Ken Ham, Young Earth Creationists, Atheists…in the Wonderful World of Twitter

As you will inevitably know if you read my blog, I’m not a fan of Ken Ham. The young earth creationism he espouses is, to put it mildly, wrong across the board: scientifically, biblically, historically. This post, though, it not about Ken Ham, but he does have something to do with it. You see, Ken Ham routinely tweets out his blog posts, and I get those tweets. For the most part, I ignore them, but occasionally if one catches my eye, I take a look at the post to see if I want to write about it.

Yesterday though, Ken Ham must have been really angry, for he shot out a number of tweets that seemed to be looking for a fight. Truth be told, almost every tweet Ham puts out gets some sort of response in Twitterworld. Most of them come from really angry atheists, and fairly often young earth creationist followers (i.e. let’s call them Hamites) feel the need to respond, and the result is that Ham’s twitterfeed gets rather raucous. I might add a funny one-liner every now and then, but for the most part I steer clear of the bloodbath. Yesterday was one of those days where I made a comment, and as things turned out, I got into a few conversations. It really was fascinating.

What I’ve noticed on Ham’s twitterfeed responses is that the arguments from both the Hamites and the atheists, for the most part, are quite predictable. Some atheist will respond to an offensive tweet by Ham by saying that the Bible is Bronze Age unscientific nonsense, and then a Hamite will say, “There’s no evidence at all for your atheistic religion of evolution! You are the one who has blind faith!” …and it just goes on in that vein.

What I’ve noticed is that both sides simply shout at each other, based on uninformed caricatures each one has about the other side. On one hand, Hamites really do have no clue as to what evolution actually is—they really think it an “atheistic religion,” and they really think evolution tries to explain the origin of life. It doesn’t—it explains the natural processes that bring about the various kinds of species. On the other hand, most of the atheists really have no real understanding about what the Bible actually is, or what Christianity actually teaches. (For that matter, the Hamites really have no understanding about the Bible either).

That’s why their arguments are so fascinating…and baffling. But let’s get to the Twitterfied tweets. Like I said, Ken Ham was in rare form yesterday.  I think he was just looking for a fight. Here’s what he tweeted:

• Naturalistic evolution is man’s irrational and illogical anti-God religion in a failed attempt to explain life and the universe
• The Bible even describes many on twitter: “lovers of themselves… boasters, proud, blasphemers… unthankful, unholy,” (2 Timothy 3:2)
• People like Richard Dawkins have a blind faith whereas Christians have a sure faith confirmed by science
• People who do not build their morality on the absolute authority of God’s Word can only have a ‘morality’ that’s subjective / just opinion
• The battle in our culture is between two religions – God’s infallible Word vs man’s fallible word
• Atheists usually react emotionally and irrationally with ad hominem arguments to Christianity because it’s a spiritual issue
• Atheism is nothing more than the religion of naturalism in a failed attempt to rebel against the Creator God

Tweeting with a Vulgar Hamite
Needless to say, Ham got a lot of reaction. On one twitterfeed, an atheist scientist (we’ll call her Sarah) was slamming Ham (quite correctly) on his pseudo-scientific claims; then a Hamite (we’ll call him Bob) decided to take her on by throwing out a number of young earth creationist arguments, and then telling her that she should go to Kent Hovind’s website to learn some “real science.”

Now, for those of you who don’t know, Kent Hovind is not just a young earth creationist, but he makes Ken Ham look positively respectable. He’s known as “Dr. Dino,” and if you look him up on the web, you’ll find some really crazy stuff. In his 100 page “doctoral dissertation” for Patriot University (an unaccredited “college” that is run out of what looks like a mobile home), he claimed that evolutionary theory started when Satan fell from heaven, and that Cain was a proponent of evolution. Hovind also is a conspiracy theorist who thinks the government was behind the 9/11 attacks, the Oklahoma City bombing, and yes, UFOs. And to top it off, he has been in prison for the past few years because he was found guilty on 58 counts for not paying his taxes for a long time.

Anyway, when I saw that “Bob” had invoked Kent Hovind, I quickly tweeted out who Hovind was. “Bob” first responded with, “Slander is the language of losers!” I tweeted back, “Seriously, Hovind just got out of prison last year,” to which “Bob” replied, “You are full of s***! Burn in hell!”

Wow… Now, I doubt that Ken Ham would approve of this guy, but I think this guy’s paranoid, violent reaction is just an inevitable consequence of the kind of misinformation and paranoia that the likes of Ham and Hovind peddle. Just look at the few tweets Ham put out that day. If you imbibe that stuff on a regular basis, as soon as anyone questions you, or points out simple facts, your reaction is going to be, “That guy’s a blasphemer, illogical, rebellious…etc. etc.! I must defend the truth!” And what you get is just a little more violent, a little more vulgar kind of rant than the ones that Ham puts out there.

Tweeting with Atheists
In any case, a few other not-so-vulgar-but-still-combative-Hamites joined in, and I just tried to explain that (1) evolution is a scientific theory that deals with the natural world, (2) Genesis 1-11 isn’t trying to do science in the first place, so (3) evolution is not a threat to the Bible, and it doesn’t “disprove” Genesis 1-11, because they’re addressing two separate issues.

At that point, a few atheists who had been “liking” my response to the vulgar Hamite, suddenly took issue with me: how dare I say science doesn’t discredit the Bible! The Bible is Bronze Age nonsense! One guy then assumed I must be a young earth creationist, and asked, “How old do you think the world is?” Another guy (who obviously checked out my Twitter page) tweeted, “Alabama! That figures!”  Another guy wrote something like, “Science and reason disproves the bull-s****y nonsense in the Bible.”

At another point, when I said that it was hard to discuss this topic on Twitter, and suggested they check out my blog so they could write more lengthy comments and I could respond more fully, one guy in particular essentially said, “No, I don’t need to. 140 characters is more than enough to disprove the Bible.”

Another guy posted a couple links to atheist websites that displayed these intricate charts that tried to show every single instance in the Bible where there was a contradiction. These things were so intricate and detailed, they reminded me of those old “End Times” charts of dispensationalists—the kind that were so detailed that your eyes would just glaze over. Or better yet, they actually reminded me of the Answers in Genesis website, where you can find articles that are so long, with so much scientific jargon, that you simply have no idea what they’re talking about.

It Was All Quite Fascinating…
It really was fascinating. Similar tactics, similar antagonisms. The Hamites got incensed if you pointed out that they didn’t really know what evolution actually is, whereas many of the atheists took offense when I pointed out their understanding of the Bible wasn’t accurate. By the same token, the “evolution” that the Hamites confidently and brashly condemned was nothing more than a false and ill-informed caricature of the real theory; and the Bible that the atheists confidently and brashly condemned was also a false and ill-informed caricature.

It seemed that neither side was really open to dialogue and consider the possibility that, “Hey, maybe there’s something I don’t know…”

In any case, the whole experience was interesting to say the least. There was one particular conversation, though, on which I want to comment. It involves the question regarding the reliability and truthfulness of the Bible. But that post is for tomorrow…