed that if I really wanted to know about Fort Dodge, I
needed to go to the Fort Museum. A reconstruction of the frontier fort that
preceded the township of Fort Dodge, the Fort Museum also contained a
strange hodgepodge of exhibits, including a Civil War display (Lewis Armistead was stationed
here before joining the Confederacy) and a hall dedicated to Karl L. King, a Fort Dodge
native and composer of marches, who directed the Barnum and Bailey Circus Band. Barnum
pops up again later in this story.
Of particular interest, toward the back of the fort at the end of a long plank walkway was a
small hut in which lay a replica of the Cardiff Giant. Here is his story.
In 1868, after an argument with a fundamentalist minister, George Hull decided to make
some money. An atheist and cigar manufacturer – which today would render him evil to
liberals and conservatives alike – Hull recalled a passage from Genesis that described an
ancient race of giants. (That’s chapter 6, verse 4 for those of you who are interested.)
An excellent 19th Century example of the "entrepreneurial spirit of America," Hull purchased
a five-ton block of gypsum extracted from a quarry in Fort Dodge, which was then shipped to
Chicago where stonemasons carved it into a statue of a giant standing ten feet, four and a
half inches tall. Hull had the stone aged with sulfuric acid and buried on a friend’s farm in
Cardiff, New York. The whole operation cost him $2,600.
Finally, a year later unsuspecting workers were hired to dig a well on the burial site, where
they stumbled across an astounding archeological find, which was of course, the "fossilized"
giant. Actually, experts almost immediately denounced the artifact as a fake. Scientists,
including New York state geologist James Hall and Yale paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh,
noted that the gypsum giant was not a fossilized anything. Cornell University President
Andrew D. White also weighed in against the authenticity of the Cardiff Giant.
Even laypeople who heard of the excavation pointed out that there was no reason to dig a
well on the spot, given that the site was next to an existing stream. But, as Hull had hoped,
fundamentalist Christians pushed the "petrified giant" into the headlines – proof of the early
Creation as Genesis described it.
Fake or not, the controversy generated a thriving tourism industry. Hull charged admission
and eventually sold the Giant to a group of businessmen for $37,000, a 1,400 percent return
on his investment, and roughly $488,000 in 2005 dollars. This was enough money to peak
the interest of P.T. Barnum, who attempted to lease the giant for three months for $60,000.
When his offer was refused, he had his own Cardiff Giant carved. Unperturbed by the
competition, the purveyors of the original giant revised their sign with an exaggerated version
of the story: "P.T. BARNUM OFFERED $150,000 FOR THE GIANT – THE MOST VALUABLE
SINGLE EXHIBIT IN THE WORLD TODAY."
Meanwhile, Barnum’s giant, which benefited from his renowned sense of showmanship,
began raking in the cash, drawing even larger crowds than the original. When the two touring
colossi showed up in New York simultaneously, the owners of the original Giant attempted to
stop the hemorrhaging of profits by taking Barnum to court. Unfortunately, by this point Hull,
presumably deciding the hoax had become too amusing not to share, stepped forward with
the truth and destroyed their case. Pronouncing Barnum’s giant to be a fake of a fake, the
judge threw out the suit.
The New York businessmen, assuming the Giant had been stripped of its market, got rid of it
and it ended up several years later in a private collection in Des Moines, Iowa. Then the New
York Historical Association thought better of the
whole thing, bought it back for $30,000 and
installed it in the Cooperstown Farmer’s
Museum where it has continued to draw tourists
ever since.
Barnum’s giant ended up in Marvin’s Marvelous
Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills,
Michigan. And new replicas have been made of
both the original Cardiff Giant and Barnum’s
fake. The Barnum replica (a fake of a fake of a
fake) resides in Circus World in Baraboo,
Wisconsin, while the Cardiff replica (which is
merely a fake of a fake) sells tickets at the Fort
Museum I visited in Fort Dodge, Iowa. A play
was also written and produced in Boston in 1992
about the Cardiff Giant. So it’s easy to see why
some have heralded the Giant as the greatest
American hoax of all time.
And it may be a healthy reminder that attempts
to meld science and religion are neither
particularly new, nor is their influence
easily erased.
