Date: 22 Mar 94  22:08:06
   From: James G. Acker
     To: All
Subject: Ham's "lecture", 3/22/94

From: jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker)
Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center -- InterNetNews site



     Presentation by Ken Ham, 3/22/94:

     Two-sentence summary:  It is hard to believe so much
wrong information could be packed into one hour.  But I was
there;  it can be done.

Here's a sampling:
     The Grand Canyon is similar to a canyon near Mt. St.
Helens, and in 50 years geologists probably can't tell the
difference.  Real science is making rockets and sending them
up into space, but once you try to say something about the
past, it's a belief system.  There are no transitional
fossils, according to Dr. Colin Patterson.  Creationists
believe in Natural Selection -- that's just not evolution.
There may still be dinosaurs existing today, and the only
way we'd know for sure is to have observers looking at every
square foot of ground on the Earth simultaneously and
reporting that they don't see any dinosaurs.  Archaeopteryx
was a true bird.   "Living fossils" indicate that our ideas
about the geological column are wrong.  The best examples of
anthropological evidence for pre-humans are Piltdown Man (a
hoax on which 500 Ph.D. theses were written), the Nebraska
Man tooth, and skulls of Australopithecus (undiscussed) and
Neanderthal man.
     There's more:
     NASA Viking probes show evidence of a global flood on
Mars where there's no liquid water.   Yet scientists don't
believe in a global flood on Earth where there's plenty of
water.
     COBE was wrong.  The fluctuations COBE saw indicate a
degeneration in the fundamental fabric of the Universe, a
preliminary indication of the coming "test by fire" promised
in the Bible.
     Fossils only exist in the present, so what can they
tell us about the past?  We weren't there.
     Behemoth in Job is a dinosaur because his tail was like
a cedar tree, and therefore couldn't have been a
hippopotamus or an elephant.
     Creationists are a minority and the minority is always
considered to be wrong.
     The order of a sequence, like letters taken randomly
from a hat, is meaningless unless we have a pre-existing
language to interpret the words.
     The Flood produced most of the fossils found around the
world.
     Dinosaurs existing on the Earth just a few hundred
years ago were referred to as dragons.
     Evolution is at the root of all the social problems
found in America today.
     Even Creationists would expect _some_ change in "living
fossils" over 50 million years!

     It was all quite astonishing and unbelievable.  And
several parents brought their kids from a nearby Christian
school, too.

     News:  Another Creationist, archaeologist Clifford
Wilson, will be on-site May 3.  And there will be a "Back
to Genesis" seminar in Baltimore May 20 and 21.  Based on
what I saw today, there's no reason to go.  Under those
circumstances, there is no chance to refute or challenge
their idiotic arguments.
     But:  a handout indicated that Ham is helping to found
Creation Science Ministries (CSM), based in Florence, KY,
near to Cincinnati.  They are planning a Creation Science
museum there, so that their message will be nearer to the
East Coast and Midwest.  Ham is supported by Dr. Gary
Parker, a "former biologist and evolutionist", and Mark
Looy, a broadcaster.

     I did what I could:  I wrote Ham a politely-worded
letter pointing out that the Usenet (Internet) group
"talk.origins" is a "troublesome" obstacle to the Creation
Science message, and that I would like to see the
evolutionary scientists represented there to be soundly
refuted.  I mentioned that due to the electronic nature of
the Internet, mis-information on t.o. is spread rapidly.  I
said that CSM should go on-line and confront this discussion
group.  When I handed Ham the note, he read it briefly and
said he "had heard of it".
     Ham was involved in a mini-debate (which he had to
leave) while I approached him after the talk.  I had decided
that given the chance, I would approach him with a quote
from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Creation and Fall", since I
could read it quicker than Augustine.  All I had the chance
to do was show Ham the book and ask his opinion of it (I
asked "was it a good book to read?")
     Ham said that he hadn't heard of it.

     A lecturer on the Genesis doctrine of Creation had not
even _heard_, let alone read, a less-than-100 page treatise
on the theological implications of Biblical Creation by one
of the 20th-century's most renowned theologians, a man who
was also a martyr for the Christian faith?
     That one observation neatly summarizes the lack of
theological scholarship in the entire ICR-CRS-CSM
Creationist hierarchy.  I've just read Bonhoeffer's book --
but Ham purports to be an expert on Biblical Creation, and
he _hasn't even heard of it_?   Utterly amazing, and
furthermore, appalling.

     Now, a final note of warning:  If we should, through my
note to Ham, be able to engage the CSM on talk.origins, we
all should be as circumspect, polite, and reasoned as we can
possibly be, _even if we've heard it before_.   We should
dispense with our clever one-liner insults, even the use of
such anger-inciting words as "ignorant" or "misinformed".
We should engage them point-by-point, completely
characterize their position on every aspect, and then
carefully, politely, and completely...
          ... demolish every point they make.  No finger-
     pointing, no name-calling, no accusations of hidden
     agendas;  just demolish their science.   We might have
     the barest minimum of a chance to make inroads on their
     corrupt science and misleading arguments if we're
     careful, and we don't shout them away.  Let them in,
     make 'em feel comfortable, and then, in the best sense
     of scientific discourse -- take no prisoners.

     That's all.  Be vigilant.


===============================================
|  James G. Acker                             |
|  REPLY TO:   jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov  |
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