Ken Ham hates it! He’s actually pretty clueless.
The new channel brags of having “superstition-free programming,” which implies that religion is just silly superstition but atheism is rational and logical. However, laws of logic and rationality only makes sense if God, who is logical, created them and made us in His image so that we can understand them! Laws of logic shouldn’t exist in a completely random materialistic universe that the atheists believe in —and yet they do!
But god is illogical. There is no reason to believe in any deity, let alone the bizarre one Ken Ham worships, who is little more than a tribal warlord writ large, promoting archaic ideas like blood sacrifice.
If logic can only arise from a logical intelligence, where did Ken Ham’s putatively logical god come from?
It is incredible that atheists spend so much time, effort, and money arguing against Someone that they don’t even believe exists! Where are all their books, websites, and magazines that argue against the mythical Easter Bunny? This is because they do know God exists but they are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18).
No, I don’t believe god exists. I do believe religion exists. When militant EasterBunneyists start running for political office to promote their beliefs, I’ll argue against them more.
And why do atheists care so much about proclaiming their message? Atheism offers no hope and is ultimately a totally purposeless religion. If you die, that’s all there is, so why do atheists push so hard to preach their message of hopelessness? Why does it matter to them what anyone believes? It’s because they have the knowledge of God stamped on their hearts but are living in rebellion against their Creator (Romans 1:18; 3:10, 24–25).
Weird. No. I don’t believe in gods. One trivial, basic fact about atheism…and Ken Ham gets it wrong. Also, our message is that it’s a fool’s game to live for an imaginary life after you’re dead. Life’s beautiful, live for it now.
But here’s the part of Ham’s tirade I find particularly funny.
Sadly, this new TV channel is not just targeting adults with a hopeless message of godlessness, but they are also trying to indoctrinate children into an atheistic worldview. Isn’t it bad enough that humanistic thinking has lead to over 55 million deaths of aborted children in the U.S. alone, and now the atheistic humanists want to continue their attacks to poison and destroy the minds children who have survived the abortion holocaust. You see, we live in a world that is fiercely battling for the hearts and minds of our kids. And yet, it is a world where those who teach their kids the truth of God’s Word are accused of child abuse!
Unforgivable! They’re teaching children!
But here’s his very next paragraph:
But Scripture commands believers to “train up a child in the way he should go” (Proverbs 22:6), so we need to boldly stand on the authority of God’s Word and teach our children that the Bible’s history—and message of salvation—can be trusted. I encourage you to take advantage of our “Kids Free in 2014” program at the Creation Museum—bring as many kids as you can to hear the message that the Bible can be trusted, there is a God, and He died for them.
There is a god, and he’s dead! Oh, wait, he’s not. He was just restin’ for a bit. You have to catch ’em young to convince people to believe that kind of nonsense.
I don’t know why, but our Ken always makes me think of what Hamlet said to Polonius (before that poor old sod got it in the arras) “a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak Hams”.
I love the “why do athiests spend so much of their energy countering something that supposedly doesn’t exist” thing for one reason, and one reason alone: it is easier to visualize the person making any form of this “argument” in training pants with teddy bear embroidery than any “argument” known to me.
The humor very nearly equals the resulting frustration and despair.
“It is incredible that atheists spend so much time, effort, and money arguing against Someone that they don’t even believe exists! Where are all their books, websites, and magazines that argue against the mythical Easter Bunny? This is because they do know God exists but they are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness”
It is incredible that Ken Ham spends so much time, effort and, money arguing against atheists, when he doesn’t even belive they exist! This is because he does know that atheists have very good arguments, but he is suppressing the truth out of stubborness.
Why does Ken Ham spend so much of his time arguing against atheism when he thinks that atheists don’t exist?
S’cuse me while I vanish in a puff of logic…
…
Any time now…
Poor Ham, nothing but circular reasoning ad nauseum. His whole life rests on the twin fallacies of the existence of his imaginary deity and book of mythology/fiction being inerrant. In his black hole of a mind, god proves the bible, and the bible proves god. Unfortunately for him, atheists break this circle, and require solid and conclusive physical evidence for one of the fallacies, before even considering the other. And the null hypotheses are his deity doesn’t exist, and his holy book is mythology/fiction. From there, he can’t get any traction for either concept separately, because there isn’t anything other than his delusions that he has evidence, and his word delusional and unreasoned alone is dismissible.
He sure spends a lot of time and effort checking the competition. Scared be he must.
People like Randi and Penn and/or Teller also try to debunk various kinds of woo.
But obviously they only try to debunk woo that people actually believe. Why would anyone write books debunking things that no one believes? What kind of silly argument is this?
Ham’s doing the same thing here believers do everywhere: Beg the Question. Plus I think there are several more fallacies in that sentence alone. Bottom line, if even God could not have chosen to make the laws of logic other than what they are without an unacceptable contradiction, then the contradiction lies outside of God’s choice AND its nature. It goes farther back.
Does Ham think there are no books, websites, or magazines arguing against psychic powers, alternative medicine, and the Loch Ness Monster? Oh, but there are – and the folks who believe in psychic powers, alternative medicine, and the Loch Ness Monster often make the very same butthurt complaint in the same whiny tones. C’mon … if we don’t believe, then why do we care to argue against?
And we give the same answer we give to Ham: because you’re claiming your views are both true and important. Right? Then why is there any confusion here? Honest dissent ought to be both expected and respected. We’re supposed to be dealing with a proposed fact.
The “you shouldn’t argue against or complain about something you don’t believe in” moral mandate is only legitimate when we’re not dealing with facts. This is what we invoke when we’re into matters which are strictly about taste or preference (“no right, no wrong; just different.”) Don’t burst into people’s private homes and tell them to stop knitting or making pancakes or watching a tv show just because that’s not the way YOU would choose to spend your time. What’s it to you? That sort of thing. Pointless interference in personal habits.
Whenever a theist makes this argument (“why do you care?”) they’re implicitly admitting that it doesn’t really matter whether what they believe is true or not. When you think about it, that’s a pretty steep price to pay just to get atheists off their back.
I think you’re forgetting that they’ll turn around the next second and impose their religion on you. Like immediately.
They’re not actually paying a price. They’re just trying to get you to stop talking.
doublereed #9 wrote:
Ah, but if we don’t stop talking and turn their own arguments against them, they’ll eventually discover that it did indeed cost them.
I wonder why Ham bothered waiting to publish this until the channel launched. You know he wrote it (mostly from boilerplate) as soon as he heard the name.
…says the guy with an entire theme park “museum” devoted to “debunking” a branch of science he doesn’t believe in.
Ham:
*sigh*, once again. I gotta reiterate. Atheism is NOT a religion. (by definition). What atheism fights is only sometimes the nonexistence of God. Real atheism is fighting religion. Religion is what is invading politics. We do not oppose God invading, if there was any evidence of Gawd himself manipulating politics for his own ends.
Second, we don’t expect hope from religion; we know that hope comes from ourselves. We *make* hope, it can’t be *given* to us; like some cookie. Atheism does NOT tell atheists that all is hopeless, just that Religion is not helping, at all. And Hammy, right back atcha, *if* atheism is a “purposeless religion”, what is the purpose of your religion? What is the purpose of ANY religion? To teach morality; right from wrong? Those can be taught WITHOUT religion. What else you got?
.
{I know Kenn ain’t readin here, still fun to talk to that empty screen over there; pretending he’s reading. Ah well …}
I’d love to hear the said kid’s response if it was pointed out to him that this trustworthy, child-nurturing scripture also demands that the community of the faithful are obliged to execute them if they are insufficiently subordinate. A point that the bloke who ‘died for them,’ Jesus of Nazerath was particularly keen to insist on. ( See Mark 7, Matthew 15. )
I think if he embarked on such an attempt at honesty, Ham would swiftly find himself to be somewhat isolated inside his fucking hellhouse museum, and that a large number of children would be found to have joined the company of non-believers on that very same day.
He should start up his own HamTV, which will consist of a loop of Porky Pig popping out of a circle and saying, “God did it, folks!” with a handwave.
Forget God being illogical, that statement is illogical. If God is and, presumably, was logical before supposedly creating logic, then logic already existed; there was nothing for God to create.
The more that is written to disprove god the more proof there is of god.
Then the more Ham preaches god the more he disproves god.
He finally gets it!
@11 Naked Bunny:
I think it’s rather obvious. That’s when the channel is getting its press, so that’s the time to release the counter point.
@Leo Buzalsky: I thought it might be so he could enjoy the veneer of dismissing something after having actually seen it, but your idea makes more sense. It’s not like his followers care.
It may have already been said, but bears repeating: We’re not fighting a thing we think doesn’t exist. We’re fighting religion, which clearly does exist. And while it’s usually just a damned nuisance, it has the potential for great and grievous harm.
People who believe in shit without recourse to evidence are subject to any number of other errors in thinking and sometimes the mistakes they will make as a direct result of these errors are horrific.
It ultimately threatens our continued existence.
It must stop.
Yeah, when the Easter Bunnyists gain a near monopoly on political power and start using it to restrict my rights, I’ll spend as much time worrying about their harmful and irrational beliefs as I do worrying about the harmful and irrational beliefs Ham promotes.
We don’t need to waste time on the Easter Bunny because everyone, except a few small children, know it’s not real. Perhaps by comparing his god to a known childhood myth, the Hamster is reveling something about his own beliefs.
@21 sparks
THIS.
And regarding the “atheism as a religious stance” thing, this is what I’ve said to my daughters, as a thought experiment:
– Imagine a culture that has no belief in gods of any kind. Imagine there are the only known culture.
– What is their “religion”? Do they have one? Since they have no known beliefs, and are unaware of any such beliefs, can they be opposed to them?
– Now imagine that, out of the blue, another culture becomes known, which holds a belief in some god at its core. The two have had no interaction, they are only known to you.
– Has the first group now and suddenly gained atheism as a religious belief, or as an argument against one?
(I’m sure someone with a better education could improve this ((if it were judged to be potentially valid)).)
@12: “…says the guy with an entire theme park “museum” devoted to “debunking” a branch of science he doesn’t believe in.”
Since archeology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, geophysics, physics, … ad nauseam all support an ancient Earth (4.54 GY +/-1%), just what branch of science are you imagining that Ken Ham really supports? If your list is not in the Null Set, you have committed a logical error.
Oh, so it’s another commercial he didn’t have to pay for.
“The new channel brags of having “superstition-free programming,” which implies that religion is just silly superstition but atheism is rational and logical.”
Nothing gets by him, does it?
Objects at rest remain at rest.