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| Charles Taze Russell and Ken Ham |
There are interesting parallels between the fundamentalists Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis. Russell insisted that his proprietary beliefs about the end times were a vital part of the faith and Ham insists that his proprietary beliefs about the beginning times are a vital part of the faith. Both set up publicity organisations which aimed to co-opt local congregations to their cause. In some senses Russell's "Studies in Scripture" parallels Ken Ham's "Answers" in so far as both are sold as an important means for equipping Christians to understand scripture. The beliefs of both organisations have origins in Adventism (although Ham will try to deny this). That both Ham and Russell have chin beards is probably not particularly significant, but it does help to focus the mind on their parallels. (See end-note added 13/6/18)
I found this interesting link on GeoChristain a few years ago:
It's about the Victorian preacher Charles Spurgeon's attitude to science. Quoting from the article:
Charles Spurgeon was one of the
great preachers of the nineteenth century, and like many leading Evangelicals
of that time, he had no problem with the idea of an old Earth.
Today’s Pyromaniac’s blog has an
excerpt from Spurgeon’s book The Greatest Fight in the World. In this short
section, Spurgeon attacks the scientists who think they have somehow disproved
God or the Bible. I think of the “new atheists” here, such as Dawkins. Spurgeon
also criticizes Christians who twist science to try to make it fit Scriptures.
Here I think of the modern “scientific creationism” movement. In Spurgeon’s
mind, both the “irreligious scientist” and the “unscientific Christian” are
wrong.
As I said, Spurgeon had no
problem with the Earth being millions of years old. This is from a sermon by
Spurgeon delivered in 1855, which was before the publication of The Origin of
Species, but after geologists had established that the Earth must be much older
than 6000-10,000 years:
To back up his claims Geochristian includes quotes from Spurgeon. Actually, given that Spurgeon was a Victorian all this is not too surprising. In the Victorian era there was less controversy among Christians about the Earth's origins than there was about the Earth's endings. It was out of this period that the seventh day Adventists and the fundamentalist sect of Jehovah's Witnesses emerged. Significantly the JW's don't have an problem with the age of the Earth: their pet issue was the eschatological and the end times (See here , here and here).
In a strange kind of symmetrical turn-about today's Christian fundamentalists have switched their focus from the end times of Revelation to the beginning times of Genesis 1 and 2. To complete the symmetry of the reflection it is interesting to note that the JW's and the young Earthists of Answers in Genesis lineage both got their cue from the Seventh Day Adventists although a self-deluded Ken Ham of AiG will try to deny this.
However, what particularly piqued my interest in the Geochristain article was the comments section. A Christian fundamentalist who calls himself Deke responded to Geochristian's article thus:
Deke
I think you’re trying to have it
both ways here. Not in regard to Spurgeon, but in regard to the Bible. It says
“day” so many times it’s almost comical (“…and there was evening and morning,
one day.”, “And there was evening and morning, a second day”). It’s almost as
emphatic as the repeated globality of the flood (“Every living thing that lived
on the earth perished”, “every living on the face of the earth was wiped
out…”). Only man in his staggering intellect could possibly refute such an
obvious truth.
Notice, as is the wont of the fundamentalist mind, that Deke assumes his contention is such an obvious and a plain reading of scripture that anyone disagreeing with him must being doing so out of a conscious anti-God cussedness and therefore has a compromised conscience; this assumption, after all, fits in with fundamentalist paranoid beliefs that outsiders are all partakers in a world of total depravity, especially, it seems, quasi-apostate Christians who disagree with them! Quite often, therefore, they attempt to construe the debate as one of God's plainly spoken word (i.e their opinions, of course) vs. man's intellect and word.
However, a Christian commenter who calls himself WebMonk gives a robust and very good reply to Deke (My emphases):
WebMonk
Deke, I think it has been mentioned
extensively that using the word “land” is just as valid grammatically as using
the word “earth” in the Flood accounts. The decision to use “land” or “earth”
is a decision based on the existing view of the globality (to make up a word)
of the Flood.
If one thinks it to be a global
flood, then the word “earth” is put in, but the person can’t then turn around
and say the existence of the word “earth” supports a global flood. Circular
support.
For Genesis, it is almost comical
how someone can view the heavily repetitive and formulaic structure of Genesis
1 and not understand that it is poetry. Only man in his staggering intellect
could possibly refute such an obvious truth.
Using poetry doesn’t make
something false, but it does make it extremely suspect when used outside of its
genre. Is Psalm 2 untrue? Well sure it is if you take it out of context and
subscribe it to a scientific investigation as to whether or not God had put
physical chains and fetters on the kings and rulers of the day. However, that
poem is true in what it is intended to say.
Is Genesis true? Absolutely, but
it, like most poetry, is not trying to speak to a scientific accuracy, and so
if one takes it and subjects it to a strictly scientific investigation, you’re
going to run into a LOT of problems, just like one would if one were to take
Psalm 2 and try to scientifically verify its statements about chains and
fetters. That would be taking the Bible WILDLY out of context.
Do you take Psalm 2 as a
completely precise scientific description of the world? Of course not. Is Psalm
2 true? Of course it is.
Should you take Genesis 1 as a
completely precise scientific description of the Creation? Of course not. Is
Genesis 1 true? Of course it is.
Nice one! As well as providing some very useful content Webmonk has used a strategy I have employed myself: He takes the very words used by the fundamentalist and turns them around and uses them against the fundamentalist. (See highlights in bold above). Thus Webmonk has reflected fundamentalist exclusiveness and spiritual conceit right back at the fundamentalist, giving him a taste of his own medicine. Fundamentalists are spiritually conceited to the point that they do not see that the very sickly light they try to cast on outsiders can be turned back on them. In this case Webmomk has used Deke's own words to suggest that Deke is suffering from the very intellectual conceit that he accuses outsiders of.
None of this will, of course, have much impression on the fundamentalist mind, but Webmonk does succeed in exposing a class of mind that is delusionally enamored of its own conceits and self-deceits
None of this will, of course, have much impression on the fundamentalist mind, but Webmonk does succeed in exposing a class of mind that is delusionally enamored of its own conceits and self-deceits
https://popchrist.com/2015/11/11/what-motivates-ken-ham-part-i-or-what-answers-in-genesis-gets-wrong-about-n-t-wright/
Another parallel between Ham and Russell is that both necessarily hold Restorationist doctrines in order to explain the novelty and unorthodoxy of their respective organisations; that is, they see themselves as part of a movement which has recently recovered vital truths. Viz: Russell believed himself to be recovering doctrines lost for nearly 2000 years. Ham traces the restoration of a literal view of Genesis to the 1960s, shortly after the 1961 publication of the fundamentalist book by Whitcomb and Morris, The Genesis Flood. Ham likens 1960s young earthism to a kind of reformation after 150 years of rebellion when Christian and non-Christian alike started to move away from a literal interpretation of Genesis as the Western world emerged from a medieval world view during the enlightenment. Ham wishes to restore his pre-scientific attitudes among Christians. In spite of what he might claim he is an anti-scientist as are many fundamentalist "scholars". Taken to it's extreme we find fundamentalists moving back to flat earth theory.
That rejection of his views by Christians is seen by Ham as tantamount to apostasy is indicated in this post of mine:
http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2017/02/holy-bad-mouthing.html
Further evidence that Ham's organisation sees Christians as part of a great rebellion against his doctrines is evidenced by one of his tame scholars who writes the following slanderous words. Bear in mind here that fundamentalists regard the world beyond their sect as in a state of total depravity and that is why they find it so easy to project heinous sin on outsiders.(My emphases below):
This fundamentalist has to explain to himself why so many Christian geologists don't follow his views, views he believes to be plainly evidenced in what to me is a clearly mythic portion of the Bible... to this end his fundamentalist outlook forces him to impugn the consciences of these Christians by suggesting that they are knowingly rejecting the Bible. These words which defame Christians who don't follow Ham's organisation can be read here:
https://answersingenesis.org/creationism/young-earth/most-compelling-scientific-evidence-of-young-earth/
The foregoing article (an outdated article written in 2006) has the usual errors: Misunderstandings about the nature of the post-Satan fall of humanity, failure to register Genesis 1's "very good" as not the same as "perfect", straw-man distortions about so-called "uniformitarianism" and the crass anthropomorphism of calling God an "eyewitness". These are all silly ideas hatched in the minds of fundamentalists. However, as I have said before, I spend too much time on fundamentalist anti-science as it is and so I won't comment any further on these matters. Suffice to show here that in "Answers in Genesis" we have a highly sectarian organisation which will not accept that other Christians can disagree with them with a clear conscience. Instead AiG shows a tendency to apply spiritual duress via character defamation of Christians, as does the Watchtower.
Endnote 13/6/18
That rejection of his views by Christians is seen by Ham as tantamount to apostasy is indicated in this post of mine:
http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2017/02/holy-bad-mouthing.html
Further evidence that Ham's organisation sees Christians as part of a great rebellion against his doctrines is evidenced by one of his tame scholars who writes the following slanderous words. Bear in mind here that fundamentalists regard the world beyond their sect as in a state of total depravity and that is why they find it so easy to project heinous sin on outsiders.(My emphases below):
Ultimately, the origins debate is a spiritual battle.
Both Darwinian evolution and the idea of millions of years were created in the
minds of people in rebellion against their Creator. They were inventing an
alternative story to the inspired, inerrant history in Genesis 1–11, so they
would not feel the need to be morally accountable to the Creator. That is
fundamentally the same reason that most people today believe these ideas and
are unwilling to consider Genesis 1–11 and the powerful scientific evidence
that confirms that truth.
The rock record is screaming “Noah’s Flood” and “young
earth.” Secular geologists can’t hear or see the message because of their
academic indoctrination in those naturalistic, uniformitarian assumptions. For
the same reason, most Christian geologists can’t see or hear the message, in
addition to the fact that they have believed the scientific establishment more
than the Bible, even though they claim it is the inspired Word of God."
This fundamentalist has to explain to himself why so many Christian geologists don't follow his views, views he believes to be plainly evidenced in what to me is a clearly mythic portion of the Bible... to this end his fundamentalist outlook forces him to impugn the consciences of these Christians by suggesting that they are knowingly rejecting the Bible. These words which defame Christians who don't follow Ham's organisation can be read here:
https://answersingenesis.org/creationism/young-earth/most-compelling-scientific-evidence-of-young-earth/
The foregoing article (an outdated article written in 2006) has the usual errors: Misunderstandings about the nature of the post-Satan fall of humanity, failure to register Genesis 1's "very good" as not the same as "perfect", straw-man distortions about so-called "uniformitarianism" and the crass anthropomorphism of calling God an "eyewitness". These are all silly ideas hatched in the minds of fundamentalists. However, as I have said before, I spend too much time on fundamentalist anti-science as it is and so I won't comment any further on these matters. Suffice to show here that in "Answers in Genesis" we have a highly sectarian organisation which will not accept that other Christians can disagree with them with a clear conscience. Instead AiG shows a tendency to apply spiritual duress via character defamation of Christians, as does the Watchtower.
