Incredulity in Peoria
by William Trollinger
Having spent almost a decade studying Answers in Genesis (AiG) and the Creation Museum, we sometimes forget how foreign the young earth creationist world is to a large swath of the American public.
It was great to be at the First Baptist Church of Peoria last weekend, where our old friend (and occasional Righting America blogger) Dr. Rodney Kennedy is the interim pastor. It turned out that the weekend marked the 50th anniversary of Rod’s ordination. It was such a privilege to be with him that occasion and to hear the enthusiastic applause from the congregation during Sunday morning worship.
I (Bill) had the privilege of making two presentations on Righting America. I presented one, which I wrote, on Saturday afternoon titled “A Literal Word: The Remarkable History of Creationism.” I presented another, which Sue wrote (she could not come along on the trip due to a minor illness) on Sunday afternoon. It was titled “Science and Righting America at the Creation Museum.” At each talk there were approximately 60 individuals (a few of whom were from the outside community) in attendance, and I could not have asked for a more gracious and attentive audience.
And, I have to say, bewildered. In this regard, and as we often are, I was struck by the gulf between young earth creationist fundamentalists and other Christians and other Americans. Here are some of the questions I was asked:
- How could Noah have fed all those animals for a year?
- How could he have had dinosaurs on the Ark?
- Do they really believe that humans and dinosaurs were on the earth at the same time?
- How can they reject carbon-14 dating?
- When they say “inerrant Bible,” which translation are they talking about?
- How can they pretend that the two creation stories in Genesis 1-2 are really just one account?
- Who could believe that the universe is less than 10,000 years old?
- Is there anything scientific about creation science? Anything logical?
I repeatedly responded that young earth creationists have answers for all these questions and objections. But the AiG answers I shared – e.g., Noah brought very young dinosaurs onto the Ark, and anyway, most dinosaurs were not that large – were received with incredulity and even laughter. Who could believe such explanations?
The most poignant moment of the weekend came when I was asked this question:
- How can I have meaningful conversations with my fundamentalist relatives about these matters?
I confess that I had no good answer to this question. But as I thought about it while driving back to Dayton on Sunday evening, I was reminded that fundamentalist apologetics – and that is what AiG is all about – is not about furthering dialogue with the other. It is even not primarily about converting the other. Instead, and as we note in Righting America,
The AiG apologetics ministry is designed to give people the Truth and make sure they are so fully indoctrinated in the Truth that they do not budge from the Truth. To use the warlike imagery so beloved by Ken Ham, AiG provides not only the “Christian patriot missiles” with which to attack the enemy, but also (and perhaps more importantly) a suit of armor that will ensure complete protection from the enemy, including an extraordinarily thick helmet that will render the mind impervious to dangerous ideas (208).
And, I am afraid, impervious to meaningful dialogue. That is to say, the gulf between young earth creationists and other Christians and other Americans is not an accident.
The Sinking of a Small Town
by William Trollinger
Local TV news is often derided as superficial and sensational. “If it bleeds, it leads” is the common adage. But there are times when a local newscast really does shine light and really does help us understand.
One such example is the February 25 report by Emilie Arroyo (WKYT, Lexington) entitled “Community Says Ark Park’s Economic Promise Falls Short.” Here’s a selection from this 90-second segment (and note that the quotes are from Steve Wood, the top administrator in Grant County, where Ark Encounter is located):
To the nearby Williamstown community [the Ark] once looked like a lifeboat to save them from financial woes and job cuts. But all that has changed over the last seven months since it opened. “I think the Ark has done well. And I’m glad for them on that. But it has not done us good at all.”. . . Promises of shared crowds and economic development are falling short for the nearby Kentucky community. “I was one of these believers that when the Ark came . . . everything was going to come in. But it’s not done it.” Williamstown leaders say they thought the park would boost their downtown region. Instead, they continue to teeter on the edge of bankruptcy as shops remain empty and foot traffic stays light. “Nothing. I don’t mean to sound negative in this interview, but there’s nothing here.”
The national media – New York Daily News and Raw Story – have picked up on this story, making clear that it is Grant County that is on the verge of bankruptcy, the result being that the county is considering the possibility of laying off workers and imposing a 2% payroll tax. The Raw Story article also makes reference to the fact that, amidst this financial chaos, Ham’s ark stands to benefit from what could be an 18 million dollar sales tax rebate (while the Raw Story states that this would come from the county, it actually would come from the state of Kentucky).
All of these reports miss a larger and more tragic part of this story. As we have noted before – most recently on February 7 – Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis (AiG) worked hard to sell Williamstown on the notion that Ark Encounter was going to be their economic lifeboat. So the little town gave the project $62 million in Tax Incremental Funding (TIF). Over the next three decades, 75% of Ark Encounter’s property taxes will go toward repaying the bonds instead of into local coffers. Even better for AiG, if the promised economic development does not materialize, it is the taxpayers and investors who are on the hook for those TIFs, not AiG.
Given all of this, it makes a great deal of sense that local officials are worried about the Ark’s failure to generate development. Just one month after the Ark’s opening the mayor of Williamstown, Rick Shermer, expressed concern that the town was not experiencing the economic boost it had been promised.
At that time, Ken Ham responded to Shermer and others by asserting that developers should ignore
the continual stream of negative, false information from the secular media and atheist bloggers. I think much of the secular media is responsible for part of the issue regarding the impact on the surrounding area, as they have spread so much false information about the Ark Encounter . . . The Ark Encounter can’t be held responsible for what others (businesses/developers) do or don’t do in the region. I challenge business owners and developers to take advantage of this big influx of visitors into the region to help their local communities prosper.
But as regards these latest complaints from local leaders, Ham has not – as of yet – had anything to say. Instead, he and his AiG colleagues are focusing on attendance numbers at the Ark. As reported by Emilie Arroyo:
The Ark hosted about 500,000 visitors in 2016, and a staffer says they have had about 645,000 guests to date. [Ken Ham:] “Looking at the bookings for the future and looking at the group bookings I would say we’re well on target to hit our minimum of 1.4 million up to 2.2 million, as the research has suggested.”
There are two problems with this. First, the numbers. As we have repeatedly noted, while Ham and AiG occasionally provide numbers, they never provide evidence of their accuracy.
But let’s play along. Let’s imagine that, as of February 25, 645,000 individuals had visited the Ark. This means that from July 7 to February 25 the Ark averaged 2756.4 visitors per day. Keep in mind that this includes two summer months; keep in mind that this includes a month or so of intense media coverage of the grand opening of the Ark. But let’s just go with 2756.4 visitors per day. If that average continues all the way until July 7, 2017, the Ark will have received just over 1 million visitors.
How does Ham come up with “1.4 million up to 2.2 million” visitors in the first year? Is he assuming that daily attendance will increase dramatically with the newly-opened graphic-novel-styled “Why the Bible is True” exhibit, the springtime opening of some shops and kiosks outside the Ark, the promised expansion of (as one commentator put it) “tobacco country’s saddest zoo,” and the fact that Emzara’s Kitchen now has a buffet (which has its own promotional video)?
But the attendance numbers are not the primary problem. However many guests actually visit the ark in its first year (800,000 or 1.0m or 1.4m or even 2.2m), there is no sign of a local development boom. What Ken Ham and AiG sold to community leaders who were desperate for an economic boost is not coming to pass. As Arroyo mentioned at the beginning of her story, the Ark has not turned out to be a lifeboat for Williamstown. Ark Encounter may be doing great, but the local community is not.
But then, this is precisely Ark Encounter’s message. Everybody inside the Ark is snug, happy, and safe. All those outside the Ark as the floodwaters rise? They drown.
Donald and Ken vs. the Media
by William Trollinger
Donald Trump and his White House are now shutting out reporters they deem to be unfriendly. While many Americans are horrified by this blatant disregard for a free press, sixteen months ago Ken Ham happily predicted that something like this would happen:
Many Americans are sick of the political correctness in this nation, as well as the liberal, humanistic agenda of much of the secular media! . . . Many people are rallying behind Donald Trump because in our sea of political correctness and liberal media, Trump (regardless of whether he is correct in some of his beliefs) does speak with authority. It comes across as genuine . . . In many ways he is prepared to ‘call it as he sees fit,’ even if it’s blunt and not politically correct. And he will deal with the media as he sees fit (emphasis added).
As we have noted on several occasions, there are real affinities between Ken Ham and Donald Trump. Both use grade-school logic to defend preposterous positions. Both love to use the word “sad” to describe those who disagree with them. Both have great affection for “alternative facts” – including alternative attendance facts (regarding the Inaugural and regarding Ark Encounter) – and both double down on their “alternative facts” when evidence undercuts their claims.
And both Ham and Trump love to vilify reporters and bloggers who dare point out their untruths. In his February 5 blog post, “Why is America a Divided Nation?”, Ham connects the dots for his readers:
As we watch news in the United States regarding politics, remember we are viewing a worldview clash . . . Much of what the secular media is doing in politics is what they’ve done to Answers in Genesis for years – misinformation, statements, [sic] and facts taken out of context, and blatantly untrue statements. Regardless of what battles we see in our culture, it’s all part of a real [spiritual] war going on.
It’s a war. A cosmic war, and Ham and Trump are on the same side. And they are operating out of the same playbook. A fundamentally undemocratic playbook.
Upcoming Events for Righting America
by Susan Trollinger and William Trollinger
Righting America at the Creation Museum has received a number of positive reviews and is gaining attention of many in both academic circles and among religious leaders. We are excited to share news of our upcoming events in which we will be discussing Righting America as well as our current research projects.
On Saturday, March 4th and Sunday, March 5th the First Baptist Church of Peoria (IL) will host us as guest speakers for their “Creationism vs. Evolution” learning series. We will be presenting “The Remarkable HIstory of Creationism in American Life,” on Saturday from 1 – 3pm and “Science, Bible, and Righting America at the Creation Museum” on Sunday from 11:15am – 12:30pm. Contact First Baptist Church to reserve your space.
We will be leading a 5-part seminar, “The Past and Present of American Fundamentalism,” as part of the Westminster Presbyterian Church of Dayton’s Adult Education Program. This seminar will run weekly from 11:20am – 12:15pm from Sunday, April 23rd through Sunday, May 21st. Drop-ins are welcome.
We will be presenting our paper, “Sacred Rhetoric Turned into Culture War at the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter” at Winebrenner Theological Seminary’s Sacred Rhetoric Conference, scheduled for May 31st – June 2nd in Findlay, OH. The Sacred Rhetoric Confernece explores discourses of religion, both as it is depicted in various media formats and how religious practitioners discuss issues within confessional communities. Registration is due by May 1, 2017; the conference fee is $90 for faculty and community members, and $50 for graduate students.
Finally, we have been invited to speak at the American Atheists 2017 National Convention, which will convene August 19-21, 2017. The convention, which focuses on intersections of science, space, technology, and atheism, will take place at the North Charleston Marriott in North Charleston, North Carolina.
We hope that you consider attending any of these events and sharing with us your thoughts about Righting America and our blog.
Time to Live in the Real World (as Bleak as It May Be)
by William Trollinger
From the beginning, the dream was an exercise in the worst sort of wishful thinking.
Over the past fifty-odd years, the Christian Right has been the most reliable constituency within the Republican Party. But over these same five decades, scholars and political commentators have issued a persistent stream of proclamations that the Christian Right is dead or is nearly dead or will soon be dead. Signs of its imagined imminent demise have included the televangelist scandals of the 1980s, Pat Robertson’s failed run at the presidency in 1988, the election and re-election of Bill Clinton, the emergence and re-emergence of “young” evangelicals who would not toe the Right line, the overwhelming victory of Barack Obama in 2008, and, most recently, the alleged conflict in the Republican Party between economically-focused libertarians and social conservatives (a claim that required a stubborn unwillingness to see the enormous overlap between the Tea Party and the Christian Right).
But after November 8, only a person determined to live in a progressive fantasyland will miss the import of the Christian Right in American politics. Ignoring or discounting their candidate’s misogyny, racism, and heavy dependence on alt-facts, an estimated 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. Trump has rewarded them for their support. Not only is Mike Pence — creationist and staunch opponent of gay rights — Vice President of the United States, but Trump has filled his cabinet with conservative evangelicals such as Ben Carson, Betsy DeVos, Rick Perry, and Scott Pruitt. Most striking, Liberty University president Jerry Falwell, Jr., who on election night described Donald Trump as the “dream candidate” for evangelicals, has been appointed by Trump to lead a task force aiming to “reform” American higher education.
The day for make-believe has past. And not only do we need to see clearly, we need to understand. Righting America at the Creation Museum is one window into the Christian Right. As we argue in the book, Answers in Genesis (AiG) – the fundamentalist apologetics enterprise that is behind both the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter – is “a Christian Right arsenal in the culture war” (191). All the emphasis on young Earth creationism and biblical literalism cannot mask the fact that AiG’s goal is to “prepar[e] and arm crusaders for the ongoing culture war that polarizes and poisons U.S. religion and politics” (15).
“Polarizes and poisons.” A true word when Righting America came out in the spring of 2016. Even more true today.
Why the Creation Museum Made This Evangelical Uncomfortable
by Lee Dixon
Today’s post features our colleague, Dr. Lee Dixon, Associate Professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Dayton. Lee reports on his recent visit to the Creation Museum, raising questions about the museum’s messages from his own perspective as a born-again Christian.
My family, along with another family, recently visited the Creation Museum. We would consider ourselves “born-again” Christians, and we attend evangelical churches. In all, we had 5 kids between the ages of three and six in tow.
Although there were many parts of the museum that were a lot of fun for the kids, it seems that it was designed more for adults. In fact, there were some displays that we were uncomfortable allowing our children to experience. For example, the Cave of Sorrows, which outlines man’s fall, was frightening for some of our youngsters and presents information that we did not want to expose our young children to, such as the consumption of pornography and premarital sex. There was a quality to the museum that scared me as well, but I had a hard time putting my finger on it.
I knew that I was bothered by the overall dark tone of the museum, and the general lack of hope and “good news.” However, it was not until later when reading the Science chapter of Righting America at the Creation Museum that I was able to get a better sense of what I was truly bothered by, and I will try to explain it here.
The Creation Museum, and the information it presents, seems to have one goal: prove, through science, that the Earth was created around six thousand years ago and that all science that points to the contrary is faulty. The impression I get is that this belief in a young earth is seen by the creators of the museum to be a foundation upon which their faith (and all Christianity) is built.
I cannot fault someone for what they believe, but others’ beliefs can and do make me sad. The reason this particular belief makes me sad is that it is so tenuous, and it appears to take so much energy to hold on to. It seems to me that there are so many other more worthwhile endeavors into which one could invest energy: helping the poor, spreading the Good News of Christ, loving one another well, etc.
Personally, I am not comfortable with the argument that is at the heart of the Creation Museum—namely, that the Earth was created by God in six twenty-four-hour days less than 10,000 years ago—because I feel that it places the onus of proving the truth of the Word of God, His existence, and the Gospel as a whole on us humans.
This stance requires first that we decide to believe that every word in the Bible is meant to be taken literally. I am not sure that this makes sense since I cannot recall any portion of the Bible that says that it is all meant to be taken literally. Second, it requires us to look to science for the support of that literal interpretation. Science is a man-made enterprise that is prone to man-made mistakes. I do not want such an error-prone enterprise to serve as the foundation of my faith. I believe that my faith in God comes from Him.
After having visited the Creation Museum, I am more confident in this than ever.
The Irrelevance of Evidence
by Rodney Kennedy
We are pleased to welcome Baptist minister Dr. Rod Kennedy back to the blog, this time to connect the economic, religious, and political dots.
The connections are striking. The economic ideology of a free and unrestrained market, the religious populism of creationism, and the political populism of Mr. Trump. Each of these ideologies emphasizes blind faith that has little or no room for evidence.
Start with capitalism. The free market’s true believers have dug up the body buried in the Great Depression and propped it up against a Wall Street office building and claimed that it is alive and well. As Robert McElvaine puts it in The Great Depression (1984), “The Market-God worshipping forensic economists and historians exhumed the corpse of the twenties economy and pronounced it to have been in good health at the time of its demise; the result was to clear the way for the decriminalized deregulation, tax-slashing for the highest income groups, a rapidly growing concentration of income among the very richest people, and staunch opposition to unions.”
Then there’s creationism. Biologists tell us that evolution has never been on more solid ground than it is today (Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory, 2008). Notwithstanding the evidence, creationists persist in demonizing evolution and those who teach and support it. They claim that evolution is “just a theory” in a clever twisted change in the meaning of “theory” in science. In science, a “theory” defines the currently accepted “truth” and “facts” of science with the disclaimer that science is never arrogant and always subject to its truths and facts being replaced. But creationists try to define “theory” as assumption, opinion, and ideology.
The owner-operator of the Creation Museum, Ken Ham, regales his audience with the strange claim, “I don’t interpret scripture; I just read it.” This plays well in the parallel universe of conservative evangelicals. “Trust the clear message of God” is juxtaposed with “the interpretation of man.” That this is an impossible claim matters not at all to the audience. Tell them that the Hebrew text translated into English is itself an interpretation and eyes glaze over, boredom sets in, and the suspicion that you are a secret agent of Satan rolls over the crowd like fog.
The faith that market-worshippers and creationists have in this particular brand of populism is also reflected in Trump supporters. This faith is so unquestioning that any piece of evidence that contradicts their beliefs is simply discounted. The media is attacked for dispensing “fake news.” Recently, Ms. Kellyanne Conway coined the term “alternative facts” – an incredible oxymoron – to cover outright “pants on fire” lies by President Trump’s press secretary.
The frustration that this engenders in people accustomed to facts, evidence, and critical thinking is that our methods are now discounted. In the world of the media, there is almost no challenger to the populism of conservative evangelicals and their message. Couched in an alleged literalism, we have a set of hypotheses revolving principally around creationism, the Rapture, and a revisionist reading of American history, all of which are dangerous to the health of this planet and to the survival of the human race.
There’s something strangely amiss in a world where truth no longer matters; this is especially disruptive when one of the primary dispensers of this dangerous ideology is a version of Christian faith.
Thus I maintain my initial argument: There are three related movements (first cousins at least) – creationism, political populism, and economic free market ideology – that now dominate the American political/religious/economic landscape. In the words of our new president, he will be able to do as he pleases because people just don’t care. I remain hopeful that he will be as wrong about this as creationists are about the age of the earth.
Righting America cited by Americans United
We were very pleased to see that our post from earlier this week was cited by Rob Boston at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. In his latest editorial on Ken Ham’s defense of Ark Encounter’s murky financing, Boston writes:
Lo and behold, I’ve come to find out that two champions have arisen in our defense. Susan L. Trollinger and William Vance Trollinger Jr., who are both professors at the University of Dayton, challenged Ham’s claim that he’s not receiving any state subsidies.
“While Ham would like readers to focus on these semantics, we should look at something else Ham says: ‘The Ark Encounter was built by donations and bond issue [emphases ours] – no state money was used,’” wrote the two on their blog. “Bond issue. It sounds straightforward. Boring even. But nothing could be further from the truth.”
The Trollingers added, “As we have reported numerous times, in 2013 the town of Williamstown – a few miles from the Ark, with a population under 4,000 – gave Ark Encounter $62 million in Tax Incremental Funding. Over the next thirty years, the Ark will apply 75% of its property taxes toward repayment of these bonds. This is a remarkably sweet deal, made sweeter by the fact that if the Ark sinks, the taxpayers and the investors (and not AiG) will be left holding the bag.”
That sort of puts things in a different light.
Boston notes that he has not yet read Righting America at the Creation Museum, but when he does, we hope he’ll review it!
Who Is Twisting the Truth?
by William Trollinger
Taking a page out of Steve Bannon’s playbook, Answers in Genesis (AiG) CEO Ken Ham has launched a broadside against “the leftist media and bloggers” for “twisting information, disseminating misinformation, and making [sic] outright lies.”
And what has so infuriated Ham? An editorial in the February 2017 issue Church and State — the magazine produced by the Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) – entitled “Dragons and Dinosaurs: Don’t Force Ky. Taxpayers to Prop Up the ‘Ark Park.'” The first part of the editorial describes AiG’s preposterous claim that Beowulf is an eyewitness account that provides evidence of the fact that dinosaurs and humans were on the Earth at the same time (a point we discuss in Righting America, p. 198). After granting that “people have the right to believe things that are flat-out incorrect,” the editor goes on to argue that
What’s not acceptable is expecting taxpayers to prop up this nonsense – and that’s exactly what’s happening in Kentucky. Ham denies that he got state subsidies to build Ark Encounter, but he did. Under a Kentucky program, once a year, all of the 6 percent sales tax that Ark Encounter charged for things like tickets, food and souvenirs is returned to the park. So money that had been in the state treasury is given back to Ark Encounter. That’s a subsidy.
In his February 05 post, “Americans United Group Twisting Truth Once Again,” Ham devotes five paragraphs to attacking this AU statement, all of which can be boiled down to two points:
1. Since the first check from the state of Kentucky will not arrive at Ark Encounter until later this year, the “rebate” (Ham’s word) did not contribute to the building of Ham’s ark.
2. The “rebate” actually is an “overall incredible net gain” for the state of Kentucky, given the “millions of dollars” already brought into the state by Ark Encounter. (No evidence for this claim is provided.)
None of this would seem to invalidate AU’s claim that Kentucky is providing Ark Encounter with a “subsidy.” But never mind. While Ham would like readers to focus on these semantics, we should look at something else Ham says: “The Ark Encounter was built by donations and bond issue [emphases ours]– no state money was used.”
Bond issue. It sounds straightforward. Boring even. But nothing could be further from the truth.
As we have reported numerous times, in 2013 the town of Williamstown – a few miles from the Ark, with a population under 4,000 – gave Ark Encounter $62 million in Tax Incremental Funding. Over the next thirty years, the Ark will apply 75% of its property taxes toward repayment of these bonds. This is a remarkably sweet deal, made sweeter by the fact that if the Ark sinks, the taxpayers and the investors (and not AiG) will be left holding the bag.
It is interesting that Ham never mentions the specifics of this deal, even though telling the truth – which he claims to do in this article – would surely require him to say more than the two-word phrase, “bond issue.”
Of course, if Ham were to talk about this sweet deal, he would surely claim that – as he claims regarding the sales tax subsidy – in the long run this deal benefits the region more than it benefits Ark Encounter. This is how he sold it to little Williamstown, claiming that in its first year Ark Encounter would “attract between 1.2m and 2.0m visitors” which will be “followed by annual attendance increases.” In 2015 he increased the estimated attendance to 1.4m to 2.2m in the Ark’s first year; last August, one month after the Ark opened, Ham proclaimed that the first year “attendance will be way beyond the minimum,” and closer to 2.2m.
Getting Ark attendance information out of AiG is as difficult as is getting Ham to acknowledge the remarkably generous conditions of the bond issue. But as we noted in a recent post, in late December Ham bragged that the Ark had attracted almost 500,000 guests (which, oddly enough, is what AiG’s Mark Looy claimed in mid-November).
Those numbers do not bode well for Ham’s attendance projections. And if AiG falls short of what they told Williamstown to get these bonds, what word should we use to describe what they were given by the town?
Subsidy? Or something else?
Kant’s Wisdom on Fundamentalism
by Susan Trollinger and William Trollinger
We (Bill and Sue) have never been enthusiasts for Kant. The categorical imperative has always left us rather cold. But the other day, as we were preparing for class (we team teach an interdisciplinary course with six other faculty, so we all read the same texts for that class), we were both blown away by how powerfully Kant speaks into the present.
In his essay, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What Is Enlightenment?’” Kant argues that what is at the heart of Enlightenment is the freedom for “the public use of reason” or the freedom to think carefully and then argue convincingly on any matter in public. Kant contrasts this freedom with the obligation to passively obey some command (such as to pay one’s taxes). And while a citizen must obey certain commands like paying their taxes, he argues, they also ought to make public use of their reason by objecting to the tax if their reason tells them that it is unjust.
In the course of the essay, Kant lets his reader know what is at stake here. In calling for the public use of our reason, he is encouraging instability since our public use of reason has the potential to challenge, even overturn, any set of ideas, doctrine, consensus, or apparent truth.
Taking this point seriously, he asks, “But should not a society of clergymen . . . be entitled to commit itself by oath to a certain unalterable set of doctrines, in order to secure for all time a constant guardianship over each of its members, and through them over the people?” (2). Shouldn’t a people of faith (any faith) settle on certain truths and lock them down for all time?
Kant says no because, as he sees it, there is a grave problem in this. And that problem is human beings. Interestingly, for Kant the problem is not so much an epistemological one—human beings are not able to know truth because they are limited, fallen, etc. Rather, the problem is who human beings are by their very nature as reasoning beings. For Kant, to forbid human beings from interrogating some truth in religion (or anything else) is to infantilize them or, worse, dehumanize them. When we do that, we force them to be something that they aren’t. We strip them of what gives them value.
Since 1919, Protestant fundamentalism has been dedicated to the project of nailing down once and for all the “fundamentals” of the Christian faith, as seen by fundamentalists. Answers in Genesis’ “apologetics ministry” continues in that effort. And just as Kant describes such an effort in the quotation above, theirs is a two-part task: 1) to identify the truth(s) that may never change (the inerrant word, a historical Adam and Eve, a young universe, and so forth), and 2) to maintain a “guardianship” over AiG’s members and all fundamentalists. It is AiG’s job (which AiG clearly embraces) to decide which truths may not be contested by fundamentalists and to make them impervious to any critique or challenge whatsoever to those truths.
Is there a problem in this? Kant would reply with a resounding yes! He would surely argue that AiG’s apologetics ministry (and fundamentalism’s project more generally) seeks to strip earnest Christians of what makes them human. Just as bad, it aims to disable their capacity to think carefully and meaningfully about a topic most dear to their hearts—their faith. Rendered silent on what are arguably the most important truths for them, they are called by AiG to a dehumanizing obedience.
What human beings need, Kant would argue, is not ANSWERS in Genesis, but the freedom to ask hard questions about Genesis. While embracing such freedom does bring with it a certain instability, he would admit, the greater risk is in stripping ourselves of what makes us human.
Amen.
