Welcome back. We were just getting to the part where Ken Ham calls his fellow Christians to action.
The Bible says if you're not with me you're against me (Matthew 12:30). [...] There is no neutral ground.
It's not enough for Ken Ham to deny science and reasoning, or to influence others to do the same. He has to rally Christians to fight against science, education, and intelligence. And when he says neutral ground, he doesn't mean between religion and secularism, he means between the Bible and science. In other words, everyone who is Christian must assert as fact what the Bible says regardless of what any evidence may indicate, and to have doubt or honest skepticism is unacceptable.
What [separation of church and state] really means is we get rid of the Bible. That's what it really means in people's minds today, in the secularist's mind.
True, but only half true: it's only getting rid of the Bible in government institutions, but it's also getting rid of the Quran, The Book of Mormon, The Bhagavad Gita, Dianetics, or any other religious scripture. Ken Ham is under the impression that freedom of religion means anti-Christianity. The truth is that separation of church and state inhibits government from imposing any religion with tax dollars paid by people who have the freedom to worship any other religion. Freedom of religion means that unlike in Iran, where apostasy is punishable by death, Americans have the right to practice (peacefully) any religion they choose, be it Christianity or no religion at all. However, since Ham has already claimed that having no religion is a religion, then of course he must assert that separation of church and state is just rejecting Christianity for another religion. Here's a lovely quote.
You can't have freedom from religion because everyone has a religion. In fact, there are only two religions, ultimately, either you start with God's word, or man's word. So what they really mean is, freedom from Christianity.
Where to start? Okay, the beginning. Not everyone has a religion, but we've already tackled that. Next point of dishonesty, that the Bible is God's word. This allows Ham to dismiss every other religion whose holy book is claimed to be on God's word, but it is well know that the Bible was written by men, and by today's standards, inferior men at that. Therefore, in this case, God's word is man's word, whether Ken Ham likes it or not.
The next section of the speech is where he bashes the newly released film, Creation. I can't say much about it, because I never saw it because it seemed boring, but this has nothing to do with the loss of a belief in God (unless, like Ham, you equate evolution with atheism). The film clips he shows transitions him into the point that belief in evolution leads to moral relativism, which Ham equates to having no morals at all. He says that "children of evolution" are committing school shootings as an act of natural selection. This is offensive, but you wanna talk about beliefs leading to violence or murder? How about when someone kills an abortionist as a "service to women?" How about when a mother prays instead of taking her daughter to get medical treatment, and the daughter dies? How about the people who were killed in the riots against the Danish cartoons depicting and image of Muhammad? Ken Ham is forgetting not only that his religion is responsible for the deaths of millions, but also that evolution does not claim any moral standing, it's just a model of reality.
Then we get to the Gap commercial. Ham claims that the Gap holiday commercial is more secularized and shows how we're losing God in America. Here's a brief summary about what happened: Gap made a commercial including Christmas, Kwanza, Hannukah, and winter solstice. The American Family Association, a Christian activist group, saw it and threw a bitch-fit, calling for the boycott of all Gap stores. Gap responded by cowering like a dog who's been beaten too much, and making a new commercial that only mentions Christmas. The AFA ended the boycott and the Christian fundamentalists win again. If anything, this shows that religious fundamentalists have too much power over the free market, but I wouldn't even extrapolate that much from it.
Next he talks about how blasphemy is so widespread and acceptable. He says that it's too common that Christianity is openly mocked and that Jesus is blasphemed against. Kind of like how Ken Ham blasphemes against and dishonors the God of any other religion, such as Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism? Kind of like how Ken Ham openly mocked Catholicism and mainstream Christianity earlier in this very speech?
Ham cites his book, Already Gone, and claims that too many young people are abandoning the church.
Research shows that two-thirds of our young people are walking away from the church, and you know the number one reason the research found? Because of hypocricy.
He clarifies that hypocrisy means that the church is saying that one must obey and believe the Bible, but it's ok to not consider Genesis as historical fact. He says that if people think it's ok to dismiss some of the Bible, then why not get rid of the whole thing, and that, he says, is how Americans are losing faith. For once, I agree with him. If people choose to dismiss the Genesis fables, or any of the huge number of inconsistencies or contradictions, then they've already found one flaw with the Bible, and that automatically nullifies when the Bible says it's infallible. With that in mind, you can't reasonably trust anything in the Bible that's not verified by anything else, so if you're going to have to filter it through your own interpretations, why not throw it away and view the world through your own interpretations and formulate what's right and wrong for yourself? You already do that anyway, whether your a religious believer or not. For example, Ken Ham is taking it literally when the Bible says to preach the gospel to as many people as you can reach (Mark 16:15), but he's neglecting to preach that the Bible says that when a man rapes a woman, she must marry him (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), or that any man who does any work at all on the Sabbath must be put to death (Numbers 15:32-36), or that Jesus said you must hate your parents if you are to be with him (Luke 14:26). Ken Ham, as well as any other sane believer, ignores these instructions, because they're morally reprehensible, but that just shows that the Bible is not a literal and perfect account from God, and they know it, so to say that it is literal and perfect is hypocrisy. The internet has made this information widely available and easily accessible and that may be the hypocrisy that causes young people to leave the church, many of whom choose to worship God in their own way.
The next statement cites BioLogos as a form of Christianity accepting evolution. Francis Collins, who founded BioLogos and worked on the Human Genome Project, thinks that God drove evolution and that Adam and Eve were a metaphor for the first evolved humans. He says this because he believes in God, but also searches for truth and is forced to assign God the role of creating evolution. Ken Ham doesn't search for truth, he has already decided truth, and therefore he must attack and dismiss any evidence, legitimate or not, that conflicts with his absolute truth.
Billboards are a noticeable theme in Ham's address. He calls attention to the billboards put up by atheist groups, billboards that say "You can be good without God," or "Don't believe in God? You're not alone," or a quote from Richard Dawkins. Ham claims that these are examples of secular humanism seeping into the culture and replacing God's word. This is interesting because later in the speech, he calls for more billboards like the ones his organization produces, billboards that speak out against abortion or gay marraige from a biblical perspective. Basically, freedom of speech should only apply to him. He can't be bothered with opposing views except to attack them.
He ends with a little suggestion to fix the economy: prayer. Because we Americans turned away from the Lord, he says, He has turned away from us, and if we turn back to God we will be an economic superpower by His will. Of course this implies that by praying, we will deserve a better economy than any other country, even if they pray, because Ham doesn't care about anyone who doesn't believe what he believes. Anything bad that falls on them is what they deserved for not worshiping God the same way he does.
I could only write so much on this, and to get the full effect of the stupid you'd have to watch it for yourself. It's an hour long, but if you have the time, you might get some laughs. Since all the points I've commented on have been better said on Youtube alone, I'll cite some of the major flaws in his reasoning with links to well-made corrections. Flaws like that atheism is a religion, and therefore requires faith, that God has established moral absolutes, that evolution is intrinsically atheistic, and most importantly, that the Bible is God's word.
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