The Nye/Ham Debate (Part 8): 7 Things to Do, or Do Not do…(there is no try!)

HURRAH! If you don’t want to actually read this post, but would rather listen to ME read it for you, well YOU ARE IN LUCK! A YouTube video is available for that very thing! Yes, it’s me–Joel Anderson–reading my post…just for you. Enjoy!

Here we come to “Part 8” of my month-long homage to the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham that took place three years ago. The focus of these posts has been the analysis that Ken Ham and Bodie Hodge gave of that debate, in their book, Inside the Nye/Ham Debate. The focus of these posts, though, has not so much been on the actual arguments made during the debate, as it has been on Ken Ham and Bodie Hodge’s (HH) take on the debate. In short, it has been on the “smoke and mirrors” YECist groups like Answers in Genesis adeptly use to avoid addressing challenges to their YECist claims.

In “Part 7,” I summarized HH’s use of these smoke and mirrors in their attempt (a) to delegitimize the scientific evidence Bill Nye gave of an old earth, (b) to distract their followers from the actual topic of the debate, (c) to demonize Bill Nye himself, and (d) to declare a call to arms in their culture war. If you read that post, you no doubt were struck how HH completely dismissed any and all evidence for an old earth as “mere assumptions” and “fairytales.” Fossils, rock layers, ice cores, tree rings, and distant starlight—all received the same reaction: “Was Bill Nye there? It’s all just assumptions; Bill Nye is dishonest and relies on the mythologists of humanistic evolution, and Ken Ham is wise to rely on God’s historical science textbook!”

I ended that post by asking a simple question: “How should a Christian go about addressing the claims of YECism?” In this post, therefore, I want to contemplate that question and offer some reflections.

Personal Stories
Although most of the responses I have received about both my book, The Heresy of Ham, and the numerous posts I’ve written this month on the Nye/Ham debate, there have been a few comments and questions to the effect of, “Why are you attacking a fellow brother in Christ?” Well, believe me, when I wrote my original blog posts on the debate three years ago, I never imagined I would still be writing about YECism three years later. In fact, I wrote about my thoughts on the debate just to clarify in my own head what I felt the fundamental issues of the debate were. I thought I’d write my few posts and move on, focusing on teaching my classes working on finishing up my four-year Worldview curriculum that I hoped to eventually get published.

As things turned out, those posts ended up being used against me by a rather over-zealous YECist headmaster to eventually oust me from my job. Needless to say, my experience over the past three years has made me realize that YECism isn’t just a fringe movement that Christians can amicably disagree about—YECists like Ken Ham do not allow that as an option.

In addition, I’ve also come to realize that most Evangelical Christians have never really thought much about this issue or really think it is all that important. Consequently, many are surprised (like I was) when they realize that there those who are insistent that belief in a 6,000-year-old universe is a core tenet of the Christian faith upon which the Gospel rises or falls.

My friend Ian Panth has recently written on his blog about how quickly YECists demonize you as soon as you let on that you don’t believe the earth is 6,000 years old. Just the other day, a friend of mine from church told me about a recent experience she had in her homeschool group—they were planning to use some YECist science textbook, and when she asked why, they said, “Well, we’re Christians,” and they practically treated it as if it were a salvation issue. And over the past year, I’ve gotten numerous responses to my posts on YECism by people who have been deeply hurt by YECists, particularly Ken Ham, and who almost lost their faith because of the way they were treated.

Simply put, if YECism was just another secondary issue Christians tended to disagree on and felt free to debate and discuss, I doubt I would be writing about it, and I doubt I would have lost my job over it. But the fact is, YECists like Ken Ham feel it is their duty to declare war on fellow Christians who disagree with their YECist claims. If you don’t believe me, just join a YECist Facebook group and say, “I don’t see what the big deal is if you think the universe is 14 billion years old; a lot of Christians don’t read Genesis 1 literally.” Sit back and let the comments come in…and you’ll see.

The reality, though, is the facts of science, proper biblical exegesis, and Church history are not on Ken Ham’s side. That’s a big problem for organizations like Answers in Genesis—and, as I’ve shown in the previous seven posts, you can say that AiG’s strategy can be boiled down to this: “If you can’t debate, obfuscate!” And, if you take the time to slow down and actually pick apart what they say (as I’ve tried to do in this series), you realize that their arguments have more holes in them than Swiss cheese…that has been blown apart by a shot gun.

And if you visit the Ark Encounter, some of the stuff is well, just plain silly: elephants on treadmills on the Ark, powering a pully-system that helps dispose animal waste in the sea? A pre-flood civilization that had coliseums, where giants threw innocent people to the…velociraptors? Noah had access to incredible pre-flood technology that would have put our modern technology to shame? Where is any of that in the Bible? For someone who claims to be upholding biblical authority, Ken Ham certainly has a tremendous ability for telling some incredibly tall tales.

So What is One to Do? (Or Not Do?)
And this brings me to the main question for this post: “How is a thoughtful Christian to deal with YECism?” Here is my advice:

1. Don’t bury your head in the sand: Don’t be like I was, and think this is not a big deal, and that honest Christians can have different opinions on this issue. Realize that for the real hard-core YECists, this is an issue of life or death. For them, (as crazy as it may sound), if the earth is 14 billion years old, then Christ died for nothing and the Gospel is undermined.
2. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a big deal: No, I’m not contradicting myself. What I mean here is that no matter what anyone may tell you, the age of the earth is utterly irrelevant to the Gospel. No matter what anyone might tell you, the reality of human beings’ sinfulness is not dependent upon whether or not there was a literal couple named Adam and Eve. What is a big deal is this: loving God and loving your neighbor; it is sacrificing your life for others; it is caring for those in need; it is developing the talents that God has given you; it is allowing yourself to be transformed into God’s image through the inevitable sufferings that come into your life. “He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). For the life of me, I don’t recall anywhere in the Bible that says “What is good” is to claim that God’s entire gospel of salvation in Christ is dependent on whether or not you think Adam and Eve had a pet dinosaur.

3. Don’t get nasty and hateful with YECists, even if you find yourself really hurt by them: It doesn’t do anybody any good to ruthlessly mock and denigrate YECists and groups like AiG—it belittles you and it actually helps feed into their narrative that they are being persecuted. That’s not to say that a humorous jibe or and clever quip when pointing out any one of their many outrageous claims is a bad thing. Like in any debate, humor and cleverness is fine. In fact, you need to have a sense of humor when discussing YEC. I mean, look at this picture. Look closely at the animals represented–it really is just funny! There’s a difference between humor and sheer meanness. I realize it’s sometimes hard not to slip into that (I think one time, I told a guy he was dumber than a bag of hammers…not my finest moment). But the thing to remember is that the people who arrested, beat, and handed Jesus over to be crucified were the religious leaders of Jesus’ own people. And part of what He exemplified is the willingness to take the beatings without repaying in kind. And dang it, if you’re a Christian, you’re called to imitate Christ—so even if a nasty comment sneaks out here and there, do your best to curb that desire to repay in kind.

4. Don’t “play nice” with YECists like Ken Ham: At the same, it isn’t good to just “play nice” and refuse to say anything at any time that might be construed as being mean. Again, if you read through the gospels, Jesus could really take it to the Pharisees at times, and just look at what he did when He got to the Temple! Sometimes, it is right and good to confront someone who is doing something wrong and hurtful. I know a few people objected to the title of my book, The Heresy of Ham, on the grounds that it sounded too confrontational. My response is that it is confrontational! It is challenging the basic claims of YECism in light of the fundamental tenets of the historical Christian faith, and it is calling Ken Ham out on the vitriol that he has put out there in which he savages fellow Christians simply because they disagree with him. Divisive, hateful behavior needs to be challenged and called out. When Ken Ham claims biblical authority, and then turns around and claims that a pre-flood civilization threw innocent people to savage dinosaurs in their pre-flood coliseums, one has to say, “No, that’s not in the Bible.” When he claims that if you don’t believe there are time zones in space, or that Adam and Eve had perfect genomes, then you are a compromised Christian, one has to say, “No, that has never been part of the Christian faith.” Simply put, don’t let yourself be bullied, and stand up to the bully when you see other people getting verbally abused by that bully.

5. Don’t worry, but rather have faith that truth is revealed in the light: The Catholic monk Thomas Merton once said something to the effect, “There’s no need to defend the truth; you just have to make sure that you bring it to light—the truth can take care of itself.” The number one priority for a Christian shouldn’t be to “defend” anything; it rather should be to shine the light on what is true. If you’re a Bible scholar, shine the light on what certain passages say; if you’re a scientist, shine the light on what certain theories (like evolution) really say…and let the truth speak for itself.
6. We need to realize that all this debate…is actually kind of necessary: What I mean by that is this: this is how we learn and grow, both individually and as a society. I actually started looking into this whole issue when the Ben Stein movie, Expelled, came out in 2008—it was about the Intelligent Design movement. At first I thought it was a good movie, but then I started to look more closely at it. Now, at that time, I would have said I didn’t think evolution was true—micro-evolution, sure; but macro-evolution? Come on. In any case, I got into a conversation with a guy who had huge problems with the I.D. movement, and to make a long story short, it was because of that conversation that I started to look into the whole creation/evolution debate more, and eventually got to the position I am now: I am a Christian who believes in Christ, and who is convinced that much of the theory of evolution is scientifically correct—if future discoveries change that view, great…it won’t bother me either way. But the point is, it took time for me to research and think things through…and it takes time for anyone to think these things through. That’s how we learn.

7. Finally, don’t forget that there’s a whole lot more Bible beyond Genesis 1-11. Don’t me wrong: Genesis 1-11 is extremely important, in that it lays out the over-arching backdrop to the rest of the Bible. But we have to remember that Genesis 1-11 is pretty useless if we don’t read beyond it. It’s the back curtain and backdrop, if you will, to the stage of biblical history—but if all you do is stare at the back curtain, you’re going to miss the play going on throughout the pages of Scripture. So by all means, debate creation/evolution and talk about how to interpret Genesis 1-11. I sure do! But don’t neglect looking at the whole biblical story.

I realize this post might have proven to be a tad more dull that the previous ones, but I wanted to lay out these thoughts before I write the two concluding posts about the Nye/Ham debate: the rebuttals and the questions/answers time.