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!

Andrew Ollerton's take on Suffering and Evil. Part II

In this three part article I am looking at the response of Andrew Ollerton to Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch's loss of faith. Andrew Ollerton is the author of the Bible Society's successful Bible and Romans courses, courses we have run at our church. Andrew's answer to Kemi Badenoch can be found on the Premier Christianity website here.  The Premier article is divided into three parts: Viz:

Part I: What Andrew refers to as his Logical Response. I looked at  this in Part 1 of the series

Part II: This is about Andrew's Biblical Response, and is the subject of this blog post. 

Part III:  This concerns Andrew's Pastoral Response, and will be the subject of the next post in this series.

Below I interleave Andrew's Biblical Response with my own comments.

Andrew's BIBLICAL REPONSE

Andrew: Secondly, let’s consider a biblical response. Taken as a whole, the Bible depicts God as the enemy of evil and never the cause of it. In Genesis, God created only what is good.

MY COMMENT: Many Christians (and that includes myself) have trouble getting round the genocidal slaughterings of the Book of Joshua, slaughterings which are depicted as the implementation of God's will. OK, there may be apologetics here that takes into account the mitigating constraints which arise if one is constrained to play humanity at their own game, but it means that God as the enemy of evil and never the cause of it is not an immediately obvious truism*.  The statement In Genesis, God created only what is good, is deeply issue laden: For example, can we equate the "good" of Genesis 1 with perfection? At a lecture in Norwich Cathedral Cambridge University biologist & Faraday institute member Denis Alexander  maintained that in Genesis 1 "good" meant fit for purpose and not perfection. In fact the Bible itself is clear that the creation was far from perfect: Firstly, humanity was given the task of subduing and organizing the chaotic Earth beyond the garden of Eden and this suggests that the Earth was less than perfect and needed more creative work to be done. 

But secondly the real challenge to the notion of a perfect creation is found in the Biblical fact that the two main created players in the cosmic drama, namely humanity and Satan, were given a less than perfect power of choice, a power which allowed them to implement choices which could endanger "project earth" and send it on a near catastrophic course in the space-time continuum. Unfortunately I too have that less than perfect power of choice, so unless I'm a radically renewed animal I'd better be barred from the New Heavens and Earth of Revelation 21. There is only one force in this world that can radically renew my power of choice....

***

ANDREW: At the end of Revelation, [God] promises to restore all things. Now, as we interpret God’s ways ,,,,, we must avoid two dangers. One is to equate God’s silence or hiddenness with indifference. Kemi Badenoch assumes that if God cared for Elisabeth Fritzl, he would prove it by stepping in. However, while God is active in the world, he has given humans free will. He is not a puppet-master continually tweaking reality.

As the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks noted: “We believe God gave us freedom. It is the most fateful decision he made in the entire universe.” God teaches us what is good but does not forcibly prevent us from doing evil. Josef Fritzl is therefore responsible for his actions. To blame God for such malevolence overlooks the serious truth of free will. 

MY COMMENT: I can accept that God's silence or hiddenness doesn't necessarily imply indifference. But if we are expecting God to step in and stop the suffering then why is there any suffering and evil in the first place? ..... Because surely an intervening God would then be obliged to step in from the get-go. Therefore that a morally perfect omni-everything God has allowed suffering and evil to multiply from day one remains a mystery at this stage. However, as I mentioned in part I we now have to face the challenge of atheist PZ Myers who wrote:

No one uses the problem of evil to disprove a god, but only the idea of a benevolent god, or more specifically, the perfectly good being most Christians promote. When I see it deployed in an argument, it’s usually to make the narrower point that I don’t believe in your god..........But OK, sure, (if) the problem of evil says you should be anything but a traditional Christian, I’ll take it.

Well, OK I may not agree with that, but it is a robust & genuine challenge; namely, that the easy explanation for suffering and evil, if one assumes God exists, is that God isn't God as Christians perceive Him and instead a real baddie. But as a response to the question of suffering and evil I find Andrew's talk of "freewill" a cliche that is far from adequate; the general idea behind the "freewill" argument is that if we can source suffering and evil in human and satanic choices then this absolves God of any creative responsibility for the world's problems; the claim is that it is all down to human & satanic "freewill". God is therefore let off the hook. But the bad news is that so-called "freewill" is a minefield of issues....

Firstly one would have to trace all those flawed "freewill" decision making processes back to God's creation of agents who have the propensity to make such morally disastrous decisions. Secondly, as I have made a case for in the past, the debate between so called "freewill" and "determinism" is suspect from the point of view of meaningful intelligibility. The concepts of both "freewill" and "determinism" used by both sides of the debate fall-over on questions of their coherence. Therefore the resort to "freewill" is no answer to Myers' challenge and fails to off-load moral responsibility for the Creation's woes from the Creator to the Creation's acting agents. 

***

 

ANDREW: The opposite danger is to assume God’s current tolerance of evil is permanent. It is not. God has set a day to end injustice and hold evildoers to account, including Fritzl. Moreover, those like Elisabeth who have suffered at the hands of earthly fathers will have their tears wiped away by their heavenly father.

Then and only then, from the vantage point of eternity, will pain and suffering be put into perspective. To feel deep anguish in the face of evil today is absolutely right. But to reject God for this reason is premature. Instead, we need to hold on in hope and echo the cry that concludes the Bible: “Maranatha! Come Lord!”

MY COMMENT: I feel there is some force in the above apologetic: It's true that there is a measure of amelioration if one puts suffering and evil in the context of a much larger divine plan, a plan which includes ultimately putting the world permanently to rights and satisfying justice....the respective theological terms for this are expiation and propitiation.  The idea here is that the New Eternal Heavens & Earth which are metamorphosed from the current creation will be so wonderful as to make all the temporary suffering of this world worth it. The New World will be like waking up from a bad dream, or for what is for some a nightmare.  But there will be no waking up from the bad dream if its choosing agents still have a propensity for selfishness. 

......to be continued

 Footnotes

*  I have heard the view expressed that the apparently God-ordained murderous genocides in the book of Joshua is the Bible's authoritative and candid account informing us of the then erring human understanding of how God works. The same idea could by applied to some of the Psalms

The Genesis Account

Some Christians take the early chapters of the Book of Genesis literally; that is, they believe the Earth was created in 6 literal 24 hour days no more than about 10,000 years ago. A small minority of Christians, also of a literalist frame of mind, interpret other verses in the Bible (See for example Ps 104:5, Is 40.22, Job 26:10, Rev 7:1, 1 Chron 16:30 ) to mean that the Earth must be stationary and flat; Flat Earth Christians, by definition do not believe the Earth is a globe orbiting the Sun. For both Young Earthists and Flat Earthists any science which contradicts their beliefs is likely to be written off as a product of fallible human thinking; they do not see their understanding of the Bible, which in the final analysis is a product of their minds, as also subject to fallibility.

However, many Christians (possibly the majority), especially those in Universities, the sciences and Christian colleges, do not accept Young Earth and Flat Earth theories and  believe the Earth (and cosmos) to be many millions of years old. These Christians would likely claim that the disputed passages are a product of one or more of the following…

a)  A cultural perspective,

b)  Metaphorical/figurative/mythical expression,

c)  A poetic literary genre,

d)  A polemical and symbolic (rather than literal) attack on the world view of the religions of the day.

But whatever are one’s views on this subject, the Genesis account, above all, provides a clear polemical affirmation that God created everything apart from Himself.  This account cuts across religions which at the time of the writing of Genesis 1 were inclined to attribute divine status to created objects (such as the sun, moon and stars). It also cuts across some modern Gaia theories of the Earth. In contrast the Genesis account is clear that God is something other than the observable natural world and that the latter is not a totality.

The Genesis creation account describes creation using commonplace human thought-forms based on everyday observations. This makes the account comprehensible to a wide spectrum of human cultures, particularly the peoples of the Bronze Age who penned the account and who had no powerful instrumentation or sophisticated mathematical theories with which to aid in the description of cosmic organization. 

For the rest of this article see here

Theology According to PZ Myers

Avenging Angel:
 "I'll never be nice to (recanting) MAGAts"
 says PZ Myers. But what if the repentance is,
full, deep and genuine?

In this post fundamentalist atheist PZ Myers (*1) criticizes a New York Times article written by Ross Douthat. In his article Douthat grapples with the timeless challenge presented to theism by the problem of suffering and evil. Douthat's article on the subject can be found here: The Best Argument against Having Faith in God.  Douthat is a theist and writes this... 

One interesting point about this argument is that while it’s often folded into the briefs for atheism that claim to rely primarily on hard evidence and science, it isn’t properly speaking an argument that some creating power does not exist. Rather it’s an argument about the nature of that power, a claim that the particular kind of God envisioned by many believers and philosophers — all powerful and all good — would not have made the world in which we find ourselves, and therefore that this kind of God does not exist.

PZ Myers response is...

That is correct. No one uses the problem of evil to disprove a god, but only the idea of a benevolent god, or more specifically, the perfectly good being most Christians promote. When I see it deployed in an argument, it’s usually to make the narrower point that I don’t believe in your god.....

.....But OK, sure, (if) the problem of evil says you should be anything but a traditional Christian, I’ll take it.

What I think PZ is saying here is this: "OK if there is a God, it's anything but a Christian God, given the level of evil and suffering we observe"; that's PZ's theology. It follows from this theology that if there really is such a thing as a Christian God there would be no suffering and evil in his creation; or at least not to the extent we observe. However, for me this kind of theology prompts a huge personal dilemma.....

***

An implication of PZ's concept of a Christian God is that, by definition, morally and epistemically flawed persons such as myself would not exist in the world free of suffering & evil which PZ envisages. Let me expand on that theme a little.....

A morally flawed person such as myself (flawed enough to be the person who readily passes by on the other side like the priest and Levite in Luke 10:25ff), is part and parcel of the tainted world I'm in. My character is so intimately bound up with my context that this context is also inevitably going to contain your Hitlers, Putins, Stalins, Maos, Polpots, Assyrians, Trumps, Kim Jong Uns, Musks, Mugabes, Assads and an endless list of other sinners whose aim in life is to get a hormonal high by securing for themselves the glories and status symbols of self-assertion (e.g. power, legacy, reputation, wealth, conquest, top-dog rule, high status, plutocracy, influence etc.) and whose ambitions have priority over the well-being and lives of others; they may jail or even kill those in their way.  J R R Tolkien's great literary metaphor has warned us of the potential evil that lurks behind our social standing and status motivations; namely, the all but irresistible temptations of the One Ring to Rule them all and in the darkness bind them should the opportunity of absolute power fall into our hands. If any of us corruptible sinners should take and wield the One Ring of absolute power there is the potential for corruption on a wide scale. I have trouble enough with those lesser, mean and squalid sins like walking by on the other-side, let alone the irresistible temptations of social ambition. 

So, given that I'm sinner enough to be potential One-Ring-to-Rule-them-All material (just like the characters in that rogues gallery which so often cites Hitler as a prime exemplar) I wonder, as does PZ, that our kind of world would have been reified at all by a Christian God; if it is a Christian God who is responsible for its reification, it must cause untold agony in the Godhead. But given that I now enjoy a highly conscious existence in a cosmos with many beauties, glories, pleasures and consolations should I now wish that my world in spite of all the suffering was never created (along with myself)  in the first place? That's the big dilemma.

***

PZ's theology tells him that given the evidences of evil and suffering he's fairly sure there can be no Christian God (sometimes I feel the same way when reality bites). But let me try turning that on its head... does the evidence which for PZ excludes the existence of a Christian God actually point in the very opposite direction? That is, to the existence of the God of John 3:16....

"Before" the big bang(*3) the history of our highly organized and seemingly arbitrarily contingent cosmos existed in the un-reified platonic realm as a logical possibility; just as does, in fact, any other story that some human author pulls out of the platonic realm, reifies it in book form and who presides over that book as an absolute sovereign. So, in spite of all it's pain and evil, did God so love this world that he decided to reify it and save it? We've heard it said that God has an inordinate fondness for beetles; does he also have an inordinate fondness for human beings in spite of our very human self-orientation which has such a potential as a source of suffering and evil? This is the unmerited unconditional love of God, "Grace" I think it's called.

***

Douthat leaves the question dangling of just what kind of God has reified our cosmos out of the platonic world of logically possibility. Hence PZ sums up Douthat's argument for God thus...

The straw he (Douthat) grasps at is that any god exists, and you can’t explain that, therefore God.

Yes, arguments for God which have form Evidence X  therefore God are subject to all the weaknesses of inductive reasoning. But when it comes to the question of meaning and purpose (if the cosmos has any) I prefer the ultimate abductive explanation: That is, the Christian God is the concept I begin with and then I see if that concept can be used to make the best anthropic sense of the cosmos; In this capacity "God" is the primary epistemic driver which both provides the confidence motivating rational investigation into a knowable ordered cosmos and best of all obviates cosmic absurdity in favour of meaning and purpose. (Gen 1:1, Hebrews 11:1-3, 6). 

However, at this noetic juncture there looks to be no logical obligation, at least one we able to grasp, which obliges either God or no God.  If there is no God then this may mean that we have to simply swallow as is a cosmos absent of meaning and purpose. In this connection consider the reaction of people like physicist Prof Brian Cox who proposes a story of a cosmos that will ultimately end in the black void of thermodynamic death, an absurd story clearly absent of all anthropic meaning & purpose, apart from that which we invent ourselves. That's not to say that I don't respect Cox's position; it's the position Westerners are left with once they discard the abductive explanation of Hebrews 11:1-3,6. 

***

Finally  PZ says this regarding the creation:

Except that we don't need and all powerful supernatural being to explain how the world works.

That sounds like the "Science explains everything, therefore no God", a line of argument with which I'm very familiar. See for example atheist theologian Don Cupitt who also easily caved in to this line of thought. But this thinking only works if one believes that science's descriptive completeness is capable of satiating our appetite for full explanation. The fly in the ointment of descriptive completeness is that it is only possible in a cosmos which has an a priori unexplained brute-fact high organisation. (The antithesis of randomness). Any attempt to upgrade science's descriptive answers (which in the final analysis only provide answers to the question "How?") to answers addressing the question "Why?" inevitably leads to an absurd algorithms-all-the-way down regress. Any deeper sense than providing a descriptive grasp on the cosmos leaves untouched those intuitively compelling questions which revolve around the question of meaning, purpose and the question "Why?"(*2). We have instinct that the cosmos has an a priori organization which means it yields to rational scientific inquiry. Some of us also have an instinct that the cosmos has ultimate meaning and purpose and just as we can search out cosmic organisation we can also seek meaning and purpose (Acts 17:26ff).

Footnotes 

* I would actually rate PZ Myers, by strictly human standards, as a worthy human being. He's a faithful family man and shows no sign of conceit or dishonesty. He gives every appearance of being genuine in his atheism and his case for it is strengthened by the clowning we get from Christian Trumpites and fundamentalists; but he's an insufferable grouch when it comes to criticising Christians of all brands. However, if I get to the Pearly gates before he pops his clogs I'll put a good word in for him. 

*2 One atheist who floats his attempt to address the ultimate "why" is Richard Carrier. He tries to arrive at a generalised logical full-stop beyond which no further endeavor about origins need proceed (apart from filling in details). But this attempt runs aground as a consequence of his misunderstandings surrounding the nature of probability and randomness. For him randomness is the ultimate "god-dynamic". 

*3 There are attempts (unsurprisingly) to imbue the cosmos with an eternal quality using theories such as infinitely recurring inflation. The impersonal, dispassionate, eternal cosmos then stands in the place of God as a kind of Gaia incubator of life, a disinterested creator without love or compassion. It is an attempt to put creation on the testable level of spring-extending and test tube precipitating science, but this line of thought still leaves us with the algorithms-all-the-way-down regress. 

Fred Hoyle is well known for his much earlier attempt the propose an eternal universe with his continuous creation model.   The irony is that in his later years his ideas started to get a mystical religious flavour in what to me looked like a pantheistic philosophy of intelligent design.  That God shaped hole was trying to fill itself!

Good News from Ken

 

An uneasy Ken Ham. Maybe he's
wondering if he's got it right after all! 
 He has a lot at stake.

In a post dated 12th March a somewhat concerned AiG theme park supremo, Ken Ham, writes this:

Over the past four decades of ministry, I’ve been disappointed by the low number of Christian academics, theologians, pastors, and leaders who will take a firm stand on Genesis publicly. Most won’t take a firm stand, allowing for compromise positions involving millions of years or even other evolutionary beliefs, and many of the ones who do believe in the straightforward teaching of Genesis aren’t willing to teach it to their congregations or others because it’s “too controversial.” 

I've always regarded this kind of admission by Ken as good news; it's an indication that in spite of the literalist excesses we hear so loudly from North America most Christian academics are loathe to endorse Ken's views.  But I suppose Ken's emphatic fundamentalist perspective is understandable: He's given his whole life to building up his religious business empire which depends on selling a ministry marketing a perverse understanding of science and the Bible, so he's not going to change his views in a hurry and will be jealously defensive of them. But in spite of Ken's marketing efforts, it looks as though things aren't going so well for him among thoughtful Christians. See also:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Good News from Ken Ham. (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Views, News and Pews: More Good News From Ken Ham. (viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com)

Ken goes on to explain his big beef:

Why is this so disheartening to me?

Well, because this is an authority issue! Ultimately, the battle over Genesis isn’t about the age of the earth or God’s method of creation. The issue is “Who is your ultimate authority?” Is it God and his Word,or is it man and his (fallible!) word? You see, millions of years and evolution don’t come from the biblical text—you won’t find even a hint of long ages or slow and gradual processes in Genesis! The reason so many Christians have accepted these ideas has nothing to do with Scripture and everything to do with taking man’s ideas about the past and adding them into Genesis.

Here Ken is engaged in his usual activity of impugning the conscience of those thoughtful Christians who disagree with him and accusing them of all but blasphemy: He just can't accept that other Christians may have good reason to reject his literalist interpretations and do so with a clear conscience and with no sense they are rejecting Biblical authority. The "ultimate authority" they are rejecting is in fact Ken's assertions based on flawed reasoning, behind which lie deep business interests. He of course genuinely believes that the arguments presented by AiG cannot be faulted: He therefore believes his antagonists don't have good reason to reject the claimed authority of AiG pronouncements and must have bad consciences. In Ken's mind this justifies his use of spiritually intimidating language threatening divine displeasure should AiG be contradicted.

As for those millions of years and evolution not being in the Bible...... Likewise, I'm unaware that the Bible teaches us that the Sun is a star.... but of course, it doesn't teach such a thing: The Bible is written from the perspective of the ancients who naturally enough would be unable to put the Sun in the same category as a star; they'd need to know a lot more about cosmic distances, atomic physics and gravity to do that!  It's no surprise then that at least one Biblical literalist should end up arguing that the Sun is not a Star: See here:

Quantum Non-Linearity: The Sun Isn't a Star!!?? Light Relief Time (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Further, it is very debatable whether the Bible has any clarity about the Earth being a sphere; so much so in fact that some Christian literalists (not Ken I'm glad to say) have been arguing the case for a flat Earth. See this link:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Christian Fundamentalists Embrace Flat Earth. (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

My conclusion is that as a meaningful cross-cultural account of creation the Genesis story is necessarily highly symbolic rather than literal.  Ken is ripping Genesis 1 right out of its original cultural context just as do the "The Sun is not a star" literalists. Let's recall that meaning = text + context. This important "equation" is clearly something Ken is missing and needs to understand. 

Ken has invested a lifetime's work in his literalist theme park and has a lot to lose.  Therefore, his spiritually bullying tone comes very naturally out of his very committed business interests. It is also not surprising that he implicitly supports what is looking increasingly like an emerging Christian dominionist culture among Christian Trumpites. He also appears to implicitly support fellow fantasist Trey Smith who used the Ark Park to host a QAnon video. 

ADDENDUM 27/04/24

Ken's ignorance of science shows itself when he continues to promote the flawed "Two kinds of science" philosophy: That is, "Observational science" vs "Historical science".  See here for example: 

Creation Basics: Two Kinds of Science | Answers in Genesis

Why this is a very fundamental error is explained here:

Quantum Non-Linearity: The "Observational Science vs Historical Science" Error. (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

This false philosophy is, of course, promoted by AiG with the full force of its presumed authority and backed up by Ken's propensity to apply religious duress to those who disagree with him. Anyone joining this fundamentalist organization, and that includes those with science training, would very likely be expected to take onboard Ken's take on science. 

***

Interesting Links

1. Real Geology: As a break from those bizarre literalist views below is a link to an interesting post by Christian Geologist Micheal Roberts:

2000 years of Genesis and Geology | Peddling and Scaling God and Darwin (wordpress.com

I found the following diagram which he published of particular interest (Click on picture to enlarge):

2. Is Trump threatening political violence if he loses the '24 election?

Trump warns of 'bloodbath' if he loses the presidential election (msn.com)

I have this notion that if Trump is elected and America becomes a dictatorship, Trump and Putin will then face off against China.

3. Tell me about it!

Theologians explain how 'malignant narcissist' Trump feeds his 'hypomanic grandiosity' (msn.com)

4. Putin and Traditional Values

Vladimir Putin compares himself to Jesus in mission to uphold 'traditional values' (msn.com)

Putin compares himself to Jesus promoting 'traditional' values against the 'Satanic' West (msn.com)

...and that probably includes upholding the traditional values of Godfather government.  God warned the Israelites of the consequences of Royal dictatorship (1 Samuel 8: 7-18)

5. Cranky Taylor-Greene: Putin's useful idiot?

Greene’s 'Kremlin talking points' earn her a new nickname from former House Republican (msn.com)

Mike Johnson, although very conservative is quite a reasonable person. It goes to show that the real battle isn't with Republicans per se, but with up-and-coming Godfather regimes. See below:

"Buck called Greene’s remarks “irresponsible as so many of the statements that Marjorie has made over the years are completely irresponsible. The idea that somehow the Speaker is corrupt, because he believes that we should be supporting an ally that’s been invaded by a war criminal, Vladimir Putin, and the idea that somehow anybody who is in agreement with Ukraine and our NATO allies, is corrupt. It’s just another distraction that she uses to take away from the core arguments that are so important.”

On Monday Congresswoman Greene did just that, falsely telling far-right host Steve Bannon Russia is “protecting” Christianity while the “Ukrainian government is attacking Christians, the Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that.”

Numerous credible reports detail Russia’s torture and killing of Ukrainian clergy.

Greene has supported Russia over Ukraine for years."

Taylor-Greene: She clowns 
around but she's beyond a joke

The Trump team may understand that Taylor-Green's clowning is too much of a liability:

'Unwanted and just stupid': Trump insider trashes Marjorie Taylor Greene's latest stunt (msn.com)

5. On this side of the Atlantic we have our very own rival to MTG

Liz Truss claims dark forces that brought her down will come for Donald Trump if he wins election (msn.com)

If you don't agree with Liz you'll likely to be labelled by her as a woke leftist intent on destroying the West!

Calling down Hell and Hamnation on Heretics!

 

Ham's Heretics: Wright and Collins!

The above is an online duet by famous Christian scholars Tom Wright (Theologian) and Francis Collins (Scientist). It is titled "Genesis" and Wright and Collins use it to affirm their belief in both Genesis and evolution. I have to confess I haven't listened to the song just in case I find it overwhelmingly cringe-worthy. In any case as the specialism of this blog is really all about a miscellany of fire and brimstone fundamentalists, sectarians, cultists and the religious lunatic fringe etc, the devout, thoughtful, scholarly and mild mannered Wright and Collins hardly fit into these categories! In fact although I don't necessarily agree with their position on evolution my perception is that the following inscription found in St Stephen's church in Norwich, describes them well; and that's saying something; fame, admiration and status can be difficult to handle;

A scholar without pride, a Christian without bigotry and devout without ostentation

Neither will I be commenting on evolution or whether it is possible to reconcile evolution and Genesis. Instead, much more in line with this blog's interest in catching strange fish is the highly partisan and holy-than-thou fulminations of the kind we find in the all too typical outburst of Ken "Hell & Hamnation" Ham who screams down divine wrath on Wright and Collins*. One can well feel the spirit of the inquisition at work in Ham's response as he slanders W & C by stuffing words of blasphemy into the mouths and minds of all those he accuses.  As per below I've used bold type to emphasise Ham's baseless, fallacious and extreme spiritual incriminations:

HAMNATION: BioLogos (the leading “evolutionary creation” group) recently released a video titled “Genesis” that says, “Oh, I believe in Genesis,” while they demonstrate that they don’t actually believe in Genesis.   ...........  Genesis and evolution simply don’t go together—the biblical account of creation (which isn’t just taught in Genesis—it’s confirmed throughout Scripture) and the naturalistic explanation for the existence of earth, life, and the universe are utterly opposed to one another.

MY COMMENT: Ham should really have put it like this They demonstrate that they don't believe in my interpretation of Genesis. In my opinion Genesis and evolution cannot be put together. But qualified and measured statements like that don't make for the convinced sensationalist sales talk needed by a  fundamentalist theme park manager who must make a show of hard selling his line of thought. Also, as I have said on many occasions "evolution", as currently understood, is hardly "naturalistic" (what ever "naturalistic" means) in that it demands very unusual up-front physical constraints to work. In fact under no circumstances can a logically contingent world such as ours ever be "natural";  God, having the property of Aseity, is the only entity that is "natural". 

HAMNATION: So if someone says they “believe in Genesis,” but they also believe in evolution, then they don’t really believe in Genesis. They’ve taken man’s ideas from outside Scripture and added them into the Bible. Millions of years and evolution don’t come from the Bible—they come from the mind of fallen man, and N.T. Wright, Francis Collins, and others are using those ideas to interpret Scripture. Really, they’re setting themselves up as the authority over God and his Word, and they are a blight on the church.

MY COMMENT: Once again a narrow minded and sales-talking theme park supremo isn't going to get involved with measured subtleties like meaning = text + context, an equation which implies that the Bible can never be absolutely self-interpreting. It is the knowledge base we bring to the Bible which brings it alive, either rightly or wrongly (hopefully the former). But of course Ham is spiritually conceited enough to think he's got a direct line to God absolving him of any epistemic responsibility for its interpretation. It is Ham who is setting himself up as an authority over God and his word.

HAMNATION: It would appear that by singing “DNA, shaping creatures from the dust and clay” that DNA — not God — is doing the work of creation. This would be consistent with an evolutionary worldview in which DNA (the molecule of heredity) is supposedly responsible for all the life we have today. This idea is, quite frankly, blasphemous. It steals the glory that belongs to God—and God alone—for what he has created. DNA didn’t create creatures. God created DNA (an incredibly complex information system) when he created life.

To say that God used evolution to create and then to sing this line is incredibly inconsistent . . . and hypocritical. An all-wise Creator doesn’t use the inept, bumbling process of trial-and-error (and death, bloodshed, and disease) that is evolution to create. Instead, he speaks and it is so.

 MY COMMENT: Even if evolution as currently conceived is the explanation for natural history it is misleading to claim that DNA is responsible for all the life we have today: Instead we would have to trace the causes of evolution back to the physical regime that only omniscience could create knowing its likely outcome. So Ham is factually wrong here, although I can see why a dualist mindset like his will think in the dichotomised terms of "God did it" vs "Evolution did it" and then use that canard as the basis for accusations of heresy.  But although I can offer Ham some leeway here he's not got the kind of personality that is going to give allowance for the mitigating circumstances effecting those who disagree with him - rather Ham is going to charge them with heinous sins of hypocrisy and blasphemous and no appeal accepted. I have an inkling that  as Wright and Collins are both respected members of the secular academic establishment this has got something to do with Ham's outburst; the Christian evangelical Trump voting right-wing are very suspicious of "deep government" institutions in any guise, tax funded academia included. And let's not forget that Trump has fueled the fires of suspicion by making friendly noises toward Alex Jones and the QAnon conspiracy theorists. Trump, the would-be dictator, like Ham, has a need to discredit and bypass the institutions of society and appeal directly to his support base.

Although I have reservations about standard evolution myself, I wouldn't want anything to do with Ham's ignorant and mindless inquisitional style condemnation of Wright and Collins.

HAMNATION: And not how Wright and Collins mean when they sing “for he spoke and it was so”—they mean God spoke and over billions of years, natural processes, guided by God, bumbled about creating life on earth as millions of creatures that didn’t quite turn out died out, dying and suffering, killing and eating, paving the way for new, more advanced lifeforms to emerge. No, when the all-wise, all-powerful Creator speaks—it really is so, just as it says in Genesis.

MY COMMENT: Once again Ham is over stating the random "bumbling" element of evolution and wrongly thinking of it as a "natural process". In any case chaos, suffering, fall and evil predate man; that's what the appearance of the serpent in Genesis 3 teaches us.  

HAMNATION:  They sing that God is grace and love, but they are really attributing millions of years of death, suffering, disease, and bloodshed to God. By saying God used evolution, they are really saying God—not our sin (which is what the Bible teaches)—is the author of death and the brokenness of creation. That’s not the loving and gracious God of the Bible! God sent his Son to pay for this brokenness and rescue us from the mess we caused because of our sin in Adam.

Genesis describes the paradise of Eden as the first home for humanity—before Adam and Eve’s sin broke creation. But in Wright and Collins’ view, Adam and Eve are standing on layers of sediment filled with fossils (the remains of dead things). This means, in the evolutionary view, they are standing on the evidence for millions of years of death, suffering, disease, and bloodshed. How’s that for a “bliss” that we miss? What kind of paradise is that?

 MY COMMENT: As is common with some fundamentalists Ham neglects Satan's fall and the chaos beast - but actually in a sense so does the Bible but for the right reasons. Viz: That the central and primary message of the Bible is the plan of salvation for humanity and not Satan's fall; the latter is mere context even though it alludes to an important cosmic event; this event is not allowed to upstage the Glory of Christ which is the central message of the Bible (Phil 2:1-11). Moreover, like other toy-town fundamentalists Ham fundamentally understates the problem of suffering and evil by glibly (and wrongly) tracing too much back to the Adamic fall.  

Although Adam did screw things up big time for humanity, a claim to be the originator of the Serpent and cosmic chaos is too big a claim for (wo)man. 

 

HAMNATION: ....BioLogos and those affiliated with them are leading Christians into error. Wright and Collins need to repent of their compromise with the pagan religion of the day, repent of not believing God’s Word, and repent of encouraging others to compromise God’s Word. They may sing, “Oh, I believe in Genesis,” but what they really mean is, “Oh, I believe in man’s ideas about the past and have added them into Genesis.” They would do well to heed God’s Word, “let God be true but every man a liar” (Romans 3:4 NKJV).

MY FINAL COMMENT: Notice that Ham automatically gives no credence to the consciences of Wright and Collins or concede that in their own very scholarly minds they have satisfactorily reconciled evolution and Genesis; like other fundamentalists Ham assumes that Wright and Collins secretly understand the Bible in the way that Ham does but are knowingly suppressing it; fundamentalists (by definition) assume their interpretations are "plain" and beyond doubt. This is  the assumption made by all fundamentalists (by definition) that I have met from the Watchtower through the Children of God to Ken Ham.  Ham is effectively accusing Wright and Collins of wilful, knowing sin. Such is the wrath of a Trump voting right-winger who fears and looks askance at the academic establishment, especially if, like Wright and Collins, they claim God's salvation! 

Ham's word is not to be identified with God's word but simply the word of Ham. He's used Romans 3:4 in exactly the same way the Watchtower use it of those who contradict Watchtower teaching. In any case it's worth noting the parallels between AiG and the Watchtower. Ken Ham is a theological dunce who has failed to draw out the anti-pagan lessons of Genesis 1 and instead distorted it with his town-toy "anti-science" and a pagan dualist outlook. He should apologise to Wright and Collins for his baseless and fallacious accusations of heresy.  Unfortunately. however, I see in Ham the spirit of the inquisition, a spirit which follows rules and fails to take cognizance of consciousness. 

***

Postscript

In a recent bizarre web encounter I have had with a fundamentalist who is plumbing the depths of unreason I actually started to feel that relatively speaking Ken Ham is quite a reasonable bloke! That AiG in comparison can seem a moderate outfit goes to show how far some parts of evangelical Christianity (if it's fit to be called that) have gone down the road of utter intellectual debasement and lunacy. In fact so much so in this case that I found myself recommending an article on AiG to the fundamentalist concerned! But more about that weird encounter another time!

Relevant Links:

https://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2017/02/holy-bad-mouthing.html

https://answersingenesis.org/culture/believe-in-genesis-sing-two-scholars-who-dont-believe-in-genesis/

In the post below Ham attacks William Dembski and William Lane Craig, both of a mainstream evangelical persuasion. It's a sign of how Ham's theme park sales interests have pressured him into taking up an extreme position and is over-selling his fundamentalism.

https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2010/07/19/which-southern-baptist-professor-proposesteaches-this/

Viz: 

A significant portion of my presentation will center around the teachings of William Dembski and others (such as William Lane Craig associated with Talbot Theological Seminary and Biola University) who sadly contribute to the loss of biblical authority in church and culture.

Footnote:

* See here: 

https://answersingenesis.org/culture/believe-in-genesis-sing-two-scholars-who-dont-believe-in-genesis/

ADDENDUM 20/04/21

The FB post by Ken Ham below comes close to accusing Christians like N T Wright and Francis Collins of idolary. It further adds to Ken's cultic credentials. (Click to enlarge).

The Pillars of Creation

The Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula. 

In a blog post dated 2 May and entitled "New Born Stars Form in the Pillars of Creation" fundamentalist theme park manger, Ken Ham, writes the following 

According to God’s Word, stars didn’t form slowly and gradually from “protostars” in nurseries. They were formed at God’s command when “he made the stars also” (Genesis 1:16) According to God’s Word, stars didn’t form slowly and gradually from “protostars” in nurseries. They were formed at God’s command when “he made the stars also” (Genesis 1:16). And he names them all: God determines the number of the stars and he gives to all of them their names (Psalm 174:4). So what do we make of this claim that we can see “baby stars” in the Pillars of Creation?

Here Ham is responding to the observations and conclusions drawn by astronomers regarding the apparent protostars found in the "Pillars of Creation"  dust clouds. Of course, stellar evolution doesn't fit into the time scale of Ham's declared 6000 year old cosmos! In the above quote Ham appears to be following the common Biblical literalist notion that God merely had to "speak the stars into existence" like a magician and to hell with all the problems of creative integrity that "mature creation" brings. 

My standard criticism of this kind of interpretation of scripture, a criticism I have expressed elsewhere in more detail, is that:

a) It neglects to ask questions about the meaning of the word "command": High level commands breakdown into the myriad of low level operations needed in order that the command to be carried out. But since none other than God is doing the creation here those smaller commands must be executed by God himself. Ergo Genesis 1:16 is merely a one-liner summary of a huge Divine creative act involving a very large number sub-creative events. The words "make", "create", "work" etc are recursive concepts. Naturally, one can't expect this highly complex creative activity to be described in a very literal way in a short passage of scripture! In short Ham hasn't a clue as to how star formation actually happened and it is clear that he is massively superimposing his own meanings onto the brief text. He then uses this as a pretext for spiritually bullying those that don't take on board his simplistic line of thought.

c) Ham assumes he knows what he means by chronological time (as opposed to kairos time) and how it is measured: For Ham "a second is a second is a second". But  since chronological time as we know it is measured using standards internal to creation this means that the question about how time is measured during Genesis 1 when creation was still a work in progress is problematic. Moreover let's remember that Ham's website hosted Jason Lisle's "solution" to the star light problem and Lisle did some "funny things" with the measurement and definition of Time; it rather put Ken's simplistic concept of time in perspective. Perhaps that's why Ken wasn't that keen on Lisle's work and Lisle left AiG. 

A pillock pillar of creationism

Of course Ken doesn't ask or attempt to address those kinds of difficult question; after all he's really in the business of sales talk and not science talk. Salesmen can sometimes threaten customers with dire consequences if they don't buy their products and that's what Ken does: He opts for spiritual intimidation in order to ease through an acceptance of the divine authority of his opinions: It's his way or the wrong way. I'm not the only one who sees Ham as the epitome of authoritarian and unreasonable fundamentalism.

But to be fair to Ken I can nevertheless put one good word in for him: He seems to have kept himself clean from all the fanatically weird ideas about Covid-19 that do the rounds among America's well armed militias (and religious cowboys), ideas which undermine the lock-down. Ken seems to have accepted the need for lock down. As he's running a business for all the family, a business he fervently believes in, it's clearly hard times for AiG. That's one thing where I can feel a certain amount of sympathy for him.

ADDENDUM 14/05/20

It's worth comparing Ham's almost childish interpretation of creation which he pushes through with a brute-spirituality with NT Wright's view expressed on the video below However, I'm not going to add comment to this video:

NT Wright: If Creation is Through Christ, Evolution is What You Would Expect - Resources - BioLogos

Serpentine Logic

That devolved legless reptile is doing its damnedest to stay in the picture

Interesting is this post on Uncommon Descent concerning ID guru William Dembski’s book “The End of Christianity, Finding a Good God in an Evil World”. This is what Dembski says about the book.

My book attempts to resolve how the Fall of Adam could be responsible for all evil in the world, both moral and natural IF the earth is old and thus IF a fossil record that bespeaks violence among organisms predates the temporal occurrence of the Fall. My resolution is to argue that just as the salvation of Christ purchased at the Cross acts forward as well as backward in time (the Old Testament saints were saved in virtue of the Cross), so too the effects of the Fall can go backward in time. Showing how this could happen requires extensive argument and is the main subject of the book. As for my title, “End of Christianity” involves a play on words – “end” can refer to cessation or demise; but it can also refer to goal or purpose. I mean the latter, as the subtitle makes clear: Finding a Good God in an Evil World.

The link to the interview with Dembski also worth looking at.

Some comments
1. Although he minces his words and hedges (Not surprisingly given his particular Christian sub-culture) my guess is that Dembski is an “Old Earth” believer; otherwise his attempt to explain pre-fall evil as a “retroactive” result of an anthropocentric fall would seem rather futile. (Note: If the act of God in Christ is a powerful symbolic declaration of covenant by God and revealed in the fullness of time, then its ability to dispense grace retroactively is less enigmatic, whereas I can make little sense of a retroactive fall in this light)

2. In line with Young Earth Evangelicalism’s world view Dembski assumes evil and suffering to be largely sourced anthropocentrically. And yet the serpent in Genesis 3 could be construed as a symbol of the presence of extra-human evil. The person(s) who penned Genesis 3, as is the wont of arcadian folk, would be ever aware of the lurking presence of evil in an unseen world. There is also the question over the interpretation of the enigmatic Romans 8:18-23 , a passage which hints that the cause of evil and suffering is not quite so crisp and clear cut as traditional Young Earth Evangelicalism would have it.

3. The problem Dembski is addressing comes out of contemporary Young Earth Evangelicalism’s world view and is thus very pressing in his own intellectual circles. Some of us, such as myself, who feel that there are deeper mysteries surrounding the source of suffering and evil have a less pressing need to explain pre-fall suffering. According to my concordance the word “good” of Genesis 1 is not quite the same as the word perfect (~ completion). I wonder what Dembski teaches his seminary students?

I have been a close witness of evangelical philosophy for over thirty years and its sometimes cursory and shallow treatment of suffering and evil is not its only short fall. So much about standard evangelical explanations fail to make sense of the world around us, not to mention its inconsonance with aspects of my own personal experience. It’s no wonder that when pressed the fallback position of many evangelicals is fideism: Viz: “Faith is not always logical, if it was it would not be faith.” In the fideist mind the ability of faith to accommodate mystery is conflated with the ability to swallow illogicality. But I’ll hand it to William Dembski, he is brave guy (and a nice guy as far as I can tell) and he is making a very valiant attempt at being be logical. Pity about some of his fellow pilgrims.