Ham is a literalist.
Bill Nye to debate Creationist tonight at 7 - 2.4 on CNN
- Thread starter DarthTom
- Start date
Ham is a literalist.
Well, again I think the more ad-hoc, moronically stupid explanations you can force them to make, the better, with each story dumber than the last. ^_^
"So you really think America sailed away from Israel or Turkey in just 40 days, faster than any sailing ship could make the journey? Wouldn't this have been such a huge event that nobody would've commented on the light storm showers going on?"
"So you really think America sailed away from Israel or Turkey in just 40 days, faster than any sailing ship could make the journey? Wouldn't this have been such a huge event that nobody would've commented on the light storm showers going on?"
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Amaris
Guest
Which is probably why Bill didn't go for it. He had two audiences that night: the fundamentalist YECs, and the run of the mill Christians. He maintained a fair balance without appearing petty, unlike Ham, who decided to needle Bill whenever he could.
Attacking the theology isn't necessary, that's playing on their turf. Attacking what their trying to do which is playing in the playground of science is much easier. Creationism, any religion really, doesn't hold up when trying to explain how the universe works. There's simply more to the whole shebang than the writers of religion can come up with, especially so if your trying literalism. Religion and philosophy are fine in their place-talking about the whys and purposes to life. Those questions are irrelevant to science and they make bad science when trying to apply science to answering them as it plays into the obscurantism of folks like Ham who want folks to think the sciences and creationism are simply different theories to explain the cosmos.
All their arguments boil down to this "God did it"
But that's silly. The universe was created as the result of a conference between Tepeu and Gucumatz, who decided to create light. Then other gods came into play, and they had lots and lots of meetings, thrashing around different ideas, and conducted quite a lot of failed experiments in attempts to get things right.
Why God never got tenure
1. He had only one major publication.
2. It wasn't published in a refereed journal.
3. Some even doubt that he wrote it himself.
4. It may be true he created the world, but what has he done since then?
5. His cooperative efforts have been limited.
6. The scientific community has had a hard time reproducing his results.
7. He never applied to the Ethics Board for permission to use human subjects.
8. When one experiment went awry, he tried to cover it up by drowning the subjects.
9. When subjects didn't behave as expected, he deleted them from the sample.
10. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
11. Some say he had his son teach the class.
12. He expelled his first two students.
13. Although there were only ten requirements, most students failed his tests.
14. His office hours were infrequent, and usually held on a mountain top.
http://www.yorku.ca/hjackman/Mis/god.html
1. He had only one major publication.
2. It wasn't published in a refereed journal.
3. Some even doubt that he wrote it himself.
4. It may be true he created the world, but what has he done since then?
5. His cooperative efforts have been limited.
6. The scientific community has had a hard time reproducing his results.
7. He never applied to the Ethics Board for permission to use human subjects.
8. When one experiment went awry, he tried to cover it up by drowning the subjects.
9. When subjects didn't behave as expected, he deleted them from the sample.
10. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
11. Some say he had his son teach the class.
12. He expelled his first two students.
13. Although there were only ten requirements, most students failed his tests.
14. His office hours were infrequent, and usually held on a mountain top.
http://www.yorku.ca/hjackman/Mis/god.html
I disagree. Their knowledge of theology is sometimes worse then their knowledge of science. An average theologian or biblical historian could probably rip Ham apart. For instance, that quote from Jesus about marriage. That's marriage defined by JEWISH LAW. Last time I looked Christians weren't Jews.
Ah, I thought you meant theology in general not literalist theology.
Even their literalist theology is whacked. Ham believes there can't be any Sin with evolution which is just absolutely wrong. With evolution, you just have to accept the fact that Sin is part of the human condition. Anyone with a child will tell you that kids are well sinful. You simply can not raise a perfect child that grows up to be a perfect adult. I don't even know why early christian theologians came up with such a stupid idea in the first place.
As for grace, that's always been a personal discovery and a personal choice so why bring it up in public.
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Amaris
Guest
Maybe so, but you're counting on the poorly taught people in the audience who are with Ken Ham, to suddenly realize he doesn't know what he's talking about. That's not going to happen. There are literalists out there who believe the Bible has been one unified book since the very beginning.
I personally don't see the difference showing that Ham doesn't know much about either science or theology. I think we should favor science because it's objective but if you add historical, textual and archaeological evidence, theology can in some cases be just as objective.
As for literalist, nothing is going to convince them so who cares.
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Amaris
Guest
I think we can agree that those who think like Ken Ham see him as a lightpost; for support, rather than for illumination. 
Looking forward to watching it later. It was too late last night to tune in live.
This was the best tweet during the debate. How can any Christian not believe in non-recorded history but still believe in God?
It's also amazing to me that so many people who have a Phd in various different scientific fields including microbiology are creationists. Did they do their thesis in young earth science? What University [apparently the university of Oklahoma did in one case] grant a doctoral degree to anyone who believes young earth science without destroying their reputation as a legitimate school?
It's also amazing to me that so many people who have a Phd in various different scientific fields including microbiology are creationists. Did they do their thesis in young earth science? What University [apparently the university of Oklahoma did in one case] grant a doctoral degree to anyone who believes young earth science without destroying their reputation as a legitimate school?
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The Bible is the exception because it is the word of god and not of man. How does he know it is the word of God? Because the Bible tells him so.
Yea. The flaw of course is that the New Testament was written not by god but by the Apostles. And Mark et al. were very much men.
No doubt Christians would claim that the Apostles were inspired by God but that fails to explain how each of them got certain aspects of Jesus life differently. Was God's inspiration confused from one account to another?
It get's better, because for centuries the bible has only be copied by mortal monks by hand and later translated by men into hundreds of languages.
Even fundamentalists like Ham can't believe that the King James or similar editions are the literal word of god anymore. Unless every scribe who made a copy of a copy of a copy of a translation of a copy of a transplation of a copy was also inspired by god.
And if that is the case why go through all the trouble and don't inspire every living person ever directly by beaming the story into our heads?
As I said in page one of this thread and as I've gotten older and less dogmatic about my own lack of belief in God, I'm fine with any Christian that wants to view God as the watchmaker who started the big bang and the rest unfolded as proven science has established - but this 6,000 year old earth bullshit is absurd to anyone with even a modicum of critical thinking skills.
As Nye goes into great detail in the debate to point out it's absurd that a family could build an arc that modern ship builders cannot replicate - it's absurd to believe that tens of thousands of animal species were transported on a boat for nearly 1 year etc. etc.
As an ex-Catholic myself I was raised to believe most of the old testament was apocryphal
Studies of the Dead sea scrolls and the modern Torah show almost NO difference. Remember this is a document that have been copied for the last 2000 years. Divine inspiration?! No, more likely rigorous quality control as every copy is checked and rechecked for errors.
Problem is with translations. There are numerous mistranslations when going from the Hebrew Torah to the Greek Septuagint and then to the Latin Vulgate and finally to the "old" new English of the King James.