Ken Ham’s Reformation: Don’t You Dare Challenge Him! (My thoughts on his thoughts about Joel Duff’s thoughts about him seeing himself as a modern day Martin Luther)

Allow me to give a brief back-story to the topic of this post. On January 1^st, Ken Ham wrote an article for the Answers in Genesis (AiG) website entitled, “Igniting a New Reformation in 2017,” in which he compared his efforts at the Ark Encounter to that of Martin Luther. Martin Luther had taken a stand against the corruption, and what he felt was the erroneous doctrines of the Catholic Church of his day, and Ken Ham is taking a stand against the findings of modern science, which he conveniently calls “blind belief,” because the findings of modern science conflict with his insistence that Genesis 1-11 is God’s historical-science textbook.

Then on January 2^nd, biology professor Joel Duff (who maintains a blog in which he discusses the creation-evolution debate quite extensively) wrote a post on his blog entitled, “Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter to Usher in a Modern Day Reformation?” In his post, he points out that Ham’s YEC has its roots, not only in Henry Morris and John Whitcomb’s 1961 book, The Genesis Flood, but ultimately in the work of 7^th Day Adventist George McCready-Price, who tried to argue scientifically that there was a literal world-wide flood of Noah and that the entire universe was only about 6,000 years old.

Duff also points out that Ken Ham’s fundamental claim for YEC is rooted is his understanding of biblical authority. Ham feels that if you don’t read Genesis 1-11 as history and science, you are undermining biblical authority. And Duff, like myself, obviously doesn’t not agree. Good biblical scholarship shows that the early chapters of Genesis are not intended to be read a historical and scientific accounts. I would add that, therefore, to insist that they are historical and scientific accounts, would be, in actuality, to go against biblical authority, or at the very least, to misinterpret those chapters.

Fast forward to yesterday, January 10^th. Ken Ham wrote his own blog post, entitled, “My Parents are to Blame!” in response to Dr. Duff’s post. And that is the focus of my post.

A Quick Overview of Ham’s Post
If you ever wanted to learn how to engage in ad hominem attacks, Ken Ham would be a terrific case study. The gist of Ham’s post is basically this in bullet-point form:

• Joel Duff writes for BioLogos, who wants churches to “reject a literal reading of Genesis and believe in evolutionary biology, geology, anthropology, astronomy”
• I’m not going to respond to his “attack article”
• Duff ignores the work of our “highly-qualified researchers,” and needs to do “careful research” instead of “following unbelievers”
• Duff’s language is “sarcastic and demeaning,” and he uses ad hominem attacks against me
• It’s a false accusation that AiG has its roots in 7^th Day Adventism and Ellen G. White; I got my view from my parents!
• Duff relies on the work of “the openly agnostic, apostate Seventh Day Adventist historian, Ronald Numbers”
• YEC was not a “novel view invented by 7^th Day Adventists;” it was “historical Christian orthodoxy” until the 19^th century, when atheists, deists, professing Christian geologists decided to ignore Genesis; it was then that “most of the church quickly compromised with millions of years”
• McCready-Price didn’t “invent” YEC; he was simply “interpreting the geological record using ‘biblical glasses’”
• This is why we need a new reformation!

Let’s Get to the Facts
As you can tell from the bullet-points alone, there really isn’t much to Ham’s post other than, ironically, a lot of ad hominem attacks—the very thing he accuses Duff of engaging in. You can read Duff’s article for yourself, I’m pretty sure you won’t find a personal ad hominem attack on Ken Ham, despite what Ham claims here.

Nevertheless, there are a couple of specific claims that we can look at more closely. First, in regards to Ham’s claim that Duff ignores the works of young earth creations, I invite you to check out Duff’s blog and skim his posts. The simple fact is that Duff regularly analyzes and critiques the work of young earth creationists. So on this point, what Ken Ham is saying is demonstrably false.

Secondly, Ham claims that YEC doesn’t have its roots in either the work of Henry Morris or 7^th Day Adventism, but rather was “historical Christian orthodoxy” up until the 19^th century. (We’ll ignore his claim that he got his views from his parents, though—I’m pretty sure Duff was talking about the historical origins of YEC as a movement, and was not trying to speculate on where Ham personally got his views from).

Well, to the point, that’s simply not true. First, on AiG’s own website, you can find articles like this one about Henry Morris, in which Morris is called “the father of the modern creationist movement.” They also acknowledge that George McCready-Price was the first “flood geologist” of the 20^th century.

In addition, it is simply a matter of historical fact that insistence on a literal/scientific reading of the early chapters of Genesis (and hence belief in a young earth) has never been “historical Christian orthodoxy.” No matter how many times AiG makes this claim, it simply isn’t true: no early Church Father saw the age of the earth as a fundamental of Christian orthodoxy; nowhere in the creeds is such a claim made; and nowhere in Church history has such a claim ever been made…until very recently…by young earth creationists like Ken Ham. Anyone familiar with how Christian theologians have read the early chapters of Genesis throughout history knows full well that those chapters have been read and interpreted a number of ways, and that at no time was it ever insisted that a YEC interpretation like that of Ken Ham’s was part of the historical, orthodox Christian faith.

The fact is that the YEC movement, according to AiG’s own words, was started by Henry Morris in 1961. The fact is Morris was influence by McCready-Price’s work. And the fact is that YEC has never been considered part of “historical Christian orthodoxy.”

How Many Ad Hominem Attacks Can You Spot?
The most fascinating thing to me about Ham’s post, though, wasn’t his factual errors. Those are simply par for the course. What continues to fascinate me is the subtle (or not so subtle?) way Ham and AiG engages in manipulative rhetoric. The very way they even set up an article or depict an AiG “opponent” is designed to evoke fear and suspicion before one even considers what that “opponent” says. You see this sort of thing all the time with partisan websites: if a left-wing website does a story on a conservative, chances are the picture they use of that conservative is a rather unflattering picture that makes that person look either sinister or ridiculous. The same holds true for right-wing websites.

What Ham and AiG does, though, is pepper their articles and posts with little comments, all designed to get you to not like the person they want you to not like, before you really even know anything about who that person is or what that person is saying. In Ham’s post alone, I noticed several ad hominem attacks on the first reading.

• Look at how Ham depicts BioLogos. If you are a follower of Ham, the very mention of BioLogos will cause you be fearful, for Ham routinely depicts BioLogos as an enemy to the Christian faith. Duff’s article isn’t about BioLogos at all, yet Ham makes sure to let his readers know that Duff has written for BioLogos—why? Because for a Ham follower, BioLogos = Bad.
• Look at how Ham characterizes Duff’s article as being full of “sarcastic and demeaning language.” Again, I challenge you to read Duff’s article and see if you can find any such thing. (Granted, I can sometimes get sarcastic, but I have yet to see much on Duff’s blog.)
• Notice that Ham accuses Duff of ad hominem attacks against himself, although he doesn’t bother to give any examples. The reason why? There aren’t any in Duff’s article. Still, the effect of the charge is obvious: Ham is saying, “Duff has nothing! He’s just taking cheap shots!” In this case the charge of ad hominem questions the character person, and is in effect an ad hominem in and of itself. (And to be clear, am I accusing Ham of using ad hominem attacks? Absolutely. Does this reflect poorly on his character? Absolutely. Do I give examples of this? Yes, indeed.)
• In Duff’s article, he mentions the book The Creationists by Ronald Numbers, a former 7^th Day Adventist. Ham characterizes Numbers as an “openly agnostic apostate 7^th Day Adventist” whose historical analysis is “distorted.” Later, Ham calls him an “unbeliever.” If that’s not ad hominem, I don’t know what is. Does such a characterization say to you, “This guy makes certain claims we disagree with; check him out—we’re confident that the evidence is on our side and you’ll find his argument unconvincing”? Or is the impression you get: “Agnostic! Apostate! Danger!”? Even if Numbers is not a Christian, does that mean one should reject his argument about the historical development of YEC out of hand? Ham certainly wants you to come to that conclusion.

UPDATE SINCE THE ORIGINAL POST: Something of a highly ironic nature has been made known to me by someone who commented on this post. You can see his comments in the comment section, but I wanted to insert his insight into the post itself. It turns out that Ronald Numbers’ book, The Creationists–the one that Ken Ham asserted was full of “distorted historical analysis;” written by an author that Ken Ham described as “agnostic” and “apostate”–was endorsed by none other than Henry Morris himself. That’s right, Ken Ham’s idol, the man whom AiG praises as “the father of the modern creationist movement,” was so impressed with Numbers’ book that he wrote a glowing endorsement of it that you can read on the back cover of The Creationists. Here is what Morris wrote: “For those interested in the background of the modern revival of creationism, whether evolutionists or creationists, this book is a rich mine of information and historical insights.” Henry M. Morris, Institute for Creation Research.

To say that I find that incredibly amazing is an understatement. It borders on the comedic.

• In conclusion, Ham (as usual with anyone who disagrees with him) accuses Duff of “compromise.” Compromise of what? Biblical authority, of course. But is Duff really compromising on biblical authority, or does he simply think Ham is wrong to insist that the early chapters of Genesis are meant to be read as the “historical science textbook” Ham claims? After all, we need to be clear: it is Ham’s claims that run contrary to (a) modern science, (b) biblical scholarship, and (c) the entire history of the Church.

In Conclusion
Next month, to commemorate the three-year anniversary of Ken Ham’s debate with Bill Nye, I will be doing a series of posts on Ham’s book, Inside the Nye/Ham Debate, not to debate or rehash the arguments of the “creation/evolution debate,” but rather to analyze the tactics Ham uses when he discusses the debate. This post, in effect, is somewhat of a preview.

If you are someone interested in science, I highly encourage you to subscribe to Joel Duff’s blog. You’ll learn quite a lot. He also has a book out about the Grand Canyon that is a worthwhile read as well. In addition, if you look through my blog, you’ll find numerous articles on the problems with Ken Ham’s young earth creationism. Or, if you want a concise and thorough analysis of the creation/evolution debate, let me encourage you to check out my book, The Heresy of Ham.