I’ve even gotten comments to the effect of why can I not leave poor Ken Ham alone. All for criticizing his visit to a Texas home school conference to sell people on his supposed advantages of teaching their children Young Earth Creationism over actual science. He responded on his facebook with this challenge…
This should make for good publicity for the Texas Homeschool conference I am speaking at August 1-3 this year.
It’s a good example of how atheists interpret ‘Freedom of Religion!’. A good illustration of their utter intolerance of those who hold views different to their anti-God religion of atheism.
I encourage as many Homeschoolers and other Christians to attend this conference and bring as many children as you can so we can teach them the truth of God’s Word beginning in Genesis. Let’s pack this out!
So I got together with Shayrah Akers on The Nones, and we invited Neeley Fluke of Secular View, who is also a secular homeschooler, and also Vic Wang a Houstonian atheist organizer for Houston Atheists, the largest atheist offline community on the planet. We brainstormed in a podcast what could be done about Ham’s spreading scientific illiteracy. Ham responded by calling us hateful and intolerant, on his blog at Answers in Genesis. I suppose trying to drop our docs is a somehow benign act.
Here is a sample of some of his misrepresentations to his followers…
The atheist video is one of the best I’ve seen to illustrate atheists exhibiting the following traits:
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Intolerance and arrogance
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Hatred of biblical Christians
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Hatred of the Bible
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Ignorance
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Wanting to control education and capture your kids’ hearts and minds
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Extremism
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Fighting against freedom of religion
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Wanting to close down or limit biblical, Christian homeschooling
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Seeking to control what private organizations teach
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Desiring to control what you teach at home
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Claim Christians are scientifically ignorant but are themselves scientifically inept
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Sanctimoniously determining morality for themselves
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Attempting to shape the culture according to their anti-God beliefs
He also called us “little gods”.
Aron is going to address and rebut Ham’s accusations with me, including that he is right because he and his followers think the Bible make them right despite any and all scientific evidence. We will make a video together that will also update people on Vic’s and Houston Atheist’s efforts to organize a demonstration of just how wrong it is to teach YEC as science to children.
Ham and cheese…very punny.
I see what you did there.
Why is Ken Ham in the US, anyway?
Oh right … it’s where the ignorant religious gits are…
Something about Willie Sutton comes to mind.
I’m glad you’re taking the concerns of secular home-schoolers to heart. There are plenty of non-goddist home-schoolers who have very valid reasons for not wanting to use their local schools. And of course education is central to our mission as secularists, at least, that’s my opinion.
I’m always very amused by this sort of statement. When the stated goals and statement of faith of his own website include an explicit rejection of the scientific method, how does he have the balls to turn around and call us scientifically inept?
He was making a claim about something I said on the show on one of his workshops on how he says there is one race and 2 spiritual races. I said that variation is so anathema to him that he must deny any kind of variation. He then claimed I said that humans (I am assuming he means Homo sapiens) are more than one species. Something I never said at least about H. sapiens. There were other human species, but those are extinct.
Ohhhhhhhh. You were making a reference to homo erectus, homo ergaster, and similar species that preceded sapiens?
What the hell does he mean by two spiritual races? Does he group Christians into one race and everyone else into another race? If he’s drawing that sort of line, then whatever the hell his criteria for racial divisions are, they certainly put Hindus in a different group than atheists.
So, what’s the mechanism that allows people to change their race, when they change from a Christian to an atheist, as they’re doing in such huge numbers? I’d love to hear Ken Ham elaborate upon that point.
What I said…
His response…
I can only guess at what he is talking about, because of how bizarre it is.
Only one current race, yes … as utterly unscientific as the word “race” is. Where does Ham get off, quoting the Human Genome Project, when he rejects pretty much all of their findings, except for the few that seem to lend credence to his preaching points?
Granted race is a fuzzier term now than it was in the past. However, he appears to be giving race the same rank as species.
I was trying to figure out the exact meaning of his words, myself. Anyone who uses fuzzy, unscientific words like “kind” is unlikely to use other words correctly. Where do you even begin?
Is the confusion that lilandra is talking about extinct species in the human family / order / whatever, and Ham doesn’t accept the existence of evolution denies humans ever evolved, yada yada, which leads him to the absurd conclusion that lilandra must be talking about extant separate human species? That’s what I first thought when I read that.
That’s the only thing I can think of that makes any kind of sense, yeah.
the human genome project sealed the fact that different races or types of humans diverged an order of magnitude longer ago than Ham thinks even the whole universe existed. if he wants to eat the cake, he must admit that it’s on his plate first. his agenda is nothing but intellectual fraud (with a side dish of making a fine income).
You woman, you. *giggle*
It’s always been very fuzzy. In the early 20th century, some anthropologists proposed a classification of humans into more than 60 races, and classifications with more than 30 weren’t uncommon.
Even today, the same person can be “black” in the US, “coloured” in South Africa, and “white” in Brazil.
So much projection I thought I was at an afternoon matinee.
Heh, yeah. Steve Shives points that out repeatedly , in his YouTube critiques of apologetics books, pointing out that uncomfortable moment, when you think you’re talking about the other side, but …
Apologists are masters of projection.
@5: “Scientifically inept” = “doesn’t wear god glasses when looking at scientific data.”
Oh yeah, I forgot about that part of the scientific method. Clearly, Paul spelled that part out, when he wrote about the scientific method in his letters.
If that Ham jackass wants to see what real intolerance looks like, he should look at his fellow religionists:
http://www.alternet.org/belief/outrageous-attacks-supporters-church-state-separation-death-threats-murdered-pets-and
http://www.wnd.com/2010/07/175413/
http://old.richarddawkins.net/letters/ugly
How’s this for ” atheist intolerance”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScrNFYYACp8
Note that unlike the original “Thaw” video, the atheist video does not have the comments disabled, plus they are pushing for people of various religions to get along as opposed to wanting to stamp out xianity as an “intolerant atheist” would do.
What the heck is WND again? Something like World News Daily, or some similar acronym?
They look a little on the nut-job end of things. I love the banner at the top, “Voted A Most Trustworthy News Source,” by some website I’ve never heard of. That’s generally a pretty good sign of an extreme source that doesn’t deserve any of the kudos that they slap all over their site.
Here we go again with the “Freedom of Religion” == “Freedom from Criticism”
Other friends of mine have also apparently earned the wrath of Mr Ham — although it is likely that there is a broader campaign out there patrolling (or trolling) the internet for “hater”.
how we won the James Randi $1,000,000 paranormal challenge
http://forum.skeptic.za.org/general-skepticism/how-we-won-the-james-randi-$1-000-000-paranormal-challenge/
,,..,//,/,,/,/,/,
Looks like Mabus is violating parole again.
Slammer time!
Can’t spam this – duuuun dun dun dun dun dun duuuun
Can’t spam this – duuuun dun dun dun dun dun duuuun
So he’s using your reaction to drum up hatred against atheists. In order to create ‘publicity’, to get people over to his cause. I think I read something about that tactic in a little British book, called 1984.
It’s to hope that the more agitated he gets, more people dare to look at those nasty atheists and their evidence for themselves. They might be pleasantly surprised.
Haven’t read the article yet although I know it’s gonna be a good one! Anything that starts with “Ken Ham” in the title is gonna be great!
Well done, Liliandra!
I second Sally’s appreciation of your treatment of secular homeschoolers. Thanks.
Glad to see that there *is* a secular form of home-schooling. I have a two year old and am a stay-at-home dad. I’ve been looking into home-schooling my son because I’d like to avoid sending him to what is an extremely mixed bag of potential influences found in public schools.
The problem I’m running into is that there is a very vibrant and active evangelical home-school movement out there. These people make and publish a lot of curricula which would be nothing more than a disservice to my son and I’m not willing to compromise on the veracity of observable facts or my opinion that life should be rational and data-driven. “Faith” is a euphemism for ignorance anymore, beliefs, in this line of reasoning are excuses for not knowing and being too lazy to find out.
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