Here’s a short video that takes you deep into a fundie lecture hall to be taught by the likes of Ken Ham. I learned of this video by visiting a well-written science blog, Pharyngula (written by biology professor Paul Z. Myers).
Watching the video is startling, disturbing and depressing. The young children are being taught to mindlessly repeat the world according to Ken Ham in order to please their teachers and parents. In this video, you can hear the kids parrotting Ham’s claim that dinosaurs and people lived at the same time, a few thousand years ago, because the Bible says so. No need to raise any serious questions or to consider whether the evidence backs up these claims. Just repeat after Ham. What Ham and these children are attacking, of course, is not evolution, even though they are calling it evolution.
As I watched, I kept thinking of all of those hungry young minds that are only a couple good questions away from seeing that Ken Ham is a fool. Or is he evil? What is the right term for a man who propogates his self-delusionals in order to bask in the adoration of the children he helps to keep ignorant?
Really, those youngsters are only a couple of good questions away from becoming seekers of knowledge, if only their parents could have the courage to let them explore new ideas with the same vigor with which they repeat their fear-induced oxymorons. If only those parents had enough faith in their own children to give their children access to both sides of the story and then step back to let their children make their own choices . . .
But no. As it often is these days, this video shows that fear and ignorance win the day.
I’ll end with a quote:
…if I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.
[Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir]
Disturbing subject… but, really great quote. I love the writings of Asimov. I just hope that someday when these kids get exposed to other points of view that they won't be so far gone as to deny anything that conflicts with their teachings. That they still have the ability to way the validity of a statement that is backed up by facts.
Alas, so many do not 🙁
Ken Ham is teaching those kids a different worldview, a worldview where God exists. In the public schools the opposite worldview is being taught, and this is happeing Monday through Friday. The reason you are upset with Ham is because you don't like (or agree with) his worldview.
Julian: You are correct that I don't like Ham's world view. I don't like Ham's world view because it's fake science being taught as real science. In Ken's "science" classroom, no real world fact has any chance of altering Ken's "scientific" view that Noah's ark carried every "kind" of dinosaur as well as every "kind" of every other animal (two of each, actually), all of this only 4,300 years ago.
Ken conveniently explains that God didn't need to put two of each species on that single boat. Only two of each "kind." Therefore (explains Ken), there was "plenty of room in the ark for two of each "kind" of animal, including two of each "kind" of dinosaur. I have a hard time believing that Mr. and Mrs. T-Rex cooperated with Noah during this journey. I'm surprised they didn't eat most of the other animals during the trip. Maybe Noah packed a couple of huge choker collars for the T-Rex's . . .
How those relatively few "kinds" sprayed out into millions of species in a few thousand years. Nor does he explain how all precise radiometric dating contradicts virtually everything Ken says, is just not a problem. Why? Because Ken (who offers no scientific analysis of his own) says so. Nor does he explain what happened to all of those dinosaurs or when. Maybe Adam forgot to feed them.
Ken trumpets that Noah did his thing 4,300 years ago. too easily proved the fool by the humble bristlecone pine tree, one of which is 4,700 years old. By what scientific trickery do we know that this tree is older than the flood that allegedly destroyed every living thing on land? They counted the rings.
How did Noah accomplished his great feat? Just read the Bible, according to Ken. No need for facts. And don't ask how it is that an unflinchingly genocidal God can nonetheless be characterized as loving and kind. God just is, because people like Ken say so.
No need for real facts? What kind of science would that be? Ken's kind of "science." A science that hasn't developed a single medical cure. A science that has never provided the blueprints for a single useful invention. A science where pi is exactly 3, rather than true pi (see I Kings 7:23 or 2 Chronicles 4:2). A science where the numerous contradictions (at least 384) are no obstacle to characterizing the Bible to be inerrant.
You are right. I don't like Ham's world view. But that is because his world view is not rigorously grounded in the world. Instead, it is baseless fantasy drivel that would be laughed out of any classroom or laboratory where real science is being done.
I loved the bit in the video after the rally where one kid said that he wanted to become a biochemist "to prove the truth of Creation".
If we could all the Creationists to study some actual science, to intelligently try to prove their case using actual laws of physics and real math, then this problem would die out.
It seems that every Creationist who then gets a science degree from an accredited institution becomes very quiet on the matter.
Here's a nice little article about the bristlecone pine tree, the world's oldest living thing. Older than Noah! http://home.austarnet.com.au/davekimble/bristleco…