Ken Ham | |
---|---|
Born | Cairns, Queensland, Australia | 20 October 1951
Education | Queensland Institute of Technology (B.AS.) University of Queensland (DipEd) |
Occupation(s) | Christian apologist, Evangelist |
Organisation | Answers in Genesis |
Title | Founder, CEO |
Spouse | Mally Ham |
Children | 5 |
Website | www |
Kenneth Alfred Ham (born 20 October 1951) is an Australian Christian fundamentalist, young Earth creationist, apologist and former science teacher, living in the United States. He is the founder, CEO, and former president of Answers in Genesis (AiG), a Christian apologetics organisation that operates the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter.
Ham advocates biblical literalism, believing that the creation narrative in the Book of Genesis is historical fact and that the universe and the Earth were created together approximately 6,000 years ago, [n 1] contrary to the scientific consensus that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. [2] [3] [4]
Ham was born 20 October 1951 in Cairns, Queensland. [5] His father, Mervyn, was a Christian educator who served as a school principal in several schools throughout Queensland. [6] [7]
Ham earned a bachelor's degree in applied science (with an emphasis on environmental biology) from the Queensland Institute of Technology and holds a Diploma in Education from the University of Queensland. [8] [9] While at university, he was influenced by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris's 1961 book The Genesis Flood . [6] Upon graduation in 1975, Ham began teaching science at Dalby State High School in Dalby, Queensland. [7] [10]
In 1977, Ham began teaching at a high school in Brisbane, where he met John Mackay, another teacher who believed in young Earth creationism. According to Susan and William Trollinger, Ham was "appalled by the fact that some of his students assumed their textbooks that taught evolutionary science successfully proved the Bible to be untrue," and he said the experience "put a 'fire in my bones' to do something about the influence that evolutionary thinking was having on students and the public as a whole." [7] In 1979, he resigned his teaching position and, with his wife, founded Creation Science Supplies and Creation Science Educational Media Services, which provided resources for the teaching of creationism in the public schools of Queensland, a practice allowed at the time. [11] In 1980, the Hams and Mackay merged the two organisations with Carl Wieland's Creation Science Association to form the Creation Science Foundation (CSF). [12]
As CSF's work expanded, Ham moved to the United States in January 1987 to engage in speaking tours with another young Earth creationist organisation, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). [7] [13] His "Back to Genesis" lecture series focused on three major themes – that evolutionary theory had led to cultural decay, that a literal reading of the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis contained the true origin of the universe and a pattern for society, and that Christians should engage in a culture war against atheism and humanism. [14] With his popularity growing in the United States, Ham left ICR in 1994 and, with colleagues Mark Looy and Mike Zovath, founded Creation Science Ministries with the assistance of what is now Creation Ministries International (Australia). [14] [15] [16] In 1997, Ham's organisation changed its name to Answers in Genesis. [14]
From the time AiG was founded, Ham planned to open a museum and training centre near its headquarters in Florence, Kentucky, telling an Australian Broadcasting Corporation interviewer in 2007, "Australia's not really the place to build such a facility if you're going to reach the world. Really, America is." [17] [18] In a separate interview with The Sydney Morning Herald's Paul Sheehan, Ham explained, "One of the main reasons [AiG] moved [to Florence] was because we are within one hour's flight of 69 percent of America's population." [19] The 60,000-square-foot (5,600 m2) museum, located in Petersburg, Kentucky, 4 miles (6.4 km) west of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, opened 27 May 2007. [20]
In February 2018, Ham was disinvited from the University of Central Oklahoma, where he was scheduled to speak, after an LGBTQ student group objected. [21] [22] [23] Later that month, UCO reinvited Ham to speak, [24] [25] [26] and Ham spoke on March 5 as planned. [27] [28]
At the end of 2005, the AiG Confederation crumbled due to a disagreement between Ham and Carl Wieland over the "differences in philosophy and operation". This disagreement led to Ham effectively retaining the leadership of the UK and American branches while Wieland served as managing director of the Australian branch and the smaller offices in Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. This splitting into two groups led to the Australian branch renaming themselves Creation Ministries International (CMI). The AiG stayed with Ham and continued to expand its staff and work closely with the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). Young Earth creationist Kurt Wise was recruited by Ham as a consultant to help with the concluding phases of the museum project. [29]
In May 2007, Creation Ministries International (CMI) filed a lawsuit against Ham and AiG in the Supreme Court of Queensland seeking damages and accusing him of deceptive conduct in his dealings with the Australian organisation. Members of the group expressed "concern over Mr. Ham's domination of the groups, the amount of money being spent on his fellow executives and a shift away from delivering the creationist message to raising donations." [30] Ham was accused of trying to send the Australian ministry into bankruptcy. [31] According to the CMI website, this dispute was amicably settled in April 2009. [32] In 2008, Ham appeared in Bill Maher's comedy-documentary Religulous . [33] AiG criticised the movie for what it called Maher's "dishonesty last year in gaining access to the Creation Museum and AiG President Ken Ham." [34]
In March 2011, the board of Great Homeschool Conventions, Inc. (GHC) voted to disinvite Ham and AiG from future conventions. Conference organiser Brennan Dean stated Ham had made "unnecessary, ungodly, and mean-spirited statements that are divisive at best and defamatory at worst". Dean stated further, "We believe Christian scholars should be heard without the fear of ostracism or ad hominem attacks." [35] The disinvitation occurred after Ham criticised Peter Enns of The BioLogos Foundation, who advocated a symbolic, rather than literal, interpretation of the fall of Adam and Eve. Ham accused Enns of espousing "outright liberal theology that totally undermines the authority of the Word of God". [36]
In February 2014, Ham debated with American science educator and engineer Bill Nye (popularly known as "Bill Nye the Science Guy") on the topic of whether young Earth creationism is a viable model of origins in the contemporary scientific era. [37] Critics expressed concern that the debate lent the appearance of scientific legitimacy to creationism while also stimulating Ham's fundraising. [38] [39] Nye said the debate was "an opportunity to expose the well-intending Ken Ham and the support he receives from his followers as being bad for Kentucky, bad for science education, bad for the U.S., and thereby bad for humankind." [40]
Ham said that publicity generated by the debate helped stimulate construction of the Ark Encounter theme park, which had been stalled for lack of funds. [41] The Ark Encounter opened on 7 July 2016, a date (7/7) chosen to correspond with Genesis 7:7, the Bible verse that describes Noah entering the ark. [42] The following day, Nye visited Ark Encounter, and he and Ham had an informal debate. [43]
According to Ham, he was inspired by his father, also a young Earth creationist, to interpret the Book of Genesis as "literal history" and first rejected what he termed "molecules-to-man evolution" during high school. [6]
As a young Earth creationist and biblical inerrantist, Ham believes that the Book of Genesis is historical fact. Ham believes the age of the Universe to be about 6,000 years, [n 1] and asserts that Noah's flood occurred about 4,400 years ago in approximately 2348 BC. [44] Astrophysical measurements and radiometric dating show that the age of the universe is about 13.8 billion years and the age of the Earth is about 4.5 billion years. [2] Arguing that knowledge of evolution and the Big Bang require observation rather than inference, Ham urges asking scientists and science educators, "Were you there?" [45] [46] The Talk.origins archive responds that the evidence for evolution "was there", and that knowledge serves to determine what occurred in the past and when. "Were you there?" questions also invalidate creationism as science. [47] [48] Creationists argue that if the Bible is truly the word of God, creationism is not invalidated by this question, since God was there. [49]
Ham claims that abortion, same-sex marriage, homosexuality, and being transgender "are all attacks on the true family God ordained in Scripture". [50] He believes that Christians should "take back the rainbow", a popular symbol for the LGBT movement. [51] As a condition for employment at the Ark Encounter, AiG, as directed by Ham, requires workers to sign a statement that they view homosexuality as a sin. [52] [53]
Ham rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. [54]
Chris Mooney, of Slate magazine, believes Ham's advocacy of young Earth creation will "undermine science education and U.S. science literacy". [55] But Andrew O'Hehir of Salon argues that the "liberal intelligentsia" have grossly overstated the influence of Ken Ham and those espousing similar views because, while "religious ecstasy, however nonsensical, is powerful in a way reason and logic are not", advocates like Ham "represent a marginalised constituency with little power". [56]
Ham has been awarded honorary degrees by six Christian colleges: Temple Baptist College (1997), [57] Liberty University (2004), [58] Tennessee Temple University (2010), [59] Mid-Continent University (2012), [60] Bryan College (2017), [61] and Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary (2018). [62]
On February 17, 2020, PBS aired a documentary about the Ark Encounter entitled We Believe in Dinosaurs . Filmmakers Monica Long Ross and Clayton Brown followed the story line of a "religious organisation creating their own alternative science in a legitimate looking museum." [63]
Ham is married to Mally Ham; the couple have five children. [64]
Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. In its broadest sense, creationism includes a continuum of religious views, which vary in their acceptance or rejection of scientific explanations such as evolution that describe the origin and development of natural phenomena.
Creation science or scientific creationism is a pseudoscientific form of Young Earth creationism which claims to offer scientific arguments for certain literalist and inerrantist interpretations of the Bible. It is often presented without overt faith-based language, but instead relies on reinterpreting scientific results to argue that various myths in the Book of Genesis and other select biblical passages are scientifically valid. The most commonly advanced ideas of creation science include special creation based on the Genesis creation narrative and flood geology based on the Genesis flood narrative. Creationists also claim they can disprove or reexplain a variety of scientific facts, theories and paradigms of geology, cosmology, biological evolution, archaeology, history, and linguistics using creation science. Creation science was foundational to intelligent design.
Young Earth creationism (YEC) is a form of creationism which holds as a central tenet that the Earth and its lifeforms were created by supernatural acts of the Abrahamic God between about 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. In its most widespread version, YEC is based on the religious belief in the inerrancy of certain literal interpretations of the Book of Genesis. Its primary adherents are Christians and Jews who believe that God created the Earth in six literal days.
Old Earth Creationism (OEC) is an umbrella of theological views encompassing certain varieties of creationism which may or can include day-age creationism, gap creationism, progressive creationism, and sometimes theistic evolution.
Duane Tolbert Gish was an American biochemist and a prominent member of the creationist movement. A young Earth creationist, Gish was a former vice-president of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) and the author of numerous publications about creation science.
Answers in Genesis (AiG) is an American fundamentalist Christian apologetics parachurch organization. It advocates young Earth creationism on the basis of its literal, historical-grammatical interpretation of the Book of Genesis and the Bible as a whole. Out of belief in biblical inerrancy, it rejects the results of scientific investigations that contradict their view of the Genesis creation narrative and instead supports pseudoscientific creation science. The organization sees evolution as incompatible with the Bible and believes anything other than the young Earth view is a compromise on the principle of biblical inerrancy.
Recurring cultural, political, and theological rejection of evolution by religious groups exists regarding the origins of the Earth, of humanity, and of other life. In accordance with creationism, species were once widely believed to be fixed products of divine creation, but since the mid-19th century, evolution by natural selection has been established by the scientific community as an empirical scientific fact.
The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is a creationist apologetics institute in Dallas, Texas, that specializes in media promotion of pseudoscientific creation science and interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative as a historical event. The ICR adopts the Bible as an inerrant and literal documentary of scientific and historical fact as well as religious and moral truths, and espouses a Young Earth creationist worldview. It rejects evolutionary biology, which it views as a corrupting moral and social influence and threat to religious belief. The ICR was formed by Henry M. Morris in 1972 following an organizational split with the Creation Science Research Center (CSRC).
The Creation Museum, located in Petersburg, Kentucky, United States, is a museum that promotes the pseudoscientific young Earth creationist (YEC) explanation of the origin of the universe and life on Earth based on a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative of the Bible. It is operated by the Christian creation apologetics organization Answers in Genesis (AiG).
Henry Madison Morris was an American young Earth creationist, Christian apologist and engineer. He was one of the founders of the Creation Research Society and the Institute for Creation Research. He is considered by many to be "the father of modern creation science". He coauthored The Genesis Flood with John C. Whitcomb in 1961.
Jonathan David Sarfati is a young Earth creationist who writes articles for Creation Ministries International (CMI), a non-profit Christian apologetics ministry. Sarfati has a PhD in chemistry, and was New Zealand national chess champion in 1987 and 1988.
Carl Wieland is an Australian young Earth creationist, author and speaker. He was the managing director of Creation Ministries International, a Creationist apologetics ministry. CMI are the distributors of Creation magazine and the Journal of Creation.
John David Morris was an American young earth creationist. He was the son of "the father of creation science", Henry M. Morris, and served as president of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) from the time of his father's retirement in 1996 until 2020. Morris was a creationist author and spoke at a variety of churches. Many of his presentations discussed the fossil record and its relation to evolution.
Creation Ministries International (CMI) is a nonprofit organisation that promotes the pseudoscience of young Earth creationism. It has branches in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Andrew A. Snelling is a young-Earth creationist geologist who works for Answers in Genesis.
A creationist museum is a facility that hosts exhibits which use the established natural history museum format to present a young Earth creationist view that the Earth and life on Earth were created some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago in six days. These facilities generally promote pseudoscientific biblical literalist creationism and contest evolutionary science. Their claims are dismissed by the scientific community.
The debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham on the question "Is Creation A Viable Model of Origins?" was held February 4, 2014, at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.
Ark Encounter is a Christian theme park that opened in Williamstown, Kentucky, United States, in 2016. The centerpiece of the park is a large representation of Noah's Ark, based on the Genesis flood narrative contained in the Bible. It is 510 feet (155.4 m) long, 85 feet (25.9 m) wide, and 51 feet (15.5 m) high.
Is Genesis History? is a 2017 American Christian film by Thomas Purifoy Jr. that promotes the pseudoscientific notion of Young Earth creationism, a form of creation science built on beliefs that contradict established scientific facts regarding the origin of the Universe, the age of the Earth and universe, the origin of the Solar System, and the origin and evolution of life. The film suggests the Earth was created in six days of 24-hours each in opposition to day-age creationism, and also advocates the Genesis biblical narratives of Adam and Eve, the Fall, the global flood, and the tower of Babel. It grossed $2.6 million in theaters and $3.3 million in video sales.
Answers Research Journal (ARJ) is an open-access creation science journal published by Answers in Genesis (AiG), a fundamentalist Christian apologetics organization. Founded in 2008, the online journal devotes itself to research on "recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework". ARJ's research is not scientifically sound and encourages readers to doubt mainstream scientific evidence. The journal, in its embrace of young Earth creationism (YEC), supports the unscientific idea of a 6,000-year-old Earth, among other claims. The journal refuses to publish research contradicting its belief system. While ARJ undergoes a peer-review process, the journal's reviewers are selected from a pool of people who only support the stances of the journal. Therefore, members of the scientific community are excluded from the review process.
Q: "So, how old is the Earth — 6,000 years old or 4.5 billion years old?" Ham: ... "And regardless of whether they skip a generation or two, it has dates for their ages, and you can add up all those dates, and it comes to about 6,000 years. ... So, if those days are ordinary days, then you've only got about 6,000 years. All the age dating methods that you can use to age date the earth from the Bible are fallible. I mean, there are hundreds of dating methods. Some get thousands of years and millions of years and everywhere in between, but they're all based on assumptions about the past."
were you there evolution responses.
What we do deny are the worldview-based assumptions behind the interpretations of what causes climate change. Climate change is observational science (we can observe it by recording measurements), but it needs to be interpreted as to why it's happening—and your starting point determines your interpretation. Starting from the Bible, we know that there was a global Flood a few thousand years ago that completely changed Earth's surface and climate, and that the earth is still settling down from this catastrophe. So we should expect there to be some variations in climate change, but this is not alarming and is not the direct result of modern human activity. That's why when I was interviewed live on the Piers Morgan show on CNN after the debate (with Bill Nye sitting beside me) and was asked, "Why do you deny climate change?"—I answered that I did not deny climate change and went on to say that climates have been changing ever since the Flood.