Ken Ham: Vote Trump? ...and support the Kremlin?

Ken still hasn't acknowledged the Trump menace.

In a video entitled "What is the role of Government" (17th October), Ken Ham, supremo of the Answers in Genesis (AiG) young earthist theme park, gives his views on the role of Government. For a Christian of many years standing Ken's teaching about government is basic and not particularly controversial from a Christian angle (leaving aside Ken's young earthism, his anti-gay views & his naturally authoritarian character *1). However, given the kind of policy supported by the Republican party it is very likely that Ken votes Republican; it is easy to infer this from Ken's video. But there's nothing wrong with that: He lives in what is purported to be a democracy and is free to argue for the Republicans. 

Under normal circumstances I wouldn't find Ken's video particularly remarkable but the political situation in the US is far from normality: Currently the Republican party is not just a party supporting the more conservative and traditional values that Ken prefers: That's because at the present time Republicanism is hosting a monstrous parasitic cuckoo in the nest, a monster that is destabilizing the world order, a world that in any case often finds itself teetering dangerously on edge of conflict. So, instead of just making his Republican preference clear, why isn't Ken talking about the Whitehouse's abuse of government and it's criminal occupant? I suspect that's because Ken knows his AiG bread is buttered in part by evangelical MAGArites; in short he can't afford to alienate MAGArism. 

Unfortunately, given the political situation in the US a vote for the Republicans in the primaries is now vote for the narcissistic parasite in the Whitehouse. That parasite is creating a traitorous regime which is hostile to the Western democratic alliance and is apparently in favour of the criminal tyrant ("a cold blooded killer") that resides in the Kremlin. 

When I saw the front page of Ken's video (See picture above) my first thought was that perhaps Ken was at last calling Trump to order, but no, he simply effectively promotes the Republican party and stays silent about MAGArism. It is the misfortune of the Republican party that a vote for them in the primaries is a vote for MAGArism and therefore by implication a vote for the Kremlin. When Republicanism has at last purged itself of a parasitic pathogen Ken can comfortably go back to promoting Republicanism to his heart's content. 

Footnote

*1 Ken fails to acknowledge that God's Word is seen through an interpretative filter which necessarily engages huge but fallible cognitive and cultural resources, as it does for all of us. Therefore what he stridently refers to as God's Word is in fact Ken's word and therefore should be administered with epistemic humility rather than with the fundamentalist cultic arrogance that he is accustomed to.  With regard to that arrogance let's not forget the bad mouthing Ken gives to Christians he disagrees with:

Views, News and Pews: Hell and Hamnation Watch

Views, News and Pews: Calling down Hell and Hamnation on Heretics!

Views, News and Pews: Holy Bad Mouthing

Answers in Genesis vs Institute for Creation Research.

Front page of Ken's recent video: Ken of AiG on the left
 and Ken's antagonist Randy Guliuzza of ICR on the right.

In the following post on Ken Ham's blog I found myself very much in sympathy with Ken.....

Is Natural Selection an Idol? | Answers in Genesis

In a video posted with his blog Ken tells us that within the constraint of his 6000 year time scale he accepts that there is a degree of natural selection taking place. This selection works on resources inherent in an organisms makeup. This, he explains, is one of the God-supplied providences giving animals the flexibility to adapt to changed environments. Leaving aside Ken's young earthism I have no problems with that; Ken is being quite reasonable here in my view. Moreover, I guess Ken's views here are relatively uncontroversial as we know that humans themselves, via selective breeding, can considerably change life forms (*1). So Ken admits to a form of incremental evolution but of course he doesn't accept macroevolution which he scathingly refers to as molecules to man evolution. Fair enough, that is consistent with Ken's young earthist assumptions.

Now, Ken's video goes on to tell us about Christian fundamentalist Randy Guliuzza president of the Institute for Creation Research, (ICR) who regards even Ken's small and quite reasonable concession to evolution as idolatry. My interpretation of Guliuzza is that he makes this accusation on the basis of what I would identify as the old natural forces did it vs God-did it dichotomy, a dichotomy that surfaced during the enlightenment in the form of deism. Guliuzza's views piqued my interest because they run parallel to the evolution-did-it vs God-did-it popularist dichotomy that the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) community have been exploiting (See my Quantum Non-Linearity blog here for example).

According to Guluizza's misconceived theophilosophy any form of natural selection, presumably even to the extent accepted by Ken, amounts to modern idolatry because it "credits natural selection as creator". And yet Ken makes it clear that the biological resources which supply organisms with the flexibility to adapt are obviously the providences of God's creative activity and therefore Guluizza has no basis for accusing Ken (and Answers in Genesis) of idolatry and making evolution a creator.

Guluizza is a modern inquisitor who puts his naive concepts of idolatry and creation into the heads and mouths of his antagonists. Ken, whatever else I might say about him, is not an idolator.

There is irony here, however. I'm not aware that Ken has ever accused those Christians who disagree with his young earthism of being idolators (But see *2 below!). But he does have a habit of very badly bad mouthing those who disagree with him; in fact to such an extent that one wonders if he really considers old earth Christians to be Christians at all. See these links.

Views, News and Pews: Hell and Hamnation Watch

Views, News and Pews: Calling down Hell and Hamnation on Heretics!

Views, News and Pews: Holy Bad Mouthing

There is therefore a kind of poetic justice in that the head of ICR should make an even more extreme accusation toward the Supremo of AiG, Ken Ham. But this clash of fundamentalists is no new thing.  See these links:

Views, News and Pews: Fundamentalist Gurus Fall Out

Views, News and Pews: Jeepers Creepers II: The John Mackay Affair

Views, News and Pews: Jeepers Creepers I

Footnote:

*1 However Ken might be criticized on the basis that his version of microevolution has to do a lot of heavy lifting in a short time. 

*2 But then I looked at the addendum of the post I linked to above. That is...

 Views, News and Pews: Calling down Hell and Hamnation on Heretics!

Intellectual Bankruptcy

 

The above video was picked up by PZ Myers and was the source of much amusement among his followers. GOP candidate Darren Baily looks to be a young earth fundamentalist and apparently believes that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. Bailey, a likely MAGArite, Trumpite & Hamite, repeatedly responds to the interviewer's question about whether humans and dinosaurs co-existed with the question "Were you there?". 

I too was amused, especially over those people in dinosaur suits who attend Baily's rallies and send up his views; that's democracy at work for you. And yet at the same time I was horrified to think that this kind of intellectual degeneracy is being promoted in the name of Christianity. 

The eye watering stupidity of Bailey's response is evidence of just how intellectually run-down Christianity is in some parts of the US (and in the UK too). Of course, human beings can't be everywhere at once and many conclusions have to be drawn without eyewitness data, via abductive inference based on evidence (e.g. crime, deep space, the inside of the Sun and planets, complex software bugs, technological malfunctions, historical texts, claims about fairies at the bottom of the garden, ....etc.) In short Baily et. al. are undermining the whole providential rationality of our world with a postmodern take on science. I have a feeling it's no coincidence that Christian young earthism, fideism and gnosticism saw growth in the 1960s around the time postmodernism was geminating too. 

Another source of mindless irrationality is the following epistemic (Often heard from Ken Ham) :

Everyone has the same evidence, but different interpretations occur because of different starting points.

...as if there was no such thing as some world views joining the data dots more consistently, succinctly and predictably than other world views. The deep time theory built up over many years by large numbers of scientists is more probable than the spiritually threatening intellectual ad-hocery of young earthism: Another postmodernist take on science!