Announcement! “The Heresy of Ham” is Almost Here!

Mark your calendars and tell your friends…my book, The Heresy of Ham is due out soon…really soon! I’ve been fortunate enough to have Archdeacon Books agree to publish it for me, and the plan is to have the Kindle/E-book of The Heresy of Ham out within a few days. If Ken Ham can celebrate the opening of his “Ark Encounter” on July 7th, then why not celebrate the publication of my book on the same day as well?

To be clear, only the Kindle/E-book will be available in a few days. The official print edition will come out later this month. So, if you want to wait for a physical book to purchase, stay tuned, and I’ll announce when it is available. If you want to get a jump on things and read the Kindle/E-book, you have only a few days to wait.

By all means, please share this announcement on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media site you can think of. Spread the word. I’d appreciate it if you wrote a book review and shared it on Amazon.com, or perhaps your Facebook page, or even if you have your own blog.

In any case, I thought I share a short section from early on in the book, where I introduce precisely why the young earth creationism of Answers in Genesis is so problematic.

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Ever since Charles Darwin published Origin of the Species in 1859, there has been controversy over the issue of evolution and how it may or may not affect the Christian faith and the Bible. It is a debate that continues to spark both interest and vitriol in many segments of our modern society. The reason for such hostility is due in no small part to publications like Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, as well as increasingly influential young earth creationist organizations like Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis. There’s no better way than to keep the fires of fear and paranoia stoked than to convince people that “the other side” is out to get them.

Despite such fear-mongering, my personal experience has convinced me that in reality the majority of Evangelical Christians probably don’t spend all that much time thinking about the creation/evolution debate. They go on with their lives, and are content to hold to the simple idea that since God made the world, then evolution can’t true because evolution says there is no God and all this happened by chance. In practical terms, the creation/evolution debate itself doesn’t affect their lives all that much.

On one hand, this actually is a good thing. Christians know deep down that, despite what one thinks about the age of the earth or about precisely how God created the world, it simply is not a vital issue when it comes to following Christ. On the other hand, though, this is bad thing, because most Christians who don’t think too much about it end up being largely ignorant of it, and such ignorance has left them susceptible to being manipulated by certain people who are using the creation/evolution issue to promote their own agendas. And as I have learned, the young earth creationist movement has an agenda.

Ever since Henry Morris’ The Genesis Flood, was published in 1961, the young earth creationist movement has steadily gained a considerable amount of influence and power within certain segments of the American Evangelical church—the most well-known YEC organization being that of Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis. The reason why it has grown in influence is because it takes advantage of people’s ignorance of history, science, and the Bible, and has convinced a significant portion of Evangelicalism that evolution is the front-line issue in the battle between Christianity and atheism/secular humanism.

Therefore, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise to find that recent polls[1] have shown that 46% of Americans, and 69% of people who regularly attend church weekly, believe God created human beings in their present form at one time in the last 10,000 years or so. Within the Evangelical world, 64% of white Evangelical Protestants reject the idea that humans evolved at all. I doubt that poll number is the result of people having actually investigated the issue. It is rather because Evangelicals simply assume evolution is the same thing as atheism. They assume that because it is what they have been told by the various young earth creationists groups for decades.

The problem, though, is that not only is that claim demonstrably wrong, it is purposely deceitful. No, it’s not because men like Ken Ham are trying to pull a fast one on well-meaning, but unsuspecting Christians in order to get rich. Ken Ham says what he says because he has an agenda, and that agenda is to win the culture war. He is so horrified at what he perceives to be the moral decline in our society, that he believes it is his duty to restore a sense of moral order. He is so convinced that the reason for American society’s moral decline is directly linked to the theory of evolution, that he believes that if he can discredit the theory of evolution and convince people that Genesis 1-11 is scientifically and historically accurate, then this will convince people that the Bible is true, and thus lead to the restoration of Christian morality in our society.

In his attempt to prove that Genesis 1-11 is scientifically and historically accurate, though, Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis have given some truly bizarre “answers” that, ironically, are not found in Genesis, or anywhere else in the Bible, for that matter. Among other things, he has claimed:

• Adam and Eve possessed a perfect genome,[2] stood anywhere from 12-16 feet tall, and had super-intelligence.[3]
• There was no death of any kind before the fall, except for plants and insects; they didn’t have the “breath of life,” so therefore they weren’t technically “alive” in the first place.[4]
• As soon as Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, their perfect genomes started to mutate, the second law of thermodynamics was ushered into existence,[5] and hurricanes, cancer, and untold diseases and natural disasters burst into God’s perfect creation.[6]
• Even though the human genome was no longer perfect after Adam and Eve’s fall, the genetic mutations were still rare and so minor that it was okay for their children to marry each other and have incestuous relationships without it being detrimental to the normal functioning of human life. It was only thousands of years later, when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, that the genome become so mutated that God declared incest to be a sin.[7]
• The pre-flood civilization was highly intelligent and had access to advanced technology that dwarfed the modern technology we have today.[8] This is what made it possible for Noah to build the ark, for he hired people to help him build it. All of the pre-flood advanced technology, though, was entirely blotted out by the waters of the flood, and we thus have no evidence of it today.[9]
• Dinosaurs were on the ark, but only the small newborns. That is how they were able to fit on the ark.[10]
• Animals like the kangaroo were able to float to Australia on the pre-flood trees that had been ripped up by the flood.[11]
• Even after the flood, though, Noah’s descendants became just as sinful as ever, and rebelled against God’s command to be “fruitful and multiply” by refusing to have a lot of sex.[12]

So much for providing answers that are in Genesis (or anywhere else in the Bible, for that matter). And believe me, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Nevertheless, Ken Ham is so convinced that his “battle plan” will save our society, and he is so convinced that God has called him to this fight, he feels that anything or anyone who questions him or doubts his claims is the enemy, not only to him, but to God and the Bible as well. It doesn’t matter to him that 97% of the scientific community rejects his claims of a young earth—they are in rebellion against God. It doesn’t matter to him that the most preeminent Evangelical biblical scholars of our day disagree with his interpretation of Genesis 1-11—they are compromised Christians who are undermining biblical authority. The culture war must be won, and the proper moral order must be reestablished. There can be no compromise. If Adam and Eve didn’t possess perfect genomes, then Christ died for nothing.

The fact is, though, that the claims of Ken Ham and a number of other young earth creationists are not only unscientific, they are also unbiblical and have never been universally held in the history of the Church. Let me repeat that, for it is what lies at the heart of this book: the claims young earth creationism makes regarding Genesis 1-11 are provably unscientific, provably unbiblical, and provably without any basis in the history of the Church.

Most Evangelicals, though, don’t know this. Therefore they go along with the young earth creationists party line and simply assume that Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis organization is just another Christian ministry dedicated to spreading the Gospel and standing up against atheism.

Yet, as has happened countless times,  any Christian who ends up learning more about science, proper biblical interpretation, or the facts of Church history, and then starts to raise questions about some of the things that young earth creationism is claiming, will soon find that there is target on his back. His faith will be questioned, and, if that person happens to be either a teacher at an Evangelical high school or college, or a pastor of a church, chances are his career will be in jeopardy, not for questioning the Bible, but for questioning YEC dogma.

This book is an attempt to provide clarity for anyone confused by the creation/evolution debate, and reassurance and a comfort for those people who’ve been frustrated, hurt, and have had their faith shaken because of what can be characterized as nothing else than young earth creationist zealots. Trying to understand the whole creation/evolution debate and wrestling with how to properly interpret Genesis 1-11 is hard enough. It takes a great amount of courage and faith to ask the hard questions and to seek the truth in both tasks. It therefore is tremendously disheartening and devastating to find certain Christians calling your faith into question, simply because you don’t blindly parrot the party line of young earth creationism.

I believe that the paranoia, divisiveness, and frustration that the young earth creationist movement fosters wherever it goes should serve as an indication that there is something fundamentally wrong with it. This is not simply a case of Christians having a difference of opinion on a certain topic. This is a case of a movement willing to declare war on everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, who does not capitulate to what they have unilaterally declared to be true.

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[1]“Public Views on Evolution.” Pew Research Center: Religion and Public Life. 30 Dec 2013. Web. June 12, 2015.

[2]Elizabeth Mitchell, “Evaluating Giberson’s Book Saving the Original Sinner with Scripture and Science.” Answers in Genesis, 11 Nov 2015. Web. 12 Nov 2015.

[3]Ken Ham and Tim Lovett, “Was there Really a Noah’s Ark and Flood?” New Answers Book: Answers in Genesis, 15 Feb 2014. Web. 11 Dec 2015.

[4]Avery Foley, “Did Adam Step on an Ant Before the Fall?”  Answers in Genesis, 4 Dec 2015. Web. 11 Dec 2015.

[5]Danny Faulkner, “The Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Curse.” Answers Research Journal, 13 Nov 2013. Web. 14 Dec 2015.

[6]Ken Ham, “Was There Death Before Adam Sinned?” New Answers Book 3, 25 April 2014. Web. 10 Oct 2015.

[7]“Who Was Cain’s Wife?” Answers in Genesis. Web. 15 Nov 2015.

[8]Ken Ham and Tim Lovett, “Was There Really a Noah’s Ark and Flood?” New Answers Book, 5 Feb 2014. Web. 22 Sept 2015.

[9]Ken Ham, “Answering Claims About the Ark Project.” Answers in Genesis, 5 June 2015. Web. 5 July 2015.

[10]Buddy Davis, “Dinosaurs on the Ark.” Answers Magazine, 24 Feb 2010. Web. 13 Oct 2015.

[11]Paul F. Taylor, “How did Animals Spread all Over the World from Where the Ark Landed? The New Answers Book, 17 Feb 2014. Web. 13 Oct 2015.

[12]Bodie Hodge, “Why Don’t We Find Human and Dinosaur Fossils Together?” New Answers Book, 1 Nov 2007. Web. 13 Oct 2015.