On February 4, 2014 an uncommon thing happened. There was a debate between a creationist and an evolutionist. Any regular reader of this blog will know that I come down on the evolution side of the debate. But instead of trying to rehash the debate I want to spend some time on the version of creationism propounded by Mr. Ham. I know nothing about Mr. Ham's beliefs outside of what he had to say at this event so if he has contradicted himself in other forums I am not there to trip him up. I will, after I have laid out Mr. Ham's vision, make some observations. But these will not be from the Evolutionist perspective. Instead I want to give fellow Creationists some things to think about. But, wait for it, before I get to all that let me take a moment to make some remarks on the event.
The Event
The event took place at the Creation Museum in Petersburg Kentucky. It was between Ken Ham representing the creationist perspective and Bill Nye representing the evolutionist perspective. The whole debate is available on You Tube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI. The video runs about two hours and forty-five minutes. But this includes about 13 minutes of "countdown clock" on the front and about two minutes of filler on the back. So the actual event ran about two and a half hours. Each participant got a five minute opening statement and a short time later a thirty minute segment to make his argument at greater length. The rest of the event consisted of short (two minutes or less) back and forth segments in a number of formats.
There was no formal declaration of who won. Since both participants left some of the arguments of their opponents unchallenged technically it is possible to declare either the winner. The debate was moderated by Tom Foreman of CNN. Both debaters represented their respective sides well and comported themselves in a civil manner. So there was no shouting, interrupting, name calling, etc. They also each demonstrated a respect for the other person and their positions and beliefs. So who are they?
Ken Ham is the CEO of Answers in Genesis, which runs the identically named web site and the Creation Museum. Bill Nye is well known for his "Bill Nye the Science Guy" TV show and his many activities promoting science literacy.
Ken Ham Creationism
As I indicated above, rather than trying to pick apart Mr. Ham's position I am going to lay it out as clearly as I can. One thing I want to give Mr. Ham a lot of credit for is that he has a single reasonably well developed theory. One problem scientists have in dealing with creationists is that it is hard to pin them down as a group to just one version. I will go into this in more detail in the Analysis section. If you are looking for a Evolutionist perspective on Mr. Ham's thinking I suggest you listen to what Mr. Nye had to say in the debate and what he and others have had to say elsewhere.
I will try to stick as closely as I can to what Mr. Ham said or to slides he presented at the debate. I have not (with a single exception noted below) gone out looking for what Mr. Ham has had to say in other places or at other times. Besides quoting Mr. Ham or his slides I will try to provide a "time hack" to where they occur in the show. Frequently the time hack points to a few seconds before the quote or to where the slide is displayed. I am not that good at navigating my way around in the video so I am trying to look out for others who are similarly challenged.
An overview of Mr. Ham's argument can be found in a slide at 53:41. The history of the world can be broken into "The Seven C's of History". They are "Creation" (Genesis), "Corruption" (original sin), "Catastrophe" (Noah's flood), "Confusion" (the tower of Babel), "Christ" (his birth), "Cross" (his crucifixion), and "Consummation" (the second coming). He also pairs them up. Creation is paired with Consummation. Corruption is paired with Crucifixion. Catastrophe is paired with Christ. (Confusion remains unpaired.)
If this sounds straight out of the bible, that's because it is. At 43:15 he refers to "the creation model based on the bible". At 50:40 he says "At the Creation Museum we are only too willing to admit our beliefs based on the bible.". He makes the same point over and over. His starting point is the bible. He believes the bible to be the word of god and to be an unimpeachable source of truth when it comes to the historical record. At 36:10 he says "My starting point is that god is the ultimate authority" and that the bible is the word of god. (But see his position on what parts of the bible are literally true below).
At 51:25 he gives an extended description of his beliefs: "Let me further go on and define 'creation' as we use it. By 'creation' we mean here at Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum, we mean the account based on the bible. Yes I take Genesis as the literal history as Jesus did. And here at the Creation Museum we walk people through that history. We walk them through creation, where god made Adam and Eve, land animal kind, sea creatures and so on, and then sin and death entered the world so there was no death before sin. That means how can you have billions of dead things before man sinned? And the catastrophe of Noah's flood. If there was a global flood you'd expect to find billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth. Had to say that because a lot of our supporters would want me to. And what do you find? Billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth. Confusion, the tower of Babel. God gave different languages so you get different people groups. So this is the geological, astrological, anthropological, biological history as recorded in the bible. So this is concerning what happened in the past that explains the present. And then of course that god's son stepped into history to be Jesus Christ the god/man to die on the cross, be raised from the dead. And one day is going to be a new heaven and a new earth to come."
With a summary description of Mr. Ham's beliefs under out belts, let me get more specific. And to keep things understandable I am going to lay out a time line. And to keep things simple there is going to be some rounding. Mr. Ham believes that the earth was created in 4004 BC. That makes the earth a little over 6,000 years old. But we are going to stick with round numbers and call it 6,000 years. Further, Mr. Ham breaks this 6,000 years down into three 2,000 (again roughly) year periods. Period 1 runs from Genesis to Abraham. Period 2 runs from Abraham to Jesus, and period 3 runs from Jesus to the present.
Mr. Ham presents a handy "World History Timeline" diagram at 1:30:11. But it does not have a usable scale on it. At 1:30:00 he says "From Adam to Abraham you got 2,000 years. From Abraham to Christ - 2,000. From Christ to the present - 2,000 years". This presents a bit of a problem because the discussion of when things happened does not make reference to Abraham. Rather it makes reference to the Noah flood. When did this take place? The issue is not covered by Mr. Ham. Bill Nye says several times that from the flood to the present is 4,000 years. But that's Nye's characterization of Ham's position. The best I could do was to search the Answers in Genesis web site. At http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2012/03/09/feedback-timeline-for-the-flood I found a calculation. That calculation places the flood at 2,348 BC. This would put it 348 years before Abraham. I am going to call that close enough and stick with the 2,000 - 2,000 - 2,000 timeline to keep things simple. This puts everyone in sync with a common time line for a 6,000 year old earth. With that out of the way, let me get back to the time line.
days 1-6 - God does his "let there be light" thing. At 28:50 Mr. Ham says "God created the world in six twenty-four hour days, just as recorded in Genesis". He also says at 1:30:00 "Adam was made on day six." At the end of this we have the world (heaven and earth, plants and animals, Adam and Eve) all created. Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden and there is no death because original sin has not yet happened. (See the "millions of years" discussion below for more on this subject.)
A short time later - All the "Garden of Eden" activity happens. The original sin has been committed so that death enters the world.
2,000 BC (roughly - see above) - The Noah flood happens. Millions of animals are wiped out thus populating the earth with lots of fossils of dead things. Some "kinds" (see the "kinds" discussion below to understand why the word is quoted) are wiped out, presumably including dinosaur species.
1 AD (or maybe 1 BC, I'm not sure exactly how this works ) - Jesus Christ is born.
32 AD - Jesus Christ dies on the cross.
2,000 AD (roughly) the present.
later - the second coming
So that, in summary is his timeline.
Discussion
Here I am going to go into some issues. I am going to start with issues Mr. Ham spent some time going into.
Kinds
This is an effort to address the "but there are millions of species - they wouldn't all fit on the ark" argument. Mr. Ham's response is that there is something called a "kind". It is a kind of super-species with respect to the scientific understanding of "species". He says at 36:40 "I would say that the 'kind' in Genesis I is really more at the 'family' [a scientific term having a specific meaning] level of classification. For instance, there is one dog 'kind'. There is one cat 'kind'. Even though you have different genera [again a scientific term with a specific meaning], different species [again a scientific term . . .]. That would mean by the way you don't need anywhere near the number of animals on the ark as people think. You don't need all the species of dogs, just two, not all the species of cats, just two." At 43:00 he says "you don't see one 'kind' changing to another".
This gets him out of trouble in a couple of different ways. First, it helps with the "how do you fit everyone on the ark" problem. After some more discussion he says at 1:41:35 "In fact . . . probably less than actually a thousand 'kind's were on Noah's ark".
Second, it gets him somewhat our of trouble with the "millions of species" problem. He allows changes within kinds. You can make lots of different dogs as long as you stay within the dog kind. Or specifically finches, and more specifically Darwin's finches. Ham agrees that Darwin found several different types of finches in the Galapagos Islands. But that's ok because they are all the same "kind" and differentiation within a "kind" is ok. At 38:40 he says "Actually, when it comes to finches, we actually would agree as creationists that different finch species came from a common ancestor."
At 40:07 he shows a divergence diagram that is similar in structure (on purpose) to standard scientific divergence diagrams. These are also often referred to as "tree diagrams". At the bottom you have a single line representing perhaps a single species. It splits as it moves up the diagram as other species (or whatever) come into existence. In some cases a line ends. This is where a species (or whatever) dies off. Ham's diagrams are two trees stacked on top of each other. The idea is that we have the usual splitting. Then Noah's flood happens killing lots of things off. Then a few branches representing animals saved by the ark continue on upward. There is more splitting and some additional die off as we reach the present at the top of the diagram. He even has one diagram at 40:36 where a kind of dinosaur is shown completely dying off.
The only hard and fast rule for all this is no breach of "kind" boundaries. Or, as Mr. Ham puts it at 40:30 "dogs will always be dogs, finches will always be finches". At 43:35 he says "Now we don't deny the change. You see that. You see different species of finches. You see different species of dogs."
millions of years
As I have indicated, Mr. Ham believes that the world is 6,000 (in round numbers) years old. But according to Mr. Ham others, and in particular other Christians, believe that the earth is at least "millions and millions" of years old. Mr. Ham devotes a significant period of time to this at 1:32:40. "Yah there are a lot of Christians out there that believe in millions and millions of years. But I'd say they have a problem. I'm not saying they're not Christian but, because salvation is conditioned upon faith in Christ not the age of the earth, but there's an inconsistency. What the bible teaches, if you believe in millions and millions of years you've got death and bloodshed, suffering, disease, over millions of years leading to man 'cause that's what you see in the fossil record. The bible makes it very clear death is the result of man's sin. In fact the first death was in the garden when god killed an animal, clothed Adam and Eve, first blood sacrifice pointing toward what would happen with Jesus Christ. He would be the one who would die once and for all. Now, if you believe in millions of years as a Christian, in the fossil record there's evidence of animals eating each other . . . . We weren't told we could eat meat until after the flood."
This is a big deal argument. And I am skipping over what a scientist would make of it so I can focus on what a fellow religionist would think. Ham makes two very strong claims: (1) There was no death until after original sin, which happened in the Garden of Eden after the "six days" part of creation. (2) All men (and women) were vegetarians until after Noah's flood. This second item. Maybe he had a slip of the tongue. All I can say is that's what he said. Ham and Nye get into a discussion of whether Lions were vegetarians for a while before they were allowed to be carnivores. Remember, you can't have meat in your diet without requiring the death of animals. I didn't make a note of where this "Lion" argument is. If you care, you'll just have to find it yourself.
Bible Literalism
Mr. Ham was asked how literally he takes his biblical literalism. At 2:24:45 he starts taking about the word "naturally". Then he says "Yes I take the bible naturally. What do I mean by that? Well, if its history, as Genesis is, it's written in this typical historical narrative, you can take it as history. If its a poetry, as we find in the psalms, then you take it as poetry. It doesn't mean it doesn't teach truth. But its not a cosmological account in the sense that Genesis is. There's prophesy in the bible and there's literature in the bible, you know, concerning future events and so on. So, if you take it as written naturally according to the type of literature and you let it speak to you in that way, that's how I take the bible. It's god's revelation to man."
Mr. Ham goes into a little more detail beyond the quotation I have provided above but not much. It is not clear how large sections of the bible should be treated. Should they be taken literally? Apparently from remarks I have not quoted there is a lot of parts of the bible related to laws of the time that we are safe in ignoring now. And apparently we can just let the "poetry" parts of the bible "speak to us" and leave it at that. But I have no idea how Mr. Ham thinks many other parts of the bible should be treated. Apparently you apply the "naturally" rule. This segments out parts of the bible into "literal history - believe it", "laws - perhaps appropriate to the time (or later found to be wrong - see later parts of the bible) but safely ignored in the present", "literature - let it speak to you", "prophesy - I am unable to figure out how this is supposed to be handled", and maybe some other categories.
A Ham's eye view of Science
Mr. Ham is most definitely NOT a Science denier. In fact, he sees himself as a scientist. I don't have any "on point" quotes but over and over Mr. Ham characterizes himself as a proponent of science. He has no problem with cell phones, GPS, and many other modern wonders of the world. But he breaks science into two broad categories: "observational" science, and "historical" science. He puts modern technology into the "observational" category and unambiguously embraces it. It is "historical" science he has a problem with. And here his argument is interesting. He thinks scientists get this part of science wrong. In effect, the conflict between creationism and evolution is a result of scientists doing sloppy work. If they did the work correctly they would get the same results he does and the conflict would disappear.
The only example I can point directly to is a surprising one. At 2:12;50 he says (speaking about continental drift) "On the basis of the bible of course we believe there's one continent to start with". But see also the "kind" discussion above where he adopts the "scientific" evolutionary tree and accepts that there are now many species. He just argues that the "scientific" evolutionary trees are bad science whereas his evolutionary trees are science done correctly. It's not obvious from the quote itself but he was making the same point when at 43:15 he said (and also showing a slide with the same words on it) 'public school textbooks present the evolutionary "tree" as "science" but reject the creation "orchard" as religion.' His "orchard" is simply the better science version of the scientific "tree". It's not that there is no "tree" or "orchard". It's that his version is more correct than the evolutionary version.
He gets at the same point when he says at 50:40 "At the Creation Museum we are only too willing to admit our beliefs based upon the bible. But we also teach people the difference between beliefs and what one can actually observe and experiment with in the present." This sentiment is one that scientists would whole heartedly endorse. The disagreement is not as to what the proper method is. Ham and scientists agree that "actually observe and experiment" is the way to go. Scientists part ways with Mr. Ham because they believe he does not practice what he preaches in this quotation. They think he substitutes beliefs for observations and experiments.
Conclusion
I think other creationists and other co-religionists will be troubled by some or all of Mr. Ham's version of creationism. Do you agree with Mr. Ham's timeline? In other words, do you believe in six twenty-four hour days? Are you in the 6,000 years camp? How about the 10,000 years camp? Or the "millions of years" camp? Are you on board with his "kinds" analysis? If so, how about the limited speciation he allows? Are you a believer in his "naturally" approach to how much of the bible we should believe is literally true? Do you accept the approach but use a different method for categorizing the various parts of the bible? How about his view of how science should be treated? Do you accept that there is "observational" science that can be trusted? Or do you reject the entire enterprise of science. If you trust parts of science and distrust other parts, how do you draw the line? Do you agree with Mr. Ham's thesis that the problem with the parts of science that you disagree with are that the scientists doing the work just did it badly and everything would be fine if they just fixed the stuff they got wrong? Finally. Mr. Ham believes that the historical parts of the bible are truth and that there is no possibility of them being wrong? From this it follows that anything, a scientific result, for instance, that is in contradiction with this biblical truth must be wrong. That seems to be a principal that guides Mr. Ham. Does it guide you?
