Punctuation for thee and me

Bringing reason to a full stop

The back page of a recent Answers Update (Vol. 18, No. 6) carries a bright little apologetic nugget by Ken Ham himself, the strikingly australopithecine leader of Answers in Genesis. Ham is talking about the earth's effing magnetic field. How does it work?

[G]eophysical and archaeological evidence indicates that 1,000 years ago, the magnetic field of the earth was 40% stronger than today. This field is actually decaying at a rate of 5% per century.

The decay rate may not sound like much, but it's a very important factor in determining the age of the earth. Using the current rate of decay, it's been calculated that just a million years ago, the magnetic field would have been so strong that it would have melted the planet! ...

Creationist physicists declare that the magnetic field is a very strong indicator that our planet cannot be any older than 10,000 years. This, of course, confirms the roughly 6,000-year timeline in the book of Genesis.

Please don't be distracted by Ham's use of amusing little oxymorons like “creationist physicists.” We can easily detect what he is up to. There's a useful word to describe the theoretical foundation for Ham's argument:

Uniformitarianism.

Obvious. Right? Ham is assuming that conditions affecting the earth's magnetic field have remained exactly the same throughout history. What else is that besides uniformitarianism? Of course, Ham might beg to differ. Let's see how he described uniformitarianism in the 1987 edition of his book The Lie: Evolution:

Geologists have the idea that the processes we see operating in the present world have been going on for millions of years at essentially the same rate, and will probably go on for millions of years into the future as well. The technical word used in geology for this belief is “uniformitarianism.” For example, the desert museum in Tucson, Arisona, not only has a display for people to see what supposedly has happened over the past millions of years, but it also has a display of what many scientists believe will happen to Arizona over the millions of years yet to come!

Evolutionists, atheistic and theistic, use the phrase “the present is the key to the past.” In other words, they say that the way to understand the past is to observe what happens in the present.”

Bingo! Ham's magnetic-field argument for a young earth is a page ripped right out of the uniformitarianism playbook. He stands self-accused.

One imagines that Ham might wish to quibble. He could claim that he was using a reductio ad absurdum argument—or proof by contradiction—having demonstrated that the assumption of uniformitarianism leads to an impossibly high level of magnetic flux in the prehistoric past.

Sorry. That won't work. He is not just arguing that an old earth is impossible. Ham explicitly declares that some simple computations provide evidence consistent with a young earth. He is making a “pro” argument for his position every bit as much as he is making a “con” argument against his opponents (which constitute 99% of the scientific community).

Ham may not like uniformitarianism, but he is certainly willing to use it when it suits him. Perhaps he needs to create a new label for it. May I suggest “punctuated uniformitarianism”? He can use it to argue that physical laws and natural processes are uniform between occasional catastrophes—like his magnetic-field argument.

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E.T. goes to hell

Therefore he doesn't exist

Sound reasoning is a good basis for religious beliefs, wouldn't you say? So what about this example? It's from the first 2011 issue of Answers magazine from those geniuses at Answers in Genesis:

Because Adam's sin affected the whole universe, it would also affect any alien. But as nonhumans, aliens would not be eligible for salvation (this is one reason we are confident that intelligent aliens do not exist). So baptizing an alien would be pointless at best, and a mockery at worst. Jesus did not die for Martians—only descendants of Adam can be saved.

See? Simple, isn't it?

So is Ken Ham, who offers this profound observation:

Secular astronomers claim that the universe evolved slowly over billions of years. But this conclusion does not come from the facts they see but from the assumptions they must make to interpret the unseen past. This issue of Answers, written by leading creation astronomers, shows how the facts actually line up with God's account of a recent creation but can't be explained by evolution over billions of years.

Ken's tight reasoning suffers only from prolixity. I can help him shorten his statement by removing excess words. For example, for “secular astronomers” read “astronomers.” For “creation astronomers,” read “cranks.”

All better now.

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Creationism evolves again

AiG responds to selective pressure

When anyone accuses Ken Ham of being pugnacious, the creationist guru of Answers in Genesis knows what to do. He gets in their face and escalates!

Some time ago, a secular reporter accused me of promoting violence. It was because he saw AiG’s classic “castles illustration” we often use, which really sums up the spiritual battle AiG is fighting.

The two castles illustrations are labeled “Problem” and “Solution.” Notice the use of cannons on the castle. Now, I wonder what the same reporter might say if he saw some of the newer diagrams I use in my talks—today I’m using missiles!

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That's right. Ken Ham's slide show has been brought up to date. It's evolved.


Until recently, the canonical version of Ham's castle illustration featured cannons. That's what you see in the accompanying color slide that Ham used in his presentations until recently. It's been around a long time. For example, here's how it looked as a more primitive black-and-white figure from the 1987 edition of The Lie: Evolution, Ham's “classic” broadside against modern science:


As you can see, Creation Castle has been losing ground, going from bad to worse. The 1987 illustration depicts a single piratical figure (a secular humanist, no doubt) aiming Evolution Castle's only cannon at the foundations of Creation Castle (the bedrock afforded by Christ). An ineffectual sidekick hovers in the background, apparently puffing on more sinful balloons to add to euthanasia, homosexuality, divorce, pornography, abortion, and racism. Fortunately for the swashbucklers of humanism, the clerics of Castle Creation are a feckless lot. One of them is firing in the wrong direction while another is drawing a bead on the only creationist aiming at the citadel of evolution.

In the later (color) cannon version, divorce has given way to “family break-up” and homosexuality has become the more specific “homosexual behavior.” There are now two buccaneers on balloon duty and three are blasting away at creation's foundations. The tide is clearly flowing against the forces of godly superstition. What's more, although the number of occupants of Creation Castle have also increased, there is still only one who is fighting the good fight for creationism. Does Ham identify with that lone hero? The Christian ranks are rife with treachery and sloth. (I note that the Christians are now in more secular garb.)

Ken Ham mentioned missiles. Indeed. Check out the new metaphors for the battle between creation and evolution, shown in the accompanying figure. The little creationists and evolutionists are no longer to be seen, presumably having returned whence they came (which I suspect was Akbar-and-Jeff land). Creation Castle has been replaced by a conventional looking church and a weird bunker identified with Answers in Genesis. The bunker is even bigger than the church, and both are dwarfed by the huge cross (with roots!). The Scud missiles of secular humanism and evolution are roaring toward the Genesis foundations of Christianity, but the bunker's parabolic dish tracking device improbably has the power to emulate Ronald Reagan's most unlikely “Star Wars” fantasy, zapping the enemy missiles in mid-flight. (Ah, yes. Fantasy.)

In the words of Ken Ham:

[W]e do see ourselves as supplying the “troops” with ammunition. As I've often said, the books, DVDs, etc., are really “Christian Patriot missiles” to battle those who fight against God's Word.

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I don't know if Ham likes to end his presentations with a rousing chorus of Praise God, and Pass the Ammunition, but I suspect he doesn't. That hymn is a bit too overt. Ham is already on record as objecting to being portrayed as militaristic. Ham suspects this secularist agenda was at work in Alexandra Pelosi's Friends of God:

Pelosi may have had an agenda to portray Christians as militaristic, for that aspect is weaved in and out of the documentary. That type of claim is increasingly becoming more public as opponents of conservative evangelical Christianity are turning more vocal. For example, this thesis is found in a just-released, anti-evangelical book entitled American Fascists. The author, Chris Hedges, a respected newspaper journalist formerly with The New York Times, believes that evangelicals (the “religious right”) are poised to take over America, fascist-style, during the next 9/11-like crisis. He particularly notes the use of military metaphors used by many evangelicals, who often apply Ephesians 6 terminology in their messages (e.g., phrases from Ephesians such as the following: “put on the whole armor of God,” “the shield of faith,” “the sword of the Spirit,” etc.). In the HBO program, Ken is seen describing AiG’s books and DVDs as “Christian patriot missiles” that can counter evolutionary teaching. It feeds the false belief held by Hedges and others that evangelicals are militaristic in a very real sense, not just spiritual.

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That certainly is a dirty trick, using Ken Ham's own words. Militaristic metaphors do not necessarily indicate that religious people will engage in violence. I mean, whoever heard of “holy war,” right? No such thing!

By the way, I find it peculiarly apt that Ham describes his defenses against the enemy as “Patriot missiles.” People who remember anything about Raytheon's Patriot missiles in the first Gulf war probably recall the flush of triumph when they were initially credited with bringing down Iraq's Scud missiles. They're much less likely to remember the aftermath, when it was discovered that the Patriots had actually failed. Ham might want to keep this in mind when he intelligently designs his next metaphor for the conflict between science and superstition.

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