Rabble rouser Ken Ham and his biased Facebook fans

[a_haworthroberts]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/c ... -1.4392300
He's raving on his Facebook page in response to this article:
"Oh wow! What an enormous problem! A biblical creationist is going to speak at a Christian Homeschool Conference in Canada! And one person complained and it's headline news as this person wants to force his anti-creationist views on everyone else! What an absurd article. So they claim "He [Ken Ham] denies the age of the earth." Let me be clear! The earth has an age! I have an age! I don't deny the age of the earth, but I do reject the religion of millions of years and evolutionary naturalism.
I love the photo they chose (not)--they really wanted me to look “good”
for this attack article!! They claim I'm a "science denier"--typical false rhetoric used by those intolerant of biblical creationists in order to try to intimidate them and undermine their integrity.
Now, watch out for the “but”: “Alberta Liberal leader David Khan says people have freedom of religion, but ..." And if you read his statement he's basically saying there's no freedom of religion for biblical creationists--typical intolerance."

NO answers there Ken. Just denials. No convincing answers to the charge by local parent Paul Ens that "Ken's material is so anti-science, anti-education, his entire ministry is based upon keeping people back and holding back ideas". Ens was raised a young earth creationist but then investigated 'secular' takes on the history of the planet. And guess what the outcome was.
He has a YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIS4cW ... jwovFYQBJQ

But Ken has something to crow about (when he's not complaining about churches being half empty because they are failing to teach young earth creationist apologetics and therefore 'undermining' the Bible):
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/cancellat ... zh3vh.html (the Christian author of this sounds much much more tolerant than Ken Ham ever does)
Ham says on his Facebook:
"Atheist "Reason to Hope" conference became hopeless and was cancelled. Ultimately, what's the point of such a conference because what's the message? "Become an atheist, give yourself meaning and purpose. Then die and you'll never know you existed. That's it folks."
No wonder the atheist conference was cancelled. They BELIEVE there's no God; They BELIEVE life and universe arose by natural processes. Their religion is one without ultimate hope and purpose. It's ultimately a meaningless religion. Their religion has no Reason to Hope.
But there is Reason to Hope for atheists and everyone: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). Only Christianity has that sure hope everyone needs."
This somewhat invalidates Ham's claim that atheism is a 'religion' where people feel compelled to attend places of worship and teaching conventions and the like as otherwise the supernatural God they follow will regard them as half-hearted and lukewarm or perhaps even not 'real' believers."

Ham also has a habit of saying if 'atheists' think they will one day be dead forever why do they spend time in the here and now attacking young earth creationist claims (yes some of them attack any and all theistic religions). Truth matters - in the here and now of them and also of their descendants and future generations.

[a_haworthroberts]

He doth protest - a lot:
https://answersingenesis.org/ministry-n ... ing-waves/

[a_haworthroberts]

https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken- ... stmastown/
New parking lot, eh?

[a_haworthroberts]

https://www.christianpost.com/news/form ... by-208827/
https://www.facebook.com/aigkenham/
"He didn't give up religion (I don't believe he was a true Christian), and now his religion is naturalism, which is a blind-faith religion that really makes man god! On the basis of naturalism, he inconsistently uses words like 'meaningful,' 'ethical,' and 'good!'
When secularists discuss why their religion is naturalism, the issues of understanding death, suffering, and violence nearly always come up. Yet naturalistic evolution is filled with death and violence over millions of years. But it's sin that explains death!"

Looks like God abandons certain professing Christians and makes them no longer able to sincerely believe or to no longer trust in God's goodness. Whereas other Christians get an almost problem free life and carry on believing (yes some do still believe despite experiencing suffering or injustice).

And I gradually discovered that people like Ken Ham are liars and bigots and rabble rousers (many Christians are nothing of the sort). (I also discovered that God allowed me to have a mental breakdown, attempt suicide, become physically disabled and lose my employment nearly 14 years ago.)

Not being a Christian does NOT require 'blind-faith'. It is hardline hardcore creationists who exercise blind-faith eg that a global flood took place 4,500 years ago or - in SOME cases - that Earth is a flat disk. And NATURE explains death. Death is NATURAL.

[a_haworthroberts]

https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken- ... orldviews/
"Ultimately, evolutionary scientists are relying on blind faith when making their interpretations."
No, creationist liars. It's not 'blind faith'. It is based on reams of evidence. (Many educated Christians also have this so-called 'blind faith' of evolutionary scientists.)
"Beginning with the Genesis record and the timeline provided in the Bible, creation scientists are able to make intelligent, reasonable scientific predictions with logical conclusions. What we observe in the world is completely consistent with God’s Word!"
This is garbage - for these zealots reality only means anything if it is viewed through the indoctrination of a so-called 'biblical lens'. Thus they are using Genesis to demonstrate that reality 'confirms' scripture and also that young earth creationists are doing real 'science' - and then they exclaim that observed reality "is completely consistent with God’s Word". Use Genesis and genealogies to 'prove' that observed reality is totally consistent with 'God's Word'! Very compelling. Except that observed reality is NOT consistent with Genesis because the fossil record CANNOT possibly be the result of a violent year-long hill-covering worldwide flood less than 5,000 years ago. That claim is unintelligent bigotry.

And what Rivera's is doing is 'not' indoctrination of kids?

[a_haworthroberts]

Now Ham is saying this on his Facebook page: "Have you noticed secularists who reject the Bible often quote the Bible as if they're Bible students, but quote out of context or totally misunderstand the passage?
Here's a reminder that this is a spiritual problem: "For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed" (John 3:20)."

Have you noticed creationists are forever flinging out baseless accusations against everyone else en masse and justifying them with Bible verses? (However 'secularists' perceive that the Bible assumes a flat Earth whereas most 'biblical creationist' fundamentalists like Ham, though not all, will have none of that (whereas they almost die in a ditch over a 'young' Earth).)

[a_haworthroberts]

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula ... nt-1932210
AiG have made the painful discovery that it is IMPOSSIBLE not to LIE in order to 'defend Genesis'. LYING to defend the 'TRUTH' eh?

[a_haworthroberts]

https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/signs-skies/
"Also in late October, NASA issued a press release that the first interstellar asteroid had been spotted entering and then leaving our solar system.7 We covered that item in the article “1I/‘Oumuamua: The Discovery of the First Interstellar Asteroid” and concurred that Oumuamua (as it was subsequently named) likely was an interstellar asteroid."
And Oumuamua comprehensively falsifies a '6,000 year old' universe. It doesn't take an 'expert' to notice that.
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3837
Faulkner's final claim when reacting to this discovery is totally absurd:
"While we creationists may not have explicitly predicted such a thing, the discovery of 1I ‘Oumuamua is consistent with what we know about creation." Oh no it isn't. It's consistent with REAL astronomy and deep time though.

[a_haworthroberts]

Speaks for itself:
https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-cu ... really-bad

AiG not motivated by science but by theology.

[a_haworthroberts]

https://www.facebook.com/aigkenham/
"This is really an apt description of those who reject God and believe life arose by natural processes and that all life's related:
“Who say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ For they have turned their back to me, and not their face” (Jeremiah 2:27).
Here's another apt description of those who reject God and believe in the religion of naturalistic evolution:
“Claiming to be wise, they became fools ,and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:22–23).
Yes, this is true of those who have adopted the religion of evolution:
“Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).
Sadly, many Christians/Christian leaders compromise God's Word with evolution/millions of years. This verse is apt for them:
"Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked" (Proverbs 25:26)."

Ken Ham - using verses written in a pre-scientific era - pretending that everyone who is not a Bible believing Christian is a God/Bible hating nature worshipper. And suggesting that a Christian who is not a young earth creationist like him is 'surrendering' to 'wicked people' - which shows that he is anti-science. Oh, and Genesis 2:7 (life from dust even if God did it).

I was going to post this on his Facebook page - but my unjustifiable ban from Facebook persists for another 18 hours.

Some of Ham's supporters are despicable (see the thread about the 2014 Ham-Nye debate):
Chris Alexander Evans: "This debate I'll never forget. It moved me so much and changed my life. It inspired me to go into the sciences and to reject creationism after believing in it for so long, specifically christian creationism. I hope this debate stays up for many years for people to see . It truly is a great debate."
and: "Bill Irwin you don't believe i am a data scientist or that i use to be a creationist? I can tell you why i stopped believing if you're interested. I watched ken ham as a kid at my church. I was a big fan of ken. I watched this debate many years ago with great anticipation. The problem i had with it was in the end where bill said evidence would change his mind, but ken said nothing could ever change his mind. That did not sit well with me. Felt very disingenuous and made the debate entirely pointless. Of course, i didn't think this at the time. I just felt uneasy about it. I later gathered up my feelings about it after reading more work from other theologians."
Andrew Strachan: "Chris never watched the debate.. He has always been a non believer. He won't acknowledge God as he doesn't want to be accountable to the creator. This is what it all boils down to.."
(Evans has replied politely to this appalling bigotry.)
There are also hate comments here against Nye (possibly more so because even most Christians and creationists thought he performed better than Ham on the night).


PS at 10.50 pm:
More proof that Ham is anti-science, anti-knowledge and anti evidence:
https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken- ... just-bird/
Archaeopteryx was once classified as an extinct bird (very old and unlike modern birds), now it's classified as a bird-like dinosaur. Yet Ham simply cannot countenance that birds are descended from some dinosaurs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx

[a_haworthroberts]

More serious questions for Ken Ham and co. Which they will presumably never address:
https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2018/02 ... sil-birds/

[a_haworthroberts]

I see the AiG fascists have silently blocked me from commenting further at this page:
https://www.facebook.com/AnswersInGenesis/
All my recent comments appear to have vanished. All the ignorant bigoted comments broadly agreeing with AiG are still there to be read ...

[a_haworthroberts]

I see the AiG fascists have silently blocked me from commenting further at this page:
https://www.facebook.com/AnswersInGenesis/
All my recent comments appear to have vanished. All the ignorant bigoted comments broadly agreeing with AiG are still there to be read ...

Such as THIS comment which I ANSWERED (Sparrow may have seen my response before the fascists zapped it):
"Ashley Haworth-roberts There is no reason for a creationist to believe that dinosaurs will be found at all places in the world where fossils are found. And when fossil graveyards are found where only dinosaurs are found evolutionists can not explain why no other forms of life are found there. Surely they were not the only species living at that time. And what present geological events would bury 10,000 dinosaurs all at once which is what is needed to explain that? Slow natural deposition of sediments does not explain it." Based on what AiG claim, there is EVERY reason to expect some dinosaur fossils at the Grand Canyon.

[a_haworthroberts]

I see the AiG fascists have silently blocked me from commenting further at this page:
https://www.facebook.com/AnswersInGenesis/
All my recent comments appear to have vanished. All the ignorant bigoted comments broadly agreeing with AiG are still there to be read ...

Such as THIS comment which I ANSWERED (Sparrow may have seen my response before the fascists zapped it):
"Ashley Haworth-roberts There is no reason for a creationist to believe that dinosaurs will be found at all places in the world where fossils are found. And when fossil graveyards are found where only dinosaurs are found evolutionists can not explain why no other forms of life are found there. Surely they were not the only species living at that time. And what present geological events would bury 10,000 dinosaurs all at once which is what is needed to explain that? Slow natural deposition of sediments does not explain it." Based on what AiG claim, there is EVERY reason to expect some dinosaur fossils at the Grand Canyon.

Ken Ham believes in free speech. When it's him doing the speaking:
https://answersingenesis.org/about/pres ... m-lecture/

Meanwhile at least one fascist follows the AiG Facebook page (which silently and suddenly blocked me yesterday), initials DA. His comment being:
"There needs to law which bans registered Democrats from ever owning a gun." The media reports I've seen say this killer in Florida belonged to a White Supremacist organisation. And I'll bet DA is white too. As well as a Republican. And quite possibly a gun owner too.

[a_haworthroberts]

https://sciencetrends.com/vegaviidae-gr ... xtinction/
https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken- ... st-a-duck/
"A recent article highlighted the discovery of a “duck-relative” (otherwise known as a duck) [no], which they call a “modern bird,” [yes ie it was not toothed unlike most from the Cretaceous era] from the supposed “Age of Dinosaurs,” [no 'supposed' just actual] according to the evolutionary timeline.
"This duck group supposedly survived the dinosaur extinction event some 65 million years ago and is allegedly “the first documented case of a group of birds surviving such extinction.”" [That's what the evidence shows.] "But how could dinosaurs have evolved into birds if we have examples of modern birds in the very same layers as dinosaurs?" [Easily since there were hundreds of species of dinosaurs - though not all of them contemporaneous with each other - through an era lasting more than 150 million years, and (as AiG accept) some birds, species that are now long extinct, were already around too towards the end of that era.] Ham's bold type sentence is wilful misdirection.
This article also repeats Ken Ham 'information' from earlier this month that has recently been mostly debunked by a Christian palaeontologist blogger. Namely: "And, contrary to what the article states, these ducks are certainly not the only example [that article never said they were it said neornithes were "very scarce and patchy" and then suggested that Vegaviidae was "the first group of modern birds from the Mesozoic" (to survive the extinction event - and note the word 'group')] of modern birds buried with dinosaurs. We find fossilized parrots, albatrosses, loons, owls, flamingos, penguins, sandpipers, and more buried in the same layers as dinosaurs. And one evolutionary researcher claimed that such evidence supports the idea that “most or all of the major modern bird groups were present in the Cretaceous” (a so-called “dinosaur layer”). While these fossils are rarely displayed in museums, they exist and are a serious challenge to the evolutionary timeline."
See: https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken- ... just-bird/
"But the author of the article calls these birds “bird-like dinosaurs” because of the supposed evolutionary connection between dinosaurs and birds (even though modern and now-extinct birds lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, including parrots, loons, owls, flamingos, and more)."
And then: https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2018/02 ... sil-birds/
"But this claim is just wrong and it is wrong in multiple ways. First, for most of the birds mentioned, no such fossils exist. Second, the term “modern” is undefined but 99% of AiG’s readers will take this to mean that a “modern” parrot from the era of dinosaurs is a parrot similar to one alive today but whose bones are found mixed with dinosaur-bearing rocks.
So, are there fossils of “modern” parrots, loons, owls and flamingos found in dinosaur-era rocks? The short answer – NO! But are there fossils in dinosaur-bearing rocks of ancestral parrots and flamingos that are recognizable as belonging to those families or “kinds” as Ken Ham might want to call them or may be thinking in his “modern” term? The answer is still NO! There aren’t even any fossils that can be definitely identified as belonging to these families that are found with dinosaurs." [However Ken Ham does appear to have shown in his latest blog post that there were some ancestral parrots around in the Cretaceous.]
A "serious challenge to the evolutionary timeline" is not the same thing as a serious challenge to the theory of evolution.
And Ham hasn't finished:
"The layers don’t represent eons of evolutionary time—they most likely represent ecosystems successively buried by rising floodwaters." Total garbage. How could more than one ecosystem be found in a single location in the space of one year (a 'flood year' indeed)? Total nonsense. Real science - and real deep time - does explain what is observed.
"To learn more about fossils of so-called “modern” animals, check out Living Fossils, an excellent book by Dr. Carl Werner. You’ll be shocked by what’s found in the fossil record that you never knew about!
Oh, and ducks have always been—well—ducks!"
Said the Ayatollah of Misinformation.

Actually these Vegaviidae birds may have been more loons than ducks. Remind you of anyone? From the article Ham tries to ridicule:
"Records of Modern birds (Neornithes) from the Age of Dinosaurs or Mesozoic Era, are very scarce and patchy. Most specimens are represented by isolated bones or strongly incomplete skeletons. This contrast with toothed birds, which are widely represented and known by abundant skeletons." Toothed birds, which appeared earlier in Earth history, having now gone extinct. We are left with 'modern' birds (even if some of them had ancient origins).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegaviidae

Ken Ham is anti-science. His articles are often breath-takingly simplistic and stupid.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28988276


PS at 12.44 am
That parrot fossil has now been mentioned in comments at the Naturalis Historia blog.