The most important of all Greek natural philosophers was Aristotle. His ideas dominated Western scientific thought down through the 17th century, when his works finally disappeared from university curricula. In his view, the Earth was eternal and uncreated; ditto for humans and other living things. That did become “a burning issue” in the thirteenth century, when his belief in the eternity of the world led to formal condemnations of his books at the University of Paris (the second oldest university in Europe) and one or two other places. At that point, science professors at Paris could be excommunicated for teaching the eternity of the world as if it were true. Since that university had been chartered by the Bishop of Paris, continued to be supervised by that office, and also had the greatest faculty of Christian theology in the world, such a ban made perfect sense. It might even be comparable to the de facto ban on teaching creationism at (say) Harvard or Berkeley today. In both instances, the educational authorities do their best to keep heresy at bay.
Thanks for the information, as my ignorance knows no bounds! I appreciate your enlightenment!
Thanks Ted. I certainly don’t expect Ham and his AiG colleagues to picket in opposition to, say, a white supremacist gathering! But given white evangelicalism’s “race problem,” it would matter if he devoted some small percentage of his blog posts to naming and criticizing specific racist speech and actions. But as Phil suggests in his comment, this would require courage, given that at least some in AiG’s base would not look kindly on such critiques.
This said, I do appreciate that he was ahead of the curve when it came to interracial marriage. Having grown up in an evangelical church in suburban Denver, I know very well how interracial marriage was simply anathema for many white evangelicals.
Augustine was only a YEC to the extent that he did not know of any more credible way to explain the origin of the Earth and the life on it.
He was pro-Science … and even more pro-science than many BioLogos supporters.
Hi gbrooks 9,
St. Augustine was well aware of the common opinion that the world, and the human race as well, had existed from all eternity. On such a view, the origin of the Earth or of life wasn’t even an issue. Whatever Augustine’s reasons were for holding to a YEC view, they were not scientific ones. St. Augustine was also familiar with claims that the human race was much older than 6,000 years, but scoffed at these claims as “conjectures” and derided the documents on which they were based as false histories.
In addition, St. Augustine was well acquainted with the common-sense objections to the Biblical account of Noah’s Ark, and he took pains to refute them. He specifically discusses the following objections in his City of God Book XV, chapter 27:
(i) no flood could possibly cover all the mountains of the Earth;
(ii) the Ark couldn’t possibly have held all of the different kinds of animals, as it wasn’t large enough;
(iii) in any case, it would have been impossible for Noah to have built an Ark that was 300 cubits long;
(iv) were insects on board the Ark too? (Augustine thought not, as they could have been generated spontaneously from inanimate matter, so there would have been no need to preserve them on the Ark);
(v) how could Noah have caught all the animals and put them on the Ark?; and
(vi) the carnivorous animals would have had nothing to eat.
That’s a pretty fair sampling of the objections to Noah’s flood, and even in our own time, the list hasn’t changed much. A scientifically minded person would have weighed up these objections and opted for an allegorical interpretation of the Genesis flood. Indeed, there were progressive Christians in St. Augustine’s day who did just that - Augustine actually refers to them disparagingly in his City of God Book XV, chapter 27, as “they who contend that these things never happened, but are only figures setting forth other things.” Augustine was not one of them, because he didn’t think like a scientist. When confronted with these objections, he repeatedly invoked miracles to overcome any difficulties, just as Ken Ham does. God could have gathered all the animals into the Ark, says Augustine. God could have even enabled the animals on the Ark to do without any food at all. (Yes, he actually says that.) And he insists that the patriarchs lived to be over 900, and rejects the view that the years in Genesis 5 might have been ten times shorter than years are today (which would mean that the patriarchs only lived to be 90 or so), by appealing to the Biblical verse which says that the Flood occurred “in the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the twenty-seventh day of the month.” That’s very literalistic - needlessly so.
Augustine was, for his time, a theological moderate. He rejected both the view that when reading Genesis, “we should study only the historical truth, apart from any allegorical meanings” and the contrary view that the flood narratives in Genesis “are only allegories, and that there were no such facts at all.” For him, both the literal and the allegorical meanings were important. Had he been truly courageous, he would have jettisoned the literal sense of some of these narratives, but such was his reverence for Scripture that he just couldn’t bring himself to do that.
Professor Trollinger writes that “Ken Ham’s opposition to racism, while perhaps marking him as a leader among white evangelicals on this issue, remains confined to abstract statements that do not really get at the specifics of racism in American life.”
If Professor Trollinger had simply Googled “Ken Ham racism” he would have found an Answers in Genesis page on Racism, which links to several articles by Ken Ham that addresses this very issue, including One Blood and Are There Really Different Races?.
A few quotes from the two articles follow:
(a) From One Blood
So when you are talking to your children, training them up, and educating them, let’s get rid of the term “race.” Let’s start talking about “people groups” . . . and let’s talk about how to reach all of them with the gospel as Christ commanded…
Second, we need to be reprogrammed.
Here’s something you might find hard to accept: In the U.S. culture we are racially programmed, particularly in regard to the skin color issue. Because of our culture’s racist roots, because of the way the world thinks, because of the influence of Darwinian thinking, we have been programmed to look at the exterior rather than the interior of a person, and to make broad judgments based on what we see. Had you not been programmed that way in this culture, you wouldn’t see the differences as you do. Different cultures are programmed in different ways. Our biases and prejudice show themselves in different ways, but in every case it is the world and our sinfulness (rather than science and the Bible) that drives our personal racism.
I realize those are very strong words. You might not even agree with me. But the fact is, it’s true. We just go through our days making all sorts of assumptions and judgment calls based on outward appearances of skin tone, facial features, size, height, etc. It’s very hard to see through the programming because it seems to be such a natural part of the way we think. No one likes to admit it, but the consequences are too serious to ignore. We’ve been programmed, and that programming needs to be changed.…
All of us need to judge our attitudes and our worldview against the absolute authority of the Word of God. Considering our past track record, the Church needs to be very wise in realizing that as a body we have been strongly influenced by the world. Our interpretation of Scripture has been strongly skewed by pre-existing worldly biases and prejudices. We need to be willing to admit where we have been wrong—and in many cases we need to repent…
The Church needs to take the lead again. We need to let the Word speak for itself rather than filtering it through cultural and worldly thinking…
One example of this is the so-called “curse of Ham.” Genesis 9:20–27 records an incident involving Ham, his son Canaan, and the other sons of Noah at which time Noah cursed Canaan…
This was used to justify the proclamation given by the church’s prophet Brigham Young that said blacks would never hold priesthood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints…
But it’s not just members of the cults that try to use this passage to justify racism. Many people from mainline Christian denominations have called me on the radio and asked me about the supposed “curse of Ham.” (Maybe I’m just a tinge overly sensitive to this question, because my name is Ham!) I just ask them to look up the chapter and verse in the Bible. That’s always the end of that caller, because this narrative says nothing about skin color or race. Nothing. It’s a simple case of being programmed by the world to see something in God’s Word that isn’t there at all. (And the curse was on Canaan anyway—not Ham, so my name is clear!)
Third, it’s time to take action.
Instead of looking at minor outward differences in our physical features or skin tone, it’s time to look past the reflection of the small percentage of our genes and say, “This is my brother; this is my sister. I am one blood with this person.”
If you truly want to see your life reflect the life of Christ, then you must begin to allow Christ to love others through you, particularly those who are different than you, just as He did. You need to begin to see as God sees.
(b) From Are There Really Different Races?
What if a Chinese person were to marry a Polynesian, or an African with black skin were to marry a Japanese—would these marriages be in accord with biblical principles?
A significant number of Christians would claim that such “interracial” marriages directly violate God’s principles in the Bible and should not be allowed.
Does the Word of God really condemn the marriages mentioned above? Is there ultimately any such thing as interracial marriage?
Reporting on research conducted on the concept of race, ABC News stated, “More and more scientists find that the differences that set us apart are cultural, not racial. Some even say that the word race should be abandoned because it’s meaningless.”
Personally, because of the influences of Darwinian evolution and the resulting prejudices, I believe everyone (and especially Christians) should abandon the term “race(s).” We could refer instead to the different “people groups” around the world.
Sadly, there are some Christian homes where the parents are more concerned about their children not marrying someone from another “race” than whether or not they are marrying a Christian…
There is no biblical justification for claiming that people from different so-called races (best described as people groups) should not marry.
The church could greatly relieve the tensions over racism (particularly in countries like America), if only the leaders would teach biblical truths about our shared ancestry…
I could go on quoting from Ken Ham, but I think that’s enough. I defy anyone to say that the foregoing statements are merely “abstract statements that do not really get at the specifics of racism in American life.” I hope that Professor Trollinger will reconsider what he wrote.
Of course I continue to stand by what I wrote. While Mr. Torley quotes my statement introducing our December 20 blog post, “Evangelicals, Racism, and Ken Ham” (for the link see above), he does not address what we wrote in the post that explains why we say that Ham’s antiracist statements are “abstract statements that do not really get at the specifics of racism in American life.” From the post:
"As many black evangelicals have noted in the year since Donald Trump was elected president, it would seem that racism remains strongly rooted in white evangelicalism (to the point that some evangelicals of color have disavowed the ‘evangelical’ label). So it seems plausible to suggest that it is a sign of Ham’s ‘admirable leadership’ that he continues to say that racial discrimination is not biblical.
"But here’s the problem. Ham’s statements opposing racism are remarkably abstract. While his blog attacks on efforts in behalf of LGBTQ rights (34 in the past 17 1/2 months) are very specific – including, most recently, a vitriolic post regarding the legalization of gay marriage in Australia – his comments about racism rarely seem to land anywhere. He has so much material to work with, but he is silent when it comes to specifics. As we note in Righting America, from Ham and Answers in Genesis (AiG) there was ‘silence about the 2013 Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act, . . . silence about the Confederate flag controversy, and . . . silence about the persistence of institutional racism in the United States.’ That was 2015. Since then – as we discussed in a September 2017 post – Ham has said nothing (as far as we can tell) about white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, and the rise in racially-motivated hate crimes. Regarding Charlottesville, in the past week an article on the AiG website finally made reference to it . . . but only for the purposes of attacking the antifa movement for its illogical authoritarian anti-authoritarianism. Where is the critique of neo-Nazis and white supremacists?
Given Ken Ham’s location in the Christian Right, we recognize that it would take courage for him to forthrightly condemn both particular racist acts and the persistence of racism in white evangelicalism. But if his stance against racism is to mean something, then it needs to be specific. That would be leadership."
To quote Ken Ham’s own words from a recent tweet:
Legislation/laws won’t ultimately solve racism when it’s a spiritual issue - people need a heart change & be committed to Christ & His Word
And in any case, Ken Ham did speak out in response to the Charleston church shooting of 2015:
Ken Ham spoke out against the Klu Klux Klan as far back as 2007:
And in 2008, AIG published an article by Dr. Charles Ware (an associate of Ken Ham) which was scathingly critical of racism (including the KKK and the so-called Christian Identity Movement):
https://answersingenesis.org/racism/a-bridge-too-far/
Re the Confederate flag, see this 2015 article here:
You can’t unreservedly condemn an action such as flying a flag as “racist,” without knowing the intentions of the person performing the action. For many Americans, the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism, but for some older folk, it represents Southern pride. I think Ham was wise to avoid this issue.
Finally, Ken Ham has criticized Trump, saying that he does not promote “the Christian worldview” or understand what “real Christianity” is:
Not specific enough? Surely you jest, Professor.
Definitely sounds more abstract than his view toward marriage equality. When against certain things (LGBT rights, for example) it’s all about protests and campaigning and laws against it, but when it comes to racism it’s basically “Eh, it’s a heart issue – what’s the point of trying to legislate against it?” That’s why it sounds like a cop-out. Especially with the “there are no white and black people” trope – tone deaf. A racist man shot people to death because they were black and he hated them. Trying to erase their race is not the answer.
Hi Elle,
Definitely sounds more abstract than his view toward marriage equality.
All right. I’m going to give you four quotes. Imagine that you’re a gay person. Which would you find most hurtful?
- Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
- Let’s not be naive, we’re not talking about a simple political battle; it [gay marriage] is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere [legislative] bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies [Satan] that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.
- There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.
- God as the Creator has defined marriage (Genesis 2:24) as between one man and one woman, and we don’t have the authority to redefine what God has created… [T]hese lawmakers [who legalized gay marriage] may well celebrate the perversion of God’s marriage ordinance, but they need to shudder at the thought that each of them will one day answer to God: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).
The first quote comes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2357.
The second quote comes from the man now known as Pope Francis. It was made in June 2010, three years before he was elected Pope, while he was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina. Bergoglio was writing a private letter to a group of nuns in Buenos Aires, regarding a legislative bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry and adopt children in Argentina (6 July 2010). Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the President of Argentina, later said that these remarks bring us back to “medieval times and the Inquisition.”
The third quote comes from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who was later elected Pope Benedict XVI) and was personally approved by Pope John Paul II on March 28, 2003. The document was issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and was titled, “Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons.”
And the fourth quote is from an article by Ken Ham, titled, Australian legalizes same-sex marriage (December 11, 2017).
Personally, I find the fourth quote to be the least problematic, because it says nothing negative about gay people.
My point here is that Professor Trollinger is a Catholic, like myself. If he’s willing to call out Ken Ham on his intolerant attitudes towards gay marriage, then why not call out Pope Francis, too?
Finally, you add:
A racist man shot people to death because they were black and he hated them. Trying to erase their race is not the answer.
So you’re saying the term “race” refers to something real, because racists perceive it to be real? I’m not sure I follow that logic.
Anyway, I think I’d better sign off here, as Christmas is fast approaching. I’d just like to wish you, Ted, Dr. Trollinger, and Biologos readers a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
I think you have done a good job defending your view of Augustine. I guess that’s why @T_aquaticus lengthy quote by Augustine regarding ignorant Christians discussing natural philosophy like crazy people has not really found a permanent home in the pens of evolutionists.
So, until I hear some countering argument, I will accept your position on the matter.
By the way, if you get yourself in the habit of using the “@” symbol when you write someone’s login name… the system automatically notifies them that they have a message.
Above, you addressed me as gbrooks 9
It has a certain sassy quality… but it is completely ignoring how this Discourse system works.
Start with the @ symbol, and a few letters of the login… and you should get a pop up window showing you your choices for those letters entered so far.
Try it with your next post… You’ll find that you get your return postings if the people you write to know you have written to them!
George Brooks aka @gbrooks9
Since I’m not Catholic, I won’t presume to weigh in on Catholic theology, or on gay marriage (which may be heading toward thin ice as far as forum topics go, not sure). My point was really more about Ken Ham’s priorities, since I sure hope we’d all agree that racism has proven far more deadly than gay marriage.
I certainly did not mean to imply that racists are what make race real. It is real. Telling everyone “race isn’t real” isn’t going to magically change their racism – it encourages a “colorblind” approach which is problematic in other ways.
But I’ll stop with those clarifications. I do wish all of you a Merry Christmas as well.
Dr Torley,
I would not necessarily expect an Australian philosopher to understand the scope and insidiousness of racism in the US, so nothing in this post is intended as disrespectful to you. I am going to use strong words, but they are not directed against you.
Ham’s diatribes against racism may seem specific and pointed to you, but to me they are vague nostrums. I am disappointed in Ham’s statements, which seem very shallow to me as a lifelong observer of the American scene. He has lived here long enough say something more.
The KKK is already highly stigmatized in American society at large, so criticizing them is as uncontroversial as criticizing Hitler. American racism today is not organized by the KKK, so he’s not impressing me by criticizing them.
American racism today happens when police invent reasons to stop black motorists and levy substantial fines against them, while whites are not treated similarly. American racism today happens when public schools in dominantly black neighborhoods are starved of funds while white parents receive tax breaks to send their kids to private schools. American racism today happens when politicians and TV analysts claim that immigrants bring crime and social disorder to the US, when in fact immigrant communities have far lower crime rates than ethnic majority communities. And then such racist politicians are elected to the highest offices in the land. God help us.
[comments about Trump removed by moderator]
Moreover, one more way racism is practiced in the US is to label the legitimate grievances of ethnic minorities and women as “political correctness” that should be combatted. And in the article you quote, Dr Torley, I see Ham giving comfort to the racists by supporting their claims against “political correctness.”
The only thing that could be said in Ham’s defense is that he has a lot of company in intoning nostrums against racism while brushing aside the harsh realities of the American experience. God help us all.
Hi Chris,
Vincent is fine. As Christmas is approaching, I’ll keep my response as non-polemical as possible.
My father gave me a sage piece of advice once, which I’ve never forgotten: there are two sides to any story. Let’s look at the specific instances of American racism which you adduce.
American racism today happens when police invent reasons to stop black motorists and levy substantial fines against them, while whites are not treated similarly.
Well, you might think that, if you had only read reports about the 2017 Stanford study, which found that “officers’ language is less respectful when speaking to black community members.” But you might change your mind if you read Heather McDonald’s incisive critique of the study. The most “disrespectful” officer utterance that the researchers presented was: “Steve, can I see that driver’s license again? It, it’s showing suspended. Is that—that’s you?” This is racism? Really? See also this article here for an alternative perspective on police brutality. And this one. Read the other side.
American racism today happens when public schools in dominantly black neighborhoods are starved of funds while white parents receive tax breaks to send their kids to private schools.
The problems relating to American education are pervasive, and they start well before children are old enough to go to school. “Black children are far more likely to live in households that are low-income, extremely poor, food-insecure, or receiving longterm welfare support… Black children are also more likely to have emotionally traumatic experiences impacting their childhood, such as abuse or neglect, the death of a parent or witnessing domestic violence.” Confronted with this bleak picture, one might ask: is there any approach that’s working? It turns out that there is one: charter schools. Black conservative political commentator Thomas Sowell reports that “ghetto schools run by KIPP and Success Academy turn out students whose academic performances match or exceed the performances in suburban schools whose kids come from high-income families.” He adds: “What is even more astonishing is that charter schools are being opposed, not only by teachers’ unions who think that schools exist to provide guaranteed jobs for their members, but also by politicians, including black politicians who loudly proclaim that ‘black lives matter.’” It’s a real pity that partisan politics is getting in the way of making African-Americans’ lives better.
American racism today happens when politicians and TV analysts claim that immigrants bring crime and social disorder to the US, when in fact immigrant communities have far lower crime rates than ethnic majority communities.
Which immigrants are you talking about? Legal immigrants do indeed have a lower crime rate. Data for illegal immigrants is difficult to come by, but it seems to suggest that illegal immigrants have a much higher crime rate (see here and here). When you consider that the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is 11 million, it’s understandable that some people would call for tighter regulation of immigration. Whether you agree with these people or not, their concern is not racist; it’s simply prudent.
I might add that no less than 59 million immigrants arrived in the U.S. from 1965 to 2015. That’s a staggering number. A society which is generous enough to allow such large numbers of people in cannot fairly be described as “racist” if it subsequently decides to regulate the influx and slow down the flow a little. Sometimes, too much change, too quickly, can be a bad thing, even when the change is in the right direction. You might embrace it, but many people find it unsettling. I say: give them time to adjust. Evolution, not revolution. Or as the Roman Emperor Augustus used to say: “Make haste slowly.”
Moreover, one more way racism is practiced in the US is to label the legitimate grievances of ethnic minorities and women as “political correctness” that should be combated. And in the article you quote, Dr Torley, I see Ham giving comfort to the racists by supporting their claims against “political correctness.”
In the same article in which Ham decried “political correctness,” he made it quite clear that Trump “certainly does not promote the Christian worldview.” I might add that generally, Ken Ham avoids singling out political figures for special mention, and I can only find two articles of his in which he discusses presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Did Hillary Clinton Mean to Call the Unborn a Person? and Clinton Says Abortion Access Is More Important Than Religious Liberty? Neither article attacked Clinton personally, beyond saying that her public comments on abortion “are deeply disturbing coming from a presidential candidate.” And that’s it.
But if you want proof that Ken Ham doesn’t share Donald Trump’s views on immigration, here it is: a 2017 AIG article titled, Muslim Refugees Find a Place in European Churches. Ham concludes:
As Christians, are we responding to Muslims in our own neighborhoods and workplaces with fear and discrimination? Or are we recognizing that they are descendants of Adam, just like us, with the exact same sin problem and need of the same solution, the gospel of Jesus Christ? We need to be intentional about showing Christ’s love and sharing the saving gospel message with a world that is lost, hurting, and in need.
Merry Christmas.
Ah, we have been celebrating Christmas break with family and friends. So we had not realized that Dr. Torley had levelled new criticisms of my comments regarding Ken Ham’s failure to respond with specificity to racist speech and acts in Trump’s America. I should note that Dr. Torley has attacked my comments as “politically correct,” he has called on me to retract what I have written, and now he has sarcastically concluded that I must be joking.
The best way to respond to all this is with substance:
- Dr. Torley approvingly quotes Ken Ham’s recent tweet that “legislation/laws won’t ultimately solve racism when it’s a spiritual issue – people need a heart change and be committed to Christ & His Word.” Interestingly, this was precisely the sort of argument made by “moderates” in the 1950s and 1960s in opposition to the Civil Rights movement. I would commend to Dr. Torley’s reading list Martin Luther King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.” More than this, and as we highlight in Righting America, what Ham and Answers in Genesis (AiG) steadfastly ignore is that millions of white Christians in antebellum America held both to a literal reading of the Word and support for slavery – and in fact, as esteemed historian Eugene Genovese argued again and again, it is much easier to construct a proslavery argument from a literal reading of the Bible than an antislavery argument.
- “Ken Ham spoke out against the Ku Klux Klan as far back as 2007.” True enough. But, sad to say, speaking out against the KKK was much easier for white evangelicals in 2007 than it is now, given the incident in Charlottesville, and given the strong support the KKK and other white supremacists have given Donald Trump (who, again, was supported by 81% of white evangelicals). And here again, Ken Ham’s silence in response to Charlottesville was deafening.
- “Ken Ham did speak out in response to the Charleston church shooting of 2015.” This seems a non sequitur, as we never said he didn’t. What we pointed out in Righting America is that he didn’t comment on was the ensuring controversy over the Confederate flag.
- “You can’t unreservedly condemn an action such as flying a flag as ‘racist,’ without knowing the intentions of the person performing the action. For many Americans, the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism, but for some older folk, it represents Southern pride. I think Ham was wise to avoid this issue.” Would Dr. Torley make the same argument regarding the swastika? The Confederate flag did not reappear in American life until the 1950s, when it was flown defiantly by the Ku Klux Klan and other whites in opposition to the civil rights movement. That is to say, its connection with racism seems pretty clear. Would Dr. Torley tell African Americans and others who are deeply offended by this symbol in behalf of slavery and segregation that they should just get over it? And is Ham’s wisdom in avoiding this issue a wisdom rooted in his desire not to offend his constituency? (One other note: contrary to Dr. Torley, it is not just “older folk” who are flying the Confederate flag – this a misleading statement that suggests that support for the Confederate flag will die out on its own, and soon).
- “Ken Ham has criticized Trump, saying that he does not promote ‘the Christian worldview’ or understand what ‘real Christianity’ is.” Unfortunately, all Dr. Torley gives us from Ham’s October 28, 2015 blog post, “The Donald Trump Phenomenon,” are these two snippets. In our post, https://rightingamerica.net/donald-and-ken-were-you-there/ we included more of what Ham had to say in his post: “When it comes to anti-intellectual populism Donald Trump and Ken Ham sound strikingly similar. So perhaps it is not surprising that Ham, while he doubts that Trump ‘truly understands what real Christianity is,’ has many good things to say about the GOP presidential nominee: ‘Many people are rallying behind Donald Trump because in our sea of political correctness and liberal media . . . he is prepared to ‘call it as he sees it, even if it’s blunt and not politically correct. And he will deal with the media as he sees fit . . . I think the average person will respond positively to such a person . . . because many people want a leader who comes across as genuine and is prepared to lead with authority.”
So it turns out that I am neither retracting nor jesting.
Let me see. Ken Ham tells “hundreds of kids” at a Baptist church in North Carolina in spring 2016 “to respectfully ask evolutionists, ‘Were you there?’” when they talk about events that happened millions of years ago. Donald Trump plants a flagpole above the Potomac River in 2009 to commemorate the mass casualties which (he says) occurred in a battle at the spot, and when historians later dispute his assertion, he challenges them by asking: “How would they know that? Were they there?” For you, this is enough to show that “Donald Trump and Ken Ham sound strikingly similar.” What it shows me is that you’re obsessed with both individuals.
You criticize Ken Ham’s assertion that “legislation/laws won’t ultimately solve racism when it’s a spiritual issue – people need a heart change and be committed to Christ & His Word.” This, you say, is “precisely the sort of argument made by ‘moderates’ in the 1950s and 1960s in opposition to the Civil Rights movement.” Yes, but we’ve had 50 years of progressive laws since then. Ask yourself this: have they brought people together? Clearly, they haven’t. Laws are not enough. Ham realizes that. Good for him.
Finally, you argue that “what Ham and Answers in Genesis (AiG) steadfastly ignore is that millions of white Christians in antebellum America held both to a literal reading of the Word and support for slavery – and in fact, as esteemed historian Eugene Genovese argued again and again, it is much easier to construct a proslavery argument from a literal reading of the Bible than an antislavery argument.” Wrong again. AIG has written about the issue of slavery and the Bible here. The curse of Ham is particularly easy to debunk, and the fight to end slavery was led by Christians, as AIG points out.
Hi Vincent, Merry Christmas to you and yours.
So you do concede that racism is a serious problem in the US. In your previous post to me, you seemed determined to show with a highly selective sample of evidence that there is no more racism in the US. Since you now concede the continuing practice of racism in the US, however, I will not bother to finish writing the response I started, and will move on to other, more productive pursuits.
I also agree with you that laws are not enough to totally eradicate racism–or any other blemish in the social fabric. But laws do help. Governmental, spiritual, and private community solutions to racism need not be mutually exclusive.
Ham agrees with me that at least some problems merit governmental as well as spiritual solutions. For example, he surely does not believe that good marriage laws will make every household warm and stable; that would require spiritual transformation. Nevertheless, he has strong ideas about what kinds of governmental policies should be practiced. Why does he not think that systemic aspects of racism merit better policy, then?
I do welcome Ham’s comments about Muslim immigrants in Europe, and appreciate that he challenges all of us, everywhere they have arrived, to treat them graciously.
As far back? As far back as 2007? Do I have that right? He was born in 1951 and took until 2007 to speak out against the KKK?
Hi Chris,
Thank you for your gracious reply. I think I’d better sign off here, so this will be my last post.
Regarding the fight against racism, I’d agree that it is not yet over. What I would say, however, is that it is almost won. No-one would now dare to argue in a public forum that some races are superior to others, or that inter-racial marriage is wrong, or that discrimination on the grounds of race alone is morally justifiable. Differences between blacks and whites in the U.S. relating to life expectancy and academic achievement have narrowed since 1970. Recent tragic events in the news are a statistical blip: the long-term trend is clearly toward equality.
By contrast, the fight against the scourge of abortion has a long way to go. Abortion rates in the U.S. are declining, but the procedure remains legal in nearly every country in the Western world (including the U.S.), and there are 40-50 million abortions worldwide every year. Evidently, Ken Ham sees this issue as the defining moral issue of the 21st century. He has said that for him, even gay marriage pales in comparison. So my guess is that if presented with two political candidates, A and B, he’d be inclined to favor the more pro-life one.
The Democrat Party would do itself a huge favor if it granted its Congressional representatives a conscience vote on the issue of abortion. Sadly, I don’t see that happening.
Anyway, thanks for the exchange, and Happy New Year to you and your family.
Hi Vincent,
And likewise to you and yours!
Chris