Ken Ham
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“”Our Board believes Ken's comments to be unnecessary, ungodly, and mean-spirited statements that are divisive at best and defamatory at worst."
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| —Brennan Dean, Great Homeschool Conventions[1] |
Ken Ham is the president and CEO of Answers in Genesis, a Christian apologetics ministry. He is a brainwashed, Bible-humping Christian who actually believes man was created out of a handful of dirt (Genesis 2:7). Although he hails from Australia, where all the kangaroos floated during the Flood, he now lives permanently in Kentucky, somewhere in his office in the Creation Museum. He is a frequent speaker at homeschooling conferences and creationist events, where one of his favorite "arguments" is "Were you there?"[2] He once used this "argument" at a homeschooling seminar where he convinced all of the children that non-avian dinosaurs co-existed with humans and that Earth is no more than 6000 years old.
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[edit] The Bible
Every year Ham expounds on such thrilling topics as: reliability of the Bible, how compromise over biblical authority has undermined society and even the church, witnessing more effectively, dinosaurs, and "races".[3] Ken Ham notes that poll statistics show steadily fewer Americans take the Bible literally and steadily more Americans see the Bible as what it is, a book of fables. This devastates Ken Ham. He is unnaturally obsessed with the Book of Genesis, from the Old Testament Bible to such a degree that he has devoted his life to the mental contortions necessary when taking the book to be literal truth. He considers Genesis more than the rest of the Bible, "to be the most attacked, scoffed at, and ridiculed." [4] Whether his view of the Bible is a strong personal belief that he holds, or he realized how much money he could get by exploiting popular gullibility, is unknown.
[edit] Australia
Ham was created and raised in Australia, where he received a degree in applied science from Queensland Institute of Technology, followed by a diploma of education from the University of Queensland. From there, he became a public school science teacher[5] which makes one somewhat worried about a few years of public school-students from Australia. He was a member of the Creation Science Foundation starting in 1979. He moved to America in 1987 as a "loan" to the Institute for Creation Research.[6]
[edit] Answers in Genesis
In 1993, Ham left ICR to form, with the help of CSF, Creation Science Ministries,[7] which changed its name to Answers in Genesis in 1994.[7] In 2006, the US/UK branches of AiG decided to withdraw from the general collection of AiG international groups because of the other groups' frustration with Ham's personality, taking with them the rights to the name AiG and CSF. The Australian AiG (originally CSF, which helped start CSM), rebranded itself Creation Ministries International. In 2007, CMI sued Ham and AiG.
[edit] Creation Museum
Ken Ham is also the man behind the Creation Museum in Kentucky, built in 2007. In 2010, Ham announced the construction of the "Ark Encounter" theme park, which would include a full-scale replica of Noah's Ark.
[edit] Character description
According to esteemed biologist and blogger PZ Myers, writing "to" Ham:
“”Millions of people, including some of the most knowledgeable biologists in the world, think just about every day that you are an airhead, an ass, a birdbrain, a blockhead, a bonehead, a boob, a bozo, a charlatan, a cheat, a chowderhead, a chump, a clod, a con artist, a crackpot, a crank, a crazy, a cretin, a dimwit, a dingbat, a dingleberry, a dipstick, a ditz, a dolt, a doofus, a dork, a dum-dum, a dumb-ass, a dumbo, a dummy, a dunce, a dunderhead, a fake, a fathead, a fraud, a fruitcake, a gonif, a halfwit, an idiot, an ignoramus, an imbecile, a jackass, a jerk, a jughead, a knucklehead, a kook, a lamebrain, a loon, a loony, a lummox, a meatball, a meathead, a moron, a mountebank, a nincompoop, a ninny, a nitwit, a numbnuts, a numbskull, a nut, a nutcase, a peabrain, a pinhead, a racketeer, a sap, a scam artist, a screwball, a sham, a simpleton, a snake oil salesman, a thickhead, a turkey, a twerp, a twit, a wacko, a close-minded douche, a woodenhead, and much, much worse.[8]
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He has been called "willfully ignorant" by Old Earth Creationist Greg Neyman.[9] Journalist Daniel Radosh is even more scathing in his description:
“”I realized with some surprise that Ken Ham scared me. I wasn't physically afraid. I didn't think he'd haul off and punch me if I told him that I was a humanist. But his grim affect and coldly irrational imitation of rationality struck me as borderline sociopathic… Later I read an essay Ham wrote for Creation magazine on the second anniversary of September 11: "After the 9/11 attack, I had someone say to me: 'I'm glad I wasn't in the World Trade Center — I would have died.' I replied, 'Well, don't worry, your turn is coming.'" Who thinks that way? Who thinks Jesus wants them to think that way?[10][11]
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Even those who agree with him criticize him for ad hominem attacks which might be defamatory.[1]
[edit] Debate with Bill Nye
On February 4th, 2014, the Creation Museum hosted a debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye, on the question "Is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific era?" RationalWiki commentary on the event may be found here.
[edit] Aliens
Apparently, Ken Ham believes that aliens, if they exist, are doomed to hell because they are not descendants of Adam.[12][13]
[edit] Publications
- The Lie: Evolution Ken Ham (1987). T Green Forest: Master Books. ISBN 0-89051-158-6.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Ken’s official blog.
- Official site of the Creation Museum.
- No Answers in Genesis official site.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Creation Museum Founder Disinvited from Homeschooling Conferences
- ↑ Were You There?
- ↑ Answers in Genesis - About Ken Ham
- ↑ The Erosion of God's Word-It's Catastrophic!"
- ↑ About AiG: President Ken Ham
- ↑ Interview with Ken Ham by Ron Cooper, part 1
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 The History of AiG
- ↑ Here at Pharyngula, his scienceblog.
- ↑ Ham can't tell the simple truth!
- ↑ Daniel Radosh (2008), Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, Simon and Schuster
- ↑ There is a strain of Christian wingnuttery that does think that death is good, when not suicide, insofar as immanentizing the eschaton or getting to heaven faster is concerned.
- ↑ http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/07/20/well-find-a-new-earth-within-20-years/
- ↑ https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/alien-life/