Ken Ham poses with dinosaur models in his unfinished $25 million Answers in Genesis museum.
Posted on 05/23/2005 3:29:06 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Ken Ham has spent 11 years working on a museum that poses the big question - when and how did life begin? Ham hopes to soon offer an answer to that question in his still-unfinished Creation Museum in northern Kentucky.
The $25 million monument to creationism offers Ham's view that God created the world in six, 24-hour days on a planet just 6,000 years old. The largest museum of its kind in the world, it hopes to draw 600,000 people from the Midwest and beyond in its first year.
Ham, 53, isn't bothered that his literal interpretation of the Bible runs counter to accepted scientific theory, which says Earth and its life forms evolved over billions of years.
Ham said the museum is a way of reaching more people along with the Answers in Genesis Web site, which claims to get 10 million page views per month and his "Answers ... with Ken Ham" radio show, carried by more than 725 stations worldwide.
"People will get saved here," Ham said of the museum. "It's going to fire people up. If nothing else, it's going to get them to question their own position of what they believe."
Ham is ready for a fight over his beliefs - based on a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament.
"It's a foundational battle," said Ham, a native of Australia who still speaks with an accent. "You've got to get people believing the right history - and believing that you can trust the Bible."
Among Ham's beliefs are that the Earth is about 6,000 years old, a figure arrived at by tracing the biblical genealogies, and not 4.5 billion years, as mainstream scientists say; the Grand Canyon was formed not by erosion over millions of years, but by floodwaters in a matter of days or weeks and that dinosaurs and man once coexisted, and dozens of the creatures - including Tyrannosaurus Rex - were passengers on the ark built by Noah, who was a real man, not a myth.
Although the Creation Museum's full opening is still two years away, already a buzz is building.
"When that museum is finished, it's going to be Cincinnati's No. 1 tourist attraction," says the Rev. Jerry Falwell, nationally known Baptist evangelist and chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. "It's going to be a mini-Disney World."
Respected groups such as the National Science Board, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Science Teachers Association strongly support the theory of evolution. John Marburger, the Bush administration's science adviser, has said, "Evolution is a cornerstone of modern biology."
Many mainstream scientists worry that creationist theology masquerading as science will have an adverse effect on the public's science literacy.
"It's a giant step backward in science education," says Carolyn Chambers, chair of the biology department at Xavier University, which is operated by the Jesuit order of the Catholic church.
Glenn Storrs, curator of vertebrate paleontology for the Cincinnati Museum Center, leads dinosaur excavations in Montana each summer. He said the theory of dinosaurs and man coexisting is a "non-issue."
"And so, I believe, is the age of the Earth," Storrs said. "It's very clear the Earth is much older than 6,000 years."
The Rev. Mendle Adams, pastor of St. Peter's United Church of Christ in Pleasant Ridge, takes issue with Ham's views - and the man himself.
"He takes extraordinary liberties with Scripture and theology to prove his point," Adams said. "The bottom line is, he is anti-gay, and he uses that card all the time."
Ham says homosexual behavior is a sin. But he adds that he's careful to condemn the behavior, not the person.
Even detractors concede that Ham has appeal.
Ian Plimer, chair of geology at the University of Melbourne, became aware of Ham in the late 1980s, when Ham's creationist ministry in Australia was just a few years old.
"He is promoting the religion and science of 350 years ago," says Plimer. "He's a far better communicator than most mainstream scientists."
Despite his communication skills, Ham admits he doesn't always make a good first impression. But, that doesn't stop him from trying to spread his beliefs.
"He'd be speaking 20 hours a day if his body would let him," said Mike Zovath, vice president of museum operations.
Ham's wife of 32 years agrees. "He finds it difficult talking about things apart from the ministry," Mally Ham says. "He doesn't shut off."
Ham said he has no choice but to speak out about what he believes.
"The Lord gave me a fire in my bones," Ham says. "The Lord has put this burden in my heart: 'You've got to get this information out.'"
Well, to go off on a bit of a tangent, this latest fad of attempting to undermine evolution by painting Charles Darwin as a racist has led me to lose what little respect I had for creationists. The argument is such a total and obvious fallacy on several levels that I can only conclude anyone who advances it is either a wretched dissembler or a mental juvenile. I'm probably offending someone right now, but so be it!
I do see scientists saying things like..."check this link..it shows evidence for the hamburgeraceae diverging from the snackfudaceae ancestral forms more thant 10KYA when the earliest student mammals acquired running shoes"
The response ususally includes "Thanks"
It tends to pass unnoticed because the information is more important that the position.
I hereby give permission and approval to anyone who posted such a response to one of my comments to post it here. I know it's happened. Off to work now.
Just for the record, here's some "major stuff"
I've done it openly in threads, but only in rare, egregious cases. It's usually done by freepmail. And it's done quite a bit, actually. I've never, however, seen a creationist criticized for posting fraudulent quotes, or other clearly discredited arguments. Some will repetitively post the same material. They even get praise from their fellow creationists for refusing to back down. Nothing even remotely comparable to that happens on the evolution side.
There have been mistakes made by evo posters; I have corrected some, (and I have been corrected.) Corrections are always directed at the mistake, not the poster. If a poster persists in making the same mistake repeatedly, perhaps as many as 1^720 times, repeated corrections often obtain.
Since I'm a relative noob at FR compared to you, I'm curious about a few of the more obscure references to Bozo filtering, furniture-chewing and the such.
Doesn't sound any more wild-n-woolly now than it was then.
Bugs are proof one doesn't need brains to survive and reproduce.
Then again, I am definitely generalizing, and as soon as I adapt to the latest tactic, I'll get over it! =)
Pornography threads are where you see what people believe that human beings have a right to control their own lives and what people believe, like liberals, that government should be used to prevent people from doing something they deem reprehensible.
XenuDidit place mark
The speculation that I did present for the evolutionist to take things "personally" would only be attributable to the atheist evolutionist and not the theistic evolutionist. I failed to make that distinction. I apologize.
That's good news, then. I, also, have utilized FREEPmail to head off potentially disastrous lines of argumentation. I suppose it goes on wherever you have people who actually care about each other in the group.
Our lack of mutual civility usually results from not being able to see inside the other group, and as a result, we don't offer them the benefit of the doubt.
I have several brothers who are a variety of shades of atheist/agnostic/evolutionary/deists/whatever, but that doesn't affect my love them or my admiration for their achievements in life.
It's a different world on the threads, though. I will stand for my belief in God, and His creation, 'til the day I die, but I find no reason to demonize my opponents (although that doesn't mean I won't take advantage of the opportunity to make them think a little harder about what they say).
If there were some way to create a category called "Reasonable, Non-Inflammatory, Christ-like, Non-condescending, Investigation of Scientific Discoveries, Spiritual Truths, and How They Pertain to the Theology of a Creative God or Not", I'd be a happy camper.
I agree. I'm inflexible about my ability to adapt, too.
"The speculation that I did present for the evolutionist to take things "personally" would only be attributable to the atheist evolutionist and not the theistic evolutionist."
What about deistic evolutionists? :)
"Bugs are proof one doesn't need brains to survive and reproduce."
You wouldn't be one who refers to Liberals as "cock-a-roaches" now, would you?
Apology accepted. Thank you.
Take your pick!
1992 Craniofacial Evidence for theOrigin of Modern Humans in China.Yearbook of PhysicalAnthropology 35:243–298. Protsch, Reiner
Protsch, R. 1975. "The absolute dating of Upper Pleistocene sub-Saharan fossil hominids and their place in human evolution." In Journal of Human Evolution, vol. 4, pp. 297-322.
Bada, Jeffrey L. and Reiner Protsch. 1973. Racemization reaction of aspartic acid and its use in dating fossil bones. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 70:1331-1334.
Bada, Jeffrey L., Reiner Protsch, and Roy A. Schroeder. 1973. The racemization reaction of isoleucine used as a paleotemperature indicator. Nature 241:394-395.
Protsch, Reiner R. R. Catalog of fossil hominids of North America. New York, G. Fischer, 1978. 86 p. E71.P76 Includes bibliographical references
Bada, JL, Schroeder, R, Protsch, R, & Berger, R 1974. Concordance of collagen-based radiocarbon and aspartic acid racemization ages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 71:914-917.
Berger, R. and R. Protsch, 1989. UCLA Radiocarbon Dates XI. Radiology. Vol.31, No. 1. pp. 55-67.
MacNeish, R.S., R. Berger, and R. Protsch (1970) Megafauna and Man from Ayacucho, Highland Peru. Science 168:975-977.
Protsch R. R. R., 1981. Die archäologischen und anthropologischen Ergebnisse der Kolh-Larsen-Expeditionen in Nord-Tanzania 1933-1939. Band 4, 3., Tübinger Monographien zur Urgeschichte. Universität Tübingen, Tübingen.
Reiner Protsch, "The Age and Stratigraphic Position of Olduvai Hominid I," Journal of Human Evolution, Vol. 3 (1974), pp: 379--385.
Berger, R., Protsch, R.R., Reynolds, R., Rozaire, C., and Sackett, J.R. (1971) New radiocarbon dates based on bone collagen of California paleoindians. Contributions of the University of California Archaeological Research Facility 12:43-49.
Naw. Cockroaches are tough little critters capable of taking care of themselves, no matter what the universe tosses their way. Doesn't sound much like liberals, does it?
LOL!
To which you replied:
These writings shed light on acts of God, without which science cannot exist, let alone an orderly universe complete with human intelligence to observe and communicate about it.
Be this as it may, the language of the bronze age Hebrews is not sufficiently technical for modern scientific purposes. The Hebrew scriptures in question do not contain detail about how the Creator implemented creation. Instead, they are mostly concerned with morality, consciousness, and the human soul -- things science is ill equipped to deal with.
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