In 2003, Loren Coleman started the world’s first cryptozoology museum in Portland, Maine. Coleman’s International Cryptozoology Museum opened publicly in November 2009, and I recently made the trek north to see it. Cryptozoology—the search for animals not yet verified by Western science—is either a useful and legitimate zoological endeavor or a pseudoscience, depending on whom you ask. The media has focused intensely on the most legendary subjects of cryptozoology: the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and the Yeti. But aside from “the big three,” cryptozoologists claim a number of recent discoveries, including the woodland bison, the giant panda, the okapi (an African mammal related to the giraffe), and the coelacanth—a fish once believed to have been extinct since the Cretaceous period.
You cannot get a degree in cryptozoology. It is not a scientific discipline but rather a network of investigators (often using their own funds) with training in zoology, anthropology, or marine biology. Cryptozoology often resembles scientific research before the advent of professionalization, when discoveries were made not by research institutions but by “men of science” epitomized by individuals like Benjamin Franklin.
Like the first museums of the Enlightenment, Coleman’s museum evolved from his private “cabinet of curiosities.” The collection features a variety of plaster casts made from possible Bigfoot prints, primate skulls, and unusual pieces of taxidermy. Prizes include an 8-foot statue of Bigfoot covered in musk oxen fur and the rather hideous “Feejee mermaid” prop from the film P.T. Barnum.
However, the real attraction of the museum is Coleman himself, who gives personal guided tours of the collection. Coleman has training in both anthropology and zoology, as well as a master’s degree in social work and uncompleted doctoral work in both social anthropology and sociology. He began doing field investigations in 1960. Since then, he has published 30 books as well as countless articles and is one of the foremost experts on cryptozoology in the world.
Having written on the religious dimension of a West Virginian cryptid known as the Mothman, I wanted to talk to Coleman about the strange relationship between cryptozoology and religion. As it turns out, the search for hidden animals attracts two very different religious elements: the New Age and creationism. Cryptozoology has long been associated in the public consciousness with UFOs, ghosts, and the paranormal. Meanwhile, some creationists see cryptozoology as a way to gain scientific support for their claims. For example, textbooks created for private schools by the Accelerated Christian Education program claim that the Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution.
Coleman seemed mildly annoyed that his work has gained these associations. When the term “cryptozoology” was coined by Ivan Sanderson in the 1930s, and then extended in the 1950s by Bernard Heuvelmans, the field built on a history of “romantic zoology,” a way for explorers and animal collectors to find new species. Often, this work included the study of folklore, hypothesizing that legends of monsters could have a basis in fact. Since the 1970s, the discipline has struggled to distinguish itself from paranormal research and other studies involving the anomalous, especially as media interest began to focus on cryptozoology at the close of the 20th century. However, the search for funding often compels cryptozoologists to work with television shows that juxtapose the hunt for cryptids alongside psychics, hauntings, and alien abduction. This has occasionally led to confusion as to what cryptozoologists actually do.
“I’m just not interested in ghosts and aliens,” said Coleman. Coleman’s approach is empirical, and he remains agnostic as to the existence of Bigfoot. “Belief in Bigfoot”, he argues, “is the providence of religion.” Many sociologists of religion agree; in fact, the Baylor Religion Survey has been monitoring belief in Bigfoot for some time (see table 19).
But why would New Agers and creationists both be drawn to the hunt for Bigfoot? For many in the West, Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species (1859), as well as The Descent of Man (1871), seemed to confirm that religion and science had become incompatible. This perceived split inspired two very different responses.
In 1875, the Theosophical Society was established. Founders like Madame Helena Blavtasky sought to reconcile religion and science into an esoteric doctrine greater than both. Blavatsky’s writings describe enlightened beings from other planes of existence, the inhabitants of other planets, and a process of spiritual evolution that is largely at odds with Darwin’s ideas. Most of the features of the modern New Age milieu are derived from Theosophy.
In 1876, the first annual Niagara Bible Conference was held. This conference set the stage for the interdenominational fundamentalist movement. While early fundamentalists sought to reconcile religion and science, by the 1920s, a movement had begun to openly discredit evolution. This gave rise to several varieties of creationism and finally to what has been called “creation science.”
Both movements can be read as a religious response to the cultural authority of science. Within this struggle, the search for “the unexplained” becomes a powerful asset.
Because cryptozoology has positioned itself on the periphery of the scientific establishment, it offers these groups hope of undoing scientific paradigms and creating room for new sources of meaning and cultural authority. “Creation science” groups like Accelerated Christian Education and Answers in Genesis seek scientific credibility despite the overwhelming opposition of the scientific establishment. As such, they must rely heavily on fringe theories, sometimes distorting them to suit their own ends. The claim that Nessie disproves evolution is a case in point.
The periphery of science may also be a source of religious meaning unto itself.
If science “disenchanted” the world as Max Weber famously claimed, deviant fields of study like parapsychology and Ufology can offer a type of “re-enchantment” by introducing new mysterious forces into the world. A sighting of a cryptid is sometimes akin to what Rudolph Otto called “the wholly other,” an experience of both wonder and dread that takes on religious significance. In some cases, quasi-religious rites have formed around specific cryptids. Numerous rituals have been devised to summon Bigfoot and Nessie, often involving drums and chanting.
So what are we to make of cryptozoology? Perhaps we would do well to take Coleman’s advice to keep “an open but critical mind”—but it’s tough when spiritual seekers and polemicists are using it as ammunition against the scientific establishment.

In my mind, it all started with those signs on the sides of city buses. You know, the ones that say things like, “You can be good without God” or “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” There are quite a few other pithy sayings as well, if you care to look. Soon enough, it hit me—the quaint social roles of the sly village atheist or disenfranchised ex-believer just ain’t what they used to be.
What’s put the “new” in the New Atheist movement is their assertiveness, or even outright aggressiveness, in the public space. For instance, at a recent speech at the University of Toronto, Christopher Hitchens exhorted that “religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt,” and he is well known for practicing what he preaches when on the speaking and debate circuit.
This is in contrast with the more laid-back style of traditional atheists, such as that practiced by Paul Kurtz, the original founder of the Center for Inquiry (among other secular and skeptical organizations). Kurtz sought to offer a positive alternative to religion, known as eupraxsophy—roughly, a collection of philosophical commitments and practices that provide a cosmic outlook and ethical guide to living. He often joined in alliances with religious groups on matters of social justice, and hence had a much more cooperative disposition with religious institutions (though not with religion itself). Fortunately for everyone, some atheists, like Kurtz, dissent and modify their claws.
Then there’s Sam Harris, a subspecies of atheist with yet a different rhetorical manner than either of these two kinds. He takes a somewhat middle-of-the-road approach between the aggressive and cooperative style. “It’s really just a matter of conversation, and releasing these taboos that prevent us from applying pressure to people’s religious beliefs,” he says. As an example of where pressure is needed, he points to evolution-denying politicians: “there’s no penalty paid by these guys endorsing the starkest ignorance about the state of our knowledge about biology.” In Harris’ view, “there has to be a price paid.” Social pressure is being successfully applied to racism, which has fallen into disrepute in the last 50 years, and “real progress” has been made in talking about this social problem; likewise, he argues, “we can make the same kind of progress in talking about religion.”
Harris might want to recalibrate his manometer, though, since the pressure against racism and the pressure against religion are not of the same variety.
Although racism is straightforwardly bad for those to whom it’s applied, and demonstrably bad for societies that advocate it, the case for religion is much more ambiguous. In his discussion on whether religion oppresses women, for example, Nicholas Kristof makes some particular observations that apply more generally to religion’s role in greater society:

I’ve seen people kill in the name of religion, and I’ve seen people reject condoms in the name of religion even as a tool for fighting AIDS (which usually means people dying). But I’ve also seen Catholic nuns showing unbelievable courage and compassion in corners of the world where no other aid workers are around, and mission clinics and church-financed schools too numerous to mention. And in Islamic countries, I’ve seen mullahs who are hypocritical misogynists but also some imams who are leading a push for education and justice.

Admittedly, taking only what Kristof (or anyone) has seen is but anecdotal evidence. Fine—but just how would one measure billions of hidden, unreported acts of kindness or of oppression and then quantify these into a risk assessment for deciding whether to be religious or to allow freedom of religious practice within a society?
The difficulty is not just gathering the data but asking the right questions. This always struck me as the problem behind Richard Dawkins’ histrionic claim that religion and faith-based education is a form of child abuse. Yes, sometimes injurious results come from religious practice and religious eduction, but sometimes wondrous results appear too. Yet what’s injurious and what’s wondrous? Dawkins likes to anecdotally cherry-pick sexual abuse stories for appraisal of religion’s effects on children. This method nicely poisons the stimulus-response well by setting up emotional revulsion just before a discussion on religion. But he does not seem to give equal time to stories about children who started as throwaways of society and then found success in life through opportunities provided by institutions dedicated to religion. (Call me, Richard, I’ll be happy to supply you a few.)
If something really is an evil, then social pressure, even to the point of aggression, may be called for. But since religion’s overall effects have not been (and perhaps cannot be) scientifically established one way or another, I find it somewhat ironic that those New Atheists who rightly advocate evidentiary thinking by means of scientific investigation so readily default to either offensive vitriol or a bad-until-proven-good stance against religion.
There’s more than a bit of dissent within the ranks of atheism on how best to engage religion without alienating society, and my hope is that some healthy crossover from agnosticism will make all of them a bit more fit for our 21st-century environment.

From Brother Guy Consolmagno, an astronomer at the Vatican Observatory and author of the new book The Heavens Proclaim:

I know plenty of atheists (“some of my best friends…”) but, like most of my churchgoing friends, they don’t make a big public deal of it. The ones who are most likely to go in front of an audience to proselytize their atheism seem to fall into two camps. One group are Brits. What is it about being raised in Britain that turns so many people vehemently against religion? The other group are those who have rejected a faith that is very publicly not-mainstream: apostate Jews, Southern Baptists who have moved to the north; that sort of thing.
I get the feeling that they are desperately trying to distance themselves from roots that they feel somehow embarrassed by, to try to fit into what they see as the mainstream—if not the mainstream of popular society, then at least the mainstream of the “scientific” society they desperately want to fit into. (I am familiar with this desperation myself, of course; like every other graduate of MIT, I am convinced they let me in by accident, since everyone else there was clearly smarter than me.) I’m not saying this is why they are atheists; there are plenty of good reasons to be an atheist—or not to be one. But this may be why it is so important for these proselytizers to be aggressively public about their lack of belief.
We can all recognize that, of course, as the flip side of religious fundamentalism. It’s when you fundamentally lack faith in God’s salvation that you insist on saving yourself by following the minutiae of the law. (St. Paul warned against that.) It is exactly when you are insecure about your own holiness that you most feel the need to parade it, aggressively, in front of everyone else. That is what motivates a few of our more publicly outspoken co-religionists to heap abuse upon science, even as they show how little they understand it. Sadly, they are trying to earn brownie points with God by scorning the study of the handiwork God loves.
Likewise, what I find in many of the proselytizers of atheism is a very naive understanding of religion. If religion were anything like the rigid brainwashing it’s often caricatured as, I would have no part of it either. Clearly, anyone who thinks everyone in a religion rigidly believes the same thing hasn’t been to any parish council meetings lately!
Yet this thinking speaks to the deeper need for teaching, yes, sophisticated theology to an intelligent public that is starving for it. People don’t want debates full of fireworks; they want an understanding of the complexities of good and evil that we all struggle to live with every day.
Clearly, the atheists aren’t providing that. But just as clearly, most of our pastors aren’t either.