Ken Ham (founder and president of Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum, wannabe arc builder) is a Young Earth creationist, and he prides himself in taking everything in the Bible literally. AiG even says that they don't interpret the Bible, they "just read it", which is of course a load of hogwash, as everything is written interpreted in some way (for example from other languages to English!).
I agree with him on two points, but then I think that's it: that it makes no sense to pick and choose which parts of the Bible to take literally, and that he is entitled to his beliefs. How can we know which parts of the Bible are allegory and which stories really happened? I think we can't. Ham's and my solution are just completely opposite, as I choose to believe that everything in the Bible is written by man.
And on the latter agreement, he can believe what he wants. I just wish he would keep it to himself, because I think his beliefs are really bad for society. I don't object to his beliefs merely because I can. I don't bash him and AiG just because I have a right to do so, but because they are demonstratively making things worse for us all. Creationism, global climate change denial, anti-science, anti-rationality, anti-education, etc.
I write this because many people, Christians and atheists alike, are accomodationists. They believe there need not be a conflict between religion and science. They often point to prominent scientists who are/were religious (Francis Collins, Kenneth Miller, Isaac Newton, etc.). But that these people manage(d) to reconcile their faith with scientific facts doesn't mean that it is a logically consistent position. They have merely succeeded in compartmentalizing these two spheres of knowledge so they don't overlap.
Additionally, accomodationists can defend their position till kingdom come, but meanwhile a majority of American Christians fail to reconcile their faith with science, and that is a huge problem. Many are more aligned with Ken Ham than with the accomodationists. 42 percent of Americans are outright creationists, while another 31 percent looks like some sort of accomodationists, and only (though rising) 19 percent believe that God had nothing to do with creation (you know, the actual, sane conclusion based on evidence):
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| http://www.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx |
How long does it take to lose a culture, from a Christian perspective?Nice one, Ken! Quoting Hitler right in the beginning.
Actually, it takes only one generation.
The devil knows this, and of course God warns us about it. Adolf Hitler understood this when he said, “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future!”
I think one of the saddest pages in the Bible is in Judges 2:10–12, “When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel. Then the children of Israel . . . forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them.”Really?! That's one of the saddest passages in the Bible? How about the flood, when most humans and animals perished? What about when the LORD sent two bears to maul 42 kids?
24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.2 Kings 2:24
But yes, I understand his sadness nonetheless. Ken is sad because children today are leaving the church, and that is all he really cares about.
Obviously the parents in Joshua’s day did not teach their children as they should have—and in one generation, the devil had those kids! While it’s ultimately a matter of God’s grace that anyone is saved, God has given parents an immense responsibility to do their part. Over and over again, the Jewish fathers were told about their crucial role but they shirked it (see Psalm 78).Here is the eternal dichotomy that is such a huge problem for Christianity, but which is always ignored: if God is omnipotent, why does he need our help? Why doesn't he just make it so? If he gives us free will, how can he know everything? And why did he need to torture his own son in order to forgive us for our sins? Why doesn't he just forgive us like normal people forgive each other without the barbary?
The answer is of course that those stories were made up by frightened humans, and it is not a compelling story to just have God forgive us all and make everything nice and rosy.
The public schools have been teaching their own brand of apologetics: how to defend the idea of evolution and history over millions of years, thus causing multitudes of U.S. students from Christian homes to doubt the history in Genesis. Doubts about Genesis place young people on a slippery slide of unbelief that eventually destroys their confidence in the rest of Scripture. Their trust in the soul-saving gospel itself, which is grounded on the Bible’s historical claims, is undermined.Completely true. I think that is exactly how it works. Education and information is what will erode creationist beliefs, because while religion does not imply creationism, creationism does imply religion. Creationism come only from religion. The accomodationist view is a fallacious one, and the inevitable result is that more and more new adults will realize how problematic it is to reconcile the actual contradictions between scripture and scientific facts, as well as the contradictory ways of understanding the world around us, one being based on evidence and the other on faith (i.e., arbitrary beliefs contrary to evidence).
Yes, the atheists, like Hitler and Stalin, know that if they can capture the next generation (through the education system, media, etc.), they will have the culture.Hitler was Catholic. And yes, the culture will be shaped by the coming generations, of course. We all know this, and there is nothing nefarious about wanting to educate our children the best way possible. Science in science classes. Religion in history(?) classes. All of the religions. Go teach your sheep whatever you want in your own churches, but keep church and state separate in the public sphere. Also, tax the churches.
So what is Ken Ham's solution?
Teaching young people how God’s Word—rather than the atheistic worldview—makes sense of our world requires intense study, commitment, and fervent prayer on our parts. The church and parents must reevaluate their old assumptions about the way we should be teaching our kids in a hostile culture, and work together to build the next generation by following the directives from God’s Word.In other words, shield your children from the evil ways of the secular humanists. Teach your kids apologetics. I am pleased to see that Ken Ham really has no new answer to his problem. I'll give him one, though: remove the First Amendment, teach only the one true religion in public schools, shut down the internet, build a theocracy. That will really make your problem go away, because the next generations would then be ignorant of how the world actually works. Move to Saudi Arabia, Ken.
Imagine what would happen if God’s people raised up generations of kids who knew what they believed concerning the Christian faith, why they believe, and how to defend that faith against the secular attacks of the day. They could then proclaim the gospel with authority because they believed the authority upon which it stands. We would change the world!