Coat of arms of James McGrath. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Any casual student of human behavior will recognize that straw man arguments and other logical fallacies usually indicate the presence of either an untempered or irrational mind. Such is the case with the latest assault posted by Ken Ham on his Facebook wall (of persecution). James and others have responded to the clear indication that Ham has some sort of unhealthy fascination with the good (and real) Doctor McGrath. As the latter has shown, Ham has a demonstrated in a very unstable response revealing it is not AIG who is getting to McGrath, but the other way around.
What I found odd with people like Ham, Hambone, and 범죄자, is the constant refrain of “I’m winning” and “You are so deluded you’ll never hear the truth.” And yet, it is quite possible to use the same mindset on them, the same verses on them. Why? Because any such misuse of Scripture to prove the other person too deluded to understand anything, Gospel truth or otherwise, is subjective nonsense — because it amounts to little more than the childish taunt of “I know you are, but what am I”. So, when I read a statement from Ham stating he is clearly getting to someone, all I can think of is R. Girard and mimetic desire – and how such statements betray a certain hidden facet of Ham’s desire. He desires nothing more to be what McGrath is, to be a Christian like him.
The responses by Bryan Fischer and Mike Huckabee have once again reminded me the great gulf fixed between fundamentalism and mainline Christians. Do not mistake my words here as a rant against conservative Christians. I am a conservative Christian, but I am neither fundamentalist nor evangelical (at least in the American sense of the word). I am mainline. I am a United Methodist. I, instead, speak about the fundamentalists, those like Fischer and Huckabee — those like Westboro Baptist Church. Let me state clearly here as well something. There is little difference between the normative fundamentalist and Fred Phelps. Phelps just as the courage to say in public what so many pastors yesterday said in the comfort of their pulpits. 1
What was the first response you had to the tragedy? Was it to demonize the gays? Democrats? To call for the end times? Was it fear? Did you promulgate a false notion of history, as if violence suddenly increased in this country due to a Supreme Court ruling? Did you suggest it was because the rampant sin in society as if this sin is something germane to our social situation? Or did you begin to pray for the families of the victims, even for the shooters? Did you wonder what you could do to host a vigil, to send a prayer, to tweet something to the family, to hug your children?
If your first response was to assume the children in some way deserved it, that we as Americans deserve it, then you are nothing more than a follower of Fred Phelps.
If your first response, after the anger subsided just a bit, was to begin to call for prayers of comfort, you may be a follower of Jesus who refused to condemn the Gentiles who perished in the tower at Sidon.
Compare well the responses from the Westboro ilk and the mainline Christians:
Once again we speak against the culture of violence infecting our country even as we prepare to welcome the Prince of Peace at Christmas. All of us are called to work for peace in our homes, our streets and our world, now more than ever.
For communities and schools affected by violence, especially Sandy Hook Elementary School. As they remember and as they grieve, hear their cries and wipe away their tears. Assure them of your promised peace in the midst of suffering.
“Friends, in the midst of this tragedy draw closer to your loved ones, especially the children,” his letter said. “Reassure them of God’s love and your love. While we cannot undo this carnage, we can respond with the message of hope and healing that our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ offers to us all. Through the tears of a nation, remember the promise of the Psalmist: ‘Weeping endures for a night, but joy comes in the morning’ (Ps. 30:5).”
Recently, Dan Savage issued a plea for the Christian Left to get louder:
Here’s the thing – we who you would call liberal are too busy working – too busy praying – too busy doing God’s work for us that we do not have time to blast anyone. For example, these mainline churches in Newtown are already working to help the families in crisis. The UMC and other national groups are already working to provide backup to the churches in Newtown while still working in respond to Sandy, while still working in response to AIDs, immigration, labor, equality… while we are still working around the world. The reason you only hear from the right wing is because they aren’t work — they are too busy coming up with excuses and playing the blame game to work, to do real, meaningful work.
If you as a Christian believe the Bible is inerrant, you’re saying it is without error. And as a creationist, I read the Bible plainly, trusting that I can believe and understand what I read. It’s unreasonable to say that inerrancy and a plain reading of Scripture leads Christians to believe falsehoods as though they are “magically true.” But what is Dr. McKnight referring to specifically here? He writes, “One of which views is that the Bible teaches science in Genesis 1–2.”
I read the bible how I want to and it says to ME what I think it says. I’m perfect.
That is Ken Ham’s mantra. It is a Euro-centric, anti-semitic way of reading Scripture, but that’s okay I guess.
Wow…
That is the central idea behind inerrancy and the plain sense reading, that the modern reader without any help can better understand the Scripture than the original authors and culture. What Scripture says to you doesn’t really matter. It is what it is meant to say that does.
Ken makes a logical fallacy, that for Jesus to be the Son of God, he would have to be completely inhuman. I note that Paul writes that Christ emptied himself of his deity to assume flesh, and yet, Ham argues with Paul. Surely, Ham opines, that Jesus was complete deity. For him, Jesus must have known everything and been incapable of not knowing. Scripture tells us that Christ was tempted in every way, and overcame those temptations. This is because Jesus was human. He was a Jew. A Palestinan Jew of the 1st century, no matter what else we wish to believe about him… Jesus was a Jew.
Ham allows two ‘researchers’ from AiG to write,
The idea advanced by Dr. Enns here is known as the accommodation theory and was first advanced in the eighteenth century by Johann Semler, the father of German rationalism. The accommodation theory is very popular among liberal theologians and basically asserts that Jesus accommodated (accepted and taught) the various ideas of His day, even if they were wrong.5 Allegedly, since Jesus was primarily concerned with spiritual matters, He didn’t bother to correct some of their false historical or scientific beliefs because doing so might have distracted from His real message.
If this was the case, that Jesus had to correct everything (and for some reason, Ham and others assume that the Jews of 1st century Palestine were just proto-fundamentalist Christians in believe), then why didn’t he do that about medicine? Or give the world nuclear energy? Or tell people that washing hands wasn’t just a good thing when eating, but so too for physicians? Do you know how many lives that could have saved between then and the late 1800′s when it started happening?
They must make the presupposition that the 1st century Jewish Jesus believed and taught what the 21st century Ken Ham does. Second, they must believe that unless Jesus did, then Jesus was wrong. Third, they must endeavor to make sure that other 1st century Jews believed the same way that Ham does now. Fourth, they assume that unless Jesus acted in accordance with their theology, then he was wrong. Fifth, they also must assume that the Gospels are ‘historical narrative’ of the same time which is produced by modern Western societies. It is a house of cards which protects their faith.
So, no, Ken Ham doesn’t believe in the historical Jesus; he believes in an Imaginary Jesus of his own creation.
By the way, there is a blog tour for Dr. Enns’ book…see a post of it here.
When you start with ‘believing it’ as the first principle, you encourage groupthink. What one person thinks is what everyone else must think. We follow this by defense. Not examination. Not reformation. Not reforming or renewal. Only defense. This is the root of fundamentalism wherein there is no examination of the belief, only the requirement to believe it and then to defend it. As Peter Enns suggest for believers like Albert Mohler, theology should never be examined, only defended.
This is a pitiful excuse for ‘apologetics’ and indeed, a pitiful method of actual exegesis.
God help us never to be that locked into our own doctrines and beliefs that we never hear the Spirit calling….
My dear, misguided, but nevertheless Christian friend Tony Breeden has become an expert in wordplay. He takes issue with my allowance that what Kentucky has done in supporting the Ark Encounters, replete with KJV-Onlyism’s unicorns, has in fact hurt education in that state. He writes, in part,
To give an example, a misguided theology student here in Appalachia made the following statement after reading that HuffPo article:
“Honestly… a 43$ million dollar tax cut and a 11$ million dollar interstate interchange… Wow… Of course, I guess if you actually want people to believe in unicorns, you need to cut funds to education…”
Note that he too simply re-gurgitated the misinformation that the HuffPo article. His unicorn comment refers back to Barry Lynn’s Ark Snark video which willfully misrepresented Answers in Genesis’ position that the Biblical term unicorn likely refers to a real creature, but something more akin to a rhinoceros than the fairy tale creature of pop culture. I submitted a comment to his site, noting where he’s repreated misinformation, but he has as yet neither published the comment nor corrected his post.
Okay… so the bit about unicorns… That’s not what the word actually says in Hebrew. I’ve checked with actual Hebrew scholars.
Further, like Tony does with science, he simply misses the dots in what everyone is saying.
Let me break it down…
First, a budget was approved to create a $11 million dollar interstate interchange for a park which no one knows if it will ever actually be built, but if it is built, then they will get $43 million dollars in tax credits. Now, the 11 million for the interstate-exchange-to-nowhere (c) is being funded in a budget that is facing cuts in other areas due to Kentucky’s poor economic state.
So… if you don’t have the budget to fully fund public education, then you shouldn’t have the budget to fund a interstate-exchange-to-nowhere (c). However, the Governor of Kentucky is robbing, to borrow a cliche, Peter to pay Paul. Just think of it this way: If that interstate-exchange-to-nowhere (c)’s $11 million dollars weren’t being spent on concrete, then it could be spent on education.
Being a Young Earth Creationist doesn’t make you a scientist nor, obviously, does it make you an expert in government budgets.
Take it from me – one who actually has to deal with government budgets….
Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) has proposed a 2012-2013 budget that includes heavy cuts to some key departments while giving a $43 million tax break to a massive creationist theme park.
Honestly… a 43$ million dollar tax cut and a 11$ million dollar interstate interchange… Wow… Of course, I guess if you actually want people to believe in unicorns, you need to cut funds to education….
Scott McKnight is reviewing Karl Giberson’s latest work directed in part against Ken Ham and his liberal associates. McKnight writes of Ham,
Ken Ham, with no scientific credentials, no credentials in biblical scholarship, no evidence, and no research program, has become the front person, the spokesman for a large segment of evangelicalism. He proves nothing, he asserts what he finds to be truth and tells a story to make it so. He is a charismatic speaker on a mission and has become for many the authority on the evil of evolution and the dishonesty of modern science. Ken Ham and his organization Answers in Genesis have become “powerful shapers of popular opinion in America’s vast evangelical subculture.” (Annointed? … Evangelicals and Authority 1 (RJS) | Jesus Creed.)
This is something that others have noted before. With no actual background to speak of, with no real foundation, Ken Ham has attracted a large following who have surrendered to him their responsibility of examining the evidences presented by those with actual academic training. Why? Personally, I believe it is because it is in our human nature to believe the more complicated lie than to discover for ourselves the easier truth. Ham paints a rosey picture of a God who is the divine trickster, a Hebrew Loki, if you will, who creates countless evidences of an old earth and then demands that we stop using the very Reason he gave us to interpret the date to the only possible conclusion. Ham would have us believe in unicorns and dragons, but not God navigating natural laws – especially since He is the Lawmaker.
It is a powerful psychological force which draws people to believe Ham.
Ken Ham and others who are leading the liberal Creationist agenda would have us believe that over the last 150 years, Christians have compromised the ‘bible’ (what is this singular Greek book of which they speak?) because of Darwin. Anyone with any sorta of historical integrity could debunk that radical, liberal, notion that Darwin can first and that suddenly Christians everywhere were shaken in their foundation of the truth. The radical liberals, such as Answers in Genesis, would have us “take back our religion” from Darwin and return to a “literal reading of Scripture.” The problem is, is that in their liberality, they have turned from the Truth. David Carr shows that an early version of source-criticism actually appeared long before Darwin. Of course, if one has read the Language of Science and Faith they would note that before Darwin, Christians were questioning the sometimes usual interpretation of 6,000 years old. Of course, Hebrew scholars, and other ANE scholars, have noted that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2-3 are different in basic sources, and that the language of those chapters do not reflect a scientific meaning.
The year 2011 marks the 300th year after the publication of Henning Bernard Witter’s path-breaking discovery of criteria for uncovering a specific source behind the biblical book of Genesis. In 1711, this well-educated pastor in Germany published “Jura Israelitarum in Palaestinam Commentatione in Genesin perpetua” (Israelite laws in Palestine, comments on the eternal Genesis…), where he noted several important differences between the seven-day creation account in Genesis 1:1-2:3 and the story of the garden of Eden in Genesis 2:4-3:24.
