Creationism and the Mangling of Good Words
by Rodney Kennedy
Today’s post comes from our friend and colleague Dr. Rodney Kennedy. Rodney’s post is an excellent reminder of why language matters when it comes to understanding young earth creationism.
There is no getting around it. Young earth creationists twist, even mangle, the definitions of words in order to give these words meanings that fit their worldview.
Take, for example, the word “theory.” Creationists love to insist that evolution is only a theory, meaning by theory that evolution is unproven speculation, just one of thousands of possible unproven speculations. This definition of theory often shows up in courtrooms where evolution is being debated in the context of the science curriculum of public schools. For example, the Cobb County School System in Atlanta, Georgia had a small sticker placed on the inside of all biology textbooks:
This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.
Once “theory” is defined in this way, then creationism is on a level playing field with evolution and thus can be offered as a viable theory for science. (And once this leveling has taken place, then creationists play their trump card, which is that Genesis is an “eyewitness account of creation,” with God as the eyewitness to what he did – a bizarre argument, indeed).
While the notion of “theory” as unproven speculation is common in popular parlance, this is not how the word is used in science. Evolution is the central organizing principle of the biological sciences, and the word “theory” is used in the context of what is currently accepted truth. This doesn’t mean that evolution is false but that evolution is what science has concluded is true but is open to revision. It is a word of humility to use the word “theory” instead of the word “truth.” In no way are scientists suggesting that theory has the meaning of unproven hypotheses.
It turns out that it is creationism that is a “theory” in the popular sense. In other words, creationism is what it accuses evolution of being: a suspect, fallacious claim about the origins of the universe. Creationism has no merit and no legitimate warrant. All creationists can manage is to keep repeating the mantra of a six-day literal creation and keep reassuring “true” believers that it is true.
Another word that creationists mangle is “myth.” They have worked for over a century to define “myth” as an ancient story that is not true.
This is a complete misreading of the word “myth.” A Native American chief told his grandson a wonderful story about the origin of their tribe. The grandson asked, “Did this really happen?” The chief smiled, and said, “It didn’t actually happen but it is true.” Myth, like metaphor, is charged with meaning. In fact, myth and metaphor have reality-producing capabilities. They also have the power to encourage, uplift, and challenge entire societies.
But as with “theory,” creationism turns out to be a “myth” in the popular sense. In other words, creationism is a tall tale that is not true. Creationism is a false myth but it has tremendous epistemic power among “true” believers.
Sometimes false myths can do great harm. Sometimes we are best served by demythologizing false myths and showing that they are not true. In this understanding, someone should write a book called The Myth of Creationism.
God as Eye Witness
by Susan Trollinger
In our last post, we mentioned in passing that Ken Ham and AiG like to refer to Genesis as an “eye witness account” to the creation. Importantly, that is their trump card on evolution.
Readers of this blog will remember that a key rhetorical move that Ham and his colleagues make at the Creation Museum (and elsewhere) is to put mainstream science (which is to say, evolutionary science) on the same epistemological plane as creation science. They do that by way of a curious distinction that they make between observational science and historical science. Whereas observational science consists of observations and experiments that occur in the present and that can be repeated, historical science consists of theories about what happened in the past—phenomena that cannot be observed or repeated. Claims about evolutionary processes are historical science as are claims about the God of the Bible creating the universe in 6 24-hour days less than 10,000 years ago.
By way of this distinction, evolutionary science has no epistemological claim of privilege over creation science. No matter any data to the contrary.
So, there they are—evolutionary science and creation science—on the same epistemological plane. They are equals when it comes to the question of what do we know and how do we know it.
Except Ham and company have a trump card. Unlike evolutionary science, creation science has a witness to the origins it claims. The very text of Genesis is that very witness. As God dictated to Moses (who they say wrote Genesis) what happened as He created the universe, He provided an “eye witness account.” No way evolutionary science can beat that.
But here’s the thing. What is an “eye witness account”? You think of some tragic event. I remember one day a long time ago when a plane crashed just shortly after takeoff. Police and other investigators were trying to figure out what happened. And it turned out that there were people on the ground who saw the plane in the sky and watched it as it crashed. Some said they saw flames coming out of one of the engines. Others said they thought they saw an explosion. Eye witness accounts.
The point is that eye witness accounts are secondary. They aren’t the thing itself. They aren’t the event itself or its causes. They are second-hand observations (more or less accurate) of something else.
How odd that this is Ham and AiG’s ace in the hole. What? God needs an eye witness? It’s not enough that God did it? He also has to serve as his own eye witness? Why would God’s creative action need to be backed up by an eye witness? And how would he serve as an eye witness to his own act?
Sometimes one has to wonder if Ham and AiG trust the text. If it’s the truth, what does God need of an eye witness, least of all himself?
Maybe a Myth Is Better Left a Myth
by Susan Trollinger
As readers of this blog know well, for Ken Ham and his comrades at AiG reading Genesis literally—as an accurate history of the origins of the universe (an “eyewitness account”, as they like to say)—is of paramount importance. To do otherwise is to fail to take the Bible seriously. To their way of thinking, if you do not read it literally, you might as well say that whole thing is just one big fanciful myth. In other words, to fail to read Genesis literally is to head directly down the slippery slope to secular humanism and atheism.
Fully embracing this position, Ham and AiG do not shy away from certain details in the story of Noah’s flood. Like the fact that it was global. Or the fact that, being global, it wiped out every living land creature that didn’t make it on the Ark—including (according to AiG’s statistical reckoning) as many as 20 billion human beings. Or the fact that the Ark was gigantic such that it could house Noah’s family, two of every “kind” of land creature, and enough provisions to keep them all alive.
Indeed, Ham and AiG have so thoroughly embraced their literal reading that they found it compelling to try to recreate it in the form of a life-size reproduction of the Ark.
It’s worth pausing to ask whether it really is necessary or wise to read this story of the Flood and Noah’s Ark in this manner. Of course, no Christian is obliged to read it in this way. Doing so is a choice.
We have written previously on this blog about a strange exhibit at Ark Encounter that features a display of lots of children’s books that tell the story of Noah’s Ark. As we pointed out, the exhibit initially inspires delight on the part of children who visit it. They enter with great energy and want to look at the books. After all, unlike so many other exhibits at Ark Encounter, this one looks like it’s for them.
But it’s not. It’s for their parents. And the argument is clear. Books like these that make the story of the Flood and Noah’s Ark seem like a happy story about a floating zoo are dangerous. They obscure the crucial message of the Flood and the Ark and that is that our God is an angry God. He willfully slaughtered as many as 20 billion human beings (including infants and children). And, never mind the rainbow. He would/will do it again just by way of fire this time instead of water.
Is it wise to read this story in this way? Does doing so make Christians better human beings? More compassionate? More loving? More full of grace for the other?
We seriously doubt it. Indeed, we have to wonder if there is great wisdom, in fact, in those children’s books.
The Bible is a strange text. And when it comes to stories in the Bible, like this one, that are tough to square with a loving God, maybe there is, in fact, wisdom in imagining that what’s important about the Ark is that they came two-by-two and, in the end, found dry land and a rainbow.
Righting America featured in Church & State Magazine
We are thrilled to share our extended interview in the latest issue of Church & State, the Magazine of Americans United for Separation of Church & State.
Readers may recall that we’ve cited the Church & State blog and have been mentioned on the blog in the past for our posts on Ken Ham’s financing of Ark Encounter. We’re very happy that Church & State chose to feature us in an extended interview for their print publication.
The full interview is available in this month’s issue, and was posted online last Friday.
We’d love to hear others’ thoughts and responses to Righting America as well! Feel free to leave a comment below.
Two Different Visions of the Ark
by Treavor Bogard
In today’s post, our colleague Treavor Bogard continues his discussion of Answers in Genesis (AiG), exploring the possibilities and potential significance of the Ark under a different director than Ken Ham.
Darkness v. light. Death v. life. There is more than one way to understand the Ark.
The Ark Encounter, like the Creation Museum, promotes the simple and simplistic notion that evolutionary theory has led to cultural decay in the West. Given this, it is incumbent on righteous Christians to engage in a culture war against the atheistic forces of decay and corruption. Inside the Ark, the God-fearing are held safe from the flood and close the door on the masses who face peril in the rising tide. The Ark Encounter inscribes on its visitors a dramatic sense that the saved are radically distinct from the depraved. People are not seen as a mixture of good and evil, but as being either all good or all bad.
Conservative evangelicals such as Ken Ham rally behind narratives in which the land is purged and Christian fundamentalism triumphs. This message is reverberated in Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again” through exclusion: literally building a wall and shutting out Mexican immigrants and people from Muslim-majority countries as well as rejecting more rights for non-whites, women, gays, trans people, and other minorities.
The Ark has tapped the ideological sentiments of many conservative Christians who feel that a white, middle class, Christian America is under threat by social progressives. Kim Davis, county clerk for Rowan County, KY, said she was acting “under God’s authority” when she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following the Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage. Former Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee, described the whole affair as the “criminalization of Christianity.” The Ark Encounter stands as a cultural symbol of the sentiments of a people who feel the time has come to shut the door on secularists.
Of course, the Ark could be seen otherwise. The Ark could be seen as a very different sort of symbol. Contrary to Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis (AiG), the Ark could be understood as an instrument of grace for all of us. In this vision the Ark would represent a God who sees the love that connects our shared humanity, undivided and keeping afloat all that is real, leaving behind all that is false in ourselves: grandiosity, deceit, illusion, and separateness. In this vision the rainbow would be the promise that we are never separated from God’s love, that love is the only thing that is real, and that we need no longer divide in order to conquer, but unify in order to heal.
Grace. Love. Unity. Sounds like the Gospel. Doesn’t sound like AiG’s culture war Ark, and the divine drowning of perhaps 20 billion people.
The Rainmaker in Williamstown
by Treavor Bogard
Today’s post comes from our colleague Treavor Bogard, Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Dayton. Treavor, whose expertise is in English education, draws some pretty clear connections between Ken Ham and a stock character from the work of Flannery O’Connor.
Straight from a Flannery O’Connor story, it is Ken Ham.
An early feasibility study projected that the Ark Encounter would create 900 jobs, attract 1.6 million visitors in its first year, and generate a $214 million in economic impact for the region. The projections indicated that the Ark would rank below the twenty most attended theme parks in the U.S. With numbers like that, Williamstown city leaders had no problem believing that the Ark would be the town’s economic lifeboat, and offered $62 million to jumpstart construction on the Ark using high-risk, tax-increment financing of bonds.
But as has been reported in prior blog posts, the number of visitors to Williamstown has fallen far short of projections, leaving people to wonder if their encounters with Ham, who persuaded them to jump on board with the Ark, threw reason and objectivity overboard. As local businesses bemoan the absence of tourism in the area, Ham boasts that attendance at the Ark exceeds expectations and blames community developers for not taking advantage of the influx of visitors to the region. His reaction is telling: Ham and AiG manufacture faith not from believing in things unseen, but from constructing the reality they want to see.
The situation unfolding in Williamstown evokes a common trope in Southern Gothic fiction in which a “rainmaker” brings hope to an alienated town. Selling promises he can’t keep, he wins the trust of a community by reflecting back to them what they want to see. In times of drought and depression, he brings prayer, staged healings, and assurance of rain then, in a classic bait-and-switch, leaves town with their money. In the short stories of Flannery O’Connor, he appears as the devil disguised as an innocent—a young bible salesman, for instance—who exploits his victims’ faith in the decency of “good country people.” And after the offering plate is passed, he runs away with the loot, leaving the people broken, but perhaps wiser to the world. Where the community was once blind it can now see more clearly the world as it actually exits. These tales reveal how a charismatic evangelical can play to a community’s economic interests and feed its desire to have its faith and worldview affirmed.
In the tale of the Ark, the people of Williamstown stand in its shadow and look up to see Ham onboard, aloof to the sea of debt that may drown the town that materialized his vision. In the absence of tourists to justify the local development, Williamstown will struggle to keep the Ark afloat as visitors find food and lodging in cities with lots more to offer than Williamstown.
Will the people of Williamstown regard the Ark as a burden for the faithful, another cross to bear? Or will their encounter with the Ark offer redemption from religious intemperance? Such an encounter might awaken people to the cost of privileging faith over reason, emotion over intellect, intuition over fact, and denial over acceptance.
The Enemy is Religious Pluralism
by William Trollinger
In trying to understand why a strong minority of Americans voted for Donald Trump as president, much attention has been paid to the economic and cultural disaffection of blue-collar and rural whites. Less effort has been made in trying to explain (and not simply describe) the fact that 81% of white evangelicals threw their support behind Trump.
But in her recent Commonweal article, “Jesus Freaks and Donald Trump,” Julia Marley makes a powerful case that the Trump campaign connected well with the notion popular among evangelicals – and articulated by a host of Christian Right leaders, including Answers in Genesis (AiG) CEO Ken Ham – that it is Christians in America who are the suffering and the persecuted, that it is Christians and not Muslims who endure the most discrimination in America. The evidence for such persecution is not violence and death, but, instead, the loss of cultural hegemony, the decline and fall of Christian America.
Of course, and as we argue in Righting America, “one might respond that it makes sense to end Christianity’s privilege in the public square, given that . . . twenty-first-century America is a religiously diverse place, filled with people of very different faiths and of no particular faith” (162). But that is not the response of Ken Ham and the Christian Right. For them, the end of Christian America is not understood as a demographic reality, but, instead, as a moral and political disaster. As Marley astutely points out:
Here is where Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” comes into play. It’s easy to see how the slogan harks back to a whiter and more racially segregated America. But evangelicals may also be thinking of a past when there was prayer in public schools, gay marriage was illegal, there wasn’t any mainstream discussion of trans rights, and, of course, you’d only hear “Merry Christmas” during what we now call “the holidays.” Conservative Christians see religious pluralism – and the state’s reflection of that pluralism – as encroaching on their right to practice their own faith.
Religious pluralism in America equals persecution of Christians. Of course, with Donald Trump in the White House and at the podium giving the commencement address at Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s Liberty University, one might imagine that white evangelicals might take a break from their personal persecution fantasies. But no. Ken Ham is certainly not going to abandon his claims of victimage. Instead, he doubles down, linking the (alleged) persecution of AiG with the (alleged) persecution of Donald Trump:
Much of the media is dishonest – many reporters have been publishing misinformation about Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum, and the Ark Encounter for years . . . Sadly, much of the media does to us what they do to politicians and political issues – spreading fake news to deliberately malign those they don’t agree with [emphasis in original]. The left-wing, secular media is doing to President Trump what they’ve done to us for years – spreading false accusations, lies, and misinformation; being engaged in censorship; and more.
The Christian Right wins the Presidency and the Congress, and they remain the victims. As Marley eloquently concludes, we have entered
a baffling era when evangelicals continue to cast themselves as martyrs even as their man, Vice President Mike Pence, whispers into Trump’s ear and Steve “Church Militant” Bannon churns out executive orders – a period when the evangelical Christian fantasizes about dying under Diocletian even while living under Constantine. It’s possible to see yourself as a victim while you’re assaulting others’ civil rights. And it’s possible, as Constantine did, to march into battle under the sign of the cross and fail to notice the irony.
It’s more than possible. Such irony is lost on Ken Ham and the Christian Right. Too bad for the rest of us.
The Persecution of White Evangelicals
by William Trollinger
White evangelical Christians endure more discrimination in America than do Muslims.
Who says so? White evangelical Christians.
According to a new Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) poll, 57% of white evangelical Protestants believe that discrimination against themselves is high, while 44% believe the same about Muslims. White evangelicals were the only religious group to claim that they endure more discrimination than Muslims. White mainline Protestants, white Catholics, and other Americans say – by more than a 2 to 1 margin – that they believe that Muslims experience more discrimination than they do.
White evangelicals claim that they experience more discrimination than do Muslims “despite the fact,” as Rokia Hassanien of Americans United for Separation of Church and State has noted, “that Muslims [who are less than 1% of the population] are victims of 22 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes in the U.S.” White evangelicals make this claim despite the fact that the candidate they voted for by a 81-19% margin now sits in the White House. White evangelicals make this claim despite the fact, as we noted here a few weeks ago, we now have an administration filled with conservative evangelicals (and creationists). And let’s not even mention the administration’s obsession with imposing a Muslim travel ban.
The claim that white evangelicals endure more discrimination than do Muslims seems, at best, preposterous. But the lament that “we are being persecuted” has been a central feature of the Christian Right playbook for decades.
Take, for example, Answers in Genesis (AiG) CEO Ken Ham. As we document in Righting America, Ham and AiG repeatedly make the case that in America “true Christians are the downtrodden and the persecuted, true Christians are portrayed [by the larger culture] as the enemy, true Christians are seen as ‘fair game’ for ‘brazen’ attacks that ‘are vicious, slanderous, and full of lies and hatred’” (162-163). Here is Ham himself from his book The Lie: Evolution/Millions of Years:
Christian absolutes – those truths and standards of Scripture that cannot be altered – are becoming less and less tolerated in society . . . Eventually this must result in the outlawing of Christianity – a possibility that seems more and more real with legislation that not only restricts Christian activities even in America but that also lays a foundation for Christians to be viewed as criminals because of the ways hate crimes legislation and other laws can ultimately be used (33).
In short, as Ken Ham and his colleagues see it, not only are white evangelical Christians being persecuted in the United States, but they face the very real prospect that Christianity will soon be made illegal. When that dreadful day comes, being Christian in America will be a criminal act, being Christian in America will mean serious jail time, being Christian could even mean state-sponsored execution.
But more on this in the next post.
Creationists “Love Science!” Really?
by Susan Trollinger
In a March 9, 2017 blog post, Ken Ham critiqued the organizers of the March for Science (which will be held on April 22 in Washington DC and elsewhere) for their apparent exclusion of creation scientists from their march. Ham admits that they “are careful with their wording and don’t really come out as against any particular position” but, nevertheless, Ham can read a text. He knows what they really mean. And what they really mean is that this group of “scientists and science enthusiasts” doesn’t welcome creation scientists or creationists who “love science” because “much of science is controlled by an atheistic, naturalistic worldview.” And they impose that worldview on everything, which is why they don’t give creation scientists a fair shake either at their marches or in their journals.
And to make matters worse, they don’t even acknowledge their exclusionary treatment of creation scientists and creationists because they “don’t recognize the difference between observational and historical science.” They think that when they do science, they do it from a neutral position, unlike creation scientists. But, as Ham points out, that’s impossible:
Science is indeed “a tool for seeking answers,” but, when it comes to the past, what you believe about the past determines your interpretation. Scientists can’t be entirely neutral. Historical science always comes with “special interests” and “personal convictions” about the past.
Readers of our Science chapter will recall that this distinction between historical science and observational science is a big deal for Ham and his colleagues at AiG. And that’s because of the really important work it does to discredit mainstream science. If all science that talks about the past (historical science) is influenced by the perspective (whether evolutionary or creationist) that scientists bring to their work, then mainstream science is no more neutral, no less biased, no more true than creation science. At the epistemological level, it’s all the same.
Now, things are different for observational science, so says Ham and his colleagues at AiG. Because observational science is about observations and experiments that take place in the present and does not speculate on what did or did not happen in the past, it does not suffer the same bias problem. For Ham and his colleagues at AiG, observational science is proper science.
Given how important this distinction is for Ham and company, we assumed that the science in the Creation Museum would be of the observational type. If that’s the right way to do science, then surely the Creation Museum would put a premium on that kind of science, right?
When we took a really close look at the area of the museum that is dedicated to flood geology (the creation science that seeks to prove that Noah’s Flood can explain all apparent evidence for an old Earth), for instance, here’s what we found:
- There are 38 placards in the flood geology section.
- Only 26 of them display anything that appears scientific (just from a commonsense view—information that appears to have been culled from careful observation, experimentation, and/or measurement.
- Of those 26, 10 do not display observational science since they feature events or phenomena that occurred in the past and cannot be observed in the present.
- That leaves 16 of the 38 (or 42% of the total).
- When we looked closely at the remaining 16, we found that 3 of them did display observational science but in a purely informational way. They include, for instance, measurements of an Allosaurus skeleton. Certainly, such measurements are repeatable and therefore do count as real science. But the placards make no connection between that information and a young earth or a biblical creation. So, yes, it’s real science according to AiG, but it doesn’t further their scientific argument in any way.
- Of the remaining 13 placards, we found that only 7 both display observational science AND make an argument about a biblical creation. Importantly, of those 7, 4 present arguments against evolution rather than for a biblical creation.
- So, we were left with 3—just 3—placards (8% of the total) that make some kind of argument that connects to a biblical creation. We should point out that none of the 3 tries to prove that God created the universe in six 24-hour days less than 10,000 years ago. Instead, they make arguments on behalf of the idea that Noah’s global flood can explain why the earth seems old when it really isn’t.
We won’t go into the arguments of those 3 placards here (see pp. 88-94 in Righting America). Suffice it to say that in our opinion they strain credulity to the breaking point.
To return to the place where we began—the problem with those scientists planning the March for Science is that they refuse to acknowledge the difference between observational science and historical science and thereby fail to recognize their own bias. By contrast, Ham and his colleagues at AiG are serious about that distinction, especially when they want to discredit mainstream science. Odd that they are so serious about it while, as the Creation Museum clearly indicates, they make so little use of it. It does make one wonder just how much they “love science” after all.
Investment Consultants: Ark Encounter a Very Bad Bet
by William Trollinger
Ken Ham, CEO of Answers in Genesis (AiG), loves to blast critics of Ark Encounter – the fundamentalist tourist site that literalizes Noah’s Flood and the divine drowning of (according to AiG) perhaps 20 billion people – as atheists, secularists, and liberals determined to silence the Ark’s biblical message. But what about those critics who are sober and credentialed financial analysts?
First, let’s recap.
Ark Encounter opened in July 2016, thanks in good part to the fact that in 2013 the nearby town of Williamstown issued $62m worth of bonds and loaned the proceeds to Ark Encounter to get the project off the ground. This sweet deal, made especially sweet by the provision that over the next thirty years 75% of what Ark Encounter would have paid in property taxes will actually go toward paying back the loan. And if the Ark goes under, it is taxpayers and investors who are left holding that 62 million dollar bag.
Over the past eight months it has become increasingly apparent that things are not going swimmingly for the Ark. While AiG provides little in the way of attendance figures, the numbers that have been provided suggest that it is unlikely that it will attract Ken Ham’s projected 1.4m-2.2m visitors in the first year. Given that once-touted large-scale improvements have been swapped (at least for now) for relatively minor additions to the park, scheduled for 2017, the promise of annual attendance increases – promised in the bond issue prospectus – seems even more unlikely. Perhaps most important, the projected burst in local development that was supposed to accompany the opening of Ark Encounter has simply not materialized.
All this is very bad news for the taxpayers of Williamstown and the investors who bought the bonds. Interestingly, the perils of betting on Ark Encounter were detailed in a prescient August 2016 report released by Gurtin Municipal Bond Management, which is “a registered investment adviser with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission.” In this report, entitled “Municipal Credit Update: Williamstown, KY’s Ark Encounter May End Up Sinking Investors,” AiG’s big “boat” is held up as Exhibit A of what dangers lurk “in the deepest corners of the municipal [bond] market,” i.e., “projects that push the boundaries of risk and suitability for a municipal bond portfolio.”
This three-page report is brutally frank, and very much worth reading in its entirety. What is important to keep in mind when reading their analysis is that these folks are not Ham’s culture war adversaries, but, instead, financial consultants who simply worry that investors do not understand that “not all municipal bonds are truly municipal,” not all municipal bonds are “a safe haven.” We will let Gurtin have the last word, as his analogy seems quite instructive:
As just one example of a project that we believe bears similarities to the Ark Encounter, we would present the case of Marineland of Florida. The harsh reality of the “if you build it, they will come” mentality was felt by investors in the defaulted aquatic park located in St. Augustine, Florida. The expectation was that bond-financed restoration of one of the nation’s oldest aquariums and aquatic theme parks would . . . help Marineland compete with other attractions in Florida. . . . Marineland’s similarly weak economic and tourism characteristics as Williamstown, Kentucky and a debt repayment structure that also relied on ticket sales and concessions . . . ultimately resulted in a bond default and subsequent bankruptcy filing . . . Ultimately, bondholders received $245 for every $1,000 invested.
