Ken Ham Slams 'Intolerant' Baptist Pastors in Ark dispute
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- Waiting for Tyler to comment
- AIG makes great billboards (reading between the lines, Matthew 28:19,20 calls for this)
Don’t be shy - this is your chance! For a donation of only $100.00, you can have a peg used in the ark construction named in your honor! You’ll even be able to find your peg’s final location in the completed ark when it’s all over. Donate now!
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
The billboard campaign is nauseating. Ham could use a bit of humility and grace.
[TylerR]Don’t be shy - this is your chance! For a donation of only $100.00, you can have a peg used in the ark construction named in your honor! You’ll even be able to find your peg’s final location in the completed ark when it’s all over. Donate now!
I am going for a Beam so that I can get Ken Ham to sign my ark model for me. I also can’t wait to try out the salad bar in the Garden of Eden Cafe!
…..to demonstrate the feasibility of such a large boat, maybe….a sea port, or at least a Great Lakes port, would be the better option? I am concerned that Ham is jumping the shark here.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
My own take (and it’s negative) on AIG:
- I know seemingly everyone is agog over the creation museum AND
- Thank the Lord for sane defenders of creation (vs the tax evading convict Kent Hovind)
- But there are better defenders of creation than AIG. ICR is a case to point. ICR is somewhat under the radar because they have no flashy leader
- AIG’s problem is Ken Ham. See Legal controversy between Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International
- About the creation museum and whether one is even needed;
- The whole world is God’s creation museum
- Visit every exhibit from the Grand Canyon to Dinosaur National Monument to the Great Meteor Crater to Rocky Mountain National Park to the national parks in Utah, et al.
- Take your kids outside and sleep on a tarp in the open outdoors
- Go to the great north and see the Milky Way unfettered by urban light pollution (My wife and I were at Boy River MN in the middle of winter. We went out or a rural road and parked (not that kind of parked!) and opened the sun roof on our Impala. Oh the sights. Our sliding roof froze open and had to be manually forced closed)
- Try the same with the Perseids meteor shower (summertime !!). See the Aurora Borealis (Northern MN or Wisconsin is good for this)
- Study birds (eg bird merit badge in the Boy Scouts - something AWANA can never match!) and get up before dawn and hike on country roads
- Scuba dive at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park
- Have a garden!
- Make an image-bearer and witness the birth (married only!)
- Creation is not in a museum!
- In 10 years the silly ark project will be regarded as roadside kitsch
- Ham is a showman (the Ark) and a politician (as the billboard link above illustrates)
- Worth a look is the Guidestar report on AIG. Look at the salaries. Pay Ham less and your Pastor more!
[dgszweda]TylerR wrote:
Don’t be shy - this is your chance! For a donation of only $100.00, you can have a peg used in the ark construction named in your honor! You’ll even be able to find your peg’s final location in the completed ark when it’s all over. Donate now!
I am going for a Beam so that I can get Ken Ham to sign my ark model for me. I also can’t wait to try out the salad bar in the Garden of Eden Cafe!
As odd and grotesque as this may seem to many, this is actually a very standard fundraising practice for nonprofit organizations that are dependent on donor goodwill and support to keep their doors open. If you don’t believe me, look at the donation pages for any museum or art center. Most nonprofits struggle with yearly fundraising to support their mission, and very, very, very few (Yale, Harvard) have the kinds of endowments that are so large that the yearly principle from their investments can actually support their entire organization. Churches and religious organizations generally don’t work the same way that a traditional NPO will.
I think that we’re going to see a massive, massive shift in the 501(c)(3) laws and especially with what is and is not deductible in the future. The government is too cash desperate and the NPO sector is so rife with abuse that it will happen at some point…the question is ‘when’?
"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells
you need a museum so that people can have creation explained to them… Science isn’t just looking, it is explanation.
Since you bring up ICR, let me share something that just bugs me. As an example, look at this recent ICR report on the Big Bang and a void in space. What bugs me about “creation scientists” is they almost NEVER explain anything…they just pick at regular science. Well, duh, scientists don’t have all of the answers. But, SOMETHING happened that cause the microwave background radiation. Maybe “God did it” satisfies you, but it doesn’t me. I think God expects more out of me than that. It isn’t just ICR that does this, AiG does it often. Even Danny Faulkner, a retired professional astrophysicist, who regularly blasts the Big Bang as being ungodly, admits plainly he has no idea what caused the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. That just bugs me. Willful ignorance by someone who knows better! I just don’t get it.
Back to the ICR article, it ends my mentioning the many problems with the Big Bang (which they honestly overblow). Well, how about trying to explain a 10,000 year universe using science!! Can’t be done! Which explains why they don’t even try…
For a really good discussion of the NPO sector and funding models, let me recommend the TEDx talk by Don Pallotta: “The way we think about charity is dead wrong”. You can also review the article “The Overhead Myth” website at http://overheadmyth.com/.
"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells
At my present school and the one I last attended, all recent construction has a name attached to everything. There is a name on every door, every brick. You’d expect each square of toilet paper to have a “brought to you by the Smith family” on it!
Note: I am only slightly exaggerating :-)
In regards to the earlier comment about Ham’s salary, I checked and it is about $200K. For what he does and his responsibilities, that is reasonable to me though I have no idea really what other compensation he collects. For example, when he speaks, does he collect the speaking fee for himself or does it go to his organization? And are there other hidden sources of income such as other organizations? I did check Crosswater Canyon and he is not listed as highly compensated there.
So I sit back and ask myself why I just find myself struggling with Ham so much. We are on the same side after all. And I guess it just comes down to the way he operates and the way it appears he treats people that just might have the audacity to disagree with him a bit, Christian and non-Christian alike.
Back in the day (read mid-1980s) I earned the Reptile merit badge. It was yellow with a coiled cobra on it…really cool. My 7th grade humanist biology teacher had a lot snakes. I cared for them for a good while to qualify for tha badge and learned a lot.
“About the creation museum and whether one is even needed;
The whole world is God’s creation museum”
Jim, have you been to the creation museum? On the grounds is a botanical garden and petting zoo. Inside the building is a planetarium with great programs. These all fit the general revelation list you outlined. But the museum proper is basically a walk-through gospel tract targeting those who have little to no understanding of the Christian faith in general or the gospel in particular. The tour ends with a video program about the Second Adam, where a narrator and actors explain who Jesus Christ was and what He did. Its a legitimate debate as to the effectiveness of this walk-through gospel tract, but this place isn’t merely a museum about creation.
My hypothesis is that man (and I include children) naturally believe in a creator (I purposely used a small “c” there). I think about my times camping with family and the Boy Scouts. It was obvious to me that creation is very big and that whoever (was unknown to me until I was 20) made it was likewise very big and powerful and wise. Sinful man suppresses that knowledge and is foolish.
At a meta- level the choice is: Is there a Creator who exists outside of the universe (in Him we live and move and have our being) vs sheer materialism
I’m not that concerned about guys like Mark Smith (whom I admire and appreciate) who do not buy into a 6,000 year old universe. Both Mark and I agree that God created it all. He has questions and I have questions. He has arrived at conclusions that perhaps vary from my own.
Even before i was saved I believed in a Creator. Even after taking HS physics and college biology.
By the way, if you’ve seen Rebel without a Cause and the famous planetarium scene. The planetarium presenter narration is interesting. Source:
…and immensity of our universe. For many days before the end of our Earth… …people will look into the night sky and notice a star… …increasingly bright and increasingly near. As this star approaches us… …. As this star approaches us, the weather will change. The great polar fields of the north and south will rot and divide. And the seas will turn warmer. The last of us search the heavens and stand amazed. For the stars will still be there… …moving through their ancient rhythms. The familiar constellations that illuminate our night… …will seem as they have always seemed: Eternal, unchanged and little moved… …by the shortness of time between our planet’s birth and demise. Orion, the hunter. One of Ptolemy’s constellations… …and the most brilliant in the heavens. They’re almost equal in brilliancy. Cancer, the crab… …containing a large, loose cluster of stars, called Praesepe or the Beehive. …. The sun can be vertically overhead. Taurus, the bull. And while the flash of our beginning… …has not yet traveled the light years into distance… …has not yet been seen by planets deep within the other galaxies… …we will disappear into the blackness of the space from which we came… …destroyed as we began, in a burst of gas and fire. The heavens are still and cold once more. In all the immensity of our universe and the galaxies beyond… …the Earth will not be missed. Through the infinite reaches of space… …the problems of man seem trivial and naive indeed. And man, existing alone… …seems himself an episode of little consequence. That’s all.
No wonder the kids were mixed up!
[Darrell Post]Jim, have you been to the creation museum?
I haven’t been there. I actually grew up in Cincinnati (from 1960 to 1971). But aside from some visits (we have relatives in Loveland), it’s not a part of the country we frequent.
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