This month's crazy creationist is Ken Ham, for his State of the Nation address on February 16.
Who is Ken Ham?
Ken Ham is the president and founder of Answers in Genesis. He believes that the Book of Genesis should and must be interpreted as a literal account of the universe being created in 6 days. He is also responsible for the building of the Creation Museum in Kentucky, which portrays Adam and Eve coexisting with dinosaurs before The Fall, Noah herding every animal on the Ark, and a number of other biblical tales, as certain fact.
Following the president's State of the Union address, Ken Ham has made his second annual State of the Nation about what's wrong with America and what, if anything, good Christians can do to bring it back.
He starts off citing that President Obama has declared that America is "no longer" a Christian nation, but a nation of many faiths. This offends Ham because he thinks his religion has the right, over any other, to govern the United States. He goes on to emphasize that this used to be a Christian nation, but that things have changed.
He then states that problem number one for the country is that we are losing faith (just like the Israelites did in the Book of Judges). We are forgetting good Christian values, such as reading the Bible, heterosexual marriage, and banning abortion and euthanasia.
This is why so many people have a problem with fundamentalists, because they think their Holy Book gives them the right to impose themselves into public matters, like abortion rights, gay rights, and setting biblical verses on government property.
His next outrageous claim is that when people compare Creationism to Science, they're not talking about observable science, the science that brought you all the modern technology you enjoy today, but about evolution which, he claims, is not real science.
When they use the word 'science,' I'm going to talk about that later on, but when a lot of people us that word, they're not really talking about observational science that built the technology to make a broadcast like this happen. They're really talking about evolution...
As if speciation has never been observed, a topic that can be thoroughly researched by two minutes on Google, Ham is clear that because evolution conflicts with his view of Scripture, it must be wrong and therefore, not science. However, there is no separation in the real world between science that everyone agrees on and evolution, they are both equally science. Evolution is as much a part of science as gravity is, and in fact there is more evidence behind evolution than gravity, because the law of gravity can be shown to be demonstrably wrong in rare instances.
What has happened that has really caused this? Such a fundamental change from a nation built on the authority of God's word to a nation now where we see those reminders of being built of God's word are basically being removed...
When Ham says America is a nation that was built on the authority of God's word, he is lying. The founding fathers were secularists who knew the value and importance of keeping religion out of government. I have no clue where Ham is getting this idea.
Ham's next fallacy is that evolution is a belief about the past, about origins specifically. Evolution is not a belief like Christianity is a belief. It's not really believed at all as much as accepted because it has been shown to be true. Creationists like to drag down evolutionary theory to a belief because then it looks like they are on equal ground, and that creationism has the benefit of being supported by God. But that was never true and evolution requires research and study to believe, not faith.
He then quotes Shirley Tilghman, president of Princeton, as saying
"Christian fundamentalists in the United States have launched a well-publicized assault on the theory of evolution..."
She's exactly right, people like Ken Ham are attacking evolution in order to try to convince the public that there is a controversy in the scientific world where there is none. For example, more historians deny the Holocaust than scientists deny evolution. Tilghman is saying that schools have a responsibility to teach real science, and too bad for Ken Ham if he doesn't consider evolution science, because the scientific community does.
Another cheap attempt to bring down evolution is to declare it the religion of atheism.
They're saying, 'When you look at the universe, life; mankind; all of reality, the supernatural has nothing to do with it. Everything is explained by natural processes.' Do you realize that that's the religion of atheism or the religion of naturalism.
When people say that atheism is a religion, or requires faith, or is a belief system, they just show that they don't understand the basic definitions of the terms they're using. When properly defined, it becomes clear that atheism cannot be a religion in any sense of the word. Moreover, evolution is not synonymous with atheism and never has been. Ken Ham says these things because he wants you to think that theism and atheism are just two different religions, and that his religion has the authority of God behind it. As usual, he's completely wrong.
Do you realize what they're doing? They're redefining science, and they've redefined science as having to do only with naturalism and the supernatural can't be involved, so they're eliminating the Bible, they're eliminating Christianity and replacing it with another religion.
Ham is redefining science, not anyone else. Science has always assumed to be working with natural processes because there has never been a case where assuming supernatural causes has shown to be right over natural ones.
Stay tuned for part 2 of February's Crazy Creationist of the Month, where we'll go over the second half of Ham's ridiculous blatherings.
No comments:
Post a Comment