Ken Ham’s Ark: My Close Encounter of the (un)Biblical Kind–People and Worldviews (Part 2)

🔊 Listen to Post It has been a week since I visited Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter, and even though I have written my initial post detailing my experience at the Ark Encounter, I have been somewhat of a loss as to know what to say next about it. It has been like one of those times (I’m sure we’ve all had experiences like this) when the thoughts are just mulling around in your head, but you can’t quite put words to them yet—like on a subconscious level, your impressions are still trying to make sense of something before actual clarity rises to the surface.

So before I go on to talk about more specific problems with Ken Ham’s understanding of Scripture and his presentation of his understanding of Scripture as seen at both the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum, I want to share some thoughts on the people I saw there. Most of them seemed to be very nice, sincere people. The people who worked there were wonderful. I’m sure that both the visitors and the employees all really believed that the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum were solid and convincing statements for the authority of the Bible and Christianity. There’s just one big problem: they don’t have a truly biblical worldview…but then again, they sort of do…but then, well…not really.

Let me explain.

Ham the Heretic
The reason my book about young earth creationism is entitled The Heresy of Ham  isn’t just because I like alliteration, and isn’t because I just am looking to start a fight by calling something I don’t personally agree with “heretical.” It’s because, historically speaking, the heresies that were ultimately condemned at the Church councils were not 100% false. Whether it be Arianism, Pelagianism, Apollinarianism, or Nestorianism, the majority of what these men taught fell in line with Traditional Orthodox Christianity. The problem was that there was one specific part of what they taught that did conflict with the historical Christian faith, and it was that specific part that they ended up focusing on—and that was the problem.

Your personal beliefs might fall in line 99% of the time with historical Christianity, but if you end up obsessing over that other 1% to the point where you end up defining your very identity as a Christian on that 1%–then ultimately that means the cornerstone of your faith, in actuality, is that 1% that is not part of the historical Christian faith.

Now, in my opinion, it just so happens that Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis has, in reality, has done just that. Ken Ham may say that the Christian faith is rooted in faith in Christ and his work on the cross, but in reality, when you visit the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum, it becomes abundantly clear that Ham has rooted his faith in the insistence that Genesis 1-11 is historically true and is confirmed by science. His whole purpose with both the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum is to convince people of that.

And that’s why I think it is ultimately a heresy.

And Now the People Who Go There
I said in my last post that if Ken Ham made a life-sized Noah’s Ark as a creative and artistic way to illuminate the truth that Genesis 1-11 is conveying (much like a painter might make a painting of Noah’s Ark, or a sculptor like Michelangelo might sculpt the Pieta) that would be something I could really appreciate and applaud. The “artistic license” he uses in the Ark Encounter to give sort of a “back story” about Noah and his family, or to explain how one family could manage all the waste removal from all the animals, could be appreciated as such.

Now, I don’t really think that most of the people I saw visiting the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum that day really understood the supposedly scientific claims Ham was making in his exhibits. I have to think that many of the people were in actuality taking in the Ark Encounter as a means of creativity telling the story of Noah, and nothing more. I have to think that if I had stopped and said to many of the people, “You do realize that there is absolutely no evidence in the fossil record for the kinds of animals Ham has on the ark, right?” they would have responded with something like, “Oh really? Well, whatever animals were on the Ark, it’s all pretty amazing!”

What I mean to say is that whether they articulated it in this way or not, I think many of the people there really weren’t viewing the Ark Encounter as a scientific statement—deep down, they were viewing it as creative art. But the problem is that many of those same people have been effectively brainwashed (that might be too harsh a word, but it will have to do) into thinking, “If someone says Genesis 1-11 isn’t historically accurate and scientifically verifiable, then they’re saying the Bible isn’t true and their calling God a liar!” Cognitively, they would say Genesis 1-11 has to be scientific/historical to be true,” but deep down they are experiencing and enjoying the Ark Encounter as a creative expression of Genesis 1-11.

The trick is to draw a fine line between the two, and then to somehow convince people in that situation that one is laudable and fine, while the other is, quite frankly, unbiblical and false.

Here’s Where It Gets Tricky…We’re Talking About Worldviews Here, People
Throughout the Ark Encounter, one can see displays that try to contrast the “evolutionary worldview” with the “biblical worldview.” Answers in Genesis makes quite a big deal about “Worldviews.” In fact, I can say from personal experience that a fairly big movement in Evangelical Christian schools these days is teaching “Worldview.” I ought to know—I taught Worldview for eight years. Essentially, the concept behind teaching Worldview is to challenge students to think critically about the underlying philosophical assumptions and political issues throughout history. Everyone has a worldview—it’s the lens through which you look out at the world and try to bring it into focus. Think of someone’s worldview as the pair of glasses they wear. If there is something wrong with the prescription, everything will be out of focus, or at least not as in focus as they could be.

Most people, though, don’t really know they have a worldview—or at least, they’ve never thought about it; it’s just the way they’ve always looked at the world, because they pretty much inherited it from the culture in which they grew up. When you’re wearing glasses, for example, you don’t see the lenses; rather you are looking through the lenses—and often, you forget you’re wearing them in the first place.

Now the actual biblical worldview that puts history, and God’s work in history, into focus is, ironically, Genesis 1-11. It emphasizes (1) that there is one God, (2) that creation is good, (3) that mankind is made in God’s image, but (4) that mankind has nevertheless screwed things up; still (5) God has promised to redeem mankind and His creation. Those major themes that make up the biblical worldview then impact how the history of Israel in the Old Testament was interpreted and brought into focus, and how the coming of Christ in the New Testament was to be understood. That biblical worldview also should still impact how we view our world today.

But just as you look through your lenses to view the world around you, a worldview is something that you look through in order to interpret history—and here’s the key, the worldview laid out in Genesis 1-11 isn’t history; it’s the creative lens that enables us to interpret history correctly.

Ken Ham, though, is claiming Genesis 1-11 is history, and he goes about trying to prove it scientifically. So if Genesis 1-11 is history, what “worldview lens” is Ken Ham using that causes him to interpret it as history and science? The answer is that of the Enlightenment, that assumes that the only things that are “true” are historical and scientific facts. I write about this more at length in my book, but for my present purposes here, my point is this: (1) Ken Ham’s real worldview—the real lens through which he views the world and determines what is true—is that of the Enlightenment; and (2) therefore what he calls “the biblical worldview” on the Ark Encounter isn’t the real biblical worldview—it’s the fictitious category of “historical science,” that is actually not scientific at all. And that leads him to make a host of claims in his Ark Encounter that are not only scientifically impossible, but are, quite literally unbiblical.

Simply put, most of the things you see in the Ark Encounter aren’t actually in the Bible. And that’s what makes the Ark Encounter so ludicrous yet so dangerous at the same time: it is a work of creativity that, in order to try to argue Genesis 1-11 is history and science, has ended up presenting fictitious claims and fictitious animals that are nowhere to be found in the Bible.

So What Can You Do?
So what do you do if you find yourself talking with someone who is enamored with Ken Ham and the Ark Encounter, and who believes what Ken Ham is saying? I think you have to “go Socrates” on that person—meaning, you have to just start asking questions:

• “Yes, those animals were interesting. Where in Genesis 6-8 does it mention dinosaurs?”
• “Yes, Ken Ham uses Genesis 4:22 (‘Tubal-cain was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron’) to argue that there was a pre-flood civilization that possessed technology that superseded our modern technology—do you really think that’s what Genesis 4:22 is saying?”
• “Have you noticed that on virtually every display on the Ark Encounter you find the words, ‘could have been,’ ‘might have been,’ and ‘we don’t know for sure, but this is probably what happened’?”

The fact is, people don’t change their worldview overnight. It’s akin to a paradigm shift—it doesn’t happen immediately. Eventually, if you raise enough questions, and gently point out the host of inconsistencies, scientific inaccuracies, and unbiblical claims, eventually that person will wake up one morning, and then the paradigm shift will happen. It will be like when you’ve been wearing old glasses that don’t put things in focus anymore, but you don’t realize it at first and therefore don’t want to go back to the eye doctor; but then when you do, and you get those new glasses—it’s like BAM! All of a sudden you can see the leaves on the trees again, and things start to come into focus.

All that is to say, when it comes to the Ark Encounter, it could have been an incredibly creative and artistic rendition of Genesis 6-9 that helps people, through a creative means, to understand the story of the flood in a much more profound way. As it stands, though, by filling it with bad science, and unbiblical claims, and fictitious beasts that have never existed in history, all while claiming the Ark Encounter is scientific, biblical, and historical—Ken Ham is giving people a really bizarre worldview that causes everything to be dreadfully out of focus.