Posts
America's Future?
An article in the Los Angeles Times describes the work of Ken Ham, the leader of Answers in Genesis.
Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.The completion of that line of argument is that God was there, and we have his account in the Bible. It is a slick argument with subtle assumptions that pits man against God.
"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"
Continue Reading
He urges students to offer creationist critiques of their textbooks, parents to take on science museum docents, professionals to raise the subject with colleagues. If Ham has done his job well, his acolytes will ask enough pointed questions — and set forth enough persuasive arguments — to shake the doctrine of Darwin.Unfortunately the persuasive arguments are actually persuasive propaganda based on sound bites and distortion.
When pastors dismiss the creation account as a fable, he says, they give their flock license to disregard the Bible's moral teachings as well. He shows his audiences a graphic that places the theory of evolution at the root of all social ills: abortion, divorce, racism, gay marriage, store clerks who say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."Nice--it's all neat and tidy. Evolution the root of racism? Oh, I see. All those years of slavery and segregation owe their existence to a book published in 1859. If only there had been literalist fundamentalists in the South to talk some sense into people.
You can see Ham at work here.
(via Erying-L)
2 comments:
As with many thing the creationists try, this will backfire. It would seem to me that if there is one thing Creationists ought fear it is discussion. Because then the mind numbing bad ideas about science can be corrected. So I say, hey, Creationists, ask away. We can answer your questions. Can you answer ours?
Of course the correct response to Ham's teaching that God was there and He wrote (or had written) the Bible is "Excuse me, but were YOU there when it was written?" If "being there" is the only way one can have any authority on such matters then he should be just as quite as he wants those evolutionists to be.
Post a Comment