Bodies: The Exhibition

Today Jaclyn and Ryan (my sister and her husband) invited me to join them to see Bodies: The Exhibition which recently opened in Atlanta. Although the exhibit had been showing in Amsterdam when I was in the NL, I hadn't really been all that tempted to go, and honestly, had J+R not asked, I might not have ended up going here either, as it's kinda expensive and I didn't expect it to be the sort of thing I would like.

But, after an initial sort of light queasy shock period, I became acclimated to seeing cadavers and started really enjoying the educational value of all this. Although it's super-interesting, I'm not sure if my high school anatomy class made the experience more or less so...on one hand, having seen pictures and diagrams ad nauseum kinda desensitized me to the effect of seeing these things for the first time, but then again knowing the names and general functions of a lot of organs really helped augment my experience. There were a lot of things on exhibit there that were worth writing about...so many that I don't have the energy or time to go into even just the highlights.

Probably the most striking thing about the whole exhibit for me wasn't the exhibit itself but rather the type of conversation it helped initiate. On two separate occasions the subject of religion was brought up, undoubtedly because seeing (beautifully) cold-hard science in action forces people to question their beliefs (or at least become a little uncomfortable). The more interesting of the two short discussions was when an elderly black man (granted most-likely a bit senile) decided he needed to convince me that all that we saw was proof that god made us, not ourselves (what's more, I hadn't even been talking about anything to trigger this!). Although I knew what he meant, I tried to get him off my case by saying I most certainly agreed that man did not create man. Eventually his daughter had to come pull him away from me, as he was kinda harassing me, but the whole situation was an intriguing indicator of the power of science upon those that generally don't think critically. If nothing else, it's good to know that science is doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing: elevating humanity through enquiry, reason, and self-evaluation.

Overall, a really great experience. Definitely recommended. Bring along a vocal religious friend if you wanna have a particularly interesting discussion... =)