When I visited the Creation “Museum”, one thing that shocked me was this display:
At the time, I pointed out the pernicious nature of this claim:
With complete seriousness and no awareness of the historical abuses to which this idea has been put, they were promoting the Hamite theory of racial origins, that ugly idea that all races stemmed from the children of Noah, and that black people in particular were the cursed offspring of Ham. If they are going to reject science because of its abuses, such as eugenics, they should at least be conscious of the evils perpetrated in the name of their strange cultish doctrines, I should think.
Boy oh boy, let me tell you…Ken Ham was indignant and outraged. How dare we connect creationism to racism? He was claiming that all races were one, descended from a common ancestor, Noah, 4000 years ago! Of course, what he neglects to mention is that the Biblical story claims that Africans are the product of a curse of servility placed on Ham and all of his descendants.
Well, and he also neglects to mention that the story is totally bogus, disproven by modern evidence, and has no relationship at all to the patterns of migration in human history.
Ken Ham is wrong and racist. The Biblical story of the origins of the diverse peoples of the earth is wrong and racist. It really is that simple. It takes a complex history and turns it into a pat partitioning of humanity into the chosen people, and the cursed people.
And just now people are taking notice. Schools in Texas are taking advantage of creationist curricula to incorporate instruction in racism into the schools. This is an actual image from one of the creationist textbooks.
And this is what Texas schoolkids are being taught.
Instructional material in two school districts teach that racial diversity today can be traced back to Noah’s sons, a long-discredited claim that has been a foundational component of some forms of racism.
Religious bias is common, with most courses taught from a Protestant — often a conservative Protestant — perspective. One course, for example, assumes Christians will at some point be “raptured.” Materials include a Venn diagram showing the pros and cons of theories that posit the rapture before the returning Jesus’ 1,000-year reign and those that place it afterward. In many courses, the perspectives of Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Jews are often left out.
Anti-Jewish bias — intentional or not — is not uncommon. Some courses even portray Judaism as a flawed and incomplete religion that has been replaced by Christianity.
Many courses suggest or openly claim that the Bible is literally true. “The Bible is the written word of God,” students are told in one PowerPoint presentation. Some courses go so far as to suggest that the Bible can be used to verify events in history. One district, for example, teaches students that the Bible’s historical claims are largely beyond question by listing biblical events side by side with historical developments from around the globe.
Course materials in numerous classes are designed to evangelize rather than provide an objective study of the Bible’s influence. A book in one district makes its purpose clear in the preface: “May this study be of value to you. May you fully come to believe that ‘Jesus is the Christ, the son of God.’ And may you have ‘life in His name.’”
A number of courses teach students that the Bible proves Earth is just 6,000 years old.
Students are taught that the United States is a Christian nation founded on the Christian biblical principles taught in their classrooms.
Academic rigor is so poor that many courses rely mostly on memorization of Bible verses and factoids from Bible stories rather than teaching students how to analyze what they are studying. One district relies heavily on Bible cartoons from Hanna-Barbera for its high school class. Students in another district spend two days watching what lesson plans describe a “the historic documentary Ancient Aliens,” which presents “a new interpretation of angelic beings described as extraterrestrials.”
Would you believe that they also teach that the Jews killed Jesus? Of course you would.
Creationism isn’t just a source of ignorance; it’s a major wellspring of ethnic bigotry.
(via Addicting Info)
Surely there’s a legal case there if we can muster a plaintiff and interest the ACLU, which shouldn’t be too hard.
In this context, I should plug Hector Avalos’ newest book, Slavery, Abolitionism and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship. It’s got some good stuff on how the “curse of Ham” has been viewed and used over time.
It’s not necessarily historically inaccurate to say that the Jews killed Jesus. True, the Roman officials carried out the sentence, but (at least according to the Bible) it was Jews that brought Jesus to Pilate to be tried, with the understanding that the sentence would be death. Of course, it’s hard to know how much of the Bible to trust as historically accurate.
I don’t have that problem.
The whole point of Christian salvation is that Jesus died. So the Jews who killed him (or told the Romans to do it) were doing what Christians claim was necessary for them to get harp lessons for ever and ever.
Do Native Americans don’t exist, or do they just group ‘anyone not from Europe or Africa’ as ‘Oriental’? I mean, at least the original folks* who were coming up with theories like this has the excuse of having no clue the Americas existed. (And Australia, and Antartica… and they were kind of fuzzy on a lot of the bits they knew about…)
* And I confess, I don’t know when someone correlated ‘three sons of Noah’ = ‘three known continents’; if it was one of those things that went along with the story, or if some medieval theologian, priest or rabbi thought it up.
The people who wrote the Bible stories lived in the Eastern Mediterranean, with limited outside communications, so it is logical that they would want to believe that all races are rooted in their region. People tend to believe what they want to believe. It is simple human nature for those lacking knowledge, a disciplined scientific mind, or with a local political-economic interest. It is hard to fault these men.
With better information, we can theorize now with a good deal of likelihood that man first developed in sub-Saharan Africa and multiplied there due to evolutionary success. Eventually resources became scarce as populations expanded and conflict drove some out into more challenging environments. Here they either adapted to their environments, or died off. By the times of the Bible, strains of humans were already in lots of different places, with lots of different genetic developments.
There is a strain of Texans who are very stubborn.
comradebob
From where do you get your information on evolutionary theory?
Oh gods. This makes me want to hide in a cave. It’s certainly not making the future look too bright.
Becca:
We’re stuffed into the “Oriental” category.
How ironic that it’s Ken Hampromoting the Hamite Theory.
I wonder if he’s aware that the Biblical story supported the Hebrew claim to be the chosen people. It not only left out the Hamites, but the Japheths as well. Or that according to some, the Anglo-German-Irish peoples are descended from Japheth’s son, Gomer, thus making us all a bunch of Gomers.
“It’s not necessarily historically inaccurate to say that the Jews killed Jesus.”
Actually it is. At most one can say is ‘some’ Jews. Remember that Jesus and all his followers were also Jews. However much of Christian iconography and later literature draws a strict division between Jesus and his followers (other than Judas) and family from other Jews.
My decades-long observation of creationists has confirmed them to be strongly racist. Their complaint “I ain’t related to no monkey” is thinly-disguised racist code.
If one uses the null hypothesis that the babble is mythology/fiction, you will rarely be wrong…
Don’t worry. Now that the politicians know what is going on, they will step in and stop this nonsense instantly! They’re not stupid you know.
Really? This is taught in public schools? We are truly, unequivocally fucked.
Caine:
I saw this floating around the ‘net the other day. Among the various responses were a bunch of people saying Indians should go back to Asia.
@#6 Becca Stareyes:
Although the idea of continents themselves would only come along much later (you need map-makers and large-scale international trade to really recognize they are there), there is a geographic component to the sons of Noah as far back as whenever Genesis got set down. The sons of Shem, Japheth, and Ham are set out in excruciatingly boring detail, and are associated in the text with the peoples known to the ancient Hebrews. The sons of Shem include the Hebrews themselves and most of their near neighbors (Elamites, Assyrians, Sumerians, Lydians); the sons of Ham with mostly southern peoples (Kush, Egypt), but also Canaan and the Hittites; and the sons of Japheth with northern peoples (Cimmerians, Greeks, Medes, and various Anatolian states).
Josephus tried to tie all the sons in with peoples known in the days of the early Roman Empire. And the tradition continued from there.
So there has always been a sense that different general regions were populated by the different sons, but no real Europe, Asia, Africa division as such. That had to await people breaking down the known world into continents.
I found this map on Wikipedia, mapping out the grandsons of Noah (color coded by the sons, with red for Japheth, blue for Ham, and green for Shem) as interpreted by Josephus.
MM:
Eeeeee, Charlie Hill! ♥
*sigh*
To be perfectly fair, only the christian blacks are children of ham, the atheist blacks are demons in the beliefs of Ham and his ilk.
Chigau
Straight out of his asshole, AFAICT.
travisrm89
Not at all. If you find a bit where there’s actually corroborating evidence elsewhere, that bit is somewhat accurate. If not, it’s made up bullshit. So, the bit in the old testament where the Persians invade and conquer the Israelites? That bit is historically accurate. All the other bits? Not so much.
I had the misfortune of attending a fundamentalist school which taught this. The A Beka textbooks were extremely racist for more than just this reason. The fundamentalists were fine with defending slavery. I really don’t see how it’s much of a stretch for them to defend this.
Actually somewhere different ‘Dalillama’. Classic scientific method teaches us to discern facts with our five senses, and then analyze and communicate them with the seven liberal arts and sciences. Some would argue that these tools were bestowed upon man by Deity. It is a powerful thought process developed by those resisting the power structure of the Catholic Church during the Enlightenment. Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric teach us to reason and communicate. Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy teach us to apply measurements to Logic.
chalchiuhtotolin:
My sympathies.
“Factoid” does not mean “trivia” or “fact”; it’s much closer to “truthiness”.
Three things that do not shock me:
•Ken Ham is a racist
•Creationist curricula support and reinforce racists/racism
•This shit is being taught in our public schools
I’m feeling rather jaded lately.
Dalillama
I’ve got it!
comradebob is commenting from the 17th century.
Which is pretty amazing.
Where did you get that fallacious idea bigoted idjit? Science mistrusts the senses, which is why instruments are better, as they lack perception biases. Like you have. You obviously don’t understand real science.
I see that racistbob is going for the derail.
I’m not sure that you can blame their racism on being creationists. I suspect that their racism came first or both are results of having the type of mindset that characterizes a right wing christianist. Being a racist goes hand in hand with being an authoritarian because both of them depend on the “leader” being superior to everyone else by nature of his position. Thus, in order to establish themselves as superior to other people outside their group, they had to identify some obvious aspect of the “other” that would define that particular category of people that could then be labeled as inferior.
There’s no cure for stupidity.
@tonysnark – I think that rather than the ACLU, although they would be part of any litigation, the Americans United for the Separation of Church & State would probably just love to get their hands on this one. They are aware of it because it has been brought to their attention by Texas Observer who just did a bit on it.
Death does wonders for that affliction.
“When I visited the Creation “Museum”, one thing that shocked me was this display…”
Actually, I would be shocked if you found anything in that “museum” that wasn’t shocking.
Hey, guess who is going to have to put up with this shit in about two years!
…
Fuck me, I already know this crap is going on, and in this fucking system I am going to attempt to see that my future students will get some semblance of an education. Fuck Ken Ham and double fuck David Barton.
Stick around, Horde – if we’re lucky, the Highly Esteemed Stealth (he wishes) Racist and Capitaliser Of Imporant Words Comradebob might even regale us with his Tales of “Verbal IQ” or: How I Learned To Stop Listening And Assume The Coloured People Are Just Stupider Because I Can’t Understand Their Quaint Patois.
Hmm – I appear to have omitted the letter “t” from my comment @35. Clearly my own Verbal IQ is lacking today.
Where would xianity be if jesus got 8 years with time off for good behavior?
Seems like the Jews should be heroes for making xianity possible.
It’s also cuckoo to say “the Jews killed jesus”. Even according to the mythology, it wasn’t all Jews. Just a few Jewish temple officials. It’s equivalent to claiming Americans killed 26 people in Newtown, Connecticut.
No, it’s easy to know. Don’t trust it at all. None of it is historically accurate. Historical accuracy, a relatively modern idea, wasn’t even on the table. Biblical writers were interested in their political and doctrinal agendas, and only used historical people and events to further those goals. That’s why the various stories in the New Testament of the life of Jesus, the crucifixion, and resurrection are not in agreement. They weren’t writing biography, they were writing sermons…emotionally charged essays couched in historical fiction to convince someone of a particular point of view.
Well, if you look at the biblical passage this racial theory alludes to, it becomes immediately apparant why racists love it so much:
“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers.” […]
“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
May God extend Japheth’s territory;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.”
(Yeah, Noah actually curses Canaan (is Ham’s son), but who knows maybe that just scribal error or something. I’m sure theologians have written about that, but I can’t be arsed to look that up right know. But so much for the inerrant truth of the bible.)
So Ken Ham can be outraged as much as he likes – If he accepts the biblical text as literal thruth and the interpretation of Africans as the descendants of Ham, he also accepts the “be your slave”-thing. But I’m sure he’ll be able to come up with tons of apologist bullshitting to gloss of this implication.
Actually, the whole Bible-passage that contains this Curse of Ham-thing is worth reading, as it’s is quite weird:
“Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.”
Then Noah wakes up, sees “what his youngest son has done to him” and proceeds to curse him/his son. So, apparantly Ham’s crime was to walk in on his father, who had decided to get drunk buck naked. Obviously Noah’s reaction to curse all his decendants is completely reasonable.
If “Jews killed Jesus” where does that leave Jesus? He was a Jew after all.
The anti-semitic racism of Christians would be amusingly ironic if not for all the atrocities committed as a result. Not only was Jesus a Jew, but all early Christians were Jews. The first great schism of Christianity was how Jewish a Gentile man had to go to become a Christian. James (brother of Jesus, head of the church, and strictly Levitical) insisted that circumcision was required.
@robro: I’m currently reading R.M.Price’s “The Jesus Puzzle” and he mentions that for many people in the Middle East, those early Christian communities who rejected most the Old Testament behavioural laws were quite attractive. He argues that full conversions to Judaism were quite rare, because of the many lifestyle changes this would entail. The non-Jewish interpretations of Christianity, however, offered many would-be converts the opportunity to become part of a chosen people with a hope for eventual salvation, without having to obey Mosaic law. (This is of course the brand of Christianity that wold later become the Catholic orthodoxy).
“the
historichistrionic documentary Ancient Aliens”FTFY
I don’t know what to say.
I will wait for further developments in this Texas education. it must at some time end up in a court of law.
I am really still amazed that there are black protestants christians many real biblical types too. and native American christians too
uncle frogy
Ok, so Ken Ham is a direct descendant of Noah? Makes sense in a parallel, topsy-turvy universe.
These loons never cease to amaze me…
Can we please put a fence around these people? Do like George Carlin said: fence off the ‘square states’ and put all the lunatics like this inside and let the rest of us get on with our lives.
The irony of all this is that if there is a God, It very deliberately chose evolution as its toolset; which means these people are piously walking up to this God and slapping it across the face with their Bibles and telling it “No, you did what WE say you did.”
It never ceases to amze me that, in a country with an official separation of church and state, devious fundies still manage to worm their bullshit into the public school system… and devious fundie politicians go out of their way to break the law and support it. WTF? These people are delusional.
@Comradebob
Bah, messed up the blockquote. Apologies, it’s the first time I’ve done one.
But that story doesn’t actually make sense. Why would the Romans execute a man for breaking some religious rule? Obviously, the accusation was not one of conspiracy against the Romans (King of the Jews, etc), since then Pilate would never have offered to release him.
The story is so full of holes, you could use it to drain your pasta. I suppose there could be a historical core to the story, but it’s buried under so much myth it’s impossible to tell what it might have been.
Huh. We were also taught it was the “the Jews” who killed Jesus at the publicly-funded Catholic high school I attended here in Ontario during the mid-1980s. All the other courses at the school had to be run in accordance to provincial guidelines, but I’m guessing they had (And still have? Don’t know.) free reign of the religion curriculum.
The Curse of Ham (rather more the Curse of Canaan) was a blatant excuse as to why the Hebrew people could murder the Canaanites who lived in that region.
Two recommendations:
Jeremy Cohen, Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen
and
Richard Carrier, Proving History (the second part is forthcoming)
I have made a map of my own of what the authors of Genesis 10 apparently thought the ethnic composition of their world to be here.
-As for those saying none of the Bible is accurate or none of the Bible is accurate except in light of corroborating evidence-it is true the authors of the Bible spiced up their stories with massive amounts of fiction, especially in the earlier portions. However, the Bible should be treated as any other ancient text-it should not be wholly discounted upfront. While it is true practically all of the Pentateuch is fiction, Samuel clearly preserves some early tradition (especially on the importance of Shiloh in Iron I) and Kings does contain much history (albeit, frequently spiced up with fiction); e.g. Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah, Mesha’s rebellion, Nebuchadnezzar’s campaigns to Judah, and Hazael’s archaeologically-confirmed successful campaigns to Israel and Gath. The conquest of Samaria, mentioned in texts of Sargon II, is also mentioned in the Bible (2 Kings 17), though the Assyrian king invading Samaria is unnamed. The Bible’s accounts of Shalmaneser’s campaigns against Samaria in 2 Kings 17 are also not inconsistent with the external evidence.
E Harding, maybe the bible should not be discounted entirely but I think I will take my history from modern scholars instead as I think that that is what we should be teaching in our schools as well
“Inglorious Bastards” and ‘The Guns Of Navarone” while being based on history and having historical elements in them are in no way considered part of the history of WWII same thing can be said about the bible.
As has been said here more than once there is even great doubt as to any Jesus to have ever existed at all let alone the Jews killed him.
uncle frogy
@unclefrogy
-‘Tis true. Contemporary sources are often more valuable than the Biblical text (though the Biblical text was written in particular contexts and is, thus, something of a contemporary source to some historical periods). There is hardly any doubt in the scholarly community that there was a historical Jesus, but months of reading the Vridar blog have softened me to agnosticism regarding the existence of a historical Jesus.
“This absurd theory of common descent leads to moral breakdown.”
Hard to know if it’s Ken Ham or PZ Myers who is likelier to say those words.
*cough*
The seven liberal arts are literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, psychology, and science.
I posit that the authoritarian counter-forms are all the same: willful ignorance.
I don’t see why even a bible literalist would see that Ham/Canaan account as implying anything about God’s intentions, because the curse was made by Noah after a drunken carouse and being acutely embarrassed for it to have been discovered – Yahweh didn’t do the cursing, and nothing in the story suggests that Yahweh approved of it. Of all the actions in the O.T., some clearly have Yahweh’s approval, some his disapproval, and some are simply presented as what happened without either divine approval or disapproval. The Ham story seems to be just one of the “this happened” variety – that’s all.
All those literalists who for centuries used it to support racism missed the best literal interpretation of it!
Forget about Jesus; what about the children!
Seriously though, all I can think of are those fresh faced kids just assuming their community will do right by them and give them an education, one that won’t get them kicked out their next out of state school.
If I were a TX resident and parent, I’d already be moving. If I were the non-custodial parent of a child living in TX, I’d be calling my ex, and if necessary, a lawyer. If I were a school or college administrator anywhere, I’d be reviewing and revamping entrance testing.
So much awful and it extends much further than TX.
“It’s not necessarily historically inaccurate to say that the Jews killed Jesus”
Actually logically the statement “The Jews killed Jesus”, is stupid to the nth degree. Aside from the fact that, as mentioned above, the Jesus and his followers were Jews there is simple logic involved here. The vast majority of Jews then living had never heard of Jesus during his lifetime, so how could they be involved in Jesus’ death? And how were children, the insane, the weak responsible for Jesus’ death? The term “the Jews” assumes that collectively somehow the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ death. That is obviously absurd. A few Jewish officials seem to have been involved. The crowd referred to in the passion narratives was either made up by the writers or a rent a crowd. The vast majority of Jews in Jerusalem for that Passover probably didn’t give the Passion events much thought.
Jesus was crucified, a Roman punishment for slaves and rebels against Rome, considered to be a very painful punishment for the lowest of the low. Supposidly on the cross was the mocking sign “King of the Jews”. If that is the case I would suspect Pilate ordering Jesus death as a trouble maker against Rome. The Passion narratives would in all likelihood seem to try to shift the blame on to the Jewish authorities and conjure up a religious complaint against Jesus. If Jesus was crucified that would indicate in the eyes of the Romans the needed death of a troublemaker.
Or, rather, people spread simply because they could. There wasn’t exactly a barrier.
Wow. “Semite” is a really tortured interpretation; of that list, only Hebrew and Assyrian/Babylonian/Akkadian are what are nowadays called Semitic languages. Lydian was Indo-European.
Bookmarked.
Will people please stop this nonsense about five senses? There are dozens. There are specific nerves and specific receptors for such specific things as “moderate cold (8–10 °C) and menthol”.
What in the fuck?
I have a doctorate in natural sciences. Go ahead, tell me what I’ve missed by not having undergone the trivium or the quadrivium.
And that’s before we get to comment 27.
*blink*
The Seven Liberal Arts are a medieval thing. Enlightenment my enlightened ass!
Grammar, being Latin grammar, teaches us how the Latin language worked; nothing more. Logic teaches us to reason, but not to communicate. Rhetoric teaches us to obfuscate, to get away with being wrong, you asshole.
What a sad curriculum that lacks stochastics, geology, biology, almost all of physics, all of chemistry…
But… but… Wyoming is so full of gorgeous fossils! :-(
Nope, by singing about them. Music is one of the Seven Liberal Arts, painting ain’t.
o_O
O_o
In the 80s?
Sometimes I wonder if any news of the Second Vatican Council ever crossed the ocean.
…which, irony of ironies, never happened.
2 Kings, yes, plenty. 1 Kings, apparently hardly any at all.
~:-| Newfangled. BTW, your particular list isn’t at your link.
(Also interesting how psychology isn’t a science according to it…)
The scientific method, presented in brief for the benefit of comradebob:
Falsification and parsimony.
…uh, actually, only in the wide sense of the word, the one that includes Hittite. But it’s as far from the Semitic languages as English is.
Sure, but does it gum up and solidify in the mouth?
It seems possible to get Ken Ham both coming and going on this issue – or at least take a kick at one of the creationist movement’s favourite slander planks
on the AiG site there are more than a few references to the acceptance of evolution leading directly to eugenics and racism
However Ham also says that he does accept that evolutionary processes are responsible for variations within a species ( microevolution)
So essentially there’s no disagreement between Ken Ham and us as to the fact that those constructs that are viewed as races (IMO there’s only once race – the human race) came about as a result of evolution.
So surely then it would follow then that if, as Ham and his kind (or should that be Baramin?) like to assert, acceptance of evolution is prescriptive towards racism and eugenics, AND there’s no disagreement between rationalists and creationists as to whether and how the different races of our species evolved, then he’s tarred with exactly the same brush.
does that make sense?